Which king abdicated

Interception by the intelligence services revealed the French and Swiss Embassies in London were reporting to their governments on her influence over the King. The security implications were obvious. The public knew nothing of Establishment doubts about the King, the press and the BBC maintaining an effective blackout on his relationship with Mrs Simpson. The affair might be openly reported in Europe and the United States, but in Britain silence prevailed up to the eve of the abdication.

As official desperation grew, Edward remained popular, a breath of fresh air, a charming and attractive maverick, with a frequently displayed and apparently genuinely felt compassion for the unemployed and for veterans of the First World War. But Edward had to go and the Establishment eagerly seized the golden opportunity when he told Prime Minister Baldwin he was set upon marrying Mrs Simpson the moment her divorce was finalised.

A form of morganatic marriage, with Edward remaining on the throne but his wife denied royal status, was raised but deemed out of the question. One thing remains: had a section of the Establishment been prepared to go even further in its determination to remove Edward?

Some elements may have been willing to turn a blind eye to what MI5 and the Metropolitan Police Special Branch had been reliably informed was a conspiracy to assassinate the King in broad daylight on 16 July Was incompetence or collusion involved? The question is open. Instead Edward was removed from the throne in December — reluctantly, he declared in his memoirs, but possibly with some sense of relief.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor surprised even Germany. Although Hitler had made an oral agreement with his Axis partner Japan that Germany would join a war against In the largest Russian military offensive since the invasion of Afghanistan, thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks pour into the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya.

Encountering only light resistance, Russian forces had by evening pushed to the outskirts of the Madoff, who After the Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. This contingent included 33 Vertol HC Shawnee helicopters and air and ground crewmen to operate and maintain them.

Their assignment was to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat. Already appearing as a well-known figure of the Wild West in popular dime novels, Buffalo Bill Cody makes his first stage appearance on this day, in a Chicago-based production of The Scouts of the Prairie.

Unlike many of his imitators in Wild West shows and movies, William Sergei Mikhailkov, best With war raging in Europe, conflict also reigns in the Far East between two traditional enemies, Japan and an internally-divided China.

On December 11, , the first president of the new Chinese republic, Yuan Shih-kai, who had come to power in the wake of revolution in These, though, were slim pickings.

She could not continue this daily diet of venom for long, becoming so sick and depressed that Herman, seeing the effect on her, took charge. One morning he sat her down, held her hands, and had a long heart-to-heart conversation, sympathetically outlining the home truths she was deliberately avoiding. It makes me feel cheap. It makes me feel disreputable. It makes me want to run away and hide.

It hurts. Herman continued. Put it out of your mind. Much of what is being said concerns a woman who does not exist and never did exist. Perhaps it would be just as well if you stopped reading about her. She was not the only one. It is a curious phenomenon, the urge to read about oneself, knowing beforehand that it is going to hurt or depress.

Like a moth to a flame, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, was drawn to reading newspaper stories about her, however unpleasant. She disregarded all advice to ignore them, and as a result was left feeling worthless and impotent. It was hardly a flattering profile, the magazine presenting her as a carat gold-digger.

In , after his father's ascension, Edward became the Prince of Wales. His assignments to safe positions on the Italian front troubled him, causing him to announce, "What difference does it make if I am killed? The king has three other sons! Upon his return to England, the young Prince Edward took up his official duties, and traveled throughout Britain and other parts of the world. Dashing and charming, he became known in the American press as the "arbiter of men's fashions, a fearless horseman, tireless dancer, idol of bachelors, dream of spinsters.

Prince Edward met the woman who would completely change his life in June At a party hosted by Lady Furness, the prince was introduced to Wallis Simpson , a sophisticated, charming and charismatic American woman who had recently moved to London with her husband. She immediately captured the king's interest and later captured his heart.