British Nazi Propagandist Captured in Aultaussee

Photo By Erin Thompson | Norman Baillie-Stewart (center) in his Seaforth Highlander uniform during his 1933 trial.  

UNITED STATES

05.15.2023

Story by Erin Thompson 

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian

19 MAY 1945
On 19 May 1945, Norman Baillie-Stewart, a British radio propagandist for the Nazi Party, was captured by the 80th Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Detachment in Altaussee, Austria.

In the months following the end of the war in Europe, many American units went to Austria to track down Nazi affiliates and war criminals. One such American unit was the 80th CIC Detachment, 80th Infantry Division, Third U.S. Army, led by Robert Matteson. In early May 1945, the detachment’s main priority involved capturing Austrian SS Officer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the Reich Security Main Office. During this time, the 80th CIC arrested and interrogated numerous Nazi officials and sympathizers, including Norman Baillie-Stewart.

Norman Baillie-Stewart Wright was born in London in 1909. Described by one author as “unusually intelligent,” he graduated tenth in his class at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in 1927. At age twenty, he changed his last name to Baillie-Stewart, possibly to better reflect his Scottish heritage. In 1932, Baillie-Stewart was charged with violating the British Official Secrets Act of 1911 by providing the German government with English military secrets. During his trial, he was housed in the Tower of London, the first prisoner held there since the end of World War I. He became known to the British public as “the Officer in the Tower.”

Because Britain was not at war with Germany, Baillie-Stewart escaped execution and instead served only three years of a five-year sentence. After his release in 1936, he left for Austria where he later received citizenship. When his Nazi affiliations were discovered, Austrian officials attempted to expel him from the country. However, the Anschluss (Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938) around the same time instead transferred his citizenship to Germany.

In April 1939, he began working for the Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels and began radio broadcasting. Baillie-Stewart belonged to a larger group of British Nazi propagandists known throughout Great Britain as ‘Lord Haw-Haw.’ The name originally applied to all British pro-Nazi broadcasters, though today it specifically refers to William Brooke Joyce. The original Lord Haw-Haws included Wolf Mittler, Eduard Dietze, and Baillie-Stewart. Although Baillie-Stewart claimed to be the first ‘Lord Haw-Haw,’ his accent makes it more likely he was ‘Sinister Sam,’ a name used alongside ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ to differentiate between these early radio presenters. As the Nazi radio programs became more organized and Joyce more popular, Baillie-Stewart received the moniker ‘Lancer.’

In 1944, the Foreign Ministry wireless service sent Baillie-Stewart to Vienna on assignment. While there, the German government issued an arrest warrant for him for making derogatory statements about the Nazi Party. He escaped into the Austrian Alps, where several other Nazi officials and sympathizers ended up after the war.

In May 1945, the 80th CIC Detachment found itself in a small Austrian village called Altaussee. While interviewing Dutch anti-Nazi underground member Jean Schils on 19 May 1945, the intelligence officers became aware the interpreter assigned to Schils was deliberately misrepresenting him. The interpreter was Norman Baillie-Stewart. He was subsequently arrested and extradited to England to await trial for his wartime activities. Because he had secured German citizenship before beginning his broadcast career, he could not be charged with high treason. Instead, the 36-year-old received another five-year prison sentence for “offenses against the Defence Regulations,” the emergency powers established by parliament to prosecute the war.

Baillie-Stewart was released from prison around 1949 and returned to Germany where he retained his citizenship. In March 1950, now under the name James Scott, he moved to Ireland where he lived in anonymity until his death in 1966. His autobiography, The Officer in the Tower, was published posthumously in 1967.

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• Date Taken: 05.15.2023
• Date Posted: 05.15.2023 13:59
• Story ID: 444767
• Location: US