Duke of Wind­sor sought close Nazi ties, von Rib­ben­trop’s Nurem­berg let­ter reveals

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Duke of Wind­sor sought close Nazi ties, von Rib­ben­trop’s Nurem­berg let­ter reveals

THE Duke of Wind­sor sought “the closest co-oper­a­tion” with Hitler’s Ger­many in 1936, a let­ter writ­ten on behalf of a high-rank­ing Nazi reveals.

It asks former King Edward VIII to give evid­ence in his favour at the Nurem­berg tri­als.

The doc­u­ment was writ­ten by the legal team of Joachim von Rib­ben­trop, Adolf Hitler’s min­is­ter of for­eign affairs, in Janu­ary 1946. He called on the Duke of Wind­sor to appear on his behalf.

Von Rib­ben­trop recalled a meet­ing in 1936 in which the pair agreed to work towards the “closest pos­sible rela­tion­ship” between Eng­land and Ger­many.

The Nazi sought to use the Duke’s evid­ence to dis­prove counts of crimes against peace and plan­ning a war of aggres­sion, which he had been charged with. Von Rib­ben­trop was found guilty and was the first Nazi defend­ant executed by hanging. The five-page let­ter is up for auc­tion on Wed­nes­day.

It reads: “When present­ing his cre­den­tials in 1936, von Rib­ben­trop expressed to the then King Edward VIII the desire of the Reich Chan­cel­lor (Hitler) for the closest co-oper­a­tion between Ger­many and Eng­land. In the course of this audi­ence, King Edward VIII declared that he, too, deemed such a co-oper­a­tion neces­sary.”

The let­ter was kept by Dr Hans Werner, respons­ible for print­ing the record of the Trial of Major War Crim­in­als in 42 volumes. It is tipped to sell for £2,600 at Inter­na­tional Auto­graph Auc­tions of Malaga, Spain.

Richard Davie, of the auc­tion­eers, said: “Many his­tor­i­ans have sug­ges­ted that Hitler was pre­pared to rein­state the Duke of Wind­sor as king in the hope of estab­lish­ing a fas­cist pup­pet gov­ern­ment in Great Bri­tain after Oper­a­tion Sealion, the secret Nazi plan for the inva­sion of the UK.

“It is widely believed that the Duke and Duch­ess sym­path­ised with fas­cism before and dur­ing the Second World War and were moved to the Bahamas to min­im­ise their oppor­tun­it­ies to act on their feel­ings. Read­ing the doc­u­ment, you get a sense of von Rib­ben­trop’s des­per­a­tion. He was des­per­ately try­ing to do something to get out of his situ­ation.”

Edward VIII was king for less than a year before his abdic­a­tion in Decem­ber 1936. In 1937, two years before the war, he and his wife, Wal­lis Simpson, toured Nazi Ger­many. The Duke of Wind­sor declared the Nazi eco­nomic model a “mir­acle” and was pho­to­graphed giv­ing Nazi salutes.
Telegraph
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-dail ... 8194213075