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Authors: Greg King

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Her work also extended to adult education as well. Through her hospital work, Wallis became aware of the difficulties facing the native Bahamian population, particularly in the area of sexually transmitted disease. The syphilis rate among blacks was extraordinarily high; due to the nature of the disease, no one—least of all the wife of any previous governor-general—had done anything to try to improve the situation. There was no mechanism in place in the Bahamian public-health system to deal with the epidemic, nor was anyone inclined to tackle such a sensitive subject—no one, that is, until the Duchess of Windsor came along. With no assistance—practical or financial—forthcoming from the Bahamian legislature, Wallis once again utilized her private resources, founding a clinic for those suffering from venereal disease.
17
What Wallis did was extraordinary. Not only did she break the stringent color barriers which existed in the Bahamas at the time, but she took on the most controversial and unfashionable social causes as well. She became the first governor-general’s wife to have such intimate contact with the native black children. She also broke taboos which still existed in the British Royal Family. At the same time that Wallis was thus engaged in her war work, her dedicated enemy, Queen Elizabeth, was making her reputation touring the bombed slums of East End London; the approaches of the two women, however, could not have been more different. The Queen, richly attired, maintained a careful distance; the gloves she habitually wore rarely came off, and she certainly never took on such unpopular projects as the Duchess. The smiling face of the Queen, with her steely determination, was featured around the world in photographs and newsreels; such public displays led Hitler to once describe her as the most dangerous woman in Europe. Wallis, on the other hand, rarely carried out any of her work in the public eye; she certainly never publicized—in ways which the Royal Family, with their advisers, actively sought to do—her work as an example of her personal sacrifice and devotion to the war effort. She saw what needed doing and did it without concern for the consequences to her reputation.
“She very much resembled a 1940s version of the late Princess of Wales,” recalled one friend from the Bahamas. “The Duchess managed to do exactly those same sorts of things for which Diana became so famous—breaking the barriers of social stigma where disease was concerned, taking off the gloves, and meeting people face to face, on their level, touching them person to person. The contrast to the Royal Family could not have been more great; but they continued to demonize her, ignoring her work. And the Duchess, bless her, never cared—she wasn’t in it for the glory. She
wanted
to make a difference.”
18
This human touch—previously dormant—came to fruition during the war years. Wallis had a genuine ability to mix easily with those people she met, whether simple workers or members of European aristocracy. Once, during a visit to the Valley Forge Army Hospital in Pennsylvania, Wallis was asked to help distribute some fifteen hundred roses to wounded soldiers. To help speed the process along, one man from each ward was to receive the bouquets on behalf of his fellow patients during a special presentation ceremony in the recreation room. The selected soldiers were called to the platform one by one; Wallis went through several of these presentations, listening to their stories of battle and injury, before she decided that the wounded deserved better. She declared that she would personally hand-deliver the remaining flowers—with nearly a thousand left! The remainder of the afternoon’s engagements were canceled so that Wallis and David could walk from ward to ward, from bed to bed, handing out flowers and taking time to chat with each man about his experiences. There were no newsreel cameras there; it was a spontaneous gesture from her heart, one of many such incidents that for the most part went unnoticed, especially in the British press.
19
In late summer of 1942, Windsor Field was completed, and some four thousand RAF troops arrived in Nassau to share coastal watch patrols with members of the U.S. Army Air Force, which was already present. As a result, there were hundreds of soldiers wandering the streets. Although incidents were few, Wallis was quick to recognize the urgent need for some form of canteen or recreation center to keep them occupied. With her customary energy, she undertook several plans to establish organizations for the soldiers in Nassau.
She founded a canteen for the black members of the Bahamian Defense Force. Of necessity, the institute was segregated; it would have been impossible—with both the American and British armed forces segregated—for Wallis to do otherwise. But she took as much care over the club as any of her other endeavors, personally selecting the games and furnishings and visiting from time to time to engage the soldiers in conversation.
20
Wallis also managed to take over the lease of an unused wing of the Royal Victoria Hotel in downtown Nassau. Here she created a hostel for the survivors of wartime shipwrecks off the Bahamian coast—an all-too-frequent occurrence. With each new wreck, Wallis was ready: She would rush from Government House to the hotel, welcome the survivors, find out what they needed, and try to make them comfortable.
21
To accommodate the RAF and U.S. troops, Wallis, as president of the Daughters of the British Empire, took over the Masonic Building on Nassau’s downtown Bay Street. She helped fit out the building and arrange the entertainments: There were weekly dinners, movies, and dances for the troops, many of which Wallis herself directly presided over.
22
But perhaps Wallis’s most accomplished achievement—and certainly the one that consumed her greatest energy—was the founding of the Bahamian Club on Nassau’s West Bay Street.
The Bahamian Club resulted from the severe overcrowding of the other recreational facilities designed for the troops. Wallis approached her friend Frederick Sigrist and asked if he would be willing to lend his newly purchased Bahamian Club, a large, ungainly building which had formerly housed a casino populated largely by tourists and the rich white inhabitants of Nassau. Once the club was fully outfitted, Wallis devoted herself to its operation wholeheartedly. Every morning, she reported for work at the club to personally assist in the kitchen making breakfast. The sight of the Duchess of Windsor standing behind the large stoves, asking how the men wanted their eggs, was something which none of the soldiers ever forgot. Wallis happily posed for photographs, gave out autographs, and chatted with the men as she continued her work.
23
According to military censors, the subject of meeting the Duchess and being served by her was the most common topic in all letters from military personnel stationed in Nassau.
24
This work now filled Wallis’s days. With mornings spent at the Bahamian Club, she devoted her afternoons to the Red Cross and the infant-welfare clinics. In the evenings, she arranged dinners, receptions, and dances to benefit her charities and to entertain the troops. Even this was not enough, and she continued to push herself harder and harder. Wallis started a needlepoint class for a hundred black women in an effort to promote Bahamian crafts. She became director of the Dundas Civic Center, which trained young Bahamians for employment and provided job-placement assistance. She raised money for the local YWCA and the Nassau Garden Club and funded, out of her own pocket, a local program which delivered hot meals to shut-ins throughout the Nassau area. “I never worked harder in my life,” she declared. “I never felt better used.” She said that she was exhausted by all the work but exhilarated as well. “I have to keep busy. I couldn’t stay here if I didn’t.”
25
Wallis found great satisfaction in her work. Despite her occasional critical comments about the Bahamas, she responded with useful action, and action of a very royal kind, as a letter she wrote to a friend in 1943 makes dear:
I can’t wait for your visit—at last some relief from the daily grind! If you can bring any new records I know the men would appreciate it—we keep playing the same old songs over and over—they don’t complain but you can only listen to the same noise and pretend to like it for so long! We try to do what we can—keeping spirits up—it’s hard, I must say, but necessary and I feel as tho’ in some way we at least make a difference. When I go to bed at night I worry and wonder what the next day will bring—but the challenge is great, we have a great responsibility, and anything to keep our minds off this damn place helps as you can imagine! When this war is over I shall feel like I actually accomplished loads, which is better than sitting here hating our life.
26
 
It is a measure of the continued discrimination against Wallis that, despite her years of service, George VI repeatedly refused to offer her any award in his annual New Year’s Honours Lists. The Duchess of Windsor, as a result, must rank as the only wife of a governor-general who served during the war, not to mention the founder and patron of any number of successful charities, to be so deliberately ignored. The Duke himself suggested on several occasions that even the merest recognition of her war work would be appreciated, but Buckingham Palace refused to alter their position.
David also tried, once again, to convince his brother to create Wallis a Royal Highness. On November 10, 1942, when he submitted the colony’s New Year’s Honours List to London, the Duke wrote to Churchill, asking him to suggest that the King do so in recognition of her two years of public service.
27
Churchill did submit the matter to the King, and George VI replied to the prime minister on December 8. He wrote that he did not feel he could “alter a decision which I made with considerable reluctance.” He declared that there were many people in England and the empire “to whom it would be most distasteful to have to do honor to the Duchess as a member of our family.” He had consulted the family over the issue of the style of Royal Highness and wrote that, regarding his decision to withhold it, they “share these views.” He ended by declaring that his refusal to grant Wallis the style of Royal Highness was for the good of both the Royal Family and the country.
28
Thus, Wallis was once again denied not only what had rightfully been hers upon marriage to David but the most simple expression of gratitude for the services she had rendered in the Bahamas.
36
 
Shady Friendships, Murder, and Treachery
 
O
N THE NIGHT OF JULY
7, 1943, the Windsors’ friend Sir Harry Oakes was murdered in his bed in the Bahamas. The resulting investigation—and the scandal it caused—hung like another shadow over the Duke and Duchess for the rest of their lives. But the Oakes murder was just one of many peculiar incidents involving questionable friendships, suspected money trading, and ties to the Nazis that clouded the last two years of the Duke’s time as governor-general.
Many of the allegations were easier to believe due to the well-known associations the Windsors had enjoyed with those suspected of harboring Nazi sympathies. As Hugo Vickers rightly points out, it was only expected that the Duke, in his position as governor-general, “should meet most of the rich and powerful men circulating in the area. But in dealing with these characters, the duke of Windsor, who all his early life had been protected by courtiers and other advisers, was somewhat ill equipped. He was not much helped by the Foreign Office in London, which showed itself to be ambivalent about him. Old rumors about his supposed pro-German leanings as well as his now-reduced status made British officials less than open when it came to briefing him about their suspicions concerning his acquaintances. The Duke of Windsor had not been left in safe waters, as had been hoped, but dropped in a sea of sharks.”
1
Then, too, the Duke sometimes misspoke. In the March 12, 1941, issue of
Liberty
magazine, an interview with the Duke by Fulton Oursler was published which caused considerable consternation. The actual interview itself was fairly innocuous, and David had only given it on the advice of President Roosevelt’s press secretary. But one implication it contained was that it was better to leave Hitler alone to lead the German people and that in the best interests of everyone and to spare as many lives as possible, a peace should be negotiated at once. Although the Duke himself later protested that the interview had contained many inaccuracies, this sentiment was something he had certainly expressed before. When Churchill got wind of it, he was indignant: he cabled the Duke, chastising him for his “defeatist” talk and asking him to refrain from further interviews.
2
In May 1943 the Duke asked that the Duchess’s letters, like his, be exempt from censorship due to shared diplomatic status. He was told this would not be possible; he did not know the contents of the vicious report, filed by Adolf Berle, coordinator of intelligence, who noted:
I believe that the Duchess of Windsor should emphatically be denied exemption from censorship. Quite aside from the shadowy reports about the activities of this family, it is to be recalled that both the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were in contact with Mr. James Mooney of General Motors, who attempted to act as mediator of a negotiated peace in the early winter of 1940; that they have maintained correspondence with Bedaux, now in prison under charges of trading with the enemy and possibly of treasonous correspondence with the enemy; that they have been in constant contact with Axel Wenner-Gren, presently on our blacklist for suspicious activity, etc. The Duke of Windsor has been finding many excuses to attend to “private business” in the United States, which he is doing at present.
3
 
As noted in this report, Charles Bedaux, the man who had invited Wallis and Edward to stay at Candé and use it for their wedding and who had arranged their controversial trip to Germany in 1937 was arrested and charged with treason in 1943. Bedaux had always been a man of rather peculiar politics. He had continued to play a dangerous game of appeasing both his Nazi friends and his American business interests, a charade which was bound to catch up with him one day. His close ties with the Nazi industrial leadership immediately marked him as a man of questionable character to those with suspicious minds. No evidence of treason against Bedaux was ever discovered, but the vindication came too late for him. Unable to continue his imprisonment any longer, the wealthy industrialist committed suicide in his Miami jail cell. His name was later cleared of any wrongdoing, and the French government posthumously awarded him their
Legion d’honneur
in the 1960s.
The other associate marked out in Berle’s report was Axel Wenner-Gren, the Swedish multimillionaire industrialist and friend of Bedaux. Like Bedaux, he does not seem to have had any real political affiliations; his concerns were chiefly financial. He lived aboard his immense yacht, the
Southern Cross
, which he kept moored off the Bahamas. The United States, as in the case of Bedaux, wrongly assumed—and on the basis of very little evidence—that Wenner-Gren was a Nazi sympathizer. A State Department report declared:
The most recent information I have regarding Mr. Wenner-Gren indicates that he is in constant and close touch with the Duke of Windsor and that both of them are seeing a great deal of prominent and influential American businessmen, particularly from the mid-Western states, where a strictly commercial point of view would appear to prevail in business circles with regard to relations between the United States and Germany. There would appear to be certain indications that Wenner-Gren, as well as the Duke of Windsor, is stressing the need for a negotiated peace at this time on account of the advantages which this would present to American business interests. This angle, I think, should be closely observed....
4
 
The relationship between the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Axel Wenner-Gren was a constant source of tension. He had contributed large sums of money to the Duchess’s charities in Nassau and had always been willing to lend the couple his yacht if needed. When he sought permission to purchase a small island, London appealed to the U.S. State Department for advice. State Department officials replied that they did not think it wise to allow someone with such close ties to the Nazis to do so; the Duke of Windsor somehow learned of this and demanded that the U.S. government tell him precisely what evidence it had against Wenner-Gren. The State Department was forced to admit that it had no proof, but fell back on innuendo, declaring that “his links with high Germans are very intimate and suspicious.”
5
One area of particular concern was Wenner-Gren’s connection with the Mexican Banco Continental, of which he was a partner. The bank was rumored to have Nazi connections and widely believed to be used as a conduit for illegal money trading. The Windsors were thought to have engaged in such trading practices during the war, arranged by Wenner-Gren through his bank. On July 21, 1942, a secret State Department memorandum reported:
Axel Wenner-Gren is supposed to have according to my information the following sums of money on deposit and now all frozen:
 
London
$50 millions.
Bahamas
$2,500,000.
United States
$32 millions.
Mexico
$2 millions.
Norway
$32 millions.
 
 
It is understood that the deposits of $2,500,000 in the Bahamas were made at the express request and in part for the benefit of the Duke of Windsor... he is a very close friend of the Duke.
6
 
It should be noted that this report rests on the unverified surmise of an unidentified American agent. The evidence in support of the allegation, therefore, is entirely circumstantial. Even so, it is important to point out that were the allegations accurate, the Windsors were not the only important Britons to engage in illegal trading. In fact, no less a person than Winston Churchill was actively involved in illegal money trading during the war, also on the behalf of the Duke and Duchess. On April 7, 1941, he dispatched the following message to the United States:
Mr. Winston Churchill presents his compliments to His Excellency the United States Ambassador and, with reference to Mr. Achilles’ letter of 1st March to Sir George Warner of the Foreign Office concerning the property in Paris of His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor, has the honour to request that the United States Embassy in Paris may be asked to be so good as to make the following payments on behalf of the Duke of Windsor, from British funds at their disposal, the payments to be shown as separate items in their account with the Foreign Office:
1. Rent of 55,000 Francs for the current year, but not to continue the purchase option.
Renew the insurance, costing 10,000 Francs.
Pay back wages to Fernand Lelorrain at the rate of 2000 Francs monthly for January, February and March, 1941, plus 30 Francs daily for food for the whole period. It should be explained to Lelorrain that this latter rate is the rate paid to the servants at La Croë, His Royal Highness’s house at Antibes.
Continue to pay Lelorrain monthly, upon presenting himself, his 1000 Francs, plus 30 Francs a day for food.
2. The Duke of Windsor would also be grateful if the United States Embassy could enquire the situation regarding his possessions in the Banque de France and pay 15,000 Francs for the current year’s rent of his strong room there, which expired last November.
3. Mr. Churchill would be obliged if an expression of His Royal Highness’s appreciation could be conveyed to the United States Embassy in Paris for the able assistance they are giving to his affairs.
7
 
The Banque de France was, in fact, controlled by the occupying Germans. Thus, although the money went toward preserving existing property, according to the simple facts, Churchill was guilty of trading with the enemy in much the same terms that the Windsors have been alleged to have been. Whatever the truth behind the allegations, the Windsors have been subject to an immense amount of negative publicity over the money issue.
These allegations, friendships with supposed Nazi sympathizers, and other rumored indiscretions were damaging enough, but the Windsors could never entirely escape—no matter how little evidence existed to the contrary—from the suspicion that both harbored pro-German tendencies. The incident in Spain and Portugal in 1940, coupled with letters and German dispatches, was to lead to the most damaging allegation of all: that the Windsors had been traitors and that the Duke had collaborated with the Nazis with the idea of regaining his abdicated throne.
In October 1945 a number of German Foreign Office archives detailing the Nazi plot to win the Duke of Windsor over as a supporter were discovered hidden in an isolated castle. There were dozens of cables which mentioned the Windsors, including much correspondence regarding his possible pro-Nazi attitude and discussion of placing him on the British throne again once the war had ended. However, in 1957, when the papers were published in the
Documents on German Foreign Policy
, volume 10 included a statement from the British Foreign Office that the Duke “never wavered in his loyalty to the British cause.... The German records are necessarily a much-tainted source. The only firm evidence is of what the Germans were trying to do in this matter and how completely they failed.”
8
Around the same time in 1945, King George VI ordered that certain documents be retrieved from Germany and dispatched Anthony Blunt, the British art historian later exposed as a Soviet spy, and Owen Morshead, librarian at Windsor Castle. Officially, they were sent to retrieve correspondence between Queen Victoria and her eldest daughter, Empress Friedrich of Germany, but suspicious minds have since speculated that the real purpose of their mission was to find and destroy any papers which implicated the Duke of Windsor in treasonous activities. No such papers are known to have been found, and Edward VIII’s official biographer, Philip Ziegler, clearly indicates that the Blunt-Morshead mission had nothing to do with the Duke of Windsor. Despite the rather dubious efforts of later writers, no reliable evidence has ever come to light to indicate either the alleged treason of the Duke or that the Blunt-Morshead mission concerned the retrieval and suppression of such evidence.
9
Undoubtedly, however, it was the murder of Sir Harry Oakes which most adversely affected the Windsors’ time in Nassau. Oakes had made a fortune in Canada when he discovered the world’s second-largest gold vein; he spent time in England and America and finally settled in Nassau when he retired. He and his wife lived in splendor in their house, Westbourne, where he was killed.
Oakes was a rather big, somewhat crude man with a brash, boisterous personality. His Australian wife, Eunice, was a complete contrast, while their daughter Nancy would eventually marry the renowned playboy Alfred de Marigny. Oakes’s business partner in Nassau was Harold Christie, a volatile former rumrunner who had bootlegged alcohol during the Depression. In time, Christie became the leading real-estate developer in the Bahamas.

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