24 March 2016

Windsor's visit to Nazi Germany

War History Online has an article about a stupid Englishman visiting what soon would be their enemy:
A parcel of sixty photographs, compiled by Sir Dudley Forwood, the equerry to the Duke of Windsor, of an unofficial visit of the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson to Nazi Germany in 1937, has recently been auctioned by Duke’s Auctions in Dorchester in Dorset for £6,830 ($9647).
The time immediately before the war was fraught with tension, so a visit by a couple so close to the throne of England was unusual, to say the least. The Duke had abdicated his crown in 1936 to marry an American divorcée, Wallis Simpson, but there was no precedent for what role an abdicated king could fulfill, and the Duke found himself frustrated while living in exile in France. Royal historian Carolyn Harris described how the Duke was irritated that his wife was treated with disdain by the Royal Family in England, and largely shunned by the British aristocracy.
The Duke was formally invited to visit Germany, and he was very keen for the visit to go ahead, notwithstanding the fact that the British government was not in favor of the trip at all. They preferred the Duke and his wife maintain a low profile, but the Duke wanted to try and foster peace between Germany and Britain. He was not alone in that wish, and some senior members of Parliament were also keen to pursue any diplomatic measures available to try and ensure that peace was maintained. The British government, almost bankrupt after World War One and the Great Depression, made peace seem like infinite sense to many in the government.
Peace, and his anticipated role as a negotiator between their two countries, was not the only reason that the Duke was very keen for the visit to go ahead. He also wanted Wallis to experience a State Visit. Naturally, he had family in Germany, and he and Wallis were very well-received by the German aristocracy. Wallis was treated like a princess, with the distinction that he believed she was due.
In 1939, when war was imminent, the Duke tried again to broker peace. Historians have interpreted the visit as meaning that the Duke had Nazi sympathies, but that was not the case. His visit to Germany was not in support of the Nazi Party, and the Duke realized that he had made a diplomatic blunder by undertaking such a high profile visit. Andrew Morton, the royal biographer said that “the Duke was not a Nazi, but he was certainly a sympathizer. Even after the war he thought Hitler was a good fellow, and that he’d done a good job in Germany; the Duke was also anti-Semitic, before, during, and after the war.”
Timothy Medhurst, of Duke’s Auctions, said in an interview that the images showed the couple “in a relaxed environment, being shown around by Nazis clearly proud of their nation. It is a unique piece of history, compiled at a time when the Nazi war machine was preparing for European conquest and the systematic slaughter of millions of people.”
Rico says the Brits were lucky he abdicated; imagine that poofter fighting the Second World War alongside Churchill. (And with a man for a wife...)

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