By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Hitler's Aristocrats and Fascism

As we have seen in parts one and two, Hitler actively pursued an influential and largely overlooked backdoor foreign policy woing the royal families of Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Romania, and Germany. They were all looking to seize a more visible political role in their respective countries. In Britain, this included the Anglo-German Fellowship and the Cliveden Set, whereby it became seditious with Right Club’s plans for a coup d’état and as we will see underneath the conspiracy by Dr. Leigh Francis Howell Wynne Sackville de Montmorency Vaughan-Henry..

One could argue that the British ruling class’s interest in Fascism was first cultivated by visits to Italy, where King Victor Emmanuel III was a known Fascist. 

King Edward VIII claimed that 'every drop of blood in my veins is German,' most likely influenced by his family members among the German aristocracy and also led to Hitler's idea of an Anglo-German collaboration. According to a recent BBC documentary, the former Edward VIII helped the Nazis invade France by revealing defense weak spots to known collaborators and ‘encouraged the Nazis to bomb the UK into submission with a plot to put him on the throne.

As are 60 pictures showing visiting Hitler in person.

Whereby it is unclear what exactly caused the future Queen, at age seven, as seen in part one, to let herself picture with a Nazi salute. And no doubt, she must have been influenced in some way. She never denied that she made the salute, yet she did not explain the circumstances that led her to make such.

From left to right, Enrico De Nicola, Victor Emmanuel III, and Benito Mussolini July 9, 1923:

Members of the British upper classes, such as Harold Nicolson, the Duke of Westminster, and the Duke of Buccleuch, traveled to Italy to observe the new politics of Fascism, where the term originated. Winston Churchill also visited Italy during this period and left a positive impression of this new political movement. “Italy has shown that there is a way of fighting the subversive forces. . . . She has provided the necessary antidote to the Russian poison. Hereafter no great nation will be unprovided with an ultimate means against the cancerous growth of Bolshevism.” 

Hitler actively capitalized on any opportunity he saw to create alliances between German and British aristocrats, although in this case, a protective mother spoiled the plan.

Hitler’s most reliable and well-placed German connection to the British nobility was Carl Eduard, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, brother of Princess Alice of England and grandson of Queen Victoria, who as a child spent a great deal of time at the English court. The German spy Carl August Clodius revealed during interrogations by the British in 1946 that “in pursuit of an Anglo-German rapprochement (the Duke) offered his social connections and tried to invite to Germany many prominent Englishmen and put them in touch with important people” there. Princess Alice wrote in her memoirs that even though her late husband, Lord Athlone, chancellor of the University of London, often objected to German ambassador Ribbentrop’s descriptions of the “New Deutschland,” it did not preclude him from accepting a donation of Germaniae Historica in 1937 with much fanfare at the university.

In his memoir, Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer, the architect of many monumental stadiums and buildings constructed as a testament to the rising strength of the Nazi vision, wrote of Hitler’s strategic view of Britain when he rose to the chancellor. Speer did not believe that Hitler’s initial aim was war with Britain. He recalled a comment Hitler had made in Obersalzburg: “I don’t know what I should do. It is a difficult decision. I would by far prefer to join the English. But how often in history have the English proved perfidious. If I go with them, everything is over for good between Italy and us. Afterward, the English will drop me and we will sit between two stools.”

While history remembers Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, there is a darker tale of Fascism among other notoriously more exclusive and secret right-wing groups. One, as we have seen, was the Right Club.

 

Second well-advanced plot for an armed coup d’état

At the same time as the Security Service uncovered Ramsay’s Right Club conspiracy, British Government files show that MI5 agents also penetrated a second and well-advanced plot for an armed coup d’état by “a subversive organization [intending] to establish an authoritarian system of Government” once German troops landed in Britain. Its operations included “illegal printing, a transport section to convey the members in their various activities, an extensive arrangement of accommodation addresses, and various aliases for leading members of the organization,” as well as the acquisition of a substantial armory of .303 Lee Enfield rifles.1

This organization's self-styled ‘Leader’ was Dr. Leigh Francis Howell Wynne Sackville de Montmorency Vaughan-Henry, a celebrated musicologist and conductor. They had held concert performances for the British Royal Family. To the general public, Henry was known for his regular appearances on BBC wireless programs. He discussed his area of expertise: the Welsh Bardic tradition in poetry and song. To the police and MI5, however, Leigh Vaughan-Henry was better known as a pro-Nazi Fascist and violent anti-Semite. Throughout the 1930s, he had been in regular contact with Nazi officials in Germany, had been entertained by Party leaders in Berlin, and had made at least one radio broadcast for propaganda chief Josef Goebbels.2

He had been a member of (variously) the British Union of Fascists (BUF), the Imperial Fascist League, and the Imperial Socialist League, and in April 1940, acquired a criminal record after making a speech to a meeting of the English Nationalist Association (a BUF offshoot). In it, he denounced Jews as “a lot of dirty lousy Yids” and “a menace to Britishers”; he then “challenged those of Jewish beliefs or the Jewish race to come up to the platform and resort to force.” 1 Magistrates at Old Street police Court gave him a choice between £250 fine 139 and three months in prison. Henry paid the fine and was additionally bound over to be of good behavior for six months; it was an injunction he chose to ignore.

MI5 infiltrated its undercover agents into Henry’s group of British fascists and discovered that it was planning for an armed revolution. According to Henry’s deputy, Samuel Darwin-Fox, formerly Professor of English Literature at the University of Freiburg, Switzerland, but better known to the Security Service as “one of the more extreme and unbalanced of Nordic League members,” 2 in early May 1940 the plot was primed and ready. Darwin-Fox told an MI5 agent code-named M/W that:

“Italy would declare war almost immediately, France would give in, and Britain would follow before the end of the week. There would be a short civil war, the Government would leave first for Bristol and then for the Colonies, General Ironside would become dictator, and after things had settled down, Germany could do as she liked with Britain.” 3

The names of Henry and Darwin-Fox’s co-conspirators have never been released. Still, the reference to General William Edmund Ironside (subsequently ennobled as the 1st Baron Ironside) must have caused alarm. Despite being regularly associated with pro german fascists - he was the patron of General John Fuller, who was confident enough of his mentor’s support to advise the Link’s Admiral Barry Domvile that “Ironside is with us” – Ironside was then Chief of the Imperial General Staff and about to be named as Commander-in-Chief of Home Forces.4

In the same month, a second MI5 undercover operative – Agent M/M – reported that Henry had organized his followers along classic revolutionary lines. 

“There are 18 cells already organized. Each cell has 25 members who are responsible for the district in which they live or work. Henry says he has many phone numbers; instructions are to be given to each member who will destroy them when committed to memory. No call is genuine unless ‘Peter Leigh’ is mentioned in the conversation on both sides.5

Henry was reported to be eagerly anticipating the arrival of Hitler’s troops. In late May, he summoned 16 cell leaders to a meeting in his elegant Notting Hill home; it was, he told them, to be the last such gathering before the imminent coup d’état, and he issued their orders. 

“Revolution is to take place after the total loss of the Channel ports and defeat on the Western Front, and an effort is to be made to link up with the enemy in Holland … The next plan is the [in]filtration of into the C.P. [Communist Party] and chiefly the I.L.P. [Independent Labour Party]. This to be done by Darwin-Fox. Intimidation of certain people by threat, and possible action against their wives and children; bumping off certain people (this to be organized with great care).” 6 

But Henry also knew that his plot might be discovered before the coup was launched. He told his cell leaders that in the event of trouble, plans had been put in place to hide his revolutionaries from the police and smuggle them to safety in the Irish Republic. 

Arrangements are being made for the allocation of hide-outs for the women of the party and their children if necessary. These will be reached in 10 minutes, and … the point to go will be imparted to each person, and from there, he will be escorted to an unknown destination. A getaway out of London is to be by the river and out of the country to Ireland via S. Wales, a route which has been tried successfully; there is a second route. Two people have already used the first route; one injured a policeman who is now dying.” 7

The same agent also reported that Henry had obtained a printing press to churn out the revolutionary government’s instructions, which “has been moved and will continue to be moved by a baker in his bread van every few days.” MI5 also discovered that he was forging identity documents and that he had linked up with experienced Irish terrorists.

“According to information which we obtained from a reliable source, Vaughan-Henry had a large stock of inner pages of passports, and a Foreign Office embossing stamp. He said he could replace the photograph in a passport with that of someone he wanted to smuggle to Ireland, and stitch in blank pages for endorsements. He then sends such persons to a place in South Wales and thence to Ireland. In a period of ten days he has smuggled six persons to Ireland in that way, and members of the IRA have come to England by that route …:

“Eventually there will be a legion formed in Ireland (by those who go over by the secret route) who will return to fight when the revolution starts.” 8

Meanwhile, the Right Club’s plans for a coup d’état were interrupted in May 1940 by the arrest of Ramsay’s ‘Chief of Staff, Anna Wolkoff, an ardent anti-Semite and passionate admirer of Germany’s Führer, who had declared (according to an MI5 undercover report reports) “Hitler is a God …He is of this century, and it would be wonderful if he could govern Britain.” 9 

While Ambassador Kennedy arguably harbored some sympathy for Germany, other forces were at work in the American embassy to undermine Churchill’s pleas for American intervention. Anna Wolkoff, a White Russian émigré in London and secretary of the Right Club who operated out of a tearoom in Kensington, recruited Tyler Kent, a low-level employee at the American embassy, to steal secret correspondence between Roosevelt and Churchill requesting American military aid. Both Wolkoff and Kent were eventually arrested and indicted.

 

Continued in Part Five

 

1. Defence Regulation 18B: claim by Dr Leigh Vaughan Henry for damages for wrongful arrest and for breach of statutory duty. National Archives file TS 27/533. 

2. Statement of Case against Leigh Vaughan-Henry. 28 November 1940. Defence Regulation 18B: claim by Dr Leigh Vaughan Henry for damages for wrongful arrest and for breach of statutory duty. National Archives file TS 27/533.

3. Special Branch Memo by Insp. Arthur Cain, 13 June 1940. Defence Regulation 18B: claim by Dr Leigh Vaughan Henry for damages for wrongful arrest and for breach of statutory duty. National Archives file TS 27/533. 

4. Approximately £15,000 today. 

5. Cecil Serocold Skeels, member of the Nordic League. National Archives file HO 45/25746.

6. Report by M/W of meeting on May 28 1940, June 2, 1940. National Archives file KV 2/1511, page 67.

7. He was appointed to this role on 27 May, but dismissed less than two months later.

8. Report filed by M/M, June 7, 1940. John and Anne Beckett. National Archives file KV 2/1511.

9. Ibid.

 

 

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