As a confirmed Anglophile I can’t resist another season of The Crown. But the episode “Dangling Man” that dealt with the Duke of Windsor left me dissatisfied. In a BBC interview, the Duke (played by Derek Jacobi) gives the impression that he was forced to abdicate in large part because of his progressive views of the role of the monarchy. He was hardly a progressive. In 1937, after his abdication and marriage to Wallis Simpson, the couple visited Germany, were well received by Hitler, and thereafter proved active appeasers. There was much talk of their pro-Nazi sympathies and intrigues with highly-placed Nazis. This all led Churchill, who had been a supporter of Edward VIII, having him appointed governor of the Bahamas to get him out of England. The TV series suggests that Prince Charles was close to and admired his uncle. Is that why the Queen, now 93, has refused to step down in favor of her son?
THE CROWN
I am shocked to learn that anyone would consider the Duke of Windsor to have been a progressive. Wikipedia, in part, has this to say: “Edward was racially prejudiced against foreigners and many of the Empire’s subjects, believing that whites were inherently superior.”
You are quite right, of course. My point was that The Crown shows a BBC interview with an elderlyy Duke of Windsor in which he describes himself as progressive. This is presented in the show without any qualification.
Racism and progressivism often went hand-in-hand in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.
Just look at Margaret Sanger and the eugenics movement or Aldous Huxley protesting that Labour’s creation of the NHS would defeat evolution and lead to those Huxley viewed as “unfit” surviving when his Darwinist views held that they “should” have died and been eliminated through natural selection.
Cole Porter and Gandhi praised Mussolini (before the invasion of Ethiopia at least) while David Lloyd George sucked up to Adolf.
The Duke of Windsor definitely identified with the cause of modernity and thought the rest of his family were stuck in the past.
Hitler was the modernist — Churchill was the reactionary. Thank God the reactionaries won (that time, at least).