Historians believe the Duke of Windsor actively collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War
The late Duke of Windsor is perhaps most known for abdicating the throne in 1936, less than a year after being crowned King Edward VIII, to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson. But what happened afterward is where the true scandal lies.
In the documentary Edward VIII: Britain's Traitor King, experts unearth documents that suggest the duke's dealings with the Nazis during the Second World War were extensive — and that his actions were covered up by the British government after the war.
"Edward's motivation was a sense of rejection from England. I think he never really got over that," Anna Pasternak, author of The American Duchess: The Real Wallis Simpson, says in the film.
"Here is a former king that was exiled from Britain. There was so much hurt, rage, misunderstanding. That went into a lot of why and how he behaved. He was utterly selfish," she says. "As a lot of the documents might suggest, the duke was terrifyingly open to Germany and what he felt the Germans could offer him."
A thank you letter to Hitler
In 1937, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor set off on a tour of Germany, when the Nazi regime was in full control of the country.
"This would be all over the world — photographs of Wallis and Edward with Hitler," historian Jane Ridley says in the documentary. "This would be acutely embarrassing and unacceptable [to the royal family]."
In October of that year, the duke wrote a thank you letter to Hitler after spending time with him at his mountain retreat.
"It's written in German, but the translation reads, 'To the Führer and [Chancellor], the Duchess of Windsor and I would like to thank you sincerely. Our trip through Germany has made a great impression on us. Many thanks to you for the wonderful time that we had with you at the Obersalzberg," Andrew Lownie, author of Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor, says in the film.
"Having seen so much evidence for his treachery, this [letter] was probably one of the most sensitive documents that I found in my research, and it's an indication of just how close the duke was to Hitler," he says.
A public address that encouraged Britain to 'come to terms with Nazi Germany'
In May 1939, with Britain on the brink of war, the duke recorded a message to the British public from his office in France.
While the address was heard around the world, the BBC refused to air it and filed the tape away in its archives with a reference card that read, "IMPORTANT: Not to be broadcast."
"He said Britain should be doing all in its power to come to terms with Nazi Germany," says A.N. Wilson, author of Hitler: A Short Biography.
Listen to part of the broadcast:
"The BBC were furious, because they felt that the impartiality of the BBC would be infringed [by airing the tape] and they felt that the Nazis were using the Duke of Windsor for their own propaganda, which they were, of course," says Wilson.
Four months later, in September 1939, war broke out.
Secret police report details the duke's relationship with purported pro-Nazi banker
As the war went on, millions of people suffered. "Rationing had come in, people were hungry, people were terrified out of their wits, and they had to keep going in very, very grim circumstances," Wilson says in the film. "Not so [for] the Duke and Duchess of Windsor."
Hitler and the Third Reich had arranged safe passage for the couple, he says, from their residence in France down into the Iberian Peninsula, through Spain and into Portugal.
"We all knew all these rumours about the Duke of Windsor and his sympathies to Hitler and Germany," says Portuguese journalist Paulo Anunciação. "But nobody really established the facts of what really was going on."
In the documentary, Anunciação visits the Portuguese national archives, where he finds a secret police report that details what the duke and duchess did during their stay in Lisbon and Cascais, Portugal.
"The Duke of Windsor and the Duchess were taken to this mansion in Cascais. The host for this [was a] very glamorous and well connected and sophisticated person: Ricardo Espírito Santo," he says. According to the report, they stayed in a suite of rooms on the first floor overlooking the Atlantic and had at least 12 servants.
"During my trips to the national archives, I found out the true connections between Espírito Santo and the Nazi Germany," says Anunciação. "He became president of this small family bank that was founded in 1920, but during the war, the Bank of Espírito Santo just became the biggest bank in the country."
Lownie says British intelligence reports claimed Espírito Santo dealt in stolen goods and that he "in effect, acted as banker to the Nazis."
Espírito Santo also passed information back to the German minister in Portugal, Lownie says in the film. "His job [was] to write reports on the Duke of Windsor."
Captured documents suggest the duke encouraged the Germans to bomb Britain
In the closing days of the Second World War, the Allies found a trove of German files buried in the forests of Germany, including approximately 60 documents that appeared to contain correspondence between agents working around the Duke of Windsor and Nazi Germany. The collection is now known as the Marburg files.
"[The documents] were supposed to be destroyed at the end of the war. They were of communications between the foreign ministry in Berlin and German secret service agents, and it gives us literally a day-by-day account of the duke's involvement with the Nazi regime," says Lownie in the documentary.
Included in the Marburg files was a top-secret cable from the German ambassador in Lisbon to Berlin that read:
[The Duke of Windsor] is convinced that if he had remained on the throne, war would have been avoided, and he characterizes himself as a firm supporter of a peaceful arrangement with Germany. The Duke definitely believes that continued severe bombing would make England ready for peace.
"Here is the former king of Great Britain saying that if you bomb Britain, bomb his family, bomb his country, that that's the best way to bring them to sue for peace. He's quite prepared to go to those lengths in order to achieve his aims. It's chilling and sinister. And it's frankly very shocking," says Lownie.
"He was so disloyal to his brother that he was calling for the bombing of Britain as a way of subjugating them."
On Sept. 13, 1940, the Germans attacked London: the Luftwaffe flew down The Mall and bombed Buckingham Palace.
'This whole episode is completely extinguished from the record'
After the war, rumours started to circulate about the captured German documents.
When they were finally published in 1957, Her Majesty's Stationery Office released a statement. It read, in part:
The Duke was subjected to heavy pressure from many quarters to stay in Europe, where the Germans hoped that he would exert influence against the policy of His Majesty's government.
His Royal Highness never wavered in his loyalty to the British cause … The German records are necessarily a much tainted source. The only firm evidence which they provide is of what the Germans were trying to do in the matter, and of how completely they failed to do it.
"To pretend that the Germans were trying to trick him and he didn't realize is frankly ridiculous," Lownie says in the documentary.
According to the historian, Winston Churchill then colluded with the duke and others to kill the story.
"This whole episode is completely extinguished from the record," says Lownie. "This is just another classic example of our history being censored."
The Duke of Windsor spent 35 years in exile. He never lived in Britain again.
"He never did come back to this country," Sara Morrison, a family friend of the duke, says in the film.
"And therein maybe lies the whole truth."
