According to People magazine, the Palace is enraged over the release of a home movie from 1933 showing the royal family-including a six-year-old Queen Elizabeth II-giving the infamous “heil Hitler” salute.
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In the video, the young princess and her sister Margaret, 3, are shown dancing and smiling as the future British king, Edward VIII, instructs his nieces how to perform the Nazi Heil Hitler salute.
On the other hand, The Sun’s managing editor, Sting Abell said, “the footage was obtained by the newspaper “in a legitimate fashion”, and that its publication was “not a criticism of the Queen or the Queen Mum””.
The film, entitled Prince Philip: The Plot to Make a King also features an interview with Philip’s nephew Prince Rainer von Hessen who shares the unpublished memoirs of his mother – Philip’s sister Sophie.
Dickie Arbiter, a former Buckingham Palace press secretary, said the Palace would be investigating.
Asked if the newspaper was right to publish, he told the BBC1: “That is a matter for The Sunday”.
At the time today’s long-reigning queen was Princess Elizabeth, aged around six, when the black-and-white home movie released by The Sun newspaper was shot in 1933 or 1934.
The Royal Family is not without its skeletons, and for so many years, England has been trying to forget some scandalous details of its colorful past.
Edward had renounced the throne in 1936 after less than a year to marry a divorced American socialite, Wallis Simpson.
HollywoodLifers, what do you think about this video?
“If the Queen does another Nazi Salute let me know about it. Until then…she was 7 and it didn’t even have it’s eventual context”.
“Most people will see these pictures in their proper context and time”, said a Palace source.
He’s echoed by Dr. Karina Urbach, of London’s Institute of Historical Research, who remarked: “The Queen has a proud Second World War record and sense of duty to her country and no one would ever suggest she was sympathetic to Nazi Germany”.
A spokesman for Buckingham Palace said: “There is an inquiry going on to find the source of the footage and until that inquiry is completed we would not give out any further information”. “To imply anything else is misleading and dishonest”.
Elizabeth, now 89, is widely popular in Britain where she is seen as a figure of stability who rarely expresses emotion or personal opinion in public.
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While a royal source insisted that the queen would not have known the significance of the gesture at such a young age, the images threaten to cause deep embarrassment for the 89-year-old monarch.
