by Jim Wilson
The other prominent pro-German organisation was the self-consciously elitist Anglo-German Fellowship, established in 1935 with the outward aim to promote ‘good understanding between England and Germany and thus contribute to the maintenance of peace and the development of prosperity’. The Fellowship worked closely with its counterpart in Berlin, the Deutsch-Englische Gesellschaft. Although it sought to suggest that membership did not necessarily imply approval of National Socialism, in reality the Fellowship operated – as Princess Stephanie wanted it to – as a tool of Nazi propaganda. There is also evidence to suggest that there were links between the Fellowship and the Nazi intelligence-gathering organisation the Auslands-Organisation, or more cryptically, AO, which operated in countries outside Germany.
A leading member of the Fellowship was the merchant banker Ernest Tennant, who had been a guest of Rothermere and Stephanie at the dinner in Berlin the press baron hosted during his first trip to meet Hitler. Tennant had also arranged the Fellowship’s financial backing. Another prominent member was T.P. Conwell Evans, who had been instrumental in organising visits to meet the Führer for several pro-German aristocrats, including Lord Lothian. Membership overwhelmingly demonstrated wealth and influence.
MPs, generals, admirals, businessmen and bankers figured on its membership list. Both the governor of the Bank of England and the chairman of the Midland Bank were members.12 A number of financial institutions were corporate supporters together with some leading industrial firms, including Unilever and Dunlop. Directors of companies as prominent in British life as ICI, Tate & Lyle and the Distillers Company were private members. The Fellowship’s chairman was Lord Mount Temple, a former Conservative minister and father-in-law of Lord Mountbatten. Although the Fellowship was not as passionately pro-Nazi as The Link, Sir Barry Domville was a welcome member. Once again, in what MI5 observed was Stephanie’s closeness to Domville, there are multiple links between her and the Fellowship’s membership.
The Fellowship grew rapidly. By the end of 1936 it numbered some 450 people. By now the aristocratic element of its membership read like a substantial roll-call of the House of Lords: Lords Abedare, Airlie, Arbruthnot, Arnold, Barnby, Brocket, Douglas Hamilton, Ebbisham, Eltisley, Hollenden, Londonderry, Lothian, McGowan, Mottistone, Mount Temple, Nuffield, Nutting, Pownall, Rice, Redesdale, Semple and Strang, the Earl of Glasgow and later the Duke of Westminster. In July 1936 the Fellowship held a glittering dinner in London to honour the kaiser’s daughter, the Duchess of Brunswick, and her husband, at which guests sat at tables decorated with swastikas. In December the same year the Fellowship threw another grand dinner in honour of Ribbentrop.
The Nazis regarded these Anglo-German societies as propaganda platforms where prominent Germans could meet and influence sympathetic audiences. They also formed part of Ribbentrop’s intelligence network of ‘listening posts’, which fed back reports to the German Embassy on the state of British public opinion. In 1935 a rival to the Anglo-German Fellowship was formed called the Nordic League. It was set up by Nazi agents sent to London by the Abwehr and the SS to rival the Ribbentrop-orientated Fellowship. The Nordic League was an offshoot of the Nordische Gesellschaft run in Berlin by Alfred Rosenberg, an acquaintance of Prince George, Duke of Kent. It was regarded as the British branch of international Nazism and too extreme even for Mosley, who refused to get involved in it, although some of his lieutenants were founder members.
It was widely believed in society circles that Wallis Simpson was having an affair with Ribbentrop because of his constant visits to her apartment at Bryanston Court. Before he was appointed ambassador in the UK and was a foreign affairs adviser to Hitler, Ribbentrop routinely arranged to have a bouquet of seventeen red roses delivered to Wallis Simpson’s flat whenever he was in London. It was an open secret in the city’s social and diplomatic circles that Ribbentrop was infatuated with her, or perhaps it was a politically inspired infatuation?13 Even Hitler teased Ribbentrop about his methods of gaining the lady’s attention. Rumours began to circulate and the friendship between Ribbentrop and Edward’s mistress made Wallis a positive security risk. The FBI informed MI5 that the reason Ribbentrop sent seventeen flowers was because each bloom represented an occasion they had slept together. MI5 were probably not convinced by that, but nevertheless, they kept Bryanston Court under surveillance and noted the salacious gossip circulating about Wallis. It was easy for them to do so – they were already monitoring Stephanie’s apartment in the same building! The scandalous tales so annoyed Mrs Simpson, however, that in 1937 she gave an interview to an American journalist strongly denying she was being used as a tool by the Nazis.
Yet stories continued to emerge, suggesting that Ribbentrop was paying Wallis to influence the king with funds coming directly from Berlin.14 There were fears in some official circles that crucial information from state papers relating to the international situation, sent by government departments in red boxes for the king’s eyes only, was finding its way to Berlin. Edward was easily bored by official paperwork and was careless with state papers. Wallis was thought by many to be the source of these leaks. So concerned were officials in the Foreign Office that they began screening documents to ensure nothing highly secret was included before being sent to Buckingham Palace or Fort Belvedere, Edward’s private home. Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, was convinced Wallis Simpson was the person responsible for passing information to the German government, and conveyed his fears to Prime Minister Baldwin. Within a few months of Edward becoming king, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden restricted all confidential documents from the king’s eyes. Eden had no time for Edward, and the feeling was mutual. Behind the scandal of the king’s mistress, the government were well aware of a growing danger that had nothing whatsoever to do with the question of an unsuitable royal marriage, and everything to do with the king and Wallis Simpson’s Nazi sympathies.
In their biography of Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister at the time of Edward’s abdication, authors Keith Middlemas and John Barnes describe the scandal:
About Mrs. Simpson greater suspicions existed … she was under close scrutiny by Sir Robert Vansittart and both she and the King would not have been pleased to realise that the Security Services were keeping a watching brief on her and some of her friends. The Red boxes sent down to Fort Belvedere were carefully screened by the Foreign Office to ensure that nothing highly secret should go astray. Behind the public facade, behind the King’s popularity, the Government had awakened to a danger that had nothing to do with any question of marriage.15
A member of the German Foreign Office staff, Paul Schwarz, in his biography of Ribbentrop, confirmed that secrets from the British government dispatch boxes were being widely circulated in Berlin and he strongly implied that Wallis was the source.16 Then in 1939, three years after the abdication, a secret FBI report to President Roosevelt stated:
It has been ascertained that for some time the British Government has known that the Duchess of Windsor was exceedingly pro-German in her sympathies and connections, and there is a strong reason to believe that this is the reason why she was considered so obnoxious to the British Government that they refused to permit Edward to marry her and maintain the throne … Both she and the Duke of Windsor have been repeatedly warned by representatives of the British Government that in the interest of the morale of the British people, they should be exceedingly circumspect in their dealings with the representatives of the German Government.17
Collin Brooks noted in his diary, on 18 November 1936, what informed comment in London was saying about Edward: ‘the suggestion has been made in many quarters that he could, if he wished, make himself the Dictator of the Empire.’ 18 Chips Channon said he was ‘pro-German’, and Ribbentrop noting Edward’s sympathies called him ‘a kind of English national socialist’.
Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, unlike the fascist dictators on the Continent, identified strongly with the monarchy, and Mosley himself saw the possibi
lities of achieving political power if he and his policies could win royal support. ‘He who insults the British Crown thus insults the history and achievements of the British race’ was the popular BUF message for which Mosley cunningly sought to win support.19 The Blackshirts saw no impediment in Edward’s relationship with Wallis Simpson. ‘The King,’ Mosley declared, ‘has been loyal and true to us. My simple demand is that we should be loyal and true to him.’20 He stated that the king deserved, after many years’ faithful service as Prince of Wales, the right to live in private happiness with the woman he loved. Mosley, like Hitler, had much to gain in trying to ensure Edward remained king. He knew perfectly well the king was covertly sympathetic to his right-wing views. Stephen Dorril, in his book Blackshirt, says that Mosley had a number of close contacts with the king and he claimed to have had secret correspondence with Edward.21
Collin Brooks, confiding in his diary, thought the king might do anything in the face of growing pressure on him to renounce his mistress – even the extreme act of dismissing Prime Minister Baldwin and sending for Mosley to attempt a fascist coup d’etat.22 There were government ministers, too, who seriously believed this could happen. Certainly Mosley was planning and scheming to bring about such a situation, and it was an open secret to many who were close to the palace that Edward had expressed sympathy with the concept of dictatorship. He was greatly impressed with fascism as a modernising and patriotic force, one that could solve the problems of unemployment he had publicly agonised over as Prince of Wales. Many fascists regarded the new king as one of ‘them’; a member of the younger generation who had been held back by the politicians of an older era. The Blackshirts tried hard to rally public opinion with a vociferous ‘Save the King’ campaign involving leaflets, canvassing public support through meetings and a campaigning newspaper which sold many thousands of copies on the streets, particularly in the capital.
Princess Stephanie, still seeking to fulfil Hitler’s wish, was the person who originally floated the concept of a morganatic marriage as a solution to the king’s dilemma. She, like the diplomats in the German Embassy, was desperate to find a means of keeping Edward and Wallis in power in Buckingham Palace.23 The device of a morganatic marriage, she explained, would have allowed Edward to marry Mrs Simpson, but on the condition that she would merely be his consort and would not take the title Queen of England. It was very much in Hitler’s interests that a way should be found out of the constitutional maze which threatened to force Edward off the throne. Princess Stephanie quoted, in support of her suggestion, the example of the marriage of the heir apparent to the Austrian throne. Had the royal couple not been assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914, Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand would have become emperor, but his wife would not have been given the title empress, nor would any children of the marriage have inherited any rights to the succession. The ploy suggested by Stephanie was backed by some supporters of the king, notably Stephanie’s employer Lord Rothermere. At Stephanie’s suggestion the press baron arranged for his son, Esmond Harmsworth, to lunch with Wallis at Claridge’s and to urge her to accept the idea of a morganatic marriage and abandon any thought of ever becoming queen. She would have accepted the idea, but there was never any hope of such a device being adopted, by either Parliament or the dominions. Under English law, such an innovation would have required a special Act of Parliament, and it would also have needed the full support of countries throughout the empire. Edward himself, like Wallis, would probably have accepted this solution, but Baldwin had to inform the king that neither the dominions nor Parliament would countenance the idea. In any case, the Prime Minister had warned the king he himself would resign if Edward married Wallis Simpson.
On the night of his abdication, 10 December 1936, 500 Blackshirts shouting support and giving the Fascist salute gathered outside Buckingham Palace chanting, ‘We Want Edward’. The next day, at a BUF rally in Stepney, Mosley demanded the question of the abdication be put to the British people in a referendum. When the abdication statement was read out in both the Commons and the Lords, Unity Mitford, Hitler’s friend and admirer who had just returned from Berlin, exclaimed: ‘Oh dear, Hitler will be dreadfully upset about this. He wanted Edward to stay on the throne.’24 In Germany, on Hitler’s express instructions, Goebbels ordered the media to make no mention of the constitutional crisis raging in Britain. He noted in his diary: ‘He [Edward] has made a complete fool of himself. What’s more it was lacking in dignity and taste. It was not the way to do it. Especially if one is king.’25 In contrast, Rothermere’s newspapers came out with banner headlines such as, ‘God Save the King’. Edward had reigned just 325 days.
Having decided that his only course was to abdicate, Edward sent a message to Mosley thanking him for his offers of support and explaining that he felt unable to take advantage of them.26 The king’s decision undoubtedly avoided an even greater political and constitutional crisis. It seems highly probable that the pressure on Edward was exerted by Baldwin and others as much because of Edward’s known sympathies with Hitler, his autocratic tendencies, his advocacy of a close alliance with Germany and the distrust and downright suspicions that surrounded his mistress and her political leanings, as because of the scandal of his romantic entanglement with a twice-divorced American woman and a commoner to boot. Both Baldwin, as premier, and Ramsay MacDonald, as a former Labour Prime Minister, shared the opinion that Edward had acquired dangerous views and an unconstitutional and potentially dangerous interest in foreign affairs.
One senior civil servant close to Baldwin went on record as saying that it became obvious Ribbentrop had been ‘stuffing Hitler with the idea that the Government would be defeated and Edward would remain on the throne’. A message from Ribbentrop to the Führer attempted to explain the abdication as being the direct result of ‘the machinations of dark Bolshevist powers against the “Führer-will” of the young King’. He blamed a conspiracy of Jews, plutocrats and reactionaries in the British Establishment opposed to Germany.27 He needed an excuse to explain why German diplomacy in London had singularly failed to keep a Nazi-leaning king and his mistress in office. For his part, Hitler said that if Edward had remained on the throne there would have been no differences and no war between England and Germany. The king had been deposed because he wanted Anglo-German rapprochement.
Ribbentrop was intrigued by Stephanie and her closeness to the Führer, but he became suspicious when he realised that she was the mistress of Fritz Wiedemann, Hitler’s closest adjutant. Wiedemann was at that time nearer to the Führer than Ribbentrop himself; he was persuasive and had the Nazi leader’s ear. Ribbentrop’s dislike of Wiedemann was mutual. Wiedemann could not stand Ribbentrop; he hated the man’s vanity and his self-importance, and he was contemptuous of Ribbentrop’s overwhelming subservience to Hitler. Among most of the top leaders of the Third Reich, below the Führer himself, mutual detestation was not uncommon. But one thing united them: they nearly all despised Ribbentrop.28
In 1936 Ribbentrop became Hitler’s ambassador to Britain. He was installed in office in time for the coronation of George VI, in May 1937. When he presented his credentials to the new king, he performed the Nazi salute with such a display of fascist formality, rigour and clicking of heels that it caused something of a scandal. The king’s courtiers were furious, whilst the press gave huge prominence to the story of embarrassment at court. They characterised Ribbentrop with tabloid humour as ‘Herr Brickendrop’.
To mark the accession of George VI, the new ambassador, ever pleased to curry favour in society, threw a lavish party for 1,400 guests at the opulent, newly restored German Embassy in London. Fritz Wiedemann was among the official German delegation, but to her dismay Princess Stephanie was not on the guest list, and she took this as a direct snub from Ribbentrop.29 Rothermere had asked her to interview the head of the delegation, Hitler’s personal representative, the then Reich Minister for War Werner von Blomberg, for an article in the Daily Mail. Stephanie was not to be bypassed in what she regarded
as such an insulting fashion by Ribbentrop. She asked her lover Wiedemann to request Hitler to speak directly to Ribbentrop about it. Hitler did so, insisting Ribbentrop apologise to the princess, which eventually he grudgingly did.
The grand party was a major social event in London, attended by royalty in the person of the king’s younger brother, Prince George of Kent. It was the first time Hitler’s personal adjutant and the princess had been seen in each other’s company in England, a fact that did not go unnoticed in social, diplomatic and political circles. Nor did it escape the attention of British intelligence, who had already been informed by the French security service that she was the mistress of the Führer’s close friend and aide-de-camp.30 Writing years later, Princess Stephanie recorded her impressions of Ribbentrop, and they were still bitter:
He considered himself the one and only infallible political authority on England in the Third Reich, and anyone who did not agree with him that the English were hopelessly decadent, that they would never stand up to fight the Germans, and that their world empire had reached its zero hour, was a personal enemy of his. Leading Nazis like Hitler, Goering, Hess, Goebbels, Streicher, and Himmler had never been to England and could neither speak nor read English, in Ribbentrop’s eyes I was an arch fiend, a subversive meddler, a pestilential intruder.31
For Ribbentrop and his master in Berlin, the abdication was the end of a dream of a British king and his consort both sympathetic to the Nazi regime and both playing a key part in working for a rapprochement between Britain and Germany.
