Many Britons like to sneer at Germany and other continental countries for having had Nazi or fascist governments. However, the United Kingdom also had fascist tendencies which spread far beyond the British Union of Fascists. It is high time that people in the United Kingdom faced up to the considerable support for fascism that existed at all levels of British society. Such support was that of a minority but not a tiny one.
Early 1920s
Immediately after the First World War there were several fascist groupsucles. As Henry Hemming wrote fascism seemed to be ‘conservatism with knobs on.’ British fascism at first eschewed the socialist rhetoric that was found in continental fascist movements.
The BUF
A one time Tory and then a Labour MP Sir Oswald Mosley was a man of the most exceptional talents. Tall, athletic, debonair with matinee movie idol looks this former army officer and champion fencer was blessed with a magnificent oratorical ability. Yet by the 1930s his vociferation was anti-Jewish and anti-democratic. Mosley founded his own political party – the British Union of Fascists. He later appended ‘a and National Socialists’ to its name. Yet it was known as the BUF and not the BUFNS.
Sir Oswald was a welcome guest at many a country house weekend. As a baronet educated at Winchester and Sandhurst he had impeccable establishment credentials.
Mosley’s Blackshirts stomped around chanting ‘We are going to get rid of the Yids’. Their anti-Semitic bile alarmed many people.
Establishment support
The BUF enjoyed considerable admiration from a segment of the British upper class. Unfortunately, the British Isles, particularly England, has a long and despicable history of anti-Semitism. That is not to say that most Englishmen were ever anti-Semitic. However, there was a considerable number of people who were virulently anti-Semitic and the 1930s was no exception. England was one of the first European countries to expel the Jewish community in 1290. Prior to that several large scale pogroms occurred in England.
Edward VIII’s fascist tendencies are amply documented. In 2016 footage emerged of the king encouraging his niece Elizabeth II to give the sieg heil salute when she was a little girl. In Edward VIII’s autobiography ‘A King’s Story’ he expatiated on his loathing for democracy. When Edward VIII was king he attended the Trooping of the Colour that June. For the first and last time a speech was made at this military parade. The king spoke of his love of peace and assured his hearers that a soldier’s peacetime service was every iota as glorious as wartime service. The monarch may have been actuated by an entirely laudable desire to maintain peace. But there could be a less morally uplifting motive that actuated him: that he was an ardent Nazi.
You might believe that at least Churchill was a day one abominator of fascism. You would be dead wrong. We often read of Churchill being a contmner of Mussolini and recognizing him for the poltroon that he was. Yet in Winston Churchill went to Italy in the 1920s to address a fascist rally. He was effusive about Benito Amilcare Mussolini ‘he is a great lawgiver.’ He assured the blackshirts ‘If I were an Italian I would be amongst you.’
Winston Churchill also spoke approvingly of Hitler at times. In his book Great Contemporaries he waxed lyrical about Der Fuhrer.
The Marquess of Tweedsmuir was another virulent anti-Semite. He is better known as the author John Buchan. Buchan’s Judeophobia did not stop him being elevated to the peerage and indeed appointed Governor-General of Canada.
The Conservative Party had more than a flirtation with fascism. You might assume that Liberals would have no truck with fascism since it is the antithesis of their philosophy. Once again you would be laboring under a misapprehension if you believed that. David Lloyd George, the former Liberal Prime Minister, spent the 1930s publicly expressing his approval of Nazism.
There were a number of white supremacist groups in the UK besides the BUF. Among them were the British People’s Party, the Right Club, the Nordic League and the Anglo-German Friendship League.
The Duke of Hamilton was a member of the Anglo-German Friendship League. Small wonder that Rudolf Hess came to visit him in 1941 with a view to concluding peace with the British Empire.
John Amery, son of a Tory cabinet minister, was an outspoken supporter of Hitler. He went to Spain to fight for the Nationalists. After the war he stood trial for high treason. After instantly pleading guilty he was sentenced to hang. He was an odd bod by never diagnosed as mentally ill. Nonetheless his brother the Conservative MP Leo Amery contrived to save his brother with the bogus excuse of John Amery suffering from derangement of mind. It did not work and Amery was treated to an appointment with Albert Pierrepoint.
The Marquess of Londonderry was a lynchpin of the fascist establishment in the British Isles. He was an ardent appeaser of the Third Reich. This was not out of a perhaps misguided desire to avoid war. That could have been honourable. It was owing to a deep seated admiration for the Third Reich.
Nancy Astor was the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons. She was also a zealous advocate of giving the Third Reich everything it wanted.
Edward VIII was an avid fan of Nazism. He passed secrets to Berlin in 1936. His paramour Mrs Simpson was said to be the bedfellow of Joachim Ribbentrop who at that time was the German ambassador to the Court of St James. The king’s passionate Nazism was so perturbing that the establishment had to engineer and excuse to give him the heave-ho. He obliged them by his harebrained scheme to marry a twice divorced commoner who appeared to be barren. Once the Duke of Windsor wed where was his first foreign trip? He visited the Third Reich where he was received with every consideration. The Nazi Party could not have been happier to have him as their guest. The duke and duchess even visited concentration camp!
Cordiality with Italy
Through the 1920s Italian troops committed several major massacres in Libya. The news of these crimes against humanity in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica reached the ears of the British forces in Egypt. London chose to keep shtum on the issue. Why upset our Italian friends over something as petty as the lives of several thousand Bedouin?
Long after Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy the UK strove to maintain an alliance with Italy. In 1935 the United Kingdom formed the Stresa Front with Fascist Italy and France. Though the Italian Army was armed with weapons half a century old, the Italian Air Force was puny the Italian Navy was formidable. The Royal Navy was chary about testing its mettle against the Italians in the Mediterranean. When it came to the Battle of Cape Taranto it is said that British only won due to radar.
If fascism was so objectionable in principle why one earth London take such pains to be an ally of Italy? In October 1935 Italy invaded Abyssinia. This was despite Italy and Abyssinia both being members of the League of Nations. International disputes were supposed to be resolved via the League. Italy treated the League as literally irrelevant to this issue. London did not take firm action against Rome for this flagrant violation of the covenant of the League. Moreover, Italy was a signatory of the Kellogg-Briand Pact i.e. it has explicitly renounced war as an instrument of policy. After generously offering Mussolini two-thirds of Abyssinia (an offer he rebuffed) the UK eventually recognized Italian jurisdiction over the whole of Abyssinia as lawful.
During the war
Once the Second World War began fascist activity in the United Kingdom did not cease. The BUF was not banned until 1940. In a sense it is admirable that the UK afforded civil liberty to even the worst of its citizens even in wartime. However, there came a moment when self-preservation obligated His Majesty’s Government to abridge liberty temporarily.
All through the war there were attempts to negotiate peace with the Third Reich. To some extent this is laudable since ending the war would have saved millions of lives on all sides. The Duke of Hamilton was one of those British peers who published a letter in a newspaper calling for a parley with Berlin in 1940. As there seemed to be little chance of ever defeating the Third Reich there was a compelling logic to his case. Without the Soviet Union the UK would never have beaten the Third Reich – not in a 100 years. In the end the British contributed only 5% of the forces fighting the Third Reich.
However, some of the bids to reach an accommodation were not actuated by humanitarianism. Some of the crypto-fascist circles that had frolicked with the Nazis in the 1930s were unseemly in their eagerness to be helpful to the Nazis even in the 1940s.
The Duke of Windsor (the sometime King Edward VIII) was actively pro-Nazi even during the conflict. He was a staff officer in Paris in 1940 and passed on secret intelligence to the Third Reich. Anyone else would have been hanged with this. But snobbery being what it is he escaped with a ticking off. As Allied defences crumbled other Britishers fled to the English Channel. He was the only one who headed to the south. After dithering the duke and duchess crossed into Franco’s Spain where they were received with the greatest possible consideration. His Royal Highness eventually shifted to Portugal. There he remained in contact with agents of the Reich. The duke requested that his property on la Cote d’Azure named Chateau de la Croe be safeguarded from burglary and vandalism. The Germans were only to happy to oblige. They posted soldiers around the walls and assured the duke that his property would not be injured. For once Hitler was as good as his word. He wished to remain in the good graces of the erstwhile king. The ex-king could prove more than useful to the National Socialist cause.
The former Edward VIII was later dispatched to the Bahamas as Governor-General. The one time monarch had absorbed the negrophobic attitudes that were commonplace amongst his race in that epoch. HRH scorned the country as ‘a very third rate colony.’ The Duke of Windsor cheered himself up by befriending a Swedish multimillionaire named Axel Wenner-Gren. Wenner-Gren was a red hot Nazi despite being from a neutral country. Wenner-Gren acted as a go between for the duke and the Third Reich.
British intelligence was in touch with anti-Nazi resistance in Germany during the war. Those who were in contact with London tended to be Germans of the upper class and aristocratic type. These men heartily agreed with Hitler on certain issues. But if they were to overthrow him and make peace with the West what concessions would the West offer? These plotters wanted to win over waverers in Germany. What would the British say to convince neutrals in Germany that ousting the Nazis was the best way forward? The German resistance wanted to retain western Poland and all of Czechia. Adam von Trott zu Solz is often held up as a shining example of an enlightened German who gallantly resisted the National Socialists. But this Rhodes scholar also insisted on retaining the eastern domains conquered in 1938-39. Even Germans of moderate opinion tended to deny the legitimacy of Poland and Czechoslovakia.
There was some correspondence between the royal family and Germany during the war that was highly embarrassing. Anthony Blunt was sent to retrieve it in 1945.
At the end of the war the United Kingdom was very eager to see Mussolini summarily executed. This did not happen to any leading German. Why was the UK so adamant that Benito Amilcare be killed straightaway? It is surmised that London had been in secret contact with him at some point during the war offering him the chance to continue his fascist regime in return for becoming neutral. The British found this acutely embarrassing and wanted to silence Mussolini before he could spill the beans.
After the war
Some Nazi war criminals found safe havens in the United Kingdom. Others founds comfortable berths in dominions such as South Africa.
In 1955 NATO decided that the Federal Republic of Germany must have its army restored. NATO propagated the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. That is to say that the Wehrmacht had a good war record. It was pretended that the Wehrmacht had fought ethically – only slaying combatants in combat and not killing them after surrender. The numerous huge scale massacres perpetrated by the Wehrmacht were laid at the feet of the SS. To be sure the SS committed countless large-scale atrocities. However, the Wehrmacht was also culpable.
Conclusion
Nothing in this article should be construed as implying that most British people were Nazis or close to it. However, a considerable minority has sympathies in a Nazi direction. This was especially so amongst the upper orders.