ALSO BY ANDREW MORTON
WILLIAM & CATHERINE: THEIR LIVES, THEIR WEDDING
ANGELINA: AN UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY
TOM CRUISE: AN UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY
MADONNA
POSH & BECKS
MONICA’S STORY
DIANA: HER TRUE STORY IN HER OWN WORDS
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Michael O’Mara Books Limited
9 Lion Yard
Tremadoc Road
London SW4 7NQ
Copyright © Andrew Morton 2015
Published by arrangement with Hachette Book Group, Inc., 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104, USA.
All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-78243-456-6 in hardback print format
ISBN: 978-1-78243-457-3 in trade paperback print format
ISBN: 978-1-78243-465-8 in e-book format
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Cover photograph: © Bettmann/Corbis
Cover design by Simon Levy
To Carolyn
Contents
Acknowledgments
1 The Peter Pan Prince
2 Adolf Hitler, Royal Matchmaker
3 Sex, Drugs, and Royal Blackmail
4 Seduced by von Ribbentrop’s Dimple
5 Courting the New King
6 Edward on a Knife Edge
7 Love in a Cold Climate
8 Hitler’s Good Queen Wallis
9 The Game of Thrones
10 Plot to Kidnap a King
11 A Shady Royal in a Sunny Place
12 Tropic of Rancour
13 The Hunt for Pirate Gold
14 Sovereigns, Secrets, and Spies
15 Fight for the File
16 Burying the “Hot Potato”
17 Traitor King or Duped Duke?
Source Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A few years ago a passage in historian Sarah Bradford’s penetrating and occasionally acerbic biography of King George VI caught my eye. It concerned the flight, just weeks after the end of World War Two, to a German castle by two royal courtiers, one later revealed as a Soviet spy. They were tasked by George VI to pick up a bundle of correspondence, ostensibly relating to Queen Victoria and her eldest daughter. It soon became clear that there may have been other, more self-serving motives behind the flight.
Bradford explained how a buried battered metal canister, protected by a tatty raincoat, had been dug up by advancing Allied troops. It contained vital documents relating to German foreign policy, including a volume on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, whose pro-Nazi views before and during the war had made them targets for suspicion and distrust among the Allies. Once the cache of papers was secretly analyzed, powerful political “documents men” decided that this material was so incendiary it required Anglo-American co-operation at the highest level to prevent it from leaking. This was an intriguing story ripe for further investigation.
There was one problem. Most of the action took place in Europe, and I had recently married an American interior designer and was living for part of the year in Los Angeles, California. Sometimes, though, things are destined. Professor Jonathan Petropoulos, whose book Royals and the Reich is an absorbing and comprehensive study of the links between European royalty and Hitler’s Third Reich, lived just thirty minutes down the road at Claremont McKenna College. He has been hugely generous with his time, academic contacts, and advice, a constant source of encouragement, insight, and inspiration who has also become a good friend. In the land of soccer, we even speak the same language: football.
He put me in touch with Astrid Eckert, a specialist in modern German history. Her fascinating and meticulously researched book The Struggle for the Files reveals the diplomatic machinations behind the capture and subsequent return of Germany’s “soul”—the nation’s official archives. Not only has she kindly given me hitherto unseen official documents, she also suggested many fresh lines of inquiry.
Destiny played a part too in tracking down sources. It soon became clear that some largely unseen archives in the United States were as important as, if not more so than, the more familiar dossiers in Britain and Europe. At the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California were papers relating to, among others, David Harris and Paul Sweet, two of the feisty academics who traded blows with those who wanted to destroy or conceal the damning files about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The library also held documents for others involved in the story, notably Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, dubbed Hitler’s “spy princess” and a neighbor in London of Wallis Simpson.
When the research moved on to Moscow it seemed that Lady Luck was also smiling. There were two elusive lines of inquiry: the role of Soviet spy and king’s courtier Anthony Blunt in this royal detective story and the possible existence in Russian archival custody of hidden correspondence between the Duke of Windsor, Hitler, and the Nazi hierarchy. My thanks, then, to journalist Will Stewart for tracking down and having translated an obscure Russian biography of Blunt written by former ambassador to London Vicktor Popov, who had been given special access to KGB files.
Even more tantalizing was the work of researcher Dr. Sebastian Panwitz, who agreed to take a sweep through the Special Archive (Sonder Archiv) in Moscow on the last day of August, just before they closed for the winter. He emerged with a battered file with the barely legible words “Ribbentrop” and “Herzog von Windsor” handwritten on the outside. Was this the smoking gun, the documentary connection between Hitler, Ribbentrop, and the Duke of Windsor that proved his treason? Unfortunately the majority of the contents were in shorthand, and German shorthand at that. In the 1930s they used a system called Stolze-Schrey, but thanks to the good offices of Manfred Duerhammer, the Lucerne-based stenography expert Erich Werner agreed to take on the job of translation. My heartfelt appreciation for his strenuous efforts in teasing out the language from the hieroglyphics.
Less convoluted was the uncorking of a bottle of chardonnay in a Chelsea wine bar and reflecting on the dissonance between George VI and his older brother, the Duke of Windsor, with Sarah Bradford, the historian who inspired this whole journey. As ever, her insights and observations were telling.
Wallis Simpson’s biographer Anne Sebba, who triumphantly transformed an ogre into a human being, was especially helpful and thoughtful, generously giving me the opportunity to take my investigation in a different and original direction.
My grateful thanks too to Barbara Mason, a descendant of Herman Rogers, who was a great friend and counsellor to both the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. As the unofficial family archivist, she kindly gave permission to use previously unpublished correspondence between Herman, the Duke of Windsor, President Roosevelt, and others in the book. She also granted access to the photographs and movie footage taken by Herman during some of the most historic events of King Edward VIII’s short reign. They are seen on these pages for the first time. Barbara has been a great supporter of this project, her encouragement and enthusiasm unstinting and much appreciated.
That said, no
one can journey far into Windsor territory without acknowledging a debt to Philip Ziegler, whose official biography of Edward VIII remains a restrained masterpiece, and Michael Bloch, whose prodigious research, especially into Operation Willi, and unparalleled access to the correspondence of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, have made his scholarship, like Ziegler’s, the benchmark for others to follow.
Many others have contributed to my understanding of these complex times as well as the personalities involved. I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to John Bell, Christopher and Katharine Blair, Miranda Carter, Ben Fenton, Dr. Eberhard Fritz, Delissa Needham, Professor Scott Newton, Lynne Olson, Professor Paul Preston, Associate Professor Donal O’Sullivan, Pendleton Rogers, Professor Jean Edward Smith, Gennady Sokolov, Roger Weil, Professor Gerhard Weinberg, Professor Douglas Wheeler, and Sacha Zala.
On the journey my hard-working researchers Nikki Thean, Zoya Lozoya, and Kristen Lee have produced some unexpected nuggets, Nathan Ernst has undertaken careful translations, while picture researcher Laura Hanifin and restorer Jennie Flowers at Alive Studios in Devon have worked wonders under tight deadlines. Thanks too to my agent at Folio Literary Management, Steve Troha, for getting the show on the road, Deb Futter for pointing me in the right direction, Rick Ball for skillfully editing the manuscript, and assistant editor Dianne Choie for keeping the whole caravan moving along.
Finally, thanks to my darling wife Carolyn for her constant love and support. Some things are just fated.
Andrew Morton
London
November 2014
CHAPTER ONE
The Peter Pan Prince
He was the first royal sex symbol of the modern age, the wistful features of the Prince of Wales adorning the bedside tables and dormitory walls of thousands of schoolgirls and young women across Britain and the empire. He may have been the despair of his austere father, King George V, but Prince Edward—David to his family—was the undisputed darling of the empire.
Even republican America fell for the winsome charms of a bona fide war hero with matinee idol good looks. Hard-nosed celebrity journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns was such a fan that she had a picture of the Prince of Wales in a silver frame on her dressing table. “The dream of every American girl was to dance with him,” she recalled. Over the next few years he tried to oblige.
During the twenties, only silent screen star Rudolph Valentino, whose seductive performances in The Sheik and Blood and Sand transformed the one-time busboy into an international heartthrob, could possibly compare with the compelling charm of the future king-emperor.
His face was everywhere, on cigarette cards, in gossip magazines and daily newspapers, his every public appearance slavishly chronicled by Pathé News and shown at the local Roxy. An appearance by the Prince of Wales set female hearts fluttering and mothers wringing their hands in the hope that their daughter would be the chosen one. Men copied his natty dress sense, the Prince of Wales popularizing and adapting the eponymous check first worn by his grandfather, King Edward VII. He had only to appear in a particular Fair Isle pullover and factories would be working overtime to keep up with demand.
His appeal, though, lay in something more than his ubiquitous presence in the popular prints. Unlike his forbears, the unsmiling Queen Victoria, the haughty Edward VII, and his stern father, King George V, there was something pliable, friendly even, about the Prince of Wales. He looked more human than the others, almost vulnerable. Perhaps it was his clean, boyish good looks—he shaved infrequently throughout his life—or the slim wiry stature that earned him the nickname, not to his face, of “little man.” Most likely it was the seeming sadness that lay behind his haunted spaniel eyes which intrigued many. If eyes were truly a window into the soul, here was a young man in torment. He had what Lord Esher described as an expression of weltschmerz, the gloomy acknowledgment of the world as it is as opposed to the world as it should be. It was the look of a man who had seen more than his ration of sorrow and suffering, a quality he shared with those returning soldiers who survived the horrors of the trenches. He was the symbol, the human bridge between the war-weary millions still clinging to the fast-dimming certainties of a world before the horrors of 1914 and a fractious future where nationalism was on the rise, labour on the march, and aristocracy in retreat.
Wartime prime minister Lloyd George instinctively recognized that the prince was the most glittering jewel in the royal crown. It was, he argued, a jewel that should be on display. At the end of the war in 1918 the prince was asked to tour the colonies and Dominions to thank the people for their support of and sacrifice for the mother country. The Welsh politician wanted the Prince of Wales to play a “gay, many sided natural role.” If the empire’s star salesman could drum up trade for Britain’s exhausted manufacturers, so much the better.
With five emperors, eight kings, and four imperial dynasties rendered obsolete by the conflict, there was never a better time to emphasize that the newly minted House of Windsor—George V changed the family name from Saxe-Coburg und Gotha in 1917 to deflect anti-German sentiment—remained the unchanging keystone in the edifice of an empire upon which the sun never set. The slaughter of Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family at Ekaterinburg in July 1918 by Bolshevik rebels reinforced this imperial imperative, especially as George V bore an uncanny likeness to the murdered czar. Not only did the barbaric incident shake the king’s “confidence in the innate decency of mankind,” it inspired his son’s lifetime loathing of the Bolsheviks, the murder of his godfather, Nicholas II, setting his heart against the Soviets and all their works.
Thus his seemingly endless and arduous imperial tours—during the 1920s he visited some forty-five countries and travelled an estimated 150,000 miles by sea and train—were a golden opportunity to reinforce the relevance of the monarchy and to introduce the man who one day would rule. It was a daunting assignment for a somewhat naïve young man, still only twenty-five, who was frequently overwhelmed by the straining sea of strange faces, the nervous demands of public speaking—a skill that did not come naturally—and of course the endless handshaking. The tone was set on his first tour, to Canada in September 1919, where he crisscrossed the country by train, laying wreaths and foundation stones, watching parades and pageants. His arrival was greeted with such hysteria that his right hand was so badly bruised and swollen after shaking so many eager hands that he had to resort to using his left.
At times this worship of the royal personage bordered on the messianic, the prince hearing people cry “I’ve touched him, I’ve touched him” as he walked through the press of flesh. As he laconically observed: When they were unable to pat him in person, hitting or prodding him with a rolled-up newspaper sufficed. It was a remarkable step change from the days of his grandfather, Edward VII: He would arrive at an engagement in his horse-drawn carriage, receive a loyal address, cut a ribbon, and declare something or other open without ever leaving his carriage.
This quasi-religious royal adulation was not confined to the colonies. In November 1919, when he completed his marathon three-month visit to Canada, he headed for a brief tour of Washington and New York, meeting with war wounded and rubbing shoulders with senators and congressmen. He also paid a private visit to the White House, where President Wilson was recovering from a stroke.
America was an unknown quantity and he was initially apprehensive about his reception. His only previous contact with Americans was during the war, when he reviewed a parade of some 25,000 troops at Coblenz and found himself impressed by their discipline. At the time, the military review received scant publicity, but the story of him dancing with American nurses at a later function sure did.
It was no exception: During his East Coast visit, dances laid on in his honour left many a debutante in a swoon. As one of his aides observed: “The prince holds very strongly that he can influence American feeling even better by dancing with Senators’ daughters than by talking to Senators.” As the world’s most eligible bachelor, he was
linked to so many young women that he started a “My Brides” book where he glued in all the erroneous newspaper stories about when and whom he was to marry.
His first visit culminated in a ticker-tape parade through the streets of Manhattan, which was “thrilling beyond description.” As the prince later recalled: “Half asphyxiated by the smell of gasoline, I found myself sitting up on the back of the motor, bowing and waving like an actor who had been summoned by a tremendous curtain call.”
Such was the excitement generated by the brief royal progress that playwright Albert E. Thomas was inspired to pen a romantic comedy, strangely prophetic, called Just Suppose, about a prince who falls in love with an American beauty and offers to give up the throne for her hand in marriage.
Enthusiasm on the East Coast was matched by wild adulation on the West. The following April, when he stopped in San Diego on his way to Australia and New Zealand onboard HMS Renown, the princely presence excited considerable civic interest. Politically his arrival on American soil suggested that all was well with the “special relationship,” even if the Senate had rejected the Treaty of Versailles and membership in the League of Nations. As the first truly international royal celebrity, the prince was seen as a man of the New World, his youthful good looks, endless courtesy, and informal manner singling him out as a regular guy, modern, approachable, and democratic, not some feudal anachronism.
“That he is human is the pleasing point about him,” opined a local reporter, while another observer declared that the prince was as “American” as any boy in our public schools. At a reception onboard USS New Mexico, the flagship of the Pacific fleet, the prince and his travelling companion and friend Lord Mountbatten met a snaking line of local dignitaries. In the reception line were Lieutenant Winfield Spencer and his wife, Wallis. They shook hands and moved on. Years later, Wallis would complain to Mountbatten and her husband, now the Duke of Windsor, that they did not recall the brief encounter. Naturally Wallis, who remembered that she was “dressed to kill” for her first royal meeting, did.
17 Carnations: The Windsors, The Nazis and The Cover-Up Page 1