Appendix One: Hitler’s British Connections¶
Core Argument¶
This appendix exposes the extensive and deeply compromising links between the British establishment and the Nazi regime, arguing that support for Hitler was not marginal but emanated from the highest echelons of power. The core claim is that key figures in finance, the press, the aristocracy, and the monarchy actively aided and praised the Nazis, both before and during the Second World War. Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, facilitated loans to Hitler’s government shortly after it took office, channelled through the Schroder Bank of London. Viscount Rothermere’s Daily Mail provided fawning coverage, famously proclaiming ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’ in 1934, while the January Club marshalled ruling-class support for Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. The British government itself permitted increased German armaments and military exports in 1934.
The most damning evidence, however, concerns the monarchy. King Edward VIII sent Hitler a birthday telegram in 1936, and as Duke of Windsor later performed a Nazi salute at Berchtesgaden. A 1940 British intelligence telegram revealed German plans to install him as head of a puppet government. His brother, the Duke of Kent, conspired with Hitler’s deputy Hess to remove Churchill. Even the young Queen Elizabeth II was filmed performing a Nazi salute, coached by her uncle. After the war, Churchill deployed a secret team, ‘the weeders’, to Berlin to destroy documents linking the Duke to Hitler. A recently uncovered microfilm shows the Duke twice contacted the Nazis via a Spanish diplomat, requesting protection for his French homes. He told a journalist that Hitler was “a very great man” and that overthrowing him would be “tragic”. Prince Philip’s sisters married Nazi officers; Philip himself marched in a funeral procession with men in Nazi uniforms and admitted there was “a lot of enthusiasm for the Nazis” in his circle. The Duke of Windsor’s remark that “dictators are very popular these days. We might want one in England before long” encapsulates the chilling proximity of the British elite to fascism.