14. Wallis Simpson traveled to Nazi Germany and even tried to flirt with Hitler himself – though the American socialite was rebuffed by the unimpressed Fuhrer.
The woman who brought the British Monarchy to its knees didn’t just flirt with fascism in a metaphorical sense – she did so literally. Indeed, according to one recent biography of Wallis Simpson, the American openly flirted with Adolf Hitler himself whilst enjoying a personal audience with the Fuhrer. The meeting was part of a larger tour of Germany, undertaken alongside her partner the Duke of Windsor, the man who had abdicated the throne to be with her. Indeed, even the outcast royal’s presence didn’t stop Simpson from trying to charm Hitler – even if her best attempts at seduction were lost on him.
According to Simpson’s memoirs, Hitler’s eyes were “magnetic, burning with a particular fire”. However, she concluded that, since her attempts at flirting came to naught, this ‘particular fire’ wasn’t one of heterosexual lust. “I decided he did not care for women,” she wrote after their brief encounter in 1937. In later life, Simpson was forced to play down her obvious past admiration of Hitler and Nazism. Along with the Duke, she retired to Paris in the 1950s and by the 1960s, the couple were being welcomed back to Britain, even meeting with the Royal Family.