Dutch queen planned deal with Nazis to help rescue Belgian king
Queen Wilhelmina tried to broker pact via Vatican for Leopold III, war diaries reveal
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands sought to broker a deal via the Vatican in which senior Nazis at the end of the second world war would be helped to escape Europe in return for Germany releasing the Belgian king, according to newly discovered documents.
Diaries of her war-time foreign minister, Eelco van Kleffens, suggest that Wilhelmina, the great-grandmother of the current Dutch King, Willem-Alexander, ordered her government in March 1945, two months before the end of the war in Europe, to “scan” whether top Nazis could be offered an escape route as a trade.