New claims made against Windsors

Press, 31 March 1981, Page 6

New claims made against Windsors

NZPA London i The Duke of Windsor ’ who abdicated in 1936 to marrv Mrs Wallis Simpson, was ’guilty of “near treasonable acts" during World War 11, according to a forthcoming book. “The King over the Water,” by a journalist, Michael Pye, alleges that the Americans held a file on the Windsors labelling them as. “possible subversive.” The book also says that the Duke was guilty of currency irregularities while Governor of the Bahamas, and that there was a coverup over the murder of his friend, Harry Oakes. The “Daily Express” columnist. William Hickey, said yesterday that the allegations were likely to irreparably tarnish the glittering “Edward and Mrs Simpson” image of the ailing Duchess of Windsor, now 84. Hickey quoted Pye as saying in the book: “This story was meant to go untold.

British files have been weeded with an eye to Royal embarrassment.” If true, he said, Pye’s allegations would prove finally, and irreversibly, that Briain’s luckiest day was December 11, 1936, when the King abdicated. “The near treason, says Pve, stems from associations the Winders had with Nazis and Nazi sympathisers after he scuttled from France when the Germans took over, and from their continued close contact with the Scandinavian tycoon, axel Wenner-Gren. once a chum of (Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering),” Hickey said.

“The currency difficulties came from illicit deals on the Nassau, in the Bahamas, money-market and, after the war. in Paris.

“The cover-up came after the Duke intervened in the murder of Sir Harry Oakes, so confusing police inquiries that the killer was never discovered.

“The subversion suspicion is supported, says Pye, by a file held by the U.S. State Department titled “Windsor, Duke of: suspected subversive activities.” According to the "Daily •Express" column, Pye also says that the Duke’s appointment as Governor of the Bahamas was to get him out of the way while the war was on, and virtually amounted to house arres’t, and that in any case his governorship was a disaster because of his stubborness over black integration. Hickey said the book had come at a critical time wher the ailing Duchess appearer to be getting better after a three-year illness. “Her representative in Paris, Susanne Blum, tells me: ‘lt’s rubbish. It. is quite impossible that the Duke and Duchess were Fascist collaborators. The Duke is dead and the Duchess is so very ill. They have no way of fighting back’.” .',