Phoney War
Fruity was furious to discover that the offer of the plane to Britain had been withdrawn after the Duke had insisted he would only return if the couple were invited to stay at Windsor Castle, the Duke was given some wartime job and Wallis awarded the status the former king believed his wife was entitled to.
‘I just sat still, held my head & listened for about 20 minutes & then I started,’ he wrote to Baba:
‘You have just behaved as two spoiled children. You only think of yourselves. You don’t realise that there is at this moment a war going on that women & children are being bombed & killed while you talk of your PRIDE. God it makes me sick. You forget everything in only thinking of yourselves, your property, your money and your stupid pride . . . You are just nuts! . . . Now if this plane is sent out to fetch you, which I doubt very much, then get into it and be b–y grateful . . .’
Every ½ hour it is ‘I won’t go by plane! We will motor to Paris,’ or to Boulogne, etc. I point out the impossibility of doing that – roads blocked with troops, no hotels, etc, etc. Today there is talk of a destroyer being sent out.1
Instead, Monckton arrived by plane but the rescue was rejected, because Wallis had a fear of flying and there was insufficient room for their luggage. As the Duke had told Mr Mack at the British Embassy in Paris, ‘They could not be expected to arrive in England for a war with only a grip.’2 Monckton returned alone. The Duke told Churchill, who had just been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty:
It would greatly facilitate the Duchess and my return to England if you would send a destroyer or other naval vessel to any French Channel port Monday or Tuesday that you designate. This would enable us to bring our whole party of five and our small amount of luggage in one journey.3
Two days later, on 8 September, the party set off in a convoy of three cars for the Channel ports, where on 12 September they were collected at Cherbourg by Lord Louis Mountbatten in his first command, the destroyer HMS Kelly. Zigzagging across the Channel, to avoid enemy submarines, they landed later that day at the same quay from which the Duke had left almost three years earlier.
There was no member of the family to meet them, no message, no offer of a car or office. Instead, and only after Churchill intervened, they were met by a Royal Marine band and the C-in-C Portsmouth, Admiral Sir William James, who put them up for the night at Admiralty House. The next day Baba drove them to the Metcalfe home in Ashdown Forest, which was to be their base in Britain along with the Metcalfe’s London home.
On 14 September, the Duke saw the King, their first meeting since the Abdication. It was not a success. ‘He seemed to be thinking only of himself, and had quite forgotten what he had done to his country in 1936,’ George VI wrote in his diary that night.4 Two days later he noted in his diary that commanding officers ‘must not tell D or show him anything really secret.’5
Lord Crawford was even more critical:
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor are back in England – it is announced that he is about to take up a public appointment; but a stray field marshal is not easily placed, nor a superfluous admiral of the fleet, and he can’t do the work allotted to his younger brothers Kent and roly-poly Gloucester. He is too irresponsible as a chatterbox to be trusted with confidential information, which will all be passed on to Wally at the dinner table. That is where the danger lies – namely that after nearly three years of complete obscurity, the temptation to show that he knows, that he is again at the centres of information will prove irresistible, and that he will blab and babble our state secrets without realising the danger.
I dined with Howe at the Club. He is working at the Admiralty, and to his consternation saw the door of the Secret Room open – the basement apartment where the position of our fleet and the enemy is marked out by hour – and Lo! out came Churchill and the Duke of Windsor. Howe . . . was horrified.6
What to do with the Duke was to prove a problem. He had originally been offered a choice of posts – Deputy Civil Defence Commissioner for Wales or liaison with the British Military Mission in France – and picked the first; but when he saw the Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha, the next day, he was told the King had vetoed the appointment on the grounds that he did not want the former king in Britain.
Instead the Duke was forced to accept the liaison role with the French, relinquishing his rank of field marshal and reverting to the honorary rank of major general so that he could report to Major General Sir Richard Howard-Vyse.
‘I see endless trouble ahead with the job in France as I don’t think he will think it big enough and I doubt his getting on with the “Wombat” (Howard-Vyse, because of his large ears and Australian service),’ noted Baba Metcalfe in her diary:
I do think the family might have done something, he might not even exist but for one short visit to the King. Wallis said they realised there was no place ever for him in this country and she saw no reason ever to return. I didn’t deny it or do any pressing. They are incapable of truly trusting anybody, therefore one feels one’s loyalty is misplaced. Their selfishness & self-concentration is terrifying. What I am finding it difficult to put into words is the reason for his only having so few friends. One is so perpetually disappointed.7
The views of the Royal Family were clear. ‘I haven’t heard a word about Mrs Simpson – I trust that she will soon return to France and STAY THERE,’ wrote the Queen to Queen Mary. ‘I am sure that she hates this dear country, and therefore she should not be here in war time.’8
On 29 September, the couple returned to France, the Duke to the British Military Mission near Vincennes with Fruity, who was acting as an unpaid ADC, and Wallis to Versailles. What, however, was meant to be a sinecure with the intention of giving the Duke something to do out of harm’s way was to prove to be an opportunity for the British. Hitherto, they had not seen the French lines and defences, to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Now they had their chance.
* * *
The Windsors had renewed contact with Charles Bedaux at the beginning of the war and the two met regularly through the early months of the Phoney War, with Bedaux commuting between his offices in the Hague and Paris. One of Bedaux’s companies now had a contract with the French Ministry of Armaments, responsible for the inspection and control of armament production.
‘Last night I fixed a dinner in a private room here (the Ritz) for Charles B to meet them,’ wrote Fruity to Baba on 4 October. ‘He, Charles had much to say. He knows too much – about every country in Europe & also our Colonies. It is terrifying and he is right a great deal. He has left at dawn for an unknown destination this morning. He hinted at Berlin being one of those places . . .’9
There were already concerns about the Duke being a security leak. On 16 September, George VI had noted in his diary the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Edmund Ironside’s concern that the Duke was seeing the secret plans of the French, that Wallis also knew about them, and she was not to be trusted.10
The 2nd Lord Ironside in 1987 told the author Charles Higham:
My father determined that the Duke was a serious security leak. He was giving the Duchess a great deal of information that was classified in the matter of the defences of France and Belgium. She in turn was passing this information on to extremely dangerous enemy-connected people over dinner tables in Paris. As a result, the information made its way into German hands.11
The historian Gerhard Weinberg has argued ‘there seems to have been a German agent in the Duke’s immediate entourage, with or without the Duke’s knowledge, and during the first months of the war important information passed from his blabbering through that agent to the Germans.’12
Martin Allen argues that several of Bedaux’s staff now worked for the Windsors and may have reported back to Bedaux, writing, ‘Indeed it is known that one of the Duchess’s maids had the German code name “Miss Fox”. In the summer of 1940 she would travel back to occupied Paris and report to Otto Abetz, Bedaux’s long-term friend, Gauleiter of Paris, and former Paris representative of Dienststelle Ribbentrop.’13
On 6 October, the Duke set off on the first of his tours of the French defences, a two-day visit to the French First Army on the right flank of the British Expeditionary Force facing Belgium, and the French Ninth Army on its right flank between Fourmies and Charleville, covering the last stretch of the Belgian frontier to the Ardennes. He was accompanied by Captain John de Salis, 8th Count de Salis, a last-minute substitute to act as his translator and help write up the report. Salis had known Wallis whilst attached to the Washington Embassy during the 1920s, but it was his background in intelligence – he later served in MI6 – that accounted for his appointment. His role was to keep an eye on the Duke and report back on him.
‘We returned very late last night Sunday. We covered about 800 miles. HRH was all through absolutely delightful company. No one could have been a more interesting or amusing companion,’ wrote Fruity to Baba on 9 October. ‘The only few minutes I hated & when he was all wrong was when I had to get the hotel bills & get them paid and then he was frightful.’14
At the end of October, the Duke toured the French Fourth and Fifth Armies on the Vosges, covering some 900 miles in three days. Fruity remained confused that once back with Wallis, the affectionate camaraderie was replaced by iciness. ‘It always will be the same I believe as long as she is alive, and she makes him the same way.’15
The Duke produced four reports on the French defences, pointing out their areas of weakness, the poor morale and discipline in the French army, and questioning the reliance on and effectiveness of the Maginot Line, but they were largely ignored in London – with devastating consequences in May 1940.16
The Duke found it difficult to come to terms with his changed rank and status and was infuriated with the ‘accidental discovery of an order issued by the King behind my back, which in effect, imposes a ban of my entering areas occupied by British troops in France.’17
‘The Duke of Windsor is on us again,’ wrote Henry Pownall, Chief of Staff to Lord Gort, the C-in-C of the British Expeditionary Force, in his diary. ‘Behaved charmingly here but badly up forward where he took the salute of all Guards which turned out. C-in-C was there, a full General, and Master W definitely should not have pushed in on that. He’s here as a soldier, not as Royalty. C-in-C very annoyed about it and is getting it back to Proper Quarter. If Master W thinks he can stage a come-back he’s mighty wrong.’18
On 13 November, the Duke wrote to Monckton that he wanted to return to London because, ‘The recent exposure of a network of intrigue against me, makes my position here both impossible and intolerable until I have been able to clear the matter up with my brother.’19
Churchill replied the same day: ‘I see no objection to his coming over by the duty plane in the ordinary way, if the King agrees. An interview with His Majesty will be all to the good if it restores relations.’20 But the King refused to discuss the situation unless Lord Gort and Major General Howard-Vyse were there.
Windsor was becoming increasingly paranoid. ‘I am sending this via the officer flying back today, and the blue paper slip is only a precaution against what I suspect as becoming a common practice in official military circles!’ he wrote to Monckton on 14 November. A blue piece of paper was enclosed on which was typed in red: ‘To whomsoever steams this letter open, I hope you are as edified at the contents of this letter, as I am over having to write them.’21
The fact was that the Duke was in a difficult position. If he did his job too well he was accused of upstaging his brother and, if not, he had let down the monarchy. But his visits were not always welcome. Immaculately dressed in riding-breeches and polished riding boots, he insisted on using his own cars and drivers, often with lots of luggage. This was a distraction for the military, who were increasingly concerned about his loose talk.
He had also become discouraged about how useful his contribution was to the war effort, as he was sent off on long tours to obscure French army zones, often in wet and freezing conditions. ‘At the start he had reported to his office at 11 a.m. daily, looked at the situation map, chatted with Howard-Vyse for half an hour, then knocked off for the afternoon,’ noted the author Charles Murphy. ‘But presently he was dropping in only three times a week, then twice, then scarcely ever, except for an occasional luncheon with Gamelin.’22
On 9 December, the Duke wrote to Monckton, ‘The edge has naturally been taken off my keenness in the job, and I am really only carrying on because it’s the one that suits the Duchess and myself the best.’23
It was a similar situation for Wallis. She had operated a soup kitchen in the Bal Tabarin nightclub in Montmartre and, after British charities were not interested in her services, became honorary president of the French relief organisation, Colis de Trianon, founded by Elsie, Lady Mendl, distributing socks, gloves, scarves, toiletries and cigarettes to French troops. Supposedly she had ‘created a new type of trench mitten with a zipper attachment, permitting a soldier to use his trigger finger in an emergency.’24 She had also joined the Section Sanitaire of the French Red Cross, taking plasma, bandages and cigarettes to the front, driven by the Countess de Ganay, known as ‘Pinky’, famous before the war as a French racing driver.
Both the Windsors quickly lost heart, feeling that their efforts were not recognised. By spring 1940 he was often to be found on the golf course at Saint-Cloud, Saint-Germain or Mortefontaine, the two took long weekends at La Croë or Biarritz, and they continued to dine out extensively – often with Bedaux. Their thoughts were only for themselves and what especially annoyed the French was when he started pulling strings in both the French and British armies, at her instigation, to have their chef demobilised and returned to their kitchen.
* * *
On the morning of 10 January 1940, Belgian soldiers on duty at a guard post near Mechelen-sur-Meuse saw an ME108 Taifun (Typhoon) crash landing, supposedly on a routine flight from Munster to Bonn. When the soldiers rushed to the crash site, they were confronted by two Luftwaffe officers desperately trying to burn papers. They appeared to be a complete set of the German attack plans. The Allies couldn’t believe their luck. Sixty German divisions were stood down to await intelligence reports at the knowledge that the Allies now knew the German plans of attack.
On 18 January, the Duke flew secretly to London, ostensibly to see Churchill and Edmund Ironside in the hope of lifting the ban on him visiting British troops. But he had another purpose – to try and persuade the Government to negotiate with the Nazis to bring the war to a swift end.
Amongst those he met were Major General J.C.F. Fuller, a retired army officer who had been an active member of the British Union of Fascists – he had been a principal guest at Hitler’s fiftieth birthday parade in April 1939.25 He also saw Lord Beaverbrook, who realised the Duke’s ‘idea of himself as the leader of an international “Peace Movement” and rival leader to his brother, had never left his mind.’ Monckton, at whose home the two men had met, was disturbed by what he heard, and as he told Charles Peake, that ‘both men agreed that the war should be ended by a peace offer to Germany.’26
Peake reported the Duke’s meeting with Beaverbrook to the diplomat Oliver Harvey on 26 January:
WM tells me that he was present at a frightful interview between the D of W & the Beaver two days ago. Both found themselves in agreement that the war ought to be ended at once by a peace offer to Germany. The Beaver suggested that the Duke should get out of uniform, come home and after enlisting powerful City support, stump the country, in which case he predicted that the Duke would have a tremendous success. WM contented himself with reminding the Duke that if he did this he would be liable to UK income tax. This made the little man blanch & he declared with great determination that the whole thing was off.27
Further evidence for the Duke’s discussions with Beaverbrook comes from Harold Nicolson’s diary:
It seems that when the Duke of Windsor paid his visit here after the war he dined with Walter Monckton and Beaverbrook was there. He spoke about the inevitable collapse of France and said that he would return to England and conduct a movement for peace with Germany. Beaverbrook was delighted. ‘Go ahead, Sir,’ he beamed, ‘and I shall back you.’ When Beaverbrook went, Walter explained to the Duke that he had been speaking high treason and that if he really came to live in this country, he would have to pay income tax. The latter thought filled him with such appalling gloom that he gave up all idea of saving England by negotiating with Germany.28
By 27 January, Neville Chamberlain was aware of the discussions, writing to his sister Ida, ‘I have heard on unimpeachable authority that while the Duke of Windsor was here this week, Beaverbrook tried to induce him to head a peace campaign in this country promising him the full support of his papers.’29
The day before, Alec Cadogan, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, had reported that ‘secret documents were communicated . . . to the German Government! I can trust no-one.’30 The explanation soon became clear when a communication was intercepted between the German ambassador to the Hague, Count Julius von Zech-Burkersroda, to State Secretary Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, dated 27 January 1940:
Through personal relationships I might have the opportunity to establish certain lines leading to the Duke of Windsor. As, of course you know, W is a member of the British Military Mission with the French Army Command. He does not, however, feel entirely satisfied with this position and seeks a field of activities in which he would not have merely a representative character and which would permit him a more active role . . . He has expressed himself in especially uncomplimentary terms about Chamberlain, whom he particularly dislikes and, as he thinks, is responsible for his being frozen out . . . W had had especially good connections with the Reich Foreign Minister (Ribbentrop) in London . . . I had explained to him through an intermediary why it is completely utopian for England to effect a change of regime in Germany, and the statements of my intermediaries are believed to have made a certain impression on him.31
Three weeks later on 19 February, Zech-Burkersroda reported again to Weizsäcker:
The D. of Windsor, about whom I wrote you in my letter of the 27th of last month, has said that the Allied War Council devoted an exhaustive discussion at its last meeting to the situation that would arise if Germany invaded Belgium. On the military side, it was held that the best plan would be to make the main resistance effort in the line behind the Belgian-French border, even at the risk that Belgium should be occupied by us.32
The report is interesting, as the Allied plans for the defence of Belgium were not what the Duke allegedly reported and discussion about the change of strategy had been in the War Cabinet whilst the Duke was in London, rather than the Allied War Council. Might it be possible that a spy within the German Embassy at the Hague, Wolfgang zu Putlitz, was reporting back to the British about the Duke, that Churchill had discussed the issue with the Duke in January, and deliberately fed disinformation to test his loyalties?
On 21 February, Major Langford, an MI6 officer in the Hague, sent a message to London that ‘a very clever spy’ in the German embassy, named Walbach, had informed him that the Duke’s friend and adviser, Charles Bedaux, was visiting Zech-Burkersroda ‘on an almost fortnightly basis’. Bedaux was alleged to bring ‘defence material, strengths, weaknesses and so on’ of the ‘best quality’.33 Bedaux was already on MI5’s radar and the subject of discussion with the French Deuxième Bureau.34 The source of the leak was now clear.
* * *
At dawn on Friday 10 May, the Germans invaded France and the Low Countries, targeting the Ardennes, which Windsor’s reports had revealed were vulnerable. The Windsors waited to see what might happen. On 14 May the Germans breached the French defences near Sedan and by the 16th, Panzer divisions had reached the Oise. The same day the Duke made arrangements for Wallis to leave and sit it out at the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz.
The Duke supposedly spent the days after the invasion ‘tearing up secret documents and burning them in the fireplace of the Duke’s Embassy office’, according to Martin Kinna. His uncle Patrick, always known as Peter, had been sent out in September 1939, nominally as Clerk to the Duke, ‘to ensure that the Duke never took a single piece of paper home where it might fall into the hands of the Duchess.’35 The reason, Kinna had been told, was that the Duchess had been close to Ribbentrop and could not be trusted.36
Chaos reigned during those days in mid-May. ‘As you now know, the 9th Army could not “take it”. The General and all his staff are now either shot or prisoners of war,’ wrote Fruity to Baba on 24 May:
It has been a terrible shock and surprise. I fear there are bigger shocks to come. HRH came back two days ago. I am very uneasy about him. He might do anything – anything except the right thing. I live from hour to hour fearing to hear the worst. He talks of having done enough! Of course do not repeat any of this . . . I do not know what will happen. W is like a magnet. It is terrible. I have seen a great deal and hear everything. I can’t yet work out what Thomas and I will do, or where even try for, if the situation changes much worse (I refer to one’s life and also should HRH make his fatal decision).37
The day before, Hitler had halted three separate Panzer corps at the Canal du Nord, thereby letting the British Expeditionary Force escape. The question is why? Certainly the supply tail needed to catch up and tanks be maintained, but the Germans could have lasted a few more days. It has been suggested that Goering wanted victory to go to the Luftwaffe, not the Panzers, but there is another possibility – that Hitler hoped to sue for peace, with Windsor as a Pétain figure, to allow him to concentrate on his plan for Lebensraum (‘living space’) in Eastern Europe.38
Already at Cabinet on 26 May, the foreign secretary Lord Halifax had suggested a negotiated peace in order to save the Empire. It was only when it was realised that the BEF could be evacuated and Britain fight on alone that the idea was dropped.
On the evening of 27 May, Fruity said his usual, ‘Goodnight, sir. See you tomorrow.’ The following morning he put through his usual call at 8.30 a.m. to the Duke, to be told, ‘His Royal Highness left for Biarritz at six-thirty this morning.’39 Fruity had worked for months without pay, sacrificing his own needs for those of the Windsors, and had been abandoned to find his own way home by someone he called his best friend.
‘Re my late Master, he has run like two rabbits,’ he wrote to Baba:
He never made one single mention of what was to happen to me, or his paid Comptroller Phillips. He has taken all cars and left not even a bicycle!! . . . He has denuded the Suchet house of all articles of value and all his clothes, etc. After twenty years I am through – utterly I despise him, I’ve fought and backed him up (knowing what a swine he was for 20 years), but now it is finished . . . The man is not worth doing anything for. He deserted his job in 1936. Well, he’s deserted his country now, at a time when every office boy and cripple is trying to do what he can. It is the end.40
The report that Howard-Vyse filed ‘on the work of various officers . . . under my command’, does not mention the Duke. His only comment was: ‘I wish never to be asked about that man again!’41
1 Fruity Metcalfe to Baba Metcalfe, 3 September 1939, quoted Donaldson, p. 346, and de Courcy, p. 302.
2 John Mack to Walter Monckton, Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Folios 122–3, Balliol College.
3 6 September 1939, Duke of Windsor to Winston Churchill, CHAR 19/2A/14-15, Churchill College Archives.
4 14 September 1939, RA GVI/PRIV/DIARY.
5 George VI’s War Diary, 16 September 1939, quoted Deborah Cadbury, Princes at War: The British Royal Family’s Private Battle in the Second World War (Bloomsbury, 2015), p. 106.
6 Vincent, p. 604.
7 25 September 1939, quoted Donaldson, p. 349.
8 RA QM/PRIV/CC12/113, quoted Shawcross, p. 494.
9 4 October 1939, Donaldson, p. 353.
10 Ziegler, p. 403.
11 Higham, Mrs Simpson, revised edition, p. 305.
12 Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 143–4. ‘Relevant documents are either still closed or have been destroyed, but please look at the documents from the German archives published and cited in my book, A World at Arms, on p. 144, n. 82. The second one of the documents referred to contains information that would have been top secret at the time.’ Weinberg email to the author, 20 July 2020.
13 Martin Allen, Hidden Agenda (Macmillan, 2000), p. 124. This is presumably Jeanne-Marguerite Moulichon, but it seems unlikely.
14 Fruity Metcalfe to Baba Metcalfe, 11 October 1939, quoted Donaldson, p. 354, and de Courcy, p. 312.
15 Fruity Metcalfe to Baba Metcalfe, 30 October 1939, quoted de Courcy, p. 317.
16 They can be seen at WO 106/1678, TNA.
17 Duke of Windsor to Winston Churchill, 14 November 1939, CHAR 19/2A/89-90, Churchill College Archives.
18 Pownall diary, 8 October 1939, Liddell Hart Centre.
19 Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Folio 179, Balliol College.
20 Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Folio 189, Balliol College.
21 14 November 1939, Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Balliol College.
22 Bryan and Murphy, p. 415. Gamelin was the Commander-in-Chief of the French Armed Forces.
23 Duke of Windsor to Walter Monckton, 9 December 1939, Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Folio 212, Balliol College.
24 Martin, p. 370.
25 Major General John Fuller date book, 18 January 1940, Fuller 4/4/35, Liddell Hart Centre.
26 Ziegler, p. 415.
27 BL Ad Ms 56402, British Library, quoted Sarah Bradford, King George VI (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), p. 433.
28 1 October 1940, unpublished Nicolson diary, Balliol College, by permission of Juliet Nicolson.
29 Neville Chamberlain to Ida Chamberlain, 27 January 1940, Chamberlain papers 18/1/1140, University of Birmingham.
30 Cadogan Papers, diary, 25 October 1945, ACAD /1/15, Churchill College Archives.
31 Documents German Foreign Policy (hereafter DGFP), Doc. 580, Ref. 122667, Series D, Vol. VIII, p. 713.
32 DGFP, Doc. 621, Ref. 12269.
33 DGFP, Doc. 582, Ref. 122669, Series D, Vol. III. Extended source notes for Blackshirt, p. 487/3, University of Sheffield.
34 See for example Guy Liddell’s diary, 14 February 1940, Nigel West, The Guy Liddell Diaries, Vol 1: 1939–1942 (Routledge, 2005), p. 66, where he complains about the Deuxième Bureau leaking information passed to them on Bedaux.
35 Obituary Patrick Kinna, Independent, 23 October 2011.
36 Interview Martin Kinna, 2 May 2021.
37 de Courcy, p. 327. The Thomas referred to here is likely to have been the Duke’s batman.
38 Hitler’s master plan was to seize large areas of Western Russia and settle the land with German farmers and war veterans, deporting most of the Russians to Siberia and using the remainder as slave labour.
39 de Courcy, p. 327, and Donaldson, p. 357.
40 27 May 1940, Ziegler, p. 417, and de Courcy, p. 328. Gray Phillips eventually got to the South of France by hitching lifts on military lorries and Fruity reached London on 5 June 1940.
41 Bryan and Murphy, p. 420.