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These Times History Took a Turn for the Batty

Khalid Elhassan November 3, 2019 34 min

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

14. Britain’s Pro-Nazi King

In popular imagination, King Edward VIII of Britain is often remembered as a romantic monarch. For many, what first comes to mind when his name crops up is that he chose love over power, and abdicated the British throne in order to marry his American mistress, the divorcee Wallis Simpson.

What attracted less 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. In the Third Reich, 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.