THE ENGLISH king who abdicated in 1936 was openly predicting a return to the throne after a deal with Adolf Hitler, his country's bitter enemy, less than four years later.
The claim is contained in a report to the British Government one of hundreds of secret documents released yesterday at the Public Record Office at Kew.
The papers, which were originally expected to stay secret for 100 years, have been released exactly 60 years after the abdication of Edward VIII, as part of the British government's policy of greater access to historic files.
They are mainly from Foreign Office and former Colonial Office records of correspondence with or about the Duke of Windsor - as the king became after his abdication.
The papers reinforce the public picture of the duke as a man with long-held Nazi sympathies - he had met Hitler in 1937 - who believed he was being "realistic" to face the prospect of the early defeat of his country at the hands of the Germans.
One of the most shocking examples of his thinking is contained in a two-page report from a young Spanish nobleman who had known the duke before the war.
Count Nava de Tajo told how he had dinner with the duke several times after the duke and duchess left France following its fall to the advancing Germans. They moved first to Spain and later to Portugal.
The count wrote: "It was clear from the conversation of HRH that he expected the British Cabinet to resign in the near future and to see the creation of a Labour government which would enter into negotiations with Germany.
"He expected also that King George VI would abdicate, following a virtual revolution brought about by the fact that the ruling class had utterly disgraced themselves, and that he (the Duke of Windsor) would be summoned to return to England to occupy the throne."