The King Who Had to Go
Page 37
The following morning, the ex-King was deposited on the quayside at Boulogne under the protection of squads of Garde Mobile riot police, who kept journalists and rubberneckers at a respectable distance. He paced the quay with Slipper whilst the private railway carriage, which was to take him into temporary exile in Austria, was prepared for him. Up to almost the last moment he had been fixated on the idea of going to the Dolder Grand in Zurich, the destination of the aborted flight on the previous Sunday morning, but Mrs Simpson had spotted the obvious drawbacks of staying in a hotel, and she had arranged for him to stay with her friend Kitty de Rothschild at her house at Enzesfeld near Vienna.37
NOTES
1. Monckton narrative, author’s calculation
2. Hansard, 10 December
3. A King’s Story, p. 407
4. A King’s Story, p. 406
5. A King’s Story, p. 407
6. NA PREM 1/455, undated note on Fort Belvedere paper
7. Monckton narrative
8. NA CAB 21/4100/2, memorandum, 10 December
9. NA CAB 21/4100/2, memorandum, 10 December, manuscript postscript
10. Monckton narrative
11. BBK G/6/23
12. Brooks journal, 10 December
13. Baldwin to Lang, 14 December quoted in Williamson & Baldwin, Baldwin Papers, pp 415f
14. The Times, 14 December
15. Thomas Jones diary quoted in Williamson & Baldwin, Baldwin Papers, p. 388 NA CAB 127/157, Dugdale memorandum, n.d.
16. Ziegler, Edward VIII, p. 327
17. Ziegler, Edward VIII, p. 326
18. Ziegler, Edward VIII, p. 326, author’s estimate
19. Peacock narrative
20. George VI abdication narrative quoted in Wheeler-Bennett, King George VI, p. 287
21. A King’s Story, p. 407
22. Boothby papers, Churchill to Boothby, 11 December
23. Alexander to Morshead, 10 March 1942, quoted in Ziegler, Edward VIII, p. 327
24. Monckton narrative
25. Ziegler, Edward VIII, p. 333
26. A King’s Story, p. 408
27. Windham Baldwin papers, 3/3/8(iii), notes on lunch with Monckton, 27 August 1950
28. A King’s Story, p. 412
29. Rhodes-James, Victor Cazalet, p. 190
30. Reith diaries, 12 December
31. Templewood, Nine Troubled Years, p. 222
32. Boca, She Might Have Been Queen p. 140; The Windsor Story, p. 287
33. Shaughnessy, Both Ends of the Candle, p. 45
34. Shaughnessy, Both Ends of the Candle, p. 45
35. Shaughnessy, Both Ends of the Candle, p. 45; Templewood papers, IX/7, Howe to C-in-C Portsmouth, 13 December
36. A King’s Story, p. 409
* A hard-nosed and manipulative character from Dickens’s Dombey and Son
CHAPTER 21
A COURT OF HER OWN
* * *
The Prime Minister not being available, I think I should refer through you again to the point I made on Mrs. Simpson’s ‘plans’ for the future. It is clear to me that it is her intention not only to come back here (aided by what she expects to be a generous provision from public funds) to set up a ‘Court’ of her own and – there can be little doubt – to do her best to make things uncomfortable for the new occupant of the Throne.
SIR HORACE WILSON TO NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN, 10 DECEMBER 19361
KING EDWARD VIII had barely disappeared as a threat to public order and constitutional stability when Sir Horace Wilson began to confront the next danger or, at least, what he saw as the next danger. He was driven by a blood-chilling picture of Mrs Simpson as an utterly unscrupulous adventuress bent on taking over the country in alliance with Nazi Germany. Wilson’s vividly expressed concerns provide one of the central planks in the image of Mrs Simpson as a Nazi sympathiser, if not downright agent, which still endures. One of its leading advocates has been the American writer Charles Higham, who also holds the crown (against stiff competition) for an almost entirely imaginary and garbled description of Wilson’s functions: ‘special adviser to the king and diplomatic liaison between various conflicting political groups including the Labour party, the British Union of Fascists, the Anglo-German fellowship, the Link and even the communists…’2
Everyone closely involved in the affair had been under great strain and none for longer than Wilson. Wilson had borne much of the pressure of handling the government end of the crisis since Baldwin left on his restcure in the summer, and the strain was showing. The lightning rod for his growing paranoia was Mrs Simpson. She, rather than the King, was the focus of his worry, and he saw her evil intentions as the source of problems past and yet to come. To some extent he was merely echoing the Prime Minister’s own intense dislike of her, but he went far further in detecting an actual threat. On the morning of the abdication he spoke to Sir John Reith, who described him as ‘suffering from violent emotion which prevented him from being as coherent as he could wish. The woman he said had been allowed to “get away with it” in a degree which ought to have been prevented.’3 That evening, Wilson shared his fears with Neville Chamberlain. Even Chamberlain, who had been Wilson’s faithful ally in the hardliner camp since the early autumn, recognised that his judgement was not entirely reliable by then: ‘He is much strained and tired by all he has been through and is perhaps a little over obsessed with plans of mischief Mrs. Simpson may yet work.’4 Wilson was not merely letting off steam with Chamberlain. He wanted urgent action and supported his case with a letter setting out the threats in detail.
The Prime Minister not being available, I think I should refer through you again to the point I made as to Mrs Simpson’s ‘plans’ for the future. It is clear to me that it is her intention not only to come back here but (aided by what she expects to be a generous provision from public funds) to set up a ‘Court’ of her own and – there can be little doubt – do her best to make things uncomfortable for the new occupant of the Throne. It must not be assumed that she has abandoned hope of becoming Queen of England. It is known that she has limitless ambition, including a desire to interfere in politics: she has been in touch with the Nazi movement and has definite ideas as to dictatorship.
The essentials for her plans are (a) that she secures her divorce and (b) that she is provided with a sufficient income.
As regards (a), about which she is very anxious, it is unnecessary for me to say anything. As regards (b) we have some means, at least, of saving the country from grave future trouble.5
It is clear from the last paragraph that Wilson wanted the government to take active measures to thwart Mrs Simpson because of the threat she posed to national stability.
Wilson was obviously in a mood to exaggerate the danger, but his fears should not be dismissed out of hand. He was at the centre of the government’s various intelligence operations against Mrs Simpson and the King, as well as having a prime seat at 10 Downing Street, so the letter was written with access to the best information available to the government. The phone taps on the line between Fort Belvedere and Villa Lou Viei would have reported what the King and Mrs Simpson were saying to each other until the Friday, and it almost certainly included remarks that would have given Wilson a starting point for his assessment of her plans. Wilson’s vision of Mrs Simpson’s ‘court’ is supported – albeit in unspecific terms – by what the Duke of Windsor said to a former courtier who visited him in Austria a couple of weeks after the abdication and found him brooding on how he could rebuild her standing in Britain:
He [Piers Legh] had asked the Duke how he proposed to occupy his time after the marriage, and the Duke had replied that his first object would be to re-establish his wife in the position which had been contemplated, (whatever that may mean).6
The fact that neither Legh nor Simon, to whom he reported the remark, could make out exactly what the Duke meant does not mean that it should be ignored. It obviously made enough of an impression on Legh for him to repeat it. The Duke was acutely sensi
tive to his future wife’s status, so he may well have begun to discuss how it might be restored in the course of one of the phone conversations with Mrs Simpson. In a similar vein, everyone in earshot at Fort Belvedere knew that Mrs Simpson was nagging the King to stand up for his rights. Her hazy grasp on the British constitution exaggerated what these rights amounted to. She also insisted that the Duke of Windsor should get as much money as possible. It would not have required any sinister motive for Mrs Simpson to worry about whether her divorce would go through. This was just another unknown in a confusing and oppressive sea of doubts. The reference to Mrs Simpson and Nazism could be explained by Vansittart’s panicky fears at the start of the reign. The only part of Wilson’s reading of Mrs Simpson’s intentions and concerns for which there is no evidence elsewhere is his belief that Mrs Simpson was determined to become Queen. Otherwise, his letter to Chamberlain is founded in fact.
The phone taps were not the only source of intelligence, and it is striking that Wilson’s fears of Mrs Simpson’s plans should be so strong only a couple of days after an MI5 report that was savagely critical of Mrs Simpson, focusing on her greed and her relationship with the King, although it did not appear to discuss what her goals were.
From very private information it is evident that she is an entirely unscrupulous woman who is not in love with the K. but is exploiting him for her own purposes. She has already ruined him in money regards and it is thought that she can be squared when she realises that she has lost the game.7
Judging whether Wilson was right to see severe danger in Mrs Simpson is a classic question of analysing the intelligence dimension of any episode, assessing the accuracy of the information on which he was working. MI5’s information came from somewhere in the King’s entourage and the fact that material on her was still flowing after Mrs Simpson’s departure to France gives a clue as to the source. Many if not all the earlier reports seem to recycle comments made directly by the King, but this could not include the last one. With the King in almost total isolation at Fort Belvedere and Mrs Simpson at Cannes, one individual stands out as a potential source. The King was in regular contact with his friend Bernard Rickatson-Hatt throughout the crisis, which marks him as a possible MI5 source for the early material.8 In particular, Rickatson-Hatt might have been the source for one of the most influential mistakes in the MI5 reports. He believed that Churchill was the true author of the morganatic scheme, almost certainly because the King told him so. By chance, Rickatson-Hatt confirmed the story indirectly to Downing Street through a friendly German journalist.9 The jaundiced view of Mrs Simpson in the final MI5 report could easily have come from Rickatson-Hatt’s other friend, Ernest Simpson, who, it will be remembered, had been trying to sabotage their divorce earlier in the week. The speed with which the MI5 operation against the King came on stream with information in October suggests that it was exploiting an existing contact, and there are circumstantial grounds for suspecting Rickatson-Hatt on this score.
Rickatson-Hatt’s background marks him as the kind of man who might have acted as an MI5 informant. After serving alongside Ernest Simpson in the Coldstream Guards during the First World War, Rickatson-Hatt had gone on to serve in Turkey during the confused phase of Allied attempts to occupy parts of the former Ottoman Empire. Initially despatched there on the depressing duty of graves registration, he had risen to command the British detachment of the Allied Police Commission.10 His story then reads like something from one of Eric Ambler’s novels of seedy intrigue in the Balkans. He helped confiscate a large sum of money from an Armenian clerk, who had been denounced by his business rivals, which various British authorities spent much effort in trying to recover from him over the succeeding years, together with supposed overpayments in his salary.11 He found it convenient to plead that his absence in the Balkans and Caucasus on ‘special work’ had disrupted his attention to administrative matters, and thereafter added intelligence work to his curriculum vitae.12 He moved on to a civilian career with the Reuters news agency, where he rose to the rank of chief correspondent, as the right-hand man of the agency’s head, the autocratic Sir Roderick Jones. Reuters has long had close links with British intelligence. There is a clear indication that Rickatson-Hatt was the object of very high-level government interest when the Bank of England wanted to hire him for a senior job in 1941. The job had to be cleared with Major Desmond Morton, Churchill’s intelligence adviser, who in turn had to obtain approval from the Foreign Office, MI5 and Walter Monckton, who was then running British propaganda activities.13 Rickatson-Hatt’s post-Reuters career has given rise to the suspicion that he was the beneficiary of ‘people in high places looking after a friend’.14 It is questionable whether the Bank of England needed someone at a senior level whose only demonstrable expertise was in journalism, especially as Rickatson-Hatt himself insisted that he was not the Bank’s press officer.15 Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, who hired him, had been a key ally of Sir Horace Wilson in pursuing Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement via back channels to Germany. When he retired from the Bank of England, Rickatson-Hatt slipped into a senior post at the Bank of London and South America.
Rickatson-Hatt’s relationship with the King was sufficiently prominent for it to attract outside interest. When he died in 1966, the auction catalogue of his effects included ‘Simpson divorce case papers’, which featured correspondence between the two.16 The letters were available for inspection in advance of the sale and contained references to managing newspaper publicity. They were withdrawn from sale and have never resurfaced, which suggests that a well-funded organisation or individual with an interest in keeping their contents private made the executors a high enough offer.
Britain’s established intelligence operation against the German Embassy was keeping MI5 well informed of what was going on there in the final days of the crisis. Telephone conversations with Germany were also vulnerable because the Embassy trusted an early form of phone-scrambling, which the British were able to defeat.17 The German Embassy was one of a number targeted by Section X of MI6, operating in close collaboration with MI5.18 Von Ribbentrop’s delusional view of Edward VIII had been one of the cornerstones on which he had built his plans for the conduct of the Embassy when he agreed to take it in the spring, but he had remained in Berlin until the autumn and did not arrive in London until the crisis was well under way. Hitler and von Ribbentrop were both fully persuaded of this nonsense, but at this remove it is difficult to understand fully the dynamics. Most likely the original idea came from von Ribbentrop and was enthusiastically taken up by Hitler, compelling von Ribbentrop to keep his faith in it long after it was exposed as an illusion. They focused almost exclusively on the King and there was little mention of Mrs Simpson. Von Ribbentrop’s only recorded perceptive comment on the affair was to recognise the social snobbery that fed dislike of her, although she would probably have quibbled with his description of her as ‘a girl of the people’.19 Von Ribbentrop’s wildest miscalculation was his confidence that the King would overcome Baldwin, that he was the ‘certain winner’.20 He attempted to send a message to the King assuring him of German support via a friendly peer, but fortunately it does not seem to have arrived.21 The German press was instructed not to report the affair so as not to upset the King.
Von Ribbentrop was taken quite unawares when his assessment of the situation was proven to be inaccurate and was left struggling to rescue his credibility with Hitler. The Downing Street press officer George Steward had tipped off his German contacts in advance that abdication was imminent, but when this was passed on to von Ribbentrop he rather went into denial.22 Having nourished Hitler’s delusion that an Anglo-German rapport could be built on Edward’s supposed friendship, he was loath to admit his error. When he did eventually telephone Hitler with a softened version of the story that the crisis was brewing, Hitler accused him of letting himself be taken in by a provocation staged as part of an anti-German intrigue. Almost to the end, von Ribbentrop clung to his
delusion that Edward represented a significant force in British politics, imagining a violent struggle which would culminate in his restoration to the throne and Baldwin’s overthrow. He shared this twaddle with J. C. C. Davidson over lunch on the day of the abdication. Von Ribbentrop announced that he had expected gunfire in the streets as the King’s partisans fought back. ‘Indeed, he said he had been extremely nervous at coming out to lunch on a day like this! He talked more nonsense than I have ever heard from anybody in a responsible position of the level of Ambassador.’23 To cover up his error to Hitler, von Ribbentrop fell back on the stock reaction of fascism and blamed the abdication on sinister Bolshevist forces, who had been set in motion when the then Prince of Wales spoke in favour of friendship with Germany.24 He gave strict instructions that no one else at the Embassy was to report to the German ministry of foreign affairs on the topic and told Hitler that Edward VIII had been forced to abdicate by Baldwin because he would not fall in with an anti-German policy.25 Ever after Hitler remained convinced that it was the British Legion speech in 1935 which sealed Edward’s fate, although he thought that it had been delivered in Berlin.26 He also believed that Mrs Simpson would have become a good Queen.27 The professional diplomats at the Embassy could only echo J. C. C. Davidson’s verdict on von Ribbentrop’s thinking, and their complaint was reported to MI5: ‘We are absolutely powerless in the face of this nonsense.’28 Edward VIII was a tool of Nazi Germany only in von Ribbentrop’s fantasies, and the British were fully aware of this.