“The claw of the past”: this could have been the title of Eric Branca’s new book, The eagle and the leopard (Perrin). While the world has just witnessed, half-admiring, half-perplexed, the coronation of King Charles III, the historian and journalist dissects the “dangerous liaisons” between England and the Third Reich. A crushing reciprocal attraction, which the heroic resistance to Hitler of our neighbors across the Channel, under the impulse of Churchill, happily corrected. Interview.
L’Express: England’s dangerous connections seem already well known. What new elements does your investigation reveal?
Eric Branca: We mainly knew the links of Edward VIII [roi d’Angleterre en 1936, il abdique la même année pour épouser Wallis Simpson, une femme divorcée, NDLR] and his wife with Nazism. But we were unaware of the extent of the king’s betrayal, of which we know today that in 1940 he was waiting for Hitler’s invasion of Great Britain to return to the throne, and the latter’s very old relations with the Nazi circles. Wallis Simpson, indeed, was much more than a schemer: she was linked to a notorious German spy, Princess Stephanie of Hohenlohe, who was on a mission to infiltrate the British ruling class, and she was the mistress of Joachim von Ribbentrop. , whom she received in her apartment in Mayfair, when he was the Reich’s ambassador to London, before becoming Hitler’s foreign minister.
I also wanted to show that the English attraction for the Third Reich did not only concern the aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie, but extended to all circles, including the Labor Party. Sir Edward Mosley, the founder of the British Union in 1932, first belonged to this party, of which he failed to conquer the presidency the previous year. So that in May and June 1940, Winston Churchill was very isolated, and England very close to making peace with Germany.
How then to explain the current popularity of the British monarchy?
We must remember the personal role of George VI [roi d’Angleterre de 1937 à 1952, NDLR] and his wife, Elisabeth Bowes-Lyon, very brave under the German bombs. Their daughter, Elizabeth II [reine de 1952 à 2022, NDLR], had signed up as an ambulance driver during the second London Blitz, that of the V1 and V2, in 1944. But this dark side never ceases to reappear. Prince Harry, who now accuses his family of racism, was photographed at a masquerade ball in 2005 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, dressed as an officer of theAfrika Corps, and sporting a Nazi armband. Can we speak of a youthful mistake, when he was already 21 at the time? Perhaps, but then weighed down with a heavy psychoanalytical load!
In this attraction of England for the Third Reich, what is the role of ideology, economic reasons, circumstances?
Everything is mixed up. The main reason is a geopolitical calculation to keep Britain prominent. Hitler is the first German politician not to want to compete with England overseas. He recognizes the English vocation to dominate the rest of the world, if indeed he is allowed to dominate the European continent as far as Russia. However, in the years 1920-1930, the British Empire began to crack.
For England which, since the loss of its colonies at the end of the 17th century, unlike France, Spain, Italy or Germany, has not experienced either a major defeat or a break in regime, but on the contrary a continuous economic and territorial expansion, there is also the certainty of obeying an almost predestined dominating vocation.
Finally, financial interests play an important role. It is a question of fighting against the French preeminence, which, after 1918, will become the dominant power of the continent. England wants Germany to become one of its clients again. In this context, France, which occupied the Ruhr from 1923 to 1925 on the initiative of Poincaré [président du Conseil de 1922 à 1924, NDLR] to obtain the financial reparations of the Treaty of Versailles, represents the preventer from going around in circles, the economic circles fearing increased competition on the world markets. In 1923, the City and Wall Street attacked the franc to force Poincaré to ease the pressure on the Ruhr.
Were the working classes also sensitive to Nazism?
Yes. Pacifism is one of the reasons for this indulgence. But the English fascist movement is elitist, unlike Nazism in Germany, which recruits from the working classes. Mosley comes from an old aristocratic family, closely linked to financial interests. Fascism aims to restore the old order, with little to do with Hitler’s revolution. This elitism contributes to its effectiveness, but limits its scope. The English electoral system, with a first-past-the-post system, was fatal to him.
You show that between England and Germany, the attraction is mutual…
Since the end of the 19th century, the English and German ruling circles have been traversed by a powerful current of ideas with multifaceted implications: racialism, which assigns ethnicity a historical, social or political role. Of essentially Darwinist origin in Great Britain, he is closely linked to Pan-Germanism across the Rhine. Hitler expresses, with his entourage, a delirious admiration for the English, whom he describes as “blood brothers”. He is fascinated by a Germano-Celtic people, who managed to dominate 30% of the emerged lands while retaining their “racial integrity”.
Faced with the expansion of Nazism, you present Winston Churchill as the “grain of sand on the road to destiny”. Is the heroic British resistance to Nazism only due to the will of one man?
Eyes open after Munich [où sont signés, en 1938, des accords imposant à la Tchécoslovaquie l’annexion des Sudètes par l’Allemagne, NDLR], when, six months later, the Wehrmacht entered Prague in contradiction to all of Hitler’s promises. The English people feel like they’ve been cheated. However, the supporters of a peaceful coexistence with the Third Reich raised their heads when, in October 1939, after having swallowed Poland, Hitler offered peace to Great Britain. Alone to warn against Hitler since 1933, Churchill [Premier ministre de 1940 à 1945, NDLR] was still at that time very isolated, even after the beginning of the general offensive in the West, on May 10, 1940. On May 28, 1940, when Hitler stopped in front of Dunkirk and renewed his offers, he was in the minority in the cabinet of war. He plays big by taking advantage of this truce to re-embark the British expeditionary force. It is this success – which is at the same time Hitler’s first military failure – which will enable him to take control definitively and to marginalize the partisans of a updating with the Reich, starting with Lord Halifax, his Foreign Minister, whom he finally ousted from government in December 1940.
England was more mature than Vichy France to integrate into Hitler’s new order. Our vision is distorted by the French defeat. With us, there has never been a Nazi party: the Vichy regime brought together the failures of the radical party, the socialist party, the far right Maurrassienne… In England, fascism attracted the elites.
But England was exemplary, behind Churchill, in the fight against Nazism. Since the island was not invaded, there was no collaboration. Churchill wanted to erase the traces of these dangerous liaisons, like Charles de Gaulle imposing, from August 24, 1944, the myth of a France gathered in a “single fight for the fatherland”. In 1945, he traveled to Lake Como, Italy, presumably to retrieve documents that had belonged to Mussolini, which proved the compromise of the British political class with the Third Reich. These papers have now disappeared…
The eagle and the leopard. The dangerous liaisons between England and the Third Reichby Eric Branca, Perrin, 430 p., 23.50 euros.