Tested as Never Before
in our History
‘Our nation and Empire stood alone against an overwhelming enemy . . . tested as never before in our history . . . ’
—George VI, 6 June 1944
In the New Year, the breakthrough in North Africa of the closing weeks of 1942 was swiftly followed by a long-awaited turning point in the Soviet Union. Pathé newsreels played in the cinema in Buckingham Palace in February 1943 caught the final moments as the tide turned decisively at Stalingrad. The king felt deep admiration for the ‘unyielding resistance’ of the Soviet people, and the ‘heroic qualities’ of the Red Army.1 To stirring strains of music, Soviet guns closed in on what was once a city. ‘The history of warfare has never known such a large encirclement and annihilation,’ announced the deep voice of the Pathé narrator. ‘Hundreds of thousands of bodies lie frozen in and around the city . . . They rot in the land which they wanted to enslave.’ Inside the city, ‘the twisted disordered relics of an army committed to destruction by Adolf Hitler’ fought on in temperatures of -30 degrees centigrade, near starvation, taking refuge in the ruins, the cellars, sometimes even the sewers. For these ‘wrecks of men’ there was none of the glory that Hitler had predicted. The original 330,000 soldiers of the German 6th Army trapped in the derelict city were reduced to two pockets of starving men. Pathé provided a powerful image of German surrender: a line of dark figures set against wide grey skies and a smoking city. As the camera panned, a never-ending line was revealed, stretching on until the dark shapes were mere dots lost in a vast white landscape.2
The sheer scale of the Soviet sacrifice to win this decisive victory was painfully shown by the numbers. Stalingrad had cost the Red Army the lives of half a million men; half a million Axis troops also died. By contrast at El Alamein, 2,300 British and empire forces died and 2,100 Germans and Italians. Stalin felt his country was bearing the load and pushed for Britain and America to open up a second front in France. Roosevelt was keen to support the Soviets when he met Churchill in Casablanca in Morocco. The prime minister argued this was still far too dangerous and urged Roosevelt to delay the final assault on Germany while they launched an attack on Italy, which he described persuasively as ‘Hitler’s soft underbelly’. Reading the daily reports, the king knew of the political and military conflicts between the world leaders and worried that the stupendous British effort made in the first three years of war was now being eclipsed by much greater powers.
George VI heard the prime minister became unwell when he returned from the conference in Casablanca. The rumour mill began around Whitehall. Had the change in climate affected him? Churchill appeared in Cabinet on one occasion feverish, wrapped in a shawl. Word spread that he was an obstinate patient; headstrong, fond of drink, yet essentially unfit.3 The endless pressure was taking its toll, and now the man whose passion for the empire was in his very blood and bones was dependent on those for whom this had no significance. George VI had come to rely on the closeness of his friendship with Churchill. ‘Ever since he became my Prime Minister I have studied the way in which his brain works,’ the king told his mother. ‘He tells me, more than people imagine, of his future plans & ideas & only airs them when the time is ripe to his colleagues & the Chiefs of Staff . . . ’4 But by mid-February pneumonia was diagnosed. The king could not see his prime minister and his worries about the situation in North Africa began to escalate.
The Americans were expedient, prepared to compromise and work with the Vichy French leaders who had collaborated with the Germans. The king was troubled. For him there was a principle at stake. ‘We must be firm,’ he wrote in his diary, and not make deals with ‘any kind of quisling’.5 Plans were not falling into place and the king felt the strain of ‘being in the know’. Britain was reliant on her allies to win the war, but, he told his mother, the USA and the USSR ‘are both thorns in the flesh’. The Americans were failing to deliver on their promises, while the Russians put ‘every obstacle in our way when we try & help them’.6 Even though Churchill was recovering from a serious bout of pneumonia, the king went to Chequers on 8 March to discuss what he saw as the ‘deteriorating’ situation. But when he entered the room he was evidently shocked to see his friend much reduced. ‘I implored him not to overwork himself as he must get really well again,’ the king confided later to his mother.7 None the less, waiting outside the meeting room, Churchill’s secretary, Elizabeth Layton, soon heard a forceful exchange of views from inside, ‘the two tongues wagging like mad! But I fear my boss still holds the floor!’ The two men parted on the best of terms; Churchill, instructed to stay in the warm, ‘would go to the door’, observed Elizabeth.8
The closeness between the two men did not mean they shared the same opinion, and differences also surfaced on personal matters. Prince Paul was condemned as a quisling in the British press, but the king knew through Marina’s sister, Olga, that this was not just and also that Paul was close to a nervous breakdown in his British imprisonment in Kenya.9 Churchill maintained his tough stance. He saw no reason to worry over a man ‘who did so much to harm his country’ and failed to work with the Allies to strike ‘a united blow for its liberties’.10 But the king understood the complexities of the Yugoslav situation that led to Prince Paul’s decision. He was not alone in his support for Prince Paul; ministers also appealed on his behalf. Churchill was overruled and in April the British government agreed to move Paul and Olga to less restrictive detention in South Africa.
Over the course of spring 1943 the massive Allied North African offensive culminated in victory on 13 May. The prolonged battle under hot African skies was at an end. The Allies could at last savour their rich prize, fought over so many times and so hard won. Some Americans proudly referred to it as their ‘Tunisgrad’. In England a service was planned to mark the victory at St Paul’s Cathedral. At the last minute, however, this was hastily rearranged when it was feared that the time of the service had been leaked. The information that Britain’s leadership as well as the royal family were all to be gathered together in one very identifiable spot in the centre of London might prove irresistible to German bombers.11 Considerable anxiety, never shown, affected the calmest spirits. But all went well. The king appeared majestic, the queen radiant, Churchill shining with exuberance, St Paul’s still in place.
The king understood just what this victory meant to Churchill and wanted people to realise, as Lascelles put it, that Winston was the real ‘father of the North African baby’ although publicly he gave the credit to Roosevelt.12 The king’s telegram of congratulations to his prime minister was published in The Times. ‘I wish to tell you how profoundly I appreciate the fact that its initial conception and successful prosecution are largely due to your vision and to your unflinching determination,’ wrote the king. The campaign ‘has immeasurably increased the debt’ that the country owed him.13 The prime minister was equally unstinting in his reply. ‘No Minister of the Crown has ever received more kindness and confidence from his Sovereign,’ Churchill responded. ‘This has been a precious aid and comfort to me.’
The Times on 18 May followed up Lascelles’s suggestion that the exchange of telegrams demonstrated the role of the British king within a modern democracy. The heads of the government are ‘His Majesty’s Ministers’ who ‘bear absolute responsibility’, wrote The Times. George VI’s telegram did indeed demonstrate his ‘whole-hearted attribution of credit’ to his prime minister for his vision and direction. It was for the sovereign to provide helpful counsel and Churchill acknowledged how well George VI had fulfilled that role. The Times considered that this was a ‘discharge of a duty that only the Sovereign can perform and that only the few can see him performing’. Unlike ministers, the monarch provides continuity and his knowledge ‘comes to transcend that of any individual statesman’. The editorial paid tribute to George VI as ‘an unfailing public example of courage, confidence and devoted energy’.14
Just how much George VI’s conscientious style of monarchy meant to people became even more apparent in the trip he made to North Africa in June 1943. The king, who was a little ‘tired and feverish’ on arrival in Algiers according to Harold Macmillan, Minister Resident to the Allied Force Headquarters, was none the less elated. To escape Northern Europe and its dark saga of war, transferred in a matter of hours to the brilliant light of North Africa in an atmosphere charged with success, was the stuff of dreams. In that sun-soaked world of action he dined with General Dwight Eisenhower, met the two feuding French generals, Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle, rode in an open car along the North African coast and received an ovation from more than 500 men on a beach in Algiers who were delighted by his impromptu visit. By 19 June he was in Tripoli with the Eighth Army and took the opportunity to knight Montgomery. The British general was concerned about the risks the king was taking in North Africa. There remained the threat of German paratroopers and shipping routes across the Mediterranean were far from safe. Whatever the dangers, the king was insistent that his tour must include Malta. The defeat of the Germans in North Africa was bringing an end to their misery.
The king sailed by night on HMS Aurora from Tripoli across the Mediterranean. The sun rose to reveal a perfect morning, the calm sea glistening in the early light as the island came into view. The enemy was just 60 miles away in Sicily, enemy aircraft within reach; but the horizon was still clear. The king was on deck, his eyes taking in the view of the harbour. George VI was much touched by the suffering of Malta. To be here was a moment he had awaited for a long time. ‘I had set my heart on it,’ he told his mother.15
Even at a distance, it was evident that word had spread. The king’s visit had only been announced a few hours before; but that was enough. In the rush to celebrate the Maltese had made decorations out of anything they could find; bunting, flags, even curtains were flung out of windows making gay splashes of colour. People thronged from their bombed-out houses and cellars to see his ship arrive. The quayside was crammed; a solid mass of people.
The people of Malta had endured persistent heavy bombing, almost to the point of annihilation. Their valour was beyond question. And now here was their king coming to acknowledge their bravery. As the ship drew closer, George VI stood out on the bridge, a single figure, absolutely still in the dazzling sunlight, taking the salute.
It was a moment to be encapsulated in memory forever. The crowd went wild, their ecstatic welcome drowning out all other sounds as the Aurora manoeuvred into the harbour. ‘A wonderful sight,’ George VI wrote in his diary. ‘Every bastion and every viewpoint lined with people who cheered as we entered.’ And as the king finally stepped on land, now one with the crowd, the bells in the churches still standing began to ring out. He was intensely moved.16 ‘I shall never forget the sight of entering the Grand Harbour at 8.30 a.m. on a lovely sunny day, & seeing the people cheering from every vantage view point, while we were still some way off,’ he told his mother. ‘Then later, when we anchored inside, hearing the cheers of the people which brought a lump into my throat, knowing what they had suffered from six months constant bombing . . . ’17
The king who shook Field Marshal Gort’s hand on the jetty and then drove to Valetta Palace was very different to the broken man who had taken over the throne seven years before. His conscientious approach, the quality of the people around him, his willingness to take ministers’ advice and above all his own determination to play his part well had transformed him into the monarch that people wanted to see. The square in front of the palace was crammed with more than 100,000 people, waiting for a glimpse of the slight figure in the white uniform. He stepped out on to the balcony beside Gort and waved. There was still one giveaway about his intrinsic personality: there was no speech.18 The king who felt so strongly for the people of this island did not attempt to express in words what the day meant. It did not matter. Everyone knew what had brought their king to this bombed-out spot.
His tour was a triumph. Pathé reported on ‘scenes of unparalleled enthusiasm’. Unstinting in their welcome, ‘the George Cross islanders thronged the streets cheering and clapping through the seven hours the tour lasted’.19 George VI stood resolute for long hours in the growing heat, keeping a promise he had made to himself many months ago in the darkest days of the war, when an event such as this seemed nigh on impossible. ‘You have made the people of Malta very happy today, Sir,’ commented David Campbell, the lieutenant governor as he prepared to set sail at the end of a very busy tour. ‘But I have been the happiest man in Malta today,’ he replied.20
The exuberant welcome of the Maltese people was like reaching an oasis in the barren landscape of war. At last the struggle against what the king saw as ‘the forces of evil’ was halted and it felt good. But there was a price to pay for his North African tour. The unaccustomed heat, the debilitating stomach upsets and the strain of the venture had taken its toll. When he returned to London on 25 June, the queen was shocked to find her husband had lost a stone in weight.
Two weeks later, on 8 July 1943, war was wiped from the front pages with news of the brutal murder of the wealthiest man in the Bahamas: the British baronet, Sir Harry Oakes. The reports were distressing for the duke and duchess who counted Sir Harry as one of their friends. His corpse was found in the very bed where the Duke of Windsor had slept as a guest when Government House was refurbished. The crime scene was particularly horrific. The baronet appeared to have been bludgeoned to death and doused in petrol. Feathers from a pillow were scattered over his body. His pyjamas and mosquito net had burned, but the fire had failed to take and the bloodied corpse lay on the bed, face and chest scorched.
Rashly, the duke tried to control the press response, only to become mired in the shocking headlines himself. For reasons that have never been clear, he attempted to stop news of the murder leaking out by closing the cable office. But his efforts at press censorship were about as futile as trying to control the tide; reporters streamed on to the island.21 Worse, convinced the Nassau police would have no detectives of the right calibre, the duke took it upon himself to bring in a detective of his own choice: Captain Edward Melchen of the Miami Homicide Bureau. Windsor met him in person at Oakes’s mansion and discussed the case for twenty minutes.
After this, with apparently breathtaking efficiency, Melchen and his deputy, Captain James Barker, arrested Sir Harry Oakes’s son-in-law, the colourful playboy Count Alfred de Marigny. De Marigny was deemed to have a motive, since he had never won Oakes’s approval for marrying his daughter, Nancy, and there was no love lost between father and son-in-law. In less than two days the detectives produced fingerprint evidence to damn him; evidence that could condemn de Marigny to death. Nancy duly arrived on the scene, as glamorous as a Hollywood film star, and determined to clear her husband’s name. The press was captivated. A count, a baronet, an ex-king, a beautiful woman and a murder: sensational headlines were guaranteed for weeks.
That July the Allies launched the first stage in their offensive against Italy with the invasion of Sicily. Rome was bombed for the first time on 19 July and Mussolini himself overthrown in a coup and arrested on 25 July on the orders of the King of Italy. In London everyone was ‘stunned and excited. Dazed and jubilant . . . ’ wrote Chips Channon, capturing the mood that week in his diary.22 But even with the prospect of the fall of Fascism in Italy, each new twist in the bizarre saga of the ‘Murder in Paradise’ was rarely far from the front pages.
Once the case reached court shocking evidence emerged that the very detectives that Windsor had chosen had fabricated the fingerprint evidence against Alfred de Marigny. A murder mystery of Agatha Christie proportions began to unfold. Who did kill Sir Harry Oakes? Why did the detectives try to frame Count Alfred de Marigny? The case collapsed and remains unsolved to this day. But the duke’s clumsy involvement linked his name to the sleazy headlines and tarnished him with the detectives’ dishonesty.
No matter how hard the duke and duchess attempted to atone for their mistakes, events conspired to add momentum to their downward spiral. There was much speculation about the cover-up, with irregular financial dealings on the island high on the list of concerns. Some thought the duke brought in private detectives and failed to summon the FBI because he had borrowed substantial sums from Sir Harry himself and feared exposure.23 For others it was possible that the duke was involved in illegal currency speculation and wanted to avoid close scrutiny by settling the case. Believers in this theory alleged that Wenner-Gren used his yacht to transport large amounts of cash to Mexico on behalf of both the duke and Oakes.24 Suspicions about money-laundering and links to a criminal underworld continued to weave themselves into the narrative of the unsolved case. For others still, the duke was innocent but Oakes was mixed up with the Chicago mafia who wanted to invest in a casino on the islands. The truth has never been established, but in the absence of evidence to clarify the duke’s suspicious role in the bungled investigation, the case has never helped his cause.
The violent murder of Sir Harry Oakes was just one striking episode in a succession of troubles that engulfed members of the duke’s circle during 1943. His friend Wenner-Gren, ‘last reported somewhere in Mexico’, according to the New York Times, continued to protest his innocence as his plans for a powerful Mexican cartel collapsed and his American assets were seized.25 As governor, Windsor was obliged to condone his friend’s downfall, signing the Blacklist Order in which Wenner-Gren’s companies in the Bahamas came under government supervision. Axel Wenner-Gren ‘will not be permitted to return to Nassau’, the duke announced in response to a question at a press conference.26 His property developments, his fleet of dredgers and his fish-canning plant on Grand Bahama Island were confiscated.27 Windsor was obliged to give quotes to the press as though he had no objections to the State Department’s actions, telling the New York Times he was ‘intensely interested’ in the continued running of Wenner-Gren’s canning plant by US General Foods.28 Even Wenner-Gren’s magnificent yacht, the Southern Cross, the subject of intense media scrutiny while at the disposal of the Windsors, was seized by the Mexican government for naval purposes.29
A greater downfall lay in store for the first millionaire who had come to the Windsors’ assistance after the abdication, Charles Bedaux. The Americans had him in their sights as he worked on his pipelines in North Africa even before the Allied desert victory. He was arrested by the French on behalf of the Americans in December 1942 but released on health grounds. His freedom did not last long. A few days before Roosevelt arrived in Casablanca to meet Churchill, Bedaux was re-arrested in Algiers and held by the US Military Police in North Africa.30 General Eisenhower sent the Chief of the FBI’s Special Intelligence Service, Percy Foxworth, to interview Bedaux in North Africa but the plane crashed over dense jungle, killing everyone on board. The ‘Speed-up King’ became caught up in tortuous delays as the wheels of bureaucracy turned slowly and almost a year elapsed before he was extradited to Miami. He was under suspicion for trading with the enemy, possibly even treason, and FBI files show Hoover himself kept a close eye on the case.31
Bedaux’s former association with the Windsors worked against him as he became a high-profile suspect. Before the war his connections to the Nazi leadership had received publicity when he set up Windsor’s German trip. It was considered possible that he was still in contact with such high-ranking Nazis as Robert Ley, Fritz Wiedemann and Ribbentrop through Nazi officials in Paris.32 His company, Bedaux International, had been affiliated to Deutsche Bedaux in Berlin, Italian Bedaux and Bedaux Cie in Paris before the war and Bedaux’s continuing connection as an industrial agent for the Germans was suspected.33 His ambitious engineering schemes such as the pipeline across the Sahara lent weight to this view. His friends in America came under intense surveillance, including the Austrian, Friedrich von Ledebur, whose brother, Joseph, was pro-Nazi and had arranged business affairs for Bedaux. The FBI was keen to reach Ledebur before Bedaux’s own lawyer and he was interviewed under some pressure, eventually conceding only ‘that he hated his brother bitterly’ and that ‘in the event Bedaux is a Nazi collaborator, he wants nothing whatsoever to do with him’.34 The case against Bedaux mounted as his ‘Censorship Report’ concluded that he was ‘persona grata to German military authorities in France and has acquired large properties near Paris for the Germans and himself’.35 Most damning of all was a document found amongst Bedaux’s papers which appeared to show he was spying on the Allies, supplying information on shipping and other transport. Bedaux denied any knowledge of the document and insisted it had been planted in his papers.36
When he was permitted to write a letter, Bedaux appealed for legal help from Albert Raymond, the very man who had taken over the running of US Bedaux Company and benefited so spectacularly from Bedaux’s difficulties in 1937 while arranging the Windsors’ proposed tour. But Raymond, reeling under the bad publicity for the company, declined to help. Ledebur, no doubt feeling the close scrutiny of the FBI, also declined. On 14 February, alone in the Miami courtroom, Bedaux learned he was to be charged with treason.
Bedaux was not a man to be caught without a plan. The following day he was discovered unconscious. It emerged that he had regularly requested sleeping pills from the guard which he had secretly saved. It was a large enough dose to kill him, although it took three days. ‘Bedaux, Mystery Man, Facing Treason Charges, Kills Himself Here,’ announced the Miami Daily News.37 To his family his suicide was seen as a sign of his decency; he wished to spare others coming under scrutiny on his behalf. But to the authorities and in the press his action was seen as an admission of guilt and he was portrayed as a traitor, his name invariably linked to the Windsors in the papers.
Even the man who married the duke and duchess, the Reverend Robert Anderson Jardine, managed to attract the interest of the American authorities. ‘Windsor’s Cleric and Wife held for Deportation Trial,’ announced the Washington Post in May 1943. The reverend and his wife were arrested in Los Angeles on a deportation warrant and charged with overstaying their time in the country.38 It began to seem as though any acquaintance of the Windsors, from super-wealthy yacht owners to the English clergy, was viewed as a possible threat.
With the duke’s former connections under such scrutiny, the State Department was not prepared to grant immunity from censorship to the duchess. The Duke of Windsor was concerned that her mail continued to be intercepted and raised the matter with Lord Halifax in the British Embassy. The reply from Adolf Berle, Assistant Secretary of State, on 18 June 1943, was unequivocal. ‘I believe the Duchess of Windsor should emphatically be denied exemption from censorship. Quite aside from the more shadowy reports of the activities of this family, it is to be recalled that both the Duke and Duchess were in touch with Mr James Mooney of General Motors, who attempted to act as a mediator of a negotiated peace in the early winter of 1940; they have maintained correspondence with Bedaux,’ continued Berle, and ‘they have been in constant contact with Axel Wenner-Gren, presently on our Blacklist for suspicious activity . . . ’39
The duke felt the slights and humiliations deeply. While his brother appeared to have grown in stature, the papers regularly proclaiming this fact, he appeared visibly diminished, his allies apparently in disgrace. Since the abdication he had let himself be led by Wallis, who was drawn like a magnet to the super-rich regardless of their ethics and now these associations seemed ill-advised. The duke felt cut off from his old life, and did not know how to make his way back into it. Even long-standing friends were no longer keen to see him. When Beaverbrook was in New York in May 1943 and learned his visit to the city coincided with Windsor’s, he would not take the duke’s calls. The once ‘devoted tiger’ left instructions for his assistant to say he was out. It was only when the ploy was in danger of becoming obvious that he felt obliged to meet, but the old camaraderie was missing.40
There was one person still looking out for the duke in spite of everything that had happened: Winston Churchill. A committed monarchist, Churchill, who had taken such a hard line on Prince Paul and the King of Belgium, was reluctant to give up on his old friend in spite of knowledge of his disloyalty. Churchill wanted to help with the painful separation between the brothers. During his trip to Washington in May 1943 he did make time for Windsor in his packed schedule and spoke to him frankly. The king was ‘unhappy over this family estrangement’, he said, and wanted to improve relations. Was there anything the duke could do?41
But the duke’s conviction that he had been wronged was now so ingrained he could not see the olive branch that was being offered. Unable to acknowledge the part he or his wife had played in maintaining the rift, he lashed out with further damning accusations against his brother. ‘I have taken more than my fair share of the cracks and insults at your hands,’ he wrote, and referred angrily to what he called the king’s ‘belligerence’ and ‘studied insults’. The king’s first year or two was not easy, he acknowledged, but ‘ever since I returned to England in 1939 to offer my services and you continued to persecute me and then frustrate my modest efforts to serve you and my country in war, I must admit that I have become very bitter indeed . . . ’42
While Windsor hoped to recover from the humiliations that he suffered, another great-grandson of Queen Victoria, Philipp of Hesse, suffered a precipitous downfall from which there appeared to be no return. His prospects were inextricably linked with the fate of Mussolini. Philipp of Hesse still trusted in Hitler when he was summoned to his headquarters at the Berghof in the Bavarian Alps in late April 1943. He was told he was needed by the Führer for ‘special tasks’ but just what these involved was never fully clarified. From his luxurious hotel, the Berchtesgadener Hof, he enjoyed spectacular views across the mountains, yet with each passing day it became clear he was a prisoner unable to leave without permission from Hitler. He felt threatened, although no threats were issued and whenever the two men met there was nothing to indicate he was out of favour. To those around them, they appeared close, the Führer frequently summoning the prince in the evenings to discuss the fast-changing situation in Italy.43
It was Philipp’s father-in-law, the King of Italy, Victor Emanuel III, who ordered the arrest of Mussolini on 25 July. Mussolini was hidden from the Germans, whisked from one location to another before being held in the mountains in central Italy at Gran Sasso. The new leadership were negotiating with the Allies, and announced the Italian surrender on 8 September 1943.44 That same day Philipp of Hesse and Hitler had an amicable conversation over dinner and well into the small hours. There was no warning of the horror ahead. Hesse was making his way back to his hotel when two SS men emerged from the blackness and told him he was under arrest. He had only just left Hitler’s company and yet the arrest was on the Führer’s orders.
Hesse was ‘interviewed’ by the Gestapo in Berlin and stripped of his identity. His Nazi rank, his title as a Prince of Hesse, even his papers were removed. It was prisoner ‘Herr Wildhof’ who was escorted by criminal police to Flossenburg concentration camp in Bavaria. By a cruel calculation, there was a small gallows placed not far from the window of his cell. ‘Herr Wildhof’ was obliged to see what he had failed to see before: in plain view, the barbarity of the regime he had supported. Death was meted out without dignity or humanity on emaciated men and women. Carts were piled high with corpses, their bodies intimately mingled in death, more bone than flesh visible, their faces with sunken eyes, prominent cheekbones and the tight yellowing skin of starvation diets. As well as the frequent hangings a few yards from his cell, he could hear the soft crack of gunfire executions in the distance. His own death seemed imminent each time the door to his cell opened. For Philipp his dizzying fall into this frightening hell was undeserved and he protested frequently to Hitler and Himmler.45 They were not listening.
He was unable to get word to his family but the guards did take the trouble to inform him of the death of his brother, Prince Christoph. Prince Christoph had been serving in the Luftwaffe seeing action in France, the Soviet Union, North Africa and Sicily, fighting to the last for the German cause. On 7 October 1943 he was recalled to Germany and took a flight from Rome. The plane never arrived. No obvious reason for the crash of the twin-engined light aircraft into the Apennines near Ravenna was ever found.46 For Philipp, mourning his brother’s fate from the confines of his cell, it was impossible to rule out sabotage.
The most shocking treatment was reserved for Philipp’s beloved wife, Princess Mafalda, a daughter of the King of Italy. Hitler blamed the Italian royal family for the coup against Mussolini and in his eyes she became ‘a bitch’ and ‘a traitor’.47 Having fled for refuge to the Vatican in Rome, she was lured out again into Nazi captivity on the promise of receiving a message from her husband. It was a cruel trick. She was flown back to Germany, her royal status far from being an asset, now a death sentence. In Buchenwald concentration camp she was kept in the Isolation Barracks along with other high-ranking prisoners. Her cell was located in the most dangerous part of the camp, close to an armaments factory that was an Allied target, the fear of bombing adding to the inmates’ torment.
During 1943 there was a new hit by Ambrose and his Orchestra that caught the public mood. Seventeen-year-old Princess Elizabeth and thirteen-year-old Princess Margaret played it on the gramophone in Balmoral, provoked to tears by the poignant words despite the jaunty strains of the dance music echoing down long corridors once graced by Queen Victoria.48
One of our planes was missing
One of our planes was missing
With all its gallant crew.
The radio sets were humming
They waited for the word
Then a voice broke through the humming
And this is what they heard.
Coming in on a wing and a prayer
Coming in on a wing and a prayer
Tho’ there’s one engine gone and the other won’t be long
We’re coming in on a wing and a prayer . . . 49
The song captured the growing feeling of optimism. The skill and daring of RAF pilots and their crews fired popular imagination. Spectacular images of the breathtaking dambusters raid on the Ruhr had been printed worldwide and fired popular imagination. Less eye-catching but equally dangerous were the targeted Allied assaults against the German armaments industries: the I.G. Farben chemical works in the Ruhr, the ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt and others. The bombing of German cities continued. The Allied bombing on Hamburg and the resulting firestorm killed an estimated 45,000, exceeding the toll of the London blitz. From the air the terrible storms of fire below confirmed that reprisals were at last being dealt to an enemy that had seemed indomitable. The Allies were winning the war in the Atlantic too and were able to step up the transport of US troops and supplies to Europe. The US Army Air Force worked alongside the RAF in England, adding to the momentum of the assault against the Axis.
At Barnwell in Northamptonshire the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were increasingly aware of the presence of American airmen in the neighbourhood. The gardens of Barnwell were overgrown, the lawns ‘shaggy’ wrote the duchess, the yew hedges ‘with long whiskers!’ There was no one with time to take them in hand. For the Americans the rambling grounds had all the old-world charm and romance of an English manor house. ‘I have just looked out the window and seen about 50 or more Americans having their photograph taken against the old castle. Quite uninvited!’ the duchess observed on one occasion.50 The Gloucesters decided to open the gates so that anyone could visit the gardens. Alice noted from the windows of Barnwell there was one particular young airman who haunted the gardens after each sortie, as though drawing strength for his daily ordeal from their peace and beauty. One day she realised he had failed to return. She was distressed to find he had been killed over Germany.
The constant air traffic had a marked effect on her household, disturbing its orderly routines. Once she was in the sitting room when she became aware of a terrible loud noise, the sound deafening as it approached ever nearer. There was scarcely time to register that the plane was very low, black smoke and flame billowing in its wake. ‘It’ll be down in a minute,’ someone yelled. Alice was already running. Two-year-old William was asleep in his pram outside. She reached the pram ‘which leapt out of my hands’ as the crash occurred close by. To her relief, William was safe.
The duchess found the animals on the estate came to distinguish the different sounds. ‘German engines made a different sound—anumb, anumb, anumb—and the ponies recognised this and associated it with danger,’ she wrote, ‘and began to tremble and get fidgety.’ The bull mastiff showed the greatest terror, ‘wriggling under the bed or sofa as soon as he heard them coming’. The pheasants were the most alert. The shock waves alone from heavy bombing raids on the Midlands and Coventry would set them off. She and the duke heard ‘the pheasants crowing before we heard the bombs explode’.51
The Gloucesters joined the king and queen at the family retreat at Balmoral in early autumn and found the king in an optimistic mood. The tide was still moving in the Allies’ favour. Allied troops had liberated Sicily and landed in Italy. ‘My darling Mama, you will have heard the announcement of Italy’s unconditional surrender on the wireless,’ the king wrote on 8 September. At last Rome appeared to be in their sights.52 In the Scottish Highlands, tramping across grouse moors in the rain away from the pressures of their London life, it seemed possible to start talking about the future. Princess Elizabeth would reach the age of eighteen on 21 April 1944. The law was being changed to enable her to become a Councillor of State in her own right, one of five members of the royal family appointed to take on certain responsibilities for the monarch. The Duke of Gloucester would no longer be needed as Regent in the event of the king’s death.
George VI was keen to find a new position for his brother. Gloucester had been taking on some of Kent’s portfolio but the duke felt that he was not doing enough. The king discussed the matter with Churchill and soon found a solution. He asked Gloucester to take over the role planned for Kent before the war as Governor-General of Australia.53 The king explained the decision to his mother, fearing she would worry about another family separation. ‘With Harry out there as my personal representative, he can be given a roving commission as well, even to cover India. It would . . . give him a real, live interest in Empire affairs.’54 Gloucester himself was delighted at the prospect, feeling at last he had a new challenge, and Alice, who was still hoping for another baby, supported him.55
Despite the high hopes in the summer, it was the Soviets, not the British and Americans, who stole the headlines with a succession of victories. After Stalingrad, the Red Army had fought its way west across the vast Russian steppes locked in a battle of attrition with the armies of the Third Reich. Following the great Soviet tank victory at Kursk in the summer of 1943, the Soviets continued west on a wide front, reaching Kiev in November, some 800 miles from Berlin, closer than the Allies. Meanwhile in Italy the British and Americans found Churchill’s ‘soft underbelly’ proved to contain all the muscle and gristle of the German military machine. German panzers and infantry bore on Allied liberators and blocked the path to Rome, 950 miles from Berlin. German commandos rescued Mussolini in a daring raid from his imprisonment in a ski resort high in the Apennines on 12 September. The king was worried about the impasse. ‘Fighting in the mountains is hopeless,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘The men are in good heart but the conditions are dreadful. Mud, rain, and cold for weeks now.’56 The Allied assault ground to a halt in central Italy along a series of German defences running coast to coast some 80 miles south of Rome known as the Winter Line. The key point in this line, poised on a rocky outcrop that rose sharply 1,700 feet above the small town of Cassino, was a fifteen-centuries-old monastery, the headquarters of the Benedictine Order and an ‘all-seeing eye’ across the surrounding land held by the Germans.
The strain seemed never-ending. Churchill spoke of his worries about Hitler’s new secret weapon to the king. There were rumours of German rockets that could annihilate London but Churchill was more measured. He had discussed the matter with scientists, he said. The rockets were reputed to have a range of up to 300 miles. Fired from France they could reach London and could cause ‘terrific damage and loss of life’. It sounded like something out of science fiction, but the scientists could not rule it out; ‘it was possible, but not probable’, he explained.57 Was Hitler about to seize the upper hand again? How was this new fear to be met? Churchill was soon out of the country for conferences in the Middle East: in Cairo in Egypt with Chiang Kai-Shek of China and President Roosevelt; in Teheran in Iran with Stalin and Roosevelt; and then back to Cairo. Just before Christmas the king learned his prime minister was ill for a second time that year with pneumonia, which had affected his heart. ‘This is an added worry for me,’ he confided to his diary.58
Queen Elizabeth hoped the Christmas break would provide some respite. She joined the king in Buckingham Palace on 23 December 1943 for the usual tradition of giving the servants their presents. Then it was back to Windsor where this year the family was joined by Prince Philip, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Princess Elizabeth was excited to see him and in very high spirits. They had first met when Elizabeth was thirteen and since then both Marina and Lord Louis Mountbatten had created opportunities for the young couple to see each other. Philip was already closely connected to the family. Through his father, Prince Andrew of Greece, he was a cousin of Marina and a great-nephew of Princess Alexandra, the king’s grandmother. Through his German mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, Philip was also a descendant of Queen Victoria and a nephew of Louis Mountbatten.59 ‘We had a very gay time,’ Princess Elizabeth revealed to her governess, Marion Crawford, that Christmas, ‘with a film, dinner parties and dancing to the gramophone.’60 The king could not fail to miss the effect of Prince Philip on his serious older daughter. ‘She had a sparkle about her that none of us had ever seen before,’ noted her governess. He and the queen wanted their seventeen-year-old daughter to take her time before making any choice.
In the New Year the king’s private hope that the war might be over by the end of 1944 was soon crushed. When Winston returned to London it was clear that he had felt the pressure of dealing with the conflicting needs of their allies. Stalin could be difficult and rude, making costly demands, while Roosevelt appeared careless, caving in to the Soviets without prior agreement. Churchill tried to make light of it all to the king. ‘With a Bear drunken with victory on the East and an Elephant lurching about on the West, we the UK were like a Donkey in between them which was the only one who knew the way home.’61 The king saw that Churchill himself appeared rather weak and ‘seemed to have lost some of the fire in his eyes’.62
The battle at Monte Cassino came to symbolise the titanic struggle ahead for the Allies. In January, the Allies launched their first assault on this key route into Rome. The conditions were appalling. Water sluiced down the mountains; gun areas were invariably knee-deep in mud; greatcoats frozen with ice; the assault failed. After much deliberation, the Allies agreed to destroy the iconic Benedictine monastery where they believed German troops were hiding.
On 15 February, 1,400 tons of bombs from US planes wiped 1,500 years of history from the face of the map. For the Allied troops on the ground it was unearthly, as though the Benedictine monastery above them suddenly exploded under the shattering air and artillery barrage, while behind them Vesuvius was smoking ominously 40 miles away. After the bombardment, a terrifying silence fell over the Italian landscape. Had the German defenders withdrawn?
All too soon German troops dug into the hillside took advantage of the ruins to strengthen their defences. The sacrilege had brought no advantage. The second assault had failed. Morale for British troops fighting in Italy was so low it was estimated that 30,000 of them fled their posts or were absent without leave.63 A third assault was launched in March. Once again, success eluded the Allies. The few Germans who abandoned their billets left behind the strange smell of Dutch gin, Balkan tobacco and sweaty leather.64 But the site remained in German hands.