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.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/18/queen-nazi-salute-video-royal-home-movie-

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/18/the-queen-nazi-salute-the-sun-photographs

Good comments - the archives should have been opened 53 years ago. I suspect they won't be now; there will be a big purge going on in case something else embarrassing surfaces.

I agree, these are not children about to do cartwheels, and certainly the Queen Mother wasn't about to do one. The comments from the Palace have been extremely week.

twitter.com/Harryslaststand/status/622377584525996033

Weak, not week!

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/18/royal-family-archives-queen-nazi-salute

Oh dear, even the mumsnet bible has found the new target for a couple of weeks

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/18/royal-family-archives-queen-nazi-salute

I wonder who was doing the filming? It looks like Elizabeth was copying whoever was filming, even doing a stern face while saluting.

I could see a situation where Uncle Edward visits telling of his meetings with this man Hitler, rum fellow who has his followers throw an arm in the air like Roman centurions. Really say the others, how silly they must look. Look there's Daddy with the camera quick do a German soldier impression. everyone arms up for the camera.

It might have started to be some obvious what Hitlers agenda was in the early 30's, but the Nazis weren't actually elected until 1933 and at that time it would have been beyond the imagination of most outside the party leadership to conjure an image of the events post 1939.

Try reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for an interesting perspective on 1930s attitudes to facism.

What did it symbolise in 1933?

By which point Hitler had suspended democratic processes and was well on the way to creating a one party state. Mein Kampf was also widely available in its English translation.

It also hammers home the point that a system of hereditary monarchy is flawed - you are saddled with the monarch and their extended family - however stupid, dangerous, nasty, or ill-informed their views are. The Queen has had the good sense to say nothing, wave and unveil plaques, her first born son (whilst his view are nowhere near as repellent than his grandmother or great uncle) has been quite keen on using his unelected and unaccountable power to further his own views and interests.

Hither adopted the nazi salute from Mussolini and only afterwards made it what we know as the maxi salute.

I think anything that Edward VIII had to say about his sympathies with Hitler would have been lost following his abdication and exile in 1936. Potentially an issue if Germany had not lost the war, but clearly not the case.

It's widely reported that the Queen and her mother held Edward accountable for the early death of George VI. I strongly doubt in the intervening years they had a lot to chat about, let alone be persuaded to support the rise of the Third Reich.

It's widely reported that the Queen and her mother held Edward accountable for the early death of George VI.

Yes, but wasn't that because George VI was forced to take on a role for which he was totally unprepared and ill-suited, rather than finding the politics of Edward VIII abhorrent? Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon had first set her cap against the future King Edward VIII only to be spurned by him. I doubt whether she was much of a thinker, and would just have followed the pro-fascist leanings of most of her class.

Paper sales. That's all that matters! They are so used to digging dirt even when there is none that this is manna to their grubby mits.

At that stage in history no-one knew how it would work out.
I have watched quite a few films about the Hitler Youth and the BDM and am pretty sure my mother would have been front of the queue for the DDM had she been German (she is the British, the same age as the Queen and had to make do with the Guides).

I haven't ever read anything by Diana...I just can't being myself to...anti Semitic, fascist bitch.

Which Diana is this?

Mitford /Moseley I assume.

Diana Mitford. Wife of Oswald Mosely. Both of whom were interred for the duration of the war due to their Nazi sympathies.

Diana Moseley

Rupert Murdoch hates the monarchy - that's all there is to this.

I think this is historically interesting for all the reasons stated above and as much as I normally dislike the Sun, they've done something quite worthwhile here.

On a second note, I think we are perhaps too forgiving of the royal family. The Queen, for all the positive she has done, has done many things we would find abhorrent. She would have actively chosen to educated Charles the way he was, encourage him to marry Diana and she's married to a racist

Oh good, I thought I had missed something obvious about Lady Di.

boltofblue I have no idea how old you are but to me (in my early 50s) this country is almost unrecognisable compared with the one I grew up in - in a zillion ways, most good some bad.

To try and judge the stuff the Queen did in the past by modern standards is nuts. I can't help feeling that getting married to a racist (whether you knew or not) was nowhere like as unusual in 1947 as it might be now.

One thing she does seem to have done is to recognise what she saw as a duty to the UK above personal stuff. Her decisions may be ones we wouldn't have taken, but we weren't in her shoes (or her unique position). I'm not saying I'm for or against the Monarchy (I actually honestly don't care much as I think it's a non-issue) but I do think that a nasty greedy chippy American (who was so loyal to his native Australia he chopped in his passport for a US one) doesn't have much right to start chucking stuff about.

This thread makes me realise that bunking off history at school was a bad idea.

To try and judge the stuff the Queen did in the past by modern standards is nuts.

It's not really the Queen or Princess Margaret though, it's the then Duchess of York making what looks like a Nazi salute which is disturbing. At the time, no one had any idea that she would ever become Queen, so wouldn't have been very interested in her politics, except that it's highly unlikely that they were in any way different to those held by the rest of her social class.

It would be much better for the Palace to say that once she became Queen, she realised that she had been misinformed about Hitler and sought to atone for that. But they didn't - they whinged about being disappointed.

Yanbu utter twats

My history is ropey but I'm pretty sure that there were few signs in 1933 of what the nazi party was to become?

Yes it was, but it wasn't particularly controversial, eugenics was a 'science', disabled people were not seen unless they were the brave wounded soldiers from various wars, people with learning disabilities were put in institutions and one huge big thing we conveniently wipe from our history books was that Jewish people were not popular in many parts of Britain.

At the start of the war Jewish refugees were interred as 'enemy aliens', the kindertransport was hailed as a wonderful thing, but there was no real reason the parents could not have been given visas too.

The Jewish refugees who were able to get in to the UK had to have a guaranteed job, ensure they would not take any 'public funds' and would only be in the uK on a temporary basis.