Chapter V of William Joyce’s book on British National Socialism, ‘Twilight Over England’

William Joyce, ex-Propaganda Director of the British Union of Fascists and leader of the tiny National Socialist League, is more infamously known by his sobriquet ‘Lord Haw Haw’, a name given him by the British public in response to the jeering propaganda broadcasts he made to the United Kingdom on behalf of the German government during World War II. In 1939 Joyce, anticipating internment by the British government, fled to Germany with his wife, the Reich offering them asylum in exchange for English-language propaganda work. It was in 1940 that Joyce’s book ‘Twilight Over England’ was first published in both German and English. Intended in part for distribution to British prisoners-of-war, it is a striking book. Its cynical, informal, self-effacing tone is typical of Joyce’s writing and speaking style, and helps both disarm the reader’s defenses while seeking to inflame their sense of injustice. The book serves as an overview of UK history, politics, and economics from a National Socialist perspective, critiquing all three in service of the lambasting of the British government for its hypocrisy regarding Germany’s foreign policy and treatment of minority ethnic groups. The foundation of the book is Joyce’s passion for economic reform and issues of social justice – the book is redolent with the evisceration of Britain for its treatment of its poor, its disenfranchised, and its laboring industrial and agricultural workers. In chapters such as the fifth, ‘Finance’, which is reproduced in full below, Joyce contrasts the deficiencies of British capitalism with what he regards as the more socially conscious ideals of National Socialist economic ideology. 

In the last chapter, some account, however sketchy, was given of the deplorable economic condition into which the majority of British men and women had sunk in recent times. It must not be forgotten, however, that there was a rich and contented minority. Whereas the state of the masses of the people was unworthy of any civilized nation, above all unworthy of a nation which had such resources as England, there was in the land a ruling class which was probably more prosperous than any similar class in the world. Attached to this sacred caste was an “upper-middle-class” stratum which certainly had no good reason to complain. There were, in fact, two Englands, each ignorant of the other’s existence. If nine or ten people were crowded into a little damp basement in Hoxton Market, there were 550 persons in Britain whose personal wealth had passed the million mark.

The plain fact of the matter is that Jewish Law ruled in England. Those who merely produced wealth were the lowest caste. The path to splendour was the path of exchange. To make the soil yield up a few more turnips was to attract the highly suspicious attention of Government servants. To sit on the fattest rump that good living could provide and wait for foreign dividends to come in was the qualification for national approval and membership of the Order of Sacred Beasts. The soundest advice that a business-man could give to his son, unless destined for the Guards, would be: “Produce nothing, my boy — not even children. Buy something in the way of shares, if you can, and wait till you find some bloody fool who will pay you more than you gave for them. Also, join the Craft. Above all, do nothing extraordinary. Otherwise people won’t trust your judgement.” Continue reading →