What Did You Do
During The War?
by Richard Griffiths
(Routledge, £19.99)

RICHARD GRIFFITHS’S examination of the British pro-nazi movements in the 1930s details the motivations and activities of the assortment of aristocrats, along with the blimpish ex-military brass and their hangers-on, as war loomed and then broke out.

After describing the well-known history of Oswald Mosley’s prevarications on the outbreak of war, reinterpreting his previous more overt pro-nazi statements and advice to his British Union of Fascists movement, Griffiths turns to examine the influence of other prominent supporters of what the popular and influential historian Arthur Bryant described as the “revolutionary reforms that the National Socialist Party was achieving for German freedom.”

Like virtually all of the rogues’ gallery of Hitler enthusiasts, Bryant’s main driving force was his anti-semitism and his hatred of the “Asiatic hordes” supposedly endangering Western values.

Griffiths points out that many in the public, while accepting Germany as the enemy, did not hold strong views on the internal nature of the nazi regime until later in the war.

Public opinion was clearly influenced by the prominent appeasers and movements like the Peace Pledge Union, which the fascists worked to infiltrate.

One of the more interesting figures under Griffiths’s scrutiny, whose life he devotes considerable attention to, is the Duke of Bedford.

Unlike most of his fellow politically motivated nazi sympathisers, he remained true throughout to his openly expressed views, despite increasing public opprobrium.

If he had no appreciable influence in official circles, others such as the Duke of Buccleugh and Lord Brocket used their positions to suggest to the Germans that, despite official warnings, the British governments would be willing to sacrifice Poland and Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

As the war progressed, many of this motley band backpeddled or kept their heads down. Others worked within such pro-nazi and anti-semitic groups as The Link, founded by the notorious Admiral Sir Barry Domvile.

Griffiths has a particularly interesting chapter on the renegades who broadcast anti-British propaganda from Germany.

Unlike the well-known William Joyce — “Lord Haw Haw” — they were rather sad figures whose ineffectual and self-serving ends were quickly recognised by the Germans.

In Britain, a pattern developed of many fascists turning on their erstwhile collaborators in attempts to save their own skins.

Arrests under the Defence Regulations were numerous but an “extensive array of dukes, barons, earls and assorted aristocrats with other pillars of society” were notably left free.

Even at a time of national danger, class deference held sway.

Review of Gordon Parsons