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John Amery (14 March 1912 – 19 December 1945) was a British fascist and Nazi collaborator during World War II. He was the originator of the British Free Corps, a volunteer Waffen-SS unit composed of former British and Dominion prisoners-of-war.
Amery conducted recruitment efforts, and made propaganda broadcasts for Germany. He later gave direct support to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He was prosecuted by the British authorities and pleaded guilty to eight counts of high treason, for which he was sentenced to death sentence, seven months after the war in Europe ended.
Amery was a difficult child who ran through a succession of private tutors. He attended nursery (kindergarten) at Miss Ironside's School, whose eponymous headmistress described him as "unteachable". Like his father, he was sent to Harrow School, but left after only a year, being described by his housemaster as "without doubt, the most difficult boy I have ever tried to manage." Living in his father's shadow, he strove to make his own way by embarking on a career in film production. Over a period, he set up a number of independent companies, all of which failed; these endeavours rapidly led to bankruptcy.
At the age of 21, Amery married Una Wing, a former prostitute, but was never able to earn enough to keep her for himself. He was constantly appealing to his father for money. A staunch anti-Communism, he came to embrace the doctrines of Nazi Germany on the grounds that they were the only alternative to Bolshevism. He left Britain permanently to live in France after being declared bankrupt in 1936. In Paris, he met the French fascist leader Jacques Doriot, with whom he travelled to Austria, Italy, and Germany to witness the effects of fascism in those countries.
Amery told his family he had joined Francisco Franco's during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and was awarded a medal of honour while serving as an intelligence officer with Italian volunteer forces (Corpo Truppe Volontarie). He actually worked for Franco as a liaison with La Cagoule and gun-runners. After the Spanish war, Amery settled in France.
In September 1942, Hauptmann Werner Plack obtained for Amery the French travel permit he needed, and in October Plack and Amery travelled to Berlin to speak to the German English Committee. It was at this time that Amery suggested that the Germans consider forming a British anti-Bolshevik legion. Adolf Hitler was impressed by Amery and allowed him to remain in Germany as a guest. During this period, Amery made a series of pro-German propaganda radio broadcasts, attempting to appeal to the British people to join the war on communism.
Amery rekindled his idea of a British unit and aimed to recruit 50 to 100 men for propaganda purposes and to establish a core of men with which to attract additional members from British POW. He also suggested that such a unit could provide more recruits for the other military units made up of foreign nationals.
Amery's first recruiting drive for what was initially to be called the British Legion of St George took him to the Saint-Denis POW camp outside Paris. Amery addressed between 40 and 50 inmates from British Commonwealth countries and handed out recruiting material. This first effort at recruitment was a complete failure, but he persisted.
Amery's drive for recruits found two men, of whom only one, Kenneth Berry, joined what was later called the BFC. Amery's link to the unit ended in October 1943, when the Waffen SS decided his services were no longer needed, and it was officially renamed the British Free Corps.
Amery was returned to the United Kingdom by air. With him on the flight was William Joyce, the propaganda broadcaster widely known as "Lord Haw-Haw". They were escorted by three armed soldiers and Leonard Burt, a senior police officer seconded to the British Army Intelligence Corps.
His counsel, Gerald Osborne Slade KC, meanwhile, tried to show that the accused was mental illness. Amery's sanity was questioned by his own father, Leo Amery, but all efforts to have the court consider his mental state were unsuccessful. Further attempts at a defence were suddenly abandoned on the first day of his scheduled trial, 28 November 1945 when, to general astonishment, Amery pleaded guilty to eight charges of treason, and was sentenced to death. The hearing lasted just eight minutes.
Before accepting Amery's guilty plea, the judge, Mr Justice Humphreys, made certain that Amery realised the only permissible penalty would be death by hanging. After satisfying himself that Amery fully understood the consequences of pleading guilty, the judge announced this verdict:
Amery was hanged in Wandsworth Prison on 19 December 1945 by executioner Albert Pierrepoint, and buried in the prison cemetery. In 1996, Julian Amery had his brother's remains and Cremation, scattering his ashes in France.
An epitaph by his father appears in The Empire at Bay. The Leo Amery Diaries. 1929–1945:
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