Posted on 03/25/2006 3:11:13 PM PST by freedom44
Prince Philip has broken a 60-year public silence about his family's links with the Nazis.
In a frank interview, he said they found Hitler's attempts to restore Germany's power and prestige 'attractive' and admitted they had 'inhibitions about the Jews'.
The revelations come in a book about German royalty kowtowing to the Nazis, which features photographs never published in the UK.
They include one of Philip aged 16 at the 1937 funeral of his elder sister Cecile, flanked by relatives in SS and Brownshirt uniforms.
One row back in the cortege in Darmstadt, western Germany, was his uncle, Lord Mountbatten, wearing a Royal Navy bicorn hat.
Another picture shows his youngest sister, Sophia, sitting opposite Hitler at the wedding of Hermann and Emmy Goering.
Explaining the attraction of the Nazis, 84-year-old Prince Philip told an American academic: "There was a great improvement in things like trains running on time and building. There was a sense of hope after the depressing chaos of the Weimar Republic.
"I can understand people latching on to something or somebody who appeared to be appealing to their patriotism and trying to get things going. You can understand how attractive it was."
The revelations are in the book Royals and the Reich
He added that there was 'a lot of enthusiasm for the Nazis at the time, the economy was good, we were anti-Communist and who knew what was going to happen to the regime?'
Philip stressed that he was never 'conscious of anybody in the family actually expressing anti-Semitic views'. But he went on to say there were 'inhibitions about the Jews' and 'jealousy of their success'.
Philip was born Prince of Greece and Denmark on Corfu in 1921, the youngest of five children and the only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg. All four of his sisters married German princes and three - Sophie, Cecile and Margarita - became members of the Nazi party.
Sophia's husband, Prince Christoph of Hesse, became chief of Goering's secret intelligence service and they were frequent guests at Nazi functions.
Philip went on to fight with distinction for the Allies in the Second World War before marrying the young Princess Elizabeth in 1947, five years before she became Queen. He served with the Royal Navy where, by 1945, he had risen to the rank of first lieutenant on a destroyer and was mentioned in despatches.
All of his sisters and brothers-inlaw are now dead but he keeps in contact with his German relatives.
His comments on the family's Nazi connections appear in Royals and the Reich, by Jonathan Petropoulos, to be published in Britain in May.
"There was a great improvement in things like trains running on time."
"Am I the only one who doesn't see why this is news worthy?"
No, you're not!
Seems only certain opinions are allowed by you?
Well, now that you put it that way, it does sound absurd....(thinking of Monty Python's sendup of Royal members as stuttering, sillywalking, inbred twits..)
Didn't mean to jump all over people..just too quick on the trigger and perhaps a bit too sensitive to a '20-20 hindsight' reading of history...being an (amateur) historian few things tick me off as quickly (particularly as I attended commie schools as a kid before I emigrated to the USA, and let me tell you, those people cornered the market on that stuff....)
If you would have asked Brits in 1936 who was loonier, Hitler or Churchill, most probably would have said Churchill. He was a 'voice in the wilderness' when he was warning them about Hitler.
No mention of Joe Kennedy, who served as ambassador to britain and told FDR we should support Hitler? Gee, why not?
I wasn't talking to you.
See Al's response in http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603094/posts?page=45#45
Do you see the absurdity of royals - privileged, wealthy people - being jealous of successful others simply because they're of a certain religion/ethnicity?
"Joe Kennedy didn't like the English, but Jack loved them. Go figure. Jack I guess was more assimilated."
No, Jack just "banged" more English girls.
The Rothschilds were wealthy, educated and funding wars.
Is it any wonder there was enmity abroad.
WHAT? Say - you don't believe that, do you? I mean, was the last Pope Polish or what?
Oh, wait...NEVERMIND... :>)
We don't have to agree, we can even say we don't agree.
We don't even have to give an alternate opinion, but we do have to allow others to speak without being told to STOP stating our opinion.
You forget that Jack also banged - and MARRIED a 5-6 years older blonde woman who was considered a possible Nazi spy by Hoover (she had once interviewed Hitler) - the marriage was quickly annulled via Old Joe's connections, the evidence destroyed, and Jack shipped off to the Pacific theater...
I didn't demand that he stop. I didn't hit the Abuse button. I asked please. That's not intimidation.
The Dutchess of Windsor slandered? It's not slander if it's true. There is a book about the Nazi connections, including a photo of her posing in a brothel. She snared him with Eros and then treated him like a dog after they were married. Justice for both. She wanted to be a royal and could not be.
Abdicating for the woman he loved was touching but there was really more to it than that.
Papa Kennedy hid from the blitz, would not stay in London during the bombing. The King and Queen stayed, but he ran. Does that remind us of Teddy?
Kennedy was so disgraced that FDR recalled him and had him met by his (FDR's) mistress, as I recall.
Eleanor kept JFK from running a VP under Stevenson, a man who shot and killed his friend as a boy but never talked about the incident. (No, that's not slander.) Also Stevenson's grades were kept under lock and key because the "intellectual" flunked out. Ha. Another brain like Gore who managed to flunk divinity school.
--no --he didn't marry Inga Arvad---
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