No matter, those in her circle were now under close scrutiny, particularly those on the fringes of the Cunard set. A regular and highly entertaining guest at Lady Cunard’s table at Grosvenor Square was White Russian émigré Gabriel Wolkoff, who worked as the chief set designer at Covent Garden. His brother, Admiral Nikolai, ran a tearoom in Kensington which was a meeting place for rabidly right-wing white Russians. His dressmaker daughter Anna made clothes for Mrs. Simpson and Princess Marina, the Duchess of Kent.
Besides making dresses, Anna Wolkoff was an active member of the Right Club, an anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi, anti-war society which included the Duke of Wellington among its 350 members. Her membership and frequent visits to Germany, where she met among others Rudolf Hess and Hitler’s lawyer Hans Frank—later executed for war crimes—brought her to the attention of MI5.
She was placed under surveillance, believed to be sending information to the Nazis via an intermediary at the Italian embassy. At the time, it was only a small step to assume that Wallis—and for that matter others—may, innocently or not, have been passing titbits of intelligence to Wolkoff that the Nazis found useful. (MI5 were right to target Wolkoff. In 1940 she was jailed for ten years for attempting to send the Nazis top secret communications between Churchill and Roosevelt. Her co-conspirator, American Tyler Kent, who gleaned the information through his work as a cipher clerk at the American embassy, received seven years.)
In early March 1936, as he paced the rooms of his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden, Hitler needed all these titbits and scraps of information. He spent the weekend in virtual seclusion, deciding whether to invade the Rhineland. All the reports, from Ambassador von Hoesch, von Ribbentrop, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, were assessed as he considered the possible British reaction. Could King Edward VIII be the mouse that roared and did Baldwin, Chamberlain, Eden, and company have the collective will to challenge the will of the Reich? Where he had doubts, his foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, was on hand to soothe his fears.
He decided to roll the dice. On March 7, 1936, just five weeks after George V’s funeral, Hitler, in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles, ordered German troops into the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. The German leader held his breath, awaiting the response from the British and French. It was the end of the “responsible” period of National Socialism, the moment when the wolf was revealed beneath the sheep’s clothing. Historians now agree that prompt action from the French and British to repulse the incursion would have thwarted Hitler’s ambitions and rallied German opposition to stage a possible coup.
The Allies hesitated and did nothing. Hitler’s gamble had paid off. It was his belief that the new king had been a vital ally in forming Britain’s inert response to his peaceful invasion of the Rhineland.
Four days after the invasion, on March 11, von Ribbentrop reported to Hitler that the king had issued a “directive to the British Government that no matter how the details of the affairs are dealt with, complications of a serious nature are in no circumstances to be allowed to develop.” That is to say: Don’t upset our German friends.
This was exactly the news for which Hitler had been waiting. Hitler’s architect Albert Speer, who happened to be with him at the time, recalled that the Führer let out a sigh of relief. “‘At last,’ he declared. ‘The king of England will not intervene. He is keeping his promise.’” The Führer later admitted that the forty-eight hours following the march into the Rhineland were the most “nerve-wracking” of his life.
High stakes, too, for the new king who, according to Fritz Hesse, the press attaché at the German embassy, threatened to abdicate if Baldwin went to war over this incursion. Hesse’s account is based on a conversation he claimed to have overheard between Ambassador von Hoesch and Edward VIII.
“Hello,” a voice said. “Is that Leo? David speaking. Do you know who’s speaking?”
“Of course I do,” replied von Hoesch.
The king went on: “I sent for the prime minister and gave him a piece of my mind. I told the old so-and-so that I would abdicate if he made war. There was a frightful scene. But you needn’t worry. There won’t be a war.”
When he put down the telephone von Hoesch, according to his press secretary, danced a jig around the room and shouted, “I’ve done it. I’ve outwitted them all. There won’t be a war. Herr Hesse, we’ve done it. It’s magnificent, I must inform Berlin immediately.”
While this colourful story has gained wide currency, it is doubtful that the king would have referred to himself so casually. His given name of David was used only by his immediate family and close royal relations. As his long-time friend Diana Mitford recalled: “To the end of his life he remained ‘very royal.’ He never allowed people to be casual or offhand with him, let alone impertinent or insolent. He wanted exactly what Wallis gave him, natural and unaffected good manners.” As the military historian Gerhard Weinberg has soberly observed, while Hesse’s account may have been extravagant, “there is ample evidence for a less spectacular role by Edward VIII.”
In another version, the king, according to the London correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt, was less than pleased with Hitler’s behaviour. He reported to his foreign editor on March 18: “The monarch has caused a number of important people in the Government to come and see him and has said to them: ‘This is a nice way to start my reign.’” There was a ripple effect, Wallis worrying that Ernest, who frequently travelled to Hamburg on shipping business, could be interned if the international situation deteriorated.
The incursion into the Rhineland established the future pattern of German foreign policy: aggressively occupying regions and countries, the invasions accompanied by fresh assurances and promises in the hope that others would be lulled into acquiescence. Over the next few years Hitler’s imposing series of “triumphs without bloodshed” directed at “peace with honour”—tearing up the Versailles settlement, winning back the Saar, restoring “military sovereignty,” recovering the Rhineland, uniting Austria with Germany, and bringing the Sudetenland “home into the Reich”—won him support in all sections of the German people and unparalleled popularity, prestige, and acclaim.
In this first major German manoeuvre against the Treaty of Versailles, the Nazis faced little diplomatic opposition in either France or Britain. For the most part, British public opinion felt that the reoccupation of German lands was just and certainly not worth going to war over.
Hitler took no chances, on the day of the coup sending over his trusted royal emissary Carl Eduard to soothe jangled British nerves and ensure that his friend Edward VIII remained acceptant or at the very least neutral with regard to the German intervention. Carl Eduard stayed in London for over a week before returning to Germany. In April he wrote to his sister Alice, Countess of Athlone, asking if her husband, the Earl of Athlone, had seen the king. He wanted to know about his state of mind, that is to say he was fishing to discover if there had been any change in the king’s favourable view of Germany.
The duke soon had his response—business as usual. On April 20, Hitler’s forty-seventh birthday, the king sent a telegram wishing him “happiness and welfare” in the future. Germany was much on Edward’s mind—just a few days earlier his generous host and friend, Ambassador von Hoesch, had collapsed and died of a heart attack, leaving his cousin and chargé d’affaires Prince Otto von Bismarck in temporary command. Bismarck was subsequently transferred to Italy.
It was a sign of what little regard Hitler had for bothering to negotiate with Britain that he allowed this plum ambassadorial position to remain empty for several months. When Hitler was interested in a country—Spain was a case in point—he flooded the embassy with diplomats, spies, and other agents to assert German presence. Not so with Britain. When he finally appointed von Ribbentrop, kicking and squealing, into the job, von Ribbentrop agreed only if he could spend most of his time in Germany by the side of his beloved Führer. During his days as ambassador to the Court of St. James, von Ribbentrop
was frequently absent, quietly negotiating secret pacts with Italy and Japan to secure alliances against Britain. Behind the bluster and bonhomie, this was the true measure of German intent.
The Führer, too, maintained the friendly façade. On July 16, 1936, a deranged Irishman, identified as Jerome Brannigan, drew a loaded revolver on the king as he was returning to Buckingham Palace on horseback after inspecting a military review in Hyde Park. Though the potential assassin was overpowered by police, the king was widely praised for his cool and composure. Hitler was one of the first European leaders to send a telegram conveying to the king his “heartiest congratulations” on his escape. That Brannigan claimed that he had been directed to kill the king by a shadowy pro-Nazi group was simply ignored, Hitler’s concern cementing the cordial relations between the two leaders.
The few in Britain who had perceived the real nature of German expansionism were, like the deranged gunman, dismissed as mad or warmongers. Most were in step with the king who was sympathetic to Germany’s grievances and hostile to the very idea of embarking on another war. On April 1, a few days after the march into the Rhineland, Conservative MP Ronald Tree, one of the few supporters of British rearmament and Churchill, described the political turmoil caused by the incursion. He told his American wife Nancy:
A wave of the strongest pro-Germanism has swept the country—which the government very stupidly has done little or nothing to counteract. What it is in fact is sheer pacifism and a refusal to face facts but it’s terribly dangerous. People here behave as if Hitler and Co were ordinary people and could be trusted instead of realizing that these are a bunch of gangsters whose word is good only so long as it serves their purpose and a time will come in the next few years when a fresh appeal will have to be made and a new trick pulled out of the hat.
Sceptics were kept at arm’s length. When Randolph Churchill, in his capacity as a journalist, visited Munich in September 1937 and tried to persuade his cousin Unity Mitford to introduce him to Hitler she refused to help him—his critical views of aggressive German rearmament were bound to antagonize the beloved Führer.
During his infrequent and reluctant visits to London, it was the role of von Ribbentrop to marginalize these warning voices, the new ambassador, together with Princess Stephanie, the Duke of Coburg, and others, on hand to emphasize the bonds that existed between the two countries in the face of a common enemy, the Soviet Union. A dinner at Nancy Astor’s London home shortly after the Rhineland invasion brought home to von Ribbentrop just why he disliked the English—their idea of humour.
After dinner, Lady Astor made her august guests, who included delegates from the League of Nations, play musical chairs and other games. She instructed her English guests, sotto voce, that they were under orders to let the Germans win.
While he was nonplussed by this bizarre British behaviour, the new German ambassador, winning if loquacious, usually charmed his targets. It didn’t hurt that society ladies wanted to see what all the fuss was about regarding his much talked-about affair with Mrs. Simpson. Inevitably he was very much in demand as a dinner party guest, inviting the great and the good to Berlin to enjoy the 11th Olympiad or, for the select few, to meet Hitler at his mountain retreat.
The seduction of the Canadian-born press baron Lord Beaverbrook was typical. As well as numerous members of Parliament, Beaverbrook accepted an invitation to the Berlin Olympics where, accompanied by his son Max and daughter Janet, he watched the opening ceremony. Years later Beaverbrook would say how he hated the “regimentation of opinion” he witnessed during the trip. At the time, though, von Ribbentrop’s grandiose gesture worked, causing a breach between the press lord and his good friend Winston Churchill, whom Beaverbrook now described as a “war monger.”
His rival press baron, Lord Rothermere, was already snugly in the pocket of the Nazis. Described bluntly by the Earl of Crawford as a “traitor,” he danced attendance to the new German ambassador. During one lunch von Ribbentrop was at pains to emphasize Germany’s “pacificism,” reacting with horror at the very suggestion that Czechoslovakia would ever be attacked. “It has never entered our head,” he told Rothermere straight-faced. In 1938 Germany marched into the Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia. Upon hearing the news, Rothermere, who was still enamoured of the German leader, sent Hitler a fawning telegram, describing the dictator as “Adolf the Great.”
Following the German occupation of the Rhineland, von Ribbentrop presided over a veritable caravan of bankers, admirals, generals, and politicians heading to the Fatherland to see for themselves the economic and social miracle of National Socialism. Former prime minister David Lloyd George came away from a meeting with Hitler and declared the Führer “the greatest living German” as well as “the George Washington of Germany.” Nearly every British leader who personally met with Hitler—and there were many—was impressed by his sincerity, his reasonableness, and his integrity. It was all an act. Edward VIII was by no means alone in being fooled by a bravura performance by the Nazi leader, talking peace while planning for war.
Ribbentrop simply copied and amplified His Master’s Voice. While he dressed as an English gentleman, he had utter contempt for the English, believing firmly in the necessity of another war. He was, apart from Hitler, the most vociferous Nazi warmonger in the High Command. Hence his “bridge between the war veterans” policy was so much hokum. As Princess Stephanie observed in her unpublished memoir, von Ribbentrop’s motto was: “War with Britain at any time, at any cost and under all circumstances.”
As a diplomat he showed a remarkable facility for duplicity and deceit, both qualities for the successful adulterer. Was this really the man who had seduced the king’s mistress with a bouquet of carnations? Wallis’s friend Mary Raffray always believed the truth of the allegation, insisting to her family that von Ribbentrop and Wallis were lovers. She “hated” Wallis for it, she wrote to her sister Anne, and recalled the huge boxes of “glorious flowers” sent by the German emissary.
Nearly eighty years since von Ribbentrop and Mrs. Simpson first met, there is still no settled consensus about the true nature of their relationship. In 2008 it was suggested that a distinctive blue English Heritage plaque, which commemorates historical landmarks, be mounted at Bryanston Court in memory of Wallis Simpson. It was turned down by English Heritage on the grounds that the allegations about her and von Ribbentrop had not been refuted. An official argued that relevant official British archives that might shed more light on them remain closed.
CHAPTER SIX
Edward on a Knife Edge
In the fall of 1935 Ernest Simpson—steady, predictable, loyal Ernest, the patriot who laid down his wife for his king—hatched a plot that would plunge the monarchy into its greatest crisis since Charles I challenged the authority of the Houses of Parliament three hundred years before. This mustachioed figure in a double-breasted suit, always in the background, polite, deferential, dependable, was the unlikely catalyst who inadvertently started the countdown to abdication.
It began, as these things often do, with what H. G. Wells called “the urgency of sex.” As the Silver Jubilee celebrations drew to a close, the most celebrated cuckold of the century sailed for New York on business, leaving his wife in the arms of the Prince of Wales. During his visit Ernest was entertained by the attractive and endlessly flirtatious Mary Raffray, who had been specifically asked by Wallis to look after her man. Mary, who had recently separated from her husband, Jacques, a New York real estate agent, took her at her word. It was not long before the couple became lovers, Ernest seen slinking out of her Madison Avenue apartment in the early hours of the morning, on one occasion leaving behind his hat, which was discovered by the maid. Their affair progressed to the point where they spent the weekend together at Atlantic City, the racy East Coast resort that liked to boast it was the “world’s playground.”
As Mary and Ernest had known one another for more than a decade—it was at the Raffrays’ Christmas party in 1926 that he first met Wallis
—and her own marriage had been disintegrating for some time, the affair may well have been going on for years.
Those frequent “business trips” made by Ernest to New York, normally interpreted as his way of avoiding the embarrassment of watching his wife dallying with the Prince of Wales, may have had an ulterior motive: to see Mary. Though the king, aided by Wallis, has been seen as the driving force behind the events leading to the abdication, the surviving evidence points to another interpretation, that Ernest Simpson and Mary Raffray, who would become his third wife, were not quite the innocent parties they have been depicted as.
Now formally separated, Mary was doubtless anxious that Ernest’s honeyed words and protestations of love be matched by practical commitment. Feisty, fun, and endlessly sociable, she was not the kind of woman prepared to remain a long-distance lover forever. She was not mistress material. Marriage, though, was quite another matter.
Without a word to Wallis but doubtless with his lover’s collusion, Ernest came to the inevitable conclusion that if he wanted Mary he had to divorce. As a man of business he had to be practical. His finances remained in dire straits. Business was still not good and he had existing commitments, financially obliged to his first wife, Dorothea, as well as the education and upbringing of their teenage daughter, Audrey. The cost of divorcing and maintaining Wallis who, thanks to her royal admirer, now had elevated expectations, would add a further burden. Then there was the outlay associated with a third marriage.
He knew that the Prince of Wales was besotted with Wallis but realized that his wife was more in love with the social status, the palaver of royalty, than the “little man” himself. If, he reasoned, the prince wanted his wife as his mistress, companion, hostess, whatever, he should damn well pay for her upkeep. Ernest had had enough of shelling out for his wife’s designer clothes so that she could attend social events, and stumping up the insurance premiums for jewelry given to her by another man.
17 Carnations: The Windsors, The Nazis and The Cover-Up Page 9