The facts of the matter are surprisingly clear. In 1940, famed author P.G. Wodehouse was living in France and was taken into German custody when France was occupied. A couple of months later, he made a brief series of six radio broadcasts from Berlin. Five of these broadcasts were descriptions of his experiences under interment and the sixth was an interview.
I’ve read the five internment broadcasts and their content appears innocuous. I’ve seen quotes from the interview which could conceivably be interpreted as being mildly pro-German. But overall, nothing too serious. Wodehouse was certainly no William Joyce or Ezra Pound.
But during the war, and for decades afterward, Wodehouse was condemned as a traitor to England for making the broadcasts and he never returned to his birth country. At times it was implied that if he had, he would have been arrested and tried. It was also implied that while Wodehouse’s actions may have not been overt, he sympathized with the Nazis and received payments from them for his services.
After the war, public opinion slowly turned. The consensus was that while Wodehouse had been foolish to make the broadcasts, he had not been unpatriotic. The money he had received had been royalties due him from neutral countries like Spain and Sweden that were forwarded through the German government as a procedural matter. In 1975, shortly before his death, Wodehouse was knighted and apparently his past was forgiven.
But in 1999 the controversy re-errupted. An official government report said that there had been evidence all along that Wodehouse had in fact knowingly aided the Germans during the war. But this report stated its conclusions without releasing the evidence it was based on.
So here we are. Wodehouse’s defenders say he is innocent and the new report is a govermental attempt to justify its past misdeeds. Wodehouse detractors say the old man got off too easy and should have been imprisoned. Who’s right? I’d like to hear what people have to say.
Nice OP. I’m a tremendous Wodehouse fan, and for that reason am biased in his favor. But I don’t know anything substantive, and I’m sorry I don’t have anything more to add to this debate.
There was a thread about this a while back (I can’t find it, or I think it’s been lost), with cites that had me convinced that he was an apolitical innocent. That he should have been more political is open to opinion, but all available evidence points to his innocence.
Bosda, it’s a matter of taste, of course, but maybe try a few more before you condemn his oeuvre. They’re the kind of books in which you have to get to know the characters before appreciating the subtlety of humour (maybe too much effort for something that doesn’t immediately grab you, I concede). I find his works charming. I have particularly enjoyed them - even the golf stories - when at home sick.
Oddly, after the Berlin radio debacle, many of Wodehouse’s detractors began going through his writings in search of evidence he’d been a crypto-Nazi all along.
One of Wodehouse’s defenders was George Orwell, who noted wryly that, as far as he could tell, nothing in any of Wodehouse’s work showed any signs of post-1913 thinking at all. Indeed, that was part of the charm of his stories! In Wodehouse’s world, WWI never happened and WW2 was only a nuisance.
For his part, Wodehouse tried to make amaneds by turning Sir Roderick Spode into a fascistic leader of the “Brownshorts,” and making him an object of ridicule. But even so, Spode was more a blustering buffoon than a real villain.
And I think that reflects Wodehouse’s thinking. Wodehouse didn’t comprehend genuine evil. In Wodehouse’s mind, there are no truly BAD people, just comically unpleasant ones. Aunt Agatha was a pill, but she’d never KILL anyone! I don’t think Wodehouse could have understood people who would. In his broadcasts, he treated the Nazis as silly nuisances, rather than as evil.
I mean, at that point, who DID understand the profundity of Nazi evil?
As long as we agree the main reason we’re interested in the question at all is that the man is famous for his writing, it makes sense to consider the writing itself.
I’m not familiar with all of his works, or, more relevantly, the time of their writing, but there are several Jeeves and Wooster stories that are relevant. A recurring character in them is a wannabe-fascist-leader type. Given the fun poked at him and his ilk, it’s clear that (at least at the time he wrote them) Wodehouse didn’t think much of fascists. Or wanted his readers to think he felt that way.
I’m not up to snuff on my British history, but wasn’t there a real wannabe-fascist-leader in Britain in the thrities?
I find the books totally hilarious. And the Fry/Laurie televersion as well.
I was reading some short stories last night before bed - and ended up laughing my head off while Bertie contemplated poverty for the first time. (or at least the first time that he could remember, Bertie’s sort of shallow that way).
I think it’s the closest I’ve ever seen to political, most of the rest is a world that doesn’t seem to have been touched by that sort of thing.
<< But even so, Spode was more a blustering buffoon than a real villain. >>
Well, Wodehouse doesn’t have many “real villains” unless you count Aunt Agatha. Or is Dahlia? Spode comes about as close to a “real villain” as Wodehouse gets.
I also think that, when you are “taken into custody” by Nazis and asked if you would do them a small favor, you probably do it.
Don’t think Wodehouse is funny? Hmmm. Well, it does take an appreciation of fairly subtle nuance, like a character who prefers newts to people. OK, so I pull a book off the shelf at more or less random, and give you the first line:
I think the British public in general have long ago forgiven, or even forgotten Wodehouse’s activity while in Germany. In that case, I’m also willing to do so.
I don’t see how anyone can find Wodehouse not funny.
Wodehouse, Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern are generally credited with originating the US style of musical comedy.
Its all deft, and daft, parody of the absurdity of a “ruling class”. Bertie Wooster is ineffably incompetent, and survives entirely by the grace and generosity of his servant, who is his superior in every concievable measure. It is satire without sarcasm, mockery without malice, the Danny Kaye of prose.
He makes Garrison Keillor look positively vicious.
I love Wodehouse, particularly the Jeeves and Bertie stories. I think Bertie Wooster is one of the greatest comic characters of the twentieth century. To echo what 'lucy said, I don’t percieve any viciousness or true hostility anywhere in Wooster’s work. This is extraordinary for a humorist, because humor is so often a manifestation of anger. It is exceedingly rare to find someone who can produce laughs-- true, deep, belly laughs, without ever being mean. Accordingly, I just cannot believe that the guy had some secret, malevolent, genocidal facet to his personality that was released during his captivity by the Germans. I think he was just human enough to be scared shitless of the nazis, and he did what they told him to do. I probably would have done the same. I don’t wanna go in no oven.
You seem to have missed the point. All the British government did in 1999 was to release its old MI5 files on the case. It did so not because it now has any particular view about the case but because the files are of interest to Wodehouse scholars. There was no ‘report’ in 1999 and no ‘conclusions’. Also, bear in mind that it was a previous British government which recommended him for his knighthood so, in so far as there is any official policy on the matter, it is that Wodehouse’s wartime conduct has been forgiven.
The files caused a fuss because they revealed that MI5 had thought that they had more evidence against him than just the radio broadcasts. It was the payments from the German embassy in Paris, not the broadcasts, which would have formed the central plank on any prosecution, although even at the time officials were uncertain that that would be sufficient to secure a conviction. The assumption was that Wodehouse would be unable to provide an innocent explanation for the payments. Of course, as a number of Wodehouse supporters have been quick to argue since the release of the files, innocent explanations can plausibly be given for the payments. That however was not so obvious in 1944 or 1947.
I have read previously about Wodehouse’s radio talks during World War II, and the affair does show him being, at worst, somewhat naive.
As for enjoying his novels: Well, I suppose the Horatian maxim applies (de gustibus, etc.), but I have long loved Wodehouse, and particularly the Jeeves and Wooster novels and stories, which I have reread many times. The plots are wonderfully intricate, and the prose style–particularly Wooster’s voice–is magnificent. Above all, it is amazingly clean, precise, and forceful. People try to imitate it, but none do so successfully.
I agree Dan,
The radio broadcasts were not very heroic but how many heroes are there really. He was an older man who didn’t want to be treated harshly. I can see where the British public would be mad… he sounded like he was having an ok time of it while they were being bombed daily. Time does heal most wounds though
FWIW there was a documentery about it (in uk, can’t remember the channel). Their conculusions seemed to be that he been a bit daft to go on air from germany, but nothing he said was pro-german or anti-allies, and he wasn’t a collaberator.
