The Duchess Of Windsor, page 42
A line of German officials, headed by Dr. Robert Ley, the leader of the National Labour Front, waited to greet the couple. Ley handed Wallis a box of chocolates with a card which bore the inscription “Königliche Hoheit”—“Royal Highness.”6 Although the Nazis had turned out in full force, the British embassy, acting on strict orders from Whitehall in London, had dispatched only a third secretary, Geoffrey Harrison, to welcome the Windsors on behalf of Sir Neville Henderson, the ambassador. With some embarrassment, Harrison quickly handed the Duke a letter from Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, the British charge d’affaires, saying that Henderson had unexpectedly been called away from Berlin and that the embassy had been instructed to take no official notice of the Windsors’ visit. Nor were they to be received at the embassy—a fact which both Wallis and David took as a deliberate humiliation.7 “Both the Duke and Duchess were very, very hurt at not being extended any sort of regular welcome in Berlin,” recalls Forwood.8
When the welcoming ceremony had ended, Ley, who was to act as their official host for the duration of the visit, escorted the Duke and Duchess to his waiting black Mercedes and climbed in between them on the rear seat. The driver wore an SS uniform, and four other SS officers, one on each running board, and two armed guards in the front seat added a grim touch. As the car set off, the gathered crowd of several hundred erupted into loud cheers and applause.9
The sleek Mercedes raced along Berlin’s impressive boulevards at breakneck speed. This so unsettled Wallis that she complained to David later that evening. As the visit progressed and the motorcades continued their dangerous pace, the Duke was forced to tell Ley that either he order his driver to slow down or he and his wife would ride in another car altogether.10
The Duke and Duchess were given a spacious suite at the luxurious Kaiserhof Hotel. From their windows, they could look across at Hitler’s stunning and massive new Reich Chancellery, its marble walls stretching for hundreds of feet along the avenue. When they arrived at the hotel, the Windsors were welcomed by a specially invited crowd that serenaded them with a bombastic song, composed for the occasion by the Propaganda Ministry on the orders of its head, Josef Goebbels.
The following day, Wallis and David embarked on separate programs. The Duchess was taken to a Nazi Welfare Society department workhouse where she was shown women happily engaged in sewing clothes for the poor. Since her mother, Alice, had done much the same thing in Baltimore, Wallis was able to comment with some interest and knowledge on the products before her; she even tried her hand at communicating in her less-than-perfect German, although the accompanying translator was swift to ensure that no misunderstanding occurred.
While Wallis was thus engaged, David was taken on a tour of the Stock Machine Works at Grünewald. He was impressed by the amenities offered to the workers there, including a restaurant, concert hall, and swimming pool. In fluent German, he spoke with many of those he encountered, questioning them as to their lives, their workday, their pay rates, and their children. That afternoon, David was guest of honor at a free concert given for a thousand workers by the Berlin Labor Front Orchestra during which selections from Wagner and Liszt were played. The concert ended with “Deutschland Ueber Alles,” “The Horst Wessel Song,” and “God Save the King.” Newsreel cameras were rolling as David, a wide smile on his face, was seen to raise his arm in the Nazi salute. Although his apologists have tried to explain this away as misinterpretation of a simple wave, the Duke himself later acknowledged that he had made the offending salute on several occasions during the trip. “There are times when it’s necessary to do or say certain things,” he told his friend J. Paul Getty, “and then allow them to remain on the record. Wallis and I both have broad shoulders. We can bear the load.”11 As Sir Dudley Forwood rightly points out, “that Nazi salute was no more than the simple courtesy one always extended to one’s hosts. If His Royal Highness went to a country where the people rubbed noses in greeting, he would do so. The salute was nothing more than good manners.”12
That evening, Dr. Ley hosted a party for the Duke and Duchess at his country estate. Among the guests were Joachim von Ribbentrop; SS leader Heinrich Himmler; Rudolf Hess and his wife, Use; and Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels and his wife, Magda. Goebbels failed to make a favorable impression: Wallis later described him as “a tiny, wispy gnome with an enormous skull. His wife was the prettiest woman I saw in Germany.” Together they reminded her of “Beauty and the Beast.”13 Ilse Hess was fascinated by Wallis. She later recalled her as “a lovely, charming, warm and clever woman with a heart of gold and an affection for her husband that she made not the slightest attempt to conceal.”14
The next morning, Wallis remained at the hotel while her husband set off on a long inspection tour. At Crossensee, he visited the training school of the Death’s Head Division of the Elite Squad of the SS. Once the SS band had finished playing “God Save the King,” David toured the medieval-style facility, with its thick stone walls, thatched roofs, and tall towers. After lunch, he was driven to the Stargard military airport, where he boarded a twelve-passenger plane that belonged to Ley and made an aerial inspection of a Nazi youth camp along the shores of the Baltic Sea. While David was thus occupied, Wallis toured the former Imperial Palaces at Potsdam.
On October 14, Wallis and David paid a visit to the Berlin War Museum and the Pergamon Museum. That afternoon, they were driven into the countryside to meet with Field Marshal Hermann Goering and his wife, Emmy, at their magnificent country estate, Karinhalle, some forty miles from Berlin. Escorted by Luftwaffe officers, the Windsors’ motorcade turned through the long, tall stone piers which marked the entrance to the estate and swept through the forest to the clearing where the house stood. Wallis later recalled how it had appeared out of the rain and mist, a massive baronial house of white stone walls pierced with towers and arcades and topped with a steep thatched roof.15
Goering himself was greatly worried over the visit; he was keenly aware that Hitler expected him to do all in his power to favorably influence the Duke toward Germany. Just before the Windsors arrived at Karinhalle, Goering told his wife, “Please make everything nice for them—this visit means a lot to me.”16
Immaculately dressed in a white uniform covered with medals, Goering stood at the side of his wife, waiting at the front door to greet the Duke and Duchess. The foursome took tea at a round table set up in the hall, an immense room filled with modern furniture. Although a translator was present, the two couples managed on their own: David spoke German to Goering and his wife, while Wallis spoke English and French to Emmy Goering and French with Goering himself. The Duke questioned Goering at length about housing conditions. “He showed himself to be very well informed about the Reichs Government’s building program,” Emmy Goering recalled, “and talked exhaustively about the plans which he himself had had to improve the social position of the British working man.... The Duchess, who was dressed with amazingly simple elegance, pleased me even more than the Duke. I found myself sitting opposite to a real lady and I could not help thinking that this woman would certainly have cut a good figure on the Throne of England.”17
Wallis asked Emmy Goering to show her around Karinhalle. The house was enormous, with vast rooms hung with Rembrandts and filled with an eclectic mixture of furnishings; the tall windows looked out over magnificent views of the forest beyond. She noted a gymnasium in the basement filled with weights, electric horses, and bars and inspected the servants’ rooms, which had the occupant’s names painted on the doors. Everything seemed overly picturesque; even the housemaids wore peasant dresses with pleated skirts and smocked blouses. In the barn, the women were joined by the Duke and the field marshal, who delighted in showing his guests an enormous toy train which filled the room.18
The only jarring note came when they entered the library. David quickly turned to Wallis and pointed to a large map of Europe which hung above the fireplace. On Goering’s map, Germany and Austria had become one country, an ominous sign of the coming Anschluss. “Excuse me, Your Excellency Herr Field Marshal,” David said, pointing at the map, “but that’s rather important.” According to Sir Dudley Forwood, Goering, rather sheepishly, replied, “It must be, Your Royal Highness.” But the Duke would have none of it. He shook his head and said loudly, “Never, never, never.”19 As he and Wallis left, David turned to the Goerings and said in German, “This was the nicest visit of all those we have made in Germany.”20
The Duke and Duchess paid further visits to Dresden, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, and Munich. Throughout these long days, they were introduced to and escorted by various Nazi officials. The only jarring note was the continued presence of Ley himself, “a rather awful little man,” in the words of Forwood.21 Both Wallis and David found him a boorish, brutal lout; half the time he was with the Windsors, Ley was drunk, a state which only made him more vocal in expressing his admiration of the Third Reich and disapproval of the way in which England had treated the couple. Eventually, word of this behavior reached Hitler, and midway through the visit, Ley was relieved of his duty as official host.22
On October 15 the Duke and Duchess went to Essen, where they toured a large coal mine. To the surprise of his hosts, David insisted on climbing some fifteen hundred feet down into the shaft, accompanied by Dudley Forwood, to see for himself the conditions within. Following an afternoon visit to the Krupp’s Armaments Factory, the Windsors attended a reception given in their honor by the president of the Rhine province. The next day, they visited Düsseldorf, where they attended an industrial exhibit. Wallis found the display boring, but David was fascinated. A visit to a miners’ hospital followed, where both the Duke and Duchess toured the wards and took time to sit down on the beds of several patients for impromptu chats.
On the twentieth, David’s cousin Carl Eduard, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, gave a dinner party in their honor at the Grand Hotel in Nuremberg. As the Windsors stood at the head of the receiving line, the hundred guests carefully made their way past the couple. Wallis noticed that each and every lady curtsied to her and called her “Royal Highness,” gestures she deeply appreciated.23
The highlight of the visit came on October 22, when the Duke and Duchess accepted an invitation from Adolf Hitler to join him for tea at Berchtesgaden. No part of the Windsors’ trip to Germany would cause more controversy that this single visit, but it is difficult, in retrospect, to explain why so much ink has been spilled condemning these few hours. Only three days earlier, Edward, Viscount Halifax—the British foreign secretary—had likewise visited Hitler at the express wish of both the British government and King George VI. Chamberlain, desperate to guarantee the future peace of Europe, was willing to negotiate; on his behalf, Halifax told the Führer that England was officially prepared to recognize the preponderance of German interests in Europe. Although nothing came of the visit, it was not the first, nor would it be the last, British attempt to sound out Hitler and actively form some sort of alliance, however uneasy.
The idea for the visit originated with Hitler himself. Neither David nor Wallis had expected to meet him; when he issued the invitation, however, they were honor-bound to accept. Had they refused, their decision would undoubtedly have caused a diplomatic incident. As it was, the Windsors were private citizens; neither brought any agenda to Berchtesgaden. Nor was there anything unusual in such a meeting; high-ranking visitors to Germany were often accorded private audiences with the Führer, which were simply regarded as a matter of courtesy. Under the circumstances, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had little choice but to honor the Führer’s invitation or reason to refuse it.
Hitler dispatched a private train to collect the Duke and Duchess, who were accompanied by Rudolf Hess. When they reached Berchtesgaden, they were joined by Dr. Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s personal translator. The Windsors climbed into an open-topped black Mercedes and, escorted by a contingent of SS guards on motorcycles and a host of cars filled with detectives and armed officers, were driven up the mountain at Obersalzburg to Hitler’s Berghof.
At the top of the hill, the procession rounded the drive and swung through the gates which marked the entrance court before the Berghof. Hitler, dressed in the brown Nazi Party jacket, black trousers, and black shoes, stood on the steps, waiting to greet them. “His face had a pasty pallor,” Wallis recalled, “and under his mustache his lips were fixed in a kind of mirthless grimace. Yet at close quarters he gave one the feeling of great inner force. His hands were long and slim, a musician’s hands, and his eyes were truly extraordinary—intense, unblinking, magnetic, burning with the same peculiar fire.”24
Hitler led the Windsors into the entrance hall, past a huge painting of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and into an anteroom. There several tall, well-built young men stepped forward to remove their coats. They were then escorted through a hallway and down three steps into the immense drawing room. One wall was occupied by an enormous picture window with magnificent views of the snow-covered Alps stretching for miles in the distance. Hitler told the Duke he would like to speak with him privately, and Wallis was left with Rudolf Hess in the drawing room to await their return.
David would later recall that the ensuing conversation was utterly banal:
My ostensible reason for going to Germany was to see for myself what National Socialism was doing in housing and welfare for the workers, and I tried to keep my conversation with the Führer to these subjects, not wishing to be drawn into a discussion of politics.... In a roundabout way, he encouraged me to infer that Red Russia was the only enemy, and that it was in Britain’s interest and in Europe’s too, that Germany be encouraged to strike east and smash Communism forever.... I confess frankly that he took me in. I believed him when he implied that he sought no war with England. . . .25
The hour-long interview was also recalled by the interpreter, Paul Schmidt:
Hitler was evidently making an effort to be as amiable as possible towards the Duke, whom he regarded as Germany’s friend, having especially in mind a speech the Duke had made some years before, extending the hand of friendship to Germany’s ex-servicemen’s associations. In these conversations there was, so far as I could see, nothing whatever to indicate whether the Duke of Windsor really sympathised with the ideology and practices of the Third Reich, as Hitler seemed to assume he did. Apart from some appreciative words for the measures taken in Germany in the field of social welfare, the Duke did not discuss political questions. . . .26
Finally, the Duke and Hitler returned to the drawing room to join Wallis for tea. David spoke to Hitler in German, although Hitler had ordered Schmidt to translate; several times, the Duke stopped the conversation to correct the translator, saying that he had misinterpreted what he had said. Hitler addressed few words to Wallis. The one chilling remark she did later recall was in answer to her compliment on the splendid architecture she and David had observed. “Our buildings,” Hitler declared ominously, “will make more magnificent ruins than the Greeks.”27 After the Windsors had left the Berghof, Hitler turned to Schmidt and announced, “She would have made a good Queen.”28
The Duke and Duchess were unprepared for the avalanche of criticism which greeted their German visit. They were accused of having been taken in by the Nazis, of swallowing without question the endless propaganda parade of happy workers and beautiful Aryan youth which had greeted them at every stop. Although the Duke was a man of powerful influence, his critics would argue, he had done nothing to discover the ugly reality behind the rumors of concentration camps and imposed brutality. He and Wallis had been used by the very forces which threatened the peace of the world. British MP Herbert Morrison, leader of the London County Council, declared, “The choice before ex-kings is either to fade out of the public eye or be a nuisance. It is a hard choice, perhaps, for one of his temperament, but the Duke of Windsor will be wise to fade.”29
In retrospect, the Duke’s decision to visit Germany, while it may be considered unfortunate for the damage it did to the reputations of him and his wife, cannot be regarded with any political significance. David knew little of the realities of the Nazi regime; in Hitler and the Third Reich he saw—as did so many others at the time—only the admirable economic and patriotic results of their achievements. It is doubtful that he was even aware of Hitler’s policies on race. Wallis knew even less than her husband. Both feared Soviet Russia far more than they did any future threat from Germany.
Then, too, Germany was the country of David’s heritage; his mother had raised him to speak the language as fluently as a native, and the walls of the royal residences of England were lined with portraits of his Hanoverian ancestors. “The Duke’s first country—England—had cut him off,” declares a friend. “It was only natural that, in his exile, he would look with misty eyes to the only other country with which he felt a close bond.”30
Much of the criticism of the Windsors’ tour of Germany stemmed from the fact that they were shown only what the Nazis wished them to see; they were not allowed to explore the conditions of those suffering under the Nazi regime, nor did they seem inclined to ask any questions or appear in any context which might have proved controversial. But surely the responsibility for some of this criticism must be laid squarely at the doors of both King George VI and his Foreign Office. Had the British government, acting upon the King’s continued wish that his brother be marginalized, not insisted that the Duke be ignored by their own diplomats during his visit and left to misstep on his own without any advice or counsel from the embassy, almost certainly the results of the trip would have been different. At the very least, embassy officials would have been able to ensure that the Duke and Duchess avoided any appearances which might cause offense or lead to misinterpretation.
