Palace Controversy

The Sun have courted controversy over the future Her Majesty the Queen, doing a Nazi salute. At least it is not Price Harry on this occasion.  

The video  it is claimed was most likely filmed between 1933 and 1934, after Hitler's rise to power in Germany. The black-and-white footage, obtained by the British tabloid The Sun, features the then seven year-old Princess Elizabeth raising  her right arm into the air doing a Nazi Salute.

We only visit a piece of news like this, because of the interest in the treatment of workers and the unemployed in Germany. The Nazi regime was greatly admired by some in the UK, particularly the upper classes. 

The British Union of Fascists was a political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley. In 1936, it changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists and in 1937 to British Union which existed until 1940 when it was proscribed [banned].  The Nazis set a whole new agenda in the relationship between those that control production, and the ordinary workers.     

According to Wikipedia, the Nazi salute or Hitler salute (German: Hitlergruß – literally Hitler Greeting) is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. It was adopted in the 1930s by the Nazi Party to signal obedience to the party's leader – Adolf Hitler – and to glorify the German nation (and later the German war effort). The salute was mandatory for civilians  but mostly optional for military personnel, who retained the traditional military salute until shortly after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944’.

Use of this salute is currently a criminal offense in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. In Switzerland and Sweden, the salute is illegal hate speech if used for propagating Nazi ideology.

How much did people know about the Nazi Regime at that time?  In 1933 there was a the Jewish Declaration Of War On Germany which resulted in the Economic Boycott of 1933. The Daily Express of London described how Jewish leaders, in combination with powerful international Jewish financial interests, had launched a boycott of Germany for the express purpose of crippling her already precarious economy in the hope of bringing down the new Hitler regime.

At that time it has been aledged the Nazis and the Zionists had been cooperating secretly, with idea of creating a homeland the Jews could be deported to. 

This Jewish Declaration Of War On Germany was met by a Nazi backlash and some outside Germany portrayed the boycott as an act of aggression, with the British newspaper the Daily Express going so far as to use the headline: "Judea Declares War on Germany". This was all early in the rise of Adolf Hitler where early on his power was not absolute. 

In the United Kingdon the Cliveden Set were a 1930s, upper class group of prominent individuals politically influential in pre-World War II Britain, who were in the circle of Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor. The name comes from Cliveden, the stately home in Buckinghamshire, which was then Astor's country residence.

The "Cliveden Set" tag was coined by Claud Cockburn in his journalism for the Communist newspaper The Week. It has long been widely accepted that this aristocratic Germanophile social network was in favour of friendly relations with Germany.

Another supporter of the Nazis was Sir Montagu "Monty" Norman Governor of the Bank of England at the time. Historians have pointed out that Monty Norman and the leading merchant banks in the City were heavily involved helping to prop up the German financial system.

Norman believed that central banks, not politicians, should control the world economy.  

Norman assisted Germany, as much as three years into the war. On 15 March 1939, Hitler completed his rout of Czechoslovakia, making a triumphant entrance into Prague. One of his first acts was to order the directors of the Czech national bank to hand over the country's gold reserve. For Hitler, the Czech gold was a vital replenishment of rapidly dwindling reserves. An increasingly isolated Germany needed gold to barter for raw materials.

The Czech directors told the Germans it was too late; the gold had already been deposited via the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland (BIS) in the Bank of England. The Germans ordered them to retrieve it. BIS did not deal in physical transfers of money or bullion - most of them took place on paper, by central banks adjusting their accounts with each other. The Czechs called BIS, which contacted London.

Norman obliged, instructing BIS to deduct the gold's value, some $40m (pounds 24m) at 1939 prices, from the Bank of England's account in Basle. The gold went back to Czechoslovakia, and to the Reichsbank in Berlin.

There is much more. However the involvement of the English upper classes in the rise of the Nazis is very significant, and many household name companies in the US were involved funding the Nazi Party.  Ford among them. 

The subjection of the ordinary worker, the exploitation of the unemployed, the imprisonment of trade unionists, and the banning of trade unions, the percecution/murder of the disabled and the supressing of any critical media, were all features of the Nazi regime.

This Sun article/video on the Royal Family shines a light on a very dark era in history. The trajic misjudgement by the Jews, strenghtened Hitlers support and when the doors of countries closed to mass Jewish immigration, such as the UK, the Holocaust started.  

The argument that no one knew what was going on in Germany in the early thirties at that time seems rather hard to belive? 

In the ‘dough and in the know’ is the modern day expression.

One answer to the Palaces issues would be to release all the documentation from that era? As we are a Constititional Monarchy, those paper are publically owned not private correspondance.  It would fill in an uncomfortable gap in history, and let future generations understand how a monster like Hitler could come to power. 

Source Wikipedia, The Independant