The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #157739   Message #3725314
Posted By: Rob Naylor
21-Jul-15 - 07:30 PM
Thread Name: BS: Queen Mother
Subject: RE: BS: Queen Mother
Joe,

There were loads of people throughout Europe and the USA who were either Nazi sympathisers or who believed Hitler was "good for Germany":

"Adolf Hitler is a born leader of men, a magnetic dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will and a dauntless heart. He is the George Washington of Germany." - Lloyd George, former UK Liberal PM during the first world war, writing in 1936 AFTER the German annexation of the Sudetenland!

"One may dislike Hitler's system, yet admire his patriotic achievement." - Winston Churchill, talking as late as 1938.

And in 1945, AFTER the war, and with the full atrocities of Belsen, Auschwitz and Dachau etc publicly known, Eamon De Valera, Premier of the Republic of Ireland, made a point of visiting the German Legation in Dublin to sign a Book Of Condolence for the death of Hitler. The Irish government also took away the rights to employment, pensions and healthcare of over 5,000 Irish citizens who'd joined the British army to fight the Nazis. De Valera offered sanctuary to a number of Nazi fugitives wanted by the Allies for war crimes, at least one of whom was implicated in the deaths of over a million people.

There are loads of other examples. So whatever your take on the royal family, I'd suggest this photo/movie is pretty tame considering some of the things said and done by other public figures/ governments several years later, when the full extent of Nazi atrocities had become, or was becoming, very clear.