The Crown Season 6: The Controversy Over Harry’s Nazi Costume?
The Crown Season 6 stages an event that involves the youngest son of Diana. Before Prince Harry stepped down from royal duties in 2021, he was involved in a media controversy over the Nazi soldier costume he wore to a party in 2005, which ended up on the covers of British tabloids. The incident is described in the final episode of season 6 of The Crown on Netflix, in which Prince William (Ed McVey) and his bride Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) to a costume rental store and look for various outfits for a party. When Harry asks them what they think of the Nazi costume he’s trying on, Kate says, “I don’t know. Maybe cover the swastika?” William responds: “Come on. Wearing that suit does not make you a Nazi.” During the party, Harry is shown drinking a bottle of wine and smoking cigarettes throughout the night. Nobody criticizes him for his disguise. Luther Ford (Harry) arrives with Meg Bellamy
The Crown Season 6: Harry’s Version of the Nazi Uniform He Wore to the Party?
The Crown‘s depiction of the event differs from Harry’s account. In his 2023 memoir Spare, the prince describes how his brother and now sister-in-law encouraged him to rent the costume, with more details about the party he attended wearing it. According to Harry, in January 2005, one of William’s friends invited him to a birthday party in a field near Gloucestershire. The theme of the party was native and colonial. While Harry didn’t like dressing up to go to parties, he had a lot of fun with William and Kate brainstorming what outfits they would wear. According to him, he went to a costume shop in the town of Nailsworth to look for an outfit that Kate would surely find fun.
He called the couple and asked them if he should get the British pilot’s uniform or a sand-colored Nazi uniform with a swastika armband. The decision was unanimous: to put on the Nazi uniform. When she took him away, she says William and Kate “howled.” She even trimmed her mustache to look like Hitler’s. At the party, “no one looked twice at my costume,” he says. But someone did it. Photos of Harry in Nazi garb appeared on tabloid covers soon after, sparking widespread controversy. The incident occurred just days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Harry says he regrets his outfit choice: “There were times over the following weeks and months when I thought I might die of embarrassment,” he writes. “The typical response to the photos was: What could I have been thinking? The simplest answer was that she wasn’t. When I saw those photos, I immediately recognized that my brain had perhaps been offline for some time. “I wanted to go around Britain knocking on doors and explaining to people: I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t mean any harm”.
The rift that now exists between Prince Harry and Prince William can be partly attributed to this incident. Robert Lacey, who wrote the history of the royal family, claims in his 2020 book Battle of Brothers that “Harry chose his costume with his older brother” and “was bothered by the fact that William got away with it so much.” lightly”. In his memoir Spare, Harry says that Carlos was surprisingly understanding. He challenged him, but attributed the act to immaturity, saying that he had also made reckless decisions in his youth. He assured his son that the controversy would pass, but Harry writes that he knew the incident would haunt him forever: “The shame would never go away. It shouldn’t be like that either”.
Harry publicly apologized and Charles sent Harry to see the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain. The Jewish leader lectured him about why Nazi jokes are never funny, but also assured the young man that he had shown his true character by seeking to atone for his behavior. He granted her forgiveness. A few months later, Harry put on another uniform. To show that he was serious about public service, he enrolled at the Royal Military Academy to begin a career in the army, despite calls that he should be banned from service. Over the next decade, he served two tours in Afghanistan and rose to the rank of Captain. In an October 25 interview with People, The Crown creator and director Peter Morgan said that he had not read Harry’s memoirs and that he did not plan to do so. “It’s not that I’m not interested, but I don’t want his voice to inhabit my thoughts too much. I have a lot of sympathy for him, a lot of sympathy. But I didn’t want to read his book”.
