Ravens

On 13 November 1940, as London was being bombed, Queen Elisabeth, the wife of King George VI of England, refused to allow his daughters to be sent to safety in Canada: "The children won't go without me. I won't leave the king. And the king will never leave". With a single sentence, the new ruling family in England declared its determination to defy the Nazi attack. Regardless of the threat posed by Hitler, the Crown would remain with the British people and defy Nazi Germany. As the head of a parliamentary monarchy, the royal couple would fully support the policies of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and resist. The courage shown by the Windsors was not shared by all the monarchies of Europe. Solid and unequivocal opposition to Nazism and Fascism was not spontaneous among all the royal families, and some in fact decided to collaborate with Hitler and the Nazi regime or found themselves compelled to ally themselves with him to counter the communist advances made by Stalin. The memory of the execution of the Russian imperial family by Russian revolutionaries was vivid in the minds of the royals, to whom the communist threat was a terrifying prospect. Attached to their privileges and rank, some monarchies still had faith that the great dynasties that had existed before World War I would return. The rise to power of the Fascist and Nazi political parties deluded them with a pleasant illusion: that the old world could be restored. By joining forces with Hitler, whose aim was to defeat the communists and establish a Reich for a thousand years, they could regain their honour and their rightful place in Europe. Confronted by critical historical events, the crowned heads of Europe all had a role to play. But their families found themselves torn apart by the process to decide what position to adopt: whether to resist or collaborate. Some quickly sensed the danger involved. They denounced totalitarianism, racism and the detestable values championed by the new dictators, which ran counter to those that the monarchies had upheld for centuries. It was impossible to repudiate what their ancestors had stood for. In the opinion of some of the royal families, associating themselves with the dictators would be sheer folly, even in the fight against communism. In contrast, others seemed to believe that the Nazi ideology represented the direction history was taking. For the first time, a documentary is investigating the strategic decisions that the crowned heads of Europe took faced by the wave of nationalism spreading across the continent. These families, which had always been mainstays of diplomacy, wanted to demonstrate that they had not lost their political role despite the decline of the monarchies caused by World War I. Evidence that this was actually the case is given by the fact that Hitler understood that they still had a place at the centre of the political spectrum. What were their roles during the rise of fascist parties between the wars, and then during World War II itself? How much did nationalist, warmongering ideas appeal to some of the militarist sovereigns, those who dreamed of regaining glory and power and of restoring the world that had existed before the Great War? Clever manipulation and the effectiveness of his violent methods allowed Hitler to win over the ruling class, first of Germany, then of Europe. He made it possible for those monarchs who had lost their positions, prevented from governing by democratic systems that had taken away their power, once again to dream. But he also bolstered the spirits of those sovereigns who were still in place, but who were living in fear of being swept away by Bolshevism, as had occurred in Russia. Confronted by communism, which they had believed to be their only enemy, they saw fascism as the lesser of two evils. Naturally, they sometimes criticised these extreme ideologies remote from their Christian and gentlemanly values, but they gradually allowed themselves to come to terms with them. How did Hitler come to rely on the wealth of these great families to finance his accession to power and to achieve his dream of a Greater Germany? And why were some European monarchies attracted to the Fascist and Nazi ideologies? Ideologies whose sinister side they very quickly discovered when they became aware of the political murders carried out in Italy, Hitler's rise to power in spite of the failure of his Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, the Night of the Long Knives (during which members of the German aristocracy were assassinated), the anti-Jewish laws, the Anschluss (which ran counter to the Treaties of Sèvres and Trianon), etc. What was the waiting-game played by the royal families, members of whom were always conscious of the potential dangers they faced? How were the families split by the question of which strategy to take? Divisions that Hitler skilfully played on for his own benefit. European monarchs faced by the threat of war, royal families confronted by totalitarian delusions: these are the themes of this unique documentary that highlights the foresightedness of some of the families, those that were ready to fight bravely for their people and to orchestrate resistance in order to save thousands of their subjects. It will also describe, in two episodes, the hunger for power and the naivety - or blindness - of those rulers who allowed the dictatorships to establish themselves in power insidiously, or who were unable to denounce them and thus collaborated by omission. But it will also show the courage and self-denial of the more farsighted, those who were ready even to lay down their lives in order to oppose the fascist struggle for a new world order and the savagery it entailed. Royals at War: a story of families, politics and honour. A facet of Europe's history that would become a cornerstone of the construction of post-war Europe.