Wallis Simpson saved Royals from disaster

DEAR EDITOR:

To comment on a recent letter about Wallis Simpson (Herald, March 12).

I think most people in Canada or elsewhere don’t even know who she was; her liaison with the then Prince of Wales, was nothing like the events involving Prince Harry and Meghan.

She does not deserve (and mostly has not) recognition in the Royal Historical sense. She was a twicedivorced American and was never accepted by the British people in general.

Although I was born and raised in England, I was too young to know about her affair with the then Prince of Wales, but I heard my parents and friends discussing it and once sneaked away a copy of the “News of the World” newspaper with interesting material.

Some years before all of this problem, Prince George, the then Duke Of Kent, married Princess Marina from Greece who became very popular and even had a color named after her — “Marina Blue” and we all wanted a dress of that colour! So the contrast between the two brothers choice of partner was a hot topic later on.

The Prince of Wales was known as the Playboy Prince — liking the good life, lots of vehicles and planes, and very many women in his life. One of my Uncles was a superintendent in the Metropolitan Police and served as “bodyguard” for the Prince. He is quoted as having said “I’ve waited outside more bedroom doors in Belgravia and Mayfair than I have had hot dinners.”

Wallis Simpson was well accepted by the nightlife fraternity in Germany which apparently was ahead of anything in England and she had met Adolf Hitler several times, introducing the Prince who became very interested in some aspects of plans for the future of Europe and was known to be a Nazi sympathizer.

After his abdication, the couple went to live in France, were married and given the title Duke and Duchess of Windsor. After France fell to the Germans, they fled to Lisbon, and he was appointed Governor of the Bahamas, far enough away for the British Prime Minister — Winston Churchill allegedly said, “He can’t do too much harm over there.” He apparently remained interested in Nazi activities, even from some distance.

So, in a way, her place in history is for Wallis Simpson saving Britain from being an acquisition of Nazi Germany, and as an outsider, encouraging that weak-minded man with his almost traitor-type interest as a known Nazi sympathizer, to abdicate.

As King, he would have been disastrous, the Government of the time certainly feeling relieved. Marjorie M. Montgomery Penticton