Wallis Simpson - World War II

World War II

Following the outbreak of war in 1939, the Duke was given a military post in the British Army stationed in France. According to the son of William Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside, the Duchess continued to entertain friends associated with the fascist movement, and leaked details of the French and Belgian defences gleaned from the Duke. When the Germans invaded the north of France and bombed Britain in May 1940, the Duchess told an American journalist, "I can't say I feel sorry for them." As the German troops advanced, the Duke and Duchess fled south from their Paris home, first to Biarritz, then in June to Spain. There, she told the United States ambassador, Alexander W. Weddell, that France had lost because it was "internally diseased". In July, the pair moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where they stayed at the home of Ricardo de Espirito Santo e Silva, a banker who was suspected of being a German agent. In August, the Duke and Duchess travelled by commercial liner to the Bahamas, where the Duke was installed as Governor.

Wallis performed her role as the Governor's lady competently for five years; she worked actively for the Red Cross and in the improvement of infant welfare. However, she hated Nassau, calling it "our St Helena", in a reference to Napoleon's final place of exile. She was heavily criticised in the British press for her extravagant shopping in the United States, undertaken when Britain was enduring privations such as rationing and the blackout. Her racist attitudes towards the local population (she called them "lazy, thriving niggers" in letters to her aunt) reflected her upbringing. In 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill strenuously objected when she and her husband planned to tour the Caribbean aboard a yacht belonging to a Swedish magnate, Axel Wenner-Gren, whom Churchill stated to be "pro-German". Churchill felt compelled to complain again when the Duke gave a "defeatist" interview. Another of their acquaintances, Charles Bedaux, was arrested on charges of treason in 1943, and committed suicide in jail in Miami before the case was brought to trial. The British establishment distrusted the Duchess; Sir Alexander Hardinge wrote that her suspected anti-British activities were motivated by a desire for revenge against a country that rejected her as its queen. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the couple returned to France and retirement.