The Lost Visit - Queen Elizabeth's Parents in Berlin

Very few of the official histories mention the visit by Queen Elizabeth II's parents - George VI and the Queen Mother to Berlin. I came across a passage in Harold Nicolson's Diaries in 1936 when meeting the Queen Mother (still Duchess of York at that time) she remembered to him their last meeting in Berlin. I was very surprised by this, as I never came across a mention in the official histories of this visit by Royalty to pre-war Germany. Finally I found the earlier entry in Nicolson's diary to their visit, where he lunches with them in Berlin and his favourable impression of the Duchess.


This visit which took place in March 1929, was the first Royal visit to Germany since World War One and took in the palaces of the deposed Kaiser in Potsdam. There were 2 visits as the Yorks on route to a Royal Wedding in Norway took the train and stayed in Berlin on the 2 legs of the journey.

There is nearly no mention in the British Press at the time of this visit and very little since. They took the opportunity to present the Royal calling card with President Hindenburg's office. Since one of the Duke's many dubious aquaintance's included notorius honours trafficker Maundy Gregory who had linked to the Herrenclub, there may have been more to this visit and the York's interest in Right Wing German monarchist circles.

His Majesty's Secret - George VI and Mussolini

King George VI actually met Benito Mussolini in 1930 on his visit to Rome when he was Duke of York. While attending the wedding of Prince Umberto, George VI is reported to have met with Mussolini and had a long talk, the details were confidential. The British Ambassador at the time was Lord Ronald Graham, a pro-fascist  and Pro-Nazi who became a key figure in the notorious anti semitic Right Club in 1939.

When George VI became King in 1937 his Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sponsored a secret backchannel to Mussolini via Italian Maltese Adrian Dingli, and the relationship with Mussolini was key to the four power pact at Munich in 1938. In January 1939 Chamberlain visited Rome to see Mussolini in person and in 1940 when US envoy Sumner Welles visited 10 Downing Street he found Neville Chamberlain had a signed photograph of Mussolini on his mantlepiece.
George VI's connections with Italian Royalty and Fascist Italy predate all of this when in 1923 King George V visited Rome, King Victor Emmanuel III visited England in 1924 and interestingly King George V seemed unalarmed to have a British Fascist guard on honour for his train.

His Majesty's Secret - Fascism and the Duke of York's Camps

King George VI was an passionate advocate of organised youth camps and from 1921 to 1939 sponsored and attended his boys camps held on the Romney Marsh in Kent and Southwold in Essex. There was even a camp at Southport in Lancashire and at Balmoral in Scotland. The key movers in this was the Industrial Welfare Society organised by the Reverend RH Hyde, Captain JG Paterson who was the Camp Commandant. Boys from public schools mixed with those from industrial towns and the camps were "mobilised" into 20 sections led by section leaders. In the 1929 camp one section leader was Lord Clydesdale, later known as the Duke of Hamilton who was appointed as George VI's Chief Stewart in 1940 when he was compelled to sack the Duke of Buccleuch because of the Duke's Pro-Nazi views. Interestingly Hamilton then known as Clydesdale was one of the first public schoolboys to attend the First Duke of York's Camp at Romney Marsh in 1921 organised by Louis Greig and then came back in 1929 as an organiser and in 1933 as a speaker to tell the boys all about his adventures on the Mount Everest Expedition of 1933 which had been sponsored by British Fascist funder Lady Houston  (on the Everest committee was Lord Wakefield, John Buchan, & the Master of Sempill - who helped Japan develop airpower) In the following year the Bursar for the camp was Mr I J Pitman (Issac James) who had married Lord Luke's (The Bovril King , and funder of Sir Joseph Ball's anti-semitic Truth) daughter. Pitman a rugby international would become a Tory MP after having appointed to the Bank of England in 1941.

The Duke of York ran a network of pro-fitness organisations in the 1920's such as the National Playing Field Association which included Ronald Waterhouse, Noel Curtis Bennett and Louis Greig. This move mirrored similar movements in Germany such as the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) movement of the Nazis which had been studied by Hamilton spouse Prunella Stack and mirrored the pro-fitness obsessions of the British Fascists. In January 1939 the Reverend Hyde advocated a German style Kraft durch Freude approach to fitness. In February King George VI met Nazi Fitness leader Doctor Ley when he came to London to attend the World Congress for Recreation and Leisure.

George VI and the Most Noble Order of the Crusaders

One of the little known secret societies which sprung up in the 1920's in England was the Most Noble Order of the Crusaders, which was founded by a Colonel Walter Faber in 1921. Apart from the ruling council, the membership was secret and initates like freemasons identified each other by secret sign and symbols. One of the leading lights of the Crusaders was it's patron the Duke of York who attended the Sacred Ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey on November 28th  1923.

The group shared the Duke's agenda of Class unity but it also had many fascist overtones and was strongly anti-communist and anti-trade union. Led by the Pro-Grand Master Colonel Faber who also initiated an annual eve of Derby fundraising dinner for the Conservative Party at the same time which was taken up by Maundy Gregory at his death in 1928. The group was designed to unite ex-servicemen on a 10th Crusade against the forces of evil which would be extinguished in a holy fire. The Order held services in Priory Churches in London, Temple, St Bartholomews, Southwark and set up groups across the Empire before affiliating with the Royal Society for St George and disappearing in 1941.  A very strange and odd secret society with a membership which included the Grand Scribe Arthur Paterson - author of  The Strike Weapon,  Grand Master Sir Archibald Boyd-Carpenter (Conservative Minister and MP 1918-37)   Grand Seneschal Major TH Hague, Grand Keeper of the Records General Sir Edward Bethune, Grand Keeper of the Chest  Colonel John Josselyn, Grand Custodian Captain Gee (Conservative Candidate for Newcastle East in 1923), and Grand Abbot Reverend F Murray Tapply of Twickenham.

 Featured in many pathe newsreels of the time and did a lot of charity work amongst other things...
Interestingly in June 1923, Walter Faber started his Annual Eve of Derby Dinners among his first guests to be invited to the Naval and Military Club on June 5th 1923 included: Major Oscar N Solbert (US Military Attache), Duke of Northumberland (founder of the Anti-Semitic Patriot and Owner of the Morning Post), Lord Younger (Tory Treasurer), Sir Reginald "Blinker" Hall, General Sir Edward Bethune (Grand Master of the Crusaders), Geoffrey Dawson (Times Editor and Cliveden Set), Captain Drummond (Presumably George Drummond of Drummonds Bank) Commander Greig (Wing Commander Sir Louis Greig) HA Gwynne (Editor of Observer) General Seeley (later Lord Mottistone)  and Sir Charles Wakefield (later Lord Wakefield - who was a member of the Duke of York's Industrial Welfare Society and had an official  representative of the merged St George/Crusaders at his funeral in 1941.
By the 1927 Faber Derby Dinner - J Maundy Gregory, JCC Davidson, Lord Mount-Temple, General Horwood and others were in attendance.

George VI and Alfred Rosenberg

George VI's younger brother Prince George Duke of Kent who died in a mysterious aircrash in August 1942 had frequently visited Nazi Germany and invited Nazi Ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and British Double Agent De Ropp to London in 1938 to brief him on Nazi Ideology so he could better inform King George VI

"At the close of last year we received the message that the King of England has expressed himself to be very dissatisfied over the official press agency. The visit of the Duke of Kent to Munich (March 1937) had made matters still worse pertaining to the King's views on the press agency. Consequently we one day received the request from London to make possible that our English agent take a trip to London in order to orient the Duke of Kent in every detail pertaining to national socialism in order to convey this information to the King. R. went with me to London exactly as requested and there had an over three hour long unobserved conference with the Duke of Kent, who then conveyed this to the King of England. One can assume that this instruction has served its purpose and exerted a definite strengthening pressure for change of cabinet and head it in a direction of closer cordiality for Germany."

Source : Captured Nazi Foreign Office documents

George VI and Moral Rearmament

King George VI and the Queen Elizabeth had a religious emphasis which constantly underlined their support for the appeasement of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. They had like Baldwins and Chamberlain's fallen into the clutches of the Buchmanites , a pacifist Christian movement which was anti-communist and led by Dr Frank Buchman a man who had an ambivilent attitude to Hitler.

Many of those younger friends of George VI and the Queen like the Marquess of Hamilton, British tennis ace Bunny Austin and others supported Buchman's call for Moral Rearmament.

1946 -What did HG Wells know?

On July 5th 1946, following relevations in the House of Commons on the extent of Italian Fascist funding for Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists - world famous SciFi writer HG Wells wrote and extraordinary article in a little known left wing magazine "Socialist Leader" which accused the British Royal Family of involvement with pre-war Fascism. The attack came weeks before his untimely death on August 13th of unspecified causes aged 79. The British Press refused to discuss the allegations, but the rumours it created led to Press Comment where the imprisoned Fascist Leader actually defended George VI against the charge of fascist involvement.
The Socialist Wells asked "The Genuine democratic communities throughout the world need to know what is going on in this hushed up business of the huge Mosley funds and how far our own Royal Family is involved in this affair." Wells went on to say that if the royal family were involved then there is every reason why the house of hannover should follow the house of savoy into the shadows of exile and leave england free to return to it's old and persistent republican tradition."
Those who read the article were shocked and many attributed this to the ramblings of senility of a once great man, yet did Wells hear rumours about George VI's involvement in fascism?

George Orwell in his 1948 book "1984" uses the song from the George VI's Boys Camp in his sinister Chestnut Tree Cafe in his totalitarian distopia. Winston Smith hears

“Under the spreading chestnut tree

 I sold you and you sold me

There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.”
In George Orwell's (Eric Blair's) earlier 1936 Road to Wigan Pier he writes  

“Fascism is coming, probably a slimy anglicised form of fascism, with cultured policemen instead of Nazi gorillas, and the Lion and the Unicorn instead of the Swastika… It sounds rather  like the Duke of York’s Summer Camp and that dismal talk about class cooperation and putting our shoulders to the wheel , which is eyewash,  or fascism or both” 


The funding of the British Fascists by Benito Mussolini was on a colossal scale which when it emerged in 1946 in Chuter Ede's statements shocked HG Wells, yet even more disturbing evidence of British establishment links with Mussolini continue to come out, including in 2009 Historian Peter Martland discovered archive files showing that Benito Mussolini was employed by British Security Services to beat up Italians peace campaigners to keep Italy in the First World War under his British liason MI6 Officer Samuel Hoare (who as Sir Samuel Hoare and later Lord Templewood was heavily implicated in appeasement of both Italy and Germany)

George VI when Duke of York was on good terms with Samuel Hoare, as well as Pro-fascist and Pro-Mussolini Maundy Gregory (from whom he had accepted gifts and money in the 1920's) and his very good friend Sir Louis Greig who was his Comptroller, Tennis Partner, Medical Advisor, Mentor and Stockbroker. Louis Greig was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship and the British Fascist Dining Club - the January Club and his wife Phyllis had a relation Alex Scrimgeour who worked with Louis Greig as a Stockbroker who not only funded the British Union of Fascists in 1935 but also William Joyce's (aka traitor Lord Haw Haw) British National Socialist League  in 1937.

Mussolini provided funds to a secret bank account which was accessed by Ian Hope Dundas(who father had been ADC to George V), George Tabor and Bill Allen (and his wife Paula Gellibrand) who was a friend of the Duke of Kent (George VI's younger brother).

Coming back to HG Wells his requested epitaph was "I told you so. You damned fools." Couldn't put it better myself.