The Nazi Foreign Minister embraced it with all the enthusiasm to which his abysmal ignorance often drove him, and the German Foreign Office and its diplomatic representatives in Spain and Portugal were forced to waste a great deal of time on it during the climactic summer of 1940. After the fall of France in June 1940, the Duke, who had been a member of the British military mission with the French Army High Command, made his way with the Duchess to Spain to escape capture by the Germans.
