On 10 July 1940, the German Luftwaffe launched a massive aerial campaign against the United Kingdom, beginning the Battle of Britain. For months, German bombers and fighters attacked British airfields, ports, and cities, including London, Birmingham, and Coventry, in an attempt to gain air superiority ahead of a possible invasion. Despite the odds, the Royal Air Force held firm, and by October 1940, Hitler abandoned his invasion plans. The British people endured the bombings with resilience, and the nation became a beacon of resistance against Nazi Germany.
However, not everyone shared this determination to fight back. While most Britons rallied behind Churchill’s call to never surrender, some looked to Hitler with admiration and openly sympathized with the Nazi regime. One of the most notorious British Nazi collaborators, who would pay the highest price for betraying his country, was John Amery.
John Amery was born on 14 March 1912 in London, England, one of two children. His father, Leo Amery, was a British statesman, a member of Parliament, and later a Conservative government minister. Leo’s mother was born in the Jewish quarter of Budapest and came from an intellectual Jewish Hungarian family, but Leo chose to hide his background, likely fearing it could jeopardize his political career. John’s mother was Florence Greenwood, the daughter of a Canadian barrister and sister of the first Viscount Greenwood.
From a very young age, John displayed behaviors that deeply worried his family. At the age of two, a nanny described him as a very hard child who suffered from violent tantrums. By five, his teacher observed that he was an extremely abnormal boy with a disturbing inward focus. In 1922, when John was 10, his father was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, and the family moved into Admiralty House on Whitehall. John’s formal education began at Miss Ironside School, where the headmistress quickly labeled him unteachable. He cycled through private tutors, none of whom managed to control him.
Eventually, he was sent to Harrow, one of Britain’s most elite public schools. His rebellious nature became immediately apparent. He was caught sneaking out at night to attend London nightclubs. The 1926 Harrow punishment book records a sanction for shop stealing and moral breakdown. His housemaster remarked that he was without doubt the most difficult boy he had ever tried to manage. His parents took him to a psychologist, Dr. Maurice Wright, who concluded that the boy had no moral sense of right and wrong.
In a last attempt to stabilize him, John was sent to a school in Switzerland. The result was disastrous. He returned home having contracted syphilis, a condition that would affect him for years. He told his tutor he had caught it by prostituting himself to men. Despite his chaotic upbringing, John secured a place at Oxford University in 1929, but he turned it down and set his sights on the film industry. He briefly worked as an assistant director for a small traveling company, then convinced friends and family to invest in a film project titled Jungle Skies, to be shot in Africa. The proposed budget was $100,000, but the project never materialized.
Around this time, he announced his intention to marry Una Eveene Wing, an actress he claimed would help restore confidence among his creditors. In reality, Una was known to police as a common prostitute. They married in Greece and later settled in Paris, funding their extravagant lifestyle by borrowing from acquaintances and pawning valuables. In Paris, John’s eccentricity grew. He often carried his childhood teddy bear to cafes, placing it beside him, buying it drinks and comics. He also carried a gun at all times, convinced his creditors were hunting him down. According to Una, John continued working as a male prostitute and frequently visited brothels.
Politically, John began to shift. A staunch anti-communist, he embraced fascism as a counterbalance to the spread of Bolshevism. In 1936, he was officially declared bankrupt. He left his wife in London and traveled to Spain, where he supported Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War, involving himself in gunrunning and combat. He later claimed to have witnessed the horrors of communist torture chambers in Barcelona, experiences that deepened his ideological hatred. He came under the influence of French fascist leader Jacques Doriot and his French Popular Party, traveling with members through Austria, Italy, and Germany.
The Second World War began on 1 September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. John returned to Paris, where he had a new girlfriend, Janine Bard, who worked as a prostitute. After the fall of France and the establishment of the Vichy regime in June 1940, he remained in unoccupied France. In October 1942, with the assistance of German officer Werner Plack and the support of Count Seyss, a German armistice negotiator, John relocated to Berlin. There, he was received by Adolf Hitler himself, who approved his presence and granted him the status of a guest of the Reich.
Seen as a political trophy, a British aristocrat who had turned against his homeland, John was pushed into Nazi propaganda efforts. He was offered the opportunity to speak directly to British audiences via German state radio. On 19 November 1942, he made his first broadcast, framing himself as a patriotic Englishman. He declared, “A crime is being committed against civilization. You are being lied to. Your patriotism, your love for our England is being exploited by people who for the most part hardly have any right to be English. Between you and peace lies only the Jew and his puppets.” This was the first of several broadcasts in which John called for the overthrow of Churchill’s government and urged his countrymen to support the Nazi campaign against the Soviet Union.
Eventually, as his usefulness to Nazi propaganda waned, he returned to Paris. There, with Michelle Toma, another woman known to police as a prostitute, John began working on a new idea: the creation of a pro-German British military unit. His proposal was to recruit British prisoners of war to fight alongside the Germans against the Soviet Union. Even his own father later called this plan undoubtedly his most heinous offense. The project made little progress until early 1943, when John reconnected with Jacques Doriot. Encouraged by Doriot’s success in recruiting French volunteers, he revived his plan, aiming to form a core group of 50 to 100 men.
John’s first official recruiting attempt took place at the Saint-Denis prisoner of war camp outside Paris, where he addressed a group of 40 to 50 British and Commonwealth prisoners. He handed out printed material and spoke passionately about the need to fight Bolshevism, but the reception was overwhelmingly negative. His initial recruitment drive was a failure. Still, he persisted and eventually found two men who showed interest. Only one of them, Kenneth Barry, actually joined what would later be called the British Free Corps. John’s involvement with the unit ended in October 1943 when the Waffen-SS decided his services were no longer required.
In 1944, John traveled to Italy at the invitation of Benito Mussolini, who was attempting to maintain his fascist regime with German support. However, the Axis powers were in retreat, and Italy was descending into chaos. While there, John was captured by Italian partisans. He reportedly expressed relief when British forces arrived to take him into custody. According to Captain Alan Wicker, the young officer sent to bring him in, John greeted him by saying, “Thank God you’re here. I thought they were going to shoot me.”
John was transferred to an internment camp in the town of Terni, where he was interrogated by British investigators. He seemed strangely detached from the seriousness of his situation, speaking at length about personal possessions he had lost, including his childhood teddy bear and his wife’s fur coats. He appeared far more concerned about missing belongings than the charges he would soon face. At one point, he told investigators, “I don’t suppose for a moment they’ll bring a charge against me, but if they did, of course, my father would see to it.”
John was eventually flown back to England, arriving in full fascist uniform, complete with jackboots. He was held in a London prison to await trial and charged with eight counts of high treason. Under British law, the penalty for treason was death. His family launched a desperate campaign to save him, calling in political favors and even petitioning the king. His younger brother, Julian, argued that John had taken Spanish citizenship and therefore could not legally be guilty of treason against Britain. His lawyer attempted to present evidence of mental illness, supported by his father, who believed his son was unstable. Despite these efforts, the court did not accept any argument based on diminished responsibility.
In a dramatic turn, on the very first day of his trial, 28 November 1945, John pleaded guilty to all eight charges of treason and was sentenced to death. The entire hearing lasted just eight minutes. John Amery was 33 years old when, on 19 December 1945, he was hanged by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint. According to reports, Amery maintained a strange composure until the very end. As he approached the gallows, he is said to have turned to Pierrepoint and said, “Mr. Pierrepoint, I’ve always wanted to meet you, but not of course under these circumstances.”