The Sun Newspaper

[Workingman]

That is roughly what I was getting at, Vic, when I mentioned that The Queen part of the story was a red herring. That was the spin put on the story by Royalists to deflect the real issue. It was attacked as being an attack on The Queen, which it was not.

Had that film, with two future Kings and the future Queen Mother, been made available at the time it could have brought down the monarchy. That is its significance and historical importance, not the innocent actions of a seven year-old Royal schoolgirl.

[KateLMead]

The Royal family cannot win., our Queen is the finest monarch in the worl in my opinion. "God Bless Her" What a damnable life inspite of all the pomp and luxury. The Duke of Edinborough I admire him.
Andrew I have absolutely no time for nor his wife and offspring.. Edward keeps to himself good man..
The hangers on get rid of them all.

[Kaz]

Utterly disgraceful! We cannot possibly judge this by our 21st century perspectives - of course we are horrified by a Nazi salute but in the early 1930s nobody knew exactly what Hitler was up to

HM has served this country pretty much blamelessly all of her life, and to do this to an 89 year old is muck-raking pure and simple! I have no time at all for the "Oh this is of historical interest......" nonsense. No it isn't, it is muck-raking to sell newspapers.

[Workingman]

The Sun's headline "Their Royal Heilnesses" was crass and whoever came up with it should have been sacked. However, the article was supportive of The Queen and it made clear that no blame could be attached to her whatsoever. The muck-raking started when the Mail and Express ran stories claiming that the clip had been stolen in some 'phone-hacking' type activity and was being used to bring down the Monarchy. There was nothing of the sort. The clip had been accidentally released from the Royal archives and distributed to documentary editors, and both the Guardian and Telegraph came out to make that quite clear.

Many news outlets also brought out historians and research fellows for their views on the clip and there seemed to be a small majority saying that it was significant.

As I said in an earlier post, these things cannot be air-brushed out of history - not the good, nor the bad.

[KateLMead]

Pity they cannot be so forthcoming with the paedophiles they have been protecting and kept hidden.

[Suff]

I don't believe it would have come even close to bringing the Monarchy down. In 33 the vast majority of people would only have been peripherally aware of Hitler and who he was. I'm pretty certain that virtually nobody outside of very senior government circles or the espionage agencies has the slightest clue what was really going on there.

If that had been put to the people in 33 or 34, they would have assumed they were taking the pith. The people of the UK, in the 30's, were mainly Monarchists. Trying to second guess how the people would have reacted, to me, is simple. They would have taken it as a joke and been supportive of the monarchy and the Empire.

That was the UK in the 30's.

Today we look at it and think it might bring down the Monarch. After more than 70 years of Labour doing it's best to dismantle the Lords and the Monarchy, we are still a majority of people who support our Monarch but the relationship is massively more fragile than it was then.

[Workingman]

Talk about people revising history.

Anyone would think that the British Empire in 1933 was living under a dome without overseas diplomats, radio and newspapers and their foreign correspondents, and that everything inside Germany was kept secret from the rest of the World.

It follows that my earlier list, all happening in 1933, would have gone unreported, as would Germany's rearming. Benito Mussolini would have been passed off as a railway porter and Oswald Moseley and his 50,000 supporters were just a bunch of misguided loons.

Meanwhile, back in "blissful innocence land", the WI was making jam, bell ringers were making a din and Morris dancers were out entertaining local fetes like there was no tomorrow.

[Aggers]

Meanwhile, back in "blissful innocence land", the WI was making jam, bell ringers were making a din and Morris dancers were out entertaining local fetes like there was no tomorrow.

The 1930s were my school days, Frank, and I can confirm that much of what you say is correct.

For me, the 1930s were marvellous times. Since then, in spite of all the 'improvements' in our living standards,
my view is that Britain has gone downhill in many ways, and affluence has not brought happiness.

[Workingman]

I can confirm that much of what you say is correct.

Which part, John?

I was reading the Daily Express take regarding the film.

Apparently the Royals were only larking about mimicking the Nazi salute, the same as millions of schoolboys were doing.

That does not fit with the British public knowing nothing about Hitler, the Nazis and what was going on in Germany. Of course they knew, as did the Royals, and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

[Suff]

It follows that my earlier list, all happening in 1933, would have gone unreported, as would Germany's rearming.

Germany's rearming, yes. The other pieces? I did some fairly deep searches and I can't dig up any hint, anywhere, that the western press were aware of the level to which the Nazi's were ostracising the Jews or to which they were blaming them.

As I said before, had those laws which were passed, especially the sterilisation laws, been widely known; then the German Olympics of that time would not have been attended as it was.

Whilst it may have been known at very high levels, it was certainly not common knowledge. I know for a fact that the horrors being put on the Jews was not common knowledge because I talked to my father in law about it, who was in Germany immediately after the war, having fought his way up through Italy. He told me the soldiers had no clue at all. Those who found the Jews were literally shattered by the experience.

Something else he told me which almost never makes the historical press was what it did to our soldiers when they realised they couldn't save all the people they liberated from the camps. Thousands more died in their custody because there were so many of them and it was impossible to get them enough medical care for those who were at the very end of their lives. Having fought this war for so long to save as many people as they could, they simply could not cope with so many more dying before their eyes and they were powerless to stop it.

People, the public generally, had no idea what had gone on in Germany and had those laws been public knowledge they would not have been so surprised at the end.

I'm convinced this was part of the outpouring of rage at the trials.