Churchill’s bid to cover up Duke’s link to Nazis
WINSTON Churchill tried to conceal documents which revealed that the ‘disloyal’ Duke of Windsor supported the Nazis, newly- declassified files reveal.
Hitler had planned to install the former monarch as the puppet king in Britain if the Germans had won the war.
And files released by The National Archives at Kew, West London, now show Churchill feared these revelations could have brought down the House of Windsor.
The wartime prime minister attempted to have the papers blocked for 20 years thinking that the truth would scandalise the nation with the suggestion that the Duke was colluding with the Nazis.
But American academics fought for the files to be published, which they were in 1957 after 12 years of delay by the British. The intercepted telegrams which were published in 1957 highlighted the former King Edward VIII’s Nazi leanings, and his willingness to deal with the Hitler regime to win back the throne.
They documented the wartime activities of the Duke and his wife, the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, and the couple’s links to the German dictator.
The Duke and Mrs Simpson had been living in Paris, but after the fall of France in 1940, the couple moved briefly to Spain and Portugal.
While there, their unguarded comments were recorded by Nazi sympathisers, who sent the material to Berlin, where Hitler pored over them.
The conversations revealed that the Duke was angered at being forced to abdicate the throne in 1936 so he could marry Mrs Simpson.
He believed only the continued heavy bombing of British cities would bring the United Kingdom to the negotiating table.
Hitler and his foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, became convinced that Edward was willing to be installed as the puppet king of Britain.
They contrived an elaborate plot – codenamed Operation Willi – to tempt the couple to Spain to wait for the Germans to invade the UK before putting the Duke back on the throne.
Within days of the Duke and Mrs Simpson’s arrival in Madrid, German diplomats were working with their Spanish allies to try to convince the former king to remain in Spain.
The couple were offered a small fortune and a palace in Ronda in southern Spain to sit out the war.
The Duke notified Churchill, who ordered that he be moved to neighbouring Portugal. According to German diplomats, the Duke was seen as ‘the only Englishman with whom Hitler would negotiate any peace terms, the logical director of England’s destiny after the war’.
Hitler ordered his spy chief, Walter Schellenberg, to travel to Lisbon to entice – or if necessary kidnap – the Windsors. The Germans recorded their every word and noted their movements and gestures, the files reveal. According to their notes, the Duke considered his younger brother, King George VI, ‘utterly stupid’, the Queen an intriguer and Churchill a warmonger.
The Nazis at one point even tried to convince the couple that Churchill would order their assassination in the Bahamas. Hitler’s plot came to nothing, but when he was shown the dossier after the war, Churchill immediately insisted that it should be destroyed as he feared it would damage the monarchy.
The documents just released show Churchill tried to delay the dossier’s publication for up to 20 years in case they damaged the Duke’s reputation and raised doubts about his loyalty.
In 1953 he even wrote to US President Dwight Eisenhower, appealing to his sense of ‘justice and chivalry’ to prohibit their release for another ten or 20 years.
‘If they were to be included in an official publication they might leave the impression that the Duke was in close touch with German agents and was listening to suggestions that were disloyal,’ he wrote.
‘Willingness to deal with Hitler’