Previously unheard tape from BBC Archives reveals Duke of Windsor wanted Britain to appease Hitler
The tape was labelled 'IMPORTANT: Not to be broadcast'
The BBC Sound Archive reference card reads, "IMPORTANT: Not to be broadcast."
The tape contains a 1939 message from the late Duke of Windsor — the former King Edward VIII, who had abdicated the throne in 1936 — urging the British to appease Hitler just months before the beginning of the Second World War.
"He said Britain should be doing all in its power to come to terms with Nazi Germany," says writer A.N. Wilson in the documentary Edward VIII: Britain's Traitor King.
Using documents unearthed by historians, the film suggests Britain's former king was complicit in a plan to reinstall himself as monarch in the event of Nazi victory.
Andrew Lownie, author of Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor and a consultant on the documentary, calls the recording "extraordinary" evidence.
"The context is so damaging because by May 1939, we were determined to fight Hitler. We couldn't appease him," he says.
While the duke's address was heard around the world, the BBC never broadcast the recording in Britain and filed it away. It is played publicly for the first time in the film.
"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.
Lownie says his research also suggests that the duke passed information to German agents during the Second World War, undermining Britain's war effort and putting the country's soldiers in real danger.
"This is a man who will stop at nothing to usurp the throne," he says.
Featuring home movies filmed after the war, archival materials, and interviews with experts and personal friends, Edward VIII: Britain's Traitor King presents the case that the Duke of Windsor wasn't just sympathizing with the enemy — he was actively collaborating with them.
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