The Nazi King and the Wombat Liberation Army: What Australia might have been like without Wallis Simpson and the abdication
It’s the international subterfuge that was kept secret for almost 70 years, how Australia might have fallen victim to the Nazi scourge if not for this dramatic move.
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This was the secret kept for nearly seventy years: in 1936, the British Prime Minister and members of the Royal family tricked King Edward VIII into abdicating.
They saw no alternative.
The new king was passing top-secret information to Nazi Germany, now rearming to conquer Europe. The King admired fascism and Hitler and was increasingly bitter against the British politicians who would not let him marry divorcee Wallis Simpson.
What if the abdication never happened?
King Edward’s vicious side – and Mrs Simpson – had been kept out of the press.
The influence of a popular fascist king might easily have achieved a close alliance with Germany. His support for British fascist parties could have given them the opportunity to seize power, just as the Nazis had in Germany.
Britain would never have fought World War II, or if they did, they’d have been quickly defeated. Britain couldn’t win a war where the king delivered all vital information to the enemy – not in a political system where every new law must be read, then signed, by the king.
The Soviet Union accepted a treaty with Hitler in 1939. Could the USA alone have defeated both the German and Japanese empires, if there had been no allied sabotage or bombing to postpone Germany’s atomic bomb program, no Russian front, no enemy for Rommel to battle in the desert?
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The USA might have stayed isolationist rather than fight an unwinnable war. If Japan had threatened Australia, then fascist Britain would have had the resources it lacked in war-torn 1942, and come to our aid.
Australia – and Europe and the Commonwealth – might still be under Nazi rule.
I might not be writing this either. Not all my ancestors were “Aryan” and my dyslexia might have been viewed as an inheritable flaw to be exterminated. Even if I escaped the concentration camps, I doubt the Nazi party would approve of what I’d write.
Surely, we’d have raised the Eureka flag again and rebelled?
Or would we? Totalitarian regimes tend to be stable. Kill the writers, the artists, the filmmakers, the musicians, the historians, the teachers, anyone who doesn’t parrot the party line.
Kids learn how the Fuhrer saved us from the non-Aryans. Without the cost of World War II, and its aftermath of displaced people, we’d have remained basically British with a comfortable standard of living. We’d have watched the imported new teledrama, “Life of Hitler” (all 4000 episodes) and been content.
Except … in every country under Nazi rule there were resistance groups. It needed armed invasion to defeat the Nazis, but anti-Nazi sentiments were still whispered. People saluted, but only when troops stood near.
We are a large country, with a scattered population. If resistance groups could survive in the fields of France, they’d have thrived in the vast deserts, rainforests, valleys, and mountains of Australia.
We live in a land where people have always had to work together to survive.
During the recent bushfires from last November to January, I saw locals become heroes battling for their community, where official leadership was absent and resources far too few. Unofficial “Mosquitoes” headed into the toughest territory, to face the flames for days at a time – and win.
Those who couldn’t stand on the front line stood behind those who could – cooking, maintaining vehicles, raising funds, or simply texting, “R U OK? How can we help?”
It is still happening in our community under lockdown – groups emerging to make life good, helping the vulnerable, local industries adapting, changing radically within days to survive and keep people working. And no, not everyone is doing this, just as there were plenty of collaborators in occupied Europe, and even more who just did nothing, or looked the other way.
But somewhere in the cliches of Australian mateship there is a core of truth.
When times are hard, in bushfire, flood or cyclone, Australians come together, and we don’t give in.
I don’t know what would have happened to Britain during decades of totalitarian government and a fascist king, but I’m pretty sure of what would have happened here.
Perhaps, in the alternative 2020, I’d be writing this from a secret location in the Araluen Valley, where locals have been leading anti-fascist raids since 1942, part of a nationwide network.
We call ourselves the Wombat Liberation Army because we have dug so deep that the invaders cannot find us. Our Barbed Wireless broadcasts from a cave where bushrangers once hid. The Gestapo have been hunting it for years.
Princess Elizabeth – the true heir to the British throne – escaped as the storm troopers marched through London. She still broadcasts from Tasmania.
There are many questions about what would have happened if a fascist king had not been so deftly and secretly toppled from his throne, but there are two that stay forever relevant.
If you knew evil was occurring, what would you do?
And would you stand with your community, risking life for others?
*Jackie French AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014–2015 Australian Children’s Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016, she became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children’s literature and her advocacy for youth literacy. Jackie is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors and writes across all genres – from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much-loved historical fiction for a variety of age groups.
Her newest book, Lilies, Lies and Love, which thrusts an Australian woman spy into the pre-war turmoil of Edward, Wallis and the rise of the Nazis, is now available in stores.
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Originally published as The Nazi King and the Wombat Liberation Army: What Australia might have been like without Wallis Simpson and the abdication