| October 9 |  |
Editor says, what if the King had forced the Prime Minister out? muses Jackie Rose. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the March 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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It is 1936, and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin is threatening to resign if King Edward VIII insists on marrying Mrs. Simpson, a divorced American.
Happy Endings Part 6
Edward VIII and Wallace SimpsonThe King tells his Prime Minister to resign and be damned, then promptly marries his sweetheart.
Baldwin had been planning to sell airplane engines to the Germans, but this project came to a screaming halt when he left office. His replacement, Neville Chamberlain, saw the need to rearm England (rather than Germany) and desperately calls on his countrymen to do just that .. aided by his staunch ally, Winston Churchill. When the German Fuhrer invites Chamberlain to the Munich Conference two years later, the Prime Minister curtly refuses to attend. Even without him, Hitler invades Czechoslovakia, but England is ready to fight him.
Edward had expressed admiration for Hitler before, but at his Prime Minister's directions he avoids doing so again. Instead, he focuses on helping the unemployed, just as he had done before meeting Mrs. Simpson. So now the nation is united behind King Edward and Queen Wallis, and he rallies his people with the King's Speech: "For the second time in most of our lives, we are at war".
Entry posted by
Jackie Rose
© Jackie Rose, 2011-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Happy Endings Source: Wikipedia Labels: Wallace Simpson, Edward VIII, Abdication Crisis, King, England. Editor says, in reality Edward did abdicate, leaving Baldwin in a stronger position than ever for appeasing Hitler, until it is almost too late. The King's Speech is delivered by Edward's brother, King George VI.
~ Edward would have made a bad King...he was all play, no work, unlike his brother and niece. During his brief reign the "boxes" were sadly neglected, and what had been looked at often showed signs that he'd been drinking while he did it.
~ \edward \viii was pro-Nazi, as was one of his brother and a great admireer of Hitler - as were many who thought something should be done for the workers. Had britain been ivades in 1940 we would have had a King Edwars and Queen Wallis.
o you jst would not have got this, rather a raprochement with the Nazis.
~ One thing's for sure: Britain would have been better off without Baldwin as PM when things started going haywire in central Europe.
~ It'd have been a much shorter WWII if Britain had led an international expeditionary force to take out Hitler. Then again, Hitler might've won it playing himself as a David against Goliaths.
~ Good twist.
~ Reads like a good drama, but that England was ready in 1938 was doubtful.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
