Radio Treason was originally a series of New Yorker dispatches from Rebecca West, covering the trial for treason of William Joyce, who was a radio propagandist for the Nazis nicknamed “Lord Haw-Haw.” This book is a reissue of these columns into one book, which is unfortunately and depressingly extremely of the moment. I had a lot of moments of recognition and sadness reading this as to how little things have changed in terms of the small minded and pathetic nature of Fascists. West details the trial and then investigates his background and the events of his life, intertwined with a wider exploration as to what sorts of people the Nazis drew to them as traitors. She has a very incisive and strong voice that gives this work its staying power; her descriptive abilities elevate it into something literary and beyond more workmanlike reporting. There’s a psychological aspect here that worked well for me as someone interested in other people’s minds and why they make the decisions that they do.
West draws some conclusions about revolution that I wasn’t sure I completely agreed with. Her basic argument is that revolution simply leads to the old system being replicated, but worse and after many people have died. I had never thought about it this way and my instinct is to counter-argue that at some point a revolution could lead to something better, but I appreciated the chance to contemplate that. I did wish that she had done a whole book tracking all of the weird outsider losers who ended up betraying the UK and joining the Nazi propaganda outfits, because her brief descriptions of them and their lives were fascinating in a grim way, and I liked the look at the underside of the narrative we tend to get of the brave heroes of the war. Another point that I found especially interesting was that under normal circumstances, his courage in the face of being sentenced to death might have been moving, but because everyone in the country had been “in danger of undeserved death or pain, and had shown, or seen others showing, great courage,” so they were unable to give him any sympathy or emotionally engage with him. It was a good example of the nature of trauma and the bravery that the British populace had to show in the face of the Blitz, etc. She also drives home the true hatred people had of him due to the fact that he was trying to scare and dispirit the populace. He was so despised that he had to be moved to a different prison at one point because the prisoners hated him so much.
A good read, I do think there were places that I wish she had dug more into, but considering that these were dispatches from the trial, I think that’s totally understandable!
