By Steven Jonas
In Part 1 of this two-part series , I wrote that I think that, with Steve Bannon at his side (actually out in front of him in the present lead-up to the Big Event), as the various investigations close in on him, Pres. Trump is preparing to resign (with pardons all round). I noted that there are certain parallels on both the personal and political sides between Trump and history's most famous Prince of Wales. Part I was devoted primarily to my description and analysis of the events that are taking place and in view will take place in the run-up to that predicted resignation. (By the way, I am not the only one making it.) Then I described briefly the run-up to the abdication of the Prince, before he could be crowned at Edward VIII of Great Britain (see also, further, below).
The common interpretation
of this event focuses on the Prince's then impending marriage to a U.S.
divorcee, Mrs. Wallis Simpson. Actually,
at the time she was in her second marriage and would have to be divorced again
before she could marry the Prince.
However, history has shown that the primary reasons behind the Prince's
abdication were political, not social.
It is to those reasons, as well as subsequent political events involving
the Prince (who became the Duke of Windsor following his abdication) that this
column is devoted.
Like many members of the British aristocracy and
industrial ruling class as well, in the 1930s the Prince became quite attracted
to Nazi Germany and fascism. This attraction
was both for how it controlled its working class at home and how, it was hoped,
it would eventually lead the destruction of the hated Soviet Union abroad. In fact, after his abdication, in Nov. 1937
the Duke had a private meeting with Adolf Hitler that lasted for 50
minutes. There is no extant record of
what was discussed at that meeting.
But when he was still the Prince of Wales, as the
war clouds began to spread over Europe once again in the mid-1930s, he had made
it quite clear that he was sympathetic to the "German way of doing things." (Although he didn't think that they should be
doing what they were doing to the Jews, to him that always seemed to be a minor
point). He was also close to the
homegrown fascists led by Sir Oswald Mosely and
his British Union of Fascists and the very
upper class, very Right-wing "Cliveden Set," which counted many Hitler-admirers
among its membership. The political
ruling class, dominated by the Conservative (Tory) Party at the time, was split
on the subject. They were concerned with
German rearmament and Hitler's increasingly aggressive foreign policy on the
one hand, but on the other they thought too that he might be able to be focused
in what he had called the "Drang nach Osten," the drive to the East, to destroy
the jointly hated communists and the Soviet Union.
In the meantime, as his father was failing, Edward
was getting closer to throne. Also in
the meantime, he serially spurned a wide variety of royal matches from Europe
who were offered to him. And then
lightning struck in the form of Wallis Simpson, a once divorced, currently
married U.S. from Baltimore. An affair
was struck up in 1934 (during which time she apparently also had a dalliance
with the then Nazi Ambassador to the U.K., the former successful wine merchant
(by marriage) Joachim von Ribbentrop [who had purchased the Prussian "von" for
himself].) At the same time Edward's
pro-Nazi leanings were becoming widely known.
Which presented difficulties for the British political elite, if not the
pro-Nazi aristocracy. Edward would be
becoming King. Hitler and Mussolini were both presenting "problems." Then, despite the hoped-for "Drang nach Osten"
(to get Hitler to focus exclusively on it was the real purpose of the Munich Agreement of 1938),
the U.K. might once again be facing a heavily armed Germany on the European
mainland.
Click here for the full article.
Source: OpEdNews.com
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