Traitor King

by Andrew Lownie

The writer Charles Higham says he was ‘believed to be secret agent’.1 He was not regarded as necessarily a good influence on the Duke, a minute to Churchill noting:

  I saw in the papers that a certain Captain George Wood – and his wife – had attached themselves to the Duke of Windsor’s party. A nasty bit of work, if he is the man I am thinking of: lived for years in Vienna, married to a Hungarian, daughter married a Hohenberg last year, poses as a notch big-game shot, e.g., ‘white hunter’ . . . I should suspect him of holding utterly defeatist views and being a bad influence.2

  By 23 June, the Duke’s 46th birthday, the party had reached Madrid, from where a flying boat was due to fly them to Lisbon the next day. The British Ambassador, Sam Hoare, had known the Duke since the First World War and often shot at Sandringham. As he later wrote, he was determined the couple should move on quickly and ‘prevent any compromising incidents while he was in Madrid.’3

  Hoare had only just arrived in Spain himself and the Windsors were not put up at the Ambassador’s residence, because ‘it was badly equipped, and had no facilities for distinguished visitors.’4 Instead they stayed at the Ritz, which Hoare admitted was ‘One of the most active centres of the German secret service, where every word that was spoken could be automatically recorded by the Nazi listening posts.’5

  Madrid was the greatest concentration of the German intelligence services outside Berlin, and Spain was virtually a German protectorate – General Francisco Franco owed his victory in the Civil War to German support. Some 70–100 intelligence staff were attached to the German embassy sending, as Hoare later wrote, ‘worthless reports to Berlin. And worst of all, Hitler believed what they sent him rather than the careful reports from the Abwehr that did not always suit the Fuhrer’s wishful thinking.’6

  On the day the Windsors arrived, Eberhard von Stohrer, the German Ambassador, sent a ‘Strictly Confidential’ telegram to Ribbentrop reporting the couple’s arrival and that ‘from certain impressions which General Vigon had received in Germany that we might perhaps be interested in detaining the Duke of Windsor here and eventually establishing contact with him. Please telegraph instructions.’7

  Vigon, head of the Spanish Supreme Army Defence Council, had met Ribbentrop on 16 June. It was only on that day that the Duke had seen Hugh Dodds, the British consul in Nice, asking what he should do and was told he should make his escape through Spain.8 So how did the Germans know so quickly about the Spanish plan when there were plenty of other options, including leaving by ship from Cannes or Bordeaux? Though ostensibly it was Dodds’s advice, might the Germans have had a hand in directing the Windsors to Spain?9

  A complication now took place. The Duke of Kent was due in Lisbon the next day as head of the British delegation for the week-long celebrations for the 300th anniversary celebrations of Portugal’s independence. It was felt undiplomatic for the two brothers to meet, so the Windsors were to be kept on stand-by in Madrid until 2 July. The family quarrel provided an opportunity for the Germans – and also the Duke.

  After the snub in September 1939, the Duke wanted an assurance he was going to be given a proper job on his return, that the Civil List would be used to compensate any extra tax he might have to pay, as he would lose his status as a tax exile, and that his wife would be treated with the respect to which he felt she was entitled. According to Wallis, ‘all that he ever specifically asked for was a fairly simple thing: that I be received, just once, by the King, his brother, and the Queen, in order to erase by that single gesture of hospitality the stigma attaching to my never having been received since our marriage by the Royal Family, his family.’10

  Churchill equivocated and said a job could be discussed on his return, but the Duke was adamant. He wrote to Churchill on 24 June:

  My visits to England since the war have proved my presence there is an embarrassment to all concerned, myself included, and I cannot see how any post offered me there, even at this time, can alter this situation. I therefore suggest that as I am anxious to continue to serve the Empire, some useful employment, with more official backing than I have hitherto received, be found for me elsewhere.11

  That evening, Hoare followed up:

  Duke of Windsor is most anxious to have reply to his personal wire before leaving here. He does not want to appear to be returning as a refugee with nothing to do. I hope you can help him with a friendly answer as soon as possible. I have told him that if he fails to return to England in a few days, all sorts of mischievous rumours will circulate about him.12

  David Eccles, a young diplomat with an intelligence brief at the British embassy, wrote to his wife on 25 June:

  I have learned a great deal about the collapse of France, I do not think it wise to put it into this letter, but I have made some notes, and I will one day tell you the sickening story of treachery, weakness and shame. You will have difficulty in believing your ears, but sad to say, it is true. Are we quite sure we have no similar canker at the heart of our public life? I pray so, but we must be vigilant. I distrust the Duke of Windsor; he and his Duchess are coming here to stay next week. I shall watch him at breakfast, lunch and dinner with a critical eye.13

  He was right to be suspicious. On the same day, the Spanish foreign minister, Colonel Juan Beigbeder, wrote to General Franco enclosing information from a secretary of the embassy, relaying a conversation with Windsor, in which he reported the Duke was against the war:

  He throws all the blame on the Jews and the Reds and Eden with his people in the Foreign Office and other politicians, all of whom he would have liked to put up against a wall . . . if (the Germans) bombed England effectively this could bring peace. He (the Duke of Windsor) seemed very much to hope that this would occur. He wants peace at any price.14

  The report was forwarded to the Germans.

  On the same day, the head of the Fifth Department of the NKVD, Pavel Filin, sent the Kremlin a memo, presumably based on reports from his agents:

  The former king of England Edward together with his wife Simpson is at present in Madrid, where he is in touch with Hitler. Edward is conducting negotiations with Hitler on the question of the formation of a new English government and the conclusion of peace with Germany contingent on a military alliance against the USSR.15

  It was clear that the Windsors remaining in Madrid was becoming a problem for the British. On 26 June, Churchill sent a telegram to the Duke asking him to return to Britain as soon as possible.

  ‘Impossible to persuade Duke to leave Madrid before Sunday and Lisbon before Wednesday,’ reported Hoare to the prime minister later that day. ‘He insists there is no need for such haste unless there is some job for him in England or the Empire. I could not have put more strongly case for immediate departure but with no result.’16

  The Duke continued to hold out, sending a telegram to Churchill the following day:

  Regret that in view of your reply to my last message I cannot agree to returning until everything has been considered and I know the result. In the light of past experience my wife and myself must not risk finding ourselves once more regarded by the British public as in a different status to other members of my family.17

  The negotiations continued with the suggestion that the Duke be offered a naval command, or a position on the staff of the C-in-C Middle East, General Wavell, in Egypt.18 The Duke had now ‘dropped the condition of receiving some post, and that it boiled down to both of them being received once only for quite a short meeting by the King and Queen, and notice of the fact appearing in the Court Circular,’ reported Hoare.19 The Duke had also backed down on his tax position, but Hoare was becoming increasingly desperate, as the longer the couple remained in Madrid, the greater the chance of them being kidnapped or used by the Germans.

  ‘Can you help me with a friendly message that will get him back to England? Could Monckton also help?’ he plaintively telegrammed Churchill late on 28 June.20

  Churchill’s response was swift, threatening the former king with a court martial: />
  Your Royal Highness has taken active military rank and refusal to obey direct orders of competent military authority would create a serious situation. I hope it will not be necessary for such orders to be sent. I most strongly urge immediate compliance with wishes of the Government.21

  Meanwhile the Germans were ingratiating themselves with regard to the Windsors’ property in France. On 30 June, Ribbentrop’s Secretariat sent a telegram to the Protocol Department:

  the Foreign Minister requests first that Abetz be instructed to undertake unofficially and confidentially an unobtrusive observation of the residence of the Duke. Secondly, Ambassador von Stohrer is to be instructed to have the Duke informed confidentially through a Spanish intermediary that the Foreign Minister is looking out for its protection . . . However, no written statement whatever is to be made.22

  These communications were all against the backdrop of a series of German peace initiatives. During the first week of July, Sir David Kelly, the British ambassador to the Vatican, who had already fielded peace feelers from the Papal Nuncio, met in Switzerland with Dr Carl Burckhardt, acting president of the International Red Cross, who passed on a peace proposition from Berlin.

  Shortly afterwards Prince Max zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (later suspected of being a German agent) saw Kelly in Berne, introduced by Spain’s minister to Switzerland.23 In Washington, Lord Lothian had received an approach from the Italians through Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle, who claimed to be acting as an intermediary. Berle added that ‘a similar communication on the same line’ had been received from Don Alfonso, the ex-King of Spain.24

  Writing to his sister Elizabeth, Alexander Weddell, the American ambassador to Spain, described how he had entertained ‘Wally Simpson and her Boy Friend’ to mint juleps on Saturday 29 June. ‘Wally herself gives every suggestion of extreme acuteness and unlimited ambition; her exterior suggests heavy armour plate or some substance slightly harder than a diamond. But very pleasant, very genial, and very witty.’25

  A few days later, Weddell reported to the US Secretary of State, Cordell Hull:

  the Duke of Windsor declared that the most important thing now to be done was to end the war before thousands more were killed or maimed to save the faces of a few politicians . . . These observations have their value if any as doubtless reflecting the views of an element in England, possibly a growing one who find in Windsor and his circle a group who are realists in world politics and who hope to come into their own in event of peace.26

  On 2 July, the Duke of Kent left Portugal and the Windsors, accompanied by the Woods, set off by car for Lisbon, spending the night as guests of the Spanish Government at Merida. With them was Gray Phillips, who had been appointed the Duke’s comptroller and private secretary and who was to serve the Duke throughout the Second World War. Well over six foot, Phillips had been a brilliant classical scholar at Eton, before going on to Magdalen College, Oxford – the same college the Duke had attended.

  During the First World War, he had served with the Black Watch, winning an MC, before taking up a career as a barrister and serving as Comptroller to the Duke of Sutherland. Charming, witty, kind, and with impeccable manners and a strong artistic streak, Phillips – a gay man, he was a lifelong bachelor – was to be a loyal servant of the Windsors.

  The German Ambassador, Stohrer, reported later that day to Ribbentrop: ‘Windsor has expressed himself to the Foreign Minister and other acquaintances in strong terms against Churchill and against this war. The Foreign Minister supposes that Windsor also is going to Portugal in order to replenish his supply of money.’27

  The next day, instead of being escorted to the Hotel Palacio at Estoril, which supposedly did not have room for them, they were directed to a large pink stucco eighteenth-century house at Cascais, seventeen miles west of Lisbon on the Portuguese coast, which had been made available by a well-known banker, Dr Ricardo de Espiritu Santo e Silva. Ostensibly the suggestion was on the recommendation of the manager. In reality, the direction had come from the German authorities.

  Santo was a German agent and a close friend of the German minister in Lisbon, but it was felt that the couple would be there only temporarily – two flying boats of RAF Coastal Command were waiting in the Tagus to take them the next day to Saighton Grange in Cheshire, which the Duke of Westminster had put at their disposal.

  The plans were put in disarray when, on the very day they were due to fly back to Britain, Churchill, against the wishes of George VI, Queen Elizabeth and the Colonial Secretary, Lord Lloyd, offered the Duke a job – Governor of the Bahamas. For the former King Emperor, who had ruled over a large part of the world, it was a humiliation. For the Government, a neat solution to the developing situation.

  No other member of the British royal family had served as the Governor of a Crown Colony. The Bahamas was regarded as a hardship posting and was so low in the pecking order that the appointment did not even carry a knighthood. The Duke hesitated before accepting, but it was something.

  ‘He has accepted a job under great pressure from HE and your affectionate DE, you’ll see about it in the papers,’ wrote David Eccles to his wife that day, after lunching with the Windsors. ‘A very cunning solution. It means some recognition at last for her. He’s pretty fifth-column, but that’s for you only.’28

  On the same day, Eccles sent his Foreign Office colleague, Gladwyn Jebb, a ‘Most Confidential’ telegram. ‘I had some conversation today with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Mr and Mrs George Wood and Major Phillips. They are very nearly 5th column.’29

  Churchill now drafted a memo to the prime ministers of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, explaining the situation, marked, ‘Most secret and personal. Decipher yourself.’

  The activities of the Duke of Windsor on the Continent in recent months have been causing HM and myself grave uneasiness as his inclinations are well known to be pro-Nazi and he may become a centre of intrigue. We regard it as a real danger that he should move freely on the Continent. Even if he were willing to return to this country, his presence here would be most embarrassing both to HM and to the Government.

  In all the circumstances it has been felt necessary to try to tie him down in some appointment which might appeal to him and his wife and I have decided with HM’s approval to offer him the Governorship of the Bahamas (I do not know yet whether he will accept). Despite the obvious objections to this solution, we feel that it is the least of possible evils. I wished you to have the earliest possible advance information of this. You will appreciate how necessary it is to preserve complete secrecy. We here are of course doing all we can to ensure this.30

  ‘I did my best with them while they were here and I greatly hoped that you would come to some accommodation over the offer,’ wrote Hoare to Churchill the next day. ‘I am certain that this is the moment to end the trouble and if it is not ended now, the rift between them and the rest of the Family will become deeper and possibly more dangerous.’31

  The appointment had been made narrowly in time. Sir Alexander Cadogan, the head of the Foreign Office, had received a memo from Reginald Leeper on 7 July from an intelligence source in Prague, stating:

  Germans expect assistance from Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the latter desiring at any price to become Queen. Germans have been negotiating with her since 27 June. The status quo in England except undertaking to form anti-Russian alliance. The Germans propose to form an opposition government with Duke of Windsor, having first changed public opinion by propaganda. Germans think King George will abdicate during the attack on London.32

  ‘The King is grateful to the Prime Minister for letting him see the enclosed,’ – presumably an intelligence report on Wallis – Alan Lascelles told Eric Seal, Churchill’s principal private secretary, two days later. ‘As I told you once before, this is not the first time that little lady has come under suspicion for her anti-British activities. And as long as we never forget the power that she can exert over him in her efforts to aveng
e herself on this country, we shall be all right.’33

  Alec Cadogan, in conversation with the King at a lunch party on 10 July, noted in his diary that George VI was ‘amused at C’s report of the quisling activities of my brother.’34

  1 Higham, Mrs Simpson, p. 324.

  2 Minute to John Martin, June 1940, FO 800/326/191A, TNA.

  3 ‘A Deep-laid plot’, p. 10, XXIII/1–2, Templewood Papers, Cambridge University Library.

  4 ‘A Deep-laid plot’, p. 10. Hoare had only arrived in post a few weeks earlier.

  5 ‘A Deep-laid plot’, p. 10.

  6 ‘A Deep-laid plot’, pp. 7–8.

  7 DGFP, Series D, AA-B15/B002531, Vol. X, p. 2.

  8 Hugh Dodds report to Halifax, 23 June 1940, Hugh Dodds papers, courtesy of Bel Crewe.

  9 It seems to have been an open secret. David Eccles wrote to his wife from the British Embassy in Spain on 16 June: ‘I must get out before Wally Windsor and all her friends arrive. I should not be able to behave well to them, and I long to be at home.’ Sybil and David Eccles, By Safe Hand: Letters of Sybil and David Eccles 1939–42 (Bodley Head, 1983), p. 121.

  10 Heart, pp. 340–1.

  11 The Duke to Churchill, 24 June 1940, CHAR 20/9A–B/7, Churchill College Archives, and FO800/326/197A, TNA.

  12 Sam Hoare to Winston Churchill, 24 June 1940, CHAR 20/A–B/8, Churchill College Archives.

  13 Eccles, p. 128.

  14 Document 56, Fundacion national Francisco Franco, Documentos ineditos para la Historia del generalismo Franco, Vol 11–1, Madrid, 1993, quoted Karina Urbach, Go-Betweens for Hitler (Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 191, 192, 213.

  15 Secret memorandum No. K5/8175, quoted Urbach, p. 202.

  16 Hoare to Churchill, 26 June 1940, CHAR 20/9A–B/9, Churchill College Archives.

  17 The Duke to Churchill, 27 June 1940, CHAR 20/9A–B/13, Churchill College Archives, and FO800/326/199B, TNA.

  18 Hoare to Churchill, 27 June 1940, CHAR 20/9A–B/28–9, Churchill College Archives; Templewood Papers X111/16/29, Cambridge University Library, and Alec Hardinge to Winston Churchill, 28 June 1940, CHAR20/9A-B/13–14, Churchill College Archives.