http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002623527Oh my.
Since the primitives are so boring when it comes to "discussing" politics, a little change in the fare this Sunday morning, for some light entertainment and amusement of decent and civilized people:
snagglepuss (8,055 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
Shocking letters hidden for 76 yrs reveals Edward VIII's Abdication was orchestrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Lang.
snip
The cause of the conflict between the King and his Archbishop appears to have been a question of style as well as traditional morality.
snip
He stooped to blackmail and rumour-mongering, falsely alleging that the King was mentally ill and an alcoholic.
snip
A devastating private letter was sent to Dawson that said: ‘My dear Dawson, I have heard from a trustworthy source that His Majesty is mentally ill and that his obsession is due not to mere obstinacy but to a deranged mind.
More than once in the past he’s shown symptoms of persecution-mania. This, even apart from the present matter, would lead almost inevitably to recurring quarrels with his ministers if he remained on the throne.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136672/The-madness-King-Edward-VIII-Shocking-letters-hidden-76-years-reveal-Archbishop-accused-Monarch-insanity-alcoholism-persecution-mania--forced-abdication-crisis.html#ixzz1tOtwfOBZ
Okay, this is something right up franksolich's alley.
I just counted something; there are 41 books (hard-cover) here dealing with the abdication of Edward VIII in December 1936, bought and read over the past, oh, I dunno, ever since I was in college. None is less than 2" thick. They're books by all the participants, ranging from the Duke of Windsor himself to Winston Churchill, and many long-after-the-event observers. And of course there's that stack of
Time and
Life magazines from 1936-1937 here.
So it's reasonable, one supposes, to assume franksolich knows something about the matter.
Stanley Baldwin's wife "orchestrated" the abdication.
Anyway.
Suich (8,014 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
1. Small point: It was Edward Vlll, not Vll.
snagglepuss (8,055 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
4. Thanks. I've made the correction.
msongs (25,914 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
2. hmm sounds like his "persecution-mania" was entirely justfied lol
MADem (71,475 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
3. Well, the guy did a good thing, at the end of the day.
Eddie and Wally were fans of Hitler. Had Germany won the war, they would have been the Puppet Royalty of the British Empire.
after which a photograph of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor greeting Snickelgruber
...In 1941, while they were holidaying in Florida, the exiled former king and his consort, now the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor, were spied upon by the FBI on the orders of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. These FBI files, written in the 1940s and now released under America’s Freedom of Information Act, detailed that the Duchess might have been passing secrets to a leading Nazi with whom she was thought to have had an affair and that His Majesty’s Government had known for the fact for some time.
Following Edward’s accession, the German embassy in London sent a cable for the personal attention of Hitler himself. It read: “An alliance between Germany and Britain is for him (the King) an urgent necessity.†In October 1937, the Windsors visited Nazi Germany, met Hitler at his Obersalzberg retreat (above), dined with his deputy, Rudolf Hess, and even visited a concentration camp. The camp’s guard towers were explained away as meat stores for the inmates. The visit was against the advice of the British government and during the visit the Duke gave full Nazi salutes.
At the outbreak of war, the duke served as a military liaison officer in Paris. Hitler made an abortive attempt to bring Edward and his wife to Nazi-sympathetic Spain, and greatly alarmed, the British establishment finally packing the duke off to the Bahamas from 1940-45. Deeply disenchanted by the society that had spun him, the Duke made his Nazi sympathies explicit, once telling a journalist that “it would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler was overthrownâ€. In another break from his usual unassuming boyish behavior, he remarked, “After the war is over and Hitler will crush the Americans. We’ll take over. They (the British) don’t want me as their King, but I’ll be back as their leader.â€
After the war, the duke and duchess returned to France. He died there in 1972, while the Duchess lived on until 1986....
http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/edward-and-wallis-with-hitler/
jberryhill (22,997 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
7. Well, it's not as if "Windsor" was the original family name
MADem (71,475 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
8. Yep, they were a long ways from their native land!
I always got the impression that Eddie was a bit of a twit and an idiot, and Wally led him round by the nose. She just luvvvved her some Nazis--not sure if it was the authoritarian attitudes or the snazzy uniforms that turned her twisted head!
The rabid Dem is right, in the bold above.
The second part, I don't think so.
patricia92243 (6,947 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
10. Thanks for the post. I always heard that it was the Nazi stuff that made the powers that be get rid of him. They would have found some way around the Wallace situation - but not the Nazi thing.
DefenseLawyer (7,758 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
6. I think the fact he was a nazi had a bit more to do with it.
Nope, nope, nope.
The fact that Edward VIII was a shallow, selfish, insipid wimp had all to do with it.
ashling (14,897 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
9. Will no one rid me of this medlesome priest?
Yeah, yeah, the usual "understanding" of history the primitives have.
The long-ago Mythsaje primitive for example once commented that the
Magna Carta of 1215 was directed against the Church.....when in fact it was the then-Archbishop of Canterbury who
wrote the
Magna Carta, directed against the King.
And given who's in the White House today, perhaps it's an appropriate time for a new Stephen Langton to emerge, to remind the Magic One he's not God's Gift to mankind.
LeftishBrit (25,669 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
12. The Daily Mail is a sensationalist rag
It was always known that Archbishop Lang opposed the King's marriage and contributed to his abdication, though some of the details are new.
In any case, though the furore about his marrying a divorcee was rather ridiculous, it is just as well that he abdicated, since he had rather too many sympathies with Nazi Germany.
renate (6,101 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
13. oh, poo
The Yorks didn't set up a "rival court" in hopes of snagging the monarchy--they were horrified and upset about it. George VI cried on his mother's shoulder for an hour when it was clear that it was inevitable, and realized that he'd never been trained for the job, as being a naval officer was all he ever knew.
Once Wallis came into the picture (and while I don't particularly like her, I don't blame her--the obsessive love was one-sided), Edward/David was paranoid about anybody who didn't agree with him, and that included the Archbishop of Canterbury. He would have been a horrible, self-focused king along the lines of George IV, so if Cosmo Lang was dead-set against him, thank goodness for that. Every little bit helps.
The new Queen Elizabeth probably sent Lang a thank-you note out of politeness and gratitude for his emotional support, not for his having gotten them onto the throne. They didn't want it--she had turned Bertie (later George VI) down three times before accepting him, because she didn't even want the life of a royal duchess, let alone that of a queen) and she later felt that the stresses of kingship had shortened her husband's life.
Goodness, I need to get a life. But however pathetic it is that I have any feelings at all on this matter, this article is full of poo about people's motives, even if it's correct about what happened.
