Pearl Joyce Vardon (5 April 1915 in

Jersey Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label= Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the l ...

Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...

– November 2011) was a British broadcaster of

Nazi propaganda The propaganda used by the German Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's dictatorship of Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation of Nazi polici ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. In 1946 she was convicted of an offence under the

Defence Regulations During the Second World War Defence Regulations were a fundamental aspect of everyday life in the United Kingdom. They were emergency regulations passed on the outbreak of war and during it to give the government emergency powers to prosecute the ...

and sentenced to nine months' imprisonment.

Biography

Pearl Vardon was a school teacher on Jersey when the island fell under the German occupation of the Channel Islands in 1940. As she spoke German, she found herself ordered by the German administration to work locally as an interpreter for a construction company based in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

. She began a relationship with a

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...

officer, Oberleutnant Siegfried Schwatlo, and when he was posted to Germany in 1944 she decided to go with him.

Propaganda for Nazi Germany

Vardon began employment as an announcer at

Radio Luxembourg Radio Luxembourg was a multilingual commercial broadcaster in Luxembourg. It is known in most non-English languages as RTL (for Radio Television Luxembourg). The English-language service of Radio Luxembourg began in 1933 as one of the earlies ...

for the DES, the Deutsche Europasender. She introduced music and programmes such as ''Ladies First'' which criticised the USA and praised Germany's social security system, and ''Matters of Moment'' which gave news from a German perspective. More significantly, in ''For the Forces and their Kin'', she read out letters written by British POWs for their families back home. A German colleague later said of Vardon's attitude that she "simply hated all things English and loved all things German". In mid 1944 she was evacuated to

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

and in October 1944 she was working at

Apen Apen (Low German: ''Aap'') is a municipality in the district of Ammerland, in Lower Saxony, Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europ ...

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

until the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

drew close on the advancing Eastern Front.

Arrest and trial

Vardon fled from Apen to

Wilhelmshaven Wilhelmshaven (, ''Wilhelm's Harbour''; Northern Low Saxon: ''Willemshaven'') is a coastal town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the western side of the Jade Bight, a bay of the North Sea, and has a population of 76,089. Wilhelmsh ...

, arriving on 30 April 1945. She was arrested there when she enquired how to obtain new identity papers and she was then held by the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

at Esterwegen Internment Camp, the former Esterwegen concentration camp, where she was interrogated. Vardon was tried at the Old Bailey in February 1946. There she pleaded guilty to the offence of ‘doing an act likely to assist the enemy’ and was given a nine-month prison sentence.

After release

Pearl Vardon eventually married Siegfried Schwatlo in 1950 at Abergavenny, Monmouthshire. She died in November 2011, in Weißenburg, Bavaria, Germany, at the age of 96.

Declassified files

The declassified

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...

files on her were released by the

Public Record Office The Public Record Office (abbreviated as PRO, pronounced as three letters and referred to as ''the'' PRO), Chancery Lane in the City of London, was the guardian of the national archives of the United Kingdom from 1838 until 2003, when it was ...

in 2000. They show that British prosecutors were inclined to take a more lenient attitude towards female collaborators such as Vardon and Margaret Joyce, the wife of the traitor

William Joyce William Brooke Joyce (24 April 1906 – 3 January 1946), nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an American-born fascist and Nazi propaganda broadcaster during the Second World War. After moving from New York to Ireland and subsequently to England, ...

, than with their male counterparts. The MI5 report on Vardon states, ‘Her motive seems to have been the clear one of avoiding as much as possible separation from the German officer with whom she fell in love’ but added, ‘It is just possible that her motives were not so simple as they appear to have been on the surface’. The Security Service file on her is held by The National Archives under referenc
KV 2/256
and the Home Office file on her is held there under referenc
HO 45/25811

References

External links

"News in Brief."
Times, London, England, 6 Feb. 1946: 2. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.
"Charge Of Aiding Enemy."
Times, London, England, 7 Feb. 1946: 2. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.
"News in Brief."
Times, London, England, 28 Feb. 1946: 2. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. {{DEFAULTSORT:Vardon, Pearl 1915 births 1972 deaths British collaborators with Nazi Germany Jersey collaborators with Nazi Germany British broadcasters for Nazi Germany British propagandists