Yet Blunt’s role in the collection of the letters seems to have been minor. In his report of the rescue, Morshead hardly mentioned Blunt and only justified his presence ‘since he had in any case to go out to Germany on business I had brought him with me, for agreeable companionship and because his German is excellent.’26 So why was Blunt there? What other business did he have? Morshead may have removed Vicky’s letters, but no artwork was taken and Blunt simply made an inventory of thirty-one English works that belonged to the Empress.27
From Kronberg, Blunt travelled to Schloss Marienburg, near Saxony, property of the Princes von Hanover. Prince Ernst August von Hanover was close to the Nazi hierarchy – he had joined the SS in 1933 – and there was concern that some correspondence there might reveal pro-German sentiment by British royals. There was also a worry that important cultural artifacts might fall into the hands of the advancing Soviets.28
In 1979, Blunt was publicly revealed to have been a Russian spy since the 1930s, though he had privately confessed to the intelligence services in 1964. The MI5 officer Peter Wright, who interrogated him, was informed by the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Michael Adeane, that Blunt had undertaken an ‘assignment . . . on behalf of the Palace – a visit to Germany.’ Wright was told not to ‘pursue the matter . . . strictly speaking it is not relevant to considerations of national security.’29
It looks like the trip to Kronberg was a cover for a fishing expedition, which suggests there was something else the Royal Family was worried about. ‘George VI had every reason to believe that the Hesse archives might contain a “Windsor file”, because Prince Philipp of Hesse had been an intermediary, via the Duke of Kent, between Hitler and the Duke of Windsor,’ claimed Prince Wolfgang of Hesse to the Sunday Times.
It was a belief supported by the wartime intelligence officer Hugh Trevor-Roper, later Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University.30 It is confirmed by Andrew Sinclair, who spent eighteen months researching a biography of Vicky, The Other Victoria, who wrote that Blunt had retrieved ‘the Duke of Windsor’s correspondence with his German princely cousins, some of whom held high office in the Nazi party.’31
John Loftus, a lawyer with the US Justice Department, interviewed two former US military intelligence officers from the SHAEF T-groups attached to General Patton’s forces, who confirmed they had seen references to communications between the Duke of Windsor and Hitler. The documents had been found in a ‘villa that was owned by a close relative of the Duke which was occupied as an American officer’s club.’32
Douglas Price, an aide to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was stationed at Friedrichshof in the summer of 1945. In the library he found an ornate cabinet containing letters between the Hesse family and the Duke of Windsor, dating back to when he had been Prince of Wales. It seems that these were the documents that Blunt had been sent to retrieve.33
According to the intelligence magazine Lobster, Blunt had also been sent to retrieve the minutes of the Duke of Windsor’s 1937 meeting with Hitler, which were missing from the captured German documents.34
Donald Cameron Watt, the British historian who was part of the team dealing with the captured German documents at Whaddon Hall, later told the Sunday Times:
Among the 400 tons of documents there was a section relating to the Duke of Windsor. Everything we thought should have been in this file was indeed there – with one exception. For example, we found all the Lisbon material and we found accounts of Windsor’s conversations with Ribbentrop and various German officials. The exception was there was no account of the conversation with Hitler in October 1937. There was simply no trace of this in the archives.35
The Windsors, unaware of what was happening with the captured documents, quietly left the Bahamas for Miami in early May 1945. They spent time with friends in Palm Beach, and then spent several months at a flat at the Waldorf Towers in New York, whilst they decided what to do. The Duke had lost $100,000 drilling for non-existent oil on his Canadian ranch and needed to make up his losses. He briefly toyed with the idea of a business career in America and visited Cleveland, Ohio, at the end of June to study industrial methods, courtesy of Robert Young, but decided it was not for him. In July, they were the guests of the Canadian philanthropist and banker Isaak Killan at his fishing lodge in New Brunswick, causing British officials to worry he might be lobbying to become Canadian governor general.36
In August, they stayed at the Washington embassy as the guest of Sir John Balfour, the First Secretary. Balfour had met the Duke pre-war and had always felt ‘in spite of the hold on popular affection which he had acquired as Prince of Wales, he was unfitted to be King . . . My disquiet about the King was heightened by reports that innate pro-German sympathies were colouring his views on the subject of Nazi Germany.’37
Balfour found no reason on his visit to revise his opinion, regarding him as ‘a mixed-up, unstable character’:
On the third evening of his stay, the Duke asked us to invite to dinner an elderly American friend of his – a railroad tycoon named Young. Both of them seemed oblivious to Nazi misdeeds and were at one in thinking that, had Hitler been differently handled, war with Germany might have been avoided in 1939.38
By September, the Windsors were back in Paris. Duff Cooper, recently appointed British ambassador in Paris, reported that the Duke ‘seems to be making himself a bit of a nuisance, “talking big” to various French officials whom he meets at dinner, and telling them how to run their own country, which naturally they don’t like. He was always given to holding forth, and indeed, as long ago as 1926, showed increasing signs of becoming a hearth-rug bore; with increasing years, he may be developing George IV’s tendency to arrogate to himself capabilities, and performances which are actually beyond him . . .’39
His wife, Lady Diana Cooper, equally disparaging, thought ‘both looking as thin as if just out of Belsen. She grown a little more common, and he more pointless, dull and insipid.’40
Shortly afterwards the Duke flew to London, staying at Marlborough House with Queen Mary. He had two objectives – to secure acceptance of Wallis from his family and a job from the new Labour Government. He failed on both counts. It was the first time he had seen his mother since 1936 and his brother since 1940 and the reunions, according to Tommy Lascelles, went ‘far better than expected’, but ‘I gather that the King has at last convinced him that there is no possibility of his Duchess ever being “received” or getting the title HRH.’41
‘Quite like old times; very well informed, knew everything that was going on,’ Queen Mary told Owen Morshead about the visit. ‘But still persisting about my receiving his wife, when he promised he’d never mention the subject to me again. His last words when he was going away – “Well goodbye – and don’t forget: I’m a married man now.” Don’t forget, indeed: as if one ever could!’42
There was equally little comfort from Attlee. The Duke had hoped there might be a role for him as an Ambassador at Large in the United States. ‘I would concentrate on the public relations aspect . . . Such a job would require my bringing Americans and visiting Britons together, providing a good table and a comfortable library for informal talks and helping along what Winston Churchill called “the mixing-up process”.’43
But there was the continuing concern, as Halifax reported to the Foreign Office, that ‘press reports of society engagements in Newport, New York and Long Island would, as they have done before, tell heavily the other way.’44 And there were the questions about some of his associates. ‘The Duke has certain disagreeable personal skeletons in his cupboard – e.g., Axel Gren, Bedaux and Ricardo Espírito Santo Silva, all proven German agents,’ wrote Lascelles in his diary, after the Duke had asked to be made Ambassador at Buenos Aires. ‘No professional diplomat with such associations would ever be given an important embassy – or indeed employed anywhere.’45
Sir Alexander Cadogan noted in his diary at the same time that ‘the King fussed about the Duke of Windsor’s fil
e and the captured German documents.’46
But Churchill could see the merit of giving the Duke something to do. As he told the King, ‘I would even go so far as to say that there might be serious disadvantages in utterly casting off the Duke of Windsor and his wife from all official contact with Great Britain, and leaving him in a disturbed and distressed state of mind to make his own life in the United States.’47
In mid-November, Churchill spent the day with the couple in Paris and drew up a memo, ‘Concerning His Desire for Official Work in America after 1945’.48 But nothing was forthcoming.
In March 1946, Tommy Lascelles suggested to Halifax that the Duke buy a house:
somewhere in the southern states, and make it a centre of private hospitality . . . where he could bring together worthwhile Americans, English and foreigners . . . with this he could continue some line of his own (stock-raising, arboriculture, agricultural research, etc.) which would give him an interest, and which, with his considerable means, he could well afford to do on a useful and even profitable scale . . . The King feels strongly . . . that the USA is the only place in which he can live, and that he should be urged to make it his permanent home as soon as possible. He must not settle in the UK . . . The King hoped if Duke did settle in US it would be possible for British Embassy to establish a friendly and unofficial relationship with the Duke whereby HRH’s wish to make himself useful in the sphere of Anglo-American understanding may be encouraged, and when necessary, controlled by private advice.49
The problem with the United States was taxation. The Duke had considerable wealth and, since diplomatic status was not being offered, he had no wish to pay tax, especially if it was backdated. Kenneth de Courcy, the editor of a series of international finance and intelligence magazines who had suggested the Duke adopt the role of roving foreign affairs expert lobbying those in power, continued to press the couple to stay close to the Royal Family and to:
set up a suitable home in England which should, at first, be visited for very short, sharp and brief periods for business and private purposes only . . . I think the public and the government should be allowed slowly to get used to the idea of Your Royal Highness and the Duchess coming over for private purposes from time to time. Slowly and wisely the thing could become habitual and presently the whole thing would be accepted by everyone as perfectly normal and harmless.50
Hearing that Fort Belvedere, which had been abandoned during the war, might be sold or leased, the Duke offered to buy it back. It was immediately taken off the market.51
It was clear that the couple’s exile was to be permanent.
1 Details of the collection at the National Archives can be found at http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8595, and the Loesch letter at FO 371/46712, TNA.
2 The Thomson report, quoted Andrew Morton, 17 Carnations: The Windsors, the Nazis and the Cover-Up (O’Mara, 2015), p. 245.
3 Liddell diary, 30 May 1945, KV4/196, TNA.
4 ‘Notes for 19 June meeting’, FO 371/46713, TNA.
5 Duff Hart-Davis (ed.), King’s Counsellor, p. 351.
6 Bevin to Atlee, 13 August 1945, FO 800/521.
7 Duff Hart-Davis (ed.), King’s Counsellor, p. 352.
8 CAB 79/37/21, TNA.
9 Record Group 59, CDF, 1945–9, 862.4016-862.42, Box 6836, NARA.
10 Guy Liddell diary, 24 August 1945, KV 4/466, TNA.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Attlee to Churchill, 25 August 1945, Annex D CAB 301/179, TNA.
17 Churchill to Attlee, 26 August 1945, Annex D, CAB 301/179, TNA.
18 Harris to Hickerson, 27 August 1945, Record Group 59, Lot File 78D441, Historical Office Records relating to the German Documents Project, 1944–83, Box 6, Historical Office, National Archives, quoted Morton, 17 Carnations, p. 282.
19 Byrnes to Halifax, 11 October 1945, Record Group 59, Lot File 78D441, Box 13 Historical Office, National Archives, quoted Morton, 17 Carnations, p. 284.
20 The relationship lasted from the mid-1890s until the Duke’s death in 1942.
21 Duff Hart-Davis (ed.), King’s Counsellor, pp. 324–5.
22 OMGUS Records, p. 130, Ardelia Hall Collection, NARA.
23 The story is told in Roland Perry’s The Queen, Her Lover And the Most Notorious Spy In History (Allen & Unwin, 2014).
24 Guy Liddell diary, 15 August 1945, KV4/ 466A, TNA. Cf. US Colonel John Allen memo, ‘on 3 August 1945, however, the Victoria letters were officially received by Sir Owen Morshead and Major A.F. Blunt for transfer to Windsor Castle, England’, RG 260, OMGUS Education and Cultural Relations, Box 226, Colonel John Allen to G-5 USFET, 6 August 1946, NARA, quoted Jonathan Petropoulos, Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 338.
25 The Vicky letters were returned in December 1951 and can now be seen at Schloss Fasanerie. The Morshead/Blunt mission is documented in RG 260, OMGUS Education and Cultural Relations, Box 226, Colonel John Allen to G-5 USFET, 6 August 1946, NARA, quoted Petropoulos, p. 338. Also RA M SS A/1 report of Owen Morshead, 9 August 1945, and RA MSS Sir Owen Morshead’s Mission to Germany 3–5 August 1945, quoted Petropoulos, p. 339. The visit alerted Nash that there might be other valuables in the castle. Together with her boyfriend, later her husband, Colonel Jack Durant, she stole the family’s fabled collection of jewellery, worth up to $6 million. Quickly apprehended, Nash was sentenced to five years and Durant to fifteen years. Only a small percentage of what had been stolen was ever recovered.
26 RA Add M SS A/1, report of Owen Morshead, 9 August 1945, quoted Petropoulos, p. 339.
27 ‘Hesse Crown Jewels Court-Martial’, p. 95, NARA.
28 Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt (Macmillan, 2001), p. 316. Details of the mission to Duke of Brunswick can be found in FO 371/65327, TNA.
29 Peter Wright, Spycatcher (Viking, 1987), p. 223.
30 C. Simpson, Leitch and Knightley, ‘Blunt was Emissary’, Sunday Times, 25 November 1979.
31 Andrew Sinclair, London Review of Books, Vol. 37, No. 18, 24 September 2015.
32 John Loftus interview, John Costello, Mask of Treachery (Collins, 1988), p. 461.
33 Interview Douglas Price, Edward VIII: Traitor King (Channel 4, 1996).
34 Lobster, summer 2015, referencing a Daily Telegraph report from 1978.
35 Sunday Times, 25 November 1979.
36 See DO 127/54, TNA.
37 ‘Encounters with the Windsors’, p. 5, Sir John Balfour papers, Columbia University.
38 Ibid, pp. 8–9. He writes in similar vein in his autobiography: John Balfour, Not Too Correct an Aureole (Michael Russell, 1983), p. 108.
39 Lascelles Diary, 9 November 1945, Duff Hart-Davis (ed.), King’s Counsellor, p. 367.
40 Lascelles Diary, 11 October 1945, Counsellor, p. 361.
41 Lascelles diary, 6 October 1945, Counsellor, pp. 356–7.
42 Owen Morshead, ‘Notes on conversation with Queen Mary’, 18 February 1946, A AEC/GG/12/OS/2, quoted Shawcross, p. 600.
43 New York Daily News, 11–16 December 1966.
44 Halifax to FO, 4 March 1946, RA GV EE 13/48, quoted Ziegler, p. 506.
45 Lascelles diary, 5 October 1945, Counsellor, pp. 355–6.
46 Cadogan diary, 25 October 1945, ACAD/1/15, Churchill College Archives.
47 Churchill to George VI, 18 November 1945, RA GV EE 13/41, quoted Ziegler, p. 505.
48 It is reproduced in Bloch, Secret File, pp. 315–18.
49 Halifax papers, A4.410.4.10, quoted Sarah Bradford, King George VI (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), pp. 445–6.
50 Kenneth de Courcy to the Duke of Windsor, 14 March 1946, de Courcy, Box 3, Folder 5, Hoover Institute.
51 In 1955 it was sold to his nephew Hon. Gerald Lascelles on a 99-year lease, which was taken up in 1976 by the son of the Emir of Dubai. Edward & Mrs Simpson was filmed there in 1978.
CHAPTER 17
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A Life Without Purpose
Susan Mary Patten, a US diplomat’s wife and one of Duff Cooper’s mistresses, sat next to the Duke at a dinner in Paris and wrote in her diary, ‘He is pitiful, looks young and un-dissipated, and the famous charm is still there, but I never saw a man so bored . . . They are dining here on Saturday and I couldn’t dread it more . . .’
He had recounted his day to her:
I got up late, and then I went with the Duchess and watched her buy a hat, and then on the way home I had the car drop me in the Bois to watch some of your soldiers playing football . . . When I got home the Duchess was having her French lesson, so I had no one to talk to, so I got a lot of tin boxes down which my mother had sent me last week and looked through them. They were essays and so on that I had written when I was in France studying French before the Great War . . . You know I’m not much of a reading man.1
Though there were too many sensitivities for the Duke to take on a business career or diplomatic appointment – the latter having a particular attraction because of the tax status – there was no reason he could not have devoted his time to a non-governmental job or charity, but he chose not to do so. Independently wealthy and with no dependants beyond his wife, he had greater freedom than most men of his generation – he was just fifty – to pursue his own interests.
The problem was that he had few interests. As he told Susan Patten, he was ‘not much of a reading man’. When Churchill presented him with an inscribed copy of his memoirs, the Duke thanked him and said he would put it in the bookshelf next to the other volumes. He had no interest in the arts or helping others. Once, after sitting through a concert organised by Lady Cunard, he asked, ‘Did that Mozart chap write anything else?’2
Traitor King Page 21