While King Edward VIII is famous for abdicating the British throne, he is also remembered as a celebrated visitor to East Devon Golf Club in Budleigh Salterton, where he played a round of golf in 1921.
The visit must have been one of the highlights of his two-day trip as Prince of Wales to Devon and Cornwall, during which he wrote to his mistress Freda Dudley Ward of feeling 'so
lonely and bored and fed up and depressed’. A low point during the royal tour was meeting the crowds of well wishers, and dignitaries such as the Bishop of Exeter, of whom the Prince wrote that he ‘looks quite mad and is anyway revolting with a scraggy beard’.
Later, as Duke of Windsor following his abdication, he and his wife, the former Wallis Simpson, embarked on a ten-day private tour of Nazi Germany in October 1937. His supporters saw him as a potential peacemaker between Britain and Germany, but the British government refused to sanction such a role, opposed the tour and suspected that the Nazis would use the Duke's presence for propaganda.
The Windsors dined with high-ranking Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Albert Speer, and had tea with Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden. The Duke had a long private conversation with Hitler, but it is uncertain what they discussed, as the minutes of their meeting were lost during the war.
On 8 May 1939, a few months before the outbreak of World War II, the Duke recorded a radio broadcast during a visit to the World War I battlefields of Verdun, his first since abdicating in 1936. In it he appealed for peace. These are his words:
‘I am deeply conscious of the presence of the great company of the dead, and I am convinced that, could they make their voices heard, they would be with me in what I am about to say. I speak simply as a soldier of the Last War whose most earnest prayer it is, that such cruel and destructive madness shall never again overtake mankind. There is no land whose people want war.’
The broadcast was heard across the world by millions. It was widely regarded as supporting appeasement, and the BBC refused to broadcast it. It was heard outside the United States on shortwave radio and was reported in full by British broadsheet newspapers.
Pictured are Sir William Orpen's portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales, and the photo of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor meeting Adolf Hitler in 1937, from Wikimedia
You can hear the Duke of Windsor's broadcast at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG4bu5LJUTo
If you are interested in the history of early America, and Roger Conant as a peacemaker in troubled times you can join the Devon Peacemaker Festival Facebook group at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/700424602802079
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