"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown"

The monarchs of occupied Europe

In the modern age, most kings and queens are constitutional monarchs whose actual powers are greatly limited by the laws of their country, and they wield far less formal authority in politics than most elected heads of state. Nevertheless, some monarchs remain important symbolic figures who are expected to represent the unity of the nation and inspire the people in times of crisis. But what can a monarch do if their country is overrun by a vastly more powerful enemy, as it happened to several European states during World War II? This article is about the monarchs who found themselves at the head of a conquered state.

Monaco. The microstate of Monaco was bound to be dragged into the war due to its location on the Mediterranean coast between France and Italy. Louis II, the 69-ear-old Prince of Monaco, served in the French military as a young man and was sympathetic toward France, but still tried to preserve Monaco's neutrality. He bought the German recognition of this neutrality by allowing a German presence in Monaco's economy. Eventually, Germany not only had a stake in the famous Monte Carlo Casino, but also used the country to produce propaganda and buy weapons on the open market.

Life in Monaco went on largely undisturbed (at least for the wealthy) until November 1942, when Italy occupied the country despite the German recognition of neutrality. A year later, Mussolini was deposed and Italy changed sides but Germany quickly reoccupied Monaco and stayed until September 1944, when U.S. troops liberated the country. Louis tried to protect his citizens, but also remained in power during the Axis occupation. He allowed the Germans to establish companies in Monaco for money laundering, and a bank to circumvent the U.S. economic embargo. He also stood by (though realistically could do nothing) while German authorities deported much of the country's Jewish population (between 1,000 and 1,500 people), with Monaco's own police rounding up 90. At the same time, some sources also claim that Louis used the police to warn Jews of imminent arrests and give them time to escape.

Louis's perceived friendliness with the Germans drove a deep wedge between him and his grandson, who eventually succeeded him. After the liberation, 75-year-old Prince Louis spent most of his time in France and neglected governing his country.

Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein is another tiny country, wedged between Switzerland and Austria, with a prince as its head of state. Prince Franz Joseph II was made regent by his father, Prince Franz I, in early March 1938. It's been speculated that Franz I withdrew from power because his wife had Jewish heritage, and he didn't want her to become a target if Nazi Germany invaded. Whether this was true or not, Franz I died in July the same year, making Franz Joseph the new prince, and the first monarch of Lichtenstein who actually lived their full-time.

Lichtenstein was one of the few European countries that managed to stay neutral, largely by virtue of its general irrelevance. In March 1939, the prince visited Hitler and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to discuss Lichtenstein's neutrality. Hitler had no interest in Franz Joseph or his country, and raised no objections.

While Franz Joseph worked to secure the principality's neutrality, some Lichtensteiners wanted the opposite. While the prince was in Germany, the German National Movement in Lichtenstein, the local Nazi party, attempted a coup, albeit with comically amateurish effort. They first burned swastikas, hoping it would provoke a German intervention, then declared an Anschluß, a unification with Germany, with absolutely no effect. The leaders were rapidly arrested and Lichtenstein remained neutral, with Franz Joseph II sending occasional letters to Hitler, such as on the occasion of the Führer surviving the Valkyrie plot (Valkyrie), to maintain cordial relations.

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg found itself between a rock and a hard place in not one, but two World Wars. Despite trying to maintain its neutrality, it was occupied by German troops heading for France both in 1914 and 1940. The first time around, Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde was criticized by many Luxembourgers who considered her a collaborator, and she abdicated in favor of her sister Charlotte in 1919.

When the Nazi regime invaded on May 9, 1940, (The Benelux states in World War II) Charlotte fled to France, and on to Portugal. The Germans offered to restore her to her functions, but learning from her sister's experience in World War I, she refused, and took up residence in London, where she made BBC broadcasts in support of her country, and where she established the Luxembourgish government-in-exile. She also visited Canada and the United States, where she had several meetings with President F. D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt encouraged her to campaign across America, since her efforts to raise support also helped Roosevelt sway public opinion toward an active participation in the war.

Charlotte's family could not avoid German retaliation for her refusal to collaborate. Her sister Antonia was captured, sent to Dachau (The Liberation of Dachau) and Flossenbürg concentration camps, and subjected to torture that left her with permanent health impairment.

The Netherlands. 59 years old when World War II began, Queen Wilhelmina was a veteran stateswoman who had proven her spirit and sagacity many times over. Ascending to the throne at the age of 10, she was still a teen when she met German Emperor Wilhelm II shortly before World War I. At their meeting, the emperor condescendingly said to her: "My guards are seven feet tall and yours are only shoulder-high to them." She replied "Quite true, Your Majesty, your guards are seven feet tall. But when we open our dikes, the water is ten feet deep!"

The Netherlands remained neutral in the Great War. Queen Wilhelmina vigorously supported a small but competent army between the wars, making frequent surprise visits to check the readiness of various units. She also became the first woman, and the second head of state after Theodore Roosevelt, to dive underwater in a submarine. She invested her inherited wealth in America and became the richest woman on Earth.

Germany invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. Wilhelmina was disdainful of Britain due to British actions against the Boer (the descendants of Dutch settlers) during the Boer Wars in South Africa, but she still boarded a British destroyer that took her to safety in Britain. There's an ongoing debate about her departure: some historians suggest that she only wanted to take the ship to another, safer part of the Netherlands, but was forced to change her destination by the rapid German advance.

Either way, she quickly set up a government-in-exile in Britain and made frequent nighttime radio broadcasts to her people, who listened to her despite a German ban. She visited America in 1942, becoming the first queen to address U.S. Congress. She sacked her prime minister, who believed the Allies were going to lose and planned to negotiate peace with Hitler. She almost died in 1944, when a German air raid bombed her residence in England. Winston Churchill paid tribute to her tough and relentless personality by calling her "the only real man among the governments-in-exile." Displaying a photo of Queen Wilhelmina in one's home was a sign of passive resistance in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, and she remains a popular historical figure today.

Belgium. The above can hardly be said of Leopold III of Belgium. Fort Eben-Emael, the main Belgian strongpoint, was quickly overwhelmed by German paratroopers on the first day of the invasion, and the country fell after a fierce but short fight also involving French and British troops. The government fled to Paris, and on to London, but Leopold remained in Belgium. His ministers, who fled, thought he intended to form a new puppet government under Hitler's influence, which would have been treason; in fact, Leopold felt he would have committed treason by deserting his country. After Leopold’s inevitable surrender, the British press gave him nicknames like King Rat and Traitor King.

Leopold rejected cooperation with Germany, so he was placed under house arrest in his castle and a German military government was imposed on Belgium. After half a year of trying, Leopold was finally granted a meeting with Hitler in November 1940. Leopold asked Hitler to release Belgian POWs and to promise Belgium independence after the war, requests the Führer refused to grant. In 1941, he secretly married a commoner, with only a religious ceremony but no civil marriage, which was illegal according to Belgian law. News of the marriage eventually reached the public and tarnished the king's reputation. Previously, he was a victim of Nazi imprisonment; now it seemed like he was in a privileged situation, with one set of rules for him and another for everyone else.

Leopold was moved to a castle in Austria, under guard by some 70 Waffen-SS men, the day after D-Day to prevent his rescue by Allied forces. He was eventually liberated from a villa on May 7, 1945, when an aide managed to escape and warn an American column passing by just a few hundred yards away.

Leopold's liberation caused a political crisis, as Belgian society was deeply divided by his conduct during the war. The divide was only mended in 1951, when Leopold abdicated the throne. He continued to advise his son and successor for another decade, then retired to live as an amateur entomologist and social anthropologist.

Norway and Denmark were invaded by Germany on April 9, 1940. (The German invasion of Norway) The invasion force headed for Norway included a naval detachment that was supposed to sail up the Olsofjord, land troops right in Oslo, and capture the royal family and the parliament. This detachment was repulsed by the defenders of Oscarsborg, a fortress up the fjord (The Battle of Drøbak Sound), giving the royal family, the cabinet and most of the parliament time to flee the capital.

King Haakon VII met the German ambassador to Norway outside the city the next day. The ambassador demanded that the king end all resistance and appoint Nazi sympathizer Vidkun Quisling as the head of a new puppet government. Haakon replied he could not surrender without being advised to do so by the government.

The government meeting took place in a village a hundred miles (160 km) from Oslo. The king declared that his conscience did not allow him to surrender, but he was ready to abdicate, freeing the government to surrender in his stead. Inspired by his stand, the government advised him not to surrender, forcing the Germans to form a puppet government without even a thin disguise of legality.

The next morning, April 11, the Luftwaffe bombed the village where the king and the government met. The village was 16 miles (26 km) from the Swedish border, but the Swedish government, anxious to preserve their own neutrality, declared they would detain and incarcerate King Haakon if he entered the country. The king and his ministers fled across the snow-covered woods and eventually made contact with the forces sent by Britain to help the defense of Norway. The king established a provisional capital in the distant northern city of Tromsø, and took up residence with his son in a forest cabin.

In June 1940, with Allied positions deteriorating in France, Britain decided to withdraw its forces from Norway, and evacuated the royal family and government. The evacuation was successful, but still ended in tragedy. The German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau attacked and sunk the nearby British carrier HMS Glory along with her two escorting destroyers. The only British ship that received the Glory's message was the heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire, the vessel carrying the king and the government. Devonshire could not pass on the news, as breaking radio silence would have put her valuable passengers in peril. As a result, over 1,500 British seamen died.

Once King Haakon and the government established a government-in-exile in London, his regular radio broadcasts cemented his position as a national symbol for the Norwegian resistance. Many Norwegians under German occupation began to wear articles of clothing bearing the king's "H7" monogram, or jewelry made of coins that had the same stamped on them. King Haakon VII was welcomed back to Norway by a celebrating crowd on June 7, 1945, exactly five years after his departure. He stepped away from active politics for the rest of his reign, limiting himself to his constitutional duties as head of state.

Norway's southern neighbor, Denmark, had even less of a chance to fend off the German invasion, as the low-lying peninsula and islands offered little in the way of natural protective barriers, and the population was too small to mount a resistance. Recognizing the situation was hopeless, the government and King Christian X, the brother of Norway's Haakon VII, surrendered at 6 a.m. on April 9, 1940, two hours after the invasion began.

Armed resistance was impossible, but Christian became a symbol of the nation's "mental resistance" by staying in the capital of Copenhagen for the entirety of the war. Despite his age of 69 at the time of the invasion, he rode through the city every day, unattended by a groom or bodyguards, to show himself to the people. He continued the practice until October 1942, when he fell from his horse, becoming an invalid for the rest of his life. The king also opposed the Nazis in an active way: when the German plan to round up Denmark's Jews was leaked in 1943, he helped finance the secret rescue of the country's Jewish population and their relocation to neutral Sweden, an act which saved 99% of all Danish Jews.

In 1942, Hitler sent Christian a long telegram congratulating him on his 72nd birthday. The king's reply was a perfunctory and insulting "Giving my best thanks, King Christian," which enraged the snubbed Führer. The "Telegram Crisis" resulted in the recall of the German ambassador to Denmark, the expulsion of the Danish ambassador to Germany, the appointment (by Germany) of a new Danish cabinet, and the replacement of the commander of German forces in Denmark with a more heavy-handed officer.

Our article on the monarchs of German-occupied Europe will continue with the morally murky stories of Central and Southeast Europe's kings.

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