John Amery
Template:Distinguish2 John Amery (14 March, 1912 – 19 December, 1945) was a British fascist who proposed to Hitler the forming of a British volunteer force (which subsequently became the British Free Corps), made recruitment efforts and propaganda broadcasts for Nazi Germany. He was executed for treason after the war.
John Amery | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1912 |
| Died | 19 December 1945 |
| Occupation(s) | Activist, Member of British Free Corps |
| Parent | Leo Amery |
Early Activities
John Amery was the son of Conservative Member of Parliament and cabinet minister Leo Amery and educated at Harrow. Amery was from a Hungarian Jewish family that had settled in England and converted to Protestantism. Leo Amery had distanced himself from his Jewish origins due to anti-Semitism in the British establishment. It is quite possible that John Amery never even knew of his Jewish heritage.
He was a staunch anti-Communist and accepted the fascist doctrines of Nazi Germany. He left Britain to live in France after going bankrupt in the early 1930s. In Paris he met the French fascist leader Jacques Doriot, with whom he traveled to Austria, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Germany to witness the effects of fascism in those countries.
Amery claimed to his family that he joined 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; in fact Amery first visited Spain in 1939 after the civil war had ended and only stayed for a few weeks before returning to France, where he remained even after the German invasion and the creation of Vichy rule.
In Europe during World War Two
Amery soon fell afoul of the Vichy government and made several attempts to leave the area but was rebuffed. German armistice commissioner Graf 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 what he wanted 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. In this period, Amery made a series of pro-German propaganda broadcasts over the radio, attempting to appeal to Britons.
The 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 of 1943. Doriot was part of the LVF (Legion des Volontaires Français), 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 uses and also to seek out a core of men with which to gain 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 St 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 and eventually he recruited a number of individuals to his cause. Amery ended up with two men, of which only Kenneth Berry would join what was later called the BFC. Amery's link to the BFC ended in October 1943, when the Waffen SS decided Amery's 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 traveled to northern Italy to lend support to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's rump Salò Republic. Amery was captured by partisans there in the last weeks of the war.
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 he had taken out Spanish citizenship by producing fraudulent documents, and thus would have been incapable of committing treason against the UK. His counsel tried to show that he was mentally ill.
These attempts at a defence were suddenly abandoned however, on the day of his trial, 28 November 1945, when to general astonishment Amery pleaded guilty to eight charges of treason and was immediately sentenced to death. The entire proceedings lasted just 8 minutes.
Before accepting Amery's guilty plea the judge, Mr Justice Humphreys, made certain that Amery realised the consequences ie it would immediately result in a death sentence. After satisfying himself that Amery did fully understand 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."
This is believed to be one of only two cases of a man pleading guilty to a charge of treason in the UK, the other being Summerset Fox in May 1654. It is speculated that Amery pleaded guilty in the hope that by sparing his family and the wider establishment the embarrassment of a trial, his inevitable death sentence might be commuted.
Execution
He was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint in Wandsworth Prison on 19 December the same year, assisted by Henry Critchell. 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".[1] However Albert Pierrepoint himself described the meeting in a filmed interview (link at in external links) he gave and admitted that he did shake Amery's hand and did indeed like him, in fact he said he spoke to Amery at length and felt "as if I had known him all my life".
Notes
- ^ Casciani (2006)
References
- Amery, John (1943) L'Angleterre et l'Europe [England and Europe], Documents et Témoignages: collection d'essais politiques 1, Paris, 48 p.
- Casciani, Dominic (2006) How Britain made its executioners, BBC News online 1 June [accessed 22 July 2007]
- Faber, David (2005) Speaking for England : Leo, Julian and John Amery, the tragedy of a political family, London ; New York : Free Press, ISBN 0-7432-5688-3
- Weale, Adrian (2001) Patriot traitors : Roger Casement, John Amery and the real meaning of treason, London : Viking, ISBN 0-670-88498-7
- West, Rebecca (2000) The meaning of treason, New ed., London : Phoenix, ISBN 1-84212-023-9
- Interview With Pierrepoint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUe021NPt6Y&feature=related
External links
- John Amery biographical sketch, psychiatric report, his radio broadcast, leaflet, and The Times article.
- Info related to his trial
- Murderfile.net entry with photo.
- British Volunteers in the German Wehrmacht in WWII by Jason Pipes