The metaphysical roots of world politics

Wallis Simpson, the Nazi minister, the telltale monk and an FBI plot

 

When the Duke and Duchess of Windsor sailed into Palm Beach, Florida, on the SS Berkshire from Nassau on April 18 1941 they were looking forward to enjoying three days of relaxation at the Everglades Club playing golf and drinking and gossiping with American high society.

 

Little did they know that the previous night instructions had gone out from President Roosevelt to FBI chief J Edgar Hoover to launch what was to be an extraordinary covert intelligence exercise that had to fool both the exiled royals and the US secret service agent who was guarding them.

 

The exercise was launched after the FBI had been passed intelligence that the duke and duchess were being used by the Nazis to obtain secrets which could wreck the allies' war effort. The US investigation became even more lurid when FBI agents interviewed a Benedictine monk in a Franciscan monastery in the United States; Father Odo had once been the Duke of Württemberg, a minor German royal with connections to Queen Mary, the duke's mother, and her brother, the Duke of Athlone, then governor general of Canada.

 

He told them that a prime suspect in the investigation - Joachim von Ribbentrop, then the Nazis' foreign minister - had been the duchess's lover when he was ambassador to Britain in 1936. The minister was already thought to have been supplied with information by the duchess during the German invasion of France in 1940. Now it was suggested that there was far closer arrangement.

 

Father Odo told the agent: "He knew definitely that von Ribbentrop, while in England, sent the then Wallis Simpson 17 carnations every day. The 17 supposedly represented the number of times they had slept together."

 

He also revealed that the Duchess of Windsor had told guests at a Paris party that: "The duke is impotent and although he had tried sexual intercourse with numerous women they had been unsuccesful in satisfying his passions."

 

He went on: "The duchess in her own inimitable and unique manner has been the only woman who had been able to satisfactorily gratify the duke's sexual desires."

 

Exile

 

The duke was forced into exile after he abdicated as King Edward VIII in 1936. He first went with his lover, formerly the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, to France and was only later exiled again to Bahamas to keep him out of the way.

 

By the time the US president authorised the intelligence operation, the couple had been deserted and snubbed by the royal family and the British establishment. They were suspected of favouring the Nazis after they visited Germany in 1937 and were entertained by Hitler and other senior Nazis.

 

A year after war broke out, the FBI sent a memo to President Roosevelt outlining the agency's worries about the couple. It stated: "It has been ascertained that for some time, the British government has known that the Duchess of Windsor was exceedingly pro-German in her sympathies and connections and there is strong reason to believe that this is the reason why she was considered so obnoxious to the British government that they refused to permit Edward to marry her and maintain the throne.

 

"Both she and the Duke of Windsor have been repeatedly warned by representatives of the British government that in the interest of the morale of the British people, they should be exceedingly circumspect in their dealings with the representatives of the German government. The duke is in such state of intoxication most of the time that he is virtually non compos mentis. The duchess has repeatedly ignored these warnings."

 

When war broke out, the duke, a serving officer, had been posted to France to liaise between the British and French armies. But the secret memo, on September 13 1940, reports that an informant had "established conclusively that the Duchess of Windsor has recently been in touch with Joachim von Ribbentrop and was maintaining constant contact and communication with him."

 

"Because of their high official position, the duchess was obtaining a variety of information concerning the British and French official activities that she was passing on to the Germans."

 

After the Germans invaded northern France in May 1940, the couple fled to Biarritz in the south. But the FBI noted that the Nazis were able to score a propaganda coup by broadcasting that the "increasing successes of the German armies" had compelled the couple to retreat to a Biarritz hotel. Within minutes of checking in, Berlin radio announced their hotel room number because the unnamed informant "had ascertained that the duchess had informed von Ribbentrop of her itinerary, schedule, etc, prior to her departure from their villa."

 

The couple then travelled to Spain in June 1940 "but the communications between the duchess and von Ribbentrop were apparently facilitated because of the pronounced Nazi sympathies in Spain."

 

In July 1940, the pair moved to Portugal where the duke made indiscreet remarks that Britain stood little chance of resisting a German invasion and may as well try to settle for peace with the Germans. Ribbentrop, encouraged by these remarks, hatched a plot to lure the Windsors into German hands.

 

But Winston Churchill had arranged for the duke to become governor of the Bahamas in August 1940.

 

"The British were and are always fearful that the duchess will do or say some thing which will indicate her Nazi sympathies and support, and consequently it was considered absolutely essential that the Windsors be removed to a point where they would do absolutely no harm," wrote the FBI in the memo, one of a batch of 227 pages released to the Guardian under the US freedom of information act. The FBI believed that the Bahamas were selected to prevent the duchess from coming into contact with British officials and scooping up more secrets to leak and that special precautions were taken, presumably by the British, to prevent her from "establishing any channel of communication with von Ribbentrop."

 

From their base in the Bahamas, the couple made frequent visits to the United States during the war. In April 1941, President Roosevelt ordered FBI agents to tail the Windsors discreetly when they visited Florida. But J Edgar Hoover was alarmed because bodyguards from another government department had been assigned to protect the couple. He warned that the bodyguards "would undoubtedly immediately detect the presence of any undercover agents, which might result in considerable embarrassment to all parties concerned".

 

Deal

 

Instead, the government arranged for the bodyguards to report back to the FBI on where the Windsors went and whom they met. An 18-page report was subsequently produced on the five-day trip.

 

On May 2, an FBI agent wrote to Hoover, saying that an English socialite had told an informant that he had definite proof that Herman Göring, Hitler's deputy, and the Duke of Windsor had reached a deal - "after Germany won the war, Göring, through control of the army, was going to overthrow Hitler and then he would install the duke as king of England."

 

The informant also stated that there was no doubt that "the Duchess of Windsor had had an affair with Ribbentrop, and that of course she had an intense hate for the English since they had kicked them out of England".