Ministers told: release file on 'Nazi' Simpson

Calls have been made for the release of secret documents in the Public Record Office after fresh allegations about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's Nazi links.

As Edward VIII, the Duke announced in 1936 that he was abdicating to "marry the woman I love". But FBI records in the US have shed new light on the saga, suggesting the couple were removed because the Conser- vative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin found their support for Hitler unacceptable.

The files will revive suspicions that the Duke and Duchess were lined up to accede to the throne, if Hitler had invaded the UK and disposed of King George VI. They show Wallis Simpson had been the lover of a top Nazi, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador to Britain before the war.

According to the FBI files, a minor German royal, Duke Charles Alexander of Wurtemberg, said "he knew definitely that von Ribbentrop while in England sent the then Wallis Simpson 17 carnations every day. The 17 supposedly represented the number of times they had slept together."

The Duchess stayed in contact with von Ribbentrop when she and the Duke were living in France in 1940. Churchill prevented the couple falling into German hands by making the Duke Governor of the Bahamas, in effect exiling them.

Last night, the Labour MP Louise Ellman said she was tabling questions to the department of Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor, seeking the release of UK records. "The public has a right to know the truth of what happened in those crucial times of our history," she said.