King Edward VIII was longtime fan of Hitler, toured concentration camp in 1937

• Hitler meets with Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1937 shortly after Edward's abdication as King Edward VIII. BBC photo

BBC, "Within the year Edward, pressurised by the Church of England, the government and royal courtiers, decided to abdicate.

• In October 1937, Edward and his wife - by now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor - visited Nazi Germany.

They met Hitler, dined with his deputy, Rudolf Hess, and

• even visited a concentration camp.

The camp's guard towers were explained away as

• meat stores for the inmates.

Bahamas

At the outbreak of war, the duke served as a military liaison officer in Paris before eventually ending up in Lisbon after the French capitulation.

Hitler, wishing to bring the duke into his camp, made an abortive attempt to coax Edward and his wife to

• Spain, which was then sympathetic to the Nazi cause.

But the duke soon moved on to become Governor of the Bahamas from 1940-45. It was while he was there that he is said to have made his views explicit.

He reputedly told a journalist that "it would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler was overthrown".

To an acquaintance on the island, the Duke reportedly said: "After the war is over and

• Hitler will crush the Americans...We'll take over...

They (the British) don't want me as their King, but I'll be back as their leader."

After the war, the duke and duchess returned to France. He died there in 1972, while the Duchess lived on until 1986.

• Though the official Whitehall view was that "His Royal Highness never wavered in his loyalty to the British cause", the reputation of
  

"the King who never was" seems destined to remain cloaked in ambiguity."

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