to think 'the sun' is utter scum over the queen's 'nazi salute' ?

[mrsfuzzy]

it might be 'historical significance' but is it really ? the film taken in 1933 shows the royal family doing nazi salutes. the 'salute' was not really known about then as to what it would come to signify and this seems scummy behaviour on behalf of the sun to print it.
everyone now involved is dead, but the queen still has to hear it,
i'm not into royalty but this seems shitty in my book.

Sun is utter scum. The Queen joined up as a teenager in WW2 and her husband served in the Navy. In the early '30s the horrors of the Nazis could not have been imagined nor the significance that Nazi salute would come to have. Certainly not by a 7 year old child. YANBU.

'tis a bit annoying alright.
but only because we're all really waiting for the sun to run the story of the true scandal of our times - elm house / leon brittan / cliff richard / cyril smith.
now that's real news that needs to be aired publicly.

Sadly I think not even the Sun have the guts to run that story. Too many people in high up places with the money to afford the best lawyers. But I agree that that is the story that needs exposing.

Be nice if somebody had the guts to run it...

its surely the greatest scandal in british political history.
most of the media have touched on it but no-one will pursue it.
because it goes right to the top.

I know things are bad when I start thinking "maybe David Icke was right all along". We all laughed at him for saying the royal family are lizards, but he said Jimmy Savile was a pedophile long before it was revealed by mainstream media. By which time Savile was dead and buried.

we all laughed at him because the media portrayed in such as way that made him laughable.
remember when he was on wogan? he was treated like the village idiot.
but he's been correct about a number of things so far.

portrayed him

I should probably add that I don't actually think QEII and family are lizards! But I think Icke was on the ball with the other stuff.

That's very true about David Icke!

I'm 48 and when I was about twenty had a (very attractive, blond) boyfriend who turned up at a nightclub New Year fancy dress party in full Nazi uniform complete with long black leather coat.....I confess that my only thoughts at the time were how sexy he looked.....

Hangs head in shame......

I wish the press e.g. like this latest piece from the BBC would decide which it is:

either the aristocracy were afraid of Communism after the Russian royals had been murdered, so backed fascism.

or Hitler was a bit of a joke and they are mocking him in the film clip.

To me, the two are opposites - you don't mock people that you believe are going to help you out.

Has anyone mentioned that Prince Philip's mother took huge risks to hide Jewish friends during the war, and has been named 'Righteous among the Nations' for her actions.

Prince Philip went to Israel to receive the award.

If his sisters married Nazis, his mother took a very different path.

He definitely had someone in his family with all the right ideas.

Tubbs i remember that well. He was on Wogan a LOT back in the 1980s.

I know the thread has moved on a bit but what bothers me is the palace's outraged response to the film. I mean, if they'd said something along the lines of sorry, the queen was only, what, 7 or 8 and didn't understand what she was doing but knows now it was wrong and apologises for her family's attitude at the time, then maybe it would be okay. Instead, it's suing this and being furious at that and whatnot, which I find arrogant and unpleasant.

terry wogan was looking at him like he'd grown horns.
it was all very shabby journalism on wogan's part and clearly a trap.
our naive 1980's sensibilities were not prepared for david icke's allegations.
and wogan sitting there with a toupe that would cover the whole of the isle of wight. he had a nerve.

As for David Icke, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I knew about Savile, it wasn't exactly a secret, and I'm some random bloke.

Seahorses that's my attitude too. They would be much better confronting the past, rather than trying to explain it away.

the queen was only, what, 7 or 8 and didn't understand what she was doing but knows now it was wrong and apologises for her family's attitude at the time, then maybe it would be okay. Instead, it's suing this and being furious at that and whatnot, which I find arrogant and unpleasant.

Why the hell should the Queen apologise - these were PRIVATE family films. Parents and children larking about in their garden mocking a foreign political party. They could not have known in 1933 what the Nazis had in store 6 years later.

Would you really be happy for YOUR private family videos (including of dec'd parents) to be published in The Sun and manipulated to suggest you sympathised with mass genoside? Especially when those parents had been pivotal in the War effort and you felt their memory was being wrongly tarnished. Surely not too arrogant to be a tad upset in those circumstances?

They could not have known in 1933 what the Nazis had in store 6 years later.

I imagine you can't have read the thread - there were enough people who knew exactly what the Nazis intended to do, and assuming that a film taken at Balmoral was shot during the summer, had already started to implement those policies.

With one of the people in the film a known Nazi sympathiser, it cannot necessarily be assumed that they were larking about mocking a foreign political party.

I would be deeply ashamed if any of my family produced films which even suggested that they sympathised with mass genocide, which I then tried to explain away as a joke - a joke in poor taste. But then, we are just ordinary bods, which the Royals most definitely are not. So it's fine to be private citizens when your behaviour looks distasteful, but not when you want the public to bow and scrape to you? The Royal family are quite happy to release private footage when it suits them.

Sorry, LaVolcan, my view was based on my Histiry degree rather than reading the whole thread.

The Royal family are entitled to their privacy too. The fact that they are happy to share some carefully selected family moments cannot mean they have waived their entire right to privacy.

UncertainSmile
As for David Icke, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

touche.
i'm stealing that line.

The Royal family are entitled to their privacy too.

Up to a point, I agree, although they are in the public eye and they need to be aware of how things can be interpreted.

I am surprised that no-one at the Palace went through and destroyed this footage as soon as the Duke of Windsor became persona non grata. Just imagine if Goebbels had got hold of this during the war - he would have had a field day with it.

What shocked me was the Queen Mother's behaviour, although at the time she wouldn't have expected to become Queen. However, her husband was second in line to the throne, and since the Palace didn't seem to be having any luck finding a suitable young virgin (a la Diana) for Edward, she must have known that the throne could come to her husband/daughter eventually.

I went and found the Sun footage to see exactly what it did show. Initially, it shows Princess Elizabeth doing an ordinary wave to someone off camera, at that point the Duchess of York does what looks like a Nazi salute, and the Princess changes her wave to copy her, then Edward/David raises his arm, although as has been said, he looks like a schoolboy asking permission to leave the room.

Agreed, LaVolcan.

Dontloookbackinanger - your view may be based on a history degree but my view is based primarily not on my history degree but on my 93-year-old German Jewish father, who lived through that era (thankfully survived, though not all his family were as lucky). The idea that no-one knew what Hitler was planning is utter tripe - he'd made his intentions very clear many years earlier, with the publication of Mein Kampf, and since coming to power the Nazis had burned books, instituted a boycott of Jewish shops - oh, and that little thing of murdering political opponents. Read literature of the time - it was perfectly apparent to observers (such as the Royals with their numerous German relatives) exactly what was going on in Germany.

No, the full scale of the Holocaust would not have been apparent at that point. But the idea that it was a lark to teach a 7 year old child, and moreover a member of the British royal family, the Nazi salute, is absolutely ridiculous.

And more to the point, the idea that the (at that point planned) future King of England and his sister-in-law would think that that performing Nazi salutes was not just acceptable but lots of fun - as can be seen from their broadly smiling faces - is absolutely revolting and horrific.

I think it points to the need for the royals to open up their archives to full public scrutiny and admit to some of the shameful actions and attitudes of some members of the family. The only reason we're not part of a greater Nazi Germany now is because of Wallis Simpson - had Edward VIII not been forced to abdicate over her, he'd have capitulated to the Germans (willingly) from the beginning.

And more to the point, the idea that the (at that point planned) future King of England and his sister-in-law would think that that performing Nazi salutes was not just acceptable but lots of fun - as can be seen from their broadly smiling faces - is absolutely revolting and horrific
Has it not occurred to you - as it has to many others - that their broadly smiling faces show that this was nothing more than a bit of harmless performance for the camera?

How can you possibly know what was in their minds in 1933?