Looking back on the battle between George the Third and George Washington, today’s royalty-loving American public would no doubt have sided with the king. This was clearly demonstrated last night. Nobody was in the mood to listen to Christopher Hitchens’ excellent point that the film, while of course being very well made and describing movingly a human drama, seriously misrepresented the role Churchill played in the Abdication Crisis of 1936 when he defended the pro-Nazi Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson.
Hitchens also said that the film glossed over the pro-Chamberlain and anti-Churchill sympathies of George VI and his wife, i.e., Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter, in May 1940, when, after the Nazi attack of Holland and the highly plausible fall of France, an invasion of England was a real possibility.
The film-makers evidently understood that in order to win an Oscar it would be fatal to tarnish the image of Churchill and to suggest that before England had reached her Finest Hour the governing Conservative Party, and the royal family, preferred the appeaser Lord Halifax, who after the likely fall of France could have been expected to accept a peace offer from Hitler, to the anti-appeaser Churchill, who could not. This was vividly described in The Five Days in London: May 1940, by John Lukacs.
Christopher Hitchens was right to state that at that time the general public was with Churchill, not with Lord Halifax. He was also right to quote Churchill who predicted in 1936, four years earlier, that Edward VIII would “shine in history as the bravest and best-loved of all sovereigns who have worn the island crown” (William Manchester, in The Last Lion).
Nobody would have dared to quote this line last night.
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
I hadn’t read Hitchens comments. Fascinating!
I am sour today that Black Swan didn’t win more awards.
You are most generous.
And I am sour that INCENDIE was not voted as the best foreign film. But not really surprised since I had to see it twice to grasp the plot. But the subject matter and, above all, the FACES are memorable.
This excellent film was not about the War Policies of the UK during the War. Those policies are set by the PM and the King’s Privy Council, not by the King. Whatever his private thoughts and discussions with the PM, he had absolutely no role in publicly expressing any of them. The movie was about a King’s ability to inspire and reassure through speech, and a Man ability to overcome a very public handicap in his ability to do the job fate has bestowed on him.
Hitchens has the right to clarify the historical record, but to suggest that the movie, by not clarifying Royal preference for the incumbent Chamberlain and Halifax, was doing so deliberately to boost Oscar appeal is unfair to the film-makers. So too is the suggestion that support for King Edward V’s oldest Son to succeed him was a reputational blunder for any political leader at the time. The movie has engaged tens/hundreds of millions world-wide in a discussion of an important chapter in 20th Century history, introducing many of them for the first time to the role George VI had in inspiring a nation and its allies to war, by (largely) overcoming through will and determination, a handicap (that gave him shame) and delivering a speech.
A Great Day for the British Monarchy and the Daughter of George VI, her Majesty ER II.
How long before we are introduced to Sir Colin Firth?
Mike Sky
To be fair to Hitch, it was not he but I who wrote that to win an Oscar it would be unwise to say anything unpleasant about Churchill. As to the succession of the Prince of Wales in January 1936, after the death of his father George V – Edward was your typo – very few, apparently Churchill among them, knew about his flirtations with the Nazis. This did not become an issue until Wally Simposn arrived on the scene. The public objections to her were that she was an American, twice-divorced, commoner, not that she was a crypto-Nazi, as described in Tim Findley’s Famous Last Words. The Nazis certainly knew. I remember a press conference held by Dr. Goebbels at the time of the Abdication – I was unable to attend myself – in which he said, when asked about it, “We do not interfere in the internal affairs of a friendly nation.”
As to George Vl’s pro-Chamberlain stance after Munich, which Hitch criticizes, I agree with you that we should not get excited about it now. Your and my loyalty to his daughter remains unchallengable.