Windsor, Edward, Duke of

Windsor, Edward, Duke of (1894–1972),former British monarch, Edward VIII, whose abdication on 10 December 1936 soured his relationships with his family and the British government. He married the divorcée Mrs Wallis Simpson, the cause of his abdication, in 1937 and the same year made an ill-advised visit to Hitler, who announced himself ‘entranced’. When war broke out he returned to the UK and was appointed to a military mission in Paris, dropping in rank from field marshal to major-general. He undertook a series of goodwill tours of the French front with orders to report back on the Maginot Line and other French defences about which the French were being very secretive. After the fall of France in June 1940 he went with his wife to Madrid and then Lisbon. His request for suitable employment in the UK was refused, but he was offered, and accepted, the governorship of the Bahamas. While he was in the Iberian peninsula the Nazi foreign minister, Ribbentrop, attempted to detain him there (see Schellenberg), but the royal couple, who were unaware of the plot, sailed from Lisbon on 1 August 1940 and remained in the Bahamas for the rest of the war.

Some assert that though the duke may have made some indiscreet remarks during his stay in Portugal, and may have entertained the possibility of being a useful intermediary in any peace negotiations, there is no evidence that he either sympathized with the Nazis or was in contact with them. On the other hand, the historian Martin Gilbert records the contents of a telegram which was drafted by the colonial secretary, Lord Lloyd, for Churchill to send over his own name to the dominion prime ministers. Part of it read: ‘The activities of the Duke of Windsor on the Continent in recent months have been causing HM [ George VI] and myself grave uneasiness as his inclinations are well known to be pro-Nazi’ (Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 6, London, 1983, p. 700). However Churchill, a longstanding friend of the duke's, rejected the draft and wrote of the duke's ‘unimpeachable’ loyalties.

Bibliography

Bloch, M. , The Duke of Windsor's War (London, 1982).