The King's Word

The Nazi Duke of Coburg made several visits during the mid-1930s to his second cousin, Britain's new King Edward VIII. Once, the royal cousins chatted "with pipe at the fireside" in Windsor Castle, another time at tea in Buckingham Palace with Mary, the Queen Mother.

The talks roused little interest at the time, and were soon overshadowed by the melodrama of Edward's abdication in order to marry "the woman I love''--the twice-divorced American socialite, Wallis Warfield Simpson. Since then, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, growing paler and frailer with the passage of years, have drifted from Portugal to the West Indies, from Manhattan to Paris. Their pastimes have been the trifling ones of showing up at balls, growing roses.

"Who Is King Here?" But last week the long-forgotten chats of the Duke of Coburg were making headlines in London newspapers as the German aristocrat was revealed also as a special emissary sent by Hitler to Britain because of his familial connections with the royal family.

The revelations appeared in the latest batch of captured Nazi documents published jointly last week by the British, French and U.S. governments. Coburg's "Strictly Confidential" report was addressed "Only for the Fuehrer and Party Member v. Ribbentrop (No Copy)," and said of Edward VIII that "for him a German-British alliance is an urgent necessity and a guiding principle of British foreign policy." Coburg eagerly suggested that discussions about future relations be held between Hitler and Britain's Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. The King, said Coburg, "replied in the following words: 'Who is King here, Baldwin or I? I, myself, wish to talk to Hitler and will do so here or in Germany. Tell him that, please.' "

Britain's Interests. The charge of pro-German sympathies has often been made against the German-descended Duke of Windsor, most notably after the publication of other captured Nazi documents five years ago. The London Daily Express dismissed the late Duke of Coburg's account as having no value as evidence because "he was a Nazi, spreading news he knew would be welcome in Berlin."

But the Daily Mirror's columnist Cassandra seemed convinced of Windsor's "close and cordial relationships with the Nazi regime."

At week's end the Duke of Windsor, now 68, denied most--but not all--of the published reports. "They give a generally false impression," he declared in a statement issued by his secretary in France, adding: "It must be remembered that the Duke, with the majority of the people who had the interests of Great Britain at heart, was striving for some understanding with Germany."

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