All language subtitles for The.King.Who.Fooled.Hitler.2019.WEBRip.XviD.AC3-XVID-English

D-Day.

Behind the invasion lies a
secret story never before told,

of how King George VI,
the Queen,

and even Princess Elizabeth,
the queen-to-be,

were enlisted by MI5 to
fool Hitler about D-Day.

In this story of double
agents and decoys,

a groundbreaking investigation,

uncovers for the first time,
the identity of the grandest

and most secret of them all,

George VI himself.

The investigation further
reveals how he was entrusted

with one of Britain's greatest
state secrets of World War II.

How the royal household
managed to lose it whilst it

was in the King's possession,

that only the intervention of
the Queen Mother saved the day,

and how the monarchy emerged
from the shame of appeasement

to put itself at the heart
of Britain's secret state.

Ever since World War II,
George VI's true role in D-Day

remained a secret.

Then Professor Richard Aldrich
of Warwick University,

and Dr. Rory Cormac of
Nottingham University,

made a tantalizing discovery
in the diaries of the

King's Private Secretary
Sir Alan Lascelles.

Alan Lascelles, known as Tommy,

was the King's
Private Secretary,

so the most senior courtier
in the land and went on to be

Private Secretary for
Queen Elizabeth II as well.

He was very old
fashioned, an old, world kind of man.

And he left a diary.

And there's one very
interesting clue in his diary

giving insight,
a snippet of insight,

into the King's
personal role in the

D, -Day Deception Operation.

Lascelles' diary records
a visit to Buckingham Palace

in March 1944 by MI5 officers.

Friday 3rd of March 1944.

Two MI Men called
on me yesterday,

and explained how the King's
visits in the next few months

could assist the elaborate
cover scheme whereby we are

endeavoring to bamboozle the
German Intelligence over the

time and place for 'Overlord.'

And this is a
really significant clue,

because it just gives us a little hint
that the King not only knew

about one of the biggest
secrets of the war,

but had an active and
personal role in it himself.

Then a second
discovery gave further

evidence of the King's role.

In 1950, five years
after the war's end,

the MI5 officer who'd run the
D-Day deception operation,

John Masterman,
sent a top secret document

to Buckingham Palace.

It was an internal report
Masterman had written for MI5,

and it described every detail
of the World War II deception

operations he'd run.

Masterman called it
his 'secret book'.

This is one of the most secret documents

in British government.

It captures a whole new art
form of secret service,

or at least an art form taken
to a whole new level that

Britain had developed during
the second world war.

Masterman sent his
'secret book' to the King

care of Alan Lascelles,

who was still the King's
private secretary.

Lascelles replied to
acknowledge safe receipt.

Dear Masterman,
Thank you so much for trusting me

with the book.

I'm most grateful.

It looks thrilling.

I know that my
master will read it with as much interest

and admiration as
I shall myself.

Yours sincerely, Alan Lascelles.

These two discoveries,

the first hinting at the
King's secret role in D-Day,

the second showing that he
was close enough to MI5 to be

allowed sight of such a top,
secret document,

sent Aldrich and
Cormac on a quest.

What really was George VI's
wartime role?

And how had he come to
be so trusted by MI5

when, at the beginning
of his reign,

it had viewed him
with suspicion?

In December 1936
George's brother,

Edward VIII, abdicated.

The British Intelligence
Services suspected Edward of

being a Nazi sympathizer.

They even put him under
secret surveillance,

and tapped his phone.

MI5's suspicions about
the monarchy continued,

particularly the new King's
attitude to the Prime Minister

Neville Chamberlain's
policy of appeasing Hitler.

The intelligence services are watching

everybody who was connected
with appeasement.

Chamberlain and also
the royal family,

because there are continual
emissaries to Germany,

and of course, there's the
shadow of Edward VIII.

Edward VIII
who is known to be close to Hitler,

close to the Germans.

MI5 hoped that
George would not follow in his

brother's footsteps.

Everyone associates
appeasement with Edward VIII.

But King George wasn't
a Nazi sympathizer,

but he was an appeaser,
because he did not want to go

to war with Nazi Germany.

Not only had he lived

through the horrors of
the First World War,

but also feared that a war
might threaten to destroy

the, the British Monarchy.

Nazism, it didn't have such
a threat to the British

establishment or the British
Monarchy in a way that say

Communism did.

So there's this desire here to
stave off war at all costs.

And here is the paper which bears his name

upon it as well as mine.

For MI5, the Munich
agreement of September 1938

was a pivotal moment in its
battle against appeasement.

The Security Service
expected King George VI

to stay neutral.

The King
is a constitutional monarch.

It is not his job to weigh
on the biggest and most

controversial political
issues of the day.

Instead, in this letter,

unearthed by Rory Cormac,
George wrote privately to Chamberlain,

leaving no doubt where he stood.

My Dear Prime Minister,
I am sending this letter...

By my Lord Chamberlain,

to ask you if you will come
straight to Buckingham Palace,

so that I can express to
you personally my heartfelt

congratulations on the success
of your visit to Munich.

Believe me.

Yours very sincerely and
gratefully, George RI.

What we see here is the King
personally backing one faction of,

of, of the Cabinet,

Chamberlain's
appeasement faction.

To the extent that
after Chamberlain comes back from Munich,

the King invites him
straight round to Buckingham Palace

and even engineers a photo shoot on the,
on the balcony where again,

he is publicly
and visibly aligning himself

with the political
approach of appeasement.

MI5 knows that the King is on

board with appeasement,

and remarkably the King
is actually vying

with Chamberlain to establish
relations with Hitler.

The King drafts a
letter to Hitler.

He says, "This is
a letter to Hitler",

not as one statesman to
another, but one ex-serviceman

to another...

There's no doubt that the King

is as keen on appeasement
as is Chamberlain.

And the security agencies
are not sure what they

think about this.

The Foreign Office
blocked the King's letter.

Hitler's invasion of
Czechoslovakia and Poland

finally put pay to appeasement.

With Britain at war,
MI5 realized the King

could no longer be excluded
from vital matters of state.

Suspicion needed to
be replaced by trust.

The opening moves
were tentative.

The Intelligence
Services agreed to special arrangements

being made to supply
confidential

information to George VI
on a daily basis.

So we're talking about
confidential stuff,

nothing really classified,
nothing really top secret.

And a duty officer from
the cabinet war room attended

Buckingham Palace every day
and carried with him some of

this confidential material.

But they didn't trust
the Palace enough to

leave it there.

He stood with the King asthe King read it
and the Private Secretaries

read it and then he
carried it back home,

back to, back to
the cabinet office.

On May 10th, 1940,
German armies rolled into Belgium,

then France.

The King had no option but
to ask Winston Churchill

to be Prime Minister.

George's role as a
symbol of national unity

was now crucial.

But full trust of the royal
family remained elusive.

The King had to find
a way to earn it.

George VI,
once a supporter of appeasing Hitler,

now King of a nation at war,

still lacked the
full trust of MI5.

His relationship with
his new Prime Minister,

Winston Churchill,
was not an easy one either.

Like MI5, Churchill had been
on opposite sides to the King

over appeasement and
temperamentally,

the two men were very different,

Churchill charismatic
and bullish,

George shy and reticent.

Then, as war tested
both men's mettle,

came a critical moment.

Now Adolf Hitler stood,

just as Napoleon had stood
more than 100 years before,

and looked across the English Channel
to the one fighting obstacle

that stood between him
and world domination.

In the autumn of 1940, MI6,

fearing a Nazi invasion,
made preparations to

evacuate the royal
family to Canada.

Churchill put the intelligence
agency's intricate plan

to the King.

It's elaborate.

There are converted
armored cars.

There's a chain
of stately homes.

The royal family are going
to be rushed to the port at

Liverpool, taken away to Canada.

The king's response is, "We're not going".

Not even the children are
going to be evacuated.

Everybody is going to stay,
everybody is going to fight.

At this point, what they're
expecting is a German invasion

led by German paratroopers,
and the king says,

"I want to get my German."

I want to kill at least
one of the invaders,

and we will all
fight to the last...

When Churchill hears about this he says,

"Well, really, you need to be able to kill
more than one German".

Out of the blue,
a specially gift,

wrapped package arrived
at Buckingham Palace.

The sender's address was
marked '10 Downing Street.'

Inside was a gleaming
early Christmas present.

Churchill sends the king a Tommy Gun.

And we know, actually,
after this, not only the king,

but the royal family
and indeed equerries,

they're all practicing
at Windsor

and several other locations.

With pistols, with rifles,

but also with
Churchill's Tommy Gun.

The queen actually
enjoys taking pop shots at rats.

It's the Blitz,

there's lots of rats in
Buckingham Palace garden.

The King is actually
showing this off,

to Cabinet ministers,
to visiting diplomats.

And he's sending
out the message,

"We're not gonna run.
We're not gonna run".

And so it's, its real,
but it's also a performance.

But the King still
did not have access to

all state secrets.

At times, he resorted
instead to a DIY approach.

Through the royal families of
Europe to whom he was related,

he already had an intelligence
network of his own.

George's personal use of his
own private network could

potentially create problems
for the Secret Service,

and the Prime Minister too.

One intelligence officer
recorded that the King...

Received a couple of
bottles of 1941 Burgundy,

one of which he served to
Churchill at one of their

regular Tuesday
luncheons 'a deux.'

Churchill asked sharply how
the King had got hold of it,

and was much put out to be told
"Kings have their Secrets too."

The King might well be joking

but Churchill's a bit alarmed.

Churchill fears that the
King has resurrected some of

the Royal family's private
network of, of contacts

to gather his own information.

The King was able
to secure the wartime vintage

from occupied France, because the royal
pilot Mouse Fielden

also happened to fly missions
for the Special Operations Executive,

or SOE, which Churchill
had created to,

in his own words,
set Europe ablaze.

And if that wasn't enough,
George VI's wife the queen

had her own private
contacts too.

We have to bear in mind,

the Queen actually is someone
who has the closest relations

with the intelligence services.

Her brother's in SOE.

So actually, Buckingham
Palace is almost an outpost,

an outstation, if you like,
of the intelligence services.

And so, the solution
would seem to be to give the

King a bit more
access to official

British secret material.

Slowly but surely,
the King was inching his way

to the heart of
the Secret Service.

And finally in 1943, George VI
took an active part in the war

of deception.

His first personal encounter
with it was the use of

disinformation to fool the
enemy about a hazardous

mission he embarked
on in June 1943.

The Maltese were a people
of old traditions and simple

manners of life.

But Hitler turned that
island into a target

of perpetual fire.

The King flew to
North Africa and then the

island of Malta to thank its
people for resisting three

years of Nazi siege
and bombardment.

But with the Luftwaffe still
menacing Malta's skies,

there was real danger.

British intelligence's
answer was Operation Loader.

Operation Loader was a
deception operation in which

the King was
personally involved.

It was the attempt
to provide cover

for his visit to North Africa.

And it's very, very dangerous
to escort the King across the

Mediterranean where Germans
had been in active operation.

And so, Buckingham Palace put
out a false line that the King

was visiting troops in
Portsmouth at this time.

And yet there was a
mysterious General Lyon who was on board

the plane and who
landed in Algiers.

Stories appeared in
the press that 'General Lyon'

was visiting General Eisenhower,

Supreme Commander in
Chief of Allied Forces,

in North Africa.

On June the 7th 1943
he landed in Algiers.

For Eisenhower at least, it was no
surprise that 'General Lyon'

was none other than - the King Emperor,
- George VI.

After leaving Algiers,
General Lyon carried on to

Malta and this was
an important morale

boosting mission.

The people of Malta had been
under barricade for a long,

long time and really
appreciated the King making a

very dangerous journey.

Operation Loader was
a success and George returned

home to Buckingham
Palace safe and sound.

It showed that the King could
be a valuable asset to the

deception planners.

A few months later he was
invited to a day out with the

Special Operations Executive.

In November 1943,
the entire Royal Family,

visit RAF Tempsford.

This is not any RAF station.

This is the location of the
secret special duties flights

that take the agents
of SOE and the agents

of MI6 to Europe.

All the James Bond material is laid out

for the Royal Family to see.

There are daggers in handbags.

There are compasses hidden
in the top of lipsticks.

There's all sorts of
exploding devices.

SOE like to disguise
explosives as innocent

materials, wine bottles,
dead animals,

and the favorite of course,

is explosive disguised
as horse poo.

The Queen is
absolutely thrilled by this and she calls

the King over and says,
"Look at this.

This is amazing".

Exploding horse poo.

The King, it seemed,
had earned his spurs.

A few months later,
he would be invited to join the

greatest deception
operation of the war.

In March 1944 with
the visit to Buckingham Palace

of two MI5 men, noted in his diary
by King's Private Secretary

Alan Lascelles,
George the VII was invited

to join the Allies greatest
deception operation of the war,

fooling the Nazis about
the timing and location

of Operation Overlord,
the D-Day landings.

The man who devised the
deception operation was the

Oxford don, John Masterman.

Back in August 1914, Masterman had been
teaching in Germany

and was interned for the
duration of the war.

But he used his time there
to learn the language,

and study the mind set
of his German captors.

It was
important in many ways because

if you knew how they thought,

it was much easier to,
to deceive them

and lead them astray.

Even with the, with the spies that the

Germans sent over to us,
he had a relationship with them,

and in the end,
he got them to spy for us.

When war broke out,
Masterman was signed up to the

intelligence corps and then
MI5 where he helped devise the

Double Cross system,
which used double agents to feed

misleading information
to the Nazis.

He was a Chairman of a
subcommittee which dealt with

the Double Cross System.

The 20 Committee.

XX.

They were actually in
control of 39 spies

working in different
areas in Europe.

And in England.

They were all deceiving
the Germans in some way

or another.

One of his team was
a long serving MI5 officer,

Tar Robertson.

Tar Robertson was
involved in working with

Masterman to coordinate the
activities of all of these

double agents to make sure
that the Germans were

sufficiently confused and
misled and that this very

intricate and
sophisticated web of lies,

misinformation and some
real information,

was coordinated in such a way as
to not breach British security

whilst misleading the Germans.

The D-Day deception,

code named Operation Fortitude,
would be Double Cross's

greatest challenge.

Key to it were double agents
known only as 'Garbo',

'Freak' and 'Brutus'.

Agent 'Brutus' was a Polish
air force pilot who'd been

parachuted by theBritish into
German occupied France.

The Nazis captured
and tortured him,

saying 'return to England and
spy for us or be executed'.

He pretended to change sides
but his loyalty to the allied

cause never wavered.

When he eventually came
to England he contacted

the intelligence services here,
presenting them with a,

what he believed to be an
invaluable opportunity for him

to work as I say, really as a,
as a triple agent on the

belief that the Germans were
asking him to work and

supply information to them.

And at that point you start to see over
the next two years,

this extraordinary build,
up of information in which

he is part of the Double Cross
Network supplying the Germans

information to make them
believe that the landings

would take place in Calais.

The Nazis knew from
the massing of troops in

southern England that
an invasion was coming.

The allies' aim was to deceive
them into thinking the main

landings would be at Calais,
anywhere else, like Normandy,

was just a sideshow.

The King's movements,
as reported in the British press,

were a central part
of the deception plan.

Rory Cormac has done a search
of nearly 23,000 local and

national newspapers printed
in Britain between March

and August 1944,
three months before,

and two months after D-Day.

This historical detective work
reveals that what has been

seen until now as a
random series of morale,

boosting royal visits to troop
concentrations

was in fact a calculated program,

carefully choreographed
with misleading

reports from the
double cross agents.

Here is a cutting
from The Times newspaper,

dated 10th of March 1944.

And the headline is,
"Canadians Inspected by the King."

MI5's plan was to drip feed

the Germans information
which would make them think

they were piecing
together the jig-saw

of the secret plan for D-Day.

Newspapers covered the King's visits to
key attack formations,

but their locations were
not revealed in print.

Tantalizing clues however,
made the Nazis think they were

doing the detective work,
like reports from the Double Cross

agents in London, which helped identify
the troops the King

was visiting.

The whole secret
of deception is to get the

Germans to work these
things out for themselves.

The first part of
this deception was to suggest

to the Nazis that a full,
scale invasion or, perhaps,

a large coastal raid,
might be imminent.

So, that same day, double
agent Brutus fed back to

Berlin false information that ordinary
traffic to the Isle of Wight

had been stopped, to free the roads
for troop movements.

Because
the King is down in Hove,

not far from the Isle of Wight,
it suggests to the Germans

that something might be up,

maybe that war planning
is being stepped up.

There might be troops
movements to the isle of Wight.

Visiting troops in Hove
suggests that there might be

some sort of attack on Normandy,

but would there just be a
diversionary attack to, to draw

German attention away from
the real invasion of Calais?

The King's visit is
working like a highlighter pen.

He's identifying particular
units that later they want the

Germans to follow.

The suggestion that
the invasion was only days away

was a bluff, there were still nearly
three months to D-Day.

The second part of the
deception was about location.

Initially Hove implied some
kind of force leaving from

Sussex to Normandy.

Then one of the Double Cross
agents wired Berlin to say that the

troops there were moved just after the
King's visit to Dover,

directly opposite Calais.

It's aimed to
confuse the Germans,

about location of forces,
about the order of battle and

where and when the ultimate
invasion is going to come from.

Another deception
was to draw Nazi attention

away from the south to
the north of England.

This time royal involvement
was to be ratcheted up,

and for the first time,
the queen, and queen, to be,

Princess Elizabeth were
enlisted in the ruse.

This
article comes from the Times,

on the 24th March 1944.

The headline is, "The
King With His Army",

Tour with the
Queen and Princess."

The king goes north
on the royal train to visit

Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

These are attack formations.

They're
in the east of the country,

so this very much reinforces
the deception story they might

be going east to Calais.

They might actually be going
east to attack Scandinavia.

It was the
King's seventh such inspection,

in recent weeks, but it was
the first time the Princess

had made a full, length
tour, with her parents.

When you have the queen,

when you have
Princess Elizabeth,

the whole royal family there,
dramatic forces.

Airborne gliders, snipers, special forces,

this just makes for really
fantastic news coverage.

So, this is a way in which the
king is using the royal family

to amplify the
process of deception.

The King's role
in Double Cross was working

exactly as planned.

On the 18th April, the King's Private
Secretary Alan Lascelles

wrote in his diary.

Overlord has done a
good job with the 'elaborate cover scheme'

intended to
bamboozle the Germans,

and seems to have succeeded.

And according to
Masterman's nephew David,

the King was too keen to
be kept fully in the loop

by John Masterman.

I think he was informed about
everything that was going on,

I'm sure he said that
the king wanted

to be informed about everything.

A week later
George inspected troop

formations in Hampshire.

The visit was then spun back to Berlin by
MI5's double agents,

Garbo and Freak, its aim to create
confusion about

what was real and what
was just rehearsal.

Agent Garbo's report
just a few days after the King

makes this visit, backs up the
narrative by suggesting that

invasion might be
imminent from Hampshire.

Freak's report on the
very same day adds even more

credibility to this narrative
by suggesting that there might

well be some military exercises
in the Channel and crucially,

Freak warned that
they couldn't rule out that

this was an actual operation.

And this is significant
because it's designed to

confuse the Germans.

The Germans are thinking when
it doesn't materialize well

maybe it was just
a, an exercise.

And this lowers their
defenses for when the

ultimate D-Day comes.

The Royal deception
operation was elaborate

and complex.

But it was not just limited
to the British mainland.

In May 1944, the King embarked
on his most dangerous mission,

to Scapa Flow in
the Orkney Islands.

Again, the paper omitted
George's destination,

but the mention of one clue
made it very clear to the

Nazis where the monarch was.

This is the
front page of The Daily Mail,

from the 15th of May 1944.

We see the report talking about
cold and lonely Northern waters.

And the headline is, "The King
Takes Leave of His Fleet."

It says, "The King has taken
leave of his captains in the"

Home Fleet, and has bidden them,

their ships' companies
and their ships God Speed

before battle.

This part of the deception plan,

called Fortitude North,
was designed to suggest

that a full scale allied
invasion of Nazi,

occupied Norway
was being prepared.

The king's visit
to the Orkneys is remarkable.

The Orkneys are
further away from

London than they
are from Norway.

And of course, because they're
quite close to Norway,

they are fiercely patrolled
by German U-boats,

by German fighters.

This is a hazardous
mission, so the question is,

why is the king going there?

And the answer is to give
credence to Fortitude North.

So the king is taking actually
quite a significant risk.

A few days
after the King's visit

double agent Garbo warned Berlin that an
allied invasion of Norway

was imminent and that it
might be the first attack

in the invasion of Europe.

Its a deliberately
complex deception operation,

and this is why Double Cross
and Fortitude is such a

fascinating operation, and ultimately
a successful operation,

because it was so nuanced,

because there were so many
moving parts which were being

coordinated by, by MI5.

On June, the 6th 1944,

a fleet of 7,000 ships emerged
from the early morning mist,

heading for the
Normandy beaches.

The panic ridden German
defenders radioed for

urgent reinforcements.

The response
from Berlin is somnolent.

On the day of the
invasion, Hitler is sleeping late.

He's having a lie in.

No one wants to wake him.

And when he does wake up,
and he's told about this,

because it's Normandy,
because he's been fed all this

deception material,
he doesn't believe

this is the main attack.

He thinks this is
a coastal raid.

And so, really, he
just shrugs it off.

The armies of the United
Nations have made their first

landings on the soils
of Western Europe.

This is D-Day.

The King,
who had played a vital role in the

deception plan
broadcast to his people.

Four years ago,

our Nation and
Empire stood alone

against an overwhelming enemy,

with our backs to the wall.

This time, the challenge
is not to fight

to survive,

but to fight to win
the final victory

for the good cause.

A week later, the King and
Prime Minister Winston Churchill,

sifted through
piles of MI6 classified

reports on D-Day.

The King, once denied full
access to all intelligence

material because his family
was seen as a security risk,

was now allowed
to see everything.

Two days later an eminent
dignitary arrived in Normandy

for the final phase
of Double Cross.

British intelligence would
maintain the ruse that D-Day

was only a diversionary
attack right up until August,

to give allied troops time to
consolidate their positions.

The eminent dignitary
was in fact none other,

than King George VI.

The Germans thought the Kings
presence was a further attempt

to distract the
attention from Calais.

But, as it would turn out,
one extraordinary further

twist would show that George
still could not be entirely

trusted with a secret.

At the war's end,
John Masterman,

key player behind double cross system
and D-Day deceptions,

wrote a top secret MI5 report,

detailing every aspect of
the Double Cross system.

It was also a template for
future MI5 and MI6 operations.

This is one
of the most secret documents in

British government,
it's a form of strategic leadership

that Britain doesn't
want to give away.

During the Second World War,
during the 1950s,

during the 1960s,
and indeed Britain has set up a

special department called the
Department of Forward Plans,

particularly to keep this kind
of specialist expertise alive.

Masterman called
the report his 'Secret Book'.

In 1950, five years after the
war when he'd returned to

academic life at
Oxford University,

he sent his one and only
personal copy of it to

Buckingham Palace,
for the private attention

of King George VI.

The King's private secretary,
Sir Alan Lascelles,

wrote to Masterman that
it had arrived safely.

Dear Masterman,
I think it would be remiss of us both...

If we didn't exchange a receipt.

Here it is.

Lascelles passed the
secret book on to the King.

But then, as the
months ticked by,

came an extraordinary
twist to the story.

With no sign of his only copy
of his secret book being

returned by Buckingham Palace,

Masterman was becoming
a worried man.

On the 4th
of October 1951 Masterman writes

from Worcester College Oxford
where he's provost and he

writes to Lascelles,
and he says...

I'm sorry to
trouble you at a time like this...

Of course the king is,
is increasingly ill.

But I'm wondering
whether I ought to send you a

reminder about the book
which I lent to you.

I see that it went in December
and I'm beginning to be

worried, probably
quite unnecessarily...

Lest it be overlooked.

Yours sincerely, John Masterman.

And of course, it's
almost a year that this book has been

out of his possession.

Lascelles was
in an unenviable position.

The King was never an
easy person to approach,

and now the lung cancer from
which he was slowly dying,

made any approach on a
matter so serious as MI5's prize missing,

perhaps even lost,
top secret document,

extremely awkward.

I think he
admired him as a person,

but he was at times difficult.

He wasn't very easy
because he did get very emotional about

all sorts of things and
needed help with his work.

Well I think he used
to go off in a rage,

and almost like having a fit,

and then people just had to
soothe him and calm him down.

The queen was very important
in that way I think.

On this day of mourning
is a London silent and still.

Its citizens remembering
that here in this very city

their King had faced with them
the dangers of the last war.

On February, the 6th 1952,

the King died.

There was still no sign
of the secret book.

Masterman feared the worst,
either it had got into the

wrong hands or it
was lost forever,

along with the late George VI.

Even more worryingly the
incoming boss of MI5 was

determined to tighten security.

Masterman, now in
desperate straits,

wrote one last
time to Lascelles.

Dear Lascelles,
once more I have to apologize for

ringing you when you must be
overwhelmed with anguish.

I want to ask to ask if you
can manage to get my secret book

to me.

I am nervous, I
hope needlessly...

With the change of
Director General.

And here is referring
to Sir Dick White...

I can't very well say

that I haven't got it,
or say where it is.

Masterman's in a panic,
because he's now convinced

that the book is missing,
and you can tell he's in a

panic because he's not just writing,
he's also ringing up.

This is urgent, and, and
really he can almost feel the

new director general
of MI5, Dick White,

grabbing his collar.

He, he's really like a
schoolboy who feels that the

headmaster is bearing
down on him, and,

and he needs this book,
and he needs it now.

Two months later
Lascelles was finally able to

convey some good
news to Masterman.

George's widow, now
the Queen Mother,

had been on a secret
operation of her own.

Dear Masterman,
my trouble has been that all the

personal dispatch boxes have
been out of my control.

However, this very day,
I got the Queen Mother to look at them,

and sure enough, there it was.

It is now locked up in my room.

A. Lascelles.

Ones guess is that
the king confided in her and

found her very important
very necessary shoulder

to lean on and he presumably
he told her things that he

wouldn't tell anybody else.

The Queen Mother had
got Masterman out of jail.

In 1972, he published
his Secret Book.

But even then, 28
years after D-Day,

MI5 believed that Double Cross
and all deception work should

remain secret and
tried to block him.

Masterman thwarted them
by publishing in America.

But there was one thing
he decided not to reveal,

the role of George VI in
the D-Day deception,

it has remained a secret,

until Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac's
investigation today.

The monarchy's role in
Britain's Secret State would

not die with George.

His eldest daughter the
young Queen Elizabeth II

would inherit his mantle.

The Crown, once
under the scrutiny,

and even investigation
of the Secret Service,

was now its trusted
friend and counselor.

One extraordinary meeting
demonstrates this intimacy.

In 1955 the Prime Minister
Anthony Eden,

or AE, and the Head of the Foreign
Office's Middle Eastern Desk,

Evelyn Shuckburgh,

traveled to Buckingham Palace.

The Suez crisis was looming,

and the empire alive
with conspiracy.

But one apparent friend was
the young Harrow educated

King Hussain of Jordan.

However, the British feared he
had fallen under the influence

of his Nationalist and
anti-British uncle, Nasser Shariff.

Shuckburgh noted in
his diary in 1955...

I told her, the queen,

the machinations
of the wicked Uncle Nasser.

The Queen said she didn't
really think it a good idea

to send Arabs to
English public schools.

She had
seen poor little Hussain,

fresh from Harrow, a year or two ago
and all he could

do was stand stiffly to
attention, saying...

Saying, "Your Majesty
and not another word."

As for Uncle Nasser, she said,

she was surprised,

nobody had found means
of putting something

in his coffee.

It was not until afterwards
that I thought of what I ought

to have said to this, that it was
dangerously like a remark,

made on a famous occasion,
by her predecessor,

King Henry II.

Of course, King Henry had said,

just before the murder of the
Archbishop of Canterbury,

Thomas Beckett, will nobody rid me
of this troublesome priest?

Instead,
I said, it was a good idea,

which ought to be applied,
to a number of people

in the Middle East.

I promised to send her
the gossip we have

heard about Hussain.

I was a little handicapped,
by having a cigarette in my hand,

which steadily burnt
my fingertips, behind my back.

AE was looking
wonderfully fit and relaxed

And was
very friendly to both of us.

And that's, startling,
because we never get a sense

of the Queen discussing
these kinds of things,

we never get a sense
of her, her humor.

And, and
we never get a sense of her

talking to diplomats,

about matters of state,
particularly against the background,

of a range of covert operations,

being launched, by the
foreign office and MI6,

against countries across
the Middle East, most famously,

the other Nasser,
the President of Egypt.

We think of
the intelligence services,

as the most secret
institution in Britain,

well the Royal Family certainly give them
a run for their money,

at least in terms
of historical documents.

So, when the queen appears
on a page you take notice.

And when the queen starts
talking about potentially

assassinating somebody,
you really take notice.

The queen's
words were, no doubt,

delivered in jest.

Uncle Nasser was never
was assassinated,

but the queen remains close
to her Secret Service.

From suspicion to trust,
the relationship between

the monarchy and British Intelligence
had come full circle,

a relationship
which endures to this day.

Captioned by Cotter Media Group.