| January 20 |  |
Editor says, what if the abdication crisis had been avoided with cooler heads prevailing? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).
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In 1936, upon the death of George V his eldest son Edward ascended to the throne as Emperor of India and King of the United Kingdom and the British dominions.
Abdication Crisis avoidedEdward had held successively the titles of Prince Edward of York, Prince Edward of Cornwall and York, Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay, and Prince of Wales. As a young man, he served in World War I, undertook several foreign tours on behalf of his father, George V, and was associated with a succession of older, married women. The most recent example of the King's womanising was an affair with the American divorcée Wallis Simpson.
Members of the establishment and the royal house were horrified to discover that Edward was planning to break royal protocol by watching the proclamation of his own accession to the throne from a window in the company of the then still-married Mrs. Simpson. Fortunately for all concerned, he was disuaded from this course of action. Several months later the issue re-emerged when Edward declared that he intended to marry Wallis. However, due to her age it was improbable that such a union would bear children, and Edward was convinced to continue the relationship in semi-secrecy.
The significance of these events would only become apparent three years later. Because Edward VIII turned out to be just the right man for the hour, helping to lead the British people through the continental crisis with a calm fortitude that gained him their love and respect. Due in no small part to his excellent relationship with the German Government, the monarch had succeeded where elected politicians might fail, by ensuring that it would be "peace in our time".
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Baldwin, Paul. "The 365 Most Important Events of the Twentieth Century" Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Alternate Nations Source: Wikipedia Labels: Edward VIII, Hitler Triumphant, Germany, Britain, Abdication Crisis.
~ More likely Edward would have joined the Nazi Germans side & allow most of Europe to be conquered as a result ;)
~ You're probably right.
~ FWIW, just because he'd been cordial and polite on a tour of Germany did not make him a Nazi. It has been pointed out that pointing Hitler East would have been very much in Britain's own interest, and Hitler himself would have been amenable---he had no interest in destroying the British Empire.
~ One wonders just how long "our time" would have lasted after the fall of France. If King Edward had led Britain to a separate peace, the Nazis would have been free to devote much greater resources to Operation Barbarossa in '41, and if as a result the Soviet Union had fallen, how long would it have been before Britain faced a choice between war and vassalage?
Moreover, a separate peace between Britain and the Nazis would have strengthened the hand of isolationists in the U.S. That might have meant that after Pearl Harbor (assuming that attack occurred), America would have ignored Europe altogether and focused all its energies on defeating "the little yellow monkey men of Nippon." That, in turn, would have given the Nazis a free hand to perfect their V-rockets (which in this scenario would have been aimed eastward, rather than westward, as soon as possible, to wipe out whatever remained of Soviet ressistance) and to continue their nuclear experiments. By 1948 or '49 they might have had a bomb, especially if (like the Soviets in our history) they had the help of information from the Manhattan Project obtained via espionage.
Ugly as our own world of 1950 was with the Soviets sprawled across much of Europe and armed with atomic bombs, this world might actually have been worse.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
