Nov. 1938 HOME & GARDENS: A Home With Hitler

[nightandthecity]

And she wasn't really into the fascist thing. She really was just fishing around for a way to grab power. I don't know if this goes some way to defending her or digs her further into disrepute. There's generally something a bit more disgusting who'll do something out of sheer opportunism than someone who actually Believes.

bk

It's hard to get at the full truth about Edward's fascist sympathies. When you get that close to the heart of the British establishment people stop talking and documents go missing. But Edward was undoubtedly a sympathizer and fellow traveller, and he may well have been more - I believe FBI documents accuse him of passing secrets to Ribbentrop, another of Ms Simpson's lovers.

Edward wasn't alone, Prince Phillip had strong Nazi sympathies as a young man - as, indeed, did many British and European royals and aristos.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/MONedwardVIII.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VIII

http://histomatist.blogspot.com/2006/05/dead-king-watch-edward-viii-nazi-king.html

http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/royal_nazis.html#George

 

[jamespowers]

Wasn't there some plot that involved the Duke of Windsor taking control of England if and when Hitler conquered them? I think it was recently mentioned on a PBS biography show.
If that is the case, coupled with passing on secrets, then he and his wife should have been hanged for treason as well. :rage:

Regards,

J

 

[nightandthecity]

It seems the Nazis planned to install him as King, but whether it could be proved Edward himself was aware and willing is another issue of course. Pretty similar with the passing secrets stuff: this was alleged at the time without much supporting evidence, but an internal FBI memo making this accusation surfaced more recently. But I doubt if there was/is enough evidence to convict in a court of law and we'll probably never get at the full truth, given the rank of the people we are discussing and the sensitivy of it all. But they were definitely both Nazi sympathizers - not in itself a crime, of course.

 

[Story]

There were also those businessmen who didn't like FDR's socialistic policies. In 1934 a plot was discovered to have a military overthrow of FDR backed up by executives from DuPont and JP Morgan. It all unraveled because they were trying to gen the maverick US Marine Corps General Smedly Butler to help them and he went straight o Congress with the details.

A few years ago, Jules Archer's The Plot to Seize the White House was hosted free online but has since been reprinted. See http://www.chris-floyd.com/plot/
Well worth reading.

 

[Fletch]

The essay is, to put it mildly, pretty free-wheeling. Floyd obviously isn't concerned about coming over a crackpot. For one thing, no baby died at the Bonus riot; that's an urban legend. Also, Du Pont did not "own" GM, just over a third of its common stock. (Just! )

The Du Pont-Morgan-Butler affair is largely passed over these days, probably because every effort was made to soft-pedal the story and keep the investigation out of the public eye. It probably deserves more serious treatment than it's gotten.

 

[LizzieMaine]

So far as Oswald Mosley is concerned, nobody pegged him better than P. G. Wodehouse, who turned him into the unforgettable Sir Roderick Spode, leader of the "Black Shorts" -- of whom Bertie Wooster once said:

"The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting 'Heil, Spode!' and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: 'Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?'"

Of course, Wodehouse himself was accused of Nazi sympathies, but it's hard to read the above quote and believe any of that...

 

[nightandthecity]

Wodehouse was never a Nazi sympathizer - on the contrary, in as much as he had political views they were vaguely left-wing and definitely anti-fascist. But he was really a political naif. His crime was to foolishly make some broadcasts over German radio when he was interned during the war. The charges against him were comprehensively dismissed by George Orwell at the time.

http://www.drones.com/orwell.html

what's sad is that these charges keep resurfacing, and even today many people have a vague idea he was some kind of "nazi" - it shows the extent to which mud sticks, and demonstates the scary power of the gutter press. As you say, the Spode caricature alone - one of the few overtly political references in his books - shows where his sympathies lay.

The hounding of Wodehouse certainly makes a sickening contrast to the restained treatment afforded Edward and Mrs Simpson, who, as we have seen, may well have committed treason.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Wasn't there some plot that involved the Duke of Windsor taking control of England if and when Hitler conquered them? I think it was recently mentioned on a PBS biography show.
If that is the case, coupled with passing on secrets, then he and his wife should have been hanged for treason as well. :rage:

Regards,

J

As i remember the story, the Windsors were in Spain just before the outbreak of war and were approached by German agents. According to various sources she was more amenable than he. As NATC says, it's very difficult to get information when the protagonists are so close to the "top".

bk

 

[nightandthecity]

actually, the prima facie case against them is pretty strong - as I said, probably not strong enough to convict, but definitely strong enough to have warranted a serious criminal investigation. Instead they were shunted out of the way to the not-unpleasant backwater of the Bahamas.

The most damning evidence has surfaced in the last couple of decades in American, Portuguese and German records. I find it impossible to believe that what was known to the FBI and the Portuguese SIS wasn't known to the British intelligence service and government.

 

[nightandthecity]

here's a couple of links re Archibald Ramsay, one of the most notorious of the pro-Nazi appeasers. If you are interested in the fate of his "Red Book" it turned up in the safe of his solicitor in 1989 and was found to contain the names of several senior Tories and peers of the realm...no surprises there.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRramsayA2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Maule_Ramsay

An interesting aside: Maxwell Knight, head of MI5's anti-subversion unit, and thus responsible for investigating the likes of Ramsey, was himself a former member of the British Fascisti......