After a few weeks’ rest and relaxation, during which the couple endlessly dissected the abdication, the duke began to fret about his future—just as Wallis had predicted. Bored, frustrated, and angry at their treatment by the royal family, the duke was eager to return to England and take up some official post that would use his talents. He was supported by several newspapers, notably Beaver-brook’s Daily Express, which started a campaign for the Windsors to return to England. As far as the royal family were concerned, this was a toxic ambition, the ducal couple viewed as a Fifth Column who would foster intrigue and discord should they ever set foot on English soil. The new king felt vulnerable and worried and told the Prime Minister so. “After all,” he argued, “I did step into the breach.”
The fog of suspicion that had swirled around the duchess ever since her arrival in society circles now began to envelop the duke. Until now she had been seen as the spy and Nazi-lover, the duke largely excused as the lovesick puppy bounding after his mistress, his pro-Nazi views largely forgiven by virtue of his exalted position. An incident in June 1937 in Vienna during their prolonged honeymoon set alarm bells ringing for diplomats in London and Washington.
During their stay at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna they were entertained for dinner at the Brazilian Legation by Ambassador Sam Gracie and his wife. Edward’s friend, American ambassador George Messersmith, his wife, and a junior diplomat from the Italian embassy and his English-speaking wife were also invited.
At the end of dinner, Messersmith was called away by an emissary sent by Austrian chancellor Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg. He was informed that there had been a derailment on a train travelling from Germany to Italy through Austria. Inside a ruptured sealed railcar were naval shells intended for storage at two Italian ports, so that German ships could replenish supplies when they were stationed in the Mediterranean. The clear implication was that the Germans were preparing for a sea war in the not too distant future, presumably with the French or the British.
The disclosure of this secret military build-up, long suspected but never proven, had ramifications for Britain’s naval deployment, rearmament, and appeasement policy. It was important that this matter remain confidential and that the Germans and Italians, who had grown closer since 1936, were not made aware that the Americans and British knew about their secret traffic in armaments.
When Messersmith returned to the dinner party, the duke quizzed him closely on the message he had just received. Somewhat guilelessly, Messersmith let the duke in on the secret. He immediately took the Italian diplomat to one side and blabbed the story. As soon as it was polite, the diplomat made his way to the Italian embassy and sent a cable, duly intercepted by the Americans, informing Rome that the “cat was out of the bag” regarding the secret shipments of shells. Whether the duke’s actions were deliberate, naïve, or simply showing off, it left Messersmith angry at himself for being so trusting, and increasingly suspicious of the duke.
His report to the State Department reflected that fact. During the months of his exile, Messersmith had come to admire and respect the duke. Now the worm of doubt entered into his assessment of the ducal character. Over the next few years his misgiving and concern about the duke’s conduct and his dubious choice of friends would grow apace.
He was not alone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hitler’s Good Queen Wallis
It was the improbable figure of Charles Bedaux, described in a New Yorker profile as having a “boldly battered face, dominated by his fine, dark eyes,” who made the duke feel relevant and alive once more. During their stay at Bedaux’s Loire château the two men had struck up an unlikely friendship, playing golf during the day and at night putting the world to rights over a couple of glasses of fine brandy. While Bedaux had made his considerable fortune studying work practice, the duke, too, along with his younger brother the Duke of Kent, had always had an interest, however sporadic, in factories and the welfare of the working man.
The duke was keen to know how the working man fared in Hitler’s brave new world. Could Bedaux arrange a visit through his contacts? Ever the expansive salesman, Bedaux blithely suggested that the duke include other European countries and America in his itinerary. He had excellent business connections in many parts of the world. Unspoken was the fact that he believed that a royal association would do his name and companies no harm at all.
He contacted political advisor Robert Murphy at the American embassy and labour leader Dr. Robert Ley in Germany. Subsequently the duke met Hitler’s adjutant Fritz Wiedemann, the long-time lover of Princess Stephanie, at the Ritz hotel in Paris to seal the deal.
The plight of the working man, though, was something of a fig leaf. Both men had other motives, Bedaux to use the duke’s name and prestige to regain and expand his corporation in Germany and the duke to show his new bride the true meaning of being royal. His equerry, Dudley Forwood, always maintained that the reason behind the visit was “not to give a public statement of his approval for the Nazis. We went because he wanted his beloved wife to experience a State visit. He wanted to prove to her that he had lost nothing by abdicating. And the only way such a State visit was possible was to make the arrangements with Hitler.”
While the proposed royal tour was being secretly arranged, the duke and duchess journeyed to Borsodivánka in Hungary, where Charles Bedaux had rented a hunting lodge. The duke was clearly intrigued by Bedaux, a man of vision and a constant fountain of utopian ideas. He had even developed his own political theory, equivalism, which he saw as the economic basis to develop an ideal world in which labour, management, and the wider community could live in harmony. At a stroke it would replace capitalism and communism and thereby bring about world peace. This was the unfolding vista the immensely persuasive Bedaux conjured up for the gullible duke, a movement for world peace where he would play a leading role. For a man seeking a sense of purpose and relevance, his honeyed words struck a chord. The duke’s supporters believed he could still play a major public role, Herman Rogers writing to his former headmaster Dr. Peabody: “His future interests me. He is of great potential value to any universal—not political—world cause.”
It was not idle talk. At Château Candé in the spring, the duke had been given a letter from Colonel Oscar Solbert, a senior executive at Eastman Kodak, who first met the duke on his 1924 tour of the US East Coast. In his letter he suggested that the duke “head up and consolidate the many and varied peace movements throughout the world. . . . I am not a pacifist, as you know, but I do believe that the one thing the world needs more than anything else is peace.”
On the duke’s behalf, Bedaux sent Solbert an encouraging response, saying that he was interested in leading an international peace movement and “devoting his time to the betterment of the masses.” As well as Solbert, Bedaux had already involved IBM executive Thomas J. Watson, who agreed to sponsor the Windsors for their projected tour of the United States. Watson, whose slogan was “World Peace through World Trade,” had already met Hitler, attended a Nazi rally, and accepted the Order of the German Eagle. The German government was IBM’s second-largest client, its punch card technology, according to controversial award-winning author Edwin Black, ultimately helping to facilitate Nazi genocide, a claim refuted by historian Peter Hayes among others.
Were Bedaux and Watson “naïve idealists” or cynical collaborators turning a blind eye to the unfolding horrors of the Nazi regime, their calls for world peace simply a cover for a pro-German accommodation? As Professor Jonathan Petropoulos argues in Royals and the Reich, there are “compelling reasons” to see Bedaux as a more “sinister” figure: “This rhetoric of peace and reconciliation was a front for pro-Nazi sentiment, and occasionally the correspondence between the Windsors, Bedaux, Solbert, and Watson reveals this thinking.”
Certainly the surreptitious and secretive planning behind the visit to Germany and America caused outrage inside Buckingham Palace and the Foreign Office, his surprise announcement catching everyone off guard
. The new king described it as a “bombshell and a bad one too.”
Even the duke’s supporters were concerned; Herman Rogers thought the visit “untimely,” while Churchill and Beaverbrook both opposed it, the press baron even travelling to Paris to remonstrate with the duke. He warned him that he would offend all Britons by consorting with Hitler’s bullies. The duke was unmoved.
It left the Foreign Office nonplussed about how to deal with an ex-king on a private though officially sponsored tour. The king’s private secretary, Alex Hardinge, described the visits as “private stunts for publicity purposes” which would not benefit the workers themselves. The king felt strongly that the duke and duchess should not be acknowledged as having official status in the countries they visited, nor should they be invited to stay at any embassy or legation. If they were to be met at a railway station it should be by a junior member of staff. British representatives abroad were expressly forbidden from accepting invitations or hosting dinners for the duke. They were only allowed to give the ducal couple “a bite of luncheon.”
The respective ambassadors argued that it would be bad policy to cold-shoulder the ex-king and his wife. Britain’s ambassador to Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay, though regarding the forthcoming visit with “unmitigated horror,” still felt the embassy should host the ducal couple.
He was summoned to Balmoral for discussions, where he found the king, queen, and their advisors in a state of “near hysteria” when faced with the prospect of dealing with this loose royal cannon. In his account Lindsay later recalled that the royal family felt that “the Duke was behaving abominably, embarrassing the king and dropping bombshell after bombshell.” They feared that he was trying to stage a comeback with the help of his “semi Nazi” friends and advisors.
Of course the Germans saw the twelve-day ducal visit, which began in Berlin, as a propaganda triumph. It was not just the Nazi hierarchy who welcomed his arrival but the general German public. They considered the duke to be modern, progressive, vigorous, and accessible. Even his mock Cockney accent with a touch of American seemed more down-to-earth and unaffected than the disdainful patrician tones of a man like Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. He remained an intriguing international celebrity, his marital turmoil only enhancing the iconic mystery surrounding the man. As historian Gerwin Strobl argues, the duke was not seen, either privately or publicly, as a collaborator, appeaser, or traitor to his country. Far from it.
In his study of German attitudes to the British between the wars, he observes: “When the Nazis were dealing with a useful fool, they could never quite disguise an element of contempt in their language. . . . There is nothing of this in the descriptions of the Duke’s conversations in Berlin or the later wartime recollections of his actions and opinions. Instead there is something one comes across only very rarely in Nazi utterances: genuine respect; the respect felt for an equal.” In their eyes, the harsh treatment of this charismatic man of the people was an indication of the rottenness at the heart of the British Establishment, which they saw as increasingly incompetent, hidebound, snobbish, and decrepit.
Relentlessly insulting, too. At least in the duke’s eyes. The most-travelled monarch-in-waiting in history discovered that his quarter century of loyal, dutiful service to his country counted for nothing. When the ducal couple arrived at Friedrichstrasse station in Berlin on the morning of October 11, 1937, they were met by the forlorn figure of the British embassy’s third secretary. He handed them a letter from the duke’s long-time friend, Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, now the chargé d’affaires, politely and somewhat apologetically informing them that British ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson had left Berlin and that Ogilvie-Forbes had been directed to take no official cognizance of their visit.
It was their Nazi hosts who provided the duke and duchess with a friendly welcome. No effort had been spared to make them feel at home, the station decorated with Union Jacks neatly alternating with swastikas. As the duke and duchess alighted from the train the crowd cheered “Heil Edward,” while a brass band struck up a hearty rendition of “God Save the King.” They were greeted by the portly German Labour Front leader Dr. Robert Ley, heading a large and deferential German delegation and watched by enthusiastic, cheering crowds.
They left the station in the company of their host, Dr. Ley, with four SS officers hanging on to the running-boards for dear life as Ley barrelled through the streets at breakneck speeds before arriving at the Hotel Kaiserhof, where a specially invited crowd of Nazi members greeted the ducal couple with a jaunty song composed by the Propaganda Ministry of Joseph Goebbels.
Then their avuncular but quickly irritating host raced them at high speed in their black Mercedes-Benz to Carinhall, the country estate of Hermann and Emmy Göring where Hitler’s right-hand man, whose visitors included their friends Charles and Anne Lindbergh, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and American president Herbert Hoover, gave them a tour of the estate. The high point was his pride and joy, a model train set valued at $265,000, which had tunnels, bridges, stations, and even a miniature airfield and model planes. Unlike their vulgar escort, the head of the Luftwaffe was interested in intelligent discussion, over tea he and the duke touching on everything from the British parliamentary system to international relations and labour issues. This was more like it.
After the royal guests departed, Frau Göring announced that Wallis would have “cut a good figure on the throne of England.” The duke was so respected that her husband, whom Wallis described as “trustworthy,” ordered Prince Christoph von Hessen to have their phones tapped, a courtesy the Nazi regime extended to most visiting politicians, important businessmen, and so-called guests of the Third Reich.
It was not long before they began to realize that, as the duke recalled, they were treated as little more than “trophies at an exhibition,” raced from housing project to youth camp to hospital in Stuttgart, Nuremburg, Munich, and Dresden, Nazi newsreel cameras capturing their every gesture.
During one tour the party went to a concentration camp that appeared to be deserted. “We saw this enormous concrete building which I now know contained inmates,” recalled his equerry, Dudley Forwood. “The duke asked: ‘What is that?’ Our hosts replied, ‘It is where they store the cold meat.’ In a horrible sense that was true.”
All the while their “odious” host Dr. Ley entertained them with a stream of risqué jokes and boorish comments, his breath frequently smelling of alcohol. This was not at all what the duke had in mind when he described the nature of a royal tour to his wife.
Wallis loathed the man. “A drunkard, a fanatic, quarrelsome, a four flusher [an empty boaster],” she said. There was a point where they did not think they would survive the tour alive, Dr. Ley driving so fast between engagements, sirens blaring, that the duke threatened to travel in a separate motor if he did not slow down.
In spite of Dr. Ley, the duke enjoyed meeting the people, giving off-the-cuff speeches or chatting with well-wishers in the language of his childhood. Wallis was reunited with her erstwhile lover, von Ribbentrop—sans carnations—at a dinner he hosted at the gourmet restaurant Horcher in Berlin, where the ducal couple met with the Nazi leadership, including Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf and Ilsa Hess, and Joseph and Magda Goebbels. All came away impressed by the duke’s demeanour and integrity and the duchess’s style and charm.
Goebbels gushed:
A charming, likeable chap; open, clear with a healthy common sense approach, an awareness of contemporary life and social issues. . . . There is nothing of the snob about him. . . . What a shame that he is no longer King! With him an alliance would have been possible. . . . The Duke was deposed because he had it in him to be a king in the true sense of the word. That much is clear to me. . . . A great man. What a shame! What a terrible shame.
The Nazi leadership, who collectively had “bottomless contempt” for Britain’s degenerate ruling class, made an exemption with the duke. They saw him not only as someone favouring an understanding with Hitler but as a
hard-headed defender of the British empire. Goebbels later described him as “a tender seedling of reason,” writing in his diary that he was “too clever, too progressive, too appreciative of the problem of the under privileged and too pro German [to have remained on the throne]. This tragic figure could have saved Europe from her doom.”
The eagerness of the Nazi leadership was matched by the genuine enthusiasm of the crowds who followed their royal progress, the duke’s magnetic appeal transcending national boundaries. After enduring a week of mixing with the common man, Wallis was treated to an elaborate “what might have been” when she and the duke were guests of honour at a glamorous dinner at the Grand Hotel in Nuremberg, hosted by Carl Eduard, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, where the remnants of Germany’s aristocracy came to pay obeisance. She was addressed as “Your Royal Highness” and accepted curtseys from the titled and the high-born. As the New York Times headline put it: “German Society to Fete Windsor.” This was how it felt to be a queen, albeit Hitler’s queen.
If the dinner in Nuremberg was the social highpoint, the private audience with the German leader at Berchtesgaden on October 22 was the political summit. During the trip, the duke had, according to the New York Times, given a modified Nazi salute. On two occasions he gave the full salute, the first time at a training school in Pomerania when a guard of honour from the Death’s Head Division of Hitler’s elite guards was drawn up for his inspection, the second time when he met Hitler at the Berghof, his residence in the Bavarian Alps. “I did salute Hitler,” he later admitted, “but it was a soldier’s salute.” After being kept waiting for nearly an hour, they were ushered into a large room with a view towards the dramatic Untersberg massif. An aide collected the duke while Wallis was left to make small talk, mainly about music, with Rudolf Hess. Music to the ducal ears was the fact that everyone, including Hitler, addressed the duchess as “Royal Highness.”
17 Carnations: The Windsors, The Nazis and The Cover-Up Page 14