Five Brothers and a War

Prins Bernhard

Prins Bernhard was born a German prince, and while a student at Humboldt Universität had joined the Nazi party (though he left as he graduated from the university). This issue was extremely controversial throughout his life , beginning with his engagement to the crown princess, Juliana in August, 1936. To his dying day, he swore, “with his hand on the Bible” that he was never a Nazi, but subsequently-discovered documents proved otherwise.

Prinses Juliana on the occasion of her engagement to Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. Even then, several years before the outbreak of the war, the antics of Hitler and the Nazis was of grave concern to the Dutch, and the thought of their crown princess marrying a German was very unpopular. Eventually, he was not only accepted, but he was celebrated as a war hero, having flown missions over Europe as an RAF pilot. His life was punctuated by a series of controversies, some of which were only revealed after his death, including his membership in the Nazi party. His most damaging controversy dealt with a bribery scandal whereby he sought, and received, money from Lockheed aviation company in order to gain a contract with the Dutch air force in the 1970s. Unrelated, he also fathered two illegitimate daughters. Alicia de Bielefeld, who was born in 1952 as Alicia Webber, but changed her name to a derivation of Bernhard's German family name, is a landscape architect in California. The other, Alexia Grinda-Lejeune was born in 1967 and lives in Paris. Both maintained a relationship with their father until he died in 2004. Bernhard's considerable fortune, perhaps of about $5,000,000,000, was split equally between his six children upon his death.

holland

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