Edward, Prince of Wales became King Edward VIII in January 1936. By then, Edward had become a bit better at interacting with his subjects than he used to be (see 1923: Thomas Hardy entertains the Prince of Wales), though not everyone was happy with the appearance of this new young king – Betjeman’s poem ‘Death of King George V’, describes Edward VIII, the first monarch to fly, landing at London airport, where ‘Old men who never cheated’ stare at a young man landing ‘hatless from the air’.
The forebodings were justified. Edward was in love with an American divorcee, Mrs Simpson, and only ruled for 327 days, abdicating in December with the words ‘you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love’. In the streets, the children sang: ‘Hark, the herald angels sing, / Mrs Simpson’s pinched our king’.
The two lovers went into exile and became Duke and Duchess of Windsor. They became a real embarrassment to Britain in 1937, by visiting Adolf Hitler in his Berchtesgaden retreat. The Nazi propaganda machine gleefully publicized the visit, which managed to unite most of British opinion – except the far right – in dismay, particularly as the duke enthusiastically gave both ‘full’ and ‘modified’ Nazi salutes. The duke’s stated intention for visiting Germany – to examine German solutions to unemployment – was regarded as ludicrous by most observers, who also mostly regarded the duke’s behaviour as naive, but it is entirely possible that in putting himself forward as a friend of Germany, Edward was also putting himself forward as a possible future ally of the Nazis in any conflict with Britain. This was a view held by many in both Germany and Britain, though it seems probable that at the meeting, Hitler and the duke did no more than exchange banal pleasantries. The only public comment Hitler seems to have made about the Windsors was that Wallis would have made a ‘good queen’. Hitler probably only said this to annoy the British. Rumours of Wallis’ infidelities abounded, and even diehard monarchists in Britain blanched at the thought of Wallis becoming queen. Wallis seemed to some to be rather like a former British royal, George IV’s wife Caroline (see 1810: Tom Molineaux fights Tom Cribb; 1815: Jane Austen visits the Prince Regent’s librarian).
What Happened Next
WWII happened next, in 1939, in which context, for Britain, Edward was a potentially major irritant. The duke was known to favour a ‘negotiated peace’ with Hitler, and was thus packed off in 1940 to become governor of the Bahamas – a position Churchill thought was sufficiently harmless for this loose cannon. He died in Paris in 1972; Wallis also died in Paris, in 1986.