Nothing of the evidence you provide (“Mrs Wodehouse”) are grounds for the accusation of treachery.

“As for Orwell and Wodehouse’s ‘bufoonery’ I think that ‘in a striking way Wodehouse is utterly without a sense of political calculation’ is just a posh way of calling him a twit.”

I struggle more with this. I wanted to learn where exactly Orwell describes Wodehouse as a buffoon. The phrase “utterly without a sense of political calculation” is my own gloss on my memory of reading Orwell’s “In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse”. Orwell finds this absence intriguing and stimulating. This is actually what Orwell is discussing in his short essay. Wodehouse reflects a world Orwell knew briefly at first hand but recognises has passed for ever. It was for Orwell a world in which, despite its many falsities and evasions, nevertheless exhibited certain virtues which he admired – a “gentle obsolescent breed” of writer’s before ideology alone determined who was good and who bad.

Amory was from a very well connected High Tory background and went to the gallows. I do not think the British authorities agreed in some way to over look anything Wodehouse did or said whilst in German hands. On the evidence a case would not stand up. As I have stated I feel no compassion for Joyce nor Amory – both convinced and enthusiastic Fascists. I have never supported the death penalty in any circumstance. About the rest we will have to disagree.

Best Wishes.

As for Orwell and Wodehouse’s ‘bufoonery’ I think that ‘in a striking way Wodehouse is utterly without a sense of political calculation’ is just a posh way of calling him a twit.

After the war, MI5 learnt that Wodehouse had been on the Nazi payroll. Evidence was found that during 1944 he received, through his wife, a series of payments that appeared to be equivalent to a salary of £150 a month, a not inconsiderable sum at the time.

The MI5 file also contain documents recovered from the German embassy in Paris, which refer to his work for the “language section” and on films, noting the propaganda value of his efforts. Mrs Wodehouse was sent about £1,500 from Berlin and Wodehouse admitted that he had sold the rights to a novel he wrote during internment, called How to Make Money, to a German company.

I would very much like to have details of this paper-trail of payments to Wodehouse for broadcasts he made whilst in German hands. I am unaware that Wodehouse ever claimed he was tricked into making these few broadcasts. Again details would be welcome. You will doubtless be aware that he never broadcast for German (and therefore Nazi) radio but for an American station and an American audience, the U.S.A. at that time neutral and maintaining media and diplomatic links with Germany.

Where does Orwell say Wodehouse was a buffoon? What he writes is that in a striking way Wodehouse is utterly without a sense of political calculation; he is a product of the pre-First World War society which Orwell conceives of as free from 20th century ideology: What does the party require of me? would be an absurdity to Wodehouse who would not begin to understand the question. No serious writer who came to maturity after the events of 1914-18 was free from this problem in Orwell’s mind.

What lynch mobs do either in this country or elsewhere is a poor way to support a case which should be based not on prejudice but evidence.

Wodehouse was eventually exonerated but at one stage public and prosecutors saw little difference between Joyce and himself as both had made broadcasts for the Germans. (Even Joyce was not the original Lord Haw Haw). Wodehouse eventually managed to claim he had been ‘tricked’ into broadcasting for the Nazis (though the paper-trail of payments makes a mockery of this claim). So I therefore stick to the original claim that Wodehouse very nearly shared Joyce’s fate. Even he knew he was lucky and decamped to the USA after the war never returning to England.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wodehouse-secretly-in-pay-of-the-nazis-say-mi5-files-742072.html

Wodehouse was exonerated following a interrogation by Hector Milmo K.C. on behalf of M.I.5. Details can be found in Malcolm Muggeridge’s ‘Chronicle’s of Wasted Time’ Vol. Two. However, the best account of Wodehouse’s “treachery” is to be found in Orwell’s ‘In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse’. Orwell had met Wodehouse (whom he admired as a writer) in Paris through Muggeridge. Often repeated, the charge against Wodehouse became a useful distraction from a re-examination of the records of some arch Appeaser’s and worse in post-War Britain.

‘Poppy St Julien said. ‘I don’t know a thing about politics, but I’m sure Hitler must be a wonderful man. Hasn’t he forbidden German women to work in offices andtold them they never need worry about anything again, except arranging the flowers? How they must love him.’
‘They do,’ said Eugenia. ‘Heil Hitler! Cousin Poppy St Julianyou must be enrolled as aUnion Jackshirt at once. It costs ninepence a month, the Union Jackshirt is five shillings, and sixpence for the little emblem. Here we are.’

1935

The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?”

Bertie Wooster, from: The Code of the Woosters, 1938.