Feeling rejected by his family and isolated from his country, flattered by German attentions, determined to give his wife the official reception that he felt that she deserved and naively thinking he could make a difference, the Duke went ahead with the tour.
1 Originally built in the thirteenth century, it is now run as a holiday let.
2 Gore Vidal, Palimpsest: A Memoir (Deutsch, 1995), p. 206.
3 6 June 1937, New York Times.
4 George Allen to the Duke, Monckton Trustees, Box 15, Folio 37, Balliol College. The equivalent now of £700K and £1.4 million.
5 Monckton Trustees, Box 16, Balliol College.
6 ‘Conversations with King Edward (Duke of Windsor) after his Abdication’, MSS 109 2017-00, Messersmith papers, University of Delaware.
7 See for example the report on him to Colonel R.H. Van Deman, Chief of Military Intelligence Section of the War Department, US National Archives 10505-27.
8 Almost £1 million today.
9 27 April 1937, RA DW 3200, and Michael Bloch, The Secret File of the Duke of Windsor (Bantam, 1988), pp. 109–10.
10 23 August 1937, Bedaux to Oscar Solbert, RA DW 3409.
11 Forwood, p. 52, BREN 2/2/7, Churchill College Archives, Cambridge. The four-part series, The Windsors: A Dynasty Revealed, was shown around the world and published as a tie-in book written by Piers Brendon and Philip Whitehead.
12 Sunday Mirror, 31 October 1954.
13 FO 954/33A/30, TNA.
14 Diana Mosley, Duchess of Windsor: A Memoir (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980), p. 89. Fourteen of his sixteen great-great-grandparents were born into German royal houses and the other two into minor Hungarian nobility as subjects of the German Habsburg Emperor. His mother was the German princess, Mary of Teck.
15 13 July 1933, Kenneth Young (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart 1915–1938, Vol. 1 (Macmillan, 1973), pp. 262–3.
16 June 1934, épris means enamoured, Rhodes James, Channon, p. 35.
17 Fritz Hesse, Hitler and the English (Wingate, 1954), p. 22.
18 November 1936, Rhodes James, Channon, p. 84.
19 25 June 1935, MEPO 10/35, TNA.
20 Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), p. 980.
21 Davidson papers, Parliamentary Archives.
22 William Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (Macmillan, 2009), p. 366, and Ziegler, p. 273.
23 Helen Hardinge diary, Hon. Lady Murray Papers, quoted Shawcross, p. 366.
24 CAB 21/4100/1, TNA, and 10 December 1936, Hansard.
25 Copy of letter FO 800/847, TNA, and FO 954/33A/36, TNA.
26 Top Secret memo from State Secretary, 17 September 1937, FCO 12/255, TNA. This was Dr Hans Solf (1910–87) later the first German European civil servant in the Council of Europe.
27 RA DW 3423, quoted Ziegler, p. 389.
28 FO 954/33A/52, TNA.
29 FO 954/33/59, TNA.
30 FO 954/33/61, TNA.
31 RA KEVIII Ab. Box 5, quoted Ziegler, p. 389.
32 17 October 1937, Ronald Lindsay to Elizabeth Lindsay, Acc 9769, 100/1, part 2 of 2, National Library of Scotland, and John Vincent (ed.), The Crawford Papers: The Journals of David Lindsay 1892–1940 (Manchester University Press, 1984), p. 619.
33 8 October 1937, Vincent, p. 582.
34 Ronald Lindsay to Elizabeth Lindsay, 11 October 1937, Acc 9769, 100/1, part 2 of 2, National Library of Scotland and abridged in Vincent, p. 617.
35 Ronald Lindsay to Elizabeth Lindsay, 11 October 1937, Acc 9769, 100/1, part 2 of 2, National Library of Scotland.
36 ‘3 pm at Duke of Windsor . . . very interesting and pleasant chat. Some cooperation should be considered later,’ Wenner-Gren diary, courtesy of Mark Hollingsworth. Cf. Ziegler, p. 455.
CHAPTER 5
The German Tour
On Monday 11 October, the couple arrived by train in Berlin at a station festooned with alternating Union Jacks and swastikas, to be met by Robert Ley, the head of the National Labour Front, the foreign minister Ribbentrop, and representing Britain, a lowly third secretary, Geoffrey Harrison – the British Ambassador, Sir Neville Henderson, had diplomatically taken a leave of absence, whilst his deputy Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes later visited the couple privately at their hotel.1
For all the protestations that this was a private fact-finding visit, it quickly became clear there were other agendas, quite apart from Nazi propaganda. The Windsors had two servants, Rudolph and Margot, assigned to them. Philip Attfield, their protection officer, who unknown to the servants spoke French and German, quickly discovered they were spies and searching the couple’s luggage. In turn, Attfield himself acted as a spy, reporting back to MI5 on visits to locations, such as Peenemünde, the rocket research station.
The Windsors’ first visit was to the stock machine works at Grunewald, an ultra-modern building for 3,000 workers with extensive gardens, a swimming pool and restaurant. After lunch in the canteen, they enjoyed a concert given for a thousand workers by the Berlin Labour Front Orchestra, with selections from Liszt and Wagner.2
The next day there was a visit to the headquarters of the National-Socialist Welfare Organisation, the Osram Electric Bulb Company factory, garden settlements for working men, and then a dinner given at Ley’s 37-room house in the Grunewald attended by Ribbentrop, Hess, Himmler and Goebbels. The visit appeared to confirm many of the German assumptions about the former king. Goebbels later wrote in his diary: ‘The duke is wonderful – a nice, sympathetic figure who is open and clear and with a healthy understanding of people . . . It’s a shame he is no longer king. With him we would have entered into an alliance.’3
In turn, Wallis wrote that Goebbels, ‘the club-footed master-mind of the Nazi propaganda mills, impressed me as the cleverest of the lot – a tiny, wispy gnome with an enormous skull. His wife was the prettiest woman I saw in Germany, a blonde, with enormous blue eyes and a flair for clothes. Seen together, they reminded me of Beauty and the Beast.’4
On 13 October, the Windsors visited the Pomeranian Training School of Hitler’s bodyguard, the elite SS Death’s Head or SS Totenkopf. Here the Duke was seen to give the Nazi salute – Dudley Forwood later described the gesture as ‘merely good manners’.5 After lunch there was an aerial inspection of a Nazi youth camp along the shores of the Baltic sea, whilst Wallis toured the former Imperial Palaces at Potsdam.
There were visits to Berlin’s museums on 14 October, then tea with Goering at his hunting lodge, Karinhall, forty miles north of Berlin, where he awaited his guests ‘with two rows of huntsmen behind him to play a fanfare on their hunting horns.’6
Wallis was amused how Goering, in an immaculate white uniform, medal ribbons emblazoned across his tunic, took pleasure in giving a tour of his home, showing off his Rembrandts, demonstrating some of the weight-lifting equipment in his well-equipped gymnasium – including an Elizabeth Arden massage machine in which he forced his generously proportioned body between one of the pairs of rollers – and the playroom provided for children of friends and relations with:
the most elaborate toy railway I have ever seen – yards and yards of intricately connected tracks, dozens of switches, coal tipples, charming little stations, and any number of locomotives and cars of different sorts. The Field-Marshall, kneeling down in his white uniform, showed us how it worked. The deftness with which he directed the trains up and down the tracks, opening and closing switches, blowing whistles, and averting collisions, suggested that he must have spent a good part of his time in the attic.7
Other ‘toys’ included a wire-controlled model plane that could drop wooden bombs. The Duke was shocked to see a wall map that showed Austria coloured in as already part of Germany.
There were visits to Essen, where they visited a coal mine, industrial works and garden settlements, and they concluded with a visit to the Krupps Armaments Factory. Another day was spent in Dusseldorf for an industrial exhibit, where they toured a miners’ hospital and a con
centration camp. Forwood later recalled, ‘We saw this enormous concrete building which, of course, I now know contained inmates. The duke asked, “What is that?” Our host replied, “It is where they store the cold meat.”’8
The tour was not enhanced by the antics of the boorish, drunken Ley, who was relieved of his duties halfway through the trip. Wallis later described him as ‘if not actually an alcoholic . . . a noisy, chronic drinker’.9 Partial to schnapps, which he sneaked throughout the day, ‘He had bright eyes, a florid complexion, and a squat, bear-like build. To my American eyes, he was a four-flusher.’10 Ley took particular pleasure in driving extremely fast. Wallis ‘was afraid of being blown out of the back seat’, whilst ‘all the while, above the roar of the wind, a radio blared out German tunes to which Dr Ley kept time by rolling his head from side to side.’11
Meanwhile the British Government kept a watching brief, not least on Charles Bedaux, who had arrived in Berlin two weeks before the Windsors’ visit. On 17 October, Ogilvie-Forbes reported to Eden:
I dined two nights ago privately with Prentiss Gilbert, the new Counsellor and at present Chargé d’Affaires at the United States Embassy . . . He raised the subject of the Duke of Windsor and of His Royal Highness’s intended visit to the United States . . . He also said that as a result of the approaches which Mr Bedaux had made to him, it was clear that this individual was ‘running’ HRH and probably paying his expenses for the tour outside Germany . . . Much of the above will I fear be painful reading, but you ought to know what has been going on here and that it would be as well to keep an eye on Mr Bedaux’s activities . . . This letter which I have typed myself will not be put in the Chancery archives.12
On 22 October, the couple arrived in Munich for the highlight of their trip – tea with Hitler at Berchtesgaden.13 A special train took them to Hitler’s mountain retreat seventy miles away. Arriving early, they were made to wait whilst the Fuhrer had his nap, but eventually the meeting began at 2.30 p.m. Though the Duke spoke German, Hitler insisted on using an interpreter, Paul Schmidt. Wallis was taken off by Eva Braun and Rudolf Hess, who talked to her about music, ‘which he loved’, whilst the detective Philip Attfield was left to his own devices, though always with a Gestapo man with him.14
Reporting the visit, the New York Times noted that ‘the Duchess was visibly impressed with the Fuhrer’s personality, and he apparently indicated that they had become fast friends by giving her an affectionate farewell. He took both their hands in his saying a long goodbye, after which he stiffened to a rigid Nazi salute that the Duke returned.’15
Wallis, always drawn to powerful men, later wrote of Hitler’s ‘pasty pallor, and under his moustache his lips were fixed in a kind of mirthless grimace . . . his eyes were truly extraordinary – intense, unblinking, magnetic.’16 Forwood was more direct. He remembered Hitler as ‘a funny little man sitting beside the Duke. He didn’t impress me as being a great person.’17
No record exists of what the Duke and Hitler talked about, though Paul Getty, later a friend of Windsor, was to muse, ‘It would not surprise me if one day a musty EYES ONLY file is fished out of some top security vault and new light is thrown on the episode.’18 The only ostensible drama of the visit, recounted by the Duke’s detective, Attfield, was when, ‘An English woman schoolteacher got through the guards. I caught her as she was about to embrace the Duke. She had followed the party for ten days.’19
The Windsors returned to Paris on 24 October. For all the concerns in British Government circles, their visit to Nazi Germany had made little impact. Nigel Law, who had been in Germany on business, reported his impression to the Foreign Office:
The visit of the Duke of Windsor seems to have made a bad impression. His entire journey and expenses were paid by the German Labour Front. He was always with Dr Ley, who is invariably drunk and is of second rate importance among the Nazis. He saw very little of the real leaders and spent but a short time with the Fuhrer. Even the bill for the manicure of his secretary was paid by Dr Ley and no tips were given at the Kaiserhoff where he stayed. Germans say he did not understand half of what he saw or what was said to him. The whole visit is described as lacking in dignity for one who has held such a great position.20
An equal embarrassment now arose – the visit to America. On 24 October, Bedaux, who was financing the trip, writing from the Paris Ritz, sent Lindsay the ‘first draft of the complete schedule of visits’.21
The visit would start in Washington on 11 November and finish in Los Angeles and San Francisco in mid-December. The Duke would see President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House; his wife, Eleanor, would personally show him the housing projects in which she was involved; the Duke would lay a wreath at Arlington Cemetery and broadcast to the nation. A private Pullman train had been hired to take them from the East to the West Coast and General Motors had put at their disposal a fleet of ninety of the latest Buicks.
Three days later, Bedaux and his wife, Fern, set sail for New York in preparation. Also aboard the Europa was Ernest Simpson, en route to marry Mary Raffray.
The Windsors prepared for their new trip, sending a seven-page memo to the staff of the Bremen, the German ship that would take them to New York, outlining their requirements. It included service in the Red Room, a separate dining room set aside for them on the Sun Deck, provision for a special English blend of tea, and a barrel of London drinking water. The memo informed chefs that the Duke liked plain food, steaks and cutlets and chicken for dinner, preferred French dressing without mustard, and only drank mineral water before cocktail time. He also enjoyed canapés of liver paste, Westphalian ham and rarebits. With dinner he liked claret, but not white wines or champagnes, and had an after-dinner brandy with his coffee.22
On 2 November, the day after the Bedauxs arrived in New York to finalise arrangements, Sumner Welles, the US Under-Secretary of State, reported his talks with the British Ambassador, Ronald Lindsay:
The Ambassador said rather significantly that there recently had been a widening of this sentiment of indignation because of the fact that the active supporters of the Duke of Windsor within England were those elements known to have inclinations towards fascist dictatorships and that the recent tour of Germany by the Duke of Windsor and his ostentatious reception by Hitler and his regime could only be construed as a willingness on the part of the Duke of Windsor to lend himself to these tendencies.23
Trouble was brewing. The media was already sceptical. London columnist Hannen Swaffer wrote, ‘It’s nothing but a publicity stunt. I travelled with the Duke when he was studying housing in Wales, and if he were there for fifty years he wouldn’t know anything more about it than he knows now.’24 Now the American unions, who were no fans of Bedaux’s industrial practices, responded. Ronald Lindsay reported to the Foreign Office:
Tone of the press and trend of opinion as regards Duke of Windsor’s tour has been growing even more unfavourable . . . Language about Duchess has been unfriendly. But most of all his prospects have been damaged by association with Bedaux, who is of course anathema to Labour. A culmination was reached today when a manifesto by Baltimore Federation of Labour was issued attacking the tour of the Duchess and especially of Bedaux and fascist tendencies displayed by circumstances of Duke’s recent visit to Germany.25
Organised Labour had long been critical of Bedaux and took their revenge. The American Federation of Labour and the Congress of Industrial Organization issued statements criticising his companies and their efficiency policies. The Union of New York Longshoremen announced they would picket Windsor’s ship and not unload any of his luggage. Shares in Bedaux’s American companies fell dramatically and his fellow directors forced him to stand down as president of American Bedaux Associates. A former lover, Louise Booth, presented him with a lawsuit of $250,000 and the Inland Revenue handed him a bill for $202,718.26
Bedaux, who took flight to Canada then Europe, realised the game was up and cabled the Duke, copying in the press, ‘Becau
se of the mistaken attack upon me here, I am convinced that your proposed tour will be difficult under my auspices . . . I respectfully . . . implore you to relieve me completely of all duties in connection with it.’27
The Duke now cancelled the trip. Lindsay’s brother, Lord Crawford, noted in his diary:
So the Duke of Windsor has cancelled his journey to America. Ronald told me he had put himself hopelessly in the wrong by starting his visit with a preliminary tour in Germany, where he was of course photographed fraternising with the Nazi, the Anti-Trade Unionist and the Jewbaiter. Poor little man. He has no sense of his own and no friends with any sense to advise him. I hope this will give him a sharp and salutary lesson.28
On 8 November, the Daily Herald editorial was clear. ‘The Duke of Windsor has now announced that he will in future consider himself “no longer a public figure”. That is a wise decision.’29
But suspicions remained about his ambitions. On 22 November, Robert Bruce Lockhart wrote in his diary, after talking to the diplomat Rex Leeper, ‘German view of Edward, Duke of Windsor. Germans still believe he will come back as social-equalising King, will inaugurate English form of Fascism and alliance with Germany.’30
A week later, Lindsay wrote to Alec Hardinge that, ‘In the greatest confidence I have been shown copies of two letters which were written by Bedaux in August and September about the tour of the Duke of Windsor which was then being planned.’31 The letters outlined that the Windsor trips were part of ‘a worldwide peace movement’, in which a manifesto would be issued ‘at some moment during the Duke’s tour in America. I am told that advance copies of this statement had been given to some newspaper editors, and that these are therefore still in their hands. I am sending a copy of this to Vansittart.’32
Then in December a further example of the Duke’s views was brought to the attention of the Government. William Tyrrell, staying with his successor as British ambassador to Paris, Sir Eric Phipps, at the end of 1937, was told that a member of the embassy staff had seen the text of an interview that Windsor had given a Daily Herald journalist:
Traitor King Page 5
