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Famous Historic Figures’ Public Image vs the Reality of their Lives

Khalid Elhassan June 3, 2020 34 min

John Ford - The Searchers — John Wayne. Pintrest

18. The Nazi King

The wedding of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Town and Country Magazine

Britain’s King Edward VIII is most remembered as the romantic monarch, who chose love over power. Famously, he abdicated the British throne in order to marry his American mistress, the divorcee Wallis Simpson. Less known is the jarring contrast between his public image, and the fact that he was a Hitler fan.

Wallis Simpson, Edward VIII, and Hitler. South China Morning Post

What attracted little attention over the years – in no small part because the British government went out of its way to downplay it and conceal the evidence – is that Edward was a Nazi sympathizer. Indeed, in 1937, a year after his abdication, Edward and his wife toured Nazi Germany, in defiance of the British government’s advice. There, they were lionized by the Nazis and honored by Hitler.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.