It is not easy, in assessing the fascination of his talk, to know how much was due to the interest inevitably aroused by the fact of power, and how much to the intrinsic attraction of his strange personality. Power is a magnet.
Unlike, for example, Stalin who inherited the communist machine of government from Lenin, Hitler had made his own way. He had no money, no influence, not even very good health when he left hospital in 1919, for he had been half blinded by gas on the western front. His triumph, when it came, was peculiarly his own. If Hitler had been anything like the man described in the biographies, how could one explain a whole chapter of history? Could he have attracted the thousands of devoted adherents and the millions of votes which in fact he did attract? The truth is that in private life he was exceptionally charming, clever and original, and that he inspired affection. He also inspired fear, perhaps, but he was essentially one of those rare beings who make people want to please them, want to work for them, eager to sacrifice. He identified himself with Germany and this identification was accepted by his countrymen. In his make-up there was both pride and a modesty, even vulnerability, which aroused chivalrous feelings, a very powerful motive force. His public appearances, his speeches, had this dual effect which must have come from something in his personality; they excited to action while at the same time arousing a deep desire to protect and cherish. He probably appealed in equal measure to women and to exactly the sort of men he needed.
He told me that when he was in prison in Munich after the putsch, on the eve of his trial early in 1924 he had a visit from Frau Bechstein, a rich supporter. She thrust a large bouquet into his arms saying: ‘Wolf! Wir stehen immer zu dir!’17 When he got back to his cell he found half a bottle of champagne hidden among the flowers; he drank it next day before going into court. Later, at Festung Landsberg, gifts showered upon him. In those days his friends called him Wolf; hence Wolfsburg, where the Volkswagen which he designed is manufactured.
Hitler was the most unselfconscious politician I have ever come across. He never sought to impress, he never bothered to act a part. If he felt morose he was morose. If he was in high spirits he talked brilliantly and sometimes did wonderfully comic imitations. Once when I was there he was shown a photograph in a paper of Mussolini. The Duce was on horseback, he had just been presented with a sword, and he lifted it high above his head in a dramatic gesture. Hitler, after ‘being’ Mussolini, added, ‘Of course, if somebody gave me a sword I shouldn’t know what to do with it. I should just say, “Here, Schaub, take this sword.”’ He admired Mussolini but he saw the comic side of him and he could never quite swallow the histrionics. When Mussolini was reported as having said: ‘I offer the world peace resting on a hundred thousand bayonets,’ or something of that sort, Hitler read it out and observed: ‘Dass ist ja natürlich reiner Quatsch.’ (That is pure nonsense.)
A German in whom what one might call the chivalrous attitude towards Hitler was very marked was Goering. Hitler admired the brave war hero who had won the highest medal ‘Pour le Mérite’, instituted by Frederick the Great; Goering loved Hitler. Unity and I had met him at a reception in the Reichskanzlei and he and Frau Goering invited me to luncheon. There again legend and fact conflicted; the food was quite good but frugal, the wine an unpretentious hock. One day when I visited Goering on a late, foggy afternoon in December he really was in fancy dress. He wore a pale yellow soft leather jerkin over a white silk blouse with voluminous sleeves caught in at the wrist; on his fingers were several rings set with emeralds and sapphires. I believe the jerkin had something to do with his being Reichsforstmeister;18 in any case he was an amazing apparition. That evening I could not resist telling a German acquaintance about his astonishing get-up; the only reaction was: ‘Yes, he dresses like that because he gets so hot.’
Apart from that one occasion I always saw him in ordinary air force uniform. Although he was much less with Hitler than Dr. Goebbels there was a strong mutual affection between Goering and Hitler. Unity told me that one April Hitler took her to see his birthday presents, arranged in a vast room in the Reichskanzlei. There were hundreds of pairs of hand-knitted socks and jerseys from admirers as well as many rich gifts from all parts of the world. There was an elaborate scale model of the Munich Haus der Kunst and Hitler drew Unity’s attention to it: ‘Vom General Feld Marschall!’ he half whispered, exactly as if it were a marvel that such as he should have been given a birthday present by a famous Field Marshal.
The economic miracle in Germany during the six years of National Socialism up to the outbreak of war is never mentioned now. The myth is that the unemployed were immediately absorbed into the armament factories; otherwise Germany was inhabited by brown-shirted thugs who ran up and down the streets looking for a Jew to bully. Astonishing progress was made and a new prosperity was everywhere apparent. Dr. Schacht managed the financial side of the economy, Hitler himself gave the directives on the political and social fronts. People worked hard and were well rewarded, they supported the régime, and the attacks upon it by emigrants made them xenophobic.
Once when Unity and I were in Berlin a huge crowd assembled on the Wilhelmplatz for some reason I have forgotten. We were at the Kaiserhof, and we went out to see what was happening. Unity always wore a swastika badge, it looked rather like a party badge but without the letters NSDAP on the red circle; she had bought it some years before, subsequently the sale of such badges had been forbidden. Near us on the Wilhelmplatz there were some very tiresome, well-scrubbed and fanatical women. They turned furiously on Unity, pointing to her badge: ‘Dazu haben Sie kein Recht! Dass ist ja betrug!’19 they said, and warming to their work they added, including me in their strictures: ‘Schämen Sie sicht nicht, so geschminkt vor dem Hause des Führers zu stehen!’20 They kept up a sort of undertone of barracking for quite a while, Unity paying not the slightest attention.
Next day we were invited to luncheon at the Reichskanzlei. We were four, Hitler, Goebbels, Unity and I. We told about the cross women on the Wilhelmplatz. ‘Why did you stay out there? You should have come in here to us,’ said Hitler. Unity and I marvelled at his ignorance of what went on below stairs in his own palace. The idea that on a day when the Wilhelmplatz was packed with crowds clamouring for him to show himself on the balcony one could have walked past the police and the guards and uninvited into the Reichskanzlei was wildly unimaginable.
We had a cheerful luncheon with many jokes from the Doktor. A few weeks after this incident Unity saw Hitler at the Osteria Bavaria and he took a little parcel out of his pocket. ‘Next time anyone complains about your badge just take it off and let them see the back,’ he said.
His gift was a swastika badge, identical with the party badge except that it had no lettering, and on the reverse side his signature was engraved. She thanked him, but when we talked it over we agreed that to show the signature to the cross women would have been almost to invite a lynching. In their eyes it would have been an additional outrage, for they would never have believed that Hitler himself had had it done. As to the lipstick, Hitler’s supposed antipathy to make-up seems to have been a myth.
Was Unity ‘in love’ with Hitler? This is a question frequently asked. In my opinion, and nobody knew her better than I did, she was not. Her admiration and even affection for him were boundless, but she was not ‘in love’. On his side, he was certainly very fond of her and she amused him greatly; most of the women he met were desperately shy and over-awed in his company. There were exceptions like Frau Wagner and Magda Goebbels, but anyone meeting him for the first time after he became Führer of Germany hardly spoke in his presence except to say ‘Ja, mein Führer’ or ‘Eben, mein Führer’ or ‘Selbstverständlich, mein Führer’, as the case might be. Unity was never awed in her entire life. She said what came into her head.
Once there was some talk about clerics and she asked him: ‘Have you been excommunicated?’ The Umgebung looked startled, but Hitler laughed.
‘Excommunicated? Never! Why, if I were to go into the
Frauenkirche this minute the whole place would soon be black with priests come to greet me.’
‘Don’t go then,’ said Unity.
Another time he told us: ‘Last week I was driving in Munich and I saw a car coming the wrong way down a one-way street. I told Kempka to slow down and I said, why, it’s a woman driver! And then I saw, of course, it was die Unity!’ She said ‘Yes, I was chasing your car and it was the only way I could catch up.’
She knew about Eva Braun. At a Parteitag we were given seats next to Fräulein Braun, and thought her pretty and charming. There again, if Unity had been in love she would have been jealous of Eva Braun, and this she quite obviously was not. She herself had a boy friend in Munich called Erich; his surname, if I ever heard it, I have forgotten. She also had innumerable friends, and was constantly on the move.
There was a book about Hitler after the war called something like I Was Hitler’s Maid;21 it was made fun of by Beachcomber in the Daily Express who invented another book I Was Himmler’s Aunt. Hitler’s ‘maid’ described thrilling orgies with Hitler flagellating his housemaids and parlourmaids on the Berg. The ‘maid’ rather gave herself away by saying that when Unity stayed on the Obersalzberg she used to unpack her lovely silk underclothes. In fact, Unity went up there a few times for luncheon or tea, and once took my parents, but she was not invited to stay. The lovely underclothes were just one more figment of the ‘maid’s’ imagination.
In 1938, as I was pregnant, I travelled less than usual and spent most of my time at Wootton. Unity rushed to Austria to witness the arrival of Hitler in Vienna. English newspapers pretended to think the Anschluss was a ‘rape’. More seriously they announced that German tanks and armoured cars had broken down en route and that half the tanks were made of cardboard. Such reports were probably not believed by the well-informed, but they may have been partly responsible eighteen months later for embarrassing songs about hanging washing on the Siegfried Line, during the phoney war.
That summer, the summer of the Munich crisis, Unity got pneumonia at Bayreuth; she was very ill and Muv travelled from England to be with her. Hitler heard of her illness and he sent his own doctor, the swarthy Dr. Morell, to see her at the clinic. Later on he asked: ‘What did you think when you saw Dr. Morell at your bedside?’
‘I thought it was the Aga Khan.’
‘Sie denkt weltweit,’ (‘She thinks in world-wide terms,’) said Hitler, laughing.
While she was in the Bayreuth clinic, at a time when war seemed a possibility, Unity made up her mind that if it came she herself would disappear from the scene. Her love of Germany was deep, but it was equalled by her love of England. Rather than see these two countries tear each other to pieces she preferred to die.
Whether or not Unity was ‘in love’ is a purely private matter which, should it interest them, people may speculate about. There is another question of more general interest. Did Unity ‘influence’ Hitler? Did he get from her a one-sided or untrue picture of her native land? Did she, for example, give him to understand that the English would in no circumstances fight; did she prevent him from seeing the ‘red light’ which would have stopped him in his tracks? Is she therefore partly responsible for the 1939 war? To ask these questions is to demonstrate their absurdity. Any well-informed person would answer no, in every instance. Imagine the situation reversed. Imagine Chamberlain, or Churchill, as prime minister making friends with a German girl. He would question her about Germany, and about any German politicians she happened to know. If she was intelligent he would be interested to hear what she had to say. But he would have hundreds of other sources of information, beginning with his ambassador and a large staff at the embassy and ranging from commercial information to translations of newspapers and magazines and the speeches of politicians. It is inconceivable that he would ignore all this and believe only this German girl I have imagined.
If Unity had come from what Chamberlain once called a faraway country of which we know little, it is just possible that she might have influenced Hitler’s attitude to the place. But England, Great Britain, the British Empire, a neighbouring great power with which Germany had innumerable links, where it kept a large embassy and of which it had vast experience in both war and peace, in trade, at the League of Nations, at international conferences and so forth, to imagine the German dictator setting aside the information gathered by these various agencies and deciding to rely instead upon what Unity told him at luncheon is inconceivable. To believe such a thing of the silliest hereditary prince, or king of the cannibal islands, would be to stretch credulity. In the case of an astute self-made politician and leader of a great European power it is quite simply impossible.
Unity adopted the whole creed of the National Socialists, including their anti-Semitism, with uncritical enthusiasm. She had many gifts and was a perfect companion, with dozens of devoted friends. She was clever, funny, quick-witted, intelligent and affectionate. She had the seeing eye, her collages were imaginative and skilfully executed.
As to courage, she was one of the bravest people I have ever known, but she was not rash. She was to have motored Mrs. Hammersley up to stay with me at Wootton, but she put off the journey because of snow, ice and fog. Mrs. Hammersley, who had no idea how disagreeable, if not dangerous, the drive would have been, was quite cross. She telephoned me saying: ‘But surely, with Unity, one could go to Spitzbergen?’ a remark which tells much about both of them.
When I say she adopted anti-Semitism, it was in the sense that ‘the enemy of my friend is my enemy’. With her, it was theory; in practice she often liked Jews, and did a whole Munich Fasching (carnival) with Brian Howard.
16.
WAR
I was not particularly in favour of what came to be called appeasement as practised by the unfortunate Neville Chamberlain. Naturally everyone with a grain of sense prefers peace to war, but flying to and from Germany and waving little bits of paper ‘signed by Herr Hitler’ was no way to achieve lasting peace. The Munich settlement was not a settlement, it left almost as many loose ends and injustices as there had been before.
In order to strengthen his hand at home, Chamberlain should have dissolved parliament and had an election on the issue of peace or war. In this way he could have trounced the Churchills and Edens. A conference of all the countries involved should have followed, and plebiscites in disputed territories. Ever since the Saar had voted by over ninety per cent to become part of the Reich, plebiscites, formerly so well regarded, had been unpopular with politicians in the democracies. Yet they were probably the only way whereby war could have been avoided, and where ethnic groups were mixed the losing group should have been offered rich inducements to move into its own mother country. Those who refused would do so with their eyes open.
The same should have been done for the Jews, if they had so desired, not only in Germany but throughout central Europe. The millions spent in re-settling them would have saved their lives and endless suffering. In his book Peace Making at Paris published in 1919 Sisley Huddleston, a well-known journalist on the Westminster Gazette, writes: ‘Throughout the proceedings one had perpetually news of pogroms in Rumania or in the Ukraine or in Czecho Slovakia. The Jewish problem was not the least difficult.’ It is interesting to note that he does not mention Germany as one of the countries where there were perpetually pogroms. Thousands of Jews poured into Germany at that time from the east, and made an acute Jewish problem there. Nothing much was done, either by the League of Nations or by world Jewry, and they were left to their fate.
‘Munich’ was a watershed. Although at first many people and most conservatives were delighted with Chamberlain (a newsreel film of the cabinet greeting him at the airport upon his return from Germany showed his colleagues shouting with joy, one could even see Lord Halifax’s tonsils) they began to have second thoughts, and no wonder. Given the premise that Britain had a duty and a right to interfere in central Europe, what had happened was unsatisfactory. We, of course, did not accept the premise; our
slogan at that time was Mind Britain’s Business, the very last thing politicians of either party intended to do. The Munich ‘settlement’ had been quick and easy, and hard conundrums involving nations, sovereignties, transfers of population cannot be solved in this slap-dash style.
In England re-armament went apace at last; plans were made for the evacuation of women and children from the big cities and it became more and more obvious that the politicians were preparing for war. When, predictably in the circumstances, Czechoslovakia fell apart Hitler was said to have ‘broken his word’. Shortly afterwards a guarantee was given to Poland, another far-away country of which they knew little, though there was one thing about it they might have remembered. In 1919 Lloyd George had pointed on the map to the Polish corridor, saying: ‘Here is where the next war will start.’ At Versailles he had been strongly opposed to the arbitrary arrangement which divided Germany and put millions of Germans within Polish frontiers. As there was nothing Britain could do directly to help Poland, the guarantee was practically a declaration of England’s determination to fight for the status quo. It encouraged the wilder spirits in Poland to be intransigent and to resist even moderate adjustments; it encouraged the wilder spirits in Germany in their belief that since Britain was determined to fight sooner or later it might as well be sooner, and it delighted the war party in Britain itself. So much has been written about this period of our history that there is little left to say. Apparently not one of Britain’s ‘statesmen’ sat down to think what the result of the war with Germany would be for us. Win or lose it was bound to diminish not only England and France and Germany, but Europe itself. As to the British Empire, it was all very well to sing ‘Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set; God who made thee mighty make thee mightier yet’. In sober fact it was wide but not mighty. It was vulnerable, and the way to preserve it was not by weakening the mother country. The British Empire was a great potential, according to M.’s ideas an almost totally neglected potential; the war dealt it a blow so that it fell to pieces. M.’s speeches for peace in the summer of 1939 emphasized that whoever won the war, Britain was bound to lose it.
A Life of Contrasts: The Autobiography of Diana Mosley Page 18