Christopher Hitchens: Lord Haw Haw and Anwar al-Awlaki
...Just as most precedents for controversy about citizens joining foreign armies or insurgencies come from the British “Foreign Enlistment Act,” so the best precedent that I can find, in the world where treason meets broadcasting, is a celebrated one from World War II. During that conflict, a man named William Joyce was employed by Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda to make continuous appeals to the British people to surrender. At other times, he went among British prisoners of war, attempting mostly in vain to recruit them to a “British Free Corps” that would fight under the colors of the swastika. He actually became rather a popular entertainment item in Britain, his arrogant drawling tones earning him the nickname “Lord Haw Haw.”
Captured in 1945 and hit with three counts of high treason, he pleaded that he was and always had been an American, and thus owed no duty of loyalty to the British Crown. This defense at first seemed a plausible one. But then one of the British prosecutors at Nuremburg, Sir Hartley Shawcross, discovered that on one occasion, seeking to move countries in something of a hurry, Joyce had applied for a passport to the British consulate in New York. In the minds of the judges, this was enough to establish that he had a duty of allegiance to the Crown. He was duly hanged, leaving behind a slight impression that Shawcross had won on points, even if slightly tricky ones....