‘In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history . . . ’
—George VI, 3 September 1939
It was not long before the king realised that a new word had been minted to describe the particular kind of hell unleashed on Poland: Blitzkrieg, or lightning war. The newspapers he read outlined in vivid terms how Germany’s military arsenal was let loose simultaneously by air, land and sea. During the darkness hours of 1 September 1939 the heavy guns from a German warship pounded the port of Danzig on the Baltic coast. Miles to the south-west, sleepy Polish villages woke up to the full destructive might of the Luftwaffe. Stuka dive-bombers rained terror on Polish positions, shelling anything that moved. Quietly massed in the forests along the Polish border were the panzers and armoured cars of the German army. At 5 am they began streaming into Poland with orderly efficiency.1
Elizabeth joined George VI from Scotland, tired from the night train, her presence a tremendous comfort. She was sad to leave the princesses behind at Birkhall near Balmoral. Her oldest sister, Rose, was solemnly entrusted to do her best for them should anything happen to herself and the king. They waited for news together at the palace in those first anxious days of September, ‘hoping and praying, that a solution will be found’, wrote Elizabeth.2
The prime minister did not declare war immediately. George VI learned they were delayed because the French were not yet ready. Then a wild hope spread around Whitehall that Italy would intervene and peace might yet be saved.3 Chamberlain was stunned to find the mood was for war in the House of Commons. Anger was mounting at the delay. But no declaration of war came.
By the evening of 2 September London was in the grip of a thunderstorm. Buildings were nearly obliterated from view in the torrential rain. People hurried from the deluge, their shapes distorted, almost surreal in the gloomy light. From the Buckingham Palace windows, the world outside seemed to echo the confusion in Westminster. Polish people had endured two days of merciless destruction while they had stood by. The speed of events was appalling. Reports indicated the Polish air force had taken crippling losses.
Finally the king learned a decision had been reached at Number 10. The British ambassador, Sir Nevile Henderson, would deliver an ultimatum to the German government at 9 am the next day. If the German government did not give orders by 11 am to withdraw from Poland, Britain would be at war.
Sunday 3 September dawned glorious and church bells rang out across the land. The country was still at peace. The storm had passed and under summer skies that peace was tangible, the very essence of Sunday tranquillity in England before the war. ‘Every moment was an agony,’ wrote Queen Elizabeth, treasuring each precious second before 11 am. ‘My last cup of tea in peace! My last bath at leisure; and all the time one’s mind working on many thoughts.’ 4 All over Britain people gathered by their wireless sets waiting for the news. The prime minister was due to broadcast to the nation shortly after the eleven o’clock deadline. George VI had hardly slept the night before.5 Everything seemed unreal. He and Elizabeth waited for the broadcast in his sitting room. It is impossible to find words, she wrote later, ‘to convey even an idea of the torture of mind that we went through’.6
Eleven o’clock began to strike.
‘This is London,’ announced the BBC presenter. ‘You will now hear a statement by the prime minister.’
There was no pause; no interruption; no last-minute reprieve.
As the prime minister spoke, his querulous voice seemed disconnected from the fateful words. Hitler would not withdraw from Poland, said Chamberlain, ‘ . . . and consequently this country is at war with Germany.’
The king’s first feeling was one of relief, according to the war diary that he began that week. The ‘incessant worry’ he had felt since Munich gave way to resolution. Hitler’s violence had led the world to the ‘edge of the Abyss’. Now Hitler ‘had taken the plunge with the knowledge that the whole might of the British Empire would be against him’.7
He realised Elizabeth had tears pouring down her cheeks.8 There was little time to comfort her. The strange and penetrating whine of air-raid sirens cut through the prime minister’s familiar voice, bringing home the new reality. It was hard to know what to expect. Would the clear London skies suddenly become overcast as German bombers reaped destruction as in Poland? The king and queen, holding their gas masks, made their way down to the palace basement that had been hurriedly converted into an emergency shelter, wondering how the enemy could attack so soon.9 We felt ‘stunned and horrified’, the queen recalled, ‘waiting for bombs to fall’.10
Lionel Logue was on standby, waiting in some trepidation knowing he would soon be needed. The call from the palace came at midday and he set off from his home in south London through the transformed streets. He found the king looking distinctive in his admiral of the fleet’s uniform but nothing could conceal his anxiety. It was George VI’s first wartime speech. Even for a man with his deep sense of purpose, it was a tremendous ordeal. How was he to lead the nation towards whatever unknowable terrors lay ahead? There was just time for Logue to look over the speech and make a few adjustments that he knew would help the king. At this, of all moments, failure could not be countenanced. Friends and enemies would hear him. The return of his stammer was a private terror that had to be banished from his mind. All too soon it was time. Just before 6 pm Logue was with the king in the broadcasting room. Both men were waiting for the red cue light. Nervously the king began.
‘In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both at home and overseas, this message . . . ’ His voice was hesitant, his tone was flat, the words came at an uneven pace, but none the less, the king stuck to his message. He set out why the country had been forced into conflict: to challenge the dangerous code which permits a state ‘to disregard its treaties and its solemn pledges; which sanctions the use of force, or threat of force, against the sovereignty and independence of other States. Such a principle, stripped of all disguise, is surely the mere primitive doctrine that Might is Right . . . ’ If this became established, ‘the peoples of the world would be kept in the bondage of fear’ and all hopes of peace, justice and liberty would be ended. ‘For the sake of all that we ourselves hold dear, and of the world’s order and peace, it is unthinkable that we should refuse to meet the challenge. It is to this high purpose that I now call my people at home and my peoples across the Seas, who will make our cause their own . . . We can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God.’
The stirring words of George VI resounded around the homes and offices of Britain. People fell silent, awed at the immensity of what lay ahead, responding to his rallying call, arguably all the more rousing despite his delivery, because the intensity of feeling was still plain. Across the world the cry was heard. The Dominions were not signatories to the British guarantees to Poland but none the less, the Pacific Dominions declared war on Germany at the same time as Britain. Australia, too, was of one mind: ‘One king, one flag, one cause.’ New Zealand swiftly followed. South Africa and Canada joined the war after some debate a few days later.11
The reluctant king, now thrust hesitantly into the prominent role of Supreme Commander in Chief of the Army of an empire at war, found the sound of the sirens even worse at night, penetrating the darkness, forbidding sleep. Tired and disorientated, he and Elizabeth retraced their steps to their shelter in the small hours of 4 September. The certainties of the peacetime world were slipping away fast. The king knew his ministers had tried everything in their power to prevent war. There was no alternative. But it was impossible to imagine what lay ahead.
The king learned with some surprise that the man whose judgement had been viewed as suspect for so long had a position of real executive power as First Lord of the Admiralty: Winston Churchill.12 This would be a critical role from the outset as British ships across the world became the target of U-boats. Others in Westminster shared his apprehension. Winston was ‘very rhetorical and very emotional’, according to Samuel Hoare. ‘He strikes me as an old man who gets tired very easily.’ 13 Across the fleet the news spread like wildfire: ‘Winston is back.’ Churchill himself felt an uplifting sense of detachment. ‘The glory of Old England, peace-loving and ill-prepared as she was, but instant and fearless at the call of honour, thrilled my being . . . ’ 14
In Berlin at the Reich chancellery, the Führer was astonished at the declarations of war from Britain and then France. ‘It was plain to see how stunned he was,’ wrote Hitler’s press chief, Otto Dietrich.15 Many in the Nazi leadership blamed Ribbentrop, who right to the last fuelled Hitler’s fantasy that Britain would not fight. Philipp of Hesse had been just one of many who warned Hitler. Goering too had pushed for a negotiated settlement but was unable to counter Hitler’s intransigent belief that he could invade Poland with impunity.
Ribbentrop had lived through a week of extremes. He had been feted by his revered Führer over the German pact with Moscow only to be banished from his presence when the British affirmed their support for Poland in late August. Mussolini, too, made it clear the Italians would not fight, a view that Ribbentrop had not expected. Ribbentrop cowered in his banishment, ill with anxiety as he turned over in his mind how to get back into Hitler’s inner circle. His sense of wellbeing was so intimately linked to Hitler’s approval that his exclusion brought on physical symptoms and emotional outbursts that were frightening enough to keep his subordinates out of the way. But when Germany invaded Poland and the democracies failed to act, he appeared redeemed in the Führer’s eyes. Soon he was once more stoking up Hitler’s fantasies and thirsting for war. Yet again there was a U-turn when Britain’s ultimatum finally arrived. Goering simmered with rage. The war was ‘Ribbentrop’s doing’, he told Goebbels years later. It was a view he had in common with the British ambassador, Nevile Henderson: ‘I realised that no one did more than [Ribbentrop] to precipitate war,’ he wrote. ‘There is no hell in Dante’s Inferno bad enough for Ribbentrop.’ 16
In villages across England the autumn ritual of bringing in the harvest was underway. At Barnwell in Northamptonshire the weather was close and the Duke of Gloucester found he could not count on the usual local support. It was not long before he too learned of his new role in the army as Chief Liaison Officer of the British Expeditionary Force or BEF. The duke and duchess’s private plans to continue trying for a family had to be put on hold. Alice was to remain in England and was already involved in the creation of a Hospital Supply Depot at Barnwell, part of a network of medical relief across the country preparing for the invasion. Her husband would be at a secret location in France under the command of Lord Gort, the commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force.17
The Gloucesters spent their last few hours together on 14 September in the army barracks at Camberley in Surrey. The intrusion of military formality made personal goodbyes impossible. Senior officers’ gas masks were fitted and tested in a special sealed chamber. Official photographers and cinema operators began to gather to record their departure. Finally Gloucester’s chauffeur, Prater, arrived to take him to Portsmouth.18 ‘My beloved Alice,’ Gloucester wrote to her later, ‘I did hate leaving you yesterday so very much that I could hardly keep a straight face.’ 19 When he was sufficiently composed to turn around to wave, she was already out of view and soon the comforts of home were just a memory as he became involved in work in France.
What happened next did not auger well for the Duke of Gloucester’s trip to France. The duke was in a long convoy from Cherbourg. The blackout was all-enveloping; the rain obscured vision still more. It was not long before the fourth car piled into the third, the fifth—with the duke and Lord Gort inside—crashed into the fourth. With sickening inevitability, the sixth and seventh rammed into the pile-up from behind. The duke wrote to the king and his wife to reassure them that his bruises were minor. This mishap did not dampen his enthusiasm. Gloucester set himself the goal of touring all the troops in the most advanced locations. He wanted to see the men’s problems for himself, familiarise himself with British defences and keep the king informed of his observations.
The king had a loyal ally. In five weeks his brother travelled almost 4,000 miles. A diary from one of his staff (almost certainly his equerry Captain Howard Kerr) highlights the early teething problems. Apart from difficulties with the excitable French drivers in the blackout, there were curious local customs to adapt to. At their temporary headquarters in the Château de la Blanchardière at Le Mans, the French guard insisted they ‘blew an appalling fanfare on their trumpets’ whenever the commander in chief, Lord Gort, arrived or departed. French food was inevitably a problem. ‘Ate an oyster in “family way.” B—Awful.’ As for French officers, the imposing General Georges came to visit, ‘a smart looking old boy with about 28 medals!’ After a cursory inspection of the guard of honour General Georges appeared more interested in lunch. It wasn’t just the French who caused problems. One British officer in Nantes, a Colonel Barnes, appeared ‘completely “poggled” at all times’, wasted much time looking for his glasses ‘which were dangling from his “starboard ear”’, and totally ‘bogged’ the billeting—failing to provide sleeping quarters for arriving troops.20 Despite the inevitable setbacks, Gloucester made the most of it. ‘We are a most cheery party,’ he told his mother, ‘and everybody gets on well together.’ The weather was lovely ‘and it seems impossible that we are at war with anybody’.21
In his letters to the king Gloucester was discreet about staff failings. Regarding the billeting debacle in Nantes he commented merely ‘we were not at all pleased with everything we saw’. When it came to essential matters he kept the king informed: the drainage on some pillboxes at the front was poor and the troops could be held up for want of vehicles, he observed.22 The king thanked Gloucester, pointing out that it was hard to get news from the War Office which was frantically busy, but his letters ‘tell me just what I want to know’.23 Following a second car accident, Gloucester was keen to make sure his brother was aware ‘I was not driving the car on either occasion’. The king soon learned of one serious complaint about life in the BEF from his brother. ‘If Hitler is as much in the dark as regards our movements as we out here are,’ wrote Gloucester, ‘he cannot know very much, if anything!!’ 24
Enthusiasm was somewhat less in evidence with the king’s youngest brother. The Duke of Kent’s plans to go to Australia had to be hastily abandoned. Building on his diplomatic skills, he was assigned to the intelligence division of the Admiralty, arriving at his post in Rosyth, north of Edinburgh, just before war was declared, but he found it hard to adjust to long hours in an office.25 His cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, was commanding his own destroyer, HMS Kelly, and tackling daring exploits on the high seas, and Gloucester was in the thick of things in France, while he did little more exciting than contemplate the mounting pile of papers on his desk.
Kent’s letter to the king of 7 September provides a vivid snapshot of the last-minute preparations in the Admiralty in Scotland. The commander in chief’s offices ‘are old huts, relics of the last war’, Kent explained. The ramshackle sheds leaked and were placed immediately next to oil tanks which had no protection, ‘so one bomb will not only destroy tanks but blow the offices sky high!’ Reports were coming in thick and fast from ships and coastguards of submarine sightings, but they were mostly false alarms. Despite the fact that the Home Fleet ‘went off on a wild goose chase’ they had managed to sink a few submarines. No one had any accommodation, although Kent had been invited to stay with Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay, who had been brought back from retirement by Churchill to help deal with the threat to Britain’s coastal defences. The sociable Kent found him ‘nice’ but bafflingly unforthcoming, since he hardly said a word. The whole experience was ‘like going to school again’, he confided to the king. He started looking around for a house of his own; at the very least, Marina could join him.26
Marina was alone in London and when Chips Channon visited his neighbour’s house on 5 September, he thought her eyes were a little tear-stained. In preparation for their expected move to Australia, the Kents’ London home in Belgrave Square was stripped bare. The duchess sat in her private sitting room, empty save for a couple of chairs. ‘It was a sad little talk,’ observed Chips. Marina, surrounded by packing cases and dust sheets, was in transit as though suddenly an alien, her thoughts oppressed by fears for her own family.27 She was close to her sisters, Olga and Elizabeth, but now these relationships were strained. Elizabeth and her German husband, Count Toerring, had become the enemy overnight, along with her cousins, including Christoph of Hesse’s wife, Sophia. Olga had confided the extreme pressures she and Prince Paul faced in Yugoslavia where they were courted by the Nazi regime. Kent was pleased to learn that the king had invited his wife to stay at the palace where he knew she would have the comfort of family around her. ‘Thank you so much for asking her,’ he wrote on 7 September, grateful for his brother’s thoughtfulness at such a time.28
As Kent adapted to life in the Admiralty, he left the office for inspections of Scottish defences. The Ministry of Supply were advising him where to visit, he told the king, but ‘the Ministry of Information can’t make up their minds whether I’m still to be shrouded in mystery or not! I think not! but they seem very muddled.’ 29 At Britain’s famous shipyards on the Clyde he observed a serious shortage of guns and trained men. The convoys were finding it a tough job looking after the ships, he reported. ‘They have no idea of station keeping & straggle all over the place & run into the escort!’ He saw the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth, her great hull looming above them, newly painted in grey but none the less, he thought, ‘a terrible target’. Further north he visited Invergordon where guns were being mounted and oil tanks removed away from the town to reduce the risk during an air raid. Everywhere he went along the coast he faced the bleak, unchanging view of the North Sea, the horizon stretching away for ever over dull grey waters. ‘This is a gloomy place,’ he confided to the king, ‘& the damp is terrible.’ 30
He missed the fun of his London life. Before the war, his appointments diary was invariably filled with a delightful schedule of balls, luncheons and visits to the theatre. Now, as he adapted to his Admiralty timetable, he let off steam in his private correspondence to Betty Lawson-Johnston.
Dearest Betty
Thank you for your letter. I’m sorry not to have answered before but I’ve been up here & have had little time. I work in an office all day! Not in my Line but it is interesting work—tho’ I don’t really have enough to do—I hope to change that but I had to start with something & this was the best they could suggest. I’m taking a house up here so at least my wife will come up for a little but the children will stay in the country where it is safe—What a b——y mess this all is—& what a change of plans for me & you and everyone. It is disappointing about Australia as I had done so much to get ready for it but now it is all wasted—I don’t know when I’ll be in London again and feel very cut off up here . . .
I have given up Belgrave Sq . . . It was lucky I didn’t manage to sell Coppins—& so at least we have somewhere to go. One hesitates to think of all the misery & waste & destruction this war will lead to—and then what. How can anything ever be settled again? . . . I am depressed up here & hate being cut off from everything and don’t feel I’m being at all useful.31
Within the royal family, the king’s greatest concern was what to do with his oldest brother, the Duke of Windsor. His attitude to the European catastrophe was indifferent, almost cavalier. He hardly seemed bothered about the war; certainly there were no tears or planned heroics. He and Wallis remained abroad, savouring the last of the Mediterranean summer with long days lounging by the swimming pool at La Croë. On 3 September the duke was summoned to the telephone to take a call from the British ambassador in Paris. He returned to the pool where Fruity Metcalfe and Wallis were soaking up the sun. ‘Great Britain has just declared war on Germany,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid in the end, this may open the way for world Communism.’ His words were abruptly punctuated with a splash as he dived into the water.32
Windsor chose this, of all times, to pressurise the palace to meet his requirements for his wife. He refused to return unless he and the duchess were received by the king and queen, and his wife received by his family. Even Fruity Metcalfe was shocked to learn of the duke’s demands. There is a war on, he reminded Windsor. Women and children were dying ‘while you talk of your PRIDE’.33 Officials at the palace took a similar view and an impasse was reached between the brothers. It fell to Churchill to find an expedient solution. Taking advantage of his position at the Admiralty, he simply asked Mountbatten to divert HMS Kelly to Cherbourg to bring the wayward duke home.
When the Windsors finally docked at Portsmouth on 13 September 1939 the duke was still secretly hoping for a reconciliation. He had been away for three years and felt uncertain of the response he might receive. As they came in to land in the inky blackness of Portsmouth harbour, moment by moment the humiliations piled up. Once again, Churchill had tried to muster some semblance of dignity for the former king, but it was not enough. A local guard of honour with tin hats stood to attention while a brass band played the National Anthem, although it was the short version, not the full version reserved for the king, the duke noted. A length of red carpet was hurriedly produced, at the end of which it was clear that no family had come to welcome him, not even his favourite, the Duke of Kent. There were to be no glittering palaces, no welcoming warmth for the ex-king and his lady. Nor was there a waiting royal car and chauffeur to whisk them off to the privacy and comfort of Fort Belvedere. Instead a functionary in the shape of Walter Monckton was sent to explain the cold realities of the situation.
There had been much anxiety in court about the prospect of the return of the duke and duchess. Elizabeth sought the advice of her mother-in-law about the best way of dealing with ‘Mrs S’—her disdainful nickname for her sister-in-law. Queen Elizabeth knew how easily the ex-king undermined her husband and devoted herself to protecting George from the stresses of his demanding role as wartime leader, her serenity and ready smile a witness still in every wartime photograph. ‘Her gracious smile has always been infectious,’ announced the Daily Mirror on 12 September as Elizabeth toured ARP defences in South London. ‘Today its an example to us all. Turn to pages 8 and 9 and smile with them.’ The queen, wearing her powder-blue dress, holding her gas mask, at her husband’s side, was an inspiration. ‘A gloomy face never won anything, least of all a war,’ the Mirror told its readers.34
Queen Elizabeth was convinced the king would suffer if his older brother returned. She told Queen Mary that she had no wish to receive the duchess, but was prepared to do so, if it was deemed necessary. It is likely that Queen Mary took the lead in setting the family line that the Windsors would not be welcome in any of the royal palaces. For years her oldest son had revelled in his superior position, but now she rallied to the defence of her second son. She would not receive the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Arrangements were made for them to stay with Fruity Metcalfe and his wife, Lady Alexandra. It was left to George VI to meet Windsor alone.
Even without Wallis, he found his first encounter with his oldest brother since the abdication a trial. They met on 14 September in Buckingham Palace and as Windsor entered the room the king could see at once he looked well and had lost none of his magnetic charm. George VI had taken on the role of king in this splendid palace but his brother, exuding his customary, almost swaggering confidence, appeared to belong there. This was the brother whose very presence could make him feel inferior. Windsor invariably managed to reignite deep feelings of vulnerability in his brother and summon the most painful of childhood experiences where Bertie was always compared unfavourably. The duke told the king that he had already seen Winston Churchill. ‘I expected that he had as he was very confident about himself,’ the king noted, ‘& as to what he was going to do now that he was home.’ 35
The king was not by nature malicious or vindictive and did not want to prolong any rift but the duke’s behaviour since his abdication had heightened his concerns. Windsor’s self-made platform in Germany and his planned trip to America in 1937, his broadcast at Verdun in 1939, his showy ‘second court’ in France: all this suggested a man who would steal the limelight if he was back in England. Was he, or rather she, influencing the press even now? The New York Times took a favourable view of the duke’s return. ‘If three years ago, the head of the British Empire had not given up his throne it may well be that Hitler in 1939 would have shown more hesitation in precipitating a general war . . . ’ 36 Did American journalists seriously believe his brother would make a better job as king? Even perhaps avert war?
Oblivious to the way in which his own actions compounded their difficulties, the Duke of Windsor showed no sign of remorse. On the contrary, ‘he seemed to be thinking only of himself’, observed the king. He had always had a starring role and felt entitled to it; he expected a post that would command respect. The king took note that the duke failed to enquire after their mother, but did ask what his younger brothers were doing.37 He wanted a similar gallant role for himself and, given a choice between working for the Regional Commissioner in Wales or with the army in France, he preferred Wales, doubtless envisaging himself on a tour of Home Commands around Britain, a dashing figure, rallying the troops, sure to impress Wallis.38
The king felt uneasy after the interview. Something about their exchange had raised a crucial issue of trust in his mind. If the duke remained in England he would be bound to upstage his brothers and lose no opportunity to display Wallis in front of the army; while she would almost certainly base herself in London and cause trouble. But if he worked in France, could he be trusted with military secrets? The king ‘was very disturbed and walked up and down the room’, observed Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Secretary of State for War. None of his forebears had been crowned while the previous monarch was still alive. ‘Mine is not only alive, but very much so!’ 39
It is possible that the king was aware that his brother could turn to like-minded members of the aristocracy for backing. Less than two weeks into the war, the Duke of Westminster held a pro-peace meeting at Bourdon House, his Georgian residence in Mayfair in central London. As the richest man in England who owned large parts of London, the Duke of Westminster had much to lose from any bombing of the capital.40 He was joined by a roll-call of peers, many from the House of Lords or who wielded power through their wealth or their links to the Conservative party, including the Marquis of Tavistock, Lord Noel-Buxton and Lord Harmsworth, whose brother, Lord Rothermere, ran the Daily Mail group. The pacifist members of the gentry could count on significant support. Some contemporary estimates indicated more than a third of the country was still in favour of peace, whatever the cost.41
The 8th Duke of Buccleuch also attended the anti-war meeting on 11 September 1939. It is not known whether Buccleuch, as Lord Steward in the King’s Household, informed George VI of the pro-peace intrigues among the aristocracy but it is clear that when George VI met Hore-Belisha and General Sir Edmund Ironside, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (C.I.G.S.), on 16 September, his view had toughened against his brother. The duke and duchess must return to France, he insisted. The king confided to his mother that General Ironside did not ‘mince matters’ when it came to getting ‘David’s job settled’.42 (The royal family called Windsor by his last name, David or ‘D’. ) Ironside ‘put it very strongly to me’ that in the British Military Mission in France, ‘D would get access to the secret plans of the French’. Ironside was convinced he would pass them on to his wife. The king replied with a solemn warning. The generals in France ‘must not tell D, or show him, anything really secret’.43
Unaware of the scrutiny of his role, before the Duke of Windsor left for France he returned to Fort Belvedere, that little piece of England he had once called his home. Under his care, his staff had tended the lawns, trimmed the verges and shaped the conifers but now, as he and Wallis approached, the grounds were sadly neglected, the gardens rampant with weeds. The house had a forlorn air; the closed shutters accentuated the feel of a fortress. There were no signs of life; no housekeeper to shake down the furnishings and fling wide the windows. This was the house which he regarded as his creation, where he had held court and felt most himself, the central figure amongst his entertaining friends. Now the interior was dark, with not a vestige of its former gaiety; the shrouded furniture witness to a silence that forbade intrusion. It sent a clear message. England was no longer home. For Wallis, the neglect of their private home and her husband’s smouldering anger at their treatment underlined what she saw as their ‘little cold war with the palace’. She told her hostess, Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, that she had had enough of England and ‘saw no reason ever to return’.44
Despite his isolation in Scotland, Kent gleaned all the salacious details of their visit and was quick to share the gossip with Betty. His letter of 22 September 1939 reveals that by this time he had aligned himself completely with the king. ‘What about David and Wallis—’ Kent wrote indiscreetly to Betty. ‘Apparently his interview at BP [Buckingham Palace] consisted only of talking about himself! Thank God tho’ they’ve left the country as its very tricky having him here & you never know what they’re up to—I wonder if you saw them or heard any dirt about them? . . .’ 45
Britain lay as yet untouched by destructive German forces but the daily news from Poland gave the king a vivid impression of what was to come. ‘It is so bewildering sitting here waiting,’ he told his mother, ‘but Elizabeth and I both go out and see what is going on.’ 46 The nerve centre for information gathering was the Map Room in the Cabinet War Rooms, the government’s hurriedly formed secret underground shelter in the heart of Westminster. In a thick fog of smoke, before the ‘beauty chorus’ of coloured phones, officials worked round the clock in their makeshift basement quarters to understand the state of the battle. The king found everyone ‘very busy and . . . difficult to get hold of’, but each day a summary was typed for himself and the military chiefs.47 In the first two weeks of war it made grim reading.
The epic bravery of the Poles counted for nothing in the face of the German military might. The Polish air force was shattered. Civilians were rounded up and executed in their thousands. The ever-advancing German troops formed a raw red line on the horizon as villages were razed to the ground. By mid-September, the capital, Warsaw, was under siege. Then came the killer blow.
On 17 September the mighty Soviet Red Army invaded Poland. The 465,000-strong Soviet force rolled across its undefended eastern border. Poland was being crushed, divided in two between the mighty armies of the Nazis and the Communists. But still the Poles would not surrender and Warsaw continued its forlorn defence. ‘It is all an amazing puzzle,’ George VI entered in his war diary on 24 September. ‘Many strange things have taken place.’ 48 The Poles had fought magnificently but were unable to withstand the Nazi onslaught. And now looming uncertainly over Europe, casting a giant shadow from the east, was the threat from Stalin’s Red Army. The mighty Russian bear seized control of eastern Poland. Both the German and Italian dictators were publicly anti-Bolshevik. How would they respond to this dangerous Soviet threat? And why had Britain been left alone? ‘We must wait and see,’ the king wrote anxiously.49
Fears ran riot across Europe about the power of the Soviets. ‘Can still hardly believe that this is war and what is the outcome to be?’ Kent wrote to Betty on 22 September, ‘& now with Russia coming in—one doesn’t know what may happen. If only your country would come in now instead of waiting about & not making any sense—that would put heart into everyone & get all the neutrals and probably Italy in for us . . . ’ 50 There was a fear that the Fascists and the Bolsheviks together would destroy European civilisation.51 It was hard to know which was the greater long-term menace. The merciless brutality of the Nazis in western Poland was matched by reports of mass executions in eastern Poland and the arrest and deportation of educated citizens. Soon the claws of the Soviet bear stretched north-east of Poland along the Baltic coast, as the Soviets insisted that their troops were stationed in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Would Britain fare any better with panzers and motorised divisions streaming in from her ports, the skies black with Luftwaffe planes? The king visited RAF Fighter Command at Stanmore and Bomber Command, based at Uxbridge at the start of the war, where he found the officers very shy in his presence, unable to say much. ‘I must see them alone in future,’ he noted. When he visited the army in Aldershot he found ‘very few of the troops lived in the barracks for fear of air attack’. They were in tents under clumps of trees or in billets in the villages. So much would rest on these young shoulders.52 ‘There are no large movements of German troops etc. to the west yet,’ he reassured his mother on 24 September.53
While the king could see British preparations for himself, far less was known about the French defences. The French could exude an air of secretiveness with their ally at the best of times, but the Duke of Windsor, as a major-general with the British Military Mission, was able to gain access to sectors of the French front. According to historian Michael Bloch, Windsor’s observations held potential value for the British. French generals put great faith in their legendary Maginot Line, a remarkable system of fortifications built since the First World War along France’s German border and widely believed to be impenetrable. Windsor noted, however, that ‘the Maginot line does not seem to be an insuperable barrier’ and, once broken, the roads were open to Paris. He identified specific points of weakness, crucially in the densely forested valley of the River Meuse in northern France. In places, ‘there is a very narrow field of fire, and the entanglements could easily be approached up to within a few yards . . . there are no anti-tank defences.’ He even described the low morale of the French and the in-fighting between their generals.54 Unfortunately, on the British side there was no system in place to manage the duke or to recognise the worth of his observations. It was not long before he was straining at the leash for a more prominent position. He did not see himself tucked away on the French lines inspecting underground bunkers, but in a starring role, firing up the British front line and inspiring patriotism as he had as Prince of Wales in the Great War.
Windsor soon found a suitable pretext, which Gloucester duly reported to the king. ‘He says he is not impressed by the French way of looking after a sector of these pill boxes & wants to compare it with ours,’ wrote Gloucester, adding that if Windsor was not permitted to come he would argue ‘he is not being given a chance to do his job properly’.55 But when Windsor did get his chance to visit British troops on 18 October he misjudged the situation. The ex-king who had once been Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces simply could not humble himself to act according to the rank of major-general. The Duke of Gloucester watched his older brother with mounting alarm. ‘To my horror I saw David taking the salute in spite of the Commander in Chief [Lord Gort] and Dill being present.’ As an army man, he knew protocol was being breached. But Gloucester could see no diplomatic way to intervene, since his brother kept pushing himself forward. A smiling, tanned and gallant Windsor failed to ask about defences, but for line after line took the salute, the commander in chief increasingly disgruntled. Lord Gort finally brought the charade to an end.56
News of this errant behaviour reached the royal family. The king was uneasy. With the sinking of the battleship HMS Royal Oak just a few days earlier morale was low. His persistent fear that Windsor would upstage him and undermine his own authority as Commander of the British Army got the better of him. The king confided his annoyance to Gloucester, adding ‘it will not happen again’.57
It wasn’t long before Windsor detected what he called ‘“back door intrigue” against me’ and complained to Churchill. He explained that he had recently discovered ‘an order issued by the king behind my back, which in effect imposes a ban on my entering areas occupied by British troops’.58 He was so angry about this he wanted to come back and confront the king in person, and appealed to Churchill for advice. But, for the first time, Churchill would not take his side. What was at stake was so immense that personal considerations were irrelevant. Churchill himself felt ‘a kind of uplifted detachment from human and personal affairs’. The duke’s ignoble stance was anathema to him.59
‘Having voluntarily resigned the finest Throne in the world . . . it would be natural to treat all minor questions of ceremony and precedence as entirely beneath your interest and dignity,’ Churchill wrote to the duke on 17 November. He appealed to his friend to rise above his petty grievances. ‘By ignoring and treating with disdain all those small matters, your royal Highness would place yourself in an unassailable position, and clothe yourself in impenetrable armour. At a time like this when everybody is being ordered about, and millions of men are taken from their homes to fight, it may be for long years, and many others ruined, it is especially necessary to be defended in one’s spirit against external misfortunes . . . ’ 60
But Churchill’s wise words failed to find their mark. The duke frequently slipped back to Wallis in Paris and she fuelled his grievances. If he was kept away from the British troops in France, she pointed out, the soldiers would assume he did not care about them. The Windsors would lose hearts and minds. She confided her feelings of injustice to Walter Monckton, complaining that they were trapped and ill-treated, and threw herself into counteracting these slights with her voluntary work for the French Red Cross, Section Sanitaire. There was no shortage of press interest in Wallis wearing a neatly fitting uniform and a big smile: the war heroine packing food parcels and taking medical supplies to the front.
Brooding and angry at the perceived slights against him, Windsor once again reached out to his circle of acquaintances to confide his hurt. According to Anthony Cave Brown’s study of Sir Stuart Menzies, otherwise known as ‘C’, the head of British intelligence, this time Windsor turned to none other than the ex-kaiser of Germany himself.61
The ex-kaiser, a grandson of Queen Victoria, was viewed by Windsor’s father George V as history’s ‘greatest criminal known’. Near the end of the First World War he had been forced to abdicate his throne and had slipped ignominiously into the Netherlands. He bought a seventeenth-century estate near Utrecht and lived the life of quiet country squire, managing the grounds and obsessively chopping down trees, as though he had never wielded power, never seen the French battlefields and was in no way responsible for the young men of Europe who had died in their millions. Unlike his nephew, Philipp of Hesse, he was never part of Hitler’s inner circle, although one of his sons, Prince Auwi, was an ardent supporter of the Nazi party. After the defeat of Poland the ex-kaiser’s personal adjutant, General von Dommes, wrote to Hitler to congratulate him on the success of the Blitzkrieg. The kaiser and his family ‘remained loyal’, he told Hitler, and indeed the kaiser had one son and eight grandchildren serving in the German armed forces.
If this was the man from whom the Duke of Windsor sought advice, the correspondence between the two has never seen the light of day. An alternative theory has Charles Bedaux as the source for the German ambassador to The Hague in the Netherlands, Dr Julius von Zech-Burkersroda.62 Either way, it is beyond doubt that Zech-Burkersroda was soon writing to Ribbentrop’s second in command at the Foreign Office, Ernst von Weizsäcker. ‘Through personal relationships I might have the opportunity to establish certain lines leading to the Duke of Windsor . . . ’ he began.63
Hitler talked of Germany’s desire for peace on 6 October before the Reichstag. He gloated over the success of the German Blitzkrieg: ‘in all of history there has scarcely been a comparable military achievement’. Why should any war be fought in the West, he asked? He denounced Churchill and claimed that Germany only sought peace. England was to blame for seizing ‘the first opportunity in order to resume the fight with Germany’.
These words did not sound like a sane man conducting complex hostilities and at an evening meeting with Chamberlain at the palace this was confirmed. As Chamberlain spoke, the growing gloom underlining the ominous feelings associated with Hitler, the king learned something of the dictator’s headquarters. Chamberlain’s description had come from a Swedish intermediary, Johan Dahlerus, who had recently met Hitler and Goering. Both men wanted to stop the war, claimed Dahlerus. Hitler had been ‘in the clouds’ while Goering was a worried man. Goering had looked out of the window and said, ‘I am a soldier. What I have seen in Poland I don’t wish to see anywhere else.’ Hitler was disconnected from reality. Forgetting that he was at war with England, he suggested British negotiators could come to Berlin.64 It sounded as though Laurel and Hardy were in charge and that anything terrifying or bizarre might happen.
Extract from the king’s war diary, 9 October 1939. ‘I saw Winston Churchill . . . He seemed very sleepy, stifling yawns . . . or perhaps it was boredom!! He was also very busy making drafts of the reply to Hitler. He wanted a much sterner reply, but I said do leave the door open . . . Winston is difficult to talk to, but in time I shall get the right technique I hope.’ (The Royal Archives © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
Nothing could shake Chamberlain’s conviction that the German leadership could not be trusted with peace treaties. Britain was fighting for the defence of freedom, he declared as he rejected the peace opening on 12 October. ‘To surrender to wrong doing would spell the extinction of all hope.’ Ribbentrop dismissed Chamberlain in a gloating speech from Danzig as he launched a tirade on the ‘war guilt’ of England.65
During the autumn of 1939 Hitler’s attack in the West was expected at any moment. Constant rumours, with the attendant rush of anxiety, became a part of daily life. Churchill told the king a heavy air attack on Britain was more likely than a land attack on France.66 A Yugoslav report warned of a parachute attack on an English east-coast port as a prelude to a seaborne expedition.67 The king’s distant cousin, King Leopold III of Belgium, was told by his diplomats in Berlin that the western attack was about to be launched through the Low Countries of Belgium and the Netherlands. King Leopold was so certain of his intelligence that he set off in the blackout, driving through the night to The Hague, to warn Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Both countries had declared their neutrality. On 7 November, the King of Belgium and Queen of the Netherlands offered to mediate between the British, French and the Germans. King Leopold, a great-grandson of Queen Victoria’s Uncle Leopold, appealed directly to George VI. The British government remained firm. Was all of Europe to buckle under Hitler’s megalomaniac whim: Blitzkrieg, bombs falling, cities pulverised until they were white-hot bonfires? In spite of the threat, made all too real by media photographs of Poland, George VI replied on behalf of his ministers explaining why Britain had to fight on. His conviction was unwavering. ‘The old reason for our being at war with him still holds good,’ he wrote in his diary.68
The king and queen continued with their duties with quiet determination. On 28 November, they led the opening of Parliament. The ancient symbolic ceremony in the House of Lords chamber formed a marked contrast to Hitler’s address to the Reichstag. There was no frenzied applause or extravagant emotion. In keeping with the national mood, the event was simple and dignified; no royal coach, no ostentatious display.69 When he had spoken the king took the queen’s hand and together they walked back down the chamber to a waiting car.
As the winter set in there was a growing unease in Britain that Chamberlain was not prosecuting war effectively. The phoney war was confusing. No attack had come in the West. Although the Navy and merchant shipping faced enemy fire at sea, the land war always seemed to be happening somewhere else. At the end of November 1939, Finland, in northern Europe on the Baltic Sea, faced the might of the Red Army as 450,000 Soviet troops poured over its border with the Soviet Union. But all was quiet on the western front.
After Hitler’s dramatic attack on Poland annihilating the country with brutal swiftness, and England’s response, stumbling into war, honouring its treaty with Poland but doing nothing to help militarily, came a period of relative calm. The expected Blitzkrieg did not come. Across Britain long golden autumn days saw the harvest in, normality returned, the evacuees went home. There was no war. ‘Everything goes on here the same,’ the Duke of Kent told Prince Paul that December. ‘It seems years since war started—and the boredom is immense, three months without anything really happening.’ 70 Wallis put it more succinctly, expressing her ennui: this was the ‘Bore War’.
The king wanted to dispel the growing complacency and unite his far-flung subjects with a sense of purpose for whatever the next year might bring. Even with Logue’s constant support, the Christmas speech remained an ordeal but he recognised its importance, this year especially. He praised the work of the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, and the British Expeditionary Force. Like everyone else, George VI wondered what was to come. Europe was drawn into unknowable horror. England was a small offshore island in the sights of unscrupulous and powerful opponents. Was hope even possible? In a clear voice he finished with a poem which resounded across the world. ‘I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied, “Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.” May that Almighty Hand guide and uphold us all.’ 71
His words had a deep impact on his listeners. The Duke of Gloucester was one of thousands who heard the king’s speech from their Spartan army quarters. He had a new radio—a gift from the king; ‘the best one we have here,’ Gloucester told him.72 Like so many of the men in France that Christmas, he felt the desolation of waiting away from home for the attack in a foreign country. The roads were like glass. Clothes were never dry. Everyone seemed to have the flu. The wind could only come from the Arctic, freezing fingers, noses, eyes, everything: and no cure until wrapped in the warmth and comfort of home.
Letters were passed around the family and sent on to Gloucester. Alice enjoyed her stay, the king wrote from Sandringham. ‘Without Mama, it was rather a relief this year, and the ball room evenings were confined to two,’ he confided. ‘We did well with the shooting and got over 3,000 head.’ 73 Queen Mary wrote from Badminton, where she was joined by George and his family. She had tried hard to re-create the Christmassy atmosphere of Sandringham. ‘The tree looked lovely in the big Hall with presents on tables as at Sand. My tea to the village and evacuee children was a great success, 150 of them—first tea in servants hall, then presents in big Hall followed by carols . . . Best love Harry darling . . . I am ever Yr devoted Mama, Mary.’ 74
Early in January once again, bad news. ‘That tiresome man Hitler has done something to cause the cancellation of all leave for the present,’ Gloucester told Alice. ‘It affects Holland, Belgium and the French as well.’ 75 Once again, the invasion was imminent. Once again, troops braced themselves for their worst fears. Once again, anxious look-outs scanned the wintry scene, waiting, eyes searching through bare trees across a frosted landscape for any sign of movement on the horizon with the familiar feeling of foreboding.