<<once again largely German by extraction due to Prince Philip>>
Philip von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg - whose parents had tried to pass as Greeks in order to sit on the Greek throne but had been kicked out in 1922 - came to the UK in 1937. This could have been a recipe for disaster. Philip had been educated in Germany near Lake Konstanz; a place called Schloss Salem, founded by Prince Max von Baden and Kurt Hahn. It was based on the Nazi’s educational philosophy. Hahn initially supported the Nazis until it was discovered he had some Jewish ancestry whereupon he left for Scotland.
Philip’s sister had married a cousin, Prince Christoph of Hesse. Prince Christoph had joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and by 1935 was a standartenführer (colonel) of the SS on the personal staff of Heinrich Himmler and chief of the forschungsamt (directorate of scientific research) - in reality a special intelligence operation using new electronic intelligence gathering methods. Their son was named Karl Adolf after Hitler and Philip afterwards took a keen educational interest in his nephew. Perhaps the family was spared some embarrassment when the Prince of Hesse was killed on active service in 1943. His sister was killed in an Allied bombing raid.
Another of Philip’s sisters Cecilia was married to Georg Donatus, Grand Duke of Hesse-by-Rhine, also a great-grandson of Queen Victoria. They died when the Luftwaffe Junker aircraft, personally supplied by Herman Göring to allow them to attend Georg’s brother’s wedding, crashed. Another relative of Philip was the Prussian Prince Bernhard von Lippe who joined the Nazis while studying at the University of Berlin in 1934 and worked openly in the motorised SS. According to Newsweek (April 5, 1976) it was known that Prince Bernhard was a member of a special SS intelligence unit in IG Farben and this had originally been pointed out in testimony at the Nuremberg trials. Bernhard resigned from the SS, in 1937, when he married the future Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Adolf Hitler forwarded a congratulatory message though Bernhard, who became a naturalised Dutchman
Philip and Bernhard remained not just distant relatives but close friends and in October, 1961, founded the World Wildlife Fund. Prince Philip rather ruined his image more recently when, doubtless filled with nostalgia for his days at Schloss Salem, he told a journalist that he hoped to be ‘reincarnated as a deadly virus’ to solve ‘population problems’ in the world !
At the age of sixteen, in November, 1937, Philip joined his former headmaster Kurt Hahn in Scotland where he had established a new school called Gordonstoun. Hahn was also advising the UK Foreign Office on German affairs and urging a policy of appeasement based on appeals to ‘centrist’ Nazis.
Things were upset when, in spite of the strong appeasement lobby among the English establishment, England and Germany went to war again. What’s more Hitler had developed a plan to invade England and replace George VI with his older brother Edward (who had abdicated in 1936). Edward was much more amenable to Adolf and his ideas. Philip, who had just joined the Royal Navy, was told to change his name to that of his uncle - not von Battenburg but Mountbatten.
Philip von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg - whose parents had tried to pass as Greeks in order to sit on the Greek throne but had been kicked out in 1922 - came to the UK in 1937. This could have been a recipe for disaster. Philip had been educated in Germany near Lake Konstanz; a place called Schloss Salem, founded by Prince Max von Baden and Kurt Hahn. It was based on the Nazi’s educational philosophy. Hahn initially supported the Nazis until it was discovered he had some Jewish ancestry whereupon he left for Scotland.
Philip’s sister had married a cousin, Prince Christoph of Hesse. Prince Christoph had joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and by 1935 was a standartenführer (colonel) of the SS on the personal staff of Heinrich Himmler and chief of the forschungsamt (directorate of scientific research) - in reality a special intelligence operation using new electronic intelligence gathering methods. Their son was named Karl Adolf after Hitler and Philip afterwards took a keen educational interest in his nephew. Perhaps the family was spared some embarrassment when the Prince of Hesse was killed on active service in 1943. His sister was killed in an Allied bombing raid.
Another of Philip’s sisters Cecilia was married to Georg Donatus, Grand Duke of Hesse-by-Rhine, also a great-grandson of Queen Victoria. They died when the Luftwaffe Junker aircraft, personally supplied by Herman Göring to allow them to attend Georg’s brother’s wedding, crashed. Another relative of Philip was the Prussian Prince Bernhard von Lippe who joined the Nazis while studying at the University of Berlin in 1934 and worked openly in the motorised SS. According to Newsweek (April 5, 1976) it was known that Prince Bernhard was a member of a special SS intelligence unit in IG Farben and this had originally been pointed out in testimony at the Nuremberg trials. Bernhard resigned from the SS, in 1937, when he married the future Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Adolf Hitler forwarded a congratulatory message though Bernhard, who became a naturalised Dutchman
Philip and Bernhard remained not just distant relatives but close friends and in October, 1961, founded the World Wildlife Fund. Prince Philip rather ruined his image more recently when, doubtless filled with nostalgia for his days at Schloss Salem, he told a journalist that he hoped to be ‘reincarnated as a deadly virus’ to solve ‘population problems’ in the world !
At the age of sixteen, in November, 1937, Philip joined his former headmaster Kurt Hahn in Scotland where he had established a new school called Gordonstoun. Hahn was also advising the UK Foreign Office on German affairs and urging a policy of appeasement based on appeals to ‘centrist’ Nazis.
Things were upset when, in spite of the strong appeasement lobby among the English establishment, England and Germany went to war again. What’s more Hitler had developed a plan to invade England and replace George VI with his older brother Edward (who had abdicated in 1936). Edward was much more amenable to Adolf and his ideas. Philip, who had just joined the Royal Navy, was told to change his name to that of his uncle - not von Battenburg but Mountbatten.