Linda Minor
Sun, 30 Apr 2000 09:39:26 -0700
The best source I have found for the day-to-day activities of the Duke and Duchess is Charles Higham's "The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life." After the abdication, they had to live on their investments since neither of them had any idea what the word "work" meant. That means they were totally dependent on the party who handled their investments for them, since they were more or less cut off from his family, and Wallis was an orphan, raised by her uncle (who himself had handled investments in Baltimore for members of the royal family), who had left her very little. >From Higham, beginning p. 279: "Money was a continuing problem for the Windsors. Their $21,000 a year, though the equivalent of over $100,000, was barely enough to sustain their extraordinary standard of living. The duchess's addiction to jewelry required constant satisfaction. Her clothes still had to be originals by Mainbocher, Schiaparelli, Chanel, or Molyneux. The duke auctioned off his entire herd of shorthorn cattle, grazed at his High River, Alberta, ranch, for a total of $10,000. That helped a little, and the investing skills of Eugene Rothschild helped more. Ironically, much of the Windsors's money was invested in the Jewish-owned Lyons' Corner Houses, a popular chain of what would today be called fast-food restaurants in England. These were enormously profitable and popular, and the income from them substantially improved as time went on. "On November 11 [1938?] the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, returning from a vacation in east Africa, flew to Paris and joined the Windsors for lunch at the Hotel Meurice. They went for a drive and stopped by the Eugene Rothschilds' for tea. During the evening they dropped by a new house which the Windsors had just rented and were fixing up: an imitation Louis XVI residence owned by the Italian Countess Sabini, situated at 24 Boulevard Suchet. They would retain this elegant and charming house for many years.... Early in February [1939], Victor Cazalet, an old friend, visited the Windsors in Paris. They told him that the duke would have gone to see Hitler himself if Chamberlain had not. He noted that the duke still adored Wallis and that she had him under her complete domination... "In those early months of 1939 the duke asked Walter Monckton to make inquiries at 10 Downing Street as to how Chamberlain would react to his returning with the duchess for a short visit. [the P.M. replied that the time wasn't right yet.] "On February 22 French Premier Edouard Daladier spoke at a Washington's Birthday dinner at the American Club in Paris at which the Windsors were present. Introduced by a beaming William C. Bullitt, who stressed that the U.S. would not'start a war with any nation,' Daladier spoke of permanent peace in Europe despite the fact that Italy was mustering on the border of Libya and French Tunisia. Only 16 days later Hitler annihilated the Czechoslovak state. And on May 8, in the wake of that annihilation, the duke, with Wallas at his side, broadcast on NBC from a country inn in Verdun...; his message was a plea for peace. Although he claimed that his brother the king, who was now on his way to Canada and the U.S. for a goodwill tour, approved this ill-timed address, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the BBC flatly refused to relay it. During the king's tour Nazi-controlled Sean Russell, head of the IRA and an admirer of the Windsors, planned and almost brought off an assassination of the royal couple as they took the train from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit. Simultaneously, serious consideration was given to the possibility of sending the Duke of Gloucester to Australia in the Duke of Kent's place. "On June 11, with great boldness, the Windsors went to a dinner party at the home of Count Johannes von Welczek, the German ambassador to France, with whom they had been friendly for many years....Aside from the Windsors, there were, among dozens of well-known names....members of the royal house of Monaco....Ambassador Bullitt and the famous society beauty Mrs. Harrison Williams completed the list....The prominent political journalist Pertinax observed that many pro-Nazis and admirers of Mussolini's regime used the party, as they used many similar events, to improve their connections on behalf of fascism. Anything went in the glamorous and corrupt atmosphere of Paris in those days.... "...On August 29 the duke sent a telegram to Hitler, followed by one to King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, urging both to intercede in the interest of securing peace. Even as Hitler marked into Poland, the fuhrer sent a telegram in response, saying that England was responsible for the situation and that 'if war came' it would be England's fault.... "War broke out on September 3. The Windsors' position was extremely delicate. If they remained in France, they ran the risk that the Germans would kidnap them as accomplices in a plan for the duke to resume the British throne. On the other hand, if they fled to the U.S., it would reflect appallingly upon them and would suggest that they were cowards. The only alternative was to go to England....There was already afoot in England a disorganized series of movements allegedly bent upon overthrowing the throne in the interests of fascism should Britain be invaded and sue for peace. These included the Link, which was headed by Sir Barry Domvile, former chief of naval intelligence; it was made up of a group of right-wing and reactionary politicians and their hangers-on. Two other such groups were the Right Club and the Nordic League, the latter headed by Archibald Maule Ramsay, an anti-Semitic member of Parliament for Peebles and Southern in Scotland. These were largely eccentric frondes, with no common leadership and rather scattered resources, but it was well known that if Britain were attacked they would do everything to encourage a general laying down of arms and the setting up of a puppet state. Churchill would be put under house arrest and the royal family exiled to the Bahamas. (Churchill, with great dark humor, would instead send the Windsors there).... [The Windsors refused to fly to London since Wallis never flew, and were eventually transported by surface transportation from Paris to Sussex, England.] "On September 14, without the duchess, the duke went to see the king....The duke said he would 'prefer the Welsh appointment.'...Queen Mary refused to see the duke, and by royal instruction he was not permitted to visit the Duke of Kent. "Within 24 hours, the Welsh appointment was withdrawn for obvious reasons on the advice of Vansittart. The very fact that the duke wanted it was sufficient cause for it not to be given..... "It was decided that the duke would proceed to France as major general. Actually, the duke never officially accepted the position, but two advantages can be seen in the decision to make the French appointment. First, it would get the duke out of the British Isles. Second, it would be possible for agents of the Secret Intelligence ervice to keep an eye on him while he performed various assignments, including the formulation of reports on French military weaknesses.... [Windsors departed on September 29 for France but did not move back into their boarded-up house. They checked into the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles.] "While the Windsors made sure their contributions to the war effor were publicized, it was typical of their impudence and almost humorous perversity that the first person they saw, entertained, and visited in Paris was Charles Bedaux. One would have thought even the minimum of common sense would have urged them to avoid any such encounter, in view of the fact that Bedaux, whether guilty of Nazi collaboration or not, was under constant surveillance by the Secret Intelligence Service. The fact that Fruity Metcalfe organized the meeting makes one wonder about his motives.... "On October 14 Gamelin gave an elaborate luncheon for the duke at the military headquarters at the Chateau de Vincennes. The duchess was not present; no wives were there. Meanwhile, the duchess decided to reopen her house after all. Astonishingly, she entertained Charles and Fern Bedaux at that address, which took a great deal of nerve..... "On October 17 the duke arrived uninvited at the Gort headquarters in Arras; though asked not to do so because of the security situation, he joined his brother Gloucester in inspecting the troops. Unfortunately, according to a United Press release on Jan. 8 of the following year, he wore suede shoes with his uniform. He also infuriated Gloucester by returning a salute to which it was his brother's privilege to respond. As a result of this, plus the fact that he had behaved improperly in arriving as he did, the duke was forbidden any further visits to the British front line. On October 26 he made a further tour of the French troops. But as the war began to look more serious and German attacks were expected, he was increasingly deactivated and sent to places where there was even less information to be obtained which could be of use to the enemy. He spent most of his time in Paris, where Gray Phillips, an experienced staff officer, had arrived to take up the role of the duke's aide and comptroller. Providing Phillips's services was a gesture by the palace, but the fact that the duke was in the outer darkness was further indicated when neither War Minister Hore-Belisha nor King George contacted him when they came to France in November and December." ++++ That brings us up to the date the letter would have been written. Even if the letter was authentic, what is it supposed to prove? After only a few more months in Paris, the Windsors were offered the appointment as Governor of the Bahamas, to which they were escorted. But it's not really known whether the duke and duchess were acting on behalf of the Brits there, or whether they were reacting on the suggestion of others to get back at the Brits. It is my theory from reading the entire book and other research that the duchess was the one who was receiving orders from her own sources and was manipulating her husband. I think their primary motive in everything they did was to get the biggest return on the investment of what assets they had acquired. That means they were acting on behalf of investment bankers like the Paris Rothschilds and by Robert R. Young in the U.S. and his associates. Here is an excerpt which begins in Higham's book at p. 386: "On August 4, 1945, John Balfour, who was now acting charge d'affaires in Washington, made arrangements for the duke to meet Pres. Truman at the White House. Balfour was still in the anti-Windsor camp in London and had been privy to all the many encoded documents relating to the couple. He liaised with Adolf A. Berle in keeping a constant watch on the couple. [Within a few days Truman had agreed to drop the bombs on Japan.] "Two nights later Robert and Anita Young came to dinenr with Wallis and the duke. Balfour's purpose in having the duke stay with him was to keep an eye on him. The Youngs showed their true colors that evening. Balfour wrote in his memoirs, 'They all seem to be oblivious of Nazi misdeeds and seem to feel that if Hitler had been differently handled war might have been avoided.' "It was in that period that Young, always weaving in and out of the Windsors' lives, assumed a temporary predominance. Let us pause for a moment in the narrative to consider this remarkable individual. From 1937 he had been in virtual control of Alleghany. This had been Wallis's first investment favorite; her Warfield uncles had managed to secure her some of the proferred stock issued in a storm of controversy by the banker J.P. Morgan, who was a chief investor for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the time they were Duke and Duchess of York. Alleghany stock was among the few to survive the Wall Street crash. Young had risen higher and higher, keeping Wall Street in a constant state of turmoil as he fought the investment banks and Capitol Hill to plunge forward with his wild and reckless schemes for a multibillion-dollar railroad empire that would link the nation coast to coast without a need for changing trains. His particular obsession was Chicago, where travelers had to stop, often for a whole night, before proceeding to the West or East Coast.... "The Windsors were intoxicated by Young. In particular, the duke, who clung to the past of his youth, longed to see the railroads combat what would undoubtedly be the postwar rise of commercial domestic airlines; because of her only partly conquered fear of flying, a well as her love of trains, Wallis also found Young a crusader and a hero. The Windsors decided to invest substantial sums in Young..... p. 396: "When the ship docked, the Windsors were met by Robert and Anita Young. Young was still locked in his continuing battle to obtain ultimate control of the New York Central Railroad; questioned by reporters, both Young and the duke denied that royal money was invested in the struggle. It was a futile denial..... "...The party went off according to plan. The official hostess ws the wealthy Mrs. Sailing Baruch, sister-in-law of Bernard Baruch [head of the Board of Economic Warfare]. At a certain stage during the evening the New York playboy Jimmy Donahue turned up... "The Windsors had not met Donahue before. Orlando introduced them. Slim, oval-faced, with slicked-down hair, Donahue was a remarkable personality. His mother, Jessie, with whom he lived at 834 Fifth Avenue, was the daughter of the billionaire Frank Woolworth; Barbara Hutton was her cousin. [There follows sordid tales of their connection with Donahue, a flaming "queen".]..."In February 1947 the Windsors found a temporary escape from this ghastly liaison and traveled to Florida, where the Youngs joined them at the Horse Shoe Plantation, Tallahassee, owned by the millionaire banking heir George Baker and his mother, Edith...Surprisingly, they returned to the hated Bahamas to stay with friends of the Baker family, the explorer Arthur Vernay and his wife, at Los Cayos. p. 403: "The Windsors' new lawyer was the remarkable Maitre Suzanne Blum. Then Madame Paul Weill, she was the sister of Andre Blumel, a lifelong friend, law partner, and associate of France's former premier, Leon Blum. Blumel had been administrative assistant or chief de cabinet in the Socialist and Russian-allied Blum administration during Edward VIII's reign. A convinced left-winger, he was, like Blum, Jewish. During World War II, when Leon Blum was improsoned...Suzanne Weill and her husband managed to reach New York, where she altered her name to Blum....From the moment she established her law practice in Paris after 1945, Maitre Blum began acquiring a remarkable list of clients. Many of these were prominent figures of the film industry; others were leading figures of the French aristocracy. [Then follows a tale about how the Duke of Windsors memoirs were written and published by Henry Luce and Time/Life. During this time Robert Young, George Baker and Kenneth de Courcy (who had property in La Croe, France) decided to sell and move holdings to U.S. The memoir writing continued until the beginning of 1950 when the Windsors began an extensive tour of New York, Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Mexico on the private railroad car of Robert Young.] ++++ It's my opinion that this is the most telling part of the book. Robert Young was in complete control of the Windsor investments. It was a co-dependent relationship that existed. Without their money he had no power; without his skill they had no income. The railroad stopping points show what they owned--the assets of the railroad. If one follows the boards on which Young sat and his associates, it will lead to what other investments were made of the Windsor assets. The question is: what happened to these assets when the Windsors died? Who owns these investments today, since they had no children and were angry with all their collateral relatives apparently. Would there have been some agreement made about that by the investor? Was Robert Young merely an agent of their good friend Eugene Rothschild in Paris? ++++ That brings us back to the recently discovered letter. What does it really mean, if anything? Linda Minor -----Original Message----- From: William Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Saturday, April 29, 2000 11:36 PM Subject: [CTRL] Hitler/Duke Of Windsor Link >DUKE OF WINDSOR >"TRIED TO PASS MILITARY SECRETS TO HITLER" >SAYS NEW BOOK. >by David Icke >The Duke of Windsor, who abdicated in 1936 to marry the American divorcee, >Wallis Simpson, gave military secrets to Adolf Hitler, a new book claims. > >The author, Martin Allen, claims to have a letter written by the Duke to >Hitler, dated November 4th, 1939, two months after the start of the war. It >begins "Dear Mr. Hitler" and is signed "EP" - Edward Prince, a term which the >Duke sometimes used. > >The letter talks about a tour of the French frontline, which the Duke had >made for the British military high command and he asks Hitler to pay close >attention to information which the man taking the letter to Berlin had >memorised. This man was Charles Bedaux, a pro-German spy and a friend of the >Duke. > <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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