Dramatist #JonathanMyerson, an old friend and colleague of Penelope's, chatted to us about why he chose to spend so much time living with Hitler and his cronies in order to create the 8-play drama for @bbcRadio4  #Nazistheroadtopower 

The summer home - the Berghof - which Hitler had built above the town of Berchtesgaden in the Alps. An architect's drawing of the chalet was found on the wall in the Führer bunker

Well known visitors were former Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson on honeymoon in 1937, Chamberlain in 1938.

Choose the right moment and they say you can explain the whole of history. Well, maybe. But there are some moments when a whole lot of things do seem to come together. Here’s one of them. 2 May 1937

It’s Sunday afternoon, 2 May 1937. We’re in the garden of a chateau a few miles south of the town of Tours in France. Our moment lasts just a split second, enough time for a photograph. A woman is standing rather awkwardly in a flowerbed with a bunch of pussy willow in her hand. She’s wearing a pure white dress which glows in the sunshine. The photographer is Cecil Beaton. The woman is Wallis Simpson, who, in a month’s time, is going to marry the ex-king of England.

But what everyone notices about this photo is not Wallis Simpson, or the pussy willow, but the design smeared down the front of her dress. It’s … a large orange lobster. A lobster?

Wallis Simpson wears a Schiaparelli ‘waltz dress’ with a Salvador Dali red lobster down her skirt. The setting is a French chateau belonging to the American businessman who a few months later will mastermind the Windsors’ honeymoon tour of Nazi Germany...
 

#7 'That Dress' - Ep 1 '2 May 1937: the King, his wife, their Führer, the LOBSTER

Wallis Simpson and former Edward VIII on their honeymoon visit to Nazi Germany, organised by Charles Bedaux, a Franco-American entrepreneur and owner of the chateau where the Beaton photo shoot took place

Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nazi Germany 1938-45, and his wooing of Edward VIII

You’ll often read a story that Wallis had an affair with Ribbentrop, that he used to send her seventeen roses every day because that was the number of times they’d slept together. There’s no evidence for that. But we do know, because the police reported it to the government, that Wallis organised an introduction for Ribbentrop to David – later Edward VIII - Prince of Wales.

The Nazi regime was often chaotic, based on the principal of the survival of the fittest. So Ribbentrop – with Hitler’s backing – set up his own private foreign office in Berlin in 1934,  the Dienststelle Ribbentrop (the Ribbentrop Department) working against the official German foreign office and more in line with Hitler. Ribbentrop became a kind of roving German ambassador. But his most important task was to build good relations with Britain.

As we see in another series at the History Café, Hitler had no intention of invading Britain. What he wanted was an alliance of empires, the Brits’ around the world, his in Europe.

And from 1934, Ribbentrop spent a good deal of time in London, trying to make contact with sympathetic Brits.  Since Wallis Simpson spent a good deal of her time rubbing … er … shoulders with diplomats, and since she was now the heir to the throne’s mistress, it’s would be no surprise at all if Herr von Ribbentrop used her as a convenient channel to approach the future king. She was certainly invited to a string of events at the German embassy.