The Bahamas had its Nazi collaborators. The true history of this collaboration—spanning the years before, during, and after World War II—remains unwritten. Our ignorance on this crucial part of our history is not accidental: the evidence was carefully destroyed, buried alongside those we benignly labeled ‘sympathizers’ and damningly point to as outright collaborators.
We must be honest enough to call it what it was. What happened in the Bahamas was intentional collaboration, misery profiteering, money laundering and moral rot at the highest levels. The active facilitation of Nazi interests by Bahamian political and business elites, the systematic use of Bahamian territory and institutions to advance those interests, and the network of complicity made it all possible.
This occurred while most Bahamians, trusting and uninformed, remained oblivious to how these tranquil islands were being exploited to facilitate some of the most heinous acts in modern history.
1941 – H. G. Christie gifts Wood Cay to Marguerite Wenner-Gren the wife of Nazi collaborator Alex Wenner-Gren The question is why?
What was this gift in reality? The 1941 conveyance by which Harold Christie gifted Wood Cay to Marguerite Wenner-Gren, wife of Swedish industrialist and suspected Nazi sympathizer turned collaborator, Axel Wenner-Gren, raises disturbing questions about the nature of their relationship and Christie’s wartime loyalties.
Why would H. G. Christie, a prominent Bay Street Boy and real estate magnate, simply gift valuable Bahamian property to the wife of a man already under surveillance by British and American intelligence for his suspected Nazi connections? The transaction’s timing—occurring while the Duke of Windsor governed the colony and maintained his own troubling associations with Nazi officials—suggests this was no ordinary real estate deal.
“Marguerite Wenner-Gren, born Marguerite Liggett 1891 in Kansas City, died August 12, 1973 at her ranch in Mexico, was from 1909 married to industrialist Axel Wenner-Gren . Marguerite trained as a young opera singer in Berlin and became involved with the opera in Elberfeld after her studies.”
A NATION FOR SALE: LONG BEFORE MAGIA LINKED GAMBLING, LONG BEFORE DRUGS DEALING, LONG BEFORE BEING LABELLED A CORRUPT TAX HAVEN
Harold Christie’s labyrinthine empire of shell companies, backroom dealings, and suspicious land acquisitions—amassing holdings so vast they defy legitimate explanation—casts a long, dark shadow over colonial Bahamas. His fingerprints were everywhere: on questionable conveyances, on whispered arrangements in smoke-filled rooms, on properties that changed hands under circumstances that reeked of corruption.
And then there was the blood—Sir Harry Oakes, bludgeoned and burned in his own bed, with Christie conveniently sleeping just down the hall, his testimony shifting like sand, his alibis crumbling under scrutiny. The authorities may have looked away, but the stench of guilt clung to him like the smell of kerosene and charred flesh from that terrible night.
The 1941 gift of Wood Cay to Marguerite Wenner-Gren—wife of a Nazi sympathizer—was no act of generosity. It was another thread in the web, another transaction in a life built on secrets, lies, and the careful cultivation of powerful friends in very dark places.
Christie didn’t just profit from corruption; he and others were its architect, and every deed, every shell company, every inexplicable land transfer was another brick in a empire built on treachery, murder, and the protection that money and influence could buy in a colony where justice was for sale to the highest bidder.
The Deed of Gift: 28th February 1941
Bahamas Registry: Book T.14 page 508-510
THIS INDENTURE made the twenty-eighth day of February in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and forty one BETWEEN the Honourable Harold George Christie of the Eastern District of the Island of New Providence Real Estate Agent (hereinafter called the Donor) of the one part and Marguerite Wenner-Gren at present of “Shangri-La” on the Island of Hog Island which said Island lies immediately to the North of the said Island of New Providence the wife of Axel Leonard Wenner-Gren hereinafter call the Donee of the other part WHEREAS the Donor has agreed with the Donee for the absolute conveyance to her of the herediments and premises hereinafter described and intended to be hereby granted conveyed and the inheritance thereof in fee simple in possession free from encumbrances at and for the consideration hereinafter expressed NOW THIS INDENTURE WITNESSETH that in the pursuance of the said agreement and in consideration of the friendship regard and affection which the Donor hath and bear for the Donee the Donor here by grants and conveys unto the Donee ALL that island or cay known as “Wood Cay” situate approximately in latitude twenty-six 26° and 45 minutes North and longitude seventy-nine 79° and one minute West the said island or cay being about 3 miles North by West from the north west point of the island of Grand Bahama another of the Bahama Islands and being bounded on all side by the sea at high watermark to HOLD the same unto and to the use of the Donee in fee simple absolutely and beneficially free from any resulting trust in favour of the Donor.
IN WITNESSETH WHEREOF the said parties hereto have hereunto have set their hands and seals the day and year first hearinbefore written.
H. G. Christie
Bahamas Registry: Book T.14 page 508-510
Stafford Sands was the Notary Public
Bahamas Registry: Book T.14 page 508-510
There it is in black and white: “in consideration of the friendship regard and affection which the Donor hath and bear for the Donee.”
Harold George Christie—Member of the House of Assembly, the most powerful real estate broker in the Bahamas—gifted an entire island to Marguerite Wenner-Gren out of “friendship regard and affection” in February 1941, while her husband was actively running a bank used to fund the Gestapo.
Several things jump out:
The language of gift: “Friendship regard and affection” as consideration means no monetary payment changed hands. This wasn’t a sale or even a gift—it was a personal favor from one of the Bahamas’ most politically connected men to the wife of a Nazi financier.
The specificity of her identification: She’s identified as being “at present of ‘Shangri-La’ on the Island of Hog Island”—Christie is memorializing in legal record that she’s living on the Wenner-Gren estate, emphasizing the social connection.
The location: Wood Cay, three miles north by west from Grand Bahama’s northwest point, would have had strategic value during wartime—isolated, accessible by boat, perfect for the kind of clandestine activities the Wenner-Grens were suspected of.
The absolute nature: “Fee simple absolutely and beneficially free from any resulting trust in favour of the Donor”—Christie is making absolutely certain there’s no legal mechanism for him to reclaim it. This is permanent.
The timing: February 1941. Britain is at war. The Bahamas is a British colony. The Duke of Windsor is Governor. And a Member of the Bahamas House of Assembly is gifting an island to the wife of a man who nine months later would be blacklisted by both the United States and Britain as a Nazi collaborator.
The evidence is extensive. Axel Wenner-Gren established the Bank of the Bahamas in 1939 explicitly to fund Nazi Germany through the Stein Bank of Cologne, funneling money to Hermann Göring and the Gestapo while developing Hog Island as his personal estate.
https://bahamianology.com/the-original-bank-of-bahamas-was-used-to-fund-the-nazis-1939-1942/amp/
The Duke of Windsor, exiled to the Bahamas as Governor precisely because of his Nazi sympathies, became inseparable friends with the Wenner-Grens, even depositing $2 million into their Nazi-connected Banco Continental in Mexico.
Harold Christie—Member of the House of Assembly and “The Father of Bahamas Real Estate”—gifted Wood Cay to Marguerite Wenner-Gren in February 1941 “in consideration of friendship regard and affection,” nine months before her husband was blacklisted as a Nazi collaborator.
Stafford Sands, the legal architect of Bay Street oligarchy, notarized the transaction.
Then there’s the entirely forgotten figure of Guy Brooke Baxter, another Nazi sympathizer who flourished financially in The Bahamas, and built a castle on his private island. Baxter’s story has been so thoroughly erased from the historical record that even his elaborate fortress—a physical monument to this network of Nazi-connected wealth—barely registers in Bahamian historical consciousness.
These weren’t isolated incidents. They were systematic. And they weren’t the actions of marginal figures—they were the Bahamas’ most powerful men: politicians, developers, lawyers, and eventually a British royal serving as the colony’s highest authority.
What makes this history particularly insidious is its erasure. Christie is still celebrated. Sands’ legacy as an economic architect endures despite everything. The Wenner-Gren episode gets reduced to exotic anecdote rather than examined as evidence of elite collaboration with fascism. Baxter is utterly forgotten. The foundational structures of modern Bahamian tourism and development—the very systems that still govern how foreign capital operates in the country—were built by men who had no difficulty profiting from Nazi money during a world war.
The full story requires excavating not just what happened, but why it’s been buried, who benefited from that burial, and how the same patterns of elite accommodation to foreign capital—regardless of its moral character—persist today.