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do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone
back to the Pekingana Show. Thomas is here and he's
going to finish up the series on Sir Oswald Mosley
so how are you doing, Thomas, I.
Speaker 2: Do know, well, thanks for hosting me, if memory serves,
and I reviewed the brief outline I made last time
to repress my recollection. I think I ended talking about
Lord Haha, William Joyce and his fate, his grim fate,
and Oswald Mosley and Lady Moseley being detained incident of
Defense Regulation eighteen B. Which Mosley could have made that
into something of a propaganda coup because there was sympathy
for him, you know, beyond the nine or ten thousand
member cadre that were sort of the hard core of
the British Union of Fash. I said peak they had
about forty thousand members, but about a quarter or a
third of the at was kind of like the core vanguard.
But and uh, the uh, there were a lot of
people made a show of demanding Moseley be detained, you know,
like I said, there was only about sixty five people
who were detained under Defense Regulation eighteen B. It was
basically to target Moseley as well as some of these
society types because there was there was a grave concern.
And we'll get into this today, and it's oblique to
the main thrust of the subject maroona cover. There's grave concern,
especially after Edward the eighth and you know his uh
friendly disposition towards the German Reich and uh the Duke
at Hamilton, you know who has gone to visit I
mean I didn't. I was trying to be flipped. That's
not my python, like when mister hust went to visit him,
the man has wanted to make contact with during his
ill fated flight to try and you know, reach a
peace concord with with the with the Anglo establishment. Hamilton
wasn't like a national solcist or a fascist, but he'd
known Hess and he was an interesting guy. He was
an independent thinker. Like it made sense. I think has
had kind of had his head in the clouds, Okay,
I mean we got into that in our series on him.
But the point being, it made sense that Hamilton would
be the man he wanted to make contact with. Long
shives that may had been, but there was concern that Hamilton,
Hamilton himself had been some compromised, which like his life
wasn't ruined or something thing, but I you know, these
kinds are rumors followed him and you know that that
that has ugly implications considering the the climate in the
UK as whether it was a strategic ruise or not.
And I will die on that hill at one hundred percent.
Wasn't strategic ruse the fact that Sea Lion wasn't going
to be a reality, and Hitler devised this elaborate you
know Ledgered Maine essentially to the sieve Stalin. It had
very little to do with you know, what the British
thought about it, Whether Churchill was exploiting that, you know,
to solidify his war mandate or you know, in purely
cynical terms, or if he believed that was a a
possibility a scenario that would come to pass. I don't know,
but there's only some people in the War Party who
believe you did it absolutely. And this stalke out of paranoia.
So they were trying, they were they were incessantly trying
to seek out people who they believed had been compromised
and an event of a massive German assault, these people
supposedly were going to collaborate with what was to become,
you know, a facist government and things. It all became
kind of surreal. You know. The old showed Dad's Army
for those familiar with it, it's kind of a silly
old show, but it was actually pretty funny. But the
subtext of it, I think, and let you know, and
right there's there's kind of an opaque character to a
lot of what the to a lot of what the
English should do. But I don't think I'm reading a
subtextual things into it that aren't there or weren't there,
but it kind of casts the entire it, kind of
the entire domestic climate is preposterous. You know. It's almost
like the old movie nineteen forty one, which is about
the Battle of Los Angeles. It's kind of in the
same vein, you know. So I think there was among
people who weren't taken in by the the propaganda, you know,
I think that there was a lot of people realize
this is ridiculous, but there was plenty that didn't. And
plus there's other people who absurd as any of you
the entire narrative. They just hated as well Mosley and
thought he was a bastard and wanted bad things to
happen to him. And the capacity for Scholtenfreud of the
English is basically bottomless, you know, And that had a
lot to do with it. Yeah, it may though, an
important subtext to the entire story of British fascism and
kind of the last gasp of UH the the Reich
executive trying to cultivate some sort of concord with at
least some element of the British establishment, was the attempt
to uh the the the attempt to you know, poach
a British army volunteers from the ranks of POWs, you know.
And as people will remember, rib And Troup when he
was the ambassador of the United Kingdom, he considered it
his mission and a lot of this, you know, was
on the direct orders of the fure. But also Ribon
Troup was very much a believing national socialist, and the
national socialist ambition was that there must be an alliance
with the United Kingdom, you know. And if you read
second book, that becomes clear. And Brendan simms books on
Hitler are the best other than John Tolan's biography. There's
UH in terms of like pure biographical information and kind
of a glimpse into the subjective, sort of psychic tendencies
of Hitler. You know, there's UH. There's guys like all right,
just Sophie and like David Irving, who who wrote about
Hitler is Warlord and that's fundamentally important. But just in
terms of kind of general biographical treatments, Sims his stuff
is great and he gets into some of that too.
But you know, as a as a situation deteriorated at
the front, you know, uh, something Hitler spoke of a lot,
and also elements within the Wehrmacht was you know, our
are the are the Western allies going to simply let
the Red Army overrun Europe? You know, that doesn't seem
like any that doesn't seem like something that would gain
any attraction with reasonable men either in the you know
what remains of you know, the patriotic element of the
American establishment or the military. And a particular concern, you know,
if if if the Soviets reached Berlin, I mean, the
United Kingdom had a serious problem, I mean they had
they had a serious problem anyway, because they they'd essentially
committed suicide in bargaining away the empire to to wage
the war. So you know, the reasoning in Berlin, especially
after Kursk, was well, there's got to be a substantial
portion of the body politic and the United Kingdom that
you know, is gravely concerned about the fact that Communist
victory seems imminent, you know, and so that wasn't totally
off base. So the idea was that these guys who
were to constitute what became the British Free Corps, you know,
the British National element of the vafan SS, they would
absolutely you know, they'd be guaranteed that all these men
would receive a guarantee they would not be deployed to
fight against their own countrymen. You know, they'd be deployed
exclusively to the Eastern Front, and they'd sign an oath
that was an English you know, pledging their fealty to
Europe and Adolf Hitler but also to the UKA to
like resistant Bullshevism as like a European patriot, you know.
And the idea was like, well, you know, if we
can get even like a thousand or fifteen hundred men,
you know, and we can propagandize this extensively of these
Englishmen and Scots and Irish guys and Ulster guys and
Welshmen you know, going into action against the Communists, you know,
under the swastika. You know, people back home in the
UK o well have to wait a minute, like we're
fighting the Germans, when our boys are fighting the Communists,
we're trying to overrun Europe and would probably slaughter us
like they like they did the you know, a quarter
of the Russian population, you know, like I I mean
that it did. There was an internal logic to it,
you know, And this is really kind of a brainscheld
too of a gottlib Berger. Gottlp Berger was a really
interesting guy, and he was actually the man who intervened, uh,
when crazy old Oscar der Levanger was, you know, getting
into all kinds of shit and kind of his alcoholism,
and you know, uh, it's just isn't aside because there's
a lot of people including that I can't even remember
his name. It's like this hysterical limey who's always dropping
third right content. But he goes into these like he
goes into these like history onic diet tribes about how
evil like the subjects of his like little content tidbits are,
and he loves talking about how like der Lavanger was
a quote child blister and a rapist. Derlavanger like a
lot of military guys who can't grow up, like teenage
he liked teenage girls a lot. So he'd carry on
with fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year old girls and he'd get
caught doing it, and angry father is a demand to
go to jail. And finally the Reich's like, you know what,
we're tired of this shit. I think you need to
go to a concentration camp for a while and think
about like keeping it in your pants. That's what happened.
He doesn't hang around schoolyards touching little kids. And I'm sorry,
are you a creep if you're like forty and you
like kick it with teenage girls? Yeah, dryl Vanger was
a creep. Okay, he was not a child molester. That's returned.
But in any event, Berger was his was his day
one comrade from the Great War, so he intervened to
get him sprung from the concentration camp. He basically convinced
the chance the right chancery, the party chancery, to like
look like to ploy der Levanger to Spain. You know,
let him lead part of the ground element if the
bay if if like if the krusty, horny bastard survives,
you know, he doesn't drink himself to death or getting
blown away, like, consider him redeemed so like that's exactly
what happened in Derllavanger. Like the guy the guy had
like the guy had brass balls, and so he then
say he like led from the front. He had he
had like incredible, incredible aptitude as as like an infantry commander,
like even when he became the even when he became
a standard fear you know, he was still doing the
same thing. And that's one of the reasons why com
group delave Anger, Like you know, these are very rough men,
to say the least. The only reasons they respected him.
But any event, gottleb Berger, when he wasn't trying to
get his uh his friends out of prison for their
uh indiscretions, he's the guy who really pushed hard with him.
They're like, look, you've gotta you've got to give up
this sort of like racial purity nonsense. Respective of he's like, yeah,
we're not. We're not gonna let you know, non Germanics
enjoy the full status of uh of the Praetorian Guard,
you know, like our own people do. But like this
idea that we we can't have like non Europeans in
our ranks so long as they're not you know our enemy,
so long as they're not Poles, so it's not Russians.
We'll get into at some point, like the Russian elements, uh,
and the Ukrainian elements, because that's complicated. But it was Berger,
for example, who brought uh the the Asman divisions in.
It was him who like advocated for the Maslim SS troopers,
and it was him who said, you've got to try
and get these British peiod f used in the SS,
you know. And at least his view was at least
some of them will go for it, that's all we need.
And the British Army also had a rep for professionalism,
and obviously the guys the approach with this were like
combat soldiers. They weren't pogues, and like pogues wouldn't have
been in a position to get captured anyway. But that's
gottleib Burgers who uh it was his brain child. Interestingly,
and some person just from the Foreign ministry too, but
I'll get into that in a minute. But the there
was ah and interestingly in the UK there was a
there was rumors until after the war of there being
a like company sized elements and larger like English peo
WS or British peod WS fighting in the vaf ss.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: That's not U. That's not the case. And it never
numbered more than you know, a few dozen men at
one time. But initially the name for it it was floated,
was UH, the British Legion. But there was a there's
a veterans organization in the UK, you know, it's a
counterpart to the American Legion called the British Legion. Then
the idea was floated to call it the Legion of
Saint George, but that was drops because it didn't really
resonate with the national socialist ideological culture. And you know
the Greeks, the Greek were Orthodox and the Russian Orthodox,
they have the same patron saint. They would cause confusion
that they wanted something U that had like a unique
identitarian significance to to Great Britain. Okay, So it was decided,
you know, to call it the British Free Corps, the
British Free Corps, you know, and UH for the first time,
and in UH the r s H a documentation of it,
the name British Free Corps appears at the first time
in November nineteen forty three, and again it was in UH.
It was around May that the idea was first floated,
you know, and then UH again and the after I
had the curse it it became something that was promoted
in earnest And so first there was a there was
a special detachment under the authority of the s D
specifically UH, specifically charged with attempting to increase the recruitment
of officers. That was largely a failure. They were only
able to poach about six volunteers. And I mean this
is essential to the SS said, these men have to
be volunteers. We can't press these guys into service. First
of all, we're probably just gonna get guys who are
going to try and food out of the program, and
that's why they're you know, because they're going to resent this. Secondly,
we actually wanted this to be a combat effective formation,
you know. And finally, the propaganda aspect was paramount. So
these guys had to be volunteers, and you know, looking forward,
obviously the idea was they'd allow their testimony to be
recorded in broadcast as you know, I'm a you know,
I'm an Englishman, or I'm a Welshman, or I'm a
Scotsman or I'm an ulsterman and I you know, I'm
a patriot, but you know I also stand with you know,
the European race and again against Bolshevism. You know, there
was another dedicated detachment that was UH formed and charged
with the recruiting potential volunteers. It was Special Attachment five
seventeen and they identified around three hundred British pureys who
were viewed to have like the physical and psychic and
aptitude you know for UH for a combat rule with
THEA and SS, and who were viewed to have, you know,
either the political disposition that would compliment and service they're in,
or you know, guys who were malleable enough or at
least open to the idea such that you know, they
they could be persuaded the as it's started to take shape,
a kind of a kind of command structure developed with
Special Attachment five seventeen of British volunteers. There was a
handful of British Army and Royal Air Force NCOs at
about twenty enlisted men who kind of were the first
cadre of what was to become the British Free Corps AS.
By the summer ninety forty three, as this kind of
core of original membership was identified and kind of corralled
into this formal structure, you know, they were they were
given SS identification booklets and they were put under the
uh authority of the s S help dump D one department
D one for context helped them. D one was uh.
They were also responsible for the Germanic s S. These are
the guys who formed uh, the Algamine s S in
places like Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, you know, any uh,
any any Germanic country as per uh you know, cultural
commonality as well as you know, according to the Nuremberg
laws that defined uh, who was an aryan you know,
that's that's what the Germanic SS was. And from the
Germanic SS, a lot of the national legions you know,
from these same countries, uh, that's who they That was
the original population they drew upon for volunteers. You know.
By nineteen forty four, like right after the New Year,
you know, January ninety forty four, the British Free Corps,
they were fully integrated into the SS. Like they they
became like an official you know, like SS Waffen s
S element and at that point they were given they
were given field gray uniforms you know, coma fatigues and
they received the uh the shield patch, you know, the
the national insignia that all like foreign volunteers got their's
had the Union jack you know, yeah, it's on my
shirt here. The the national shield patch always went on
the left arm, and uh, their collar patch with a
nod to Saint George. It was three lions, you know,
which is like the standard of a Saint George. By
the end of the war when they were finally deployed. Uh,
they also had a they had a cuff title which
it said it right in German and English and British
Free Corps, British Free Corps and then British Free Corps,
which is interesting. Those are really hard to find. If
if you're somebody who seeks authentic, like Third Reich Militaria,
if you can find one of those and validated is authentic,
like you're you're very lucky, and or you've got like
very good investigative shops because they're highly coveted just because
the British Free Corps is cool. And if you don't
think so, like I, you're kind of lame. But the uh,
it's and and some people make a lot of the
fact too, like the British Free Corps did have like
really keeno uniforms. There was other like national legions where
it was like more subdued, but who were really combat effective.
So like the claim is like, oh, this was just
a propaganda attempt at a propaganda coop, Like, yeah, it was,
but that wasn't all it was. And the fact that
didn't make an impact on the battlefield would to kind
of like a conspiracy of circumstances. It wasn't because dot
lob Berger and the SD and and Himmler himself and
and Carl Wolf. It's not because like they didn't have
some intention for it to be, you know, a combat
capable formation. The absolutely did. Like the fact they didn't
have the fact that it didn't happen, well, I mean
that you know, nobody denies that a large catalysts or
imminus for its creation was was propaganda. I mean that
goes out saying but there was there was any considerations
with respect to the UK and Mayor's a prestige that
didn't exists elsewhere. And I mean for people thinks it
was like some retarded pipe dream or something. I don't know, Okay,
I mean it was the final defenders at Berlin were
thirty third SS. They were much a Frenchman, Okay, I
mean like this was not The SS was a Pan
European army, and there were people who whose nations were
de facto or de jury at war with the Reich,
who you know, literally fought to the last man to
defend the German Reich.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It's more complicated than court historians allow. I mentioned a
moment ago about the oath that British Free Corps volunteers signed.
The relevant language is quote, I you know, the name
of the subject or volunteer, being a British subject, consider
it my duty to offer my services in the common
European struggle against communism, and hereby apply to enlist in
the British Pree Corps, which is what I believe was
in the minds of most of these guys, you know,
I mean, it wasn't being a prisoner and losing your
liberty is awful no matter what. But British Army prisoners
and American potwws until and until really night, you know,
end of forty four started forty five, when the terror
bombing really took its toll And and people started lynching
down Airman. British and American peodaws were treated very well.
They were treated in line with the demands that Geneva convention.
You know. That's why. I mean, obviously stuff like Hogan's
Heroes was goofy, but I know the counter refrain as
people these days getting mad at that show and can't
believe it aired on primetime, or they act like the
Great Escape with some kind of softball treatment. If you
were if you were a Royal Air Force or like
a US Army or US Army ergo or pew, you
weren't being tortured every day. You weren't being thrown in
dacaut like, you weren't being like whipped with a cat
of nine tails, like you were being treated like POWs
were always treated and according to the you know, was
Failian consensus. You know, so like that wasn't weird that
those kinds of settings that you depicted in the light
hearted stuff, you know it that's uh, that's important. The uh,
the British Free Corps it had a kind of confused
existence in terms of what command it properly belonged to,
in part because the situation was getting very critical. You know,
this was sixteen months before the Day of Defeat that
it finally was you know, validated, if you will. As
as as legion at UH, there were some commanders and
especially later in the war, despite you know, the Party
and the and the s S asserting itself against the
Wehrmacht after the attempt on Hitler's life, you had a
lot of power if you were the equivalent of a
colonel or higher in the Wehrmacht, you know, in the field,
you you were kind of a law into yourself within reason.
So when the British Free Corps showed up UH and
some of these UH and some of these pans are
element generals or ss UH, commanders were said like, okay,
like you know, these these British POWs are joining your
command now. They weren't handing it, you know, they were like,
look like, uh, this is gonna cause problems. And in
the back of their mind it was like, if we're
gonna try and negotiate some kind of peace with the
Allies before the Red Army burns it all down. If
if it looks like I'm ordering Englishmen to go into combat,
I how am I going to explain that you know, UH,
which on the one hand, UH, you could say is
kind of fucked up, But on the other hand, it's like, well,
any uh, any general officer who UH is commanding men
in combat, his job is to keep those men alive,
you know, and within reason, make sure as many of
them get to go home as possible. You know, that
doesn't mean you forfeit victory canis to prioritize that humanistic aspect.
But if the war is lost anyway, and you know,
accepting these British peowws into your command is going to
screw up the odds of you know, the collective fate
of of the unit, You've got to consider that very seriously.
So there's that there's unsubstantiated rumors that have endured and
some of this I believe to be true of after
the British Free Corps was all was for all practical
purposes disbanded individual members. There's people who claim that they
fought with them at Berlin, you know, like they were
they were attached at thirty third s s because they
like showed up there, or they were fighting with volks Therm,
or they were you know, you know, some like older Englishmen,
like older I mean like of proper military age, was
like leading some hitler yugen kids that try and help
them break out. I think at least some of that
is true, because some of these guys were never accounted for.
And uh if the Soviet I guarantee, if the Soviets
had captured or killed these guys, and the Soviets were
obsessed with documenting things, they would have made a big
deal about it. They would have been like, you know, oh,
they the capitalist English are turning against us now, you know,
look look at this, or you know, it would have
it would have really upset the the Western allies if
I mean not for not for moral reasons necessarily, but
I mean like it it would have caused uh consternation,
you know, uh if they if they'd come across these
guys before the Battle of Berlin and they've been kia
or captured, this would have been kept a secret. And
I mean nobody was getting id'd that when Berlain got overrun,
so like who would have known after that, you know,
like for decades after and there was roles and roles
at Mia presumed dead and like most a goodly number
of these people have never been identified. So that's definitely
not impossible. Okay, the numbers were talking about are a few,
but they there are some unaccounted for the UH. This
bring the case that John Amory, and he was executed
by hanging expeditiously several months after the war in the
summer of twenty ninth. And Amory we'll get into who
Amory wasn't a minute, because he plays a significant role
in UH, how this came to pass, and the entire
enterprise of the British Free Corps. But such that the
documentation I could find about other UH British subjects, I thought, like,
I'm not from the not not not from the Empire.
I mean, you know, like actual Britain's in the When
the Battle of France was underway, there were seven British
subjects said to be serving in UH various units of
the Totenkov Vimond, including in what became third s S Totenkov.
This is before the BAS existed. It's believed there's at
least a handful who served in leib Standart Adolf Hitler
first s S and UH, the the UH, the Propaganda
and War Correspondent Unit UH Standard Kurt Eggers. It's that's
where James Monty served, you know, the American defactor who
joined the Vafan s S. It's also believed that there
was two guys who might have been deserters who served
in the Flat detachment of Leibstandart Adolf Hitler, both of
whom are apparently awarded UH the Iron Cross second Class.
There's a book that hasn't been translated about UH Leips
van Dar, specifically the Flat Detachment that apparently deals with
these guys. I haven't had time to dig that out
yet and work on translating it as much as I
can to interpret what it actually says. But the original
fix a British Free Corps recruits and the guys most
known to to the public, the guys who achieved the
most prominent I guess like infamy were a guy named
Thomas Heller Cooper and Frank McLarty. And both of these
guys were British Union of Fascist veterans who apparently, immediately
upon you know, being offered opportunity to join the British
Free Corps, did it, and they became important in the
effort to recruit more. And this really came back to
haunt Moseley because even though it's not like there was
a great number of British Union veterans who joined up.
There was enough that the narrative became, oh, well, these
guys were all a bunch of Mosleyites, and look now
they're not, you know, now they're trying to join the
Third Reich. You know, this is one of the things
that really are on Mosey's post war political fortunes. I mean,
I don't think I think Moseley's moment had kind of
passed by then anyway. And uh, there's a really good
treatment of this. The seminal biography of Francis Jacky is
by Carrie Bolton. That was not saying. But there's another
biography from the late nineties which is actually great in
its own right. The end notes alone or a treasure
trove of valuable information for researchers. I include myself in
that category. It's by this guy named Kevin Coogan, who
was kind of this left wing anarchist type guy from
the Pacific Northwest. But the book was remarkably balanced and H.
Keith Thompson contributed his testimony. Elsa DeWitt, who is Yaqui's
longtime mistress. A bunch of guys who knew James Hartung Medole,
some contemporaries at George Sylvester Virick. It's a fantastic book.
It's called Dreamer of the Day. But he gets into
the rivalry between Yaki and Moseley, and Moseley's efforts to
sabotage Yacki's efforts on the continents in the aftermath of
h you know, the Day of Defeat, and it doesn't
cast Moseley in particularly flattering light. I mean, the historical
record doesn't. It's not Hoogan's conceptual predudice or something, but
such that the British Free Corps did see active service
in March nineteen forty five, you know, just weeks before
the capitulation, there was an attachment of British Free Corps
volunteers who deployed with eleventh SS, which was Nordland, which
consisted primarily as Scandinavian volunteers. They were attached to third SS,
pans Er Corps, which was under Felix Steiner. Steiner was
the commander of Viking, fifth SS and Nordland. There's a
lot of membership in common in terms of the ethnographic makeup.
You know, Norwegian, Swedes, Danes, some Finns, some folks to
which these guys were. The records such that they can
be cobbled together and the movements of these men identified
with any clarity. They were specifically sent to the reconnaissance
battalion there was, which was under the command of a Swede,
Hans Gost the Parson. Their squad leader was an S. S.
Softfire Douglas Martin. His alias was Hodge Richard W. Landvier,
who is a great documentarian of the vass He was
involved with a lot of veterans organizations into the nineties.
You know who, We're producing a lot of material as
a kind of counterweight to what court historians are producing
and whatever you think of Richard Landvia, he had unprecedented
access to veterans testimony as well as records, personnel records,
original personnel records of the waf SS and other things.
He claims in his book on the British Free Corps
that the Britons that were attached to the recon Battalion
of eleventh SS, they ended up in the village at Schoenberg,
which is on the west bank of the Oder River,
and presumably these guys went into action against the Soviets
because if they were there, I mean they were coming
under heavy assault. Okay. In April, the entire Panzer Corps
was moved templan as you know, the long retreat continued.
They were then assigned to the Transport Company of Steiner's
headquarters staff and when Nordland Division left for Berlin, you know,
the final retreat to the capitol. As Berlin became a
frontline city as the Fear called it, the Transport Company
I went to Berlin, and you know, British Free Corps
elements included Steiner. By April twenty ninth broke contact with
the enemy. What remained of uh, what remained of third
Panzer was uh was engaged UH contra the Red Army,
and he did that with the intention UH to try
and surrender, you know, to the to the Americans or
and or the English. Thomas hell Or Cooper and Fred Croft,
who are two members of the British Free Corps with
Steiner's Transport Company, they surrendered on the second and May
to the one hundred and twenty first Imagery Regiment. The
rest of them. It's entirely possible these guys died fighting
in Berlin, you know, because the record puts them there
for context of what I mentioned earlier about these reports
of some of these guys you know, being in Berlin.
You know, in the final days and hours Okay, we
still got a few minutes kind of the roots of this. Ultimately,
you know, like I said, this was the longest standing.
This was derived out of a long standing desire or
recognition of the need or probably perhaps of the fure
his staff, the Foreign Ministry element to the military and
the SS you know, who understood that there needs to
be some kind of conquer with the United Kingdom otherwise
this grand ambition of national socialism is not going to
be realized. So early on the Reich Foreign Ministry around
nineteen forty two, they set up in Berlin. They set
up this kind of study group to try and cultivate
contact and build relations with dissident elements in the UK
or at least sympathetic elements to the Reich against the
Soviet Union and against the War Party then led by Churchill,
and specifically they wanted to cultivate guys and women who
were part of the establishment and preferably part of the nobility.
Some funds were given to the Duke of Bedford, Edward
Godfrey he set up He's and he proceeded to set
up the original British National Party which later you know,
the BNP as we know it was like John Tyndall's outfit,
and then later like Nick Griffin, who I think it's
kind of a con man, you know, became hancho that
obviously they were evoking the legacy of the original BNP,
but this had nothing to do with them. This is
this is something totally different, This British National Party. They
became this. They gave this pressure group demanding a settlement
with Hitler, like a negotiated peace, and the War Party
and specifically the Home Office. They they they really freaked out.
They're like, this is a revival of the British Union
of Fascists. This is a fifth column, you know, these
people are trying to overthrow the government. And but it
garnered for what it was, It garnered a chorus sympathy
beyond what people might think was possible, especially consider that
you know, eighteen B as well as the reformed Trees
in Law, which provided for you know, a mandatory death
penalty for a very kind of loosely defined rage of
conduct that it could be demonstrated. It provided aid and
comfort to the enemy. You know. Obviously, the hope of
the Foreign Ministry and the s D was that, you know,
kind of like the nine or ten thousand core members,
that the UF who were presumably still active, would flock
to this British National Party, you know, and as Britain's
fortunes continued to decline on the battlefield, you know, this
this would be sufficient to kind of plant the seed
that would ultimately bring down the War Party, which seems
like a long shot, but you know, like I said this,
this actually did gain some traction, much as it was
blown out of proportion by the Home Office. These guys
also the British National Party, they started, they started a
newspaper called The Patriot, which made headlines by setting up
a fund, an eighteen b Detainees Aid Fund, you know,
and this was in those days there was still a
pretty strong tradition, particularly among society types, of respecting civil
liberties and stuff. A lot of people were appalled at
Mosley and some of these other guys and women had
been you know, in ceremontacy, locked up and what amounted to, ah,
you know, what amounted to a concentration camp for indefinite duration.
This was intended to become the nucleus of uh, you know,
a political movement. The Home Secretary in the wartime coalition
was Herbert Stanley Morrison, and he really agitated about the
purported threat posed by this, issued a report that uh,
that December that claimed that fascism in London was resurgent.
You know that there's gonna be imminent programs against Jews,
that the threat of Sea Lion has never abated. You
know that, uh, there's a an active fifth column within
that's in direct contact with the enemy, and they have
social pedigree and that renders them untouchable and we're all
in grave danger, you know. And this, uh, this environment
really continued until until around nineteen forty four, you know,
when in a rare moment of clarity through the haze
of delusion and alcoholism and cynicism, Churchill basically said, you've
got to scale back on this, on this kind of
propping end because it's gonna stoke sympathy for these people,
which was entirely correct the uh you know, and for
clarity too, because not a lots written about this. By
the time the war was well underway, after the Wehrmacht
was halted at the Gates of Moscow. After America joined
the war in earnest Hitler at ninety forty two, he
met with Paul Otto Schmith, who had a lot of
cloud at the Foreign Ministry. He was an interpreter, he'd
been at one of the first World Economic Forums, I
think in nineteen thirty three, and he was fluent in French.
When Hitler had to talk to Antonescu, who ironically they
were close friends, and Antonescu was Hitler's best ally. He
wasn't as personally close to him as he was the Mussolini,
but Antonescu was definitely Hitler's best military ali and they
had a great mutual respect. But Hitler didn't speak Romanian
and Antonescu didn't speak German, but Uh Antonescu spoke French,
so like Hitler would, Uh Schmidt would translate. And Schmid
didn't speak Romanian either, but he was fluent in French
and English as well as a slew of other languages.
So Paul out of Schmidt would interpret for the Furre
and then relay in French to Antonescu, who then answer
in French. Then Schmid would really back in German, but
Uh Schmidt Uh headed up the the England Committee, you know,
to try and as as I mentioned a minute ago,
to try and cultivate, you know, in an alliance with
a sympathetic cadre among British society types. And you know
Hitler's uh, you know, and what Hitler said in Hiller
privately told Borman, you know, like kind of unpleasant of
a character as Borman was. There's a reason why, you know,
he he took on Hess's role as essentially party secretary
and gatekeeper of access to the fear and Hitler confide
in them a fair amount. And you know, Hitler said
in early nineteen forty two, he said it. You know,
he said, it's definitely possible that Churchill will fall, and
he's like, we need to do everything we can to
facilitate that. But he's you know, he said, it's not
going to accomplish anything unless you know, they we have
quote men like Mosley in reserve and a cadre around them.
Hitler said, But when I think that Mosley and more
than nine thousand his supporters, including some belong to the
best families, are facing prison because they didn't want this war,
you know, he said that that's unconsortable, but also we
can use that in our favor, you know. But he
said it's essential that we cultivate this cadre. It's not
enough to just kind of, you know for some sort
of return of veterans from the McDonald the Ramsey McDonald
government in the National Coalition, you know, bringing down Churchill
because the war is a disaster, you know, we because
there's no guarantee there, like we need an alliance, you know,
we need people are ideologically committed, which was absolutely correct,
you know, in terms of what the roy had to
pull off, I mean, which, yes, that was a complete
long shot. And Hitler made manch and he said that
like we need a Cromwell, which is really interesting. And uh,
I mean Hitler obviously had read in Carlisle, but that
was uh that was the climate. And yeah that's uh,
I guess I can stop there. Yeah, all those a
new scatter shot. That's essentially the story of the British
Free Corps. It's it's hard to piece together. Like I said,
I think I'm I think I got better research shops
than many men. But uh, it's an esoteric topic. Uh,
there's a lot of like kind of lurid stuff written
about it in the seventies, Like there's this paperback when
I think seventy seven called Hitler's Jackals I got in
somewhere here. It's just like crazy, there's like no citations.
It's this crazy stuff. It's you know, it's like something
out of uh, some grindhouse Nazi spolitation movie. And don't
gonna be wrong. I like that kind of stuff, but
it does not help if we're trying to identify, you know,
facts on the historical record. So this is what I
could put together, because this topic is like a pet
kind of obsession of mine, like many esoteric things. So yeah,
I unless people are really truly thirsty for more Oswald
Mosley or I have like questions they want me to
cover or clarify, I think we can move on from
Oswald Movesley and the the British Free Corps.
Speaker 1: Question about the American and the British press, how much
was how much during the war were they reporting on
the how international the German army was.
Speaker 2: It's hard to say everything in the United States, anything
that the press wanted to cover relating to the war,
it had to go through the O W Y. The
opposite of war information, you know when they had you know,
they they wouldn't allow photographs and dead Americans to be shown.
And when somebody, when somebody snuck them through, that was
a huge deal. And uh, it was odd like what
they objected to do and what they didn't, but the
consistent uh got to the consistent pattern, the way they
cast the Germans. And part of this ode part of
this odd the delegate situation of like having to negotiate
with Darlan and like North Africa, who wasn't actually who
was a fascist? They kind of had to pretend that
this is the German army, you know, and yeah, there's
some turncoat volunteers helping the SS, but these are the
Hans just oppressing everybody. You know, there was kind of
without the omissions of the fact that this was a
there was a million non Germans under arms. Like the
omission of that from always being reported kind of speaks
for itself, you know, like in the case of in
the case of UK propaganda, it's a bit more nuanced,
but I mean a lot of there's prejudices in Britain
against you know, like during World War One, despite the
fact that like bismarcky in Germany, which Veilhelm in Germany
was very much the legacy of and Velhelm's wife wouldn't
even like Catholics in their house, but they're trying to.
They kind of cast like the Hunts in World War
One is like these retro grade, like Catholic brutes, you know,
who are you know, they they they're they're they're not
in the modern age like like civilized people are. And
there was some aspect of that, you know, kind of caricaturing,
like the Hunt is sort of like the stand in
for like European barbarism. But yeah, and stuff that went
to the O W Y. You never saw like any
statement of like you know, yeah, there's like a bunch
of you know, there's there's there's a bunch of Kazakhs
and Romanians and Italians and Frenchmen and Norwegians, you know,
like engaging the US army right now, there was like
none of that.
Speaker 1: Not to mention the French that were the first to
engage the the American forces.
Speaker 2: Yeah and Afation tours, Yeah, exactly, they were just like
Nazi forces.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, if people want to do a Q
and a we'll see what kind of questions I'll throw
it out there for people to let questions roll in
and if there's enough, If there's enough, we can do
a Q and A. But yeah, otherwise we'll move on
from this as I think it was a great topic
and like we didn't expect this to go seven episodes,
but but it Yeah, but it's perfectly fine. I think
we had enough comments of people saying, yeah, I'm glad
it did so yeah, just do plugs real quick, and then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. My substacks real Thomas seven seven seven,
that substack dot com. That's my main platform. And I
am a long last I uploading the the movie that
my friend and I made the first Thomas TV like
properly episode. You know, it's a couple of hours long.
I had to figure out the best way to monetize it.
I'll explain, and I promise I will upload it this weekend.
There was a couple of delays, and I'm dealing with
like identity the bullshit now when like my business bank account.
I shouted this out on a sit rep on substack,
which is nobody's problem but my own, and I'm indemnified.
It'll be fine. It's just a hassle and obviously because
it's my business account, I can't like link anything to
it until it bullshit gets resolved, so but it's common,
I promise. Thanks for being patient and on social media.
My alt is at Capital Ria L underscore number seven
H O M A S seven seven seven and that's
where you can find me, or he con starts me
under my garment name and I will come.
Speaker 1: Up till the next subject. Thank you so much, Ben,
take care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for hosting Union