How French Begged Churchill to Stop Edward & Mrs Simpson Collaborating w/Nazis

[cinrit]

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor famously ingratiated themselves with Adolf Hitler, and counted prominent Nazis  among their closest friends in the years leading up to the Second World War.

Now, newly declassified files reveal that the couple's links to the Third Reich led to moves to ban them from returning to their beloved France at the end of the conflict in 1945.

The Foreign Office papers,  obtained by this newspaper under Freedom of Information laws, show that the French government was shocked when Winston Churchill suggested the couple, who had spent most of the war in the Bahamas, should eventually be allowed to return to their former home on the Cote d'Azur.

Officials in the new Paris government, who had supported the Resistance, feared the couple would renew their 'acquaintances' with Nazi sympathisers who had collaborated with the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. The puppet government controlled most of France between 1940 and 1944.

Rene Massigli, the newly appointed French ambassador to London, warned Churchill that the couple's return would be both 'embarrassing'  and problematic for a country still  bitterly divided.

More: How the French begged Churchill to stop Edward and Mrs Simpson collaborating with Nazis | Mail Online

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