John Amery was a British fascist who proposed to the Wehrmacht the formation
of a British volunteer force and made recruitment efforts and propaganda
broadcasts for Nazi Germany. He was executed for treason after the war.
Early life Born in Chelsea, London, John Amery was
one of two children of Leo Amery, a half Jewish Member of Parliament and later
Conservative government minister. John's younger brother, Julian Amery also
became an MP and served in a Conservative government.
Amery was a problem child who ran through a succession of private tutors.
Like his father, he was sent to Harrow, but left after only a year, being
described by his housemaster as "without doubt, the most difficult boy I have
ever tried to manage". Living in his father's shadow, he strove to make his
own way by embarking on a career in film production. Over a period, he set up a
number of independent companies, all of which failed; these endeavours rapidly
led to bankruptcy. At the age of 21, Amery married Una
Wing, a former prostitute, but was never able to earn enough to keep her for
himself. He was constantly appealing to his father for money. A staunch
anti-Communist, he came to embrace the fascist National Socialist doctrines of
Nazi Germany on the grounds that they were the only alternative to Bolshevism.
He left Britain permanently to live in France after being declared bankrupt in
1936. In Paris, he met the French fascist leader Jacques Doriot, with whom
he travelled to Austria, Italy, and Germany to witness the effects of
fascism in those countries. Amery claimed to his family that he
joined Francisco Franco's Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and
was awarded a medal of honour while serving as an intelligence officer with
Italian volunteer forces. This was untrue although the lie achieved wide
circulation. Amery first visited Spain in 1939 after the civil war had ended
and stayed for only a few weeks before returning to France, where he remained
even after the German invasion and the creation of Vichy rule during the German
occupation. In Europe during the Second World War
In France, Amery soon fell foul of the Vichy government and made several
attempts to leave the country but was rebuffed. The German armistice
commissioner Count Ceschi offered Amery the chance to leave France and go to
Germany to work in the political arena, but Ceschi was unable to get Amery out
of France. In September 1942, Hauptmann Werner
Plack got Amery the French travel permit he needed, and in October Plack and
Amery went to Berlin to speak to the German English Committee. It was at this
time that Amery suggested that the Germans consider forming a British
anti-Bolshevik legion. Adolf Hitler was impressed by Amery and allowed him to
remain in Germany as a guest of the Reich. During this period, Amery made a
series of pro-German propaganda radio broadcasts, attempting to appeal to
Britons to join the war on communism. British Free Corps
The idea of a British force to fight the communists languished until Amery
encountered Jacques Doriot during a visit to France in January 1943. Doriot
was part of the LVF, a French volunteer force fighting with the Germans on the
eastern front. Amery rekindled his idea of a British unit and aimed to recruit
50 to 100 men for propaganda purposes, and to establish a core of men with
which to attract additional members from British prisoners of war. He also
suggested that such a unit could provide more recruits for the other military
units made up of foreign nationals. Amery's first recruiting drive for what
was initially to be called the British Legion of St. George took him to the
Saint-Denis POW camp outside Paris. Amery addressed between 40 and 50
inmates from various British Commonwealth countries and handed out
recruiting material. This first effort at recruitment was a complete failure,
but he persisted. Amery ended up with two men, of whom only one, Kenneth
Berry, joined what was later called the BFC. Amery's link to the unit ended in
October 1943, when the Waffen SS decided his services were no longer needed, and
it was officially renamed the British Free Corps. Amery continued to broadcast
and write propaganda in Berlin until late 1944, when he travelled to Northern
Italy to lend support to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's Salò
Republic. Amery was captured in the last weeks of the war by Italian partisans,
who handed him over to British authorities. The British army officer
sent to take him into custody was Captain Alan Whicker, later a prominent
British broadcaster. Trial
After the war, Amery was tried for treason; in a preliminary hearing, he
argued that he had never attacked Britain and was an anti-Communist, not a
Nazi. At the same time, his brother Julian Amery attempted to show that John
had become a Spanish citizen, and therefore would have been technically
incapable of committing treason against the United Kingdom. His counsel, Gerald
Osborne Slade KC, meanwhile, tried to show that the accused was mentally ill.
Amery's sanity was questioned by his own father, Leo, but all efforts to have the
court consider his mental state were unsuccessful. Further attempts at a
defence were suddenly abandoned on the first day of his trial, 28 November
1945, when to general astonishment, Amery pleaded guilty to eight charges of
treason. He was immediately sentenced to death. The entire proceeding lasted just
eight minutes. Before accepting Amery's guilty plea,
the judge, Mr Justice Humphreys, made certain that Amery realised what the
consequences would be, i.e. it guaranteed that he would immediately be
sentenced to death by hanging, because there was no other permissible penalty.
After satisfying himself that Amery fully understood the consequences of
pleading guilty, the judge announced this verdict:
John Amery ... I am satisfied that you knew what you did and that you did it
intentionally and deliberately after you had received warning from ... your
fellow countrymen that the course you were pursuing amounted to high treason.
They called you a traitor and you heard them; but in spite of that you continued
in that course. You now stand a self-confessed traitor to your King and
country, and you have forfeited your right to live.
Execution In order to calculate the correct
parameters for hanging Amery his height and weight were recorded shortly before
his execution: he measured 5 feet 7 inches and weighed 140 pounds. Amery was
hanged by Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by Henry E. Critchell, in Wandsworth
Prison at 9.00 am on Wednesday, 19 December 1945. A few hours later, on the
same day that he was executed, Amery's body was buried in an unmarked grave in
Wandsworth prison cemetery. This practice was standard procedure because
bodies of executed prisoners were regarded as property of the British
government, and therefore remained in the custody of the prison where they had
been executed. Wandsworth prison cemetery is situated inside the walls of
the prison, and therefore it cannot be visited by the general public. In 1996
after his brother's death, the family had Amery's body exhumed and cremated,
scattering his ashes in France. In an article which was to be published
in the Empire News and Sunday Chronicle, but which was suppressed as the result
of pressure from the Home Office, Pierrepoint described him as "the
bravest man I ever hanged". Greeting the hangman at the appointed hour, Amery
reportedly quipped: "Mr Pierrepoint, I've always wanted to meet you, but not,
of course, under these circumstances...". A proof copy of this
article is in the Prison Commission files at the United Kingdom National
Archives, but it is contradicted by another archive file: the Prison
Commission official who wrote this stated that "Amery did extend his hand
and said 'Oh! Pierrepoint.' Upon which Pierrepoint took his hand and placed it
behind his back for pinioning and that the conversation was entirely limited to
that remark". An epitaph written by his father appears
in The Empire at Bay. The Leo Amery Diaries. 1929-1945:
Cultural references Ronald Harwood's play An English
Tragedy, charting the weeks leading up to Amery's execution following his
arrest in Italy and trial in London, adapted for radio by Bert Coules, was
broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on 8 May 2010 and 13 April 2012. The cast included
Geoffrey Streatfeild as Amery and Derek Jacobi as Leopold Amery.
In the British TV crime drama Foyle's War, the finale of series 6 is loosely
based on Amery's case. Like Amery, the fictional character of James Deveraux is
born to a distinguished British establishment family, having MPs and
government ministers as relatives. Like Amery, Deveraux pleads guilty and is
sentenced to death. However, in the end Deveraux turns out to be a British spy
serving MI9 and reporting German troop movements.
See also John Codd
Friesack Camp Lord Haw-Haw
References References
John Amery, L'Angleterre et l'Europe [England and Europe], Documents et
Témoignages: collection d'essais politiques 1, 48 p.
Casciani, Dominic, How Britain made its executioners, BBC News online 1 June
2006 [accessed 22 July 2007] Colebatch, Hal G.P.. "The Subtle
Besmirching of Leo Amery". Quadrant 57. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
Faber, David, Speaking for England: Leo, Julian and John Amery, the tragedy of a
political family ISBN 0-7432-5688-3 Weale, Adrian, Patriot traitors : Roger
Casement, John Amery and the real meaning of treason ISBN 0-670-88498-7
West, Rebecca, The meaning of treason, ISBN 1-84212-023-9
External links John Amery biographical sketch,
psychiatric report, his radio broadcast, leaflet, and The Times article.
Info related to his trial British Volunteers in the German
Wehrmacht in WWII by Jason Pipes "Why the son of a Churchill cabinet
minister became a mouthpiece for Hitler", Daily Mail, 25 December 2013
Papers held in the National Archives - KV 2/78 1939 Apr 06-1944 Aug 18,
KV 2/79 1944 Aug 22-1945 Mar 06, KV 2/80 1945 Mar 07-1945 May 25,
KV 2/81 1945 May 26-1945 Dec 13, KV 2/82 1945 Dec 14-1946 Jan 04