The Duke and Adolf Hitler

check it out. There's links in the episode description, along with links to the show's Patreon, where I post episode scripts and a bonus episode once a month, and links to merch because we have new, amazing merch that comes out all the time. But as always, the best possible support for the show is just you listening to it. So thank you so much. M. M. October twenty second,

nineteen thirty seven. Berlin, the Duke of Windsor, a newly wet at age forty three, smiles his famously attractive smile as he disembarks from a private train in the German mountains. He's greeted by a guard in uniform, with whom he shakes hands, as he did countless times on his tours of America and Canada. This time the guard is wearing a swastika arm band. The Duke's wife, twice divorced, smiles at his side. The man they're here to see is napping,

they're told, so they'll have to wait. The Duke and his wife are entertained well during the wait, with music, possibly Wagner wafting through the room. They make small talk. Yes, they all agree, the fascists are strong, the British are weak, and the Jews, they may have said, with a chuckle, well, don't get us started. Finally, the man that the couple came to see is ready for them. They go into

a meeting. Only ten months ago, the Duke of Windsor had another more important title, King Edward the Eighth of England. Now he smiles that attractive smile and walks into his private audience with Adolph Hitler. When the future King Edward the Eighth was born in eighteen ninety four, the heir to the British throne was christened with seven first names, Edward, Albert, Christian, George, Andrew, Patrick,

David as king. We know him by the first of the seven names, Edward, but friends and family knew him by the last David, as if the distance between his public and private selves could not be further apart. When his father, King George the Fifth, was alive, he once remarked that if David were to become king that the quote boy will ruin himself in twelve months end quote.

King Edward the Eighth, never officially crowned in a coronation ceremony, ruled the United Kingdom of Great Britain for just three hundred and twenty six days. Edward the Eighth is the king who rose to the throne eighteen years after World War One and scandalously abdicated before World War Two after less than one year as monarch in order to marry

a twice divorced American from Baltimore. In the TV series The Crown, he is a rapscallion, a beloved uncle who ultimately horrifies the young Queen Elizabeth with the contents of a private dosier of information about him. In the pages of Menswear magazine in the interwar period, he was covered like a holly wood icon. Known for his good looks, and fashion sense. In the notations by Queen Elizabeth's stationary office, he was an ever loyal servant of the British cause.

In this very podcast he has been portrayed as the former lover of a murderers, but in the heart of Adolph Hitler he was what an ally a friend upon we can't know for sure. What we do know is that recently abdicated King Edward the Eighth of England, now known as the Duke of Windsor David, brother to the then current King of England, was entertained as an honored guest on a trip to Nazi Germany in nineteen thirty seven, where he had private meetings with Hitler while Ava Braun

and Rudolf Hess entertained his wife, the Duchess. The contents of this meeting are lost to history. It was a meeting just two years before the outbreak of World War Two, which would kill up to fifty million people worldwide, but a meaning after Germany had already passed the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jews of citizenship in Germany. Adolf Hitler was at least for an afternoon, a private confidante of the inner circle of the British royal family. I'm danishchwartz and

this is noble blood. The future Duke of Windsor's early life might be best described by this anecdote. After a boyhood in which he was pinched a bit too violently by his nanny and in which he displayed some interest in German language and culture, he wound up a student at Oxford University, for which he was basically totally unprepared. At this point in his life, he was the Prince of Wales. He considered his Oxford tutor Herbert Warren quote

an awful man end quote. The feeling was clearly mutual. After the Duke left Oxford without a degree in nineteen fourteen, his tutor sold him out to The Times bookish. He will never be Warren wrote, the tight lipped academic British equivalent not quite of he's a complete knit wit, but certainly of he's better suited to non academic pursuits. It's unlikely the pursuits the tutor would have meant included being king. Young David wanted to go into battle during World War One.

What does it matter if I'm shot? He said? I have four brothers end quote not exactly the words of a guy desperate to live to his coronation. The Secretary of State for War replied, quote, if I was certain you would be shot, I do not know if I should be right to restrain you end quote. The big concern wasn't that the heir to the throne might be killed, but that he might be taken prisoner. It was a concern that would continue to haunt the British in the

Second World War decades later. So though David wasn't allowed in battle, he did toward the trenches. He witnessed soldiers, young men his own age, who lived in constant fear of shelling. He smelled the rotting corpses of their fellow men. The experience disturbed him deeply, so deeply, in fact, that it may have planted certain ideological seeds, the idea that peace between the European nations is the single most important aim, that war in Europe can never be allowed to happen

again from the horrors of the trench. This was a noble idea, but we all know what the road to Hell is paved with. And if you think a little thing like trench war fair would depress the Prince for long think again. World War One ended with the armistice on November eleven, exactly one month before David's twenty four birthday, and he was certainly celebrating. To put it bluntly, the man was considered very attractive. He had a strong jawline

and dreamy eyes. He traveled to the United States and Canada, shaking hands like a modern movie star. The object of a million teenage day dreams, he was an international fashion plate who scandalously dared to use a zipper in his fly instead of a button. Unsurprisingly, all of that made him very popular with the ladies. He embarked on a long and storied career of affairs with married women, a lot of them. There's a sign fell joke, you can't just have an adultery, you commit adultery, and Dave it

was committed. He had affairs on his affairs. One of his early mistresses was the future murderess Marguerite Albert, who

he actually covered on this podcast. David continued on with his affairs until finally in nineteen thirty one, when, at the age of thirty six, at the home of one of these several married women he was then sleeping with he met a new woman, and already once divorced, American from Baltimore, conceived out of wedlock, who carried her father's name, dark, dramatic brows, red lipstick, with a sharp middle part in

her hair. Her name was Wallace Simpson. The Prince of Wales, who had spent a decade seducing and sleeping with an endless queue of women, felt his heart thud in his chest. He looked at Wallace Simpson and fell madly in love. By all accounts, he never fell out of it. In the meantime, as you may have guessed, nobody in England was really thinking this guy is fit for the throne. David had a younger brother, Albert, affectionately called Bertie, whom

every one preferred in temperament. But Bertie also had a stutter, and he seemed a shy and unlikely king in his own way. Still, their father, King George the Fifth, made his preference clear. He was quoted as saying, I pray to God that my eldest son will never marry, and nothing will come between Bertie and Lillibit and the throne. Lillibit, of course, was referencing Bertie's daughter, the current Queen Elizabeth the second. So with the parental preference so obvious, you

can forgive me for assuming David probably had some daddy issues. Unfortunately, death doesn't care if you lack confidence in your successor. King George the Fifth died near midnight on January nineteen thirty six. He was famously administered euthanasia so that his death could be reported in the dignified morning papers rather than the more salacious evening ones. The Prince of Wales, David,

became King Edward the eight that same day. Although the king's advisers assumed Wallace was just another mistress, it quickly turned out that David really was in love. He seriously wanted to marry her, and then she started divorce proceedings from her second husband. But well, the King is the head of the Church of England and the Church doesn't allow divorce. There was some back and forth between the king and the royal family, the cabinet, Winston Churchill, and

Wallace herself about all of this. Later in life. Recounting this period, Wallace will make herself out to be especially selfless. Quote I am sure there's only one solution, she says, quote that is for me to remove myself from the King's life. That is what I am doing now end quote. At least that's what she remembers herself as saying. In the end, there was no way around David's choice. It was the church and the monarchy, or it was Wallace.

The King chose Wallace, just shy of one year on the throne before his own coronation, Edward the Eight abdicated. The decision may have been as much about the character mismatch between David and the throne as it was about Wallace, but to the public it was about love. To the monarchy, of course, it was disgrace to renounce family and duty for personal pleasure, even if it was framed as a great love story. Was the greatest possible failure of a Yale.

The Archbishop of Canterbury told the nation that the Duke, in his quote craving for private happiness, had quote disappointed hopes so high and abandoned a trust so great end quote. David's little brother Bertie became King George the Six, which put his daughter Elizabeth next in line. David was demoted to the title Duke of Windsor, but as Duke he finally got to do what he wanted. He married Wallace

Simpson on June three, ninety seven in Tour, France. David may have gotten his bride that day in France, but there was little else to celebrate. No one in the family came to the wedding. Though he explicitly asked. Wallace was denied the title her Royal Highness. That designation can never be revoked, and the royals thought, what if she goes off and Mary's a fourth guy still carrying the

title British Royal Highness. It was impossible. It was all an enormous insult for the former Prince of Wales, the former king, the international fashion icon. So here David and Wallace are in seven honeymooning in a borrowed German mansion, said to be haunted, the abdicated monarch and his new wife, isolated and alone, looking for anyone to treat them as the king and Queen they felt they ought to have been. Four months after their wedding, the Duke and Duchess of

Windsor arrived in Berlin. As the train pulled into the station, the former king felt a twinge of old recognition and joy, and then a fresh twinge of his newer resentment and anger when he saw the red, white and blue of his own Union jack, and he felt a chill, a fear of power, of excitement, or maybe even envy when he saw his own flag alongside the red, white and black of the Swatstika. David and Wallace were welcomed warmly

on their trip to Berlin. The list of people who entertained them socially is a list of Nazi war criminals. Joseph Gebel's reich Minister of Propaganda, Herman Goring, Hitler's second in command who had been in charge of creating the Gestapo, Adolph Hitler himself. In the chummy photos of David and Wallace out in public with Hitler, the three of them are standing shoulder to shoulder. David is in the middle, long peacoat, buttoned and tie crisp, a hint of a

smile on his handsome face. Hitler is half bowing to shake hands with Wallace, pulling her arm toward his chest, Swastika on his arm, both Wallace and Hitler smiling broadly, David deferential in the middle. Another picture shows David without his wife or Hitler hatless in a sea of bowlers and peaked s s caps. He's raising his right arm palm flat fingers pointed to the sky in a Nazi salute, with his elbow slightly cocked, as if some part of

him knew he wasn't in the right. I'll pause here to say that the extent of David's involvement with the Nazis has been covered up over time, with heavy influence

from the Royals. Some of the speculation stems from those photographs, readily accessible in a Google search, but much of the speculation comes from the Marburg Files, a trove of four hundred tons of German documents found in within these the so called Windsor Files of the Duke and Duchess were the subject of a long cover up, so long that many of the details I've recounted so far in this podcast come from a book that was only published this year,

Andrew Loni's Trader King. I think it's worth quoting directly from Lonie's book on the following point, describing a day in Dusseldorf with David Wallace and their attendant Dudly Forward. The book says, quote, they toward a miner's hospital and a concentration camp. Forward later recalled, we saw this enormous concrete building, which, of course I now know contained inmates. The Duke asked, what is that? Our host replied, it

is where they store the cold meat. End quote. Finally, a week and a half after their arrival in Berlin, the fateful meeting with Adolf Hitler arrived. The Duke and Duchess sat in the train car that ferried them south of Berlin, skirting Munich. The train chugged as it scaled the snow capped Bavarian Alps to the present day southern border with Austria. They disembarked in brechdes Garden and found

themselves whisked away to Adolf Hitler's vacation chalet. The place was like a resort, complete with terrace, big colorful umbrellas and cactuses. In the entrance. Hitler was napping. The Duke and Duchess were told when they arrived in what honestly reads to me like a power move. Yes, we'll pull out the s S version of a red carpet for you, but Hitler can make you wait here because you aren't

king any more. Won't you make yourself comfortable? They were asked there's a lovely view of the snow capped mountains out the window. Perhaps you've noted the light jade green color scheme chosen by the fureer himself. They sat in the home that Hitler her himself so loved. One year later, in fact, Homes and Gardens magazine would cover the place like it was Jennifer Aniston's mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Hitler quote has a passion about cut flowers in his home.

The article said, this place is mine, Hitler said in the magazine interview, sounding like a millennial, impressed with his first job. I built it with the money that I earned. That money, of course, came from the sale of his infamous anti Semitic book Mine comp which was banned in Germany from the end of the war until twenty fifteen. At last, Hitler woke up from his nap. His wife av Braun and deputy Furer Rudolph Hess told Wallace they

would keep her occupied. Wallace and David nodded at each other. Perhaps David kissed his beautiful wife on the cheek, and then the former King of England walked into the private room with the then current Furer of Germany on the eve of World War Two. The two men sat together with teacups in front of them and talked about, Well, we don't know what they talked about. Perhaps someday a scandalous note about it will turn up on a scrap

of napkin. Maybe we'll never know. Maybe they discussed the quote unquote Jewish question as if it were a problem of politics and not human being. Maybe they discussed the strength of fascism and the weakness of democracy. Maybe they'd discussed what they'd each seen on the front in World War One. All of this is speculation. Maybe they talked about dogs, or divorce or art. We don't know. Eventually

the meeting ended. The New York Times reported that Hitler gave them a long, affectionate goodbye, holding both their hands, and that when Hitler gave his salute, David raised his arm and returned the Nazi high After the trip to Berlin, David and Wallace returned to Paris. In nineteen forty. When the Germans invaded France, David and Wallace fled southwest to neutral Spain and then Portugal. The Germans hatched a plot to kidnap him to use him to their advantage. But

it didn't materialize. Churchill appointed him Governor of the Bahamas, a minor and almost embarrassing little post for any royal, especially a former king. It was clear enough that Churchill and the Crown were nervous about David's loyalties. The Bahamas were as far as they could ship him off to

ensure he stayed away from Hitler. He and Wallace accepted the post unhappily and stayed in the Bahamas until the end of the war in nineteen There are a lot of rumors about this period that David knew of the Allies war planned in Belgium and leaked them to the Germans, That David wanted the Germans to bomb England his own country, That President Roosevelt ordered surveillance on him when he and Wallace visited Florida, in that the FBI had heard that

Wallace was sleeping with a German ambassador. All this, of course, the Duke and the Crown have denied as misinterpretation or misquoting or hearsay. What then, can we absolutely know well that the former King of England definitely had more sympathy for the Nazis during World War Two than could possibly be comfortable for England or for us today, and that basically covers the extent of the What what remains for us to understand is the why? Was it simply naivete

or lack of foresight? Was the salute just instinctual politeness? After all, in nineteen thirty nine, Roosevelt himself sent to St. Louis a ship of Jewish refugees back to Europe to be killed in the camps. Only one month after the Duke's visit to Hitler, A teenaged Prince Philip, later to become Queen Elizabeth's husband, was also photographed alongside Nazis at his sister's funeral in Germany. But maybe the source of the support was something deeper. Was it David's deep desire

for peace among the nations? Maybe he genuinely thought a dictatorship was a better governing system than a democracy or a weakened constitutional monarchy after witnessing the horrors of World War One. Maybe he thought appeasing Hitler was the way toward peace, But of course the Nazis were far from peaceful. If David's noble goal was less suffering, then we have to ask for who which brings us of course to racism.

David was known to make derogatory comments about Jewish people, Indigenous Australians, and who he called quote the Negro, though he and Wallace Simpson did also work to improve labor rights and infant health for the largely black population of the Bahamas, where they would spend much of the Second World War. It feels strange to even try to tease out how racist a person's individual views are when they

were rubbing elbows with Hitler. But when we're trying to figure out David's motivations here, I think it's worth noting that on a personal level, David probably wasn't in full philosophical alignment with how vile and violent Hitler's ideas on racial purity were. But David was more than willing to overlook those horrific policies and socialize with an Nazi high brass. So why though David told himself a narrative about preserving peace, In my opinion, at the end of the day, it

was a matter of ego and self interest. David's much loved bride was never treated well by his family or the British Royals, but over in Germany, Hitler was all too happy to flatter her. Rumor had it that David dreamed of actually being reinstated as king with Wallace as queen after Hitler's victory with the support of German troops against the British people. The two of them felt so excluded by the British monarchy that Hitler and the Germans

represented a promise to be included. But before you feel even a moment of sympathy for David or pity for his naivete, remember David's very presence was serving as a support to Hitler and origin gime that would go on to slaughter six million Jews in concentration camps during the Holocaust, a regime that would methodically murder Romani people, homosexuals, political dissenters,

and people with disabilities. By the time that David arrived in Germany in nineteen thirty seven, the reich Stock had already passed laws restricting citizenship to only quote racially pure Germans. They had already banned intermarriage and sexual relationships between Jewish people and those of quote German or related blood in

order to protect their racial purity. By nineteen thirty seven, Jewish businesses were being quote orionized, Jewish employees dismissed, and Jewish business owners forced to sell their licenses for pennies to non Jewish Germans. Jewish lawyers had their licenses revoked, and Jewish doctors were forbidden from practicing medicine on non Jews. The very next year, all Jewish Germans with names that weren't explicitly Jewish would be forced to add either Sarah

or Israel as middle names. Legally, when David arrived in Germany, he would have seen the signs across the country reading Juden sent here unevencht. Jews are not wanted here, and still David smiled for the cameras. Whether or not David was thinking about the horrors that were currently happening in Germany at the time, or simply permitting himself not to think about them, those horrors were absolutely already present, and David was willing to happily turn the other cheek in

order to serve his own personal interests. Perhaps he would be reinstated king one day, seated next to his beloved twice divorced Queen, even if he had to be put there by force. After the war, David did not retake the throne, he settled in France with Wallace. After all his many affairs, he likely wound up faithful and ever adoring towards Wallace, even as the rumors of her philandering

never stopped. His brother Bertie died in nineteen fifty two, and Queen Elizabeth ascended to the throne, the unlikely monarch queen only because of David's abdication, which would also pave the way for Charles and Diana and William and Harry and all of the tabloid royals we know today. Queen Elizabeth did have some small relationship with her uncle David, but he was never admitted back into the royal fold.

In nineteen fifty one, David wrote a memoir of his early life, The King's Story, which was absolutely torn to shreds critically descriptions like inconceivable anality and monumental artificiality pepper the reviews, but the audience score was certified fresh and the book was a best seller. Not to be outdone, Wallace wrote her own teller, The Heart Has Its Reasons, which went through multiple ghost writers who accused her of dishonesty before the book sold terribly. Finally, following one last

bedside visit from Queen Elizabeth in Paris. The Duke of Windsor, David died of throat cancer on May seventy two. He was seventy seven years old. He was buried in the Royal Burial Ground in England. Wallace outlived him by fifteen

years before being buried beside him. As of only seven years before his death, they had been planning to be buried at the Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, final resting place of famous American trader John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin, and those photos of the Duke with Hitler, which live on more than anything. There a vision of an alternate path that history could have taken, the sheer unlikelihood of

the path we did take. To think, had Wallace's earlier marriage been happy, perhaps we would have had a King of England who supported the Nazis. Perhaps the world order would look unrecognizable to us today. Hitler himself said so quote if he had stayed meaning on the throne, everything

would have been different end quote. But also, as David said on CBS while promoting those tell Alls, quote, we both feel that there is no more wasteful or foolish or frustrating exercise than trying to penetrate the fiction of what might have been end quote. As for the most scandalous of those photos, the image of David raising his arm in the Nazi salute in when that photo went up for sale at auction, nobody bought it. That's the

story of the short reign of England Nazi king. But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about the wild history of the Marburg Files. As I was researching this episode, something kept sticking out to me the speed at which people do conflate a Nazi sympathizer king with the possibility of a Nazi England. And yes, those photos of Edward the eight are shocking. But I'm an American and I'm here thinking was an

England even then meant to be a representative democracy? Isn't it the Prime Minister Chamberlain and then Churchill who made the political decisions while the monarchy was just a figurehead. I mean, the parliament serves the people right. Well, nothing shows the clash of the American versus the British government's approach to monarchy quite like the history of the Marburg Files. These were the four hundred tons of Nazi Germany's Foreign

ministry archives discovered in and assembled in Marburg Castle. This is not the castle that inspired Disney. That honor belongs to a different German castle covered in this podcast, but it looks like a cousin. Within this massive trove of archives were the Windsor Files, documents pertaining to David's activities during the war. Unsurprisingly, these files suggested Nazi sympathy on the part of the former king. Unsurprisingly, the British royal

family wanted the files suppressed. Perhaps more surprisingly, though, the Royals weren't alone. The people and entities pushing American historians not to publish the documents ranged from Winston Churchill to Dwight D. Eisenhower. The U. S. State Department got word that the British government would simply inform the American editors which documents to leave out in deference to the feelings

of the widowed queen mother David Mom. Churchill himself told Eisenhower the quote historical importance of the document was quote negligible, while publishing them would cause the Duke quote distress and injury. Essentially, U S editors and academics were treated as though they were operating at the pleasure of the hurt feelings of the British monarchy. Didn't we fight a revolution about this? Were American historians really meant to defer to the English

royal sense of embarrassment? Parliament, the Crown, the White House. They all cited a duty to the grievance and pain of the powerful royal family. I would argue, what about a duty to history and the many, many victims of World War two wartime? Ally ship can only go so far. The Windsor files were finally published in nineteen fifty seven. As far as we know, editor Paul R. Sweet says

they're intact. He also notes that they were published with a statement from the Queen's Stationary Office quote, the German records are necessarily a much tainted source. This is undoubtedly correct. They are German wartime documents. They likely have an agenda, but it is odd to spend so much energy on covering up a thing that isn't true. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Danishwartz.

Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The show is produced by rema Il Kayali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.