This astonishing book, first published in English in Berlin in 1940, provides a penetrating analysis of British society before World War II, compares it to the achievements of National Socialist Germany--and is a remarkable insight into the thinking of one of the most famous radio propaganda broadcasters in history.
Written by the Irish American William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") during his first year as a propaganda broadcaster for the German radio service during World War II, Twilight over England starts with a short historical background to British history, before moving on to discuss in detail the economic, social, and political status of Britain prior to the outbreak of war in 1939. In particular, he outlines in detail how the ordinary British peoples' interests were subjected to the dictates of a ruling elite, who sought only power and money regardless of the consequences for society at large.
An active member of the British Union of Fascists, and, after 1937, leader of his own British National Socialist League, Joyce was unhesitatingly anti-Jewish, and pulls no punches in this book in identifying their role in controlling the business, economic, media, and political structure of Britain. In a chapter devoted especially to the Jewish lobby in Britain, Joyce provides a detailed analysis of how Jewish influence at the very centers of power aided not only the Zionist colonization of Palestine, but also the outbreak of war in 1939.
The author then moves on to point out that hypocritical British foreign policy--which pretended to be opposed to "dictatorships" while propping up and supporting those autocracies which were enemies of Nazi Germany, amongst many other things--was the actual cause of the outbreak of the war.
"That the British democracy has no objection to dictatorship is shown by its adulation of the black Dictator, Haile Selassie, its admiration for Dollfuss, who ruled by sheer military force, its undying, if ineffectual love for Benesh, Beck, and Ridz-Smygly, and its untiring but unsuccessful wooing of Stalin."
Finally, Joyce provides his own opinion of Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany, and the early stages of the war, saying,
"If Adolf Hitler would accept the system of international finance and the Jews associated with it, there would be peace in ten minutes after his acceptance had been announced. However, even if Hitler were prepared, as he never could be, to surrender his economic policy, he could not. For the great philosophical gap which I have indicated would render its resurgence a mere matter of months. We have come, after these laborious centuries of groping, to the greatest turning point in world history."
This new edition has been completely reset, contains a biography of its author and 163 supplementary footnotes to allow the modern reader to understand all the references in the text to events and personalities of the time. It is also fully indexed.
About the author: William Joyce (1906-1946) was an American-born Irish national who, after a career in the British Union of Fascists and in the British National Socialist League, moved to Germany before the outbreak of the Second World War and was employed as a radio propaganda broadcaster for the duration of that conflict. He achieved fame under the nickname "Lord Haw-Haw" even though that phrase was initially given to one of his colleagues, and by the end of the war, had as many listeners in Britain as did the BBC. Arrested after the war, he was tried in Britain for treason--although he had never legally been a British national--and executed.
