Queen Mum Wanted Peace With Hitler

[Anon]

'Queen Mum wanted peace with Hitler'

By Sophie Goodchild, Home Affairs Correspondent
Independent News UK

5 March 2000

When Oxford University's Bodleian Library released a
tranche of papers relating to the royal family last week,
one box of documents was missing: the rapidly notorious
Box 24.

Experts assumed that the papers had been suppressed
because they contained vitriolic remarks by the Queen
Mother about the Duchess of Windsor. This, senior
government sources have told the Independent on
Sunday, is not the case. The reason that papers were
withheld is potentially far more embarrassing: they spell
out the true extent of the Queen Mother's
pro-appeasement views on the brink of the Second
World War.

The papers, part of a collection of letters belonging to
the first Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a close friend
of Edward VIII, dwell on the relationship between the
Queen Mother and the pro-appeasement foreign
secretary, Lord Halifax. The letters are said to show
her hostility towards Churchill and her desire that the
deeply unpopular Halifax be Prime Minister instead.

The letters, which include private correspondence
between the Queen Mother and Halifax himself, suggest
the battle to preserve the monarchy was a concern
which weighed above all others. As leader, Halifax was
likely to have sued for peace with Hitler on the
understanding that he allowed the monarchy to continue
under a Nazi occupation.

Lord Halifax was foreign secretary between 1939 and
1940 but was sent to Washington by Winston Churchill
to be British Ambassador from 1941 to 1946. He died in
1959.

Philip Ziegler, who wrote the official biography of Edward
VIII, said he had seen only the letters relating to the
abdication but confirmed that the Queen Mother had a
close relationship with Halifax. "She was known to be
very fond of Halifax indeed," he said.

--
Anon news web interface. FAQ available for review at:
http://packetderm.cotse.com/cgi-bin/blockit.cgi