Martin Allen - Hidden Agenda: How the Duke of Windsor Betrayed the Allies

Hidden Agenda

by Martin Allen

For my late father,
who left me the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,
and for whom I have finished the work
he began twenty years ago.

Copyright 2000 Martin Allen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

M. Evans and Company, Inc.

216 East 49th Street

New York, New York 10017

Allen, Martin (Martin A.)

Hidden Agenda / by Martin Allen.

p. cm.

Originally published: London : Macmillan, 2000.

1. Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 18941972. 2. Bedaux, Charles Eugene, 18861944. 3. World War, 19391945Military Intelligence. 4. World War, 19391945CampaignsFrance. I. Title.

D810.S7 A53 2002 ISBN 978-0-87131-993-7

941.084092dc21

[B]

Typesetting and book design by Evan H. Johnston

Printed in the United States of America

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I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and extend my thanks to all those people who have helped me with my research for this book. Some took the time and trouble to write to me, others granted an interview, and some assisted in translations, research, and providing information voluntarily that it did not occur to me to ask for. Without in any way depreciating the value of those persons assistance, I would like to pay a tribute to the following people in alphabetical order: Herr G. Ahlschwede, Mrs. N. Bleszynski, Mrs. Wilmay le Bryce, Mr. Stuart L. Butler, Major-General V.H.J. Carpenter (Retd.), M. J. Caluwaerts, Mr. J. Cronan, Mr. James Crowdan, Mrs. Jarmila Fialova, M. Frederic Grosjean, Joann H. Grube, Mr. C. Heather, M. Daniel Farcis, Mr. Michael Foot, Heer Van Gancuddam, Mrs. Marta Kapalinova, Mrs. Terri Land, Mr. J.R. Lankford Jr., Dr. Soos Laszlo, Brigadier Mike Lonsdale, Mrs. Rebecca Lentz-Collier, Mrs. Ewa Lipinska, Mrs. Emma Lock, Heern Joost Klarenbeek, Dr. Malcorps, Mme. Marie-Helene Marchand, Heern R. Martijn, Mr. David Metcalfe, M. A. Muret, Mr. A. Nikonov, Mr. J. Novakova, Mr. B. Ogibesov, Mr. David Prysor-Jones, Mr. S.N. Robbins, Fred Romanski, Dr. Olaf Rose, M. C. Tricot, Dr. Hans de Vreis, Lt. Col. A. Vyskrebentsev, Mr. William J. Walsh, Mrs. Linda Wheeler, Mgr. Bronislawa Witkewska, and last but by no means least, Mr. Graham Young.

I am particularly indebted to the following institutions and government bodies for replying to my letters, or who otherwise gave me their time and assistance to aid my research to uncover the details that feature in this book: Archives Generales de Royaume, Brussels; Archivex ssro of Prague; the Archivio Storico Diplomatico, Rome; the Central Armed Forces Museum, Moscow; the Climatological Service, Brussels; Companies House, Cardiff, Wales; the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, California; the Kent County Clerks Office, Grand Rapids, Michigan; the Imperial War Museum, London; the Institute Pasteur, Paris; the Institut Royal Meteorologique de Belgique, Dourbes, Belgium; the Magyar Orszagos Leveltar, Budapest; the Ministere de LInterieur, Paris; the Ministerstvo Zahranicnich veci Ceske Republiky, Prague; the Nacelna Cyrekcja Archowow Panstwowych, Warsaw; the National Security Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Archives, Washington, D.C.; North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina; the Polish Embassy, London; the British Public Records Office, Kew, London; the Rijksinstitut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Amsterdam; the Statni Oblastni Archiv V Praze, Prague; and last, but not least, Mrs. Phillippa Lavell, F.A.E., forensic handwriting expert.

I would also pay tribute to those friends, colleages, and translators who assisted in the logistics of writing this book: Mr. D.R. Brown for providing me with information about aircraft of the Second World War, Mr. F.P. Craegh for providing the security and chauffeur services necessary during the production of this book, and Dr. Olaf Rose, Mrs. Sabine Wicks, Mr. Pierre Vial, and Mr. Nick Burzynski for all their hard work in translating many important documents.

Lastly, I would like to express a very special tribute to my wife, Jeanie. As my business manager, handler of foreign rights, and partner in research, she had a very major influence on the production of this book, and I am indebted to her for all her hard work, organizing ability, and talent on the telephone.

MARTIN A. ALLEN.

It is important for me to state at the outset that Hidden Agenda is not the book I originally set out to write. Over three years ago, I began researching material for a book on a man named Charles Eugene Bedaux, and it was by this means that I eventually ended up with a book that heavily features the Duke of Windsor. It has, over the past sixty years, proven almost impossible to conduct in-depth research into the Duke of Windsors wartime career, for the vast majority of the more sensitive documents concerning him are officially listed as Lost, Withheld, or Not Available until some distant date in the future. It was by researching Bedaux that I began to find information about the Duke of Windsor that had not previously been used, and I came in at a tangent to the events of 193940 that I have written about in this book. At the start of my endeavors, I had no idea that my work would result in a quest for the truth that would cause me to travel many thousands of miles, conduct many months of research and interviews, and, finally, that my search for evidence would, incredibly, take me back to my very starting point to search through my late fathers papers. What I discovered among his records was a single sheet of paper, the contents of which made me gasp at the enormity of its consequences.

Back in the late 1970s and early 80s, my father, Peter Allen, a British author who specialized in military history books, wrote a book on the Duke of Windsors exploits in Spain and Portugal in 1940. During the writing of his book he researched and researched, dug out his old cronies from his time in Germany in the early 1950s, used his contacts to gain access to men whod been important within Hitlers Nazi government, and ever so slowly gathered the material for his book. Thus, when his book, The Windsor Secret, was published in 1983, it was somewhat controversial, clarifying as it did the dukes close interest in Nazism and his contact with representatives of the German government in Lisbon in July of 1940.

In 1994, my father died after a sudden illness, and I packaged up his records, papers, and files into many, many boxes, placing them in the loft of my home, where they remained, for I had not the heart to get rid of them. In the autumn of 1996, I happened to be in the loft to look for a book, and found myself idly glancing through some of his paperwork, when I came across something interesting. It was an intelligence report from 1917 on a Frenchman named Charles Bedaux, the man who had acted as the Duke of Windsors host for his wedding to Wallis Simpson in 1937. This report, from American military intelligence, stated that Bedaux had been suspected of spying for Germany in the United States during the First World War. It was evident from the few sheets of paper in my hand that Bedaux was quite a character, and it occurred to me that it was surprising, the Duke of Windsor had been permitted to marry Wallis Simpson in this mans home. Surely British intelligence must have known about Bedauxs past?