Did Britain's Duke of Windsor spy for the Germans during World War II? Did his wife, the former Bessie Wallis Warfield Simpson, pass classified information on to the Nazis?
It has long been known in Britain and elsewhere that King Edward VIII, who gave up his throne on Dec. 11, 1936, to marry a twice-divorced former debutante from Baltimore, was sympathetic to Germany and an admirer of German culture.Simpson had connections with Baron von Ribbentrop, Germany's foreign minister. This was known as well, though the depth and frequency of those connections is a matter over which students of history do not always agree.
For those reasons, and many others, the late duke and his American spouse do not occupy a warm place in the historical memory of the British people. To them he was "a man who ran out on his responsibility" when he abdicated and married Simpson, whom they regarded as unsuitable. And he continues to be probably the most notorious skeleton to escape the Windsor family closet, an enduring embarrassment to the monarchy.
But spies? The pair of them? Collaborators?
Quite likely, says an article by an American journalist in the December issue of American Heritage Magazine. Written by Fulton Oursler Jr., the piece raises the old allegation that the duke was expressing sympathy for the Germans while his own country was being blitzed by the Nazi war machine, then takes it a step farther.
Ivor Stanbrook, a Conservative member of Parliament for Orpington, Kent, said that he was "quite prepared to accept" that the duke sympathized with the Germans. "It's all coming out now about his Nazi sympathies."
But as to allegations that he engaged in espionage, Stanbrook said, "There is no direct evidence he did anything like that."
Philip Ziegler, author of "King Edward VIII," the official biography of the duke, was dubious about the information in the American Heritage article.