1937 Tour Of Germany By The Duke And Duchess Of Windsor

Edward, Duke of Windsor, and Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, visited Nazi Germany in October 1937. Edward had abdicated the British throne in December 1936, and his brother George VI had become king. Edward had been given the title Duke of Windsor and married Wallis Simpson in June 1937. He appeared to have been sympathetic to Germany in this period and, that September, announced his intention to travel privately to Germany to tour factories. His interests, officially into researching the social and economic conditions of the working classes, were against the backdrop of looming war in Europe. The Duke's supporters saw him as a potential peacemaker between Britain and Germany, but the UK Government refused to sanction such a role and was against the tour, suspecting that the Nazis would use the Duke's presence for propaganda. Windsor was keen that his wife—who had been rejected by the British establishment—experience a state visit as his consort. He promised the government to keep a low profile; the tour went ahead between 12 and 23 October 1937.

The Duke and Duchess, who were officially invited to the country by the German Labour Front, were chaperoned for much of their visit by its leader, Robert Ley. The couple visited factories, many of which were producing materiel for the rearmament effort; the Duke inspected German troops. The Windsors were greeted by the British national anthem and Nazi salutes. They dined with high-ranking Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Albert Speer, as well as having tea with Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden. The Duke had a long private conversation with Hitler, but it is uncertain what they discussed as the minutes of their meeting were lost in the war. The Duchess took afternoon tea with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess. Hitler was sympathetic to the Windsors and treated the Duchess like royalty.

The UK Government was unable to affect the course of events and forbade its diplomatic staff in Germany from having any high-level interaction with the Duke and Duchess. British popular opinion of the tour was muted, most viewing it as in poor taste and disruptive in the first year of George's reign. The tour of Germany was intended to have been followed by one of the United States, but Nazi repression of working-class activists in Germany led to a wave of disapproval for the Windsors in the American labour movement. This led to the US visit being cancelled. Modern historians tend to consider the 1937 tour as a reflection of both the Duke's lack of judgment and of his disregard for the advice he received.

Background

Edward VIII became king on his father's death in early 1936. Almost immediately, he announced his intention to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American. On both political and moral grounds, she was unacceptable as a royal consort to the British government and royal family. As king, Edward was the titular governor of the Church of England, which forbade the divorced to remarry during the lifetime of their former spouse; both of Simpson's previous husbands were still alive. The proposed marriage, believed critics, was in breach of Edward's coronation oath, and weakened his position as constitutional monarch. Edward knew that Stanley Baldwin's government would almost certainly resign ''en masse'' if the King forced the issue.

Edward realised that neither his family, government, Church nor people would support the marriage. Thus, in December 1936, he abdicated. His younger brother the Duke of York succeeded him as George VI, and Edward was given the title of Duke of Windsor. He and Simpson married in France in June the following year, and, having honeymooned in Vienna, they returned to Paris and established their headquarters there. Internationally, says the journalist Andrew Morton, the Duke was viewed as being

Political context

The European political background to the tour was tense. The Spanish Civil War, which had broken out the previous year, upset the balance of power, drawing in the Soviet Union, Italy and Germany. The latter was also becoming increasingly aggressive and had spent the previous few years rearming. In the United Kingdom, there was a sense of political unease towards the future and an expectation of war although foreign policy remained predicated on appeasement. Baldwin resigned as prime minister in May 1937 and was replaced by his deputy, Neville Chamberlain.

Historian Michael Bloch says that although with hindsight the tour can be viewed as a poor decision, it was not out of place for the time. He notes that "war was still two years away, curiosity about the Nazis was intense, and many respectable people accepted government invitations. It was fashionable to go to Germany and visit Hitler in the mid-thirties just as it was to go to China and visit Mao Tse-tung in the sixties". The former prime minister, Lloyd George, had visited Germany two years before the Windsors, the leader of the Labour Party, the pacifist George Lansbury met with Hitler in April 1937, and Lord Halifax, later foreign secretary, visited to do so—at Göring's invitation—the following month. Halifax's trip was "ostensibly ... a social one", but was also an opportunity for the government to initiate talks with Hitler, says the modern historian Lois G. Schwoerer. Similarly, Hitler hosted many non-Germans—including the Aga Khan, the papal nuncio Cesare Orsenigo, ambassadors, government ministers and European royals—at his Bavarian residence, the Berghof.

Royal and governmental view

George VI was said to have been horrified by his brother's entry into European political affairs at such a delicate time. He wrote to Windsor's political advisor Walter Monckton that the Duke's plan was "a bombshell, and a bad one". The King took particular umbrage because, on Windsor's abdication, he had said that he intended to avoid public appearances. The royal biographer Sarah Bradford suggests the visit indicated that Windsor had no intention of retiring: rather, he intended to behave independently of either the King's or government's wishes.

Contemporaries were aware of the negative connotations of a trip to Germany at this time. The announcement took everyone by surprise, and those sympathetic to Windsor—such as Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook—attempted to dissuade him from going. The intervention of an old friend of the Duchess, Herman Rogers, against the trip, also proved unsuccessful. The government already suspected that Windsor had "strong views on his right to intervene in affairs of state", argues the historian Keith Middlemas, but its "main fears ... were of indiscretion". The Foreign Office warned the Duke that the Nazis were propaganda experts; the Duke agreed, but promised not to speak publicly while there. The government, argues the historian Deborah Cadbury, was concerned that the Duke would be able to gather a party around him and promote his own personal foreign policy, outside government control.

Windsor stated his intention for the visit as "without any political considerations and merely as an independent observer studying industrial and housing conditions". He said that one could not ignore what was happening in Germany, "even though it may not have one's entire approval". The Duke was sympathetic to the cause of improving working conditions.

Donaldson suggests that his views "had caused offence in England because, according to opinion there, such matters were not the concern of the throne". Statements such as this, emphasises the scholar Adrian Philips, were intended to deflect from Windsor's public relationship with Wallis Simpson.

The Windsors' political views

Windsor was an admirer of Germany and fluent in the language, which the Duke in his memoirs called "the of many of our relations". He knew, too, that German blood "flowed strongly in him", and the researcher Mark Hichens speculates that Windsor's ancestry led him to favour German culture. As Prince of Wales, he had studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, under Hermann Fiedler, and had toured Germany twice before war broke out in 1914. One of the Prince's friends, Chips Channon—Conservative MP for Southend West—commented in 1936 that he "is going the dictator way, and is pro-German". Simpson was also believed to hold similar views, on account of her rejection by the British ruling class, and many within the government suspected her to have spied for Hitler while she lived in Britain; she denied this in her autobiography. The FBI also monitored her throughout this period and concluded that she had Nazi sympathies. It had been rumoured that she and von Ribbentrop had had a sexual relationship during his tenure as German ambassador in London in the mid-1930s. Count Albert von Mensdorff-Pouilly-Dietrichstein—previously Austrian ambassador to the UK, and George V's second cousin—believed that both Windsors favoured German fascism as a bulwark against communism in Europe. Windsor also, according to the Count, favoured an alliance with Nazi Germany around this time.

Windsor himself later contextualised his position in the 1930s as being a reaction to what he termed "the unending scenes of horror" of the First World War. This, he said, led him to support appeasement with Hitler. The latter is known to have seen the Duke as an ally, believing that, as king, Windsor would have strengthened Anglo-German relations. Albert Speer later said that Hitler was certain that "through him permanent friendly relations could have been achieved. If he had stayed, everything would have been different." The Duke, suggests the biographer Anne Sebba, probably wanted to restore the countries' close ties that had been broken by the First World War. He also wanted to make his new wife the centrepiece of a state visit. The historian Ted Powell suggests that the Duke would have visited any country that would accept his wife on his terms; Windsor's equerry Dudley Forwood points out that the only state visit possible was to Germany, and also suggested that the Duke wished to prove to his wife that he had lost nothing by abdicating.

Overture and organisation

A tour of Germany had been broached with the Duke before his wedding by the French businessman Charles Bedaux, whom Bloch describes as an "enigmatic time and motion tycoon". Windsor was agreeable, seeing it as a way of raising his profile. By April 1937 Colonel Oscar Solbert had suggested the Duke take a tour of Germany; this was soon intended to be the first of several planned international tours. Bedaux offered to organise the Duke's side of the arrangements. Solbert had been with Windsor on his 1924 tour of the United States and had been impressed by his gravitas and professional demeanour. This led him to suggest to the Duke that he should "head up and consolidate the many and varied peace movements throughout the world". The Swedish millionaire Axel Wenner-Gren acted as a go-between for the Duke in these early discussions. Bedaux wrote to Solbert, telling him:

The tour of Germany was planned to be a brief visit of 12 days, but was to be followed by a longer one of the United States. The German side of things was organised by Hitler's adjutant, Captain Fritz Wiedemann, with final preparations discussed at the Paris Ritz in late September. The same month, the Duchess wrote to her aunt in Washington that they were planning a trip to observe European working conditions. The Duchess explained that "the Duke is thinking of taking up some sort of work in that direction. The trip is being arranged by Germany's No. 1 gentleman so should be interesting," although she says that at that stage, it was still only a proposal. The writer Hugo Vickers suggests that Edward believed himself to be able to influence Hitler and avert war in Europe. If this was the case, says Vickers, Windsor "severely overestimated his own importance".

Several contacts visited the Windsors at their Paris hotel, Le Meurice, although the nature of their discussions remains unknown, and this has encouraged what Cadbury terms colourful theories. One such, for example, by Charles Higham, suggests that on one occasion the Duke received Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, Hess's assistant Martin Bormann and the Hollywood actor Errol Flynn together. It is more likely, she says, that these rooftop restaurant meetings involved men such as Wiedemann finalising the itinerary and other minutiae.

Announcement

Powell suggests that Windsor found the German government's response sufficiently sympathetic to proceed without delay. In late September he received a personal invitation from Dr Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Front (GLF). Windsor first indicated that he intended to accept in a letter to the British '' chargé d'affaires'' in Berlin, George Ogilvie-Forbes, on 20 September. A public announcement followed two weeks later. A telegram to the Foreign Office stated that:

The historian Jonathan Petropoulos suggests that the British government were aware that they could not prevent what was, officially, a visit by a private individual. In private the news angered both Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. The Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Robert Vansittart, wrote to the King's Private Secretary Alec Hardinge condemning the tour. Hardinge agreed, describing it as a "private stunt for publicity purposes". He also reasoned that the premise of the tour was flawed: neither the Duke nor his visit, he said, could "obviously... bring any benefit to the workers themselves". Ley proposed to hold Nazi rallies at each stop on the Windsors' tour, but the Duke had vetoed it on the grounds that it constituted anti-British propaganda.

11–23 October 1937

The historian Andrew Roberts suggests that the German government believed Windsor was forced to abdicate as a result of his pro-Nazi views, and that this encouraged them to "lay out the red carpet" for him. On 10 October, the Duke's cousin the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha wrote to him, "dear David! I hear that you are coming to Germany... I naturally would be delighted if you could take this opportunity to see me; perhaps I could introduce you to a couple of interesting personalities whom you otherwise wouldn't meet". Hitler and von Ribbentrop planned that, although the tour was a private rather than state visit, the Windsors—particularly the Duchess—were to effectively undertake a royal progress. This was first demonstrated on their arrival, early Monday morning, at Berlin's Friedrichstraße station on 11 October. The scholar Susanna de Vries describes how the Duchess "covered in jewels... did her best to look suitably royal", dressed in royal blue. They were greeted by Ley, who kissed her hand and called her "Your Highness". With Ley was a welcoming delegation including von Ribbentrop and the Gauleiter of Berlin, Artur Görlitzer. Also waiting was the British Embassy's Third Secretary to present a letter informing the Duke that the Embassy would not be available to assist him or his wife formally in the course of their visit. Ogilvie-Forbes later visited the Duke in his hotel to pay the personal respects he had been unable to pay him in public.

A welcoming crowd of approximately 2,000 lined the streets outside the station; the German media set great store by the Windsors' visit from the beginning. As the Windsors were leaving, the crowd surged forward and a crush ensued. This, says Cadbury, destroyed the "majestic air" of the reception that Ley had organised. With few of the crowd having seen them, the couple were driven away at high-speed in their Mercedes, to their hotel, the Kaiserhof.

The couple were treated like royalty by the German aristocracy, who "would bow and curtsy towards he Duchess and she was treated with all the dignity and status that the Duke always wanted". On their first night in Berlin, they joined the Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop for dinner at Horcher's. The night was attended by Speer (with whom they discussed classical music), Magda and Joseph Goebbels: she was Germany's ''de facto'' first lady and her husband was Reich Minister of Propaganda. Following their meeting, Goebbels wrote in his diary that "the duke is wonderful—a nice, sympathetic fellow who is open and clear and with a healthy understanding of people ... It's a shame he is no longer king. With him we would have entered into an alliance." The Duchess did not reciprocate, describing him as "a tiny, wispy gnome with an enormous skull", although Magda, she continued, was "the prettiest woman I saw in Germany". The Windsors dined with his cousin the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on the 19th. This dinner was attended by over 100 guests, the Duke later recalled, many whom he had " hobnobbed" with at both his father's jubilee and then his funeral.

Itinerary

The Berlin correspondent of the British ''Observer'' newspaper, reporting the couple's arrival, wrote that they could look forward to a "heavy programme" of events. The couple and their entourage—which included the Duke's cousin Prince Philipp von Hessen—travelled around Germany on Hitler's personal train, the , while their telephones were bugged by Prince Christoph of Hesse, on the orders of Hermann Göring, keeping the Nazi leadership informed of the Windsors' private opinions. The German government was funding the visit, which, suggests the modern historian John Vincent, allowed them to choreograph it. Hichens, too, notes that the Windsors "saw only what the Nazis wanted them to see, and the Duke saw what he wanted to see turning a blind eye on the horrors of Nazidom". For example, says Morton, they visited a barracks of—apparently empty—concrete buildings that they later realised had been a concentration camp. When the Duke enquired as to their purpose, Ley replied, wrote Forwood later, "'it is where they store the cold meat.' In a horrible sense that was true."

Although the couple were in Germany at Ley's personal invitation, he was a poor host. Bloch describes him as coarse, "addicted to alcohol ndhigh-speed driving", and risqué jokes. Hichens views Ley as "loud-mouthed", brutal and a "particularly odious Nazi thug". On one journey, he was drunk at the wheel of the Windsors' Mercedes while driving at speed and crashed them into the gates of the Munich factory they were visiting. One of Ley's aides, Hans Sopple, later described events, telling how Ley "drove the car through the locked gates and then raced up and down at full speed between the barracks, scaring hell out of the workers and nearly running over several. The next day Hitler told Göring to take over the Duke's visit before Ley killed him." This was not, comments Morton, "at all what the Duke had in mind when he described the nature of a royal tour to his wife".

Bloch describes the couple's itinerary as an "exhausting" series of visits to industrial and housing areas. A letter from the Duchess confirms that, although the tour was interesting, it involved walking "miles a day through factories", including one which produced lightbulbs. Among other sights, they saw a winter relief centre, a Wagnerian opera in a workers' concert hall and inspected a Pomeranian SS squadron. This was with the Adolf Hitler, Hitler's personal bodyguard. The Duchess did not accompany her husband everywhere; he visited the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft at Untertürkheim alone. This was intended to showcase German precision engineering to the Duke, and there to meet him was British racing driver Richard Seaman, who had signed for the Mercedes-Benz team earlier in the year.

On 14 October the Duke and Duchess visited Göring at his in Karinhall, where they saw his miniature railway. There, Hitler's deputy gave them high tea, followed by a tour of his large art collection and gymnasium, where—although dressed in full uniform and decorations—he demonstrated his massage machine. The three conversed in Göring's study, during which Windsor noticed a new, official map of Nazi Germany on the wall. Reflecting the party's policy, Austria was shown as annexed to Germany. Cadbury quotes Wallis: "Göring's face wrinkled with amusement... The Austrians would want to be part of the Reich", he had said. Wallis noted that "the moment passed, the statement left unchallenged" by the Duke.

They visited an Academy for Youth Leadership where they observed the training of Hitler Youth. On an inspection of the Krupp factory in Essen, production of tanks and U-boats had already begun. On each visit, the couple were presented with enthusiastic workers keen to extol their working conditions to the Duke. He, in turn, was at his most charming, says Hichens. On one occasion, he joined a session of rowdy drinking songs in a staff beer garden, where he wore a false moustache and played skittles. The couple were regularly greeted with the Nazi salute, which they sometimes reciprocated (this was not unusual, and most visitors to Germany at the time—including sports teams—made the salute). The couple were welcomed at each venue by both the German and British national anthems. The Nazis, the researcher Peter Allen finds, knew the Duchess to have a keen interest in china, and as such, they included a trip to the Meissen porcelain works; Allen suggests that this demonstrates a policy of pleasing the Duke through his wife. On a visit to one of Ley's GLF meetings Windsor made a speech, telling the assembly:

Wallis, meanwhile, notes Morton, maintained the fiction in her letters to her friends and family that they were merely sight-seeing.

Meeting Hitler

The tour culminated on 22 October when they met Hitler at the Berghof. It is possible that the meeting was a last-minute addition to their itinerary, as they were supposedly told of it only the previous day, although Allen suggests that this is unlikely, as Hitler had previously expressed a wish to meet the Duke.

The Duke and Duchess had to wait before Hitler was ready to see them, although, says Vickers, he was in a genial mood when he did. The two men had an hour-long discussion, with Hitler doing most of the talking. The Duke is known to have encouraged Hitler in Germany's desired territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. The minutes of the meeting appear to have been lost, presumed destroyed, in the war. The Duchess did not join her husband, instead taking tea with Rudolf Hess. General Bohle acted as her interpreter. A friend of the Windsors, the French millionaire Paul-Louis Weiller, later said the Duchess had organised the meeting with Hitler, and that being excluded from it had angered her. At the end of their visit the three had tea together. Hitler's partner, Eva Braun, was not present: whenever he entertained guests of high rank, she had to stay in her bedroom until they had left. The Windsors made a good impression on Hitler, suggests Hichens; the Duchess later wrote how she was both "fascinated and repelled" by Hitler. Hitler, comments the historian Philip Ziegler "mildly irritated the Duke by insisting on using an interpreter rather than speaking directly to him in German". This was Paul Schmidt, who later recalled the meeting:

Forwood disagrees with Schmidt's recollection and says the Duke raised criticisms of Nazi social policy. Forwood also says that, at the same time, Forwood accused Schmidt of mistranslating for Hitler, and that Forwood interjected or "wrongly translated!" The Duke departed, he believed, under the impression that Hitler was a pacifist. An observer describes how, as they returned to their car, escorted by their host:

The historian Volker Ullrich

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