From its earliest days, the King David Hotel hosted royalty: the dowager empress of Persia, queen mother Nazli of Egypt, and King Abdullah I of Jordan stayed at the hotel, and three heads of state forced to flee their countries took up residence there: King Alfonso XIII of Spain, forced to abdicate in 1931, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, driven out by the Italians in 1936, and King George II of Greece, who set up his government in exile at the hotel after the Nazi occupation of his country in 1942. During the British Mandate, the southern wing of the hotel was turned into a British administrative and military headquarters.