Life imitates Hitler parody…and reminds us of Windsor perfidy
Several years ago, I put up a Slogpost suggesting what Hello! might have written about Hitler’s life at the Berghof retreat had the magazine existed at the time. I’m hugely grateful for a sharp-eyed and persistent Slogger who has since proved that, not only did such a piece exist, it appeared in the November 1938 edition of Homes & Gardens…just after a glorious British Establishment had sold the Czechoslovaks down the Rhine to the Nazis.
You can find it here at a Guardian archives address. I hugely recommend you to read the content, which is beyond sycophantic and well into sick-making. As a University thesis student of British attitudes to the Hitler regime, however, I can tell you the piece wasn’t even remotely atypical. Homes and Gardens back then was a very upmarket publication, and both the British upper-middle class and aristocracy held a disturbingly high minority of pro-Nazi sympathisers.
There remains a great deal of intrigue surrounding events related to this syndrome during the period 1936-42, and a number of Cabinet documents which have still not been released. These do not so much cover as cover up several widely-believed (and in two cases, proven) realities:
1. Edward VIII was not just pro-Nazi after his abdication in 1936, he actively passed secrets to the German Abwehr (Military security wing). Churchill knew of this, and asked several friends of the ex-King to warn him of the consequences of being a traitor.
2. At a crucial point in 1940 – shortly after Dunkirk – Churchill faced a Cabinet rebellion from those who were still avowed appeasers, keen to sue for peace and do a deal with Hitler’s Germany. He only repulsed this by threatening to charge the rebels with treason…an approach for which he had All-Party support in the Commons.
3. The flight to Scotland by Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess in 1941 has been largely depicted by historians as the desperate move of a madman who was out of favour in Hitler’s circle. I have never accepted this convenient rationale: although often patronised by Hitler in private, Hess was still a highly influential figure in Nazi Party circles. In fact, there is much to suggest that (through foreign minister Ribbentrop among others) he had several valued and loyal contacts among the Scottish aristocracy.
The ‘lone flight of a nutter’ story was used by the British security services as a cloak to hide what was probably a well-reasoned attempt by Hess to have Germany align with Britain in the fight against Bolshevism. But MI5 was greatly aided in the establishment of a ‘nutter explanation’ by the fact that the man who turned up at the Nuremburg Trials under the name of Hess appeared to be mentally unbalanced. The Hess family, however, always retained doubts about whether the Spandau prisoner who died in 1987 was in fact their Rudolf.
4. It has become increasingly clear in recent years that von Ribbentrop communicated via intermediaries with the Duke of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII) throughout the latter’s time in the West Indies during the 1940-41 period, on at least one occasion making a direct offer to the former British King that he would be restored to the Throne under a Nazi occupation. German records confirming this are known to the British security services, and for obvious reasons have been suppressed.
It’s pretty obvious (I would suggest) that much of this cover-up is designed to protect former Prime Ministers – for example, the enthusiastic appeaser Alec Douglas-Hume – but above all, the British Royal family.
The current heir to the Throne Charles Windsor – another Prince of Wales – has just received a quid pro quo as a result of his uniquely close relationship with all three British security services. It gives his family a legal protection from press investigation greater than Adolf Hitler could ever have imagined.
From the humour of past history stems the entirely unamusing reality of today.
The Slog 