Mountbatten: Britain's Warlord

By Alex Mitchell

Lord Louis Mountbatten was directly involved in war crimes resulting in the needless loss of millions of lives. His list of
crimes, for which he was never charged or punished, were obscured by his self-generated propaganda and a stream of lies
from London aided by his membership of the British Royal Family.
He fought socialists and communists in India, Burma and Far East Asia for which he was promoted to Supreme Allied Commander of the South East Asia Command and took the Japanese surrender in Singapore on 12 September 1945. He carved India into two warring States during Partition and returned to London where he headed a failed coup attempt against Labour Prime Minister Harold.
His last years were spent in self-exile in Ireland where his life ended in ignominy in 1979 while out catching lobsters. He was 79.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Aug 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685833374

Alex Mitchell

Alex Mitchell is a journalist, author and gardener. She has a regular column in The Sunday Telegraph where she covers everything from how to deter slugs to the best hand cream to use after a day in the elements. She studied at the Chelsea Physic Garden and grows her own fruit, salad, herbs and vegetables.

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My life might have passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path.

—Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein

I looked upon the sea. It was to be my grave.

—Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Prologue

Lord Mountbatten, aka Lord Mountbottom, was glorified during his lifetime as the world’s greatest statesman but his real place in history was his direct responsibility for the killing of millions of people. He escaped indictment as a war criminal by virtue of his capacity to create a grandiose legend about himself. He brimmed with self-confidence and endless charm, and cultivated the image of a playboy when they were all the rage in Hollywood but virtually unknown in England. He rubbed shoulders with presidents, prime ministers and monarchs and left none of them in any doubt that he was an ambitious self-seeker. Mountbatten believed that the world revolved around him and he was its ringmaster. While Axis leaders ended their lives in gruesome circumstances – Adolf Hitler committed suicide, Benito Mussolini was shot and then hung from a lamp post in Milan and General Tojo was executed by hanging – Mountbatten escaped indictment and enjoyed a glamorous life at the top end of high society.

He rose to become Britain’s Supreme Commander in the Far East, dreamed of becoming ruler of Britain and, more ambitiously, the first Emperor of the World. Not everyone was seduced by his charm and charisma. Military historians John Keegan and Andrew Wheatcroft maintained that Mountbatten’s great talent was as a fixer, using diplomacy, flattery, threats and cajoling to achieve his ends.

1

Climbing his way to the top

Get going. Move forward. Aim high. Plan a take-off.

Believe me, you’ll love it up here.

—Donald Trump, 45th President of the

United States and hotel owner

As a teenager, the precocious Mountbatten recognised the importance of autobiographies and memoirs. There is long list of books about Dickie; some were written by him while others were written with his consent. He vetted all of those who wrote books about him: his friends among London’s publishers tipped him off who was writing what and the authors instantly received a gilded letter from Mountbatten offering to take them to a swanky restaurant for lunch. He charmed them and offered to give them some tantalising trivia that had never been published before. It always worked; authors were hooked, and they became members of an exclusive club with all of its links to British royalty.

Mountbatten’s other attraction was sexual: he was known to the Royal Family and his other top-drawer friends as being bisexual when sexual experimentation had an alluring charm for the British aristocracy. After all, it was virtually taught at Britain’s leading private schools and no harm was done if it was consensual and in private.

Winston Churchill saw the magic of Mountbatten’s formula for getting his name favourably mentioned in royal circles, Westminster and the London media. He adopted a very similar approach in the belief that 1) any publicity is good publicity, 2) the more books about your exploits, the more favourably people will think of you, 3) if it appears in a book, even if it is invented, people will believe it and it becomes ipso facto the official narrative, and 4) people are more inclined to believe what they read in books rather than in the press.

Mountbatten wrote several of his own books, though it is widely believed he hired a ghost to write them for him. He, of course, had full editorial control of what went into the book and what was cut. His books were: From Shore to Shore: The Tour Diaries of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, 1953-1979, by Louis Mountbatten, with a foreword by Philip Ziegler; The Diaries of Lord Louis Mountbatten 1920-1922, Tours with the Prince of Wales edited by Philip Ziegler; Personal Diary of Admiral, The Lord Louis Mountbatten 1943-1946, Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia 1943-1946 edited by Philip Ziegler; Mountbatten: Eighty Years in Pictures; An Introduction to Polo by Lord Louis Mountbatten; Combined Operations: The Official Story of the Commandos by Lord Louis Mountbatten.

Ziegler was the perfect sidekick for Mountbatten. An Eton old boy and graduate of New College, Oxford, Ziegler joined the Foreign Office to start his working life as a diplomat serving in Laos, Pretoria and Bogotá before joining the UK delegation to NATO in Paris. In 1967 he left the FO at Mountbatten’s suggestion to become editor-in-chief of Collins, the London publishing house. Once again he changed careers, writing the official biographies of British Prime Ministers Harold Wilson (Labour) and Edward Heath (Tory), Lady Diana Cooper, Sir Osbert Sitwell, writer and occultist (he was a member of the Ghost Club and believed in the rationing of brains without which there can be no true democracy) and Shakespearean actor Lord Laurence Olivier. His favourite mentor and friend always remained Mountbatten. Ziegler wrote for Mountbatten, helped choose his publishers and authors, and secured favourable publicity in the book pages of newspapers and magazines. If the occasion arose, Ziegler would lie for Mountbatten as well. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for his beloved Dickie.

There have been dozens of other books written about Mountbatten and there have been even more by and about Winston Churchill. In fact, the list of infantile adventure stories about Churchill is longer than Mountbatten’s.

Although Mountbatten and Churchill sell relatively well among Englanders, the top-selling book in the Western world remains The Holy Bible, primarily because a copy is placed in the top drawer of every hotel, motel and guesthouse across America, Asia, Africa and Europe. Staff cleaners swear that when guests leave, they either take the Bible with them or leave their sex toys alongside the Holy Scripture. The other best-selling books include Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf while Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto remains among the Top Five along with Das Kapital, both written in London and Manchester.

Mountbatten’s publicity-seeking was shameless as well as self-promoting. He took part in the TV series called The Life and Times of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Mountbatten of Burma, produced by his son-in-law Lord Brabourne, and in 1977 became the first of the British royal family to appear on the TV guest show, This Is Your Life, to be interviewed by Dublin-born Eamonn Andrews of ITV, an amiable host as well as a good boxing and sports caller.

Mountbatten loved titles as much as the entitlement that went with them. Whenever he travelled he made certain that the local media spelled his name correctly, got his title right and his decorations. To research his name is a torrid expedition in itself. He is listed in archives as The Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Admiral of the Fleet The Right Honourable Louis Mountbatten, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, ADC, PC, FRS. He was Chief of Combined Allied Operations 1941-1943, Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command 1943-1946, First Sea Lord 1955-1959 and Chief of Defence Staff 1959-1965.

In 1945 he lobbied successfully to receive the Japanese surrender on Singapore, in 1946 he was created Viscount Mountbatten of Burma and on formal occasions his white admiral’s uniform was covered in awards and decorations which included KG Knight of the Garter, GCB Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, KCB Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, CB Companion of the Order of the Bath, GCSI Knight Grand Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, GCIE Knight Grand Commander of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, GCVO Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, KCVO Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, MVO Member of the Royal Victorian Order, DSO Companion of the Distinguished Service Order, KStJ Knight of Justice of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, CStJ Commander of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, British War Medal, Victory Medal, Africa Star, Burma Star, Italy Star, Indian Independence Medal, Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal, Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, Order of the Nile, Fourth Class, Romanian Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown, Knight War Cross of the Kingdom of the Order of George I of Greece, US Distinguished Service Medal and US Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, French Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of Nepal, King Birendra of Nepal Coronation Medal, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the White Elephant of the Kingdom of Thailand, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands, Lion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Aviz of Portugal (1951), Knight of the Royal Order of Seraphim of the Kingdom of Sweden (1952), Grand Commander of the Order of Thiri Thudhamma of Burma, Grand Cross of the Order of Dannebrog of the Kingdom of Denmark (1962) and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Seal of Solomon of the Ethiopian Empire (1965).

Mountbatten was immensely proud of the fact that he was aide-de-camp to three British monarchs – Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II – and allowed to wear three royal cyphers on his shoulder straps.

While almost every book about Mountbatten was written in a typeface known as Grovel and Lickspittle, my contribution to his lordship’s legacy is written from the standpoint of the millions of people who lost their lives, or they had their dreams crushed, or had to flee their homes and become refugees in their own land. This story is dedicated to the victims, the millions who may seem to have been forgotten, but are still remembered.

The great news is that Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Far Eastern academics, historians and writers are writing powerful theses, articles and books on Lord Mountbatten and his lot. In doing so, they are obliged to review the entire history of the British Empire, the Raj, colonialism and imperialism. A reckoning is long overdue, and now is the time to strike. Only when the true history is written will people be able to move forward.

2

A life of preferment begins

You are braver than you seem,

and smarter than you think.

—A.A. Milne (1882-1956),

author of Winnie the Pooh

Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas, Prince of Battenberg, was born on 25 June 1900 at Frogmore House, a palatial residence in the grounds of Windsor Castle. His great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, was still on the throne. She ruled the largest empire the world had ever seen and Mountbatten felt he was entitled to share in its wealth and the inflated status that it brought. Mountbatten’s sister was Princess Alice of Battenberg, mother of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, making him great-uncle to Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne.

The Mountbattens are a British dynasty that originated as an English branch of the German Battenberg family. The family name was switched from Battenberg to Mountbatten on 14 July 1917, just three days before the British royal family changed its name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. The Battenbergs rejected the suggestion that they should accept the name Battenhill because of its Germanic connotations and opted for Mountbatten, a direct Anglicisation of the German Battenberg, or Batten Mountain. The original family ruled the Grand Duchy of Hesse in Germany before some of the children received places in the British royal family. It was part of a long-term plan to build unity between Germany and Britain to confront Russia, on its way to becoming Lenin’s USSR.

The British Empire stretched around the globe, covering colonies in Ireland, Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean. Coloured on maps in bright red, people called it the empire on which the sun never sets – and the wages never rise. As a precocious and opinionated teenager Mountbatten was annoyed that his classmates at exclusive private schools tormented him during World War One (1914-18) about his German accent. He strongly supported Prime Minister Lloyd George when he advised the royal family to surrender their German (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) heritage and reinvent themselves with the thoroughly English name of Windsor.

In later years, after the death in 1952 of George VI, royal family members and other toffs joked about how long it would take in any conversation before Mountbatten referred to my niece, the Queen. In fact, she was his second cousin once removed, a fact that he told everyone within earshot. Whenever he was not telling acquaintances he was related to Elizabeth II, Mountbatten was eagerly mentioning that he was the uncle of the racist Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Mountbatten had grown up in a deeply divided royal household. He learned that his late great-grandmother Queen Victoria had arranged strategic marriages for her German relatives to marry members of Europe’s royal families because she dreamed of becoming the Empress of Europe. As Prince Edward’s best friend he learned that the then King George V and Queen Mary had delusions of dropping the provincialism of British royalty and becoming rulers of the British Empire. Both propositions taught Mountbatten that there was a wider world than Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and that a trained and learned person could become an emperor too. Why not him? Thus the delusions of a dead Queen and a German-speaking royal couple became his goal in life.

3

Off on a Royal Tour

Dear God, Please remove anybody lying to me,

using me, gossiping behind my back

but pretending to love me to my face.

—Anonymous

Still in his teens, Mountbatten’s very first assignment following the end of World War One was for the British royal family. It came with a handsome salary, expenses and luxury living with Edward, Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII of Britain and Emperor of India, Canada, South Africa and Australia. Mountbatten was selected to accompany Prince Edward on his 1920 tour of the colonies to thank them for their sacrifice in the war. King George V and Queen Mary devised the royal tour for specific reasons: they wanted to expand their realm from two offshore European islands – Britain and Ireland – to include the British Empire, and they wanted their fragile and errant eldest son Eddie, known to his confidants as David, to man up, mature, and learn the ropes before inheriting the throne.

The Prince of Wales was delighted that his playmate and best friend, Louis Mountbatten, would accompany him on the royal tour. Edward VIII wrote in his memoirs, A King’s Story: Known to his family and friends as ‘Dickie’, Mountbatten came as Flag-Lieutenant to Admiral Halsey, but more than that he was, at 19, a vigorous and high-spirited young man who became the instigator of many an unexpected diversion outside the official programme.

Mountbatten appeared to be chosen because he had the ability to lift the prince’s spirits while controlling his impatience, writing to his mother: It is very difficult to keep David cheerful. At times he gets so depressed and says he’d give anything to change places with me. On the Royal Tour Down Under, Dickie kept the prince on message by briefing him before every public appearance.

In retirement as the Duke of Windsor, Edward reflected: Mine was, after all, a simple mission. I was not charged with negotiating treaties with foreign Governments or with propounding high Imperial policy to the Dominions. Primarily, my job was to make myself pleasant, mingle with the war veterans, show myself to schoolchildren, attend native ceremonies, cater to official social demands, and in various ways remind my father’s subjects of the kindly benefits attaching to the ties of Empire. The message that I carried went something like this: ‘I come to you as the King’s eldest son, as heir to a Throne that stands for a heritage of common aims and ideals – that provides the connecting link of a Commonwealth whose members are free to develop, each on its own lines, but all work together as one’.

The young Prince used late nights to conduct his own private correspondence with his lover, Mrs Freda Dudley Ward, who was living separately from her husband at 70 Lowndes Square in the poshest part of Central London. On the eve of travelling Down Under Prince Edward wrote to Freda, My own darling little one, saying that he had dined at The Ritz and went to a guest’s room where he inspected filthy French toys, adding, I’m going to bring back a selection, sweetheart!! I pray that when I return to England I shall be able to spend a lot of time with the only little girl that I ever want to see!!

Prime Minister Lloyd George had suggested to the Palace that a Royal Tour abroad would cement the place in history of the British Empire and bind people of the colonies closer to the Royal Family. His view was that a successful visit from the charismatic Prince of Wales would do more good than any number of solemn royal conferences, wrote amateur English historian Rupert Godfrey.

Mountbatten took his assignment very seriously and was anxious to impress the future King, his father King George V, and his mother Queen Mary, formerly Germany’s Mary of Teck. Dickie insisted that all the official invitations carried Edward’s full name and titles. As a result, everywhere he went he was listed as: His Royal Highness, Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, Duke of Cornwall in the Peerage of England, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, and Baron of Renfrew in the Peerage of Scotland, Lord of the Isles and Great Steward of Scotland. KG, CMMG, GCVO, GMBE, MC.

Eric Birks, editor of the publicly-owned Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), wrote in the monthly staff magazine: Democratic Australians might naturally have been somewhat diffident about receiving as their guest, a gentleman bearing such a number of names and titles, but when they found by literally rubbing shoulders with him, that there was a man beneath the tunic, Australians threw their diffidence to the winds and took the Prince to their hearts. The Sydney Morning Herald rendered its respects saying, It was the meeting between the Prince and the great democracy, and the official cheer squad declared his tour one of the most popular ever, claiming that "the Prince