How the Nazis Duped P.G. Wodehouse

Wodehouse Had a Bad War

The man who gave the world Bertie Wooster, Jeeves, Gussie Fink-Nottle, and many other engaging characters was put into an internment camp when Germany invaded France in 1940. Naively, he agreed to make a series of broadcasts while in captivity that caused him to be vilified in his home country.

Wodehouse the Writer

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (pronounced Woodhouse) was an extraordinarily prolific humourist, writing more than 90 books, and scores of short stories, plays, musical comedies, and screenplays.

In an essay on a man he considers to have been a great influence on his own career, writer, broadcaster, actor Stephen Fry quotes some of the praise that has been heaped upon Wodehouse:

“ 'The greatest living writer of prose,' 'the Master,' 'the head of my profession,' 'akin to Shakespeare,' 'a master of the language'.”

He was an uncomplicated man whose only goal in life was to make people happy. He achieved this by crafting stories involving not very bright English aristocrats getting into scrapes caused by their own stupidity. Inevitably, it was left to the wise and resourceful butler, Jeeves, to get them out of the glue.

Wodehouse's world was one in which the sun always shone on meadows filled with wildflowers, while pretty girls frolicked and gauche young men blushed at the thought of courting them. A few quotes give a flavour of his skill with words:

• “It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn’t.”
• “‘Very good,” I said coldly. ‘In that case, tinkerty tonk.’ And I meant it to sting.”
• “I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”
• “It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.”

This is what Stephen Fry calls the “extraordinary, magical and blessed miracle of Wodehouse's prose, a prose that dispels doubt much as sunlight dispels shadows, a prose that renders any criticism, positive or negative, absolutely powerless and, frankly, silly.”

The Arrest of P.G. Wodehouse

Wodehouse (Plum to his family and friends), and his wife Ethel had left England to live in France for tax reasons in 1934, and had settled in the resort town of Le Touquet on the northern coast.

With the Germans threatening France, he was offered a seat in a departing British fighter plane but he declined to take it because it meant leaving his beloved Ethel behind. They decided to drive to Portugal and fly to the United States from there, but their car broke down and they soon fell into the hands of the Wehrmacht.

All male British civilians under the age of 60 were arrested and interned in camps. Wodehouse and fellow internees were shuffled around until they ended up in Tost, a small town in what is now Poland.

An Associated Press reporter found the incarcerated Wodehouse and wrote about his situation. This prompted an outcry for his release, as he was almost 60. Sensing the possibility of a public relations boost, the Nazis moved their famous internee into a luxury hotel in Berlin, although he was required to pay for his accommodation.

Wodehouse Makes Fateful Broadcasts

Wodehouse's new lodgings were infinitely better than the internment camp in Poland. German officials approached their captive and, using guile, invited him to make a series of radio talks about his internment that were to be broadcast in America; it was part of a charm offensive aimed at keeping the United States out of the war.

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The BBC reports that “Naively, he agreed, keen as he was to assure his fans that he was in good health and good spirits. What he didn’t realise was that he was playing into the hands of the Nazi government, which could claim to be treating its illustrious guest well.”

Broadcast in the summer of 1941, the talks were humourous reflections on how Wodehouse and his fellow internees had coped. The title of his talks alone, “How to be an Internee Without Previous Training,” should have alerted listeners to their innocuous nature. But, this was not to be.

One of his comments was, “I'm quite unable to work up any kind of belligerent feeling. Just as I'm about to feel belligerent about some country, I meet a decent sort of chap. We go out together and lose any fighting thoughts.” This enraged many Brits who had an understandable hate on for Nazi Germany.

He became the target of vicious media attacks. In particular, Daily Mirror columnist William Connor, writing under the pseudonym Cassandra, fired broadsides at Wodehouse who he accused of being a Nazi collaborator.

Connor wrote that while Wodehouse “lived luxuriously because Britain laughed with him, but when the laughter was out of his country's heart, ... [he] was not ready to share her suffering. He hadn't the guts ... even to stick it out in the internment camp.”

Many other writers came to the defence of Wodehouse, notably Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy L. Sayers, and George Orwell. But, the damage was done; Wodehouse was never able to completely wash the stain of treachery off himself that had been put there by Connor and others.

In the 2013 BBC drama Wodehouse in Exile, Ethel (Zoe Wanamaker) gives Wodehouse (Tim Pigott-Smith) a going over for the broadcasts.

Post-War Wodehouse

Following the close of hostilities, Plum and Ethel were in Paris and British intelligence agents were sent to investigate the writer.

One of the officers involved was Malcolm Muggeridge who went on to become an influential writer and commentator in the United Kingdom. He decided that the idea of Wodehouse having committed a treasonable offence was “ludicrous.” Another interrogator noted that the writer's actions had been, at worst, “unwise.”

Wodehouse agreed with these assessments, later writing:

“Of course I ought to have had the sense to see that it was a loony thing to do to use the German radio for even the most harmless stuff, but I didn’t. I suppose prison life saps the intellect.”

The needless and cruel furor over his wartime broadcasts made him feel uncomfortable about returning to Britain, so he and Ethel settled in the United States, first in Manhattan and then on Long Island. He never returned to the land of his birth and died in America in 1975 at the age of 93.

Bonus Factoids

• Although William Connor accused Wodehouse of living “luxuriously” during his internment he actually lost 60 pounds in weight while incarcerated.
• An example of Wodehouse's affable nature is that he bore no ill will towards Connor and the two men became friends later in life.
• Twice Wodehouse's name was put forward for a knighthood but each time the British Foreign Office blocked the honour, apparently not ready to forgive him for his wartime indiscretion. On a third occasion, Prime Minister Harold Wilson intervened and the famous writer became Sir Pelham Wodehouse in 1975, a few months before he died.

Sources

• “Stephen Fry on PG Wodehouse.” Stephen Fry, pgwodehousebooks.com, 2000
• “75 of the Greatest P.G. Wodehouse Quotes to Lighten Your Mood.” soulfularogya.com, February 13, 2019.
• “Wartime for Wodehouse.” Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, May 25, 2020.
• “The Man Who Wrote the Most Perfect Sentences Ever Written.” Nicholas Barber, BBC, December 23, 2020.
• “The Work of P.G. Wodehouse Is Immortal, but He Was Guilty of a Moral Lapse.” Stephen Glover, The Spectator, September 18, 2004.
• “P.G. Wodehouse Biography.” biographyonline.net, March 18, 2020.
• “Officials Blocked Wodehouse Honour.” Paul Reynolds, BBC, August 15, 2002.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

© 2023 Rupert Taylor