News / Politics

UK Royals could sue newspaper over Nazi salute film

Sunday, 19 July 2015 9:27 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 19 July 2015 9:32 AM ]

Buckingham Palace considering legal action against The Sun Newspaper over publishing of leaked video footage showing the Royals doing the Nazi salute.

The Royal Family which is under pressure over a leaked film could sue the newspaper that published the clip showing members of the royal family, including the Queen as a young child, doing the Nazi Salute.

Sources say that they are investigating whether criminal activity or any copyright issues can be taken forward for legal action.

An investigation has been launched at the Palace to try and find out how the 17 second black-and-white clip, a section of a longer video, was taken out of the archives and handed to The Sun newspaper.

Buckingham Palace has said "It is disappointing that film, shot eight decades ago and apparently from Her Majesty's personal family archive, has been obtained and exploited in this manner."

The grainy black and white family home video from the 1930’s shows a man and a woman, with two young children playing, and then doing the nazi salute.

The lady is the future Queen Mother, the girl is the future Queen Elizabeth, and the man is her uncle; who would shortly after become King Edward VIII.

The video was published exclusively by The Sun newspaper that reported “while there is clearly no suggestion that the Queen or Queen Mother were ever Nazi sympathizers, Edward’s links with Hitler and fascism are very well documented.”

Then, Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, and later King Edward VIII, the monarch was a Nazi sympathizer and remained pro-Nazi even after war broke out. He once gave the Nazi salute to Hitler and claimed he was “not a bad chap”

Expert historians have called the footage “remarkable”, “shocking” and “historic” and are now calling on the Royals to open the archives to reveal the Monarchy’s full family ties with the Nazi regime in the 1930’s.

The Royal Archives are known to include correspondence between the Royals and the Nazi regime, but unlike the National Archives, they are not obliged to release material on a regular basis.