18. The Nazi King
Britain’s King Edward VIII is most remembered as the romantic monarch, who chose love over power. Famously, he abdicated the British throne in order to marry his American mistress, the divorcee Wallis Simpson. Less known is the jarring contrast between his public image, and the fact that he was a Hitler fan.
What attracted little attention over the years – in no small part because the British government went out of its way to downplay it and conceal the evidence – is that Edward was a Nazi sympathizer. Indeed, in 1937, a year after his abdication, Edward and his wife toured Nazi Germany, in defiance of the British government’s advice. There, they were lionized by the Nazis and honored by Hitler.