AMERY, SIR JULIAN• 15tionof seven suspects, among them an officer working in the U.S.
Office of Naval Intelligence,Andrew Roth. Jaffe was convicted and
fined, but charges against the others were dropped because of OSS’s
illegal entry.AMERY, JOHN.The son of the British Cabinet minister Leo Amery
and an admirer of Hitler, John Amery joined theBritish Union of
Fascistsand lived in Germany throughout World War II. He was ar-
rested in July 1945 by Italian partisans and charged with having re-
cruited British prisoners of war into the British battalion of the
German SS, the so-called Legion of St. George, to fight on the Rus-
sian front. He had also made radio propaganda broadcasts into Brit-
ain, but after his capture he was diagnosed as suffering from a
psychopathic illness by two Home Office psychiatrists, who also ac-
knowledged that he was not insane. To save his family from further
embarrassment, Amery pleaded guilty to eight counts of treason at
his trial in November 1945 and was sentenced to death. He refused
to appeal and was hanged in December 1945. According to the hang-
man, Amery said, ‘‘I don’t suppose you would shake the hand of a
traitor?’’ to which the hangman replied, ‘‘No, but I’ll shake the hand
of a brave man.’’
AMERY, SIR JULIAN.Having only just come down from Oxford,
Julian Amery was touringAlbaniawhen Europe was plunged into
crisis in 1939. When he arrived in Belgrade,Yugoslavia, he was in-
vited by a contact at the British embassy to join theSecret Intelli-
gence Service’sSection D. Although his knowledge of Albania was
limited to the visit he had only recently completed, Amery was repre-
sented as an expert on the country, and this was to be his entre ́e into
the secret world.
On the basis of his experience in Section D, Amery was appointed
deputy head of the Balkan branch ofSpecial Operations Executive
(SOE), based inCairo, and supervised the infiltration of the first
British military mission into enemy-occupied Yugoslavia in Septem-
ber 1941. Thereafter, Amery concentrated on SOE’sYugoslav Sec-
tion, though he later joined an SOE mission to the Communist
guerrillas in Albania.
Amery recalled the solid grounding he had been given in the espi-