Traitor King

by Andrew Lownie

  The best that Churchill could come up with was Governor of Bermuda, marginally up the pecking order and a better climate, but further from the United States and, after three days consideration, the Duke refused.43 As Wallis wrote to her aunt, ‘I can’t see much point in island jumping. I’m for the big hop to a mainland.’44

  Through Halifax, the Duke now asked for Wallis’s letters to be exempt from postal censorship because of his diplomatic status, a request that was refused by the State Department. Adolf Berle wrote to Cordell Hull:

  Quite aside from the 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 Bedaux, now in prison under charges of trading with the enemy and possibly of treasonous 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.45

  Reports about the couple’s controversial views and associations had continued to be passed to the authorities. In October 1942, a letter from Gerald Selous, the trade commissioner in Vancouver, was forwarded to Sir John Stephenson at the Dominions Office, reporting that Baron Maurice de Rothschild, had ‘set various drawing-rooms of Vancouver “goggling” with his tales, amongst which that he saw much of the Windsors . . . that the Duke had told him they loathed Nassau, that they daily regretted having left the South of France, that he (the Duke) was on very friendly terms with Ribbentrop and Goering, and that he was sure the Germans would not have bothered them (the Windsors) at all.’46

  The following April, the First Secretary at the British embassy in Washington, Sir John Balfour, wrote to Oliver Harvey at the Foreign Office after Marcus Cheke, the First Secretary in Lisbon, minuted a meeting with a young Spaniard called Nava de Tajo.

  De Tajo had known the Duke pre-war and then met him again in the summer of 1940, and he had relayed the Duke’s views, which Balfour thought were ‘of interest as corroborating what one has heard on the subject from other sources’:47

  It was clear from the conversation of HRH that he expected the British Cabinet to resign in the near future, and to see the creation of a Labour Government which would enter into negotiation with Germany. He expected also that King George VI would abdicate, following a virtual revolution brought about by the fact that the ruling classes had utterly disgraced themselves and that he (the Duke of Windsor) would be summoned to return to England to occupy the throne. HRH also spoke of how England would become the leader of a coalition consisting of France, Spain and Portugal, while Germany would be free to march against Russia! . . . HRH said he thought the age of constitutional monarchy had passed, evidently believing that an age of fuehrers such as Petain, Franco and Salazar, had opened . . . He also expressed himself with some force about the present Queen of England, whom he termed ‘an ambitious woman’.48

  What of Charles Bedaux, last viewed abandoning the American tour for the Duke in November 1937? He had continued his activities, happy to do business with anyone who served his interests, but also suspected by all. In October 1940, he had gone to North Africa to work with the Vichy governor general, Maxime Weygand, on developing railways, power plants, and water and coal production. In return for his services, his confiscated Dutch companies had been returned.49

  A State Department official, who had met Katherine Rogers in Portugal in August 1941, reported that she had denounced Bedaux as a collaborator. An FBI memo noted:

  Mrs Rogers stated that she had definite information that Mr Bedaux was using his talents on behalf of the Germans in acquiring for the account of certain German individuals and for himself large properties in and about Paris, and that he travelled about without apparent restrictions, and with all indications that he was persona grata to the German occupying forces.50

  She had also reported that the Château de Candé had been the only building in the surrounding area not bombed by the Germans.

  Herman Rogers had also given a statement to the FBI, after a routine interview by the Bermuda censorship authorities, telling the British that Bedaux:

  had always held pro-Fascist views. At the time of the battle of France, he had personally welcomed the German General Staff to his house near Tours. He was now installed in an office in Paris in the Rue des Petits Champs, where he controlled a large German staff. The work of the office was to organise Jewish industries taken over by the Germans in France, and to see that the maximum production . . . was achieved.51

  Bedaux had been automatically arrested by the Germans after Pearl Harbor, but released after the intervention of Otto Abetz. Returning to North Africa, he began plans to build a pipeline across the Sahara carrying water and peanut oil. Later he had worked with the Germans to camouflage refineries at Abadan against Allied bombing.

  According to the December 1941 war diary of General von Lahousen, head of the Abwehr Division II, Bedaux demanded various conditions for his involvement in the Abadan refinery, including being given the rank of major-general in the Wehrmacht, and was described as an agent of the ‘First Magnitude’.52

  In September 1942, he had again been picked up – and imprisoned with his wife in Paris Zoo in a cage usually used by monkeys – but was released, after persuading General Otto von Stülpnagel, commander of German forces in Occupied France, that he could best serve the interests of the regime in French North Africa.

  In October 1942, Bedaux had arrived at the American consulate in Algiers and brazenly told the minister, Robert Murphy, he was on a mission on behalf of the German government. Shortly afterwards, he and his 33-year-old son were arrested by the French, on American orders. Two FBI agents were sent to interrogate him, but were killed when their plane crashed. Subsequently two more FBI agents were sent, though Algiers was outside their jurisdiction.53

  Hoover immediately wrote a confidential memo for his senior FBI staff, outlining the incriminating evidence that Bedaux carried linking him to the Germans, which included two German passports, a pad for sending coded messages, and instructions to spy on ‘military formation’, ‘armaments’, ‘troop movements’, and ‘the acquisition of military codes’.54

  ‘Bedaux has not only been pro-Nazi and pro-Fascist since the collapse of France, but was very much so in his sentiments for a number of years before Munich,’ an OSS Report stated. ‘His pro-Nazi sentiments can perhaps be described as those of a conscientious believer in Hitler’s “New Order” in Europe.’55

  The Duke’s old friend was in deep trouble, but it was a more recent friend, the richest man in the Bahamas, who was to bring his next problem.

  1 Churchill to COS Committee, 28 February 1942, CHAR 20/63, Churchill College Archives.

  2 844E 001/60, NARA.

  3 Monson memo, 12 May 1940, CO 23/712, TNA.

  4 Geoffrey Bocca, The Life and Death of Harry Oakes (Weidenfeld, 1959), p. 89.

  5 Cranborne to Churchill, 20 May 1942, CHAR 20/63, Churchill College Archives.

  6 Letter from Commander Perkins to US Naval Intelligence, Washington, 11 February 1942. NND 883021/SIS Intelligence Reports/29 November 1941–31 March 1942, NARA.

  7 Letter from Commander Perkins to US Naval Intelligence, Washington, 11 February 1942. NND 883021/SIS Intelligence Reports/29 November 1941–31 March 1942, NARA.

  8 Wallace B. Phillips to C.A. Perkins, 18 February 1942, NND 883021/SIS Intelligence Reports/29 November 1941–31 March 1942, NARA.

  9 Heart, p. 356.

  10 Heart, p. 356.

  11 Heart, p. 356. According to Peter Coats, the Duchess told him that after she wrote to Queen Mary, she received a reply with a brooch. ‘At the time of your marriage my heart was too full to think of wedding presents, but I hope that you will accept this now. It belonged to Cha
rles I.’ Peter Coats, Of Generals and Gardens (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), p. 273.

  12 George VI to Queen Mary, 5 May 1942, RA GV CC 13/12, quoted Ziegler, p. 487.

  13 The Duke to Churchill, 18 April 1942, CHAR 20/63, Churchill College Archives, and CO 967/125, TNA.

  14 Eden to Churchill, 14 May 1942, CHAR 20/63, Churchill College Archives, and FO954/33A/210, TNA.

  15 Smuts to Churchill, 25 May 1942, CHAR 20/63, Churchill College Archives.

  16 Knowledge Management Department, FCO to author, 11 November 2020.

  17 Duke of Windsor to Colonial Office, 6 June 1942, FO 371/30644, TNA.

  18 Nassau Tribune, 9 June 1942.

  19 Clifford Thornley report, 9 July 1942, FO 1093/24, TNA.

  20 Patrick Skene Catling, Better Than Working (Liberties Press, 2004), p. 1.

  21 Catling, p. 3.

  22 Catling, p. 4.

  23 Catling, p. 4.

  24 Catling, p. 5.

  25 Catling, p. 5.

  26 Queen Mary to the Duke of Windsor, 31 August 1942, RA DW Add 1/156, quoted Ziegler, p. 384.

  27 The Duke of Windsor to Queen Mary, 12 September 1942, RA GV EE 3, quoted Ziegler, p. 485, & RA QM/PRIV/CC9, quoted William Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (Macmillan, 2009), p. 552.

  28 The Duke of Windsor to Sibyl Colefax, 8 October 1942, Folio 6, MS Eng c3272, Colefax papers, Bodleian.

  29 Duchess of Windsor to Edith Lindsay, 30 August 1942, MHS, 1772, Windsor collection, Maryland Historical Society.

  30 Heart, p. 355.

  31 Greg King, The Duchess of Windsor (Aurum, 1999), p. 371, citing private information.

  32 New York Post, 5 June 1943.

  33 Bryan and Murphy, p. 443.

  34 Rosa Wood to Edith Lindsay, 25 October 1942, Ms 1772, Windsor Collection, Maryland Historical Society.

  35 James Owen, A Serpent in Eden: The Greatest Murder Mystery of All Time (Little, Brown, 2005), p. 62.

  36 Owen, p. 209.

  37 Pye, p. 56.

  38 Pye, p. 56.

  39 The Duke to Churchill, 10 November 1942, CHAR 20/63/84–93, Churchill College Archives.

  40 George VI to Churchill, 8 December 1942, CHAR 20/52/96–100, Churchill College Archives.

  41 CHAR 20/52/96–100, Churchill College Archives.

  42 Churchill to the Duke, 22 December 1942, CHAR 20/63/107, Churchill College Archives.

  43 The offer was made on 10 June 1943, CHAR 20/100/10, Churchill College Archives, and FO954/33A/213, TNA, and refused 13 June 1943, CHAR 20/100/15, Churchill College Archives.

  44 Michael Bloch, Secret File, p. 200.

  45 Adolf Berle to Cordell Hull, 18 June 1943, 811.711/4039, NARA.

  46 Gerald Selous to Ian Maclennan, 16 October 1942, CO 967/125, TNA. Maurice was a cousin of Eugene de Rothschild. He also claimed that the Duke had lobbied Roosevelt to request he be made Ambassador to Washington. See DO 127/42, TNA.

  47 John Balfour to Oliver Harvey, 3 April 1943, FO 954/33A/212, TNA.

  48 John Balfour to Oliver Harvey, 3 April 1943, FO 954/33A/212, TNA.

  49 More details, Higham, Trading with the Enemy, p. 184.

  50 Memo, 24 November 1941, FBI file 100-49901.

  51 FO 1093/23, TNA.

  52 December 1941, war diary of General von Lahousen, Hoover Institute.

  53 One of those killed was Percy Foxworth, who had previously reported on the Duke.

  54 Hoover to Tolson, Tamm and Ladd, 4 January 1943, FBI file 100-49901.

  55 15 January 1943, RG 226, OSS report, NARA. Bedaux died from an overdose on 18 February 1944 in Miami shortly before he was due to be indicted for Trading with the Enemy. Suspicions persist it was not self-administered. After the war the French Government awarded him a posthumous knighthood of the Légion d’honneur on the grounds he had worked against the Germans, but his MI5 file confounds this with extensive references to his espionage activities on behalf of the Germans, KV2/4412, TNA.

  CHAPTER 14

  Murder in Paradise

  On the morning of Thursday 8 July 1943, the bloodied corpse of Sir Harry Oakes was found in his bed at Westbourne, one of his homes on New Providence. He had four distinct triangular-shaped wounds by his left ear, he had been set alight, feathers from a pillow were scattered over the body and his genitals had been almost burnt off. Although he lay on his back, there was blood running across his face, suggesting he had been moved after the fatal blows. A set of false teeth still sat in a glass of water on the table next to the bed.

  He had been discovered at 7 a.m. by Harold Christie, who had dined with Oakes the previous night and unexpectedly stayed over because of a thunderstorm outside. Christie claimed at the subsequent trial that he had assumed Oakes was still alive, wiped his bloody face and given him a glass of water. Then realising his business partner was dead, he had made a series of phone calls: to Madeline Kelly, the wife of Oakes’s business manager, who lived in a cottage nearby; to his brother Frank; to Reggie Erskine-Lindop, the commissioner of the Bahamas Police, and finally to Government House.

  The Duke, who was woken by Gray Phillips and told the news just before 8 a.m., was shocked. Unsure what to do, the Duke immediately imposed a news blackout, but he was too late. Etienne Dupuch, the editor of the Nassau Gazette, had already been told and had begun filing the story. The question soon began to be asked: ‘What was there to hide?’

  The Duke then made a decision for which he was to be heavily criticised. Serious crime was rare on the islands and he later argued that he did not feel that the local police were sufficiently experienced to investigate.1 The obvious decision would have been to call on Scotland Yard or, if he felt that they were too far away, the FBI or even the local RAF base.

  Instead, after several hours of discussion with Wallis and Christie, at 10.30 a.m. he rang the head of the Miami City Police Homicide Department, Captain Edward Melchen, with whom he had had dealings on his American trips, saying he needed help ‘to tidy things up a bit’. Melchen, a veteran of over 500 murders in his almost twenty years with the force, immediately jumped on a plane, bringing with him Captain James Barker, the head of the fingerprint squad. By early afternoon, they were at Westbourne.

  The police investigation was flawed from the beginning. The house was not sealed and much of the evidence was disturbed by the numbers of people who had arrived when they heard news of the death. Amongst the first to arrive was a local doctor, Dr Hugh Quackenbush, who estimated death between 2.45 a.m. and 5.15 a.m., and he was soon joined by Major Herbert Pemberton, the deputy commissioner, and several detectives.

  The police quickly identified a suspect, Harry Oakes’s son-in-law, Count Alfred de Marigny. De Marigny, whose French title came from his mother, was a Mauritian playboy then in his early thirties. Twice-divorced, he had married the eldest of Oakes’s five children, Nancy, just over a year before and two days after her eighteenth birthday.

  Relations with Sir Harry were strained and de Marigny was felt to have a motive for killing Oakes. He had been near Westbourne at the time of the murder, the hairs on his arms were scorched by fire, and he was unable to produce the shirt and tie he had been wearing on the night of the murder.

  De Marigny owned a yacht, the Concubine, on which he won many races – and also smuggled goods. An FBI background check on de Marigny revealed ‘that the Bureau had conducted some investigation in the past of de Marigny during which some evidence was developed indicating that de Marigny had been engaged in the illicit traffic of drugs.’2

  There was no need for the Duke to become involved in the investigation, but on Friday 9 July he appeared at Westbourne and had a private twenty-minute conversation with Barker. No record of what was said was kept. Two hours later, de Marigny was arrested and charged with the murder of Sir Harry Oakes. If found guilty, he would hang.

  Murders were bad for tourism and a quick resolution to the crime was needed. De Marigny had few friends amongst the officials in the Bahamas and he was a convenient scapegoat. The Duke reporte
d immediately to the Colonial Office that the two Miami detectives had rendered ‘most valuable service by their relentless investigations, which have in a large measure resulted in the arrest of the accused.’3 What he had not said was that there was history between the Governor and de Marigny.

  De Marigny had no respect for the Governor and enjoyed taunting him – on one occasion inviting the English actress Madeleine Carroll, who was on the island filming Bahamas Passage, to dinner when the Duke hoped to entertain her, and on another offering to sell at an outrageous price some cognac that the Governor expected to be given free.

  In the past, the two men had also argued about the treatment of some prisoners who had escaped from Devil’s Island and a visa for de Marigny’s yachting coach. The final straw had been when the Duke refused be the guest of honour at a fundraising dinner for the dependants of Bahamian servicemen overseas with which de Marigny was involved.

  ‘We are endeavouring to keep as clear from this awful case as is possible,’ wrote the Duchess to her Aunt Bessie on 24 August:

  I am afraid there is a lot of dirt underneath and I think the natives are all protecting themselves from the exposure of business deals – strange drums of petrol, etc. – so one wonders how far it will all go. Most unpleasant as I do not think there is a big enough laundry anywhere to take Nassau’s dirty linen.4

  In mid-September 1943, the Windsors made their fourth visit to the United States, in spite of objections from the British ambassador Lord Halifax.5 They would be away until the end of November. Starting in Miami, they moved north, staying for three nights at the British embassy in Washington and then at a hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia, where a fellow guest was their old friend from Paris, the US ambassador William Bullitt.

  ‘The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were there the entire time, occupying rooms on the same floor, only three or four rooms from ours,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘He is quite small and dissipated looking. She looks like her pictures. I think she is a disgusting kind of person, and didn’t want to have anything to do with her or him either.’6