Yet on September 26, 1940, within weeks of the first encounter between Wiseman and Mooney, Sir Joseph Ball, chairman of the Security Intelligence Centre, a secret body set up in 1940 to monitor the work of MI5 and MI6, was discussing the following agenda item: “US reports Windsor linked to Mooney separate peace.” Frustratingly it gives no further details. As the duke and duchess were confined to the Bahamas and still finding their feet, it is difficult to see what useful contribution he could have made other than, in a telephone conversation with Mooney, to voice his approval. Certainly the secret peace manoeuvres chimed with his own thinking—he saw himself in the role of honest broker, cheerleading the diplomats and politicians to come to an agreement.
During this time, the Windsors came under close scrutiny from the FBI, agent Edward Tamm specifically tasked by director J. Edgar Hoover to report on their activities. In Hoover’s eyes the duchess was a Fifth Columnist at best, a Nazi spy at worst. In his September 13 report the diligent agent Tamm described how the British had taken special precautions to stop her from “establishing any channel of communication with von Ribbentrop.” Such was the fetid atmosphere of suspicion surrounding them that when the duchess sent her clothes to New York for dry cleaning, the FBI’s second in command, Clyde Tolson, was informed that the exercise could allow the “violently pro German” duchess to transfer messages through her clothes. The dry-cleaning run was promptly halted.
As Roosevelt would read, she had, according to Father Odo, who was recounting her sexual activities to FBI agents in New York at the time, enjoyed a torrid affair with the former ambassador to Britain. In the Bahamas, reported agent Tamm, there was concern that the duplicitous duke and duchess would align themselves with the Swedish millionaire businessman Axel Wenner-Gren, a self-styled peace emissary and friend of Herman Göring who had recently settled on the islands.
As far as the authorities were concerned, Wenner-Gren, like his friend Charles Bedaux, was too wealthy, too independent, and too closely connected with the Nazi enemy. As recently as March that year he had “shadowed” Roosevelt’s emissary Sumner Welles during his visit to Germany and Italy, the businessman inserting himself onto a complex, ever shifting stage he didn’t fully comprehend. The president was not amused, and from then on Wenner-Gren was firmly in the sights of the Americans and the British. Such were the suspicions surrounding him that his FBI file is one of the most extensive on any private citizen in American history. He became a mythic figure. Not only was he said to be the go-between who hid Nazi gold in South America at the end of the war but he was also believed to have shared a mistress with John F. Kennedy, two decades before JFK became president.
The British, according to FBI agent Tamm, had deputed socialite Lady Jane Williams-Taylor, the queen of Bahamas society and the wife of the myopic Canadian banker, to keep the toxic Swede away from the royal governor. She was signally unsuccessful, the duke and duchess warming to Wenner-Gren and his wife, Marguerite. They were smart, cosmopolitan, and well read, the antithesis of the insular, parochial Bay Street Boys, the corrupt cabal of petty-minded white businessmen who effectively ran the islands.
Meanwhile, Sir William Wiseman continued his freelance quest for peace, hoping that after the presidential elections in November he could manoeuvre the incumbent into the role of peacemaker without letting the Germans know in advance that the proposal originated from the British. The merest hint that this was a British-inspired proposal would undercut their bargaining position and cripple British morale and prestige.
As far as Wiseman was concerned, the White House should use their military and economic might to force the combatants to the negotiating table and then take such a prominent role that the Germans would be prevented from using their supremacy in Europe to demand harsh terms from the British. Wiseman thought Churchill would vigorously reject any peace proposal but be secretly pleased he was being compelled to accept it.
Once again Mooney used his good offices to introduce Wiseman to Roosevelt’s one-time law partner and legal advisor Basil O’Connor, who was asked if he could broach this idea in confidence with the president. The prognosis was pessimistic, O’Connor reporting back that Roosevelt, elected president by a landslide in November for a third term, was hostile to the idea of a negotiated peace.
It was not just influential Americans Wiseman was sounding out but potentially friendly Germans. In November he had a preliminary meeting with the duchess’s former neighbour and the duke’s sometime golf partner Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe and her lover, Captain Fritz Wiedemann, who helped broker the ducal visit to Germany in 1937. Hitler’s former adjutant, based in San Francisco, was now the Nazis’ West Coast consul, in charge of an extensive spy network and tasked with the vital propaganda job of stoking the cause of isolationism in a bid to keep America neutral and out of the war.
After secret consultations with ambassador Lord Lothian and secret service chief Sir William Stephenson—known by the code name “Intrepid”—Wiseman met with the lovers in the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco on November 26. The FBI, who had placed Wiedemann, Wiseman, and Princess Stephanie under round-the-clock surveillance, had the room wired and eavesdropped on the conversation. The recordings were in essence a detailed discussion of possible peace negotiations between Britain, Germany, and the United States.
Initially Wiseman unveiled his own position, stating that he was the spokesman for a British political group headed by Lord Halifax. He made clear that any agreement had to be made with a “Hitler-free” Germany, as Hitler was not a man they could trust. The two Germans were sympathetic, suggesting a monarchist restoration or an administration run by Himmler. Wiedemann warned Wiseman that Hitler was unstable and had a split personality, at times considering himself greater than Napoleon. Though the German leader was intent on conquering Britain, Princess Stephanie suggested that she travel to Berlin to place a peace proposal before Hitler and von Ribbentrop. She was confident that she could make Hitler realize that he was butting his head against a stone wall by continuing his fight with Britain.
When FBI director J. Edgar Hoover reported a summary of the meeting to the president, Roosevelt was furious and demanded that Princess Stephanie, whom he considered to be a spy, be deported forthwith. He took a personal interest in her case and took to describing her as the “girlfriend” of his attorney general, Robert Houghwout Jackson, after he failed to find suitable legal grounds to kick her out of the country.
As Jackson observed: “I could not say that her activities amounted to espionage. It was not at all certain that there were not some kinds of negotiations between Sir William Wiseman and Fritz Wiedemann, in which she was a go-between.”
By now the peace train had pulled out of the station. Wiseman had to concede that neither Roosevelt nor the Halifax cabal had much enthusiasm for continuing the secret process. When Lord Lothian, effectively the ghost in this ad hoc peace machine, died from a kidney ailment on December 12, 1940, it shut out the chance of any backdoor peace initiative. Once Churchill appointed Halifax as Lothian’s successor, the door was well and truly locked.
One man, though, had not heard the door slam shut on the peace process. Even after Lothian’s death, the Duke of Windsor, who seems to have had merely a cheerleading role in the Wiseman imbroglio, continued to believe in Wiseman’s strategy, namely a negotiated peace settlement brokered by the Americans. In pursuit of this ambition the colonial governor took enormous personal risks, which further nourished the dark suspicions with which he and his wife were regarded by the Americans and the British.
Typically, brokering a peace deal came second to their personal needs. In public the couple were the very picture of dedicated local leaders; the duchess immersed herself in the local Red Cross while the duke tried to come to grips with the odious Bay Street Boys and effect some much-needed reforms. In private, however, they were desperate to escape the dreary climate and the suffocating company.
As the torpid days rolled into unending weeks, the dullin
g realization slowly sank in that he had spent all his life as an exotic if protected species of caged animal. By abdicating, all the duke had done was swap one restricting cage for another. He tried to escape in drink, but the duchess reined him in, not allowing him his first cocktail until seven in the evening.
The duchess made her own frustrations known in an interview with an American journalist in which she emphasized that they wanted to do their duty but not in this tropical backwater. She complained that in Nassau there was no scope for his “great gifts, his inspiration, his long training. I’m only a woman, but I’m his wife, and I don’t believe that in Nassau he’s serving the Empire as importantly as he might.”
Her words did little to ingratiate her with the socialites of Nassau but she was past caring. It didn’t help that she was suffering from a nagging toothache that seemed to be getting worse by the day.
It was not long before the royal prisoners were plotting their great escape, dreaming of sailing to the United States or spending time on the ducal ranch in Alberta, Canada. These aspirations caused apoplexy in London and Washington, the Colonial Office feeling it was way too soon to leave their post and the White House worried that the defeatist duke would only aid the isolationists in the country, a loose-knit right-wing group, mainly Republicans and Roman Catholics, who viewed the duke as a potential mascot and cheerleader. It was felt that any meeting between the Democratic president and the ex-king before an election would be pounced on by the German propaganda machine.
While telegrams were passing back and forth between Washington and London about this matter, as if on cue German radio, broadcasting in English, announced in October that the duke might play a part in possible peace negotiations in Europe headed by President Roosevelt. British officials seized on it as an example of the harmful speculation that would be unleashed should the duke visit the White House.
A month later Roosevelt won a third term and felt that the time was right to meet the fabled couple. On a personal level he was intrigued to meet the man and woman at the beating heart of a compelling romantic story, especially as his neighbours at Hyde Park, Herman and Katherine Rogers, had been so closely involved in the drama. As an astute political operator he was acutely aware of the numerous reports that had crossed his desk, not only from J. Edgar Hoover but various diplomats commenting on the pro-German, defeatist sentiments uttered by the indiscreet duke.
The president set the course for a meeting in December, when he was due to spend a week onboard the USS Tuscaloosa inspecting potential naval bases in the Caribbean as part of an agreement with the British whereby they would receive fifty destroyers in return for the right to lease air and sea bases on British colonies. He informed Lord Lothian that he would like the duke to join him when his ship entered Bahamian waters. It would be a combination of state business and the chance for the president to give the royal governor the once-over.
The British wanted to scupper this meeting at any price. When the duchess’s medical condition deteriorated to the point where she needed specialist dental treatment in Miami, the Colonial Office gave them permission to travel as it coincided with the dates suggested by Roosevelt for the naval base inspection.
As luck would have it, the regular passenger ferry to Miami was out of service, so the Windsors were authorized to sail onboard the Southern Cross, the $2 million yacht owned by Axel Wenner-Gren, the very industrialist the British were trying to keep away from the Windsors. As the Daily Mirror helpfully headlined: “Goering’s Pal and Windsors.” When they docked at Miami the royal couple were greeted by 12,000 curious onlookers, with 8,000 lining the streets to St. Francis Hospital, where the duchess was due to have her operation. It was almost like old times.
Even the local British consul, James Marjoribanks, could find nothing for the Foreign Office to complain about, reporting: “Britain’s stock soared with the advent to Miami of our former sovereign. The trip was a success from every point of view.”
On December 12, as the duchess was recovering, the duke was invited by Roosevelt to join him onboard the Tuscaloosa, now off Eleuthera Island. By then the duke had uncovered the elaborate and mealy-mouthed British subterfuge to keep the two men apart. He was delighted to accept, flying to the island the next day on an American seaplane to join the president, White House aide Harry Hopkins, and various ranking American naval officers for a discussion about using several Bahamian islands as American naval bases.
It was a jolly two-hour luncheon, much of the preliminary conversation focusing on a fishing trip that morning, when Hopkins had caught a three-foot grouper, the record for the trip thus far. There was, though, a serious purpose. Aboard the ship, a few days earlier, the president had received Churchill’s long and eloquent letter requesting aid from America, a plea that led to the Lend-Lease Act.
During the discussions the duke, who had already talked about several potential island sites at a previous meeting with an American admiral, promised to do everything he could as governor to facilitate any American request to use Bahamian islands for navy ships. As the president later recalled, the nearest they came to discussing the war was when he praised the great courage and fighting spirit of the British people, Roosevelt eager to stave off a potential defeatist ducal diatribe.
The duke flew back to Miami with a warm glow, feeling that for once his opinions and actions mattered, that in some small way he could make a difference. He was reunited with the duchess, and their friend Wenner-Gren took them back to Nassau onboard Southern Cross, the party briefly visiting the Western Bahamas.
The president was suitably impressed by the former monarch—but not by his friends. At a later meeting in Britain his friend Harry Hopkins told Churchill and others about the encounter. As Churchill’s private secretary, Jock Colville, recalled:
He told us of the Duke of Windsor’s recent visit to the President on his yacht when the former spoke very charmingly of the King (a fact which touched Winston) and he said that the Duke’s entourage was very bad. Moreover HRH’s recent yachting trip with a violently pro-Nazi Swede did not create a good impression. It was the astounding success of the King and Queen’s visit to the U.S. which had made America give up its partisanship of the Windsors.
A week later, when the duke and duchess stepped off the landing barge from the Southern Cross on the morning of December 19, 1940, they were watched by a sometime magician, ventriloquist, psychic investigator, undercover FBI agent, and influential writer, Fulton Oursler. Earlier, the editor of Liberty magazine had flown with his family from Miami to Nassau to prepare for an interview with the new governor. Oursler, a friend of politicians and presidents, had used every card, every contact to finesse his way into the duke’s presence. At first even his friendship with Roosevelt had failed to open doors but finally, and somewhat mysteriously, an interview was arranged.
They met in the evening at Government House, Oursler amazed that the royal luggage brought from Europe still lined the great ballroom. He found the duke fit and invigorated after his visit to Miami, his first to America in sixteen years. In the back and forth of the conversation, the duke proved as keen to learn about Oursler’s views as the journalist was to glean the duke’s opinions.
When the magazine editor, a professed isolationist, told him that he did not believe America should enter into the war, it was the first of many points of agreement.
The duke, fresh from his meeting with the president, was at pains to point out that Britain must have due respect for America, a country that could implement a peace settlement. During a series of rhetorical questions he averred that there was no such thing in modern warfare as victory, reminding Oursler that the German armies were never defeated in the First World War.
When Oursler asked if Hitler could be removed by an anti-war revolution by the German people, the duke’s reply left the experienced interviewer “dazed” and disbelieving. He told Oursler:
There will be no revolution in Germany and it would be a tragic thing for the world if Hi
tler were to be overthrown. Hitler is the right and logical leader of the German people. It is a pity you never met Hitler, just as it is a pity I never met Mussolini. Hitler is a very great man.
In the ensuing stunned silence, the duke leaned forward conspiratorially and asked: “Do you suppose that your president would consider intervening as a mediator when, as, and if the proper time arrives?” Oursler presumed that he would if he considered it in the interests of humanity so to do.
The duke went on to say that few people really understood what a perilous situation Britain faced, with U-boat submarine activity “creating havoc” with merchant shipping. The time was coming when someone would have to make a move to end this war between “two stubborn peoples.” He added: “It sounds very silly to put it this way, but the time is coming when somebody has got to say, you two boys have fought long enough and now you have to kiss and make up.”
He warned that if the United States entered the war it would continue for another thirty years, an opinion straight out of the isolationist playbook. The time was coming, sooner rather than later, when the president would have to step in to end the conflict—the goal Wiseman had tried and failed to achieve.
The discussion continued on other matters for two hours, a somewhat stunned Oursler leaving the royal presence in the company of his aide-de-camp, Captain Vyvyan Drury, who quietly emphasized how the duke, who had been subject to “cruel persecutions,” could be of the greatest service to both Britain and America. When he arrived back at the hotel he hustled his wife, Grace, into the closet, shut the door, and then whispered the import of his interview. He confided his “uneasy suspicion” that the duke wanted him to convey his thinking to the president himself. This was confirmed the following morning when Captain Drury arrived at their hotel and asked him if he would enter into a “Machiavellian conspiracy” and tell the president the substance of their conversation.
17 Carnations: The Windsors, The Nazis and The Cover-Up Page 22