Nazi Princess (19 page)

When he was told what was planned for him and his wife, Edward again played for time, making further selfish demands. He insisted that his former servants should be released from duties in the armed services to accompany him to the Bahamas, and that en route he and Wallis should be allowed to visit New York. Churchill had other more pressing worries and was reluctant to negotiate conditions. He did, however, agree to sanction the discharge from the forces of two of Edward’s old servants, but adamantly refused to allow the Windsors to stop off in the United States. He was worried the duke would make more ill-considered and unhelpful public comments in America at a sensitive time for Anglo-American relations, when Britain crucially needed America’s assistance in the war.

Edward and Wallis’ departure was still not certain. The Germans, through their agents in Lisbon, tried to convince the duke that the British secret service had plans to assassinate him on the voyage to the Bahamas, and that he would be much safer under their protection in Spain. Offers of luxurious accommodation were made if the Windsors would remain in Europe. Arrangements were even put in hand to bribe the duke with 50 million Swiss francs if he was prepared to give some official gesture disassociating himself from the British Crown and the British government.
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Schellenberg considered removing the Windsors from Portugal and taking them to Spain by force, but British agents and Churchill back in England successfully outmanoeuvred the German plot – although it took a trip to Lisbon by Sir Walter Monckton, former lawyer, close adviser to Edward and now a government minister, to persuade the duke and his wife to take up the governorship of the Bahamas and leave Portugal. Whatever the arguments and threats that were deployed, much to the relief of Churchill and the new king, Edward and Wallis eventually set sail for the Bahamas on 1 August.

There is no way of knowing if Edward would have committed treason by co-operating with the Nazis had an opportunity arisen for his return to the throne following a German invasion of Britain. He was certainly put under severe pressure by the Germans to do so. The considered view of his biographer, Philip Ziegler, was: ‘there seems little doubt that he [Edward] did think Britain was likely to lose the war and that, in such a case, he believed he might have a role to play’. But Ziegler concluded that in the event of a German victory in the early 1940s, ‘the Duke’s belief in the British meant he could not have allowed himself to rule by favour of the Germans over a sullen and resentful people’.
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That may well be true, but it is certain Churchill had grave fears and was far from confident what Edward’s actions would be. Many Nazi agents, orchestrated by Ribbentrop and including Princess Stephanie, had worked hard for an outcome favourable to the Nazis, and Edward and Wallis under German control would have been the propaganda coup that could have changed the course of war.

In his book
Operation Willi
, Michael Bloch wrote:

The Duke unwittingly encouraged Hitler’s hopes and illusions concerning him in a remarkable degree; and his presence in Europe, while it lasted, appears to have had a tantalizing effect on Nazi policy. The consequences may possibly have been fateful. Throughout that July, Hitler hesitated to order the attack on Great Britain – Operation Sealion – thus giving the British a chance to regroup their forces and survive. Were Hitler’s hopes that the Duke could be persuaded to go along with the plan to restore him as king one of the principal causes of Hitler’s hesitation? What one can say for certain is that it was not until August 1st – the day that the Duke finally sailed from Europe – that the Führer issued his Directive No. 17 ordering the Luftwaffe ‘to overcome the English Air Force with all means at its disposal and in the shortest possible time’; and it was not until August 2nd that Ribbentrop ordered Eberhard von Stohrer [German ambassador to Spain] to work for Spain’s early entry into the war.
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Ribbentrop, of course, failed in that ambition, too.

Edward and Wallis remained in the Bahamas until April 1945. From the governor general’s residence the duke maintained contact with Charles Bedaux until 1943, when Bedaux was arrested in North Africa where he was supervising the construction of a German pipeline. He was taken back to the United States on a charge of treason and committed suicide in February 1944 while in prison in Miami, awaiting a grand jury investigation into his wartime activities.

The duchess compared her and her husband’s enforced stay on the remote British territory to Napoleon’s incarceration on Elba. But Edward’s appointment as governor general did not stop his flirtation with Nazi Germany. In December 1940, as Britain battled against Hitler’s war machine alone and in isolation, an American journalist with close connections to President Roosevelt received an unexpected invitation to the Bahamas. He was invited to conduct a rare interview with the island’s governor. Edward was still an officer in the British Army, both as a result of his royal appointments and his war service in France with the British Expeditionary Force. He might have been expected to fly the flag for his embattled former kingdom. Yet he gave Fulton Oursler of the magazine
Liberty
an amazing eulogy to Hitler. The former British monarch told the journalist it would be tragic for the world if the Nazi dictator was overthrown; Hitler was the right man at the right time and the logical leader of the German people. Edward argued for a negotiated peace with Germany. ‘It cannot be another Versailles. Whatever the outcome a new order is going to come into the world … it will be buttressed by police power. When the peace comes this time there is going to be a new order of social justice – don’t make any mistake about that.’
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As Oursler tried to take in the enormity of what he was hearing, the duke asked him: ‘Do you suppose your President would consider intervening as a mediator when and if the proper moment arrives?’ The American understood he was being asked to carry a message to the President, but he was unsure of the exact terms. As he was leaving the governor general’s residence, the duke’s aide-de-camp spelt it out. He instructed Oursler to tell the President that if he would make an offer for intervention for peace, before anyone in England could oppose it, the duke would instantly issue a statement supporting the move. It would start a revolution in England and, the duke hoped, lead to peace.

Roosevelt would have nothing to do with the duke’s treacherous scheme. He had already placed Edward and Wallis under FBI surveillance. FBI papers, declassified in 2009, show just how scathing the American authorities’ assessment of the duke and duchess was. ‘The British government were anxious to get rid of the Duke of Windsor, first and foremost because of his fondness for the Nazi ideology,’ the 227-page report concludes. ‘The duchess’ political views are deemed so obnoxious to the British Government that they refused to permit Edward to marry her and maintain the throne.’
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The FBI was instructed by the President to tail the Windsors discreetly whenever they made short visits to the United States during their sojourn in the Bahamas. A further FBI report, this time to the FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover, stated:

An agent has established conclusively that the Duchess of Windsor has recently been in touch with Joachim von Ribbentrop and was maintaining constant contact and communication with him. Because of their high official position the Duchess was obtaining a variety of information concerning the British and French official activities that she was passing on to the Germans.
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Churchill was predictably furious at the
Liberty
article. It threatened to scupper the Prime Minister’s plan to bring the United States into the war with all the military power at its disposal. He sent a strongly worded cable to Edward in which he said the former king’s words would be interpreted as defeatist and pro-Nazi, and by implication approving the isolationist aim to keep America out of the war.

In Berlin, Hitler’s propaganda chief Goebbels noted in his diary: ‘The Duke of Windsor has given an interview to a magazine in the USA in which he pretty frankly disclaims all chance of a British victory. We decide not to use it for the present, so as to avoid suffocating this tender seedling of reason.’ The following day he noted that the duke’s interview had been published in the Italian press, and he added significantly: ‘We shall not use it so as to avoid discrediting him.’
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In May 1941 Hoover sent a message to President Roosevelt in which he said information had arrived at his office suggesting that the Duke of Windsor had entered into an agreement to the effect that if Germany was victorious, Hermann Goering would seek to overthrow Hitler and install the duke as king. Hoover claimed that this information had come from Allen McIntosh, a personal friend of the duke’s.
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During the 1930s Princess Stephanie undertook several trips to America. As she had done in Europe and in England, she set about making contacts with high-level, wealthy individuals; cultivating friendships wherever she detected the possibility of influence, whatever the sphere, be it industry, the arts or politics. Her contacts included Cathleen Vanderbilt and her stockbroker husband Harry Cushing Jnr; the composer Cole Porter; the art collector John Hay Whitney; and the industrialist Walter P. Chrysler. She was assiduously building a network of powerful acquaintances.

Some of these contacts, particularly those involved in industry and finance, appear in lists of members of the so-called Fraternity, the name Charles Higham, in his book
Trading with the Enemy
, gives to a loosely linked group of Americans whose companies, he alleged, continued commercial and financial relations with Germany even after America entered the war. While aiding the US war effort, they also aided Nazi Germany. It is claimed in 1942, for instance, Standard Oil was shipping fuel to Germany via neutral Switzerland. The Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris was doing millions of dollars’ worth of business with Germany – although the bank’s head office in Manhattan must have been fully aware this was happening. Ford trucks were being built for German occupation forces in France, as Ford headquarters in Michigan must have known. ITT, the American communications conglomerate, was helping Germany with communications systems and working on remote control devices for V1 and V2 weapons through subsidiaries in neutral countries. They were also assisting Germany to build Focke-Wulf aircraft. Ball bearings, crucial to German war production, were being shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America. At the time of Pearl Harbor, the size of the United States industrial investment in Germany totalled nearly $500 million. Many prominent American companies allowed their German subsidiaries to remain in holding companies in Nazi Germany, operating profitably, but with the profits accumulating there until the end of the war.
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In 1937 Stephanie persuaded Wiedemann to join her on a trip across the Atlantic. Hitler gave permission for his adjutant to accompany her and a cable from the American ambassador to Berlin, William Dodd, made it clear to the State Department that, as far as he was concerned, Wiedemann’s intention was to discuss political matters with his colleagues at the German Embassy in Washington. The costs of the trip, including the tickets for the princess and her personal maid, were paid for out of the special fund Hitler had put at Wiedemann’s disposal to underwrite Stephanie’s expenses. The princess’ maid, Wally Oeler, had been recruited for her by Wiedemann. She had been in service working for a prominent German family in Berlin. Wiedemann had no difficulty in arranging a permit for her to leave Germany. She was a bright and intelligent young woman. Some suspected she was a Gestapo informer.
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The American authorities were suspicious that the real reason for Wiedemann’s mission was to sound out known Nazi supporters and to encourage growth of the German-American League in the United States. The League consisted of American citizens, many with German family backgrounds, who were largely sympathetic to the Nazi regime. It was in Hitler’s interests to expand its membership and its propaganda in support of National Socialism. Moreover, actively expanding pro-Nazi support was very much along the lines of what the princess had successfully achieved in England. Wiedemann was well acquainted with The Fraternity and its members’ activities both in the United States and in Europe. It was alleged part of the reason for the trip was to assess the strength of Nazi support in the States and look at ways of expanding pro-German organisations like The Fraternity and the German-American League.

On arrival in New York in November 1937, the princess and her lover were received by the German Consul General, but there was also a hostile crowd at the dockside, some carrying banners reading, ‘Out with Wiedemann, the Nazi spy’. The following day the couple travelled by train to Washington, where they stayed at the German Embassy. The ambassador, Dr Heinz Dieckhoff, was adamant that Wiedemann should convey direct to Hitler just how strong a potential military force America represented, and what a potential threat the country posed should the United States ever be drawn into another European war. Among those whom Hitler’s adjutant met was Hugh R. Wilson, shortly to take up his post in Berlin as America’s last pre-war ambassador to the Third Reich. After Washington, Wiedemann and the princess travelled to Chicago where they made contact with branches of the German-American League, which in the Illinois area was known to be particularly strong and highly pro-Nazi. Finally, Wiedemann travelled across to San Francisco where he had meetings with pro-German contacts and branches of the League based on the west coast.

The princess always had her relationship with Hitler on her mind. In the States she bought a number of expensive books on architecture to send to the Führer as a Christmas present. As his closeness to the architect Albert Speer and his grand plans for buildings in the new Germany indicate, Hitler was fascinated by bold, brutal architecture. Shortly after Christmas, the princess received a personal note of thanks signed ‘Adolf’, conveying Hitler’s ‘devoted greetings’. The Führer added he had been told how ‘staunchly and warmly’ the princess had spoken up on behalf of the new Germany and the country’s vital needs in the United States. ‘I am well aware this has caused you a number of unpleasant experiences, and would therefore like to express to you, highly esteemed princess, my sincere thanks for the great understanding that you have shown for Germany as a whole and for my work in particular.’
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