17 Carnations: The Windsors, The Nazis and The Cover-Up

by Andrew Morton

  This is straight. It can be relied upon: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor are, by some who know, listed among the appeasers. When they come here they see that type . . . which properly can be called pro-Nazi.

  Personally, from inquiries I have made, I have no doubt that the Duke stands very well with the Nazis. He might be returned to the throne if the impossible of an English defeat were to be achieved.

  Swope’s dyspeptic attitude towards the duke and duchess did not prevent him from entertaining the ducal couple at Land’s End, his Long Island home.

  The irony is that the duke, whether he knew it or not, was not only pro-Nazi and a fervent appeaser but also, probably without his knowledge, the leader of the anti-Hitler movement. He was the face of the German resistance, in the popular imagination a talisman for peace as well as a potential puppet king.

  He was respected by all sides. In October 1940, for instance, after a brief meeting with Pétain in the small French town of Montoire, the Führer, accompanied by Göring and von Ribbentrop, drove the thirty-three miles to Charles Bedaux’s Château de Candé, where the duke married Mrs. Simpson. The three leaders of the Third Reich walked into the library, solemnly stood before the portraits of the duke and duchess, and gave the Nazi salute.

  Though the duke never did Hitler’s bidding, the Führer, according to his biographer John Toland, never lost that respect for the ex-king. He wrote in his private notes: “England for the good of the world must remain unchanged in her present form. Consequently after final victory we must effect a reconciliation. Only the King must go—in his place the Duke of Windsor. With him we will make a permanent treaty of friendship instead of a peace treaty.”

  Respect for the ex-king was perhaps the one point of agreement between Hitler and his sworn enemies. In August 1941 Nazi opponent Ambassador Ulrich von Hassell visited like-minded friends in Hungary and asked Archduke Albrecht, who was seen as a future regent, how he thought the war would end. “He banks on the Duke of Windsor,” recorded Hassell, who “he believes is holding himself in readiness.”

  In the second full year of war, surrounded by a sea of suspicion—and hope—the duke’s ambitions were much more prosaic. He and his wife simply wanted to escape the constricting climate of the tropical islands where, to their minds, they were prisoners in all but name. Several months after his contretemps with Churchill in March 1941, he sent him a long and emollient letter in which he effectively promised not to be, in the Duchess’s words, “a naughty boy” if he was allowed to visit his ranch in Alberta, Canada, and spend several weeks touring the United States in September and early November 1941.

  The prime minister relented, allowing him off the island to conduct official business in Washington, visit the Duchess’s relatives in Maryland, and go to his ranch, as well as spend a few days in New York. Lord Halifax drily remarked that it would be “cruelty to animals” not to allow this request.

  Like a prisoner on day release, it was made clear that he was on licence and that his itinerary should be strictly vetted. For his part the duke asked for one favour: “I only wish you would do something to dispel this atmosphere of suspicion that has been created around me, for there is a good deal more I could do to help on this side of the Atlantic.”

  Proving that what the world loves more than a maverick romantic is a royal maverick romantic, the duke and duchess were rapturously received when they arrived in Miami before travelling to Washington in a special train supplied by their friend, railroad tycoon Robert R. Young. By all accounts the crowds that greeted them were larger than those for the king and queen during their own highly successful tour in 1939.

  For once the main focus was not on the long-running royal family feud but the amount of luggage accompanying the royal couple. For the five-week visit it was estimated that they had brought between thirty-five and eighty pieces, British ambassador Lord Halifax describing it as “ridiculous” and chafing at the price the embassy paid for hiring a truck to transport their baggage to and from the station.

  The perceived excess didn’t stop there, the ducal couple checking into the swankiest suite on the twenty-eighth floor of the Waldorf Towers in New York and travelling around the city in a custom-built saloon supplied by their friend, General Motors’ pro-Nazi chairman Alfred P. Sloan. It gave the duchess the chance to catch up with her shopping. Stung by stories that she had bought thirty-four hats, the duchess retorted that it was only five. “Since I am actually shopping for a year, I don’t think anyone could consider this outrageous,” she said. It didn’t play well in rationed Britain, an outraged Labour member of Parliament, Alexander Sloan, asking for the recall of the governor and his wife. He complained that, with their “ostentatious display of jewelry and finery” their visit was “evidently doing a certain amount of harm and not good.”

  The controversy merely added to their appeal; in Baltimore an estimated 250,000 people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the homecoming duchess. Even in the isolationist Midwest their reception bordered on the rapturous.

  Crucially, carmaker Henry Ford, a fully paid-up member of the Hitler Admiration Society, was also impressed with the duke, who visited Detroit and Dearborn to meet up with his friend, General Motors chief—and now FBI suspect—James D. Mooney. Shortly after seeing the duke, Ford, the only American to make an appearance in Mein Kampf, announced that, contrary to his previous policy, he was now prepared to make arms for England.

  The trip was seen by the Miami Herald as a personal triumph for the duke, who was dubbed a “super salesman” for the British empire as well as doing a “bang up job” of beating the drum for America. By contrast, when Halifax visited Detroit two weeks later he was pelted with eggs and tomatoes by anti-war protesters, and his hotel was picketed.

  Even Roosevelt, who met the couple on two occasions, was charmed in spite of the warnings of Swope, Hoover, and others. He told Ambassador Halifax that the duke was “robust” on Britain’s eventual victory, which was a “great improvement” on his attitude when he met him in the Bahamas.

  A month after the duke and duchess returned to Nassau, everything changed when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, and the world’s most powerful neutral nation joined what was now a world war. If the duke was ambivalent about the war with Germany, the conflagration with the Japanese was an entirely different matter, especially after the sinking of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, which was named after him, several days later. He hated the Japanese with a passion he never felt for the Germans, his strikingly racist views for once out of kilter with those of Adolf Hitler, who had conferred the title “honorary Aryans” on the whole Japanese race. The duke had no such sympathies, describing the architects of Pearl Harbor as “the Nipponese hordes” and viewing them as a yellow disease contaminating the Far East.

  There was no longer any secret talk about negotiated peace settlements. After what he described as Japan’s “unparalleled treachery,” he was fully committed to the war effort. As the duchess wrote: “I am glad we are going to be in the war which is better than being on the outside.” She threw herself into her war work, organizing the local Red Cross and the Daughters of the British Empire, as well as setting up a maternity centre for all races in Nassau. At the military canteen she regularly served servicemen with their morning breakfast and loved the fact that many letters home ended or started with the fact that the airman had been handed bacon and eggs by the Duchess of Windsor.

  Her husband believed that the sapping climate and the energy she expended on local charities contributed to her bouts of ill health, notably stomach ulcers and a successful operation for cancer in August 1944. The duke was now equally committed to supporting the British and the Americans in any way he could. His primary task as governor was to focus his energies on the economic crisis in the Bahamas which, with the outbreak of hostilities, faced a collapse in tourism. With widespread unemployment and subsequent destitution and starvation for the majority black population threatening to overwhelm
the islands, help came in the nick of time.

  After a disastrous few months, America’s involvement in the war proved a godsend to the colony, the United States and Britain deciding to build bases there to train air crews. The islands were buoyant once more—the new tourists wore uniforms and spent freely in the bars and hotels of Nassau. During this period, the duke settled a serious race riot and managed to reduce the muscle of the “overmighty” Bay Street mafia.

  There was one man missing from the changing face of Nassau—his Swedish friend Axel Wenner-Gren who, much to the duke’s distress, was placed on an official US economic blacklist within seven days of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was a substantial investor in the islands, and this was a considerable financial blow. Though the duke asked Ambassador Halifax to explain why the decision was taken, the response he received was singularly opaque. The real reason was that he was too powerful. His great wealth had enabled him to become the de facto economic czar of Mexico, which meant that he had more control over precious resources than the Americans were prepared to concede. Central America and Mexico were their backyard, and Wenner-Gren was trespassing.

  The American media, though, subscribed to the simplistic view that he was a friend of the Nazis, labeling the Swede an enemy agent who had built a base on Hog Island in the Bahamas in order to guide U-boats to their targets. While this was a wild story, even an official denial by the duke did little to stop the speculation; furthermore, it was undeniable that the Bahamas was a potential haven for U-boats and that Nassau was virtually unprotected. They had just two light machine-guns to defend the town. Given the antics of the Germans during the ducal stay in Spain and Portugal in 1940 and the bizarre flight of Rudolf Hess to Scotland in May 1941, the imaginations of the duke and duchess worked overtime. They feared that they could be snatched from Government House by Nazi commandos landing from a submarine and then held as hostages in exchange for the now imprisoned Hess. For once, the British and Americans listened to the royal governor, especially after Italian submarines sank two ships off the Bahamian coast. Churchill personally ordered the deployment of two hundred Cameron Highlanders to Nassau, while the Americans promised to set up air and sea reconnaissance stations and a string of intelligence posts around the islands.

  Several months later, in August 1942, the death of his younger brother the Duke of Kent in a flying accident in Scotland brought home the dreadful human cost of the war. It also reminded him, if he needed any reminding, that the family dispute meant that he had not seen his brother since a brief encounter in Vienna in 1937. The duke was devastated. At a memorial service held for the Duke of Kent in Nassau he broke down and wept throughout, mourning his brother and perhaps his own life and what he had become.

  Yet this family tragedy did nothing to heal the divide between the duke and his brother George VI. Even Churchill was shocked when he asked the king if he wished to send his brother fraternal greetings, as he was due to see him during a visit to Roosevelt at his East Coast home, Hyde Park. The prime minister, who tried where possible to mend the broken royal relationship, received a “most cold message” from the king in reply. His secretary, Jock Colville, recalled: “The P.M. dictated to me rather a crushing answer [to the king], but, as often, he subsequently had it destroyed and replaced by one more conciliatory.”

  For the duration of the war the Windsors were treated with a mixture of scorn, suspicion, and celebration. It was at times simply bewildering for the duke and duchess, met with enthusiasm one minute, icy silence the next. In May, Churchill invited the duke and duchess to hear him address Congress. When they took their seats on May 18, 1943, they were given an ovation by the assembled dignitaries and politicians greater than that enjoyed by the prime minister. He was not amused. “As the Duke descended to his seat in the front row, he got as much clapping as Winston, or more, by which we were surprised,” observed Lord Moran, who watched from the diplomatic gallery.

  Yet even though they dined with Roosevelt, whose considered view of the duke became far more positive, and enjoyed cheering crowds wherever they went, they were treated like outcasts and Fifth Columnists by what the duke called “Official England” and by many in Washington.

  Shortly after the ducal couple were Churchill’s guests for his address to Congress, Ambassador Halifax asked the State Department if letters written by the duchess could be freed from censorship. The State Department refused the request, Adolf Berle, co-ordinator of intelligence, determined that she should be kept under watch. In a memorandum of June 18, 1943, he wrote to Cordell Hull setting out the reasons why:

  I believe that the Duchess of Windsor should emphatically be denied exemption from censorship. Quite aside from the more shadowy reports about the activities of this family, it is to be recalled that both the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were in contact with Mr. James Mooney of General Motors, who attempted to act as mediator of a negotiated peace in the early winter of 1940; that they have maintained correspondence with Charles Bedaux, now in prison in North Africa and under charges of trading with the enemy, and possibly of treasonable correspondence with the enemy; that they have been in constant contact with Axel Wenner-Gren, presently on our Blacklist for suspicious activity; etc. The Duke of Windsor has been finding many excuses to attend to “private business” in the United States, which he is doing at present.

  While the memorandum further confirms that James Mooney and the Duke of Windsor were in communication during Sir William Wiseman’s abortive peace attempt, the absurdity of this position was exposed just a couple of months later in September 1943, when J. Edgar Hoover—the very man who was monitoring the duchess—proudly showed the ducal couple around FBI headquarters in Washington. As the duchess noted sardonically: “I begin to think I’m Mata Hari!”

  Of course the continued hostility of the royal court never ceased to amaze the duke. Even though the Colonial Office, Churchill, and Roosevelt admitted that he had performed well in his role as governor, there was no lessening in the chill wind from Buckingham Palace. (Ironically, no matter what his achievements as governor, his tenure would be and has always been associated with the lurid circumstances surrounding the unsolved murder on July 8, 1943, of Sir Harry Oakes, the Canadian gold millionaire who was the second most famous man on the islands.) When he discussed with Churchill a bigger job, he was offered the governorship of Bermuda, a small island staging post seven hundred miles off the American coast. There had been some talk at the Colonial Office of offering him the governorship of the federation of the British West Indies but that came to nought, as did Churchill’s suggestion that he become governor of Madras. In the United States there was even a society called “Friends of the Duke of Windsor in America,” whose members hoped to see him given an ambassadorial post of some kind in their country.

  The duke set up a loose-knit cabal of supporters in the Cabinet, civil service, and media, known as the Second Front, to lobby those with influence—such as Lord Beaverbrook—for a meaningful job after the war. Somewhat improbably, the duke, one of the most famous men in the world, even offered to undertake undercover work for the Foreign Office in liberated France. It all came to nothing, every new suggestion vetoed by Buckingham Palace.

  As the Duchess confided to her friend Rosita Forbes:

  They only murdered Sir Harry Oakes once. They will never stop murdering the Duke of Windsor. . . . It is his own family who are against him.

  It was all the more galling when in November 1944 his brother—the dull and utterly uncharismatic Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester—was made governor-general of Australia. As far as the king’s private secretary, Alan Lascelles, was concerned there was no room for another rival royal wheel in the delicate timepiece of empire. After consultation with constitutional experts he concluded that, even though the duke was a “competent” governor, it was out of the question to make him Governor-General or ambassador anywhere in the empire. Furthermore, he warned the prime minister that the constant harping on this issue might have a serious
effect on the king’s health. His proposed solution was for the duke and duchess to make their home in America and use their name and influence for charities or other non-governmental work.

  Certainly, as Churchill informed the duke, the royal family would not countenance him settling in England. Nor would Queen Mary or the queen ever meet his wife. They were “inflexibly opposed.” However, they were prepared to meet the duke on his own. The prime minister agreed to let the duke relinquish his governorship in September 1944, though tying up the remaining constitutional and economic loose ends took up the best part of a year, during which time the duchess underwent an operation for stomach cancer in a New York hospital. They finally left the islands on May 3, 1945, and headed for the Waldorf Towers in New York, where they were advised to remain until the turmoil in France, where they intended to settle, had calmed.

  As they awaited developments in France, a cache of German Foreign Office documents further complicated their unique situation. The top-secret papers, which concerned their time marooned in Spain and Portugal during the war, made uncomfortable reading. The words “unpatriotic,” “disloyal,” even “treasonous” hung in the air.

  As the king’s counsellor Sir Alan Lascelles noted portentously in his diary:

  If the Windsors’ reactions were as implied in this correspondence the result is to say the least highly damaging to themselves.

  It was the beginning of a fresh saga, with the duke and duchess at its beating heart, a story that lasted twice as long as the war, straining and snapping friendships, political allegiances, and diplomatic alliances.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Hunt for Pirate Gold