Fury At Buckingham Palace After Sun Splash Claims to Show Queen Giving Nazi Salute

Liam Deacon

The Sun has released a 17 second film purporting to show the Queen, Queen Mother and Edward VIII momentarily performing a Nazi salute when larking about in the gardens of Balmoral.

The Queen is seven in the film, which was shot in 1933, just as Hitler rose to power and six years before he invaded Poland, three years before the Nazis hosted the Olympics and long before most people in Europe could realistically understand what the Nazis truly stood for.

The Salute was yet to gain it’s connotation of evil and fascism at this time, in fact, a similar salute, the Bellamy salute, was still being used in the US by Christian Socialists until 1942 when it was replaced by the hand on heart salute.

Edward VIII, who was then Prince of Wales, began communicating with Hitler shortly after he was elected Chancellor in 1933, and some believe he had sympathies with him in his early years. However, the Palace and other historians have strongly rebutted this. Edward became king in 1936 but was forced to abdicate just months later over his plans to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson – something socially unacceptable at the time.

A Buckingham Palace statement said: “It is disappointing that film, shot eight decades ago and apparently from Her Majesty’s personal family archive, has been obtained and exploited in this manner.”

The Managing editor of The Sun, Stig Abell, has defend the publication of the images as “historically relevant” and “interesting,” but refused to say how the film was obtained.

The Queen’s former press secretary, Dickie Arbiter, said on BBC breakfast that he thought the film was either snuck out by a documentary film crew, or outright stolen.

He also told Sky News: “I would like to think it was released inadvertently as a bit of harmless 1933 footage without anybody really knowing what was on it. I think what they (Buckingham Palace) would probably like to know is where it came from and who gave it to The Sun.”

Another Buckingham Palace source added: “Most people will see these pictures in their proper context and time. This is a family playing and momentarily referencing a gesture many would have seen from contemporary newsreels.

“No one at that time had any sense how it would evolve. To imply anything else is misleading and dishonest. The Queen is around six years of age at the time and entirely innocent of attaching any meaning to these gestures.

“The Queen and her family’s service and dedication to the welfare of this nation during the war, and the 63 years The Queen has spent building relations between nations and peoples speaks for itself.

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