The expatriate American poet Ezra Pound recorded or composed hundreds of broadcasts in support of fascism for Italian radio during World War II and the Holocaust in Italy. Based in Italy since 1924, Pound collaborated with the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and expressed support for Adolf Hitler. Written at first for EIAR (Radio Rome, the public broadcaster), and later for a new radio station in the Salò Republic, a Nazi puppet state in northern Italy,Feldman 2013, 94, 99; Hadjiyiannis 2015, 120; Tytell 1987, 261. the broadcasts contained deeply antisemitic and racist material. They were transmitted to England, central Europe, and the United States,Tytell 1987, 261. mostly in English, but also in Italian, German, and French.Feldman 2013, 83–84.
Calling himself "Dr Ezra Pound", Pound referred to Jews as "filth". He praised Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, recommended eugenics to "conserve the BEST of the race",Doob 1978, 140. and said the melting pot in America was "lost".Pound radio broadcasts. DOJ, 16; Doob 1978, 157. He complained about "Mr. Churchill and that brute Rosefield [President Franklin Roosevelt] and their kike postal spies and obstructors". When he learned that the Nazis in Italy were rounding up Jews, he suggested that book stores showcase The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903), a hoax document purporting to be a Jewish plan to dominate the world. He wrote: "The arrest of Jews will create a wave of useless mercy; thus the need to disseminate the Protocols."Feldman 2013, 154.
The broadcasts were monitored by the United States Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, and on 26 July 1943 the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia indicted Pound in absentia for treason.Tytell 1987, 269. Pound continued to broadcast for the fascists until shortly before his arrest by American forces in Italy on 3 May 1945.Tytell 1987, 273–274. He spent over 12 years in St. Elizabeth's Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Washington, D.C., until his release in May 1958. He died and was buried in Italy in 1972.
Background Antisemitism, economic theories Born in 1885 in Hailey, Idaho, and raised in Pennsylvania, Pound moved to Europe in 1908, living in London and Paris, then from 1924 in the coastal town of Rapallo, northern Italy. Pound's antisemitism can be traced to around 1910, when he wrote in Patria Mia—an essay about America—that Anglo-Saxons had been "submerged and well nigh lost in the pool of the races which have followed them" and that "[t]he Jew alone can retain his detestable qualities, despite climatic conditions." Throughout the teens and early 1920s, according to Robert Casillo, Pound's poetry and prose singled out Jews.Casillo 1988, 4–5. In 1922 he reportedly disliked that so many Jews were contributing to The Dial.Torrey 1992, 106. In 1927 he called Marcel Proust "a vicious little Jew, picking up everything he can find and everything he can remember".Johns 1973, 282.
From 1911 until 1921, Pound contributed to The New Age, a socialist journal in London run by A. R. Orage. He came to believe that capitalism had caused World War I.Preda 2005(a), 87. In 1918 he met C. H. Douglas in the New Age office and became interested in Douglas's ideas about social credit, a halfway house between capitalism and socialism.Moody 2007, 372–375. It was within this New Age environment, according to Tim Redman, that Pound encountered antisemitic ideas about finance capitalism,Redman 1991, 17. which he called "usury"Prada 2005(b), 90. or "Jew usury".Houen 2002, 143.
Meeting Mussolini
Pound and his wife, Dorothy Shakespear, moved to Italy in 1924, where Pound supported the fascism of Benito Mussolini, prime minister of Italy from 1922 to 1943. Pound's mistress, Olga Rudge, a violinist, played privately for Mussolini in 1927.Redman 2001, 74. On 30 January 1933 Pound himself met Mussolini at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome. He gave Mussolini a copy of A Draft of XXX Cantos and, according to John Tytell, attempted to hand him a digest of his economic ideas.Tytell 1987, 228–229; for the date, Feldman 2013, 15. That he had met the prime minister made Pound feel he had become a person of influence.Redman 1991, 98. He began writing The ABC of Economics (1933) and Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935),Redman 1991, 256. and wrote articles praising Mussolini and fascism for T. S. Eliot's literary magazine The Criterion in July 1933 and for the New York World Telegram in November.Hadjiyiannis 2015, 116. He wrote over 1,000 letters a year during the 1930s and presented his ideas about fascism and economics in hundreds of articles, as well as in his epic poem, The Cantos.Tytell 1987, 254.
Jews in Italy
Pound's respect for Mussolini increased when the latter introduced Italy's racial laws in November 1938.McCraw 1986, 53 The laws were preceded in July by the publication of the Manifesto of Race, and in September Mussolini declared Judaism "an irreconcilable enemy of fascism". The new laws required Italian Jews to register with the police. They were not allowed to marry Christians, join the Army, or employ Christian (or "Italian Aryan") domestic help. Separate schools were established for Jewish children. Foreign Jews were stripped of their Italian citizenship.Sarfatti 2006, 138–139
On 9–10 September 1943, the German Wehrmacht occupied the northern and central areas of Italy. Hitler appointed Mussolini head of a fascist puppet state known as the Republica Sociale Italiana or Salò Republic.Friedländer 2007, 470; Sarfatti 2006, 180. SS officers from RSHA IV B4, a Gestapo unit, arrived from Berlin to begin concentrating Jews in transit camps before deporting them to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the German extermination camp in occupied Poland.Sarfatti 2006, 180–181. The first group of 1,034 Jews arrived in Auschwitz from Rome on 23 October 1943; 839 were gassed.Kubica 1988, 416; Czech 2000, 187–188. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Italians for the most part did not cooperate with the Germans, and as a result most Italian Jews, over 40,000, survived the Holocaust. Around 8,500 were deported to Auschwitz."Italy". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Broadcasts Initial approach Pound's wartime broadcasts began after he approached the Italian Ministry of Popular Culture on 15 November 1940. He asked to speak to someone about "some of his methods" at "fighting anti-Italian and anti-Fascist propaganda in Europe, in Japan, in China and in the United States".Corrigan 1972, 770. The Ministry sent telegraphs asking for information about Pound, including about his "racial background", to the Italian Embassy in Washington, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry of War.Corrigan 1972, 770–771.
His first broadcast was on 23 January 1941, apparently before the Ministry had received responses. The Italian Embassy replied on 26 February 1941 that Pound was "of Aryan Race", and that he had "displayed his friendly feelings for Fascism and granted courageous interviews” and his "recent broadcasts from Italy were [the] subject of vital interest and considered to be very efficacious." Robert Corrigan writes that in a memo dated 5 March 1941 the Inspector for Broadcasting and Television told the Chief of the Cabinet of the Ministry of Popular Culture that he would "entrust Ezra Pound with the wording of at least five conferences per month besides the drawing up of two political notes each week".Corrigan 1972, 771.
Radio Rome
According to Tytell, Pound's voice had assumed a "rasping, buzzing quality like the sound of a hornet stuck in a jar".Tytell 1987, 266 In the broadcasts, Pound attacked the United States, Roosevelt, Roosevelt's family, Churchill, and the Jews. He praised Hitler's Mein Kampf and recommended eugenics to "conserve the best of the race".Pound radio broadcasts. DOJ, 12–13. In 110 scripts examined by Leonard W. Doob,Doob 1978, 417. powerful Jews were mentioned in 71 scripts, Roosevelt in 50, Churchill in 37, Jews in general in 35, and Hitler in 18.Doob 1978, 419.
In October 1941, Pound complained about "Mr. Churchill and that brute Rosefield and their kike postal spies and obstructors".Doob 1978, 7; Tytell 1987, 262 He told England in March 1942: "For two centuries, ever since the brute Cromwell brought 'em back into England, the kikes have sucked out your vitals."Doob 1978, 61. "No Sassoon is an Englishman, racially. No Rothschild is English, no Strakosch is English, no Roosevelt is English ... And it is for this filth that you fight."Doob 1978, 62. On 8 May 1943: "Until England and America delouse, and get rid of her Jew gangs, there is no place for either England or the United States in the new world at all."Doob 1978, 299.
Pound traveled to Rome for one week every month to pre-record the 10-minute broadcasts, which were broadcast every three days.Tytell 1987, 263–264. From 23 January 1941Feldman 2013, 94. he recorded or composed hundreds, and possibly thousands, of them, mostly for The American Hour on Radio Rome.Feldman 2013, 99; Hadjiyiannis 2015, 120; for The American Hour, Tytell 1987, 261 He called himself "Dr Ezra Pound" or used a pseudonym: "American Imperialist", "Manlio Squarcio",Hadjiyiannis 2015, 121. "Mr Dooley",Carpenter 1988, 633. "Piero Mazda",Carpenter 1988, 626. "Marco Veneziano", "Bruce Bairnsfather", "Langdon Billings", or "Julian Bingham".Feldman 2016, 227. Broadcast in English, and sometimes in Italian, German, and French, The American Hour was transmitted mainly to England, central Europe, and the United States.
Salò Republic radio station
On or around 23 November 1943, Pound met government officials in Salò, including Fernando Mezzasoma, the new Minister of Popular Culture. Pound wrote from Salò to Dorothy asking if she could obtain a radio confiscated from the Jews to give to Olga, so that Olga could help with his work.Moody 2015, 72. He met more officials in Milan, and from 1 December he began writing scripts for the state's new radio station.Carpenter 1988, 632–633; Tytell 1987, 274. He would send the scripts to Carl Goedel in the German Embassy in Milan,Feldman 2013, 159; Hadjiyiannis 2015, 122. although he insisted that he was working for, and being paid by, the "Republican Fascist Ministry of Popular Culture", not the Germans.Moody 2015, 79.
On 2 December 1943, Pound wrote to Alessandro Pavolini, secretary of the Republican Fascist Party, suggesting that book stores be legally obliged to showcase certain books, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903), a hoax document purporting to be a Jewish plan to dominate the world. Pound wrote: "The arrest of Jews will create a wave of useless mercy [un'ondata di misericordia inservibile]; thus the need to disseminate the Protocols. The intellectuals are capable of a passion more durable than emotional, but they need to understand the reasons for a conflict."Feldman 2013, 154; Hadjiyiannis 2015, 123; Moody 2015, 74.
In May 1944, the German military, trying to secure the coast against the Allies, forced Ezra and Dorothy to evacuate their seafront apartment in Rapallo. The couple moved in with Pound's mistress, who lived nearby.Moody 2015, 85 According to her, Ezra and Dorothy would spend their nights listening to the BBC.Moody 2015, 86. After hearing a BBC broadcast in March 1944, Pound had proposed broadcasting short speeches of his to America under the title "London lies".Moody 2015, 78.