Traitor King
Page 15
The Windsors inspected the automobile plants of Chrysler in Detroit, had tea with Henry Ford – which led to Ford, an Isolationist, being prepared to supply arms to the Allies – and saw James D. Mooney at General Motors.
Meanwhile the FBI were building their file on the couple. At the end of September, they had interviewed the Reverend Dom Odo, a Benedictine monk, about a suspected Gestapo agent, operating under cover of being a priest. Prior to entering the order, Father Odo had been Duke Carl Alexander of Württemberg, a cousin of the Duke of Windsor, and ‘related that he knows Queen Mary and her brother, the Earl of Athlone, the present Governor General of Canada, very well.’
Württemberg had come to America in 1940 from Portugal. Fleeing the Nazi regime in 1934, he had settled in Switzerland where, with financial assistance from his aunt Queen Mary, he had set up an organisation called Catholic Help for Refugees to resettle Jews.17
The FBI agent had ‘casually inquired whether Father Odo had seen the Duke and Duchess of Windsor during their recent visit to Washington’, to be told he had not, but that he had previously met the Duchess of Windsor on numerous occasions and ‘that Von Ribbentrop, while in England, sent the then Wallis Simpson seventeen carnations every day. The seventeen supposedly represented the number of times they had slept together.’18
Further evidence was being gathered of the couple’s sympathies. In a naval intelligence report from a recent Washington conference, Major Hayne Boyden, a Marine Corps naval and air attaché seconded to George Messersmith in Cuba, reported to both Adolf Berle and J. Edgar Hoover that the German Legation claimed the Duke:
as no enemy of Germany. (He was) considered to be the only Englishman with whom Hitler would negotiate any peace terms, the logical director of England’s destiny after the war. Hitler well knows that Edward at present cannot work in a manner that would appear to be against his country and he does not urge it (a reliable informant on close terms with a Nazi agent reported). But when the proper moment arrives he will be the only one person capable of directing the destiny of England.19
As a result of the Liberty article, the British authorities recognised that the Windsors needed a press spokesman to steer them clear of controversy. An old friend of theirs, Colin Davidson, was approached, but would do so only if promoted from Major to Lieutenant-General and, eventually, René MacColl, head of press and radio at the British Information Service, was appointed solely for the US part of the visit, with instructions that ‘the Duke must say as little as possible, must hold no press conferences, give no interviews, make no statements.’20
He had pressed the Duke on whether he still advocated a negotiated peace. No, he was told, that was only during the Phoney War ‘before Hitler lost his head’. MacColl felt reassured until the next morning when the Duke approached him. ‘I’ve been thinking about the question about negotiated peace,’ Windsor said. ‘I’ve been talking to the Duchess. I think we’ll play that one by ear.’21
In the end, the visit had been carefully controlled with set speeches and few interviews. When she had been interviewed, Wallis had claimed, ‘I’m afraid people credit me with much more interest in clothes than I really have,’ adding, ‘I care far more about the poor little children of Nassau. It’s them, not clothes, I intend to shop for. I want to buy them all Christmas presents.’22 Her statements were rather contradicted by the numerous packages picked up en route from the designer Mainbocher and from Bergdorf Goodman.
Though some press coverage had been favourable, a running media theme was the extent of the Windsors’ luggage – estimated to be up to seventy-three pieces and often having to be left in hotel corridors – and questions about how they funded their spending, given currency restrictions. On 18 November, Sir Ronald Campbell sent a ‘Personal and Secret’ telegram to the Foreign Office. It was a request from the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, to ‘let him know where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor got the dollars which they spent during their visit to this country’, because there had ‘been a certain amount of criticism in the press in regard to the sums spent on clothes etc. in New York.’23
Three weeks later Halifax, in a ‘Most Secret’ telegram to the Foreign Office, reported ‘So far as I can ascertain, the only banking accounts in the United States in the name of the Duke or Duchess of Windsor are two accounts with Chase Bank in the name of the Duchess. One account covers securities to the value of 9,000 dollars, while the other account had a credit balance of 29,931 dollars on 14 June this year as compared with a balance of 1,197 dollars on the same date last year.’24 The question everyone was asking was where this money was coming from.
According to Charles Higham, ‘The surrounding documents are missing from Lord Avon’s files at the Public Record Office in London, but it is clear from this memorandum that the gravest suspicions had yet again been aroused of the Windsors’ improper use of currency against all the restrictions in force at the time. Documents located in the National Archive in Washington, DC indicate that the couple had obtained even more black market currency through Wenner-Gren.’25
A British Press Service Report was blunt: ‘The general impression created was that of a rich and carefree couple, travelling with all the pre-war accoutrement of royalty, and with no thought either of the suffering of their own people or of the fact that the world is at war.’26
On 24 November, in light of the media coverage, a Labour MP, Alexander Sloan, asked a Parliamentary Question drawing attention to ‘the ostentatious display of jewellery and finery at a period when the people of this country are strictly rationed’ and suggesting the couple be ‘recalled since their visit is evidently doing a certain amount of harm and no good.’27
Churchill telegrammed the Duke, expressing regret at the personal attacks.28 The Duke was not happy with the official response. ‘Mr Hall’s lame reply did not silence Sloan, and unless I have from this distance taken an exaggerated view of the importance of this incident, I wonder if it should be left this way?’29
Events were to overtake the criticisms. On 7 December, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and America finally came into the war.30 Within a week, Wenner-Gren, long suspected of sheltering U-boats on Hog Island, was on the official US economic blacklist. Shangri-La was closed, the staff cut from thirty to seven, the Bank of the Bahamas, in which the Windsors had an interest, was closed, and the exotic birds sold or given away. A search of the property found none of the supposed landing strips or submarine pens.
America’s entry into the war may have silenced the Windsors’ defeatist sentiments, but fresh controversy was now to follow them.
1 Churchill to the Duke, 17 March 1941, CO 967/125, TNA, and CHAR 20/31A, Churchill College Archives.
2 P.E. Foxworth to Hoover, 16 April 1941, FBI file HQ 65-31113.
3 800.20211/-/51.5, NARA.
4 M.L. Smith to Mrs Begg, 25 April 1941, CO 967/125, TNA.
5 P.E. Foxworth to J. Edgar Hoover, 21 April 1941, FBI file HQ 65-31113.
6 Foxworth to Hoover, 2 May 1941, FBI file HQ 65-31113.
7 Ibid.
8 Robert Brand to Foreign Office, 7 April 1941, FO 1093/23, TNA.
9 Reginald Baxter to Churchill, 27 May 1941 of letter of 17 April, CHAR 20/31A/68–70, Churchill College Archives, and CO 967/125, TNA.
10 Norman Whitehouse to ‘Darling’, 12 April 1941, FO 1093/23, TNA.
11 Michael Pye, p. 63, 70032L, No. X1937/188/503. Charles Higham, Mrs Simpson, p. 369, quotes Churchill’s instruction in full. In August the strongroom was broken into by the Germans, but it is unclear if anything of the Windsors was removed. Duke of Windsor to George Allen, 10 August 1941, CO 967/125, TNA. Further details of the property in Paris can be found in the Chief Clerk’s file, FO 366, 1160, TNA.
12 Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy (Delacorte, 1983), p. 183.
13 Foreign Office to Washington, 15 May 1941, CO 967/125, TNA.
14 de Courcy, p. 355.
15 New York Times, 23 October 1941.
16 Hali
fax to Churchill, 19 October 1941, CHAR 20/31B/161–2, Churchill College Archives.
17 His file, ‘Alien Case File for Charles Württemberg’, A4540117, can be found in RG566, National Archives at Kansas City. The Zurich Police had told the State Department that he might be a Nazi agent, but there is no evidence to support that. Lord Halifax was one of his supporters.
18 Memo, 29 September 1941, FBI file HQ 65-31113.
19 Report, 14 October 1941, Higham, Mrs Simpson, p. 377. Boyden retired as a Brigadier General.
20 René MacColl, Deadline and Dateline (Oldbourne Press, 1956), p. 122.
21 Pye, p. 155.
22 MacColl, p. 132, quoting Helen Worden in New York World-Telegram.
23 Ronald Campbell to Foreign Office, 18 November 1941, FO 954/33A/206, TNA.
24 Halifax to Foreign Office, 4 December 1941, FO954/33A/207, TNA. The sums today would be $164K, $550K and $21K.
25 Higham, Mrs Simpson, p. 379.
26 24 November 1941, British Press Service Report, 789/1941, NARA.
27 24 November 1941, Hansard, CHAR 31B/174, Churchill College Archives.
28 Churchill to the Duke, 28 November 1941, CHAR 20/45/132, Churchill College Archives.
29 Duke of Windsor to Lord Moyne, 27 November 1941, FO 967/125, TNA.
30 Wenner-Gren had supposedly been on his way in Southern Cross to take the Windsors to Mexico days before war was declared. Washington Times Herald, 31 January 1942, in FBI file 94-8-350-66 and intercepted letter of 8 December 1941. ‘He is going to return to the Bahama Isles and will bring back the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who are thinking of buying a villa and settling down here.’ Report, 16 March 1942, FO 837/858, TNA.
CHAPTER 13
Governor
The entry of America into the war ended all talk of a negotiated peace and made protection of the Duke ever more important. At the end of March 1941, Montgomery Hyde, during his security inspection of the Bahamas, had been appalled that there were no proper passport checks, security files were kept in the Governor’s private office rather than the Colonial Secretariat, defence was limited to thirty ‘coastal watchers’, and there were only two guns larger than machine guns.
Now a year later, Churchill, remembering Operation Willi, provided a Personal Minute for the Chiefs of Staff Committee. ‘The danger is of a kidnapping party from a submarine. The Germans would be very glad to get hold of the Duke and use him for their own purposes. In my opinion continued protection against an attack by 50 men during darkness should be provided. Very considerable issues are involved.’1 There was also a concern that occupation of the islands could provide a base for attacks against the United States.
The Americans agreed to set up air and sea reconnaissance stations in New Providence and a string of intelligence posts throughout the islands, and a squadron of bombers and fighters were put on call in Florida. In March, a company of Cameron Highlanders arrived for the defence of Nassau and Government House, reinforcing the existing protection of an armed police guard of four NCOs and twelve men.
At the end of April 1942, after long, secret negotiations between London, Washington and Nassau, in which the Duke had played an active part, it was announced a major base would be constructed under Lend-Lease by the Americans on New Providence using local labour. The Bahamas were now to be a staging post for transport command for planes built in California en route to service in North Africa, a school of operational training for the RAF, and a base for ocean patrol and air-sea rescue work during the anti-submarine campaign in the Caribbean and West Atlantic. The building programme came to be called ‘The Project’. The security and economic problems would be sorted in one go.
The Duke had embarked on his governorship with ambitious plans for reform. John Dye, the American consul in Nassau, thought his opening of the Legislature in October 1940 ‘one of the most sensible and business like that had been delivered by a local Governor for many years . . . It may be true that he and his Duchess were sent out here to get rid of them, so to speak, but he is taking his job seriously and is showing a keen interest in the welfare of the Bahamas.’2
The new Governor made clear his reformist intentions saying that he would appoint an Advisory Board to look at wages and that he wished to encourage local enterprise, improve working conditions and deal with unemployment. However, he soon ran into opposition. Technically the wartime Defence Regulations gave him dictatorial powers, but the island’s government was complicated and the Governor’s powers limited.
Assisting the Governor on the Executive Council was his deputy the Colonial Secretary, Leslie Heape, and the Attorney General, Eric Hallinan. ExCo, as it was more often known, set policy on issues like immigration, but it had no money raising powers. That was the prerogative of the twenty members of the lower chamber, the House of Assembly, who were elected every seven years. This was dominated by local merchants, called the Bay Street Boys, as most of their businesses were located on Bay Street in Nassau.
The Bay Street Boys were corrupt, reactionary and they ruled entirely in their own self-interest rather than for the 90 per cent Black population. As they made most of their money importing food and drink and the House of Assembly earned revenue from import duties, there was no incentive to improve local agriculture. The Bay Street Boys kept non-whites out of public life – they were not even admitted to any of the major hotels – and refused to provide funds for public secondary education, or anything that might improve their social or economic mobility.
‘In brief, this body represents nobody but the “merchant princes” of Nassau, is selected in a manner reminiscent of the worst excesses of the unreformed Parliamentary system of this country in the eighteenth century, and in performance shows itself to be irresponsible, crass or malignant,’ ran one Colonial Office report about the parliament shortly before the Duke’s arrival.
‘As things stand, however, the constitution of the Bahamas is more or less in the form in which it was as originally created and we would only have an opportunity to alter it in the event of the House taking some step which was a danger to the external security of the Empire, or in the event of the Colony becoming bankrupt. Neither of these eventualities seem likely at the moment . . .’3
The Duke’s predecessor, Sir Charles Dundas, had tried to stimulate agriculture in the Outer Islands by encouraging large farming estates run by farmers from Europe and America, and to weaken the power of the Bay Street Boys by trying to introduce income tax and secret voting, but he had been thwarted.
The advice from the Bay Street Boys to the Duke was clear:
He will learn . . . that the best way to govern the Bahamas is not to govern the Bahamas at all. If he sticks to golf, he will be a good Governor and they’ll put up statues to him. But if he tries to carry out reforms or make any serious decisions or help the niggers, he will just stir up trouble and make himself unpopular.4
Wallis had also thrown herself into war work, giving her, hitherto, rather aimless life some purpose. She was automatically President of the Red Cross and of the ‘Daughters of the British Empire’ and she helped with the YMCA, and the Nassau Garden Club. She arranged for locals to be taught the basics of hygiene, diet and nursing, promoted courses in domestic service and started a class in needlepoint. On her trips to the United States, she lobbied department stores to stock Bahamian jewellery and weaving.
Shocked by the high infant-mortality rate amongst the non-white population, she set up a clinic for the children of mothers with syphilis. She worked closely with Alice Hill Jones, a local Black nurse trying to lower infant-mortality rates, providing a car to save her travelling to outlying areas by public transport. Here, every Wednesday afternoon, the Governor’s wife worked, weighing and washing babies, changing diapers, feeding them and rocking them to sleep. When the House of Assembly refused to grant funds, the Duke signed over income from one of his charitable trusts.
By September 1942, the airbases were completed and there was growing unemployment. The Duke t
hen arranged for 5,000 Bahamians to work in the US, mainly Florida, as agricultural labourers. The new initiative, nicknamed ‘The Contract’, after the document they had to sign, lasted six to nine months and required the men to remit 25 per cent of their earnings home. Not only did it help the United States, which was short of labour, but it provided employment and taught agricultural skills that the Bahamians were able to use on their return. By July 1944, almost 6,000 people, a twelfth of the population, had been involved in ‘The Contract’.
Many of the Duke’s attempts to diversify the economy, however, continued to be scuppered, with the House rejecting his plans for a public works programme, income tax, laws on shop workers’ hours, trade union rights and workmen’s compensation. He was constantly frustrated in his attempts to raise wages in line with the cost of living, which had risen 30 per cent during the war.
Nevertheless, he did set up an Economic Investigation Committee – the first official body in the Bahamas on which non-white men were represented substantially – to develop the islands. When it could not agree on a chairman, he appointed himself to the role. The result was the equivalent of F.D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation camps, which came to be known as the Windsor Training Farms.
But an underlying tension with his economic initiatives was Whitehall’s lack of confidence in his abilities and concern that he stray into politically contentious areas. In May 1942, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Cranborne, wrote to Churchill, irritated because Windsor wanted to take a trade delegation to Washington, arguing that ‘the subjects for discussion are of too trivial a nature to justify his personal participation as Head of the delegation, and that especially in the matter of contracts such procedure would be embarrassing to the State Department and might cause resentment.’5
More importantly, doubts also remained about his loyalties. In February 1942, an American Naval Intelligence Officer, Commander C.A. Perkins, had reported to US Naval Intelligence that there was reason to believe ‘considerable Nazi funds have, during the past year, been cleared through the Bahamas to Mexico’, and that the Duke of Windsor may be an ‘important Nazi agent’.6