The Ruling Elite

by Deanna Spingola

  Churchill told the House of Commons that the Duke of Kent was “a gallant and handsome prince.” General Sikorski sent a condolence message in which he described the Duke as “a proven friend of Poland and the Polish armed forces.” 1128 The Duke was the first member of the Royal Family to perish in 500 years while on active duty. 1129 The Duchess of Kent visited Andrew Jack in an effort to gain information about her husband’s death. Based on the evidence that he gave her, she had the following inscribed on the Duke of Kent’s memorial, “In memory of… the Duke of Kent… and his companions who lost their lives on active service during a flight to Iceland on a special mission on 25th August 1942.” Pilot Officer George Saunders, who perished in the crash, also referred to the flight as a “special mission.” In 2001 Peter Brown, Saunders’ nephew revealed that, in August 1942, Saunders, when visiting his family in Sheffield, told his mother, “I’m just on leave for a couple of days. I’m going on a most important mission, very secret. I can’t say any more.” 1130

  Even though numerous people participated in an attempted coup which included the removal and replacement of Churchill with Sir Samuel Hoare, court historians have, for decades, failed to report it. The Duke of Kent and Rudolf Hess traveled to Stockholm where they announced that they had negotiated a peace agreement. On October 3, 1942, a newspaper in Stockholm requested a lifting of the “veil of secrecy” surrounding Hess’s flight to Scotland, part of Hitler’s goal to align with Britain before Germany’s invasion of the USSR. The newspaper reported that Churchill rejected Hess’s peace proposal without discussing it with Parliament or even informing the British population. Churchill admitted that he decided to turn down the offer and imprison Hess after discussing the situation with President Franklin D. Roosevelt who did not want Europe to become too “powerful or prosperous.” Therefore, for certain people, a European war was necessary—to prevent that probability. 1131

  On October 7, the Secretary of State for Air, Archibald Sinclair made the following official statement, the results of an inquiry, in the House of Commons about the air-crash that killed the Duke. Sinclair said, “The accident (was) due to aircraft being on wrong track at too low altitude to clear rising ground on track. Captain of aircraft changed flight-plan for reasons unknown and descended through cloud without making sure he was over water and crashed.” Sinclair verified that the weather did not play any part in the accident and that there was no indication of mechanical failure. He stated, “The responsibility for this serious mistake in airmanship lies with the captain of the aircraft.” The panel ascertained that the four pilot/navigators may have wandered off course and thereafter was unable to attain the required height to fly over Eagle Rock. 1132 Of course, the pilot and the navigators were all dead and could not defend their actions or report any possible equipment problems.

  Hess was still incarcerated and all but forgotten until the Soviet government raised the issue of how the British were treating someone it considered to be a war criminal. The Soviets suspected that Britain was going to make a deal with the Germans. On December 5, Baron Oswald von Hoyningen-Huene, the German Ambassador to Portugal, sent a cable to Ribbentrop stating, “As the Embassy has learned, confidentially, the death of the Duke of Kent has been discussed recently in the innermost circles of the British Club here. The gist of the talk being that an act of sabotage was involved. It is said that the Duke, like the Duke of Windsor, was sympathetic towards and understanding with Germany and so gradually had become a problem for the government clique. The people who were accompanying him were supposed to have expressed themselves along similar lines, so that getting them out of the way would also have been an advantage.” 1133

  In 1990, some astute researchers requested that the Public Record Office provide certain documents, including the Duke’s flight plan, for their examination. The repository claimed to have lost the documents, including the flight plan that Goyen filed just before take-off. Legally, the court of inquiry was supposed to make those records available after a fifteen-year period. Officials in the Public Record Office thought that someone may have relocated the records to the royal archives at Windsor Castle. Yet, the registrar of the royal archives maintains that the archives never had the records. Officials compelled Andrew Jack, the lone crash survivor, to sign the Official Secrets Act before he ever left the hospital which forbade him to discuss the case. Goyen gave Jack a signed photograph of himself just before take-off on which he had written, “With memories of happier days.” Following the war, his superiors promoted Jack and deployed him to Gibraltar, where the Duchess of Kent visited him several times, as she sought to discover why some entity killed her husband.

  Regarding the Duke of Kent, some people claim that British Intelligence assassinated him. Charles Higham suggests in his book The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life that certain people were concerned about his lack of discretion and his friendly association with German political leaders. He was evidently attempting to negotiate a peace deal with them so Germany could focus on its war with the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. Higham claims that the Special Operations Executive (SOE), concerned over what the Duke of Kent might discuss with others after he relocated from Britain, tampered with his plane before he departed. It crashed shortly after takeoff, killing everyone aboard except for Andrew Jack. Higham, though often quoted, is not always accurate in his claims.

  Authors Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince and Stephen Prior in their book Double Standards: The Rudolf Hess Cover-up and War of the Windsors: A Century of Unconstitutional Monarchy argues that the Duke of Kent made a landing to pick up Rudolf Hess. The Duke was going to make a peace deal with Germany that included alleviating Churchill from his powerful position. The implications are that British Intelligence, per Churchill’s directive, assassinated the Duke. On December 5, 1942, German Ambassador to Portugal, Baron Oswald von Hoyningen-Huene, sent a telegram to Ribbentrop saying, “As the Embassy has learned, confidentially, the death of the Duke of Kent has been discussed recently in the innermost circles of the British Club here. The gist of the talk being that an act of sabotage was involved. It is said that the Duke, like the Duke of Windsor, was sympathetic towards an understanding with Germany and so gradually had become a problem for the government clique. The people who were accompanying him were supposed to have expressed themselves along similar lines, so that getting out of the war would also have been an advantage.” 1134

  Churchill, aware of the peace movement and its activities, effectively sabotaged it using any tactics that he could. The former Glasgow Lord Provost, Patrick Dollan and The Herald’s aviation correspondent Fred Nancarrow purchased a box of documents at an auction in Bonham’s in London. The late Daniel McBride, a soldier, had been at Floors Farm, near Eaglesham, when officials took Hess into custody. The box contained Hess’s Iron Cross and numerous materials. 1135 Captain E. E. Fresson witnessed the crash because he was flying an aircraft in the same area and time as the crashed flying boat. The day after, he returned and photographed the wreckage from the air. In 1963, Fresson, in his autobiography, Air Road to the Isles, included details about the death of the Duke of Kent but the publishers, per his son, Richard Fresson, arbitrarily removed the chapter that contained his investigation of the crash. Additionally, ten days after the Duke’s death, there was another flying boat, from 228 Squadron, that crashed in the Scottish Highlands, killing everyone on board, including Nancarrow, the Glasgow reporter. Officials claimed that the plane had insufficient fuel. Nancarrow, incredibly suspicious, was investigating the Eagle Rock crash.

  Churchill and Roosevelt, Longtime Cohorts

  Roosevelt and Churchill probably collaborated in the planning of an earlier incident involving the Lusitania in order to draw the United States into the war against Germany in World War I. Roosevelt was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, (1913-1920) while Churchill was the First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-1915). Churchill asked Commander Joseph Kenworthy, of Naval Intelligence to prepare a report on the po
ssible “political results of an ocean liner being sunk with American passengers on board.” Kenworthy, later wrote in his book, Freedom of the Seas, “The Lusitania was deliberately sent at considerably reduced speed into an area where a U-boat was known to be waiting and with her escorts withdrawn.” 1136 Several months before the ill-fated voyage, Churchill described the Lusitania as “live bait.” 1137 Britain’s Lusitania, then the world’s largest, fastest passenger ship deceptively flew the American flag. In February 1915, Churchill ordered British merchant ships, like the Lusitania, to ram German submarines on sight. The British government borrowed the Lusitania, and equipped it with bases for mounting guns and reclassified it as an auxiliary cruiser. 1138

  Despite the fact that America, according to international law, was supposedly a neutral state, the United States had already been engaging in active, militant warfare against Germany long before that formal declaration. Roosevelt circumvented the Neutrality Act of 1937 and gave Britain support, especially in the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-boats, before and just after the British started the war. It is not surprising that the United States sided with Britain, just as she had in the beginning of World War I when Americans furnished Britain with arms and financial credits. 1139 Before World War II, Americans were determined not to participate in another foreign conflict—the reason for the passage of the Neutrality Act of 1937, prohibiting the exportation of war materials and the offering of financial credits to belligerents. 1140

  Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Britain declared war against Germany on September 3. In order to facilitate United States warfare into the Atlantic against Germany, officials would have to extend American territorial jurisdiction further east. On September 5, 1939, Roosevelt had declared that the United States had to increase its coastal waters, a security zone, by hundreds of miles into the Atlantic instead of just the normal three miles from the coast. Accordingly, when the war began, American warships breached international law by following German ships sailing from American ports back to Germany and then reporting their positions to British warships waiting to attack them. 1141

  After the United States occupied Iceland, it protected all convoys of American ships bound for Iceland. Additionally, the American naval forces could guarantee the safety of other convoys in the North Atlantic as needed which of course included British shipping in the sea areas around Iceland. In response to these overt breaches of international law, in September 1939, Hitler had instructed the Naval High Command, that under no circumstances, should they engage in any incidents with the United States in order to avoid American intervention. Roosevelt figured that Hitler would accept the situation without protest. He argued that Hitler would prefer this arrangement to “an actual state of war with the United States.” There would be no incidents until June 20, 1941, when a U-203 observed an American battleship within the blockade area, an area previously forbidden to U.S. ships. The U-boat commander assumed that it was a British destroyer, thought about attacking, and did attack but it failed, and then merely shadowed the battleship. 1142

  Until then, U-boats could attack any warship within the blockade area, as no American warship would enter those waters. After that incident, Hitler instructed all U-boat commanders to avoid any incident with the United States during the next few weeks, no matter what the circumstances. U-boats could only target cruisers, battleships and aircraft carriers, only upon absolute identification as a hostile ship, even if it was sailing without lights. Therefore, U-boats could not attack enemy ships because the British and the American naval forces worked together and mingled their ships. Yet, the British warships used every means possible while the Germans could not protect themselves or counter strike. Later, Hitler issued an order that authorized the U-boat to defend itself during an actual attack. The new order kept the strict restraints regarding the U-boat’s actions. 1143

  Just after the war erupted, Roosevelt invited Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty (2nd time), to communicate with him and share whatever Churchill wished to share with the President. Churchill exploited FDR’s inclination to assist the British. 1144 FDR and Churchill would convince, through massive deceptions, the American people to support and engage in another foreign war. In November 1939, FDR lifted the embargo on the export of arms and war supplies and implemented the Cash-and-Carry policy, allowing a belligerent to purchase arms and pay cash and also ship those arms on his own ships. The modification to the Neutrality Act benefitted Britain as her ships could still sail at will across the Atlantic. 1145

  After Churchill became prime minister, on May 10, 1940, while referring to the war, he told his son, “I shall drag the United States in.” He dispatched several agents to the United States to urge Roosevelt to join Britain in its war against Germany although FDR did not need much persuasion. It was the American population that opposed joining an irrelevant war. The British provocateurs deceptively claimed that Adolf Hitler was seeking to conquer the world. Although, following the war, American agents could not find any evidence of such a claim in the Reich archives. Nor was there any evidence that Hitler was targeting Latin America. Hitler only considered Eastern Europe, particularly the land that Germany lost in World War I. 1146

  On May 15, five days after he became Prime Minister, Churchill asked Roosevelt to supply fifty destroyers to supplement their naval fleet. On May 25, Churchill explained the negative consequences if the Germans compelled the British to surrender their fleet, as if that scenario were actually viable. However, the mere threat of such a thing altered American perceptions. On December 8, after FDR’s reelection, Churchill sent a memorandum to FDR describing Britain’s shipping losses as fatal if they should continue at the same rate. He requested the protection of British shipping by American warships. He did not envision Hitler viewing this as grounds for declaring war as he did not want war with America. 1147

  Hitler was perplexed about Britain’s refusal to make peace with Germany. Rudolf Hess arrived in Scotland on May 10, the same day that Churchill became PM, to extend a peace proposal. He expressed his frustration to Franz Halder, the army chief of staff, who wrote in his diary, “The Führer is greatly puzzled by Britain’s persisting unwillingness to make peace. He sees the answer (as we do) in Britain’s hope on Russia and therefore counts on having to compel her by main force to agree to peace. Actually, that is much against his grain. The reason is that a military defeat of Britain will bring about the disintegration of the British Empire. This would not be of any benefit to Germany. German blood would be shed to accomplish something that would benefit only Japan, the United States, and others.” On July 31, 1940, Halder, after seeing Hitler, wrote “Britain’s hope lies in Russia and the United States…” On October 4, Hitler told Mussolini that “Great Britain placed her hopes in America and in Russia.” 1148

  In July 1940, Roosevelt sent Admiral Robert L. Ghormley and others to London to coordinate naval protocol plans with the Admiralty against Germany. Following the conference, the American naval staff drafted tactics that would become operational when America joined the war. The most important function was America’s protection of Atlantic convoys, which would begin on April 1, 1941, 1149 obviously well before Pearl Harbor.

  Churchill Had known about Hitler’s intentions to fight Bolshevism as early as 1936 and also knew about Hitler signing Directive No. 21 on December 18, 1940, relative to implementing offensive warfare, in Operation Barbarossa, against the Soviet Union possibly in the following year.1150 No doubt, Churchill learned of these goals from his agents or double agents. Hitler’s Soviet assault was the largest, most audacious military campaign in history. Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe was bombing England’s industrial regions and sinking dozens of ships, and experiencing success in North Africa and in the Middle East, all in the hopes of getting Britain to capitulate. The most amazing fact is that Germany had an inadequately prepared army but some superior military leadership, like General Erwin Rommel. 1151

  On De
cember 29, 1940, Roosevelt, trying to make Americans feel vulnerable, said, if Britain goes down the Axis Powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia and they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. It is no exaggeration to say that all of us in all the Americas would be living at the point of a gun, a gun loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military. Reacting, on March 11, 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, which granted Britain free American aid in ships and war materials. 1152 On January 9, 1941, Hitler had said, “What kept England going were the hopes it vested in the United States of America and in Soviet Russia.” 1153 How right Hitler was, and Lend-Lease would be the biggest factor.

  In January and February 1941, the American and British naval and military leaders held a series of conferences in Washington, following the original naval conference in London. They concluded that the Atlantic and Europe was the main theatre of war and that the American Navy now had the task of defending the sea and shipping routes of the Atlantic, without relying on a formal declaration of war against Germany. Furthermore, Britain would allow Americans essential access to the military bases under her control to accomplish this protection. On February 1, in accordance with those decisions, U.S. officials created the Atlantic Fleet under the command of Admiral Ernest J. King. On April 18, King declared that they had expanded the security zone eastward more than 2,300 sea miles from New York. This meant that the U.S. military considered about four-fifths of the Atlantic Ocean as part of the western hemisphere. American naval forces could now legally follow German warships and report their position to the British. On July 7, the US government extended the security zone further east and assumed protective control of Iceland from Britain while deploying to the area to construct naval and air bases. 1154