By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Royalty And The Nazi's Part One

King Edward VIII, subsequent Duke of Windsor, told his friend Diana Mosley, the wife of the British Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, that ‘every drop of blood in my veins is German’ was initially influenced by his family members among the German aristocracy, which also led to Hitler's idea of an Anglo-German collaboration.

There was also an unsuccessful attempt by the SS to kidnap the Duke of Windsor in July 1940 and induce him to work with German dictator Adolf Hitler for either a peace settlement with Britain or a restoration to the throne after the German conquest of the United Kingdom. Aware of the plot Churchill sought US and French help to withhold publication of telegrams revealing German overtures to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, cabinet papers reveal.

Contrary to the conventional history of a country united in opposition to Hitler, right-wing British MPs, Peers, and senior figures in the military clandestinely worked – individually and collectively – to hasten a German victory and to supplant the elected British Government with a pro-Nazi puppet regime which if up to Hitler would be a re-instated King Edward VIII.

The previous Queen Elisabeth, then a seven-year-old princess as pictured, gave a Nazi salute in 1933.

Edward VIII, subsequent Duke of Windsor, was initially influenced by his family members among the German aristocracy during the Nazi period, which also led to Hitler's idea of an Anglo-German collaboration.

The British royal family’s German origins, the Battenbergs changed their name to Windsor in 1914, and the upstairs/downstairs of British society during this time, divided between a small and insular aristocratic elite and their subjects, is well-trodden territory. However, the implications of this class-based society and the threats posed to British democracy have been largely overlooked. There were many more supporters of Hitler among this small ruling elite than previously thought, which was actively covered up.

Where today, documents in the Chatsworth House and the Royal Archives are essentially closed for researchers, one of the ways around that is to peruse the notebooks of Anthony Blunt when the Russian intelligence services recruited him and later recruited by MI5. He is thought to have traveled to Germany in 1945 to retrieve sensitive letters between the Duke of Windsor and Adolf Hitler. His role in sparing the royals from humiliation is said to have endeared him to  Windsor, and he was given the respected title of Surveyor of the King’s Pictures.

Hitler, saw an opportunity in Edward as heir to the throne. As early as 1936, Hitler was reported to be watching newsreels of the future king before the funeral of George V. To represent Germany, Hitler again sent Carl Eduard, Duke of Saxe, and Coburg, a first cousin of the deceased king. This was one of ten trips that Saxe and Coburg made to England on Hitler’s behalf during the period leading up to Britain’s entry into the war.

Rumors about his pro-German sentiments quickly circulated among the Nazi Party.

While there are both German and American files about the wartime activities of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, only the British held a copy of a German file innocuously labeled as “Matters relating to the Royal Household 1940–66.” This includes a top-secret file dated August 24, 1953, containing the German correspondence relating to the Nazi plan for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor during their stay in Madrid and Lisbon during the summer of 1940.

The British government quickly shared news of the impending trip with its American counterparts because America was the duke and duchess’s next destination after their trip to Germany.

According to the New York Times coverage of the visit, the duke gave a Nazi salute to Hitler upon arrival at Berchtesgaden. The same article recounts that Wallis was “visibly impressed with the Fuhrer’s personality, and he indicated that they had become fast friends by giving her an affectionate farewell. Hitler took both their hands in his, saying a long goodbye, after which he stiffened to a rigid Nazi salute that the Duke returned.” The duke admitted to the Nazi salute and defended it: “I did salute Hitler, but it was a soldier’s salute.” Regardless, Churchill congratulated the duke on a visit conducted with “distinction and success,” despite the prohibition of any government involvement. The New York Times coverage of the German trip noted that Germany had lost “a firm friend, if not indeed a devoted admirer on the British throne.” One outcome of the visit was establishment a line of secret communication between Hitler and Edward, passed back and forth by an intermediary. In these cables, Hitler addressed Edward as “EP,” shorthand for “Edward Prince.

Below Edward VIII, the subsequent Duke of Windsor, mustering German troops.

When the American surveillance files were slated for publication in the early 1950s, Churchill again intervened with President Eisenhower to suppress their publication.

The Marburg Files, a collection of top-secret German records made up of more than 400 tons of archives from the Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany, Joachim von Ribbentrop, reveals in detail the vulnerability of the Duke and Duchess to the Third Reich and the perilous state of British democracy. The episode began with a secret cipher from Ribbentrop dated June 24, 1940, inquiring if it was “possible to keep the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Spain for at least a few weeks before granting them a further exit visa? It would of course, be necessary that it should not in any way leak out that the suggestion comes from Germany.” The German ambassador, Hoyningen-Huene, cabled Ribbentrop to tell him that the duke “is convinced that had he remained on the throne, war could have been avoided,” describing himself as a “firm supporter of a peaceful compromise with Germany. The Duke believes continued heavy bombarding will prepare England for peace.”

Churchill and the English intelligence services followed the royal couple’s migration to Spain. They understood the duke’s vulnerability to Ribbentrop’s plan, especially after having sought refuge in Madrid, and learned of the couple’s role in passing strategic government information to the enemy. Lord Caldecote, secretary of state for Dominion Affairs, petitioned Churchill directly to send the duke and duchess to the Bahamas for the duration of the war, where they would not have access to sensitive government and military information. He wrote to Churchill that “the activities of the Duke of Windsor on the Continent in recent months have been causing HM and myself grave uneasiness as his inclinations are well known to be pro-Nazi, and he may become a center of intrigue. We consider it a real danger that he should move freely on the Continent. Even if he were willing to return to this country, his presence here would be most embarrassing to HM and the Government.”

They declined when Churchill asked the duke and duchess to return to England. In response, Churchill insisted that any refusal to follow the orders of the British government would be considered a severe breach and urged the duke to comply with government wishes to go to the Bahamas. In addition to a swiftly imposed departure from Europe with the appointment of the duke as the governor of the Bahamas, the British government also enforced a news embargo on the royal couple in both local and international media. Ribbentrop noted that according to a Swiss agent with close ties to the British Secret Service, the intent in sending the duke to the Bahamas was “to do away with him at the first opportunity.”

Ribbentrop followed developments in Madrid and then Lisbon, where the duke and duchess were the houseguests of a pro-German Portuguese banker, laying the foundations for the royal couple to remain in Spain. He even vetted the plan with the Spanish minister of the interior, the brother-in-law of the “Generalissimo,”. The latter eventually acted as an intermediary between the Nazi high command and the duke. Ribbentrop noted that Churchill had issued a verbal ultimatum to the duke threatening court-martial if the couple did not leave Europe for the Bahamas immediately.

While all indications were that the duke planned to leave for the Bahamas, the German high command, in a lengthy “Urgent” telegram “to the German Foreign Minister Personally,” set out a detailed contingency plan to spirit the duke and duchess safely from Lisbon to Nazi-controlled Spain as well as last efforts to “aggravate a motive of fear and persuade the Duke and Duchess to remain in Europe.” Among the plans were to fire shots near the couple’s Lisbon hotel, an idea that might backfire and encourage them to leave for a safer place, or a bouquet delivered to the duchess with a note of warning about the perils that awaited them in the Bahamas.

The Nazi high command was not alone in keeping a file about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The couple also captured the attention of the American intelligence community, likely because, in their Bahamas exile, they were only a stone’s throw and a security risk to the US mainland. At the request of President Roosevelt, the FBI opened intermittent investigations and surveillance of the couple, dating to their arrival in the Bahamas in 1940 and corroborating a shared interest in the couple’s recruitment by Ribbentrop. The FBI noted that the duke claimed to have only known Ribbentrop “in his official capacity and never saw him after 1937.”

The FBI files tell a different story, one that was explosive enough to be actively suppressed by Churchill and repeatedly reclassified by the United States. The FBI file reflects comprehensive surveillance initiated by President Roosevelt and overseen by the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, confirming much of the Nazi correspondence in the Marburg Files.

Plus as we will next see, there were also three conspiracies intended to stage a coup d’état to be led by a coalition of British fascist groups, which had been under consideration within the wider British fascist movement in the weeks immediately after the war was declared.

 

 

Continued in Part Two

 

 

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