The story of those Britons who chose to fight on the side of the Germans during the second world war makes an interesting footnote to the wider history of British fascism. While it is common knowledge that the SS eventually became the most multi-cultural and multi-ethnic force in the Third Reich, (including as it did such non-Aryans as Poles, Slavs, Muslims and the 2000-strong Free Indian Legion), the story of the British contingent is barely known to the general public.
It is not by any means a glorious story, the British Free Corps of the SS attracted a motley bunch of misfits, losers and chancers - much like British fascism in general. These recruits to the SS spent as much time faction fighting, squabbling and getting drunk as they did in preparing to fight on the Eastern front. It really is a sorry tale, and makes for entertaining reading for anti-fascists.
It was not simply the SS who found room for British Nazis who had ditched national; feeling in favour of racial or political ideology. A number of Britons worked for the Third Reich in other capacities, particularly in propaganda operations. Best known, of course, is William Joyce, the Irish-American Catholic ex-Mosleyite who had left the British Union of Fascists to form his own ideologically pure sect. His commitment to the cause saw him moving to Nazi Germany where he started working on radio broadcasts to the UK. Lard Haw-Haw as he became known, and hated, by the British public was captured, tried and hanged as a traitor. He was undoubtedly the most famous of Hitler's Englishmen (though technically he was no longer a British citizen).
Lesser known is the case of John Amery, wayward son of British politician Leo Amery. Like another of the British fascisms who took the German side, Amery did not let his part-Jewish background get in the way of his ideological hatred of the Jews. (I am reminded of Peter Sotos' quip that he'd never met a Nazi who wasn't Jewish or a paedophile…).
Renegades does make for a good read. Although in the grand scale of things these British fascists were insignificant in the wider context of story of the British far-Right.
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