Vergangenheit: The Duke of Windsor and the Nazi Party

Was King Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, a Nazi?

The question is still being asked of the one time King of England; Edward Windsor, almost a century after the fact. Despite numerous biographies and books on the subject, a definitive answer still eludes us. On one hand, as King, Edward was extremely close to his German extended family, including some who later become high ranking Nazis. On the other, it had been during Edward’s lifetime that the royal family had dropped the Germanic name of Saxe-Coburg in favour of Windsor, and those later Nazis were prominent in the English social circles. Edward firmly and openly supported peace with Germany at all costs but then so did many in the British government including the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, and his successor, Neville Chamberlain. Edward met Hitler in person but also dissapointed him by not supporting Nazism as much as Hitler had supposed he did.

We probably should not be surprised that a man whose personal life was complicated enough to see him abdicate the throne, in what remains the only instance in Britain’s long monarchical history, could offer a complicated answer to a fairly straightforward question.

In season two of The Crown (2017) the relationship between Edward and the Nazi party is explored in depth, culminating with a scene where the indomitable and iconic Tommy Lacselles details the specifics of Edward’s dealings.

The Crown is first and foremost a fiction but there is nothing in what Tommy says that is factually incorrect although much of it is exaggerated for dramatic effect. The relationship between Wallis Simpson and the German Ambassador, Joachim von Ribbentrop, for example, was widely speculated but never confirmed. There was indeed a plan concocted in the home of Rudolf Hess whereby Nazi high command would reinstate Edward as King of Nazi controlled England but Edward knew nothing of it and was not involved in its development. He was also hardly instrumental in the fall of France to the Nazis though he was indiscreet with the details recovered from the said crashed bomber. Ultimately, the Marburg files were published but they caused the Duke only slight annoyance rather than the political and family exile as shown in the episode.

It does, however, give us a fairly decent summary of the issues when considering; was Edward Windsor a Nazi?

The Nazis & Edward, King of England

Edward VIII acceded the British throne on 20 January 1936 and would occupy the role of King for only eleven months. He abdicated on the 11th of December of the same year after a resolution could not be reached with regards to his marriage.  His choice of wife, Wallis Simpson, was deemed entirely inappropriate and scandalous as she had divorced one man and was in fact still married while in a relationship with the king. He planned to marry her as soon as her second divorce was issued but such a marriage was incompatible with his position in society. Although the issue of marriage was so integral to the abdication, Edward had already alienated many of the leading politicians in an incredibly short amount of time.

He caused the government several headaches despite the brevity of his reign; among them his views on Germany. He was already on record for having said that Britain should keep out of Germany’s business and for his positive views on Hitler (and European dictators in general). He was unreservedly pro-German and believed that peace should be maintained at all costs. This wasn’t an unusual view for the time. Many in British society circles and in government believed the same. If you’ve read Kazuo Ishiguru’s The Remains of the Day (1989) you’ll have an idea of how determined these elements of society were to maintain peace. (If you haven’t I recommend it). The point is, Edward’s support of the Nazi Party was not an unusual or contentious position. The issue was that the apolitical head of state had clear and vocal ideas regarding Britain’s foreign policy.

It hardly helped matters that Wallis was also known for being pro-Germany and there were rumours that she was having an affair with Ribbentrop. This has never been conclusively proven though remained a suspicion for both MI5 and the FBI. Wallis herself claimed that she had only met Ribbentrop socially at two separate gatherings but she’s hardly the most reliable of witnesses. One of their contemporaries was prepared to go on record to confirm that the two had been lovers but there wasn’t much else to go on. Nevertheless, Neville Chamberlain believed her to be in contact with Nazi command and that she had “ideas for the dictatorship”.

There were however far more concrete links to the Nazi party. While courting the Prince of Wales, she shared a building with Princess Stephanie Julianne von Hohenlohe, a suspected German spy. The two women became close friends though again, the princess was also a prominent society figure. Wallis also retained a lawyer, Armand Gregoire, who represented (among others) a number of prominent Nazis including Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess, and Hermann Goering.

King Edward and Wallis SImpson holidaying in Yugoslavia in 1936. Of his eleven months as king, two of those months were spent on a Mediterranean Tour with his lover.

These fostered connections would all be problems in themselves but exarcebated by the fact that Edward was notoriously indiscreet. Every day, the king would receive his red box of official government papers for his attention. Not treating them with the attention they required made for a poor statesman but not treating them with the privacy they demanded made him a security risk. This was a greater problem than leaving them out where Wallis could potentially share them with Ribbentrop. He was leaving them out where any one of his many and frequent party guests could share them with anyone they chose. Ultimately, the government would omit the most sensitive papers from the king’s boxes, a wholly unsustainable practice that would have certainly caused more issues between King and Cabinet had not they then raced headlong to the abdication.

The Tour

Easily, the most damning link between Edward, Duke of Windsor and the Nazi party was his ill-advised tour of Nazi Germany in 1937. Officially, Edward claimed to be undertaking the trip as a private individual to view the housing and working conditions of the German labour force. Something he claimed was a personal interest. He wasn’t lying; it was indeed a personal interest, but nobody believed for a moment that the trip was purely to indulge personal curiosity.

He was advised on all sides not to visit Germany as it was generally seen as a bad idea by everyone, including Edward’s closest friends and advisors. The Royal Family was opposed because of the obvious conflict it represented in the terms of the abdication where Edward wouldn’t seek to represent his country. The British government were of the same mind as the Royal Family but with the added issue of the damage Edward could potentially do politically. He was advised that the visit would alienate the left who condemned Hitler’s facism while simulteneously antagonising the right who believed Hitler’s facism was a prelude to warmongering. The British people, meanwhile, largely believed that the visit was a betrayal of the new King who had not yet been on the throne a year. Edward’s friends predicted disaster.

Edward dismissed any and all criticism and believed that he could act as a peacemaker between the two nations. In the firm belief that he would prove to be justified in the long run, he proceeded to Germany. Despite his public admissions that the trip was a personal one, it was clear that the tour was to all intents and purposes an unofficial state visit.

The Duke of Windsor touring an SS training camp

The trip began on the 11th October and lasted for two weeks, with the Duke and Duchess returning to Paris on the 24th. In the interim, they were treated as royalty which had no doubt been Edward’s actual prevailing motivation for the trip in the first place. It was, after all, the only place where his wife would be given the respect afforded a member of the Royal Family. While there, she was addressed as Her Royal Highness, a dignity which had been denied her by her husband’s family and parliament.

Upon their arrival in Berlin on the 11th, they were assigned a German servant each though Edward’s bodyguard quickly discovered that they were spies reporting back to Nazi command on the couple. The bodyguard responded by making reports in kind to MI5. Their first day in Berlin demonstrated their typical itinerary for the trip. The Windsors were met by Robert Ley of the German Labour Front and Ribbentrop with all the pomp and ceremony of a formal State Visit. From there, they toured Grunewald stock machine works, lunched in the canteen, and joined the workers for a concert put on by the Berlin Labour Front Orchestra.

Their trip was dominated by tours of labour conditions which backed up Edward’s justfication for the visit. The Windsors visited a number of factories, coal mines, industrial works, and then housing complexes and working gardens built by the German Labour Front. But they also participated in a number of other functions. These included a great many dinners, teas, and other gatherings with members of Nazi high command. They were also guests of honour at a gala dinner hosted by Edward’s cousins, the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. 

Far more sinister were the visits to the SS training school and the Nazi youth camps. The Duchess was spared the latter, being taken for a tour instead of the former Imperial Palaces. Most infamously, the Windsors visited one of the early concentration camps. The Nazis had been using early forms of concentration camps as prisons for political dissidents since 1933. Conditions at some were so barbaric they had been closed some time before the Duke’s visit, something which Edward was likely unaware of. If he had been aware, he may not have asked what a particularly grim looking concrete block would eventually be used for. The answer, incidentally, was meat storage.

Adolf Hitler meeting the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at his retreat 'The Berghof'

The most damning element of the trip was, of course, the Windsors’ meeting with Hitler at his mountain retreat. They had tea before Edward and Hitler retired for a private conversation. Wallis was left to be diverted by Eva Braun and Rudolf Hess. It was not to be, however, the groundbreaking meeting of two facist powers that the British government feared. Hitler found Edward to be appreciative of everything the Nazi party had achieved in post-war Germany but unwilling to be drawn on political issues. Meanwhile, Edward was apparently irked by Hitler’s insistence on speaking through a translator even though the Duke was fluent in German. The specifics of their conversation were not recorded, mostly because it was uninteresting and banal rather than requiring the utmost secrecy. The fact that the conversation happened at all did more lasting damage to the Duke’s reputation than anything they might have said.

 

The Nazis and Edward, Duke of Windsor

It's a shame he is no longer king. With him we would have entered into an alliance.

For Germany, the Windsors visit had been a triumph. Nazi propagandists were keen to spin the trip as positively as possible even though it had little lasting implications. For Nazi command, the visit conjured distant plans that Edward would ultimately be returned to England as King whereby he would enter into an alliance with Germany. For Edward, his situation was largely unchanged. He had enjoyed the trip and his wife had been given a rare encounter with recognition but beyond that, it had no material impact. Other than managing to monumentally offend his former kingdom, he hadn’t actually achieved anything.

The trip to Germany was not supposed to have been occured in isolation. It was to be followed with a similar trip to America. Edward’s friend and ally, Winston Churchill, believed that the American trip would bring him far more success but alas it was not to be. Increasingly wary of Edward’s Nazi connections and those of the gentleman arranging the trips on his behalf, Charles Bedaux, America called off the entire visit. It should be noted that had the trip gone ahead, it would likely have detracted much of the later criticism he received for visiting Nazi Germany. Without it, the Nazi trip occured in total isolation – the only trip of its kind Edward ever made and would ever make.

In the brief years between the Windsors trip to Germany and the outbreak of war in 1939, Edward committed himself to the role of peacemaker, albeit inefectually. His absolute commitment to appeasement has since been interpreted as steadfast support for Nazi policies, and we can see that is certainly where his sympathies lay. However, as we said earlier, he wasn’t the only political figure to hold to this course. Appeasement was the policy of the British government; Churchill being famously opposed on the matter. In 1938, Edward offered to mediate between Germany and Britain when began a military offensive against Czechoslovakia. His request was denied and instead the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, went in person to negotiate in a move that Edward thoroughly approved of.

Pictured: Chamberlain (left) negotiating peace with Hitler (center), no matter what Czechoslovakia had to say about it

Meanwhile, Edward continued to advocate for peace. In the late 1930s, he made a number of speeches to encourage peace though the British media refused to broadcast them. On the 25th August 1939, Edward sent a personal telegram to Hitler beseeching him to commit to peace. Hitler replied that his attitude towards Britain had not changed and it was up to them whether or not war followed. Within a week, war had been declared. 

The situation between the Royal Family and the Windsors was already awkward and the outbreak of war only exarcebated it. The fact that Edward was still maintaining peace could be achieved only made matters worse. The Windsors were recalled to England in mid-September but Edward’s presence proved wholly untenable and they returned to France within two weeks.

He was given a position liasing between France and Britain but it was naturally vague, undefined, and ultimately short lived. The Windsors fled as the Nazis crossed into France in May 1940. In the above video, Tommy Lascelles speaks of a crashed German bomber that carried with it the invasion plans which crashed in Allied territory. He alleges that Edward informed Nazi command of the crash, causing them to change their plans which directly led to the fall of Paris. However, this is untrue. The Nazis were already well aware of the crash and the implications that their plans had fallen into their enemy’s hands. In reality, the German ambassador to the Hague however made a much more damning accusation of Edward, claiming that he had leaked the Allied defence plans to Nazi command. Edward, of course, denied ever doing such a thing. It may be that he was telling the truth but it’s also likely that the notoriously indiscreet Edward had once again been notoriously indiscreet and alerted the Nazis without specifically intending to.

After France had fallen, the Windsors spent some time in Spain during which the Duke continued to be indiscreet. By now Edward’s friend and firmest ally, Churchill, was Prime Minister but this did not stop Edward openly speculating for the collapse of Churchill’s government. He envisioned a Britain where the Liberal Party overthrew the government and deposed his brother. With Edward then reinstated he would make peace with Germany and then a newly reunited Western Europe would march on the true enemy; Communist Russia. Around this time, the German ambassador to Lisbon reported to Ribbentrop that Edward had been overheard saying that continued aerial bombardment would make England ready for peace. The ambassador was relating this third or maybe fourth hand and Edward emphatically denied that he had said this but at this point he certainly had a history of running his mouth. Churchill would ultimately recall him to England under penalty of court martial.

Edward was assigned to a post in the Bahamas which was an unhappy compromise for everyone involved. Nazi command came up with a plan that would have them restore Edward to the throne in return for a peace settlement with Britain. To that end, they circulated rumours that the posting to the Bahamas was a cover for an assassination attempt but their plans were ultimately unsuccesful. Edward arrived in the Bahamas and offended his hosts within hours when he reiterated his belief that had he remained king, there would have been no war. A view which, in what I feel demonstrates everything we need to know about his character, he maintained for the rest of his life.

In light of all this; Was King Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, a Nazi?

The Duke of Windsor absolutely supported the Nazi party at a time when support for the Nazi party was in fashion. But I think it’s clear that it went deeper than that. Most of the society figures who supported the Nazis recanted their position after the full extent of the wartime horrors were revealed. Those who didn’t were largely ostracised though it should be noted that the Windsors maintained an extremely close friendship with the Mitfords and Mosleys, two society families that had openly supported Hitler and facism. Wallis Simpson’s best friend and biographer, Diana Mitford, would cause controversy throughout her life by maintaining her admiration of Hitler and denying elements of Nazi Germany including the Holocaust. It’s hard to believe that the Windsors could have spent their lives in such close friendship with such people if they didn’t at agree on some level with these beliefs. 

After the war, Edward clearly didn’t feel like he had been wrong in his support of Germany, as demonstrated by the fact that he never felt the need to comment on it. When pressed, he would dress his support in claims of promoting peace at all cost but it’s also clear that his idea of peace was an alliance between a facist Britain and Nazi Germany which would inflict war on who he judged to be their mutual enemies. He blamed the American President, British politicians and “of course, the Jews” for the Second World War and while he claimed Hitler was a ridiculous figure in his memoirs in 1951, in the following decade he was recorded as saying to a friend; “I never thought Hitler was such a bad chap.”

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