In the Netflix docuseries “Harry & Meghan,” Harry called his infamous get-up “one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”
Harry recounted the 2005 incident once again in “Spare,” saying it was William and his wife Kate, Princess of Wales who told him to wear a Nazi soldier costume instead of a pilot costume.
“I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. ‘Nazi uniform,’ they said,” Harry wrote. When he wore the costume, Harry said, “They [William and Kate] both howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point.”
Naturally, the British tabloid newspaper The Sun published a front-page photo of a 20-year-old Harry wearing the costume, which also featured a red armband emblazoned with a big swastika.
“When I saw those photos, I recognized immediately that my brain had been shut off, that perhaps it had been shut off for some time,” Harry wrote about the aftermath of the public reveal. “I wanted to go around Britain knocking on doors, explaining to people: I wasn’t thinking. I meant no harm. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. Judgment was swift, harsh. I was either a crypto Nazi or else a mental defective.”
Harry added that his father, now King Charles III, “didn’t gloss over the facts” when he saw his son’s costume:
“Darling boy, how could you be so foolish? My cheeks burned. I know, I know. But he quickly went on to say that it was the foolishness of youth, that he remembered being publicly vilified for youthful sins, and it wasn’t fair, because youth is the time when you’re, by definition, unfinished. You’re still growing, still becoming, still learning, he said.
“I’d long understood that the photo of me in a Nazi uniform had been the result of various failures — failure of thinking, failure of character,” Harry also wrote. “But it had also been a failure of education. Not just school education, but self-education.”
Joy Saha
Source link
