BRITAIN’S royal family suffered a high-profile embarrassment Saturday after a newspaper published images showing Queen Elizabeth II giving a Nazi salute as a young child in the 1930s.

    Buckingham Palace voiced disappointment after the front page of The Sun carried a black-and-white image of the queen, then aged around 6, raising her right hand in the air as her mother, the late Queen Mother, does the same.

    The headline on the story read: “Their Royal Heilnesses” — a reference to the “Heil Hitler” greeting used in Nazi Germany.

    An investigation into how The Sun got the footage has been launched and the palace could take legal action against the newspaper depending on its findings, a royal source said.

    “It is disappointing that film shot eight decades ago and apparently from HM’s (her majesty’s) personal family archive has been obtained and exploited in this manner,” a Buckingham Palace spokesman said in a statement.

    Ten years ago, The Sun published a photograph of Prince Harry wearing a swastika armband to a friend’s fancy dress party. The fifth in line to the throne later apologized.

    While the queen would not have known the significance of the gesture at such a young age, the story will have made uncomfortable reading for the monarch, who is now 89.

    The images showing the Nazi salute come from a 20-second home movie which The Sun reported was shot at the royal family’s rural Balmoral estate in Scotland in 1933 or 1934 and has never been made public before.

    The video shows the young future queen briefly raising her right hand in the air three times, as well as dancing around excitedly and playing with a corgi.

    (SD-Agencies)