The Duke of Sussex has claimed the Prince and Princess of Wales encouraged him to dress up as a Nazi and “howled” with laughter when they saw him in the costume. Harry, then 20, sparked widespread international outrage in 2005 when he was pictured on the front of The Sun wearing a swastika armband as a Nazi soldier from the Afrika Korps.
The media storm surrounding his choice of fancy dress for a “Colonials and Natives” party was a major blow to his reputation and he has described it in his Netflix documentary as “probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life”. Calls were made at the time for Harry, who was then third in line to the throne, to cancel his plans to join the Army, and the Anti-Nazi League described his actions as “grossly insensitive to the many millions of people whose family members were slaughtered in the Nazis’ Holocaust”.
In a statement following the incident, Harry said: “I am very sorry if I caused any offence or embarrassment to anyone. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologise.” But the US website Page Six reported on Thursday that, in his new explosive memoir Spare, Harry lays part of the blame on William and Kate.
