What might have been....

[BeatrixFan]

Nowadays I think it would be difficult to hide.

I agree. Today, public figures can't pick their nose without it being reported. These were the days when Royal voices were not heard and only the nicest pictures were seen. The deference given to the Royal Family must have been amazing and was very beneficial to people like George who did have something to hide. And also, this was a time when the people of Britain didn't really want to know about the private lives of the Royal Family. I think that nowadays someone like George would be hounded by the press until they exposed his secret and I've no doubt that George would have done exactly the same as he did back then, now. The situation hasn't really changed that much.

My guess is that Prince George's royal wife, with her Russian mother, and the fact that he had a son by the mid-1930s were the things that made the difference.

I think that's right. George and Marina had impressive ties, they were both extremely popular and quite good looking. Chamberlain liked George, so did Roosevelt and so he would have had the right ties. If the offer was made in 1936/37 then war was certainly on the horizon with Poland highlighted as a possible catalyst so maybe George was meant to supply stability to the country?

[Jo of Palatine]

Originally Posted by BeatrixFan

Maybe I am being a little too generous to Hitler. I see him as being an incredible leader - that even though he did evil and terrible things, he still had such loyalty from common people. I think that Hitler did have the common flaw of a dictator and that is that he wanted to see Nazism travel outside of Germany - but then again, he had a different view of what Germany was exactly. I think he was quite genuinely shocked when Britain stood up against him, especially as most of the upper class thought he was a charming man. I think King George and Queen Marina might have been charmed by him. If they weren't, maybe they'd have met a very sticky end.

Here's what history professor Raffael Scheck writes about the debate between historians about the way the Third Reich worked: (from: http://www.colby.edu/personal/r/rmscheck/GermanyE5.html)

Synthesis (according to Bracher and Jäckel): Hitler derived much of his strength from the rivalry and the overlapping responsibilities of state and party institutions. He thus could assume the role of a mediator. Single offices competed to win him over to their policies. Often they tried to implement what was considered to be his wish (example: genesis of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, August 1939). In a deeper sense, Hitler also was a mediator in a thoroughly divided German society neither of whose main forces (socialism, conservatives) had been able to dominate the other ever since the late Wilhelmine Empire.

That's in addition to recent British publications of historical research where they say that from 1935 the system of the dictatorship was so efficient that though Germans slowly started to realize who this Hitler and what his party really was, they could't do anything against it anymore.

As for his personal charisma - it's difficult to say today, as the historic recordings and films only show a rather ridiculous person with a terrible way to use language. I don't understand it but then I haven't lived then when years and decades of hopelessness after WWI had led to the real strong wish for a leader to end the current situation. People wanted the change in 1933 because Hitler gave them hope. But as soon as he had the possibilities of the laws of the republic of Weimar, which offered the head of the government much more possibilities to rule absolutely through emergency legislation he used these means. The "Ermächtigungsgesetz" ("enabling act") of 1933 which changed the constitution and brought on the real dictatorship was in fact less suppressive than the emergency legislation, so most the other parties voted for it, too, in the hope that things would get better. Well, they didn't.

Yes, it's true, Hitler could be quite charming but most of all he was absolutely ruthless, as eg princess Mafalda of Savoy, daughter of the king of Italy and landgravine of Hesse-Cassel found out. Her marriage resulted in her husband being in a position to act as intermediary between the Nazis in Germany and the Fascist regime in Italy. In 1943 Hitler started to believe that princess Mafalda worked against the Nazis and called her the "blackest carrion in the Italian royal house." The princess could flee to Rome and found sanctuary at the Vatican while her husband was held prisoner in Germany. But the Gestapo managed to get her under a pretext to the German embassy (they told her she could get into contact to her husband there), she was arrested and transported back to Germany. In 1944 the princess died a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp following injuries she received when the US army bombed the camp.

Members of the Royal House of Bavaria were imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp, even though Hitler had charmed them in the beginning when he considered Munich to be the "capital of the Nazi-movement".
So I guess a king George and queen Marina of Poland would not have seen the charming side of Hitler for long if the British government had gone on to oppose Hitler as it did....

[lord_rankin]

When you consider how everything played out in the days leading up to WWII I believe that Prince George on the throne of Poland would have been a decisive factor in preventing at least the invasion of Poland. Having a memeber of the British Royal Family on the throne would most certainly have changed the outcome of the Non Aggresion Pact that Germany and Russia signed. I don't believe they would have been so eager to carve up Poland as they did to provide a buffer-state. Hitler for all his charisma and cunning was woefully under educated especially in terms of civics and governmental procedure. He believed that in Britian the King still ruled, not the Prime Minister, I have read many times where he thought certain that King George would not dare declare war on him for something as trivial as Poland. Had Prince George been on the throne I believe he would have been more cautious and would have tried not to provoke the British. I like these kind of threads

[BeatrixFan]

Thanks for that Jo. Your post was really informative. I didn't realise Hitler had been so brutal to members of various Royal Families. I suppose that them being in Poland, George and Marina could have ended up in Auschwitz when the British declared war. Then again, they would have been a good bargaining chip to have.

[iowabelle]

I think that Hitler even persecuted some members of the House of Hanover (I seem to remember that some of them were placed in concentration camps).

[RachelD]

But if Goerge was or had homosexual tendancies, wouldn't Hitler have hated him? From what I recall, Hitler despised Jews, Homosexuals and anyone who did not regard him as a God...So I don't think that if Kent had been made King of Poland he would have been able to prevent Poland being invaded.

[fee]

Originally Posted by ysbel

BeatrixFan, do you think that George's preferences would have mattered to Queen Mary? The impression I get from the British Royal Family at that time was that you were expected to do your duty and damned be your personal preferences regardless of whether they were for other men, acting, skydiving or anything else for that matter. What an individual wanted or preferred didn't seem to fit into their mentality very well.

What would you say?

Didn't Queen Mary at one time say: "Georgie, you see, is soo musical"

[BeatrixFan]

But if Goerge was or had homosexual tendancies, wouldn't Hitler have hated him?

Well Goebbels was gay - and he wasn't the only high ranking Nazi. With Hitler, it was about power. He may have hated George for being homosexual but he would have put that aside for as long as George could be a political asset.