Last month’s Channel 5 documentary about Edward VIII sought to portray him as an isolated figure. But support for Hitler and the Nazis was widespread among the British ruling class during the 1930s.
Channel 5’s documentary (Britain’s Nazi King Revealed, July 16th) on Edward VIII’s Nazi links was based on newly declassified FBI files. The playboy prince was roundly condemned by the programme’s voiceover, and Wallace Simpson, the twice divorced American he married, was depicted as a convenient pretext for forcing him into abdicating when, we were told, the real reason had been deep establishment suspicion of his pro-German views. The programme clearly wanted to present the British elite as having been anti-fascist from the start. That this was not so, that the British establishment was extremely forgiving towards Edward and deeply sympathetic to fascism, was airbrushed out of the story.
The facts presented were nonetheless remarkable. Simpson had been the lover of German Ambassador von Ribbentrop, (who went on to become Hitler’s foreign minister); and as Prince of Wales, heir to the throne, Edward was earmarked by Hitler as a potential puppet king after the Nazi victory. (more...)
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