Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires
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Any lingering hopes of a Habsburg restoration in Austria came to an abrupt end after the Anschluss with Germany in March 1938. Hitler was so worried about a Habsburg restoration that he gave the Anschluss the cryptonym “Operation: Otto” in the hopes of preventing the archduke from being placed on the Austrian throne. Zita and Otto, who were by now visibly anti-Nazi, could never consider a restoration under Hitler’s banner. “The great European powers,” Zita once wrote, “must be made well aware that, if they are against an Anschluss, then they must support the restoration.”1382 These seemed like such hollow words once Germany invaded.
Once the Nazis were firmly in control of Austria, Zita and her family took a very public stand against Hitler and his agenda. On the day of the Anschluss, Otto—with Zita’s endorsement—released a declaration from Steenokkerzeel condemning the invasion. In his statement, Otto announced that he spoke as “their heir to a dynasty which, for 650 years, has presided over the greatness and prosperity of Austria and is now the spokesman of the ardent patriotic feelings of millions of Austrians.” He called on all people worldwide to condemn the “violent annexation” of Austria and to “support the Austrian people in their unquenchable will for liberty and independence.”1383 It did not take long for Otto’s declaration to receive a response from the Nazis. On April 19, the Ministry of Justice in Vienna issued a warrant “for the arrest of Otto Habsburg for the crime of high treason.” German authorities claimed that the order for Otto’s arrest “marked the well-deserved end of a charlatan who, for years, has used the great wealth of his house to foment unrest.” Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy at the time, gave orders that Otto was to be executed if caught. Nazi reprisals against the Habsburgs were not limited to Otto. Though they did not seek to detain Zita, they were determined to curtail her influence in Europe. It was their hope that Otto’s arrest would draw “a final line under the Legitimist adventures of Zita of Habsburg-Parma-Bourbon.”1384 For the moment, Otto and Zita were beyond Nazi reach in Belgium, but not every Habsburg was so lucky. The Gestapo rounded up and imprisoned a number of archdukes, including Franz Ferdinand’s two sons, Max and Ernest.
In September 1939, the situation in Europe collapsed completely when Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain, as a leading member of the Allies and a guarantor of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, could not remain idle. With the consent of his empire and the Commonwealth, King George VI declared war on Nazi Germany, igniting the Second World War. On the morning of Sunday, September 3 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (who replaced Stanley Baldwin in 1937) announced to all of Great Britain that they were once again at war. Queen Mary, who was at Sandringham at the time, was at church that morning when the broadcast was made. The rector set up his wireless in the church’s nave so the parishioners could all listen. That evening, Queen Mary—with tears in her eyes—sat next to the radio and listened as her son made his now-famous radio address to the nation and the Commonwealth. She remarked that the king’s voice reminded her of her husband’s.1385
Over the next six months, events moved forward at a staggering pace. By April 1940, Germany had conquered Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Of all the Scandinavian countries, Norway held out the longest, launching a resistance movement against the Nazis that lasted nearly two months. In the end, defeat was inevitable, prompting Queen Mary’s brother-in-law King Haakon VII to flee to London. Hitler soon set his sights on Western Europe.
On May 9, 1940, Empress Zita’s family gathered together to celebrate her forty-eighth birthday at Hams Castle. That night, German troops swooped down on Belgium as a prelude to an all-out invasion of France. Armed paratroopers landed only a mile away from Steenokkerzeel. There was now no choice. Zita and her family had to immediately flee Hams, their home of ten years, before Nazi troops could arrest Otto and his relatives. Only a few hours after they evacuated, German dive-bombers fired on the old castle, collapsing part of the roof.
Using the pseudonym Duchess de Bar to conceal her identity, Zita, her children, and their entourage fled to a villa in southwest France called Lamonzie-Montastrue. Owned by the empress’s sister-in-law Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg and guarded by French Moroccan soldiers, the family found refuge here after more than a month of traveling under forged French passports and dodging German invasion forces. The Habsburgs used Lamonzie as a staging point for the rest of their escape. It was clear that Nazi troops were pressing farther west, leaving Zita with only Spain and Portugal as possible destinations for refuge. With the assistance of French troops, the family made it to the Spanish border, where one of the patrol guards recognized Zita and her group. The officer had been a fisherman in Lequeitio and vividly remembered the kind, generous woman whom the town had affectionately named “Our Empress of Lequeitio.” With the officer’s help, the group made it safely into Spain, just beyond Hitler’s reach.
From Spain, the Habsburgs had few escape routes open to them. Portugal was no longer a safe haven, since over the past decade the Nazis had built up a noticeable presence in Lisbon. Escaping to London was also out of the question, since most of the air and sea routes to Britain had been cut off by Germany. Zita’s son Felix advised his mother to evacuate to the United States, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt had made the family an offer of asylum. Zita was left with no choice. She had difficulty coming to grips with saying good-bye to Europe, since she did not know if she would ever return. Thus, in 1940, the empress, her children, and a small group of servants left Europe to join Felix, who was already in Washington DC. It was the second time in her life that Zita was flying in an airplane. Unlike that first flight in 1922, though, she had no husband and was not fighting to reclaim her throne. The forty-eight-year-old empress was fleeing for her life. She was also caught off guard by her accommodations. Unlike the tiny Junker monoplane that had barely carried her and Charles into Hungary, this new transatlantic, Pan American Dixie Clipper was spacious and equipped with all the latest amenities, though their journey was not without difficulties. Their plane experienced mechanical trouble over the Azores, where they were forced to make an emergency landing and await replacement parts. After a few days, they resumed their journey and landed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on July 20. Some fanfare accompanied their arrival because one of the other passengers onboard was William C. Bullitt, the American ambassador to France. After landing, Zita issued a bold public statement against the Nazis. It was the first time she ever released such a politically charged declaration in her own name.
The empress, who holds firmly to the cause of democracy in Europe, is convinced that freedom and Christianity will triumph over barbaric totalitarianism. Her ideas about the future of Europe are the same as those expressed by Archduke Otto. She believes that a Central European confederation of states, based on democratic principles, should be formed in the Danube area after the defeat of Nazism. Such a group of states could form a bulwark against any future aggression of pan-Germanism or Bolshevism.1386
It was in North America that Empress Zita of Austria would spend the tumultuous 1940s. True to form, she would not be idle. Now in middle age, she was faced with the daunting task of settling her family on a new continent.
Britain faced an overwhelming challenge in dealing with a second world war. As one of the few countries in Europe that had not fallen to Germany, it became a stronghold for governments in exile. Monarchs like King Haakon VII of Norway, King Peter II of Yugoslavia, and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands fled to London in an effort to preserve their legitimate governments following Nazi invasions.
For King George VI, the prospect of having his seventy-four-year-old mother so close to harm was deeply distressing. With no small effort, he managed to convince Queen Mary that it was safer for her to leave London along with the three million children and elderly who were being evacuated into the countryside. Her presence at Marlborough House would only cause everyone anxiety, he explained. Sandringham was quickly ruled out as a wartime residence since the king feared that w
ith Norfolk being so close to the coast, his mother may be bombed or even kidnapped by the Germans.1387 Mary, long accustomed to facing adversity head-on, disliked the idea but eventually agreed. In the company of her staff from Marlborough House—some sixty-three people and seventy pieces of personal luggage—she left London at 10:00 a.m. on September 4, 1939. Her destination was Badminton House, a villa on the west coast in Gloucester owned by her niece the Duchess of Beaufort, her brother Dolly’s daughter. During the journey, Mary passed through Peterborough and Oundle, followed by a stop in Althorp for lunch. It was here that an ironic twist of fate ensued. Queen Mary was received for lunch by the Seventh Earl Spencer and his wife. Their future granddaughter Lady Diana Spencer who would one day become Princess of Wales. “How fascinated would Mary have been if she could have known that it was from this household that would come the next Princess of Wales,” remarked biographer David Duff.1388
Mary’s home for the next six years, Badminton House was a comfortable old estate in Gloucester that was designed in the Palladian style, mimicking the buildings of Venice. Its massive, yellow Cotswold stone walls were surrounded by nine miles of verdant green forests. It was also a place that was familiar to Queen Mary. As a young woman, she had visited Badminton House for prolonged visits in the 1880s with her mother, the Duchess of Teck. At Badminton, Mary felt out of touch and isolated from her family, whom she missed deeply. Sensing his mother’s restlessness, George VI asked that the Foreign Office send daily news reports to his mother so that she could keep up to date with all the latest information about London and the ongoing war. Arthur Penn, Mary’s treasurer and old friend, also made arrangements to come from his regiment to Badminton a few times a week to act as her private secretary.
Queen Mary was not exempt from the hardships of her people while she was at Badminton. She found herself eating meals made up of rations, interspersed with vegetables grown in the gardens of the house or brought from the nearby village of the same name. Even worse were the scenes in London as the city’s residents subsisted on meager rations of unpalatable morsels. The pitiful supplies of food and fuel were soon rationed. Food rations were not the only hardship the people of London were forced to endure during the war. In September 1940, the German Luftwaffe began bombing the city directly, showing no regard for civilians and noncombatants; Buckingham Palace was a regular target. On September 13, the king and queen were nearly killed when German bombers emerged low from the clouds and dropped a stick of bombs directly onto Buckingham Palace. In a long letter to Queen Mary, Elizabeth described the horrific attack.
My darling Mama
I hardly know how to begin to tell you of the horrible attack on Buckingham Palace this morning [sic] Bertie & I arrived there at about ¼ to 11, and he & I went up to our poor windowless rooms to collect a few odds and ends.… At this moment we heard the unmistakable whirr-whirr of a German plane. We said, “ah a German”, and before anything else could be said, there was the noise of aircraft diving at great speed, and then the scream of a bomb. It all happened so quickly, that we had only time to look foolishly at each other, when the scream hurtled past us, and exploded with a tremendous crash in the quadrangle.
I saw a great column of smoke & earth thrown up into the air, and then we all ducked like lightning into the corridor. There was another tremendous explosion, and we & our 2 pages who were outside the door, remained for a moment or two in the corridor away from the staircase, in case of flying glass. It is curious how one’s instinct works at these moments of great danger, as quite without thinking, the urge was to get away from the windows. Everybody remained wonderfully calm, and we went down to the shelter. I went along to see if the housemaids were alright, and found them busy in their various shelters.1389
A few days later, German bombers led another raid, this time to London’s East End, which was one of the hardest hit areas of the city. The queen was horrified by the senseless destruction. “The damage is ghastly,” she told Queen Mary.
I really felt as if I was walking in a dead city, when we walked down a little empty street. All the houses evacuated and yet through the broken windows one saw all the poor little possessions, photographs, beds, just as they were left. At the end of the street is a school which was hit, and collapsed on the top of 500 people waiting to be evacuated – about 200 are still under the ruins. It does affect me seeing this terrible and senseless destruction – I think that really I mind it much more than being bombed myself. The people are marvellous, and full of fight. One could not imagine that life could become so terrible. We must win in the end.
Darling Mama, I do hope that you will let me come & stay a day or two later. It is so sad being parted, as this War has parted families.
With my love, and prayers for your safety, ever darling Mama, your loving daughter in law Elizabeth
PS Dear old BP [Buckingham Palace] is still standing and that is the main thing.1390
While her son and daughter-in-law fought to keep London functioning during the bombing campaign that came to be known as the Battle of Britain, Queen Mary once again threw herself into causes on the home front. She spearheaded a number of campaigns to salvage supplies. She spent days on end in the village of Badminton with a team of scrappers going from street to street searching for anything that could be reused. In her diary, she described her efforts: “We began the Salvage … for old bottles, old tins, & scrap iron, we were most successful & filled over a wheelbarrow full—We are doing this at the request of the Ministry of Supply—& I hope to start it in villages in the neighbourhood.”1391
Throughout the war, Queen Mary continued to be the embodiment of the Mother of the Nation, though she was now the queen dowager. One person who came to look upon her as a second mother was Empress Zita’s son Robert, who took up residence in London during the war instead of joining his family in North America. Mary was very impressed by the young archduke who was “battling on almost alone in wartime London.” She took it upon herself “discreetly to ‘adopt’ him.” Shortly after Robert’s flat at 59 Saint James’s Street was bombed, Queen Mary sent him a letter from Badminton House.
I hope you realise how much I feel for you being cut off from your family and friends at this anxious moment, and that is why I asked you whether I could call you R. and you should call me Aunt because I should like you to feel that you have someone in England to whom you can write sometimes if you feel like when you feel rather lonely. I know so many members of your family personally or by name. I have always felt very Austrian at heart because my father served in the Austrian army until he married my mother in 1866 and he had so many Austrian and Hungarian friends.1392
Empress Zita was immensely touched by the concern Queen Mary was showing to her son. It prompted her to send a letter to Mary via her son Felix, who was going to England to visit Robert. It was the first and only time Zita and Mary would ever have direct contact. Written in French, Zita addressed the letter to her “Dear Cousin, Her Majesty the Queen-Mother of England.” Along with her “gratitude,” Zita assured Mary of her “constant and fervent prayers for the victory of Christianity over paganism, and for our poor Europe to be saved from complete moral, intellectual and physical destruction.”1393
However concerned she was for Archduke Robert, it could not compare with the close eye Queen Mary kept on her own children. During the early 1940s, she made weekly visits to London to check up on her family. Her son the Duke of Kent appeared to be headed for a promising life, enrolling in the military and being promoted to the rank of admiral during the war. But tragedy struck in the summer of 1942, when he died in a plane crash in Scotland. The news arrived on the evening of August 25. Lady Cynthia Colville, one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, was reading aloud to her when the king’s private secretary Sir Eric Miéville arrived with the news and told Colville privately. When she returned, Mary asked her if something had happened to the king.
When Lady Cynthia, much shaken, returned to tell the Queen, Queen Mary rose from her chair.
“What is it? Is it the King?” she asked.
“No, Ma’am, I am afraid it is the Duke of Kent, there was an air crash. He was killed instantly.”
Queen Mary’s face went white and she lowered herself slowly back into her chair. “I must go to Marina tomorrow,” she said in a quiet voice.1394
In her grief, Queen Mary was touched to receive a “most dear telegram” from the Duke of Windsor, who was asking for details about the accident. Mary replied in an eight-page letter that gives a rare insight into her deep grief: “Most darling David, In this terrible hour of grief at the passing of our darling precious Georgie, my thoughts go out to you, who are so far away from us all, knowing how devoted you were to him.” She ended the letter with the words, “I send a kind message to your wife who will help you to bear the sorrow.”1395 The duke later wrote to the king that their mother “is certainly a most courageous and noble person and it is hard that in her later years, she should have yet another great and bitter blow to bear. Her fortitude is indeed an example to us all.”1396 Four days later, she watched disconsolately with her family as George was buried at Windsor Castle. His coffin was placed next to two other royal princes who died young: the Duke of Albany, Queen Victoria’s hemophiliac son; and the Duke of Clarence, Queen Mary’s first love. After the funeral, Queen Mary returned to Badminton House, except this time she was accompanied by the Princess Royal.