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.

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

Well, I know what should have been in the minds of educated, aware people with unique access to political and diplomatic channels.....

....about a new party that may or may not have come into power (depending on the exact date of the film).
Your hindsight of 1939 is rather more privileged that the 6 year forward vision of that family.

"Your hindsight of 1939 is rather more privileged that the 6 year forward vision of that family."

If by "hindsight" you mean "knowledge of history" then I agree.

AuntieFlaubert -

They didn't need to look into the future; they just needed to look back at the very recent past. The film was clearly shot in summer or possibly late spring of 1933; Hitler became German Chancellor in Jan 1933 and the Nazis took over completely (ie dictatorship) in March 1933. If you think that an appropriate reaction to that was 'smiling', then you might want to consider the very recent history that the Saxa-Coburg-Gothas Windsors cannot possibly have been unaware of:

• Immediately following the election, Social Democratic Party was then banned and its assets seized.

• All civilian organisations, including agricultural groups, volunteer organisations, and sports clubs, then had their leadership replaced with Nazi sympathisers or party members.

• By June 1933, virtually the only organisations not in the control of the NSDAP were the army and the churches.

• On 2 May 1933 all trade unions were forced to dissolve and their leaders were arrested. Some were sent to concentration camps.

• The Reichstag Fire Decree, imposed on 28 February 1933, rescinded most German civil liberties, including rights of assembly and freedom of the press. The decree also allowed the police to detain people indefinitely without charges or a court order.

• In March 1933, the Enabling Act, an amendment to the Weimar Constitution, passed in the Reichstag by a vote of 444 to 94.[19] This amendment allowed Hitler and his cabinet to pass laws—even laws that violated the constitution—without the consent of the president or the Reichstag.

• Discrimination against Jews began immediately after the seizure of power; following a month-long series of attacks by members of the SA on Jewish businesses, synagogues, and members of the legal profession, on 1 April 1933 Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses.[257]

• The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April, 1933, forced all non-Aryan civil servants to retire from the legal profession and civil service.[258]

• Similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of their right to practise.

• On 11 April 1933 a decree was promulgated that stated anyone who had even one Jewish parent or grandparent was considered non-Aryan.

• As part of the drive to remove Jewish influence from cultural life, members of the National Socialist Student League removed from libraries any books considered un-German, and a nationwide book burning was held on 10 May.

etc etc etc.

How you can possibly argue that this was all just fine and that the British Royal family - with all their numerous pro-Nazi German relatives - would be totally unaware of this, I cannot even begin to imagine.

No, they wouldn't have known about a Holocaust that hadn't happened yet. They would, however, have been aware of a violent, racist dictatorship on their doorstep. You'd only find it 'harmless' if you fancied one on your own doorstep. believe me, German Jews, the disabled, Roma, other ethnic minorities, etc found it anything but 'harmless'.

The British public would not have found it harmless or something to smile over either - only a few months later, we were chasing fascists out of the East End.

Given that history proved the British public right (fascists were, thankfully, never a significant force, here) and the Royal family very, very wrong, I think the least the Royal family can do is admit it and move on with dignity.

To pretend that the Sun is at fault here rather than the Royal family's gross lack of judgement (the Queen Mother and Edward VIII, obviously, not the current Queen who was too young to have understood the import of what she was doing) is an insult to all those people who died defending King and Country from the fascists.

If Hitler's plans were as well-known in the UK in 1933 as you suggest from your hindsight/history, it's strange that Britain continued to disarm at that time, ignoring Germany's breaking of its Versailles commitments, and went on appeasing Hitler until 1939.

If governments were looking the other way, why should families behave any differently in their private behaviour?

I'm leaving this conversation now as we are clearly not going to convince one another.

"If governments were looking the other way, why should families behave any differently in their private behaviour?"

"Families" shouldn't. This family should. Or at least the grown ups should. Because, however much people want them to be, they are not "just like us"

A factor in not rearming straight away was that the First World War was only 15 years in the past. No one in the UK wanted another big European conflict. Hence why appeasement took hold.

Thank you to stressed for your posts. It's an uncomfortable chapter in our history, and obviously some posters would rather pretend that it hadn't happened. However, you have probably helped to educate some others which can be no bad thing.

Bringing it forward to the present, neither you nor me, nor other posters really know what is happening in Syria, or with Putin in Russia, but the Royal Family i.e. the Queen, Charles and other senior members, plus David Cameron and Co. most certainly should be as well informed as possible.

You think that Egosum?

Try reading this:
www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-royals-veto-bills

And the Duke of Windsor as King had access to state papers and is believed to have betrayed secrets about plans for the defence of Belgium to the Germans - which was treason and would have got anyone else hanged.

we didnt have access to the internet then im pretty sure the information coming out of germany was a lot slower than it is now

its just a scummy newspaper article people have died today and they are reporting an eighty year old for being a child once

and while we are on the subject we knew about auschwitz in 1942 we did nothing about it we could have

we knew about auschwitz in 1942 we did nothing about it we could have

?? what could we have done about it in 1942? We weren't in a position to launch an invasion at that stage and bombing it wouldn't have achieved much.

We did know about Auschwitz, although I think that people found it hard to believe the stories coming out - until the camps were liberated.

I think the RAF did shoot footage of some of the camps later in 1944/45 and questions have been asked about why they didn't bomb the camps then.

I was really moved to see the recent reports about the liberation of Belsen - here we saw some old soldiers, who must have been battle hardened then, fighting back the tears about the horrors of what they had seen 70 years earlier.

Yep who knew what and when about the holocaust is a hugely vexed question. From the middle of the war onwards reports from Poland spoke of mass extermination of Jews in Warsaw which the Americans didn't take seriously. The existence of Auschwitz was kmown from 1944 onwards.

bombing it wouldn't have achieved much.
I don't know why they didn't bomb the railway tracks along the routes to Belsen, Treblinka etc. It would surely have seriously hindered the nazi murderers daily mass transports.

I don't know why they didn't bomb the railway tracks along the routes to Belsen, Treblinka etc.

Again, I suspect it came down to an unwillingness to believe the true horror of what was being told. Or wilful blindness?

Because the allies didn't go to war with Nazi Germany for humanitarian reasons or to save the jews. By that stage pf the war allied bombing eas focused on bombong the germans into submission by attacking their industrial capacity and demoralising the civilian population via area bombing. Mercy missions didn't enter into it.

It would have been very difficult to bomb the railway tracks accurately in the 1940s. They would have to have done it in daylight which would entail massive casualties. The worst concentration camps were in modern Poland, so they would have had to fly across Germany during the day, which again would have been highly dangerous. Even then, dropping unguided bombs from 5 miles up in the sky, you would be unlikely to hit a railway line.

I'm new to this planet. What's YANBU?

I don't know exactly but I've heard stories over the years that she wasn't the sweetly smiling benign old granny that she made herself out to be!

Agree with DrDre, and it was only latterly that bombing began to be accurate at all. Okay, that covers 1944, but surely Russia would have been better placed geographically to carry out such bombing of the camps, but there is zero question that they would ever have been interested anyway.

The story by the Sun may be a bit of a warning shot, some say there is more to come out about the Windsors and the Nazis, but then again 'some say' everything at some point. It does look scary just being footage in black and white, it always has that effect and generates a frission of 'what if' the Nazis had made it across the Channel. But you might say it is just folk mucking about and even taking the mickey. I mean, if you saw pictures of a family larking about making signs of the cross and laughing, you wouldn't think, wow, what committed Christians would you? You'd assume they were taking the piss, just as Brand obviously was when he pulls a Nazi salute.

I've inherited a whole pile of family photos. There are a number of them of my parents, grandparents and friends larking about having fun, but strangely enough, non of them making Nazi salutes. But then, we are not Royal.

The Queen Mother was reported in about 1970 or so, saying that she was suspicious of Jews. This is the woman who nobly stayed in London, in the war against Hitler, who was busy persecuting Jews.

Not that any of this stops the Sun being a scurrilous rag.

I've inherited a whole pile of family photos. There are a number of them of my parents, grandparents and friends larking about having fun, but strangely enough, non of them making Nazi salutes
Strangely enough, our family photos from the same era don't show them doing Charlie Chaplin's silly walk. What does that prove?