Ezra Pound's radio broadcasts, 1941–1945
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.
[4] He praised Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, recommended eugenics to "conserve the BEST of the race",[5] and said the melting pot in America was "lost".
[7] 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.
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.
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.
[24] 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.
[26] 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".
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".
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".
[44] He called himself "Dr Ezra Pound" or used a pseudonym: "American Imperialist", "Manlio Squarcio",[45] "Mr Dooley",[46] "Piero Mazda",[47] "Marco Veneziano", "Bruce Bairnsfather", "Langdon Billings", or "Julian Bingham".
[48] Broadcast in English, and sometimes in Italian, German, and French,[3] The American Hour was transmitted mainly to England, central Europe, and the United States.
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.
"[53][b] 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.
He added: "Why shouldn't there be one grand beano; wiping out Sieff and Kuhn and Loeb and Guggenheim and Stinkenfinger and the rest of the nazal bleaters?
"[51] According to Matthew Feldman, the Pound archives at Yale University contain receipts for 195 payments from the Italian Ministry of Popular Culture from 22 April 1941 to 26 January 1944.
He was also allowed to retain his safety deposit boxes and bank accounts, because, the Ministry said, of his "truly friendly feelings for Italy and that he collaborates with the broadcasting of propaganda to foreign countries".
[62] On 8 May, the day Germany surrendered, he told an American reporter, Edd Johnson, that Mussolini was "a very human, imperfect character who lost his head" and that Hitler was "a Jeanne d'Arc, a saint ... a martyr.
