Valid questions about Nazi sympathies

It’s completely revisionist to start saying people didn’t know what the Nazis were doing. It’s a myth that no one knew in the 1930s what the Nazis were about; a lot of people in the aristocracy thought this was the perfect obstacle to the threat of communism.

The queen’s uncle Edward would have been well aware of Hitler’s mission. He had welcomed Hitler’s accession, saying: “It is the only thing to do. We will have to come to it, as we are in great danger from communists too.”

The then Prince of Wales was reportedly a sympathiser of the British Union of Fascists, founded by Sir Oswald Mosley, who hoped to emulate the German dictator.

Edward is said to have sought a secret meeting with Hitler, and even threatened to give up the throne if war was declared. He was forced to abdicate, however, in December 1936, in favour of his brother, George VI. Officially, Edward’s abdication was caused by his desire to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee. More critical, however, were concerns that Simpson was a Nazi collaborator who was passing on British government secrets to Berlin.

There has been a massive effort to conceal the full extent of Edward’s treason, which continues to this day. But in response to what is known, the official narrative is that he was just a bad apple.

George VI and the queen mother were strident supporters of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of “appeasement” with Nazi Germany – aimed at giving Hitler a free hand against the Soviet Union.

In May 1939, the secret elite Right Club was founded by the Scottish Unionist MP Archibald Ramsay, who described its objective as being “to oppose and expose the activities of organised Jewry”.

It is thought to have had more than 200 members from within the heart of the British establishment.

Much still needs to be revealed.

But the re-emergence of such politically embarrassing historical truths, ones long carefully buried beneath a mountain of censorship and lies, must reflect more contemporary and profound conflicts and disagreements – that may go far beyond those already offered up as an explanation.

Alan Hinnrichs

Gillespie Terrace

Dundee

In the 1930s Hitler, whose crimes were not then generally known, was regarded by many in the West to be a  bulwark against the spread of Russian Communism, seen to be a danger not only in itself but to carry with it the  implied threat of social revolution.

Brian Mayes

Sycamore Gardens

Edinburgh