Edward VIII: Britain's Traitor King

[Suspenseful music playing, birds squawk] -In the closing days of the Second World War, a shocking find was made by the allies.

German files were found buried in the forests of Germany and recovered.

These documents are very important, because the Germans never expected the allies to have them.

They were supposed to be destroyed at the end of the war.

They were of communications between the foreign ministry in Berlin and German secret service agents.

And it gives us literally a day by day account of the Duke's involvement with the Nazi regime.

The Duke that they were referring to was the former King Edward VIII, the Duke of Windsor, who had been forced to abdicate in December, 1936.

-I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility without the help and support of the woman I love.

-It's a choice between remaining King or marrying Mrs. Simpson.

He can't have both.

He can't have his cake and eat it.

-Wallis Simpson has been presented as the villain of the piece.

What that did was it stopped everyone from really examining Edward and looking at the man he was and his motives.

-This is not about abdicating the throne.

This is a man who will stop at nothing to usurp the throne.

Edward wanted to come back as a Nazi-installed leader.

-We have the cabinet minutes.

The whole thing was completely downplayed in a classic Whitehall cover-up.

-That twisted ideology of Nazism that appealed to him.

-His arm went up like that, you know, vague sort of salute.

-It wasn't talked about.

I'm utterly fascinated by what's coming to light now.

-This is a rather exciting find from the archives.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor's life after the war, sunning themselves in Palm Beach, private and personal film.

Even his weaknesses in his character didn't really prepare me for the sheer audacity of the way he behaved.

[Gleeful chatter] -You've got to imagine the scene.

October 1937.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor arrive at a station in Berlin.

They get off the train, and the whole station is festooned with Union Jacks.

And in a way, that's the Duke of Windsor's idea of heaven.

-Big headlines in Berlin, hail the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, a large crowd greets them warmly.

Two hours after arriving, the Duke sets forth on a tour of German factories.

[Upbeat music] -Dictatorship.

Mussolini, Hitler, they were the flashy ones.

They were the interesting ones, and they were also the ones that trendy people supported.

Boring old monarchs were not.

[ Camera shutter clicking ] -This would be all over the world, photographs of Wallis and Edward with Hitler.

And this would be acutely embarrassing and unacceptable.

[Suspenseful music] -When they went to the SS Death Head Camp, it was said that the Duke of Windsor had given a Nazi salute.

One of the Duke's defenders said at the time it was simply a matter of good manners.

-He was blinded by the fact that Wallis had not experienced the pomp and ceremony of a royal tour, and he could give that to her.

The Duke was so susceptible to that kind of flattery, that he succumbed.

-Germany, with parades, organized sports, modern music blaring out of loudspeakers, film shows, Leni Riefenstahl's creation of Hitler as a kind of film star, wowing the masses.

-It's that emphasis on a place which is unsullied by troublemakers, Jewish people, communists, and Hitler's vision would have been appealing to him.

-The Duke of Windsor once said to one of his friends in exile that he didn't have a single drop of English blood in him, he was pure German, and in the '30s, people felt... they had to take sides.

-I am a historian, and I really rely on extensive primary research in archives around the world.

The Duke of Windsor was very strongly pro-Nazi.

He was a firm supporter of Hitler.

There's a wealth of material, quite apart from the captured German documents which has been sitting there unlooked at for the last 50 or 60 years.

Having seen so much evidence for his treachery, this was probably one of the most sensitive documents that I found in my research, and it's an indication of just how close the Duke was to Hitler.

It's written in German, but the translation reads, "To the Fuhrer and Vizekanzler, the Duchess of Windsor and I would like to thank you sincerely.

Our trip through Germany has made a great impression on us.

Many thanks to you for the wonderful time that we had with you at the Obersalzberg."

This was Hitler's mountain retreat.

This is just an indication that he was very happy to be used by the Germans.

Edward was the favorite uncle of the present Queen, and someone that she had been close to before the abdication.

So these events go right to the heart of the royal family.

[Accordion music] -On June 3rd, the world waited at the gates of the heavily guarded Chteau de Cand while the news that the greatest royal courtship of all time had reached its climax, the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

-If you think of all of the modern fairy tales, it's always marrying someone out of the family, someone throwing off the shackles of the oppressive institution and becoming their true self.

-The Duke's wedding to Wallis was hosted by a wealthy American industrialist called Charles Bedaux, in his fairy tale chateau, Chteau de Cand, in the Loire Valley.

They didn't look into him, they just thought "Oh, here we are, a lovely chateau, that would be perfect for the wedding."

And of course, that later came to haunt them.

-Charles Bedaux was a very dodgy character indeed.

He was passionately pro Hitler, pro German.

Bedaux supplied them with their servants, well, of course the servants were all spies for him.

They knew everything that was happening in that house.

-He'd expected at his wedding, you know, his brothers and various other relations to turn up, and none of them did.

-It was agonizing to him that no member of his family would be present.

Wallis had been vilified by the royal family, she's American, she divorced Ernest Simpson.

She'd stolen a beloved King.

She had become the most hated woman in the world.

-The day before the wedding, the news was broken that Wallis wasn't going to be called Her Royal Highness, The Duchess of Windsor, and they went on being obsessed by this 'til his dying day.

-The way the Duke responds to this shows him up to be the self centered and petulant figure that he is.

"I strongly resent and take great exception to the article in the magazine, Life, of the 17th of March, entitled 'The Queen' in which the latter is quoted as referring to the duchess as 'that woman'.

This remark is a direct insult to my wife, added to this is the chronic anomaly of my wife not having the same official status as myself."

Which is of course a constant gripe of the Duke."

[ Applause, jazz music plays ] -It was a sort of unity of misery and disappointment that was the super glue for them as a couple.

-He was needy, he was narcissistic, he was always attracted to more dominant women.

-I do remember being rather intrigued that the reason he'd given up the throne for this woman, because it had to do with sex.

She was the only person that he knew how to go to bed with, as it were.

-I think he was what we would call bisexual.

Somebody once told me, what you don't understand about the royal family is that they think if they do it with a footman it doesn't count.

-The Duke's sexuality is very hard to pin down.

He liked being sort of humiliated.

But a lot of men did at that time, it was a very English thing.

-It had so much become the two of them against the world that they saw everything through the lens of how it was affecting both of them, as a sort of survival.

-He felt like a wounded child and of course, the sinister person who came into the playground to pick up the wounded child was the Third Reich in Adolf Hitler.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -My step-father was an old friend of the Duke of Windsor.

I never thought that I'd ever be reliving these days again.

After the war, when I went to Paris, I remember the Duke, every sentence always started with "When I was King..." And I said, "Well, you crammed an awful lot in considering you were only King for about 10 minutes."

And he sulked for the rest of that morning.

-He wasn't straight.

There was something that you couldn't quite trust about him.

-You could see that determination and that tenacity to get what he wanted.

-In May, 1939, the Duke, who had an office in Paris, made a broadcast, in which he said Britain should be doing all in its power to come to terms with Nazi Germany and not have a war.

-He didn't listen to advice that didn't suit him.

He was a naive fool.

-The context is so damaging because by May 1939, we were determined to fight Hitler, we couldn't appease him.

[ Recorder playing ] -This is extraordinary new evidence.

It was found in the BBC archives, it had lain there undiscovered since 1939.

It was never broadcast.

It shouldn't be heard in Britain.

The horrors of the Nazi regime were coming through, so word was coming back that this was a very vicious and totalitarian regime, and not someone that we could make peace with.

The title is "Edward, HRH, Duke of Windsor: Sound Archive."

And then, at the bottom, it says, "Important: Not to be broadcast."

The Duke is asking the British to surrender to Hitler before the war has even started.

-The BBC were furious, because they felt that the impartiality of the BBC would be infringed, and they felt that the Nazis were using the Duke of Windsor for their own propaganda, which they were, of course.

Nobody quite knew what was going to happen in May, but certainly by later in 1939, it was fairly obvious what was going to happen.

[Air raid siren] [Dramatic music] -This country is at war with Germany.

-The first Christmas broadcast that George VI ever made, made an enormous impression, not only in Britain but throughout the world.

[ Recording plays ] -After Edward had abdicated, his brother, George, didn't really want to become King.

-The Second World War came, and the true qualities of George VI and Queen Elizabeth could be shown, that they had courage, they were prepared to live austerely, they lived on ordinary rations like everybody else.

And the little princesses, Margaret Rose and Princess Elizabeth were all doing their bit.

Very, very different from the way that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had been living.

-His affinity was with Germany, but I think it was a compromise.

There they were, exiled, unfulfilled, for his popularity, for his sense of self, he definitely wanted a position, he wanted a sense of purpose.

He wanted a role within his family.

-After war was declared, in an apparent change of heart, the Duke of Windsor wrote to his brother from Paris insisting that he too should be seen to be playing his part in the British war effort.

-He's given a job as a liaison officer to the French First Army, which requires him to go and inspect the French defenses.

He's actually got an intelligence officer with him to keep an eye on him.

-And the living symbol of Franco-British cooperation is Major General, the Duke of Windsor, greeted by a snowstorm when he comes up to the front line.

His job is to ensure continuous contact between the high commands of Britain and France.

-I think it's all about upstaging his brother and to show that he can play a part in world events, that he can make a difference.

-He insists on climbing out to an advanced position to meet the officers and men who are on guard by day and by night.

-He writes four reports looking at the poor general-ship, the poor moral, the fact that they are not actually as effective as perhaps the French had been arguing.

The problem is that these reports are not taken seriously in Whitehall.

-Nobody wanted to hear anything from Edward, he was just dismissed as being a sort of irrelevant, vain, and untrustworthy source.

His brother refused to lift up the phone when he rang.

-Here is a former king that is exiled from Britain.

There was so much hurt, rage, misunderstanding, that went into a lot of why and how he behaved.

He was utterly selfish.

-Edward seems to have thought that after he abdicated he would still be a leading figure in British public life.

Britain didn't seem to have any sense of his importance.

-I do remember thinking at the time, that poor little twerp of an ex-King was being, you know, pulled by the nose for whatever reason by fascists.

-As a lot of the documents might suggest, the Duke was terrifyingly open to Germany and what he felt the Germans could offer him.

-The captured German documents are clearly one of the most important sources, and it's not just the odd telegram.

This collection is riddled with references to his hope of being restored to the throne by the Germans.

-"Through personal relationships I might have the opportunity to establish certain lines leading to the Duke of Windsor.

As of course you know W is a member of the French military mission with the French army command.

He does not however feel entirely satisfied with this position."

January 1940 is a pretty sensitive point of the war.

The Germans are poised to invade France and the low countries, and the only thing that they really lack is intelligence, and this is what the Duke is about to bring them.

-The Duke of Windsor went back to really just being a socialite in Paris and gave up any thought of being a soldier, and his careless talk, undoubtedly later on, did cost lives.

-He was trying to impress other people that he knew about power.

-So, anybody, German, English, who is going to make him feel powerful and important, he succumbed to that.

-There is an intermediary who was feeding information to the Germans, who was part of the Duke of Windsor's entourage, and this is almost certainly Charles Bedaux.

This is the man, of course, who lent them his chateau for their wedding, he's seeing them almost every night, and he's moving between Paris and The Hague where he has his business interests.

The situation is we have a disgruntled Duke who doesn't feel he's being taken seriously in Whitehall, who is in close contact with a German agent, Charles Bedaux, who is believed to be passing information to that agent, who in turn, is passing it back to the German ambassador in The Hague who is passing it on to Berlin.

-Blab, blab, blab.

Everything.

All the telephone calls, the letters, everything went back to the Nazis.

-He knew that when he boasted about his knowledge about the inadequacy of French fortifications that this would go back to Germany.

-Edward's motivation was a sense of rejection from England.

I think he never really got over that.

-The Duke of Windsor wasn't merely weakening France, and the French Army, there was the British Expeditionary Force which was basically the entire British Army.

[Dramatic music] -The tragedy of France became complete, the German army poured across the Seine Bridge and into Paris.

When the attack comes, it is the very weak spots that the Duke has identified which the Germans actually attack.

-Overhead, the RAF valiantly battled the cream of the Nazi Luftwaffe, the men on the beach and the boats in the harbor were literally sitting ducks for any dive bomber that got through.

-You can draw a direct correlation between the betrayal of this information and the rapid invasion of France and the low countries, the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force and its forced retreat to Dunkirk.

-There were 300,000 men, many of them, of course, never came home because they were killed.

-They included many different nationalities across the empire.

They're not conscripted, they come voluntarily, if they had known that a member of the royal family had helped supply information that led to that route to Dunkirk, to that evacuation, it would have been utterly galling.

[ Horns honk ] -We shall fight on the beaches.

We shall fight on the landing grounds.

We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.

We shall fight in the hills.

We shall never surrender.

-Churchill's getting absolutely fed up, the situation is getting extremely dangerous.

The Duke, of course, still holds a military rank and this is the device that Churchill is going to use.

"Your Royal Highness has taken active military rank and refusal to obey direct orders of competent military authority would create a serious situation.

I most strongly urge immediate compliance with wishes of the Government."

Now, this is a prime minister threatening a former King with a court martial.

This is a very serious offense, it's unique in British history that a sovereign has been threatened with court martial.

Little does Churchill know, that this is actually not the beginning of the end, but there is going to be much more trouble in store.

[Soft piano music] [Dramatic music] -There was absolute terror, the Blitz and the bombardment of British cities.

Rationing had come in, people were hungry, people were terrified out of their wits and they had to keep going in very, very grim circumstances.

Not so, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

It was clear that safe passage had been arranged by Hitler, by the Third Reich.

They swanned off, in luxury, from France down into the Iberian Peninsular, through Spain, into Portugal.

[Upbeat music] All the news was the Third Reich, this terrifying death cult was taking over the world, and meanwhile, just outside Lisbon, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were living it up.

[Big band music] They were having their nails polished and varnished.

They were going to expensive restaurants, they were playing golf.

They were talking to their idiotic friends.

-I know that the optics look off.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor sunbathing.

Obviously, it's a deeply unedifying picture.

It looked like he abandoned his country.

[ Birds squawk ] -I'm a Portuguese journalist.

I wanted to go deeper and find out what actually happened.

We all knew all these rumors about the Duke of Windsor and his sympathies to Hitler and Germany.

But nobody really established the facts of what really was going on.

I've been spending a few hours at the Portuguese National Archives with this amazing secret police report.

10 pages detailing day by day, almost by the hour, what the Duke and the Duchess did during their stay here in Cascais in Lisbon.

The streets were full of spies and, from both camps.

It's probably the only European capital where both the allies and Nazis could watch each other and spy on each other.

Here we have this incredible document.

It's a very detailed day to day, almost by the hour, details all the movements from the Duke and Duchess.

Their stay in Cascais in Lisbon as I can see, he played a lot of golf.

They also spent a lot of time by the swimming pool or having nice dinners or in Cascais with friends like the Baron Rothschild or some of the most notable families from the Portuguese aristocracy.

The 10th of July, the report reads, "The Duke left by 11 a.m. with the Spanish Don Javier to Lisbon.

By lunchtime, they went to centre of Lisbon, where they both bought cigars."

You learned that he travels to Lisbon with his Spanish friends who are, of course, working on the behalf of Nazi Germany, and they visit the embassies and they discuss what to do.

The Duke of Windsor and the Duchess were taken to this mansion in Cascais.

The host for this, very glamorous and well connected, and sophisticated person, Ricardo Esprito Santo.

[Suspenseful music] They occupied a suite of rooms on the first floor overlooking the Atlantic, they had at least 12 servants, including a chef who we know was rather annoyed by the Duke of Windsor saying, "I don't want any of your elaborate menus, just give me sardines."

During my trips to the National Archives, I found out the true connections between Esprito Santo and the Nazi Germany.

He became president of this small family bank that was founded in 1920, but during the war the bank of Esprito Santo just became the biggest bank in the country.

-There were intelligence reports in Britain compiled on him, he was a fence for looted goods and in effect, acted as banker to the Nazis.

-His job is to write reports on the Duke of Windsor.

Edward wanted to come back as a Nazi-installed leader.

It's clear that his pro-Nazi sentiments continue to be as strong as ever.

They're treated as VIP guests in effect.

They arrange with the Germans for a member of staff to be given safe passage back to Paris to repatriate Wallis's swimsuit, Nile green swimsuit, in an operation called Operation Cleopatra Whim.

Their only focus is on their own personal needs.

This is one of the documents from Lisbon the Germans never expected to be discovered.

I think it's one of the most shocking documents that I found in my research.

He characterizes himself as a firm supporter of a peaceful arrangement with Germany.

And then, this bit.

"The Duke definitely believes that continued severe bombing would make England ready for peace."

I mean, this is extraordinary.

Here is the former king of Great Britain saying that if you bomb Britain, bomb his family, bomb his country, that that's the best way to, to bring them to, to sue for peace.

He's quite prepared to go to those lengths in order to achieve his aims.

It's -- It's chilling and sinister.

And -- And it's frankly, very shocking.

He was so disloyal to his brother that he was calling for the bombing of Britain as a way of subjugating them.

We have evidence of this and indeed, Ricardo Esprito do Santo, the German agent to pass this information back to the German minister in Lisbon, who then asked for instructions from Berlin.

The Duke had encouraged the Germans to bomb London and indeed that's what they do.

On the 13th of September, 1940, Messerschmitts fly down The Mall and bomb Buckingham Palace.

Literally missing the King and Queen by feet.

Let's look at it in personal terms.

This is the Duke encouraging the Germans to subjugate the British.

This is a man who will stop at nothing to usurp the throne, even if it requires the death of his own brother.

-To my mind, that's the most appalling thing he ever did, actively to say to somebody that you think the cities of your own country, particularly, if you've been the king of that country, should be bombed.

That the civilians should be killed in thousands, tens of thousands.

-It feels enormously shocking to read those words.

Was he actually saying that the war could be won and England would surrender if a continued bombing campaign took place?

A sense that... vindication or comeuppance would be delivered if the whole house of cards would come crashing down.

-The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, now steps in and insists the Duke take up a role as Governor of the Bahamas.

In documents which I've seen at the Royal Archives, the Germans describe this as a come down.

The Duke reluctantly accepts, but he continues to remain in direct contact with them even after taking up the post.

The Duke indeed on his way to the Bahamas sent a telegram in code to Ricardo Esprito do Santo saying that he was willing to come back if the opportunity arose, and it relates basically to these captured German documents.

[Dramatic music] I have the document here, and it shows that he very knowingly communicated with a German agent.

"The minister in Portugal reported the confidant," this is Ricardo Esprito do Santo, who is a Nazi agent, "has just received a telegram from the Duke asking him to send a communication as soon as action was advisable."

This document reveals, very conclusively, that the Duke knew exactly what he was doing and frankly, was a traitor to this country.

Communications with the enemy during war was against the Treachery Act, he could well have been executed.

It seems to have been a case of power at any cost.

[ Camera shutter clicking ] -The Duchess of Windsor and I are receiving a number of American journalists in Government House, Nassau.

-Cut.

It is a very warm afternoon, too warm for taking pictures.

-It's very difficult if you've traversed the world as the Prince of Wales and then the King, and suddenly you're Governor of the Bahamas.

It would have been humiliating for him, and Wallis could see that.

-It was still a very long road to victory but at least once America had entered the war, it was reasonably clear what the outcome was going to be.

-At the end of the war, I think that Edward just didn't give a damn and is, in a way, sticking two fingers to it all.

[Upbeat jazz music] -I remember at a party in New York, he got quite drunk, and he started singing German songs.

He was sitting on a sofa, I remember it well, the fireplace was there, I was sort of standing by the window here, and he just started singing.

[Upbeat German song] Actually his arm went up like that, you know, vague sort of salute.

-He seems to be unchanged in his views, despite everything that happened during the Second World War.

For the rest of his life, he was effectively cold shouldered by the royal family.

His brothers and various other relations never sort of talked to him about it, they feel sort of embarrassed and uncomfortable.

They never have that conversation.

[Suspenseful music] -The convincing evidence for the Windsor's treachery lies with the German Foreign Ministry files.

And political establishment realizes that they cannot suppress them, and we have the evidence here.

In the depths of the archives of the House of Commons, I'm looking at the diary of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, a journalist of this period.

Rumors are circulating about the captured German documents, this is 1946.

And he writes in his diary, it's very revealing.

"They have found some damaging material on the Duke of Windsor, there are various protocols of Nazi conversations with him, including one at Lisbon during the war."

This is the famous document of the 11th of July 1940, where the Duke tells the Nazis that the best way to subjugate Britain is to bomb it.

[Upbeat music] The Duke and Duchess of Windsor's life after the war, remains as extravagant as it was before the war.

Now much of this was supported by rich friends who they sponged off.

There's been an attempt over the previous 9 years to suppress, minimize, delay the publication of these captured German documents, and finally the moment has come when they are going to be published.

The Duke didn't feel that he'd done anything wrong.

What he was arranging with his lawyers was a statement to be put out to suggest that these documents are invented by the Germans.

I mean, why they should possibly want to do that given that they didn't expect them to be found.

Churchill, now Prime Minister again, goes ahead, and we have the cabinet minutes from the 8th of December 1954, where they discuss the publication of this file.

[Tense music] "Matter is to be watched at each stage, cabinet secretariat is to be responsible for warning ministers, particularly important to warn the stationery office."

When the material is published, there is a note with it playing down the role of the Duke of Windsor.

"The Duke was subjected to heavy pressure from many quarters to stay in Europe, where the Germans hoped that he would exert influence against the policy of His Majesty's government.

"His Royal Highness never wavered in his loyalty to the British cause.

The German records are necessarily a much tainted source."

To pretend that the Germans were trying to trick him and he didn't realize is, is, is frankly ridiculous.

Churchill who'd been exasperated by the Duke during the war and indeed wanted as little to do with him as possible after the war, colludes with the Duke and others to basically kill this story.

-How could this incredible war time leader, this moral figure, have had all this trouble during the war from someone who was absolutely of mortal peril to the nation, and then, decades later, he defends him, he pretty much whitewashes him.

-As always, Wallis would be blamed in perpetuity.

There is absolutely no question that Wallis was any sort of Nazi sympathizer.

She became a natural scapegoat.

-Was it to protect the backsides of the monarchy in this country?

It's the conspiracy to conceal that's fascinating.

-This whole episode is completely extinguished from the record, and this is just another classic example of our history being censored.

There's one last document, indeed perhaps, the most important document.

It recounts a lunch that Harold Nicolson the MP had with Tommy Lascelles, who was the private secretary to Edward, to George VI, and indeed to our current Queen.

He makes, I think, a very revealing comment.

He says, "The man is like the child in the fairy story who was given everything in the world, but they forgot the soul."

I think this really explains the Duke of Windsor, who's a man with no inner life, no self awareness, no sense of actually the magnitude of what he tried to do with the Nazis.

-Mark you as history has it out, he never did come back to this country, and therein maybe lies the whole truth.