The Duke of Windsor was clearly a Nazi sympathizer and Hitler had dreams of putting him back on the UK throne. There is a reason why the Brits won’t release any documents concerning the 1938 flight of Rudolph Hess to England and his imprisonment; the fact that he was kept quiet for decades. Something big and bad went on with this rascal the Duke of Windsor, hopefully the world will one day know.
The Hess flight was 1941 but you are quite right that it remains a rather puzzling affair. Whispers, rumours, and other such fluff which may or may not amount to anything substantial, suggest that it is the Duke of Kent rather than the Duke of Windsor who could have revealed more about that. Maybe we will know the full story one day, maybe not.
None of this is new. How the left-wing in Britain like to salivate at such meagre morsels. Elizabeth II’s behaviour during her reign has been almost faultless, leaving them frustrated and impotent. At last, a family movie which proves, PROVES, that the Royal Family were Nazis! After all, they were of *German* descent, weren’t they?!
The Duke of Windsor’s alleged fascist sympathies are based on evidence and deserve study and discussion, but this is certainly not a new sensation. That film though, where they are clearly playing around, lampooning a figure then common in the Newsreels, proves nothing.
Lampooning fascism, rather than shrinking from it in terror and revulsion, was another trait of the 1930s. It wasn’t just the aristocrats at Clivedon toasting Herr Hitler and pining for a similar dose of governance in London. To poke fun was also common. Take PG Wodehouse’s novel ‘The Code of the Woosters’ which wasn’t published until 1938:-
Bertie Wooster confronts the leader of the ‘black shorts’ Sir Roderick Spode:
“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?”