The Royals’ Nazi Ties: Is This Shocking?
The Royals’ long-established links to the Nazis are back in focus gain, following the publication of footage of a young Queen apparently giving a Nazi salute, accompanied by her mother, sister Margaret and uncle David – later King Edward VIII. It’s a leak about which the Queen is furious. And now a new Channel 4 documentary is planning to unearth once again the long and complicated history of the royals and the Nazis. Yes, Prince Philip had three sisters who married into the Third Reich: that’s shocking news, I guess, to anyone who doesn’t know any history, which unfortunately means most people. The film, entitled “Prince Philip: The Plot to Make a King” also features an interview with Philip’s nephew Prince Rainer von Hessen who shares the unpublished memoirs of his mother – Philip’s sister Sophie. In them she describes a private lunch with Hitler and her initial admiration for him. In the previously unseen extracts Sophie talks of her early admiration for Hitler. The Daily Mail reports that Philip’s sister said Goering had been ‘very enthusiastic’ about the Nazi party and its leader, and had urged her and her husband to meet Hitler in person. She noted in her memoir, written in old age: ‘As Germany was going through hard times and there was a lot of poverty and general dissatisfaction everywhere, we were interested to hear about the great improvements his party was planning to do.’ Like I said, old news but not shocking to many of us: the British royal family lineage is, after all, substantially German.
