Traitor King
Page 8
In the spring of 1939, the Duke’s blackmailer again popped up, writing to him from the Ritz Hotel:
Davy dear, Last month mother gave me the documents concerning my birth. These documents are now in safety with those concerning my relations with you. They can be produced at your request. Neither has consented to give us the chance to solve our problem by ourselves – thus until the middle of May I shall then rely entirely on her . . . I shall ask a solicitor to manage an interview between you and I or with your entourage, unless you should prefer to give me an answer either by letter or by telephone . . . Alexandra.13
‘I know Walter Monckton has commiserated with you regarding the files of the woman named Moroni (sic), and I enclose one of two supplicate letters she has written under the signature “Alexandra” from the Ritz Hotel in Paris,’ wrote the Duke to his solicitor George Allen a few days later:
You will remember that she was expelled from France about a year ago and this is the first notification that I and even the French police have had of her return to France. I had our detective, Attfield, communicate with Monsieur Perrier of the Sûreté Nationale, informing him of Moroni’s (sic)presence in Paris, and he has reported to me this evening that he understands that the woman is getting one month’s imprisonment for entering the country while being the subject of an expulsion order and will then be deported again.14
There was to be a further embarrassment the following month with perceptions of the Duke upstaging his brother and interfering in politics. ‘I see on the news bulletin today that David is going to broadcast to America this evening,’ wrote Queen Elizabeth to Queen Mary. ‘. . . how troublesome of him to choose such a moment.’15 At the invitation of a friend, Fred Bate of NBC, the Duke had agreed to make an appeal for peace from Verdun, in the belief only American intervention could prevent war. Attempts by friends, such as Lord Beaverbrook, not to go ahead were ignored:
For two and a half years I have deliberately kept out of public affairs and I still propose to do so. I speak for no one but myself, without the previous knowledge of any government. I speak simply as a soldier of the last war, whose most earnest prayer is that such a cruel and destructive madness shall never again overtake mankind.16
It was unfortunate timing, as the King and Queen had just left on a goodwill tour to the United States, where there were strong isolationist sentiments, and Canada, whose unity was threatened by the French Canadian separatist movement and the Abdication.
The BBC refused to broadcast the talk, but it made a huge impact in America, with a copy of the text inserted into the proceedings of Congress, and the Duke received hundreds of letters of support from amongst others Marie Stopes, John Foster Dulles and Lord Alfred Douglas; although his position was slightly undermined when it was revealed he had dined earlier that week with Count Johannes von Welczeck, the German ambassador to France and a longstanding friend.17 At the very least, it was seen as yet another attempt to upstage his younger brother.
‘What a fool he is and how badly advised; and everyone is furious he should have done it just after you left,’ wrote the Duke of Kent to George VI. ‘If he had mentioned you in it, it wouldn’t have been so bad, and why he broadcast such a peace talk only to America, when they have no intention of fighting, I don’t know.’18
As international tensions increased and war became more likely, the Windsors retreated to La Croë, where their first house guest was Philip Guedalla with proofs of his book on the Abdication, on which the Duke had assisted. This was to be one of several books in which the Duke attempted to control the narrative of his life – an attempt in November 1938 for Robert Bruce Lockhart to ghost a book or articles for Beaverbrook had come to nothing, whilst legal action had been taken against Geoffrey Dennis’s Coronation Commentary for suggesting the Windsors had slept together before marriage.19
Amongst the guests that summer were Noël Coward, Somerset Maugham, Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere, Maurice Chevalier, and a party of a dozen Highland pipers and dancers, who were invited to give a display led by the Duke in his full Highland kit.
The Duke still felt that war could be averted and on 27 August he sent a personal telegram to Hitler: ‘Remembering your courtesy and our meeting two years ago, I address to you my entirely personal, simple though very earnest appeal for your utmost influence towards a peaceful solution of the present problems.’20
Six days later, Hitler replied: ‘Assure you that attitude towards England remains the same and my wish to avoid a new war between our two countries remains. It depends however on England whether relations between the Germans and English can find the correct channel.’21
Throughout August, amidst concerns they might be kidnapped, Walter Monckton liaised with Sir Horace Wilson about arrangements for the couple’s return to Britain, which included sending a plane to bring them back. On 2 September, Fruity Metcalfe, who had spent the summer at La Croë with his wife and son David – who was the Duke’s godson – arranged for the Windsors’ staff to take the train to Paris.
The same day Monckton reported to Alec Hardinge and Horace Wilson, after speaking to the Duke on the phone:
He then said that unless his brother was ready to have him and his wife to one of their houses they would not return to England . . . Great pity the difficult arrangements on which we have all worked so hard should have broken down. They will be difficult to rearrange when all are desperately busy on war preparations. In my case I had given up chance of seeing my son today before he leaves.22
The next day, war was declared. The Duke’s reaction, on learning the news from a call from the British Embassy in Paris, was to remark to his wife, ‘Great Britain has just declared war on Germany. I’m afraid in the end, this may open the way for world communism.’23 He then returned to the swimming pool and dived in.
1 On Wallis’s Buick, the initials WWS for Wallis Warfield Simpson were etched in small plain gold letters in a tiny diamond-shaped frame on one of the doors.
2 Hood, Working for the Windsors, p. 41.
3 The equivalent of £550K and just over £2 million.
4 Hood, p. 41.
5 Sunday People, 29 April 1973, quoted Martin, p. 361.
6 Bryan and Murphy, p. 394.
7 Hood, p. 105.
8 Hood, p. 106.
9 Hood, p. 119.
10 Lawford to his mother, 17 October 1938, courtesy of Charles Tilbury.
11 Lawford to his mother, 1 February 1939, courtesy of Charles Tilbury.
12 Lawford to mother, 6 February 1939, courtesy of Charles Tilbury.
13 12 April 1939, Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Balliol College.
14 15 April 1939, Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Folio 64, Balliol College.
15 RA QM/PRIV/CC12/93, quoted William Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (Macmillan, 2009), p. 453.
16 New York Times, 9 May 1939.
17 Martin, p. 364; Morton Wallis in Love, p. 262, suggests the date was 22 June 1939.
18 RA GVI 342, 6 May 1939, quoted Ziegler, p. 399.
19 21 November 1938, Bruce Lockhart, Vol. 1, p. 410. It was true, but the Duke still won his case.
20 Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Folio 93, Balliol College.
21 Ibid.
22 Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Folios 116–17, Balliol College.
23 Heart, p. 330.
CHAPTER 8
Phoney War
Fruity was furious to discover that the offer of the plane to Britain had been withdrawn after the Duke had insisted he would only return if the couple were invited to stay at Windsor Castle, the Duke was given some wartime job and Wallis awarded the status the former king believed his wife was entitled to.
‘I just sat still, held my head & listened for about 20 minutes & then I started,’ he wrote to Baba:
‘You have just behaved as two spoiled children. You only think of yourselves. You don’t realise that there is at this moment a war going on that women & children are being bombed & killed while you talk of yo
ur PRIDE. God it makes me sick. You forget everything in only thinking of yourselves, your property, your money and your stupid pride . . . You are just nuts! . . . Now if this plane is sent out to fetch you, which I doubt very much, then get into it and be b–y grateful . . .’
Every ½ hour it is ‘I won’t go by plane! We will motor to Paris,’ or to Boulogne, etc. I point out the impossibility of doing that – roads blocked with troops, no hotels, etc, etc. Today there is talk of a destroyer being sent out.1
Instead, Monckton arrived by plane but the rescue was rejected, because Wallis had a fear of flying and there was insufficient room for their luggage. As the Duke had told Mr Mack at the British Embassy in Paris, ‘They could not be expected to arrive in England for a war with only a grip.’2 Monckton returned alone. The Duke told Churchill, who had just been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty:
It would greatly facilitate the Duchess and my return to England if you would send a destroyer or other naval vessel to any French Channel port Monday or Tuesday that you designate. This would enable us to bring our whole party of five and our small amount of luggage in one journey.3
Two days later, on 8 September, the party set off in a convoy of three cars for the Channel ports, where on 12 September they were collected at Cherbourg by Lord Louis Mountbatten in his first command, the destroyer HMS Kelly. Zigzagging across the Channel, to avoid enemy submarines, they landed later that day at the same quay from which the Duke had left almost three years earlier.
There was no member of the family to meet them, no message, no offer of a car or office. Instead, and only after Churchill intervened, they were met by a Royal Marine band and the C-in-C Portsmouth, Admiral Sir William James, who put them up for the night at Admiralty House. The next day Baba drove them to the Metcalfe home in Ashdown Forest, which was to be their base in Britain along with the Metcalfe’s London home.
On 14 September, the Duke saw the King, their first meeting since the Abdication. It was not a success. ‘He seemed to be thinking only of himself, and had quite forgotten what he had done to his country in 1936,’ George VI wrote in his diary that night.4 Two days later he noted in his diary that commanding officers ‘must not tell D or show him anything really secret.’5
Lord Crawford was even more critical:
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor are back in England – it is announced that he is about to take up a public appointment; but a stray field marshal is not easily placed, nor a superfluous admiral of the fleet, and he can’t do the work allotted to his younger brothers Kent and roly-poly Gloucester. He is too irresponsible as a chatterbox to be trusted with confidential information, which will all be passed on to Wally at the dinner table. That is where the danger lies – namely that after nearly three years of complete obscurity, the temptation to show that he knows, that he is again at the centres of information will prove irresistible, and that he will blab and babble our state secrets without realising the danger.
I dined with Howe at the Club. He is working at the Admiralty, and to his consternation saw the door of the Secret Room open – the basement apartment where the position of our fleet and the enemy is marked out by hour – and Lo! out came Churchill and the Duke of Windsor. Howe . . . was horrified.6
What to do with the Duke was to prove a problem. He had originally been offered a choice of posts – Deputy Civil Defence Commissioner for Wales or liaison with the British Military Mission in France – and picked the first; but when he saw the Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha, the next day, he was told the King had vetoed the appointment on the grounds that he did not want the former king in Britain.
Instead the Duke was forced to accept the liaison role with the French, relinquishing his rank of field marshal and reverting to the honorary rank of major general so that he could report to Major General Sir Richard Howard-Vyse.
‘I see endless trouble ahead with the job in France as I don’t think he will think it big enough and I doubt his getting on with the “Wombat” (Howard-Vyse, because of his large ears and Australian service),’ noted Baba Metcalfe in her diary:
I do think the family might have done something, he might not even exist but for one short visit to the King. Wallis said they realised there was no place ever for him in this country and she saw no reason ever to return. I didn’t deny it or do any pressing. They are incapable of truly trusting anybody, therefore one feels one’s loyalty is misplaced. Their selfishness & self-concentration is terrifying. What I am finding it difficult to put into words is the reason for his only having so few friends. One is so perpetually disappointed.7
The views of the Royal Family were clear. ‘I haven’t heard a word about Mrs Simpson – I trust that she will soon return to France and STAY THERE,’ wrote the Queen to Queen Mary. ‘I am sure that she hates this dear country, and therefore she should not be here in war time.’8
On 29 September, the couple returned to France, the Duke to the British Military Mission near Vincennes with Fruity, who was acting as an unpaid ADC, and Wallis to Versailles. What, however, was meant to be a sinecure with the intention of giving the Duke something to do out of harm’s way was to prove to be an opportunity for the British. Hitherto, they had not seen the French lines and defences, to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Now they had their chance.
* * *
The Windsors had renewed contact with Charles Bedaux at the beginning of the war and the two met regularly through the early months of the Phoney War, with Bedaux commuting between his offices in the Hague and Paris. One of Bedaux’s companies now had a contract with the French Ministry of Armaments, responsible for the inspection and control of armament production.
‘Last night I fixed a dinner in a private room here (the Ritz) for Charles B to meet them,’ wrote Fruity to Baba on 4 October. ‘He, Charles had much to say. He knows too much – about every country in Europe & also our Colonies. It is terrifying and he is right a great deal. He has left at dawn for an unknown destination this morning. He hinted at Berlin being one of those places . . .’9
There were already concerns about the Duke being a security leak. On 16 September, George VI had noted in his diary the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Edmund Ironside’s concern that the Duke was seeing the secret plans of the French, that Wallis also knew about them, and she was not to be trusted.10
The 2nd Lord Ironside in 1987 told the author Charles Higham:
My father determined that the Duke was a serious security leak. He was giving the Duchess a great deal of information that was classified in the matter of the defences of France and Belgium. She in turn was passing this information on to extremely dangerous enemy-connected people over dinner tables in Paris. As a result, the information made its way into German hands.11
The historian Gerhard Weinberg has argued ‘there seems to have been a German agent in the Duke’s immediate entourage, with or without the Duke’s knowledge, and during the first months of the war important information passed from his blabbering through that agent to the Germans.’12
Martin Allen argues that several of Bedaux’s staff now worked for the Windsors and may have reported back to Bedaux, writing, ‘Indeed it is known that one of the Duchess’s maids had the German code name “Miss Fox”. In the summer of 1940 she would travel back to occupied Paris and report to Otto Abetz, Bedaux’s long-term friend, Gauleiter of Paris, and former Paris representative of Dienststelle Ribbentrop.’13
On 6 October, the Duke set off on the first of his tours of the French defences, a two-day visit to the French First Army on the right flank of the British Expeditionary Force facing Belgium, and the French Ninth Army on its right flank between Fourmies and Charleville, covering the last stretch of the Belgian frontier to the Ardennes. He was accompanied by Captain John de Salis, 8th Count de Salis, a last-minute substitute to act as his translator and help write up the report. Salis had known Wallis whilst attached to the Washington Embassy during the 1920s, but it was his background in intel
ligence – he later served in MI6 – that accounted for his appointment. His role was to keep an eye on the Duke and report back on him.
‘We returned very late last night Sunday. We covered about 800 miles. HRH was all through absolutely delightful company. No one could have been a more interesting or amusing companion,’ wrote Fruity to Baba on 9 October. ‘The only few minutes I hated & when he was all wrong was when I had to get the hotel bills & get them paid and then he was frightful.’14
At the end of October, the Duke toured the French Fourth and Fifth Armies on the Vosges, covering some 900 miles in three days. Fruity remained confused that once back with Wallis, the affectionate camaraderie was replaced by iciness. ‘It always will be the same I believe as long as she is alive, and she makes him the same way.’15
The Duke produced four reports on the French defences, pointing out their areas of weakness, the poor morale and discipline in the French army, and questioning the reliance on and effectiveness of the Maginot Line, but they were largely ignored in London – with devastating consequences in May 1940.16
The Duke found it difficult to come to terms with his changed rank and status and was infuriated with the ‘accidental discovery of an order issued by the King behind my back, which in effect, imposes a ban of my entering areas occupied by British troops in France.’17
‘The Duke of Windsor is on us again,’ wrote Henry Pownall, Chief of Staff to Lord Gort, the C-in-C of the British Expeditionary Force, in his diary. ‘Behaved charmingly here but badly up forward where he took the salute of all Guards which turned out. C-in-C was there, a full General, and Master W definitely should not have pushed in on that. He’s here as a soldier, not as Royalty. C-in-C very annoyed about it and is getting it back to Proper Quarter. If Master W thinks he can stage a come-back he’s mighty wrong.’18