17 Carnations: The Royals, the Nazis and the Biggest Cover-Up in History

365 Pages·2015·4.14 MB·English

by  Andrew Morton

Begin Reading
Table of Contents
Photos
Newsletters
Copyright Page
In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any
part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s
intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior
written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you
for your support of the author’s rights.
To Carolyn
Acknowledgments
A
few years ago a passage in historian Sarah Bradford’s penetrating and
occasionally acerbic biography of King George VI caught my eye. It concerned
the flight, just weeks after the end of World War Two, to a German castle by two
royal courtiers, one later revealed as a Soviet spy. They were tasked by George
VI to pick up a bundle of correspondence, ostensibly relating to Queen Victoria
and her eldest daughter. It soon became clear that there may have been other,
more self-serving motives behind the flight.
Bradford explained how a buried battered metal canister, protected by a tatty
raincoat, had been dug up by advancing Allied troops. It contained vital
documents relating to German foreign policy, including a volume on the Duke
and Duchess of Windsor, whose pro-Nazi views before and during the war had
made them targets for suspicion and distrust among the Allies. Once the cache of
papers was secretly analyzed, powerful political “documents men” decided that
this material was so incendiary it required Anglo-American co-operation at the
highest level to prevent it from leaking. This was an intriguing story ripe for
further investigation.
There was one problem. Most of the action took place in Europe, and I had
recently married an American interior designer and was living for part of the
year in Los Angeles, California. Sometimes, though, things are destined.
Professor Jonathan Petropoulos, whose book Royals and the Reich is an
absorbing and comprehensive study of the links between European royalty and
Hitler’s Third Reich, lived just thirty minutes down the road at Claremont
McKenna College. He has been hugely generous with his time, academic
contacts, and advice, a constant source of encouragement, insight, and
inspiration who has also become a good friend. In the land of soccer, we even
speak the same language: football.
He put me in touch with Astrid Eckert, a specialist in modern German
history. Her fascinating and meticulously researched book The Struggle for the
Files reveals the diplomatic machinations behind the capture and subsequent
return of Germany’s “soul”—the nation’s official archives. Not only has she
kindly given me hitherto unseen official documents, she also suggested many
fresh lines of inquiry.
Destiny played a part too in tracking down sources. It soon became clear that
some largely unseen archives in the United States were as important as, if not
more so than, the more familiar dossiers in Britain and Europe. At the Hoover
Institution at Stanford University in California were papers relating to, among
others, David Harris and Paul Sweet, two of the feisty academics who traded
blows with those who wanted to destroy or conceal the damning files about the
Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The library also held documents for others
involved in the story, notably Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, dubbed
Hitler’s “spy princess” and a neighbor in London of Wallis Simpson.
When the research moved on to Moscow it seemed that Lady Luck was also
smiling. There were two elusive lines of inquiry: the role of Soviet spy and
king’s courtier Anthony Blunt in this royal detective story and the possible
existence in Russian archival custody of hidden correspondence between the
Duke of Windsor, Hitler, and the Nazi hierarchy. My thanks, then, to journalist
Will Stewart for tracking down and having translated an obscure Russian
biography of Blunt written by former ambassador to London Vicktor Popov, who
had been given special access to KGB files.
Even more tantalizing was the work of researcher Dr. Sebastian Panwitz, who
agreed to take a sweep through the Special Archive (Sonder Archiv) in Moscow
on the last day of August, just before they closed for the winter. He emerged
with a battered file with the barely legible words “Ribbentrop” and “Herzog von
Windsor” handwritten on the outside. Was this the smoking gun, the
documentary connection between Hitler, Ribbentrop, and the Duke of Windsor
that proved his treason? Unfortunately the majority of the contents were in
shorthand, and German shorthand at that. In the 1930s they used a system called
Stolze-Schrey, but thanks to the good offices of Manfred Duerhammer, the
Lucerne-based stenography expert Erich Werner agreed to take on the job of
translation. My heartfelt appreciation for his strenuous efforts in teasing out the
language from the hieroglyphics.
Less convoluted was the uncorking of a bottle of chardonnay in a Chelsea
wine bar and reflecting on the dissonance between George VI and his older
brother, the Duke of Windsor, with Sarah Bradford, the historian who inspired
this whole journey. As ever, her insights and observations were telling.
Wallis Simpson’s biographer Anne Sebba, who triumphantly transformed an
ogre into a human being, was especially helpful and thoughtful, generously
giving me the opportunity to take my investigation in a different and original
direction.
My grateful thanks too to Barbara Mason, a descendant of Herman Rogers,
who was a great friend and counsellor to both the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
As the unofficial family archivist, she kindly gave permission to use previously
unpublished correspondence between Herman, the Duke of Windsor, President
Roosevelt, and others in the book. She also granted access to the photographs
and movie footage taken by Herman during some of the most historic events of
King Edward VIII’s short reign. They are seen on these pages for the first time.
Barbara has been a great supporter of this project, her encouragement and
enthusiasm unstinting and much appreciated.
That said, no one can journey far into Windsor territory without
acknowledging a debt to Philip Ziegler, whose official biography of Edward VIII
remains a restrained masterpiece, and Michael Bloch, whose prodigious
research, especially into Operation Willi, and unparalleled access to the
correspondence of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, have made his
scholarship, like Ziegler’s, the benchmark for others to follow.
Many others have contributed to my understanding of these complex times as
well as the personalities involved. I would like to express my appreciation and
thanks to John Bell, Christopher and Katharine Blair, Miranda Carter, Ben
Fenton, Dr. Eberhard Fritz, Delissa Needham, Professor Scott Newton, Lynne
Olson, Professor Paul Preston, Associate Professor Donal O’Sullivan, Pendleton
Rogers, Professor Jean Edward Smith, Gennady Sokolov, Roger Weil, Professor
Gerhard Weinberg, Professor Douglas Wheeler, and Sacha Zala.
On the journey my hard-working researchers Nikki Thean, Zoya Lozoya, and
Kristen Lee have produced some unexpected nuggets, Nathan Ernst has
undertaken careful translations, while picture researcher Laura Hanifin and
restorer Jennie Flowers at Alive Studios in Devon have worked wonders under
tight deadlines. Thanks too to my agent at Folio Literary Management, Steve
Troha, for getting the show on the road, Deb Futter for pointing me in the right
direction, Rick Ball for skillfully editing the manuscript, and assistant editor
Dianne Choie for keeping the whole caravan moving along.
Finally, thanks to my darling wife Carolyn for her constant love and support.
Some things are just fated.
Andrew Morton
London
November 2014
CHAPTER ONE
The Peter Pan Prince
H
e was the first royal sex symbol of the modern age, the wistful features of the
Prince of Wales adorning the bedside tables and dormitory walls of thousands of
schoolgirls and young women across Britain and the empire. He may have been
the despair of his austere father, King George V, but Prince Edward—David to
his family—was the undisputed darling of the empire.
Even republican America fell for the winsome charms of a bona fide war
hero with matinee idol good looks. Hard-nosed celebrity journalist Adela Rogers
St. Johns was such a fan that she had a picture of the Prince of Wales in a silver
frame on her dressing table. “The dream of every American girl was to dance
with him,” she recalled. Over the next few years he tried to oblige.
During the twenties, only silent screen star Rudolph Valentino, whose
seductive performances in The Sheik and Blood and Sand transformed the one-
time busboy into an international heartthrob, could possibly compare with the
compelling charm of the future king-emperor.
His face was everywhere, on cigarette cards, in gossip magazines and daily
newspapers, his every public appearance slavishly chronicled by Pathé News
and shown at the local Roxy. An appearance by the Prince of Wales set female
hearts fluttering and mothers wringing their hands in the hope that their daughter
would be the chosen one. Men copied his natty dress sense, the Prince of Wales
popularizing and adapting the eponymous check first worn by his grandfather,
King Edward VII. He had only to appear in a particular Fair Isle pullover and
factories would be working overtime to keep up with demand.
His appeal, though, lay in something more than his ubiquitous presence in the
popular prints. Unlike his forbears, the unsmiling Queen Victoria, the haughty
Edward VII, and his stern father, King George V, there was something pliable,
friendly even, about the Prince of Wales. He looked more human than the others,
almost vulnerable. Perhaps it was his clean, boyish good looks—he shaved
infrequently throughout his life—or the slim wiry stature that earned him the
nickname, not to his face, of “little man.” Most likely it was the seeming sadness
that lay behind his haunted spaniel eyes which intrigued many. If eyes were truly
a window into the soul, here was a young man in torment. He had what Lord
Esher described as an expression of weltschmerz, the gloomy acknowledgment
of the world as it is as opposed to the world as it should be. It was the look of a
man who had seen more than his ration of sorrow and suffering, a quality he
shared with those returning soldiers who survived the horrors of the trenches. He
was the symbol, the human bridge between the war-weary millions still clinging
to the fast-dimming certainties of a world before the horrors of 1914 and a
fractious future where nationalism was on the rise, labour on the march, and
aristocracy in retreat.
Wartime prime minister Lloyd George instinctively recognized that the prince
was the most glittering jewel in the royal crown. It was, he argued, a jewel that
should be on display. At the end of the war in 1918 the prince was asked to tour
the colonies and Dominions to thank the people for their support of and sacrifice
for the mother country. The Welsh politician wanted the Prince of Wales to play
a “gay, many sided natural role.” If the empire’s star salesman could drum up
trade for Britain’s exhausted manufacturers, so much the better.
With five emperors, eight kings, and four imperial dynasties rendered
obsolete by the conflict, there was never a better time to emphasize that the
newly minted House of Windsor—George V changed the family name from
Saxe-Coburg und Gotha in 1917 to deflect anti-German sentiment—remained
the unchanging keystone in the edifice of an empire upon which the sun never
set. The slaughter of Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family at Ekaterinburg in
July 1918 by Bolshevik rebels reinforced this imperial imperative, especially as
George V bore an uncanny likeness to the murdered czar. Not only did the
barbaric incident shake the king’s “confidence in the innate decency of
mankind,” it inspired his son’s lifetime loathing of the Bolsheviks, the murder of
his godfather, Nicholas II, setting his heart against the Soviets and all their
works.
Thus his seemingly endless and arduous imperial tours—during the 1920s he
visited some forty-five countries and travelled an estimated 150,000 miles by sea
and train—were a golden opportunity to reinforce the relevance of the monarchy
and to introduce the man who one day would rule. It was a daunting assignment
for a somewhat naïve young man, still only twenty-five, who was frequently
overwhelmed by the straining sea of strange faces, the nervous demands of
public speaking—a skill that did not come naturally—and of course the endless