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When Mrs Windsor and Mr Ratzinger met in the UK, the legacy of the past hung in the air above them like an overpowering miasma, says Roy McKeen.
WHEN Mrs. Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg alias Windsor-Battenberg alias Mountbatten aka Queen Elizabeth II welcomed Joseph Ratzinger aka the Pope in Scotland the body language between them was frigid. Both knew that they have much in common and much that divides them.
The ghost of Adolf Hitler, their German heritage and the link to the Nazi regime of the Fuhrer hung over the occasion like a dark cloud.
Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson with Adolf Hilter
As a young man the Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth and would have been called upon to give the Nazi stiff-arm salute and cry out “Heil Hitler’ on many occasions. The Queen would have been desperately aware that her uncle, the former King Edward VIII, was a Hitler lover and he too had saluted the Fuhrer with the Nazi salute and a cry of ‘Heil Hitler.” She would have been aware that the former king had believed the continued bombing of Britain during WWII would make it ready for peace saying “after the war is over and Hitler has crushed the Americans we’ll take over. The British don’t want me as their king but I’ll be back as their leader.” With Queen Wallis at his side, no doubt.
The Pope would have known that Prince Philip had two sisters who married Nazi officers. His youngest sister, Sophie Schleswing-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg married Prince Christoph of Hesse. He was a Luftwaffe pilot who made the Supreme Sacrifice for the Fuhrer and the Fatherland. Before he died he sired a son whose name is Adolf, the Queen’s nephew.
Prince Philip’s eldest sister, Margarita, married Prince Gottfried zu Hohnelohe-Langenburg who was a Panzer Division Commander in WWII.
If the link to the Nazis was what united them they were divided by the knowledge that the laws of succession to the British throne forbid Catholics from ascending the throne because “it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist” (Bill of Rights 1688) and that the Catholic faith is described in the same Bill as “this damnable doctrine.”
There they were, two octogenarians with an even older octogenarian, Prince Philip, hovering in the background. Three hundred years of history, two world wars and the Holocaust loomed large as the Pope spoke about secular atheism and the Queen spoke about democracy and freedom of religion.
It was sad, really.
8 Comments
Very informative. Throw in the tale of the WW2 Concordat between Germany and the Vatican and it makes a great bedtime read.
Tell me Roy McKeen, what was your power of veto or approval over the marriage of your wife’s siblings?
My, my! Some of us really are bitter and elderly, aren’t we, Mr. McKeen? Do try to relax. You’ll feel better.
Colin (Captain Col?) is correct when he says that (as a general rule) you do not have power of veto or approval over the marriage of your wife’s (or husband’s) siblings. But the British royal family are no ordinary family. They sit at the top of the constitutional tree in the United Kingdom. Princess Elizabeth (later to be queen) would have known that her uncle, King Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, was a Hitler lover. She would have known that her future husband, Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg alias Battenberg alias Mountbatten, had two brothers-in-law who had been prominent Nazis who fought for the Fuhrer against the Allies in WWII.
One of them, Prince Christoph of Hesse, who married Philip’s sister Sophie, joined the Nazi Party in 1933. By 1935 he was chief of the Forschungsamt (directorate of scientific research), a special intelligence operation run by Hermann Göring, and he was also Standartenführer (colonel) of the SS on Heinrich Himmler’s personal staff. The Forschungsamt used electronic intelligence-gathering methods to police the Nazi Party, while working with the Gestapo against the Catholic Church, the Jews, and labor organizations. When rumors of homosexuality spread against Capt. Ernst Roehm of the Stormtroopers, Himmler turned to the Forschungsamt’s eavesdroppers, and ordered the ‘Night of the Long Knives” as a result.
Prince Christoph was a Luftwaffe pilot. He was killed in action in Italy in 1943. In a biography of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, author John Parker argued that “if Christoph had survived he would have been brought to trial at Nuremberg. This in turn would have killed off the Mountbattens’ aspirations to marry the future Queen of England to their most eligible bachelor.” Of such is the stuff that history is made.
Anyone interested in the history of this period should read ‘Royals and the Reich’ by Jonathan Petropoulos published by Oxford University Press in 2006 ISBN 0-19-516133-5.
All very informative Roy, but is it your intent to smear (or just cloud) the Queen and Prince Phillip with Nazi association? Both served in uniform in WWII in British forces. The German relatives were deliberately not invited to their wedding which would indicate to me that they rejected any such association despite the then Princess Elizabeth “knowing” about her uncle and her husband’s brothers in law, but really quite unable to DO anything to change it.
In reply to Captain Col:
I am pleased that you have found the article “informative”, Captain Col! Because there are none so blind as those who will not see, the vast majority of monarchists like you refuse to acknowledge the Nazi – Windsor connection. I just state the facts!
You are correct about the Nazi relatives not being invited to the wedding of Philip and Elizabeth. 1947 would have been too soon. But in 1948 Philip’s sister, Sophia, who had been married to Prince Christoph of Hesse and who was Adolf’s mother, was the first of Philip’s sisters to visit England bringing two of her daughters to the estate on Windlesham Moor in Surrey where Philip and Elizabeth lived. Philip’s other sisters came later that summer. John Parker wrote “if the German faction had felt troubled about being left out in the cold at the wedding, normal family relations were now resumed.”
Although the German and Nazi connections of Prince Philip remained a sensitive subject in post-war Britain, which had suffered many thousands of deaths and much destruction during the Blitz, time was a healer.
Sophia and her sisters and their husbands were permitted to attend the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. So much for your assertion that there was a rejection of the association with the Nazi regime. You should read that book, ‘Royals and the Reich, Captain Col!
Roy McKeen, perhaps for balance you should do an article on the Nazi associations with the ruling classes of the republics of the world in the same era, starting with USA. France was a hoot. USSR? Many more and much grist for your mill. Let me know if you can’t find anything, I’m sure I can help.
No answer to the loyal service of the Queen and he future husband in WWII. Perhaps they were just secret Nazi sympathisers. I’m sure you have proof somewhere. As you say, you just state the facts. But what you leave unsaid exposes you as biased.
the monarchy organised the war to take control of the world so they fought on both sides its like a rugby game to them mostly the poor and middle class die anyway so its all fun
[...] was seen curtseying to Prince Philip on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Philip, of course, has close connections to Hitler’s Nazi regime. He had two sisters who were married to officers in the Fuhrer’s armed forces and has a nephew [...]