Hidden Agenda: How the Duke of Windsor Betrayed the Allies [Hardcover]

Martin Allen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 21, 2002

How did the Duke of Windsor betray the allies and did his war time activity amount to treason? This book,the result of the author's research will seek to answer these questions.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In his first book, Allen investigates the relationship between Charles Bedaux, a Nazi spy, and the Duke of Windsor (the former King Edward VIII). According to Allen, the duke passed Allied military secrets to the Nazis via Bedaux, information that proved crucial to the conquest of France. This act of treason was subsequently covered up by a royal family fearful of a backlash. The assertion of treason is indeed dismaying, but though Allen shows that the duke consorted with a known spy (not entirely news to informed readers), he does not present persuasive evidence that he was actually feeding information to the Nazis. Allen argues vociferously that the information supposedly passed along was significant, and he is not convincing here either. Fundamentally, Allen does not seem to understand the complexities of military history or to be conversant with the latest literature on the subject (especially Ernest May's Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France). Knowing an enemy's battle plan does not necessarily decide a battle, since the Allies knew German plans through much of 1940-42, via the Ultra secret, yet were not able to win major victories until 1943. Allen is also inconsistent in his source utilization, citing some material precisely and others with only vague references. He ends by setting up a straw man: To doubt his findings and conclusions, he implies, is to be an apologist for the royal family. Not recommended.
Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Martin Allen

Product Details

• Hardcover: 342 pages
• Publisher: M.Evans & Company; 1st Am. ed. edition (October 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871319934
• ISBN-13: 978-0871319937
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,156,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars INTERESTING SUPPOSITION, BUT . . ., February 18, 2003

By 

"rschnake" (Missouri, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hidden Agenda: How the Duke of Windsor Betrayed the Allies (Hardcover)

This book charges that the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, gave Allied military secrets to Germany in a deliberate scheme to help the Nazis against his own country.

The British establishment, the author says, used Edward's love for Wallis Simpson as a pretext to force his abdication because of his pro-German views. Then, he says, that same establishment used Edward to spy on French military installations for Britain--but that Edward simultaneously passed the secrets along to the Germans through Charles Bedaux, a shadowy character with ties to both Edward and Adolf Hitler.

The book is built around a handwritten letter, in German, from Edward to Hitler, which the author says his father received years later from Hitler's architect, Albert Speer. The book surmises that Edward gave the letter to Bedaux, who hid it in his hat band, or elsewhere, and then personally delivered it to Hitler.

On the surface the letter is cryptic. Was Edward really trying to hurt Britain--or help Hitler put him back on the Throne? Was he being solicitous, or devious? If the circumstances surrounding the letter are indeed what the author claims, then this book has a real story to tell.

Unfortunately, the book's shortcomings as a serious history cast doubt on its conclusions. There is some original research, particularly with respect to the background of Bedaux himself. Most of the text, however, rests either on secondary sources or on no acknowledged source at all. The author does not cite the particular pages of the secondary sources, so it is virtually impossible for readers to evaluate the information for themselves. Worse yet, many highly accusatory and critical passages have no source references whatsoever, leaving frustrated readers to wonder whether the undocumented conversations and events actually happened. The overall tone suggests that the author has let his own animus toward Edward dictate the scholarship, rather than the other way around.

The author explains that many of the primary source documents have been destroyed, are not available for inspection, or are perhaps even being hidden by the British royal family itself. That, though, is not a license to make critical assumptions that result, essentially, in a charge of treason.

The letter appears to bear Edward's handwriting, as far as one can tell from the lithographic reproduction in the book. In an appendix the author recounts that a handwriting expert authenticated the letter. Sadly, however, he does not identify the expert, and the glaring absence of the expert's identity further undermines this book's claims.

Even if the letter is genuine, it does not prove the author's thesis. Edward was not anti-German, and he may well have thought that the Nazis were Europe's best defense against Soviet expansionism. He may also have been careless in his dealings with both Bedaux and Hitler. But that certainly does not mean that Edward would deliberately seek to harm the Empire that he served so long as Prince of Wales, and later as King.

The overreaching premise of this book makes the story of royal intrigue entertaining, but one should not uncritically accept all of the story.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Who betrayed whom?, May 28, 2003

By 

Thomas Dunskus (Faleyras Frankreich) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hidden Agenda: How the Duke of Windsor Betrayed the Allies (Hardcover)

Martin Allen`s book „Hidden Agenda - How the Duke of Windsor betrayed the Allies" provides us with an interesting look behind the stage on which the beginning of the Second World War was taking shape. Martin Allen describes in considerable detail the interests of the various parties involved in this conflict - the actors, the observers, and the by-standers, and he adroitly shows how some of the players, at times, would switch from one category to the other.

The lynchpin of the book is a letter, supposedly written in late 1939 by the Duke. Its purpose was to introduce to Hitler the Duke`s messenger, the Franco-American industrial consultant, Charles E. Bedaux who, in those early months and years of the war, was able to travel quite freely from one side of the „Sitzkrieg" front to the other.

A facsimile of the letter is shown in the book. Obviously, for a mere reader, it is impossible to say whether the letter is genuine or not. The (German!) text of the letter is, however, just ever so slightly off the track with respect to normal German style, grammar, and vocabulary that it may well have been written by a person, such as the Duke, whose command of the language was good, but not perfect. It would have taken an excellent forger to achieve such a convincing degree of (im)perfection.

The immediate military results of the Duke`s overtures toward Hitler were twofold. They represent, in a way, each party`s ante in the bargain: the Duke`s information on the French defenses allowed the Germans to turn the „sitzkrieg" into a „blitzkrieg" in the summer of 1940, whereas the German contribution was to hold their panzers back when they reached the Channel, thus allowing the British Expeditionary Force to retreat from Dunkerque with acceptable losses.

At this point, the book argues more or less explicitly, it would have been possible for some sort of peace deal to be reached. However, the Duke`s position at home had been undermined by internal machinations that had led to his resignation and he was unable to realize his ambition which, according to Allen, was to recover his throne through this admittedly risky alliance with Berlin.

The obvious argument that comes to mind at this point is that any peace with Hitler would have constituted an abandonment of Poland for whose integrity and protection the Allies had, after all, gone to war. We must realize, though, that at the end of September, 1939, when the war in Poland had come to its rapid end, the Germans had occupied only the western half of that country. The eastern half of Poland was, by then, under Soviet domination, because the Soviets had, on 17 September 1939 (when the victory of their German ally was evident) sent in the Red Army to take over the rest - and to hold on to it to the present day.

This overt act of aggression did not cause a stir in the Allied camp and voids the argument sketched out above. The value of Allen`s book lies in its exposure of the duplicity of the policy of the Allies. Only five years later, the world witnessed and for the most part, welcomed the complete hand-over of Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe to Stalin who, by that time, had become the West`s most valuable ally in the fight for the ideals of freedom and democracy. It took History a mere fifty years and millions of dead to rectify that situation. One wonders if the price that might have had to be paid to Hitler would have been quite as high as that.

9 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A faulty and biased work, at best., December 15, 2002

By 

Charles W. Clowdis "Voracious Opinionist" (Eagle's Point,) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hidden Agenda: How the Duke of Windsor Betrayed the Allies (Hardcover)

This book gets one star simply for its value to take space on a bookshelf! Otherwise, some of the probably accurate conslusions about the Duke of Windsor are rendered suspect by Martin Allen's faulty and obviously ill-researched and biased conclusions regarding Charles Eugene Bedeaux!

I have studied and researched Bedeaux for several years now. Allen would have done well to talk with the few surviving Frenchmen in and around Tour that knew of Bedeaux's efforts in putting kinks in all Nazi manufacturing ans ship-building production in France under his direction.

Jim Christy's book, "The Price of Power, The Story of Charles Eugene Bedeaux", more accurately concludes that Bedaux may certainly have courted the Duke for his "star power" of the day and that Bedeaux was NOT a Nazi collaborator but rather worked skillfully to sabotage wartime production in France that could have greatly benefitted the Nazi powers.

Allen appears more inclined to follow his own "conclusions" that are far from conclusive. It is my opinion that Bedeaux took his own life, probably with some relief by many powerful Americans, and with perhaps aid from his captors. Had he lived and told the entire story, too many powerful US citizens would have become involved.

Sadly, this flawed tale could have been told better with adequate research and less unproven ideas expressed as fact.

Find Jim Christy's book for a much better-told tale and much, much more accuracy.