Duke of Windsor Breaks with UK, kidnapped by Nazis

so I'm reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and there's an interesting tid bit about the Duke of Windsor, where the Duke states to the Spanish Ambassador in Portugal that he's thinking about making a statement breaking with his brother the King and the Government of the UK, than returning to Spain, at the time the Nazis were working hard to kidnap the Duke and his wife and planed to do so if he could be talked into returning to Spain, so what if the Duke has issued such a statement breaking with the government and calling for peace, left for Spain (plans had been laid out for that) and than with the complicity of the Spanish the Nazis had kidnapped the royal couple?
 
so I'm reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and there's an interesting tid bit about the Duke of Windsor, where the Duke states to the Spanish Ambassador in Portugal that he's thinking about making a statement breaking with his brother the King and the Government of the UK, than returning to Spain, at the time the Nazis were working hard to kidnap the Duke and his wife and planed to do so if he could be talked into returning to Spain, so what if the Duke has issued such a statement breaking with the government and calling for peace, left for Spain (plans had been laid out for that) and than with the complicity of the Spanish the Nazis had kidnapped the royal couple?

At a stroke Edward becomes a hate figure in Britain. His statement will be generally derided (that's not to say that some will take his views to heart). There is going to be a very loud clamour for him to be tried for treason and at the end of the war if he is still alive then he may well join William Joyce and John Amery at the end of a noose
 
I don't know if he would be hanged (you can't really just hang a member of the Royal family, traitor or not) but he would probably be loathed into at least exile.
 
If he were to be captured then rather than the embarrassment of having to try a former King-Emperor and the current monarch's elder brother for treason and execute him, I think it would be more likely that he'd have it carefully explained to him that even with a fair trial there wasn't a chance of a not guilty verdict so it would be awfully good of him to do the decent thing and then leave him alone with either a pistol or some form of poison/suicide device. More likely the latter since that would allow them to announce it as natural causes such as say a heart attack due to stress.

The real fun becomes what happens if after trying to make a break for it and escape at some point in their captivity they're held in decent conditions but under guard so that at the end of the war he's in Berlin when it's captured by the Red Army. The communists would of had a field day with that one.
 
If he were to be captured then rather than the embarrassment of having to try a former King-Emperor and the current monarch's elder brother for treason and execute him, I think it would be more likely that he'd have it carefully explained to him that even with a fair trial there wasn't a chance of a not guilty verdict so it would be awfully good of him to do the decent thing and then leave him alone with either a pistol or some form of poison/suicide device. More likely the latter since that would allow them to announce it as natural causes such as say a heart attack due to stress.

The real fun becomes what happens if after trying to make a break for it and escape at some point in their captivity they're held in decent conditions but under guard so that at the end of the war he's in Berlin when it's captured by the Red Army. The communists would of had a field day with that one.

Stalin would have certainly ordered his complete safety and used his potential handover as a bargaining chip with the Brits. I don't think the Red Army would have mindlessly strung him up or anything. What Stalin wanted in return would probably be the Lienz Cossacks, which, as OTL showed, he didn't really need to bargain for anyway, but what did he know?

Once he was back in Britain I agree that he'd either be exiled or put in a room with a loaded revolver and a picture of his mother.
 

Cook

Banned
At a stroke Edward becomes a hate figure in Britain. His statement will be generally derided (that's not to say that some will take his views to heart). There is going to be a very loud clamour for him to be tried for treason and at the end of the war if he is still alive then he may well join William Joyce and John Amery at the end of a noose
Had he gone against the instructions of the British government, voiced support for a peace with the Germans and returned to Spain, only to be kidnapped by the Germans he’d have become a figure of derision and to various degrees contempt, but to a large extent he was that already. All that would change was the degree of ostracism, but given that he was living in France before the war because he and his wife were unwelcome in English society, again, little would change.

Edward would not have been tried for treason for voicing support for peace with Germany; it was not in itself a crime and in the early summer of 1940, before the Battle of Britain, not an uncommon opinion; Lloyd-George even proposed it in parliament. Since he had not provided material aid to the enemy there would have been no treason charge.
 
Edward would not have been tried for treason for voicing support for peace with Germany; it was not in itself a crime and in the early summer of 1940, before the Battle of Britain, not an uncommon opinion; Lloyd-George even proposed it in parliament. Since he had not provided material aid to the enemy there would have been no treason charge.

well Churchill had ordered him to take up the Governorship of the the Bahamas, and warned that failure to do so at once would lead to a court-martial, so choosing to leave to Spain.... also I'm guessing that that Germans would try to make it look like the Duke had come willingly and would have him reading scrips on the radio with-in days (weeks on the outside)
 
Key point in the OP is that he's kidnapped by the Germans... In that case I don not see any treason trial resulting. Now, if he'd defected to the Germans of his own freewill, that'd be a different matter.
 
Key point in the OP is that he's kidnapped by the Germans... In that case I don not see any treason trial resulting. Now, if he'd defected to the Germans of his own freewill, that'd be a different matter.

no doubt the Germans (and Spanish) would want it to look like it was his freewill, and no doubt have both Windsors says so publicly, a number of times, and of course if you had defected wouldn't you say you'd been kidnapped?
 

Cook

Banned
well Churchill had ordered him to take up the Governorship of the the Bahamas, and warned that failure to do so at once would lead to a court-martial, so choosing to leave to Spain...
The Duke had already deserted his post in France; that Churchill would be willing to offer Edward a sinecure as governor of the Bahamas rather than any sort of disciplinary action is an indication of the different standard applied to the royal family, even disgraced and thoroughly despised members of the royal family.
 
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