by Martha Schad
When he returned to England after a three-week stay in Czechoslovakia, he reported to the British government that ‘Sudetenland is longing to be taken over by Germany, and the Sudeten Germans want to return to their homeland’. As the journalist Bella Fromm remarked, the princess had done a good job.
The press also linked Stephanie’s name with the Munich Agreement, one of the first ever summit conferences, which took place on 29 and 30 September 1938: the heads of government or of state from Britain, France, Italy and the German Reich met to discuss Hitler’s demand for the annexation of the German-populated Sudetenland. Until its incorporation into the new Czechoslovakian state in 1918, the region had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Hitler reasoned that since the Anschluss of Austria into the German Reich, Germany had a legitimate claim on this territory. Since May 1938, Hitler had been conducting an unprecedented war of nerves, by using the Sudeten German Party under Konrad Henlein, the so-called ‘Reich Commissar for the Sudetenland’, to raise the pressure on Prague ever higher with their demands for autonomy, accusations of Czech atrocities and threats of military action.
Finally, the British premier, Neville Chamberlain, anxious to salvage his appeasement policy, had several meetings with Hitler and accepted Mussolini’s proposal for a four-nation conference. Without inviting the victim – Czechoslovakia – to the table, the Munich conference served to disguise the fact that Britain and France were giving way to the German dictator. The Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938 decreed that Czechoslovakia must hand over the territory in question to Germany between 1 and 10 October and in return received vague promises of an international guarantee. True, Hitler gave the assurance that this was his ‘last territorial demand’, yet he had long ago resolved to ‘smash the rump Czech state’.
Chamberlain proclaimed his ‘success’ as a victory for peace, ignoring the profound shock caused in Moscow by the accommodation that the Western Powers reached with Nazi Germany. From Munich, there was a direct path to the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939, and thus to the Second World War, which broke out less than two weeks thereafter.
Fritz Wiedemann had written to Lord Rothermere at that time: ‘It was her [Princess von Hohenlohe’s] preparation of the ground that made the Munich Agreement possible.’ The fact that the princess played a not inconsiderable part in bringing about this political event in Munich was also highlighted by the press. Although she did not see it that way herself, the princess wanted to send her congratulations to the British prime minister and the German Reich Chancellor. Staying at that particular moment at the Adlon in Berlin, she wrote to Adolf Hitler:
There are moments in life that are so great – I mean, where one feels so deeply that it is almost impossible to find the right words to express one’s feelings. – Herr Reich Chancellor, please believe me that I have shared with you the experience and emotion of every phase of the events of these last weeks. What none of your subjects in their wildest dreams dared hope for – you have made come true. That must be the finest thing a head of state can give to himself and to his people. I congratulate you with all my heart.
In devoted friendship
Yours sincerely
Stephanie Hohenlohe
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Wiedemann’s Dismissal: Stephanie Flees Germany
Early in January 1939 the game of hide-and-seek around Princess Stephanie and Fritz Wiedemann came to an abrupt end. Hitler found out that Wiedemann was Stephanie’s lover.
But it was not only the love affair that led to Wiedemann’s dismissal. Stephanie often sensed a distinct sullenness in Wiedemann. He accused her of knowing nothing of life in the German Reich except what she saw from her suite at the Adlon hotel. As Stephanie’s son Franz tells us, his mother had even talked to Wiedemann’s wife about her husband’s very obvious problems. Anna-Luise Wiedemann described his ‘outbursts of screaming’ at home, if things were going badly at the Reich Chancellery. She would have much preferred to go back to their farm in Fuchsgrub. But Wiedemann was against that, chiefly because he did not want to damage their children’s future prospects.
Since the Kristallnacht pogrom against Germany’s Jews on 9 November 1938, there had scarcely been any more proper conversations between Hitler and Wiedemann. When Wiedemann wanted to talk to Hitler about this or that weakness in the system, the Führer simply did not listen. So it is not surprising that in Goebbels’ diary, as early as 24 October 1938, we find this entry: ‘The Führer tells me incidentally that he really has to get rid of Wiedemann now. During the [Munich] crisis he apparently did not perform well and lost his nerve completely. And when things get serious he has no use for men like that.’
Wiedemann had long suspected that he would soon be dismissed: ‘I just hung on until Hitler sent me into the wilderness.’
When Wiedemann came into the Reich Chancellery on 19 January 1939, his colleague Julius Schaub said he was to go to see ‘him’ immediately. Hitler was standing in the conservatory. As Wiedemann later recorded, the Führer told him: ‘I have no use for men in high positions – by that he probably meant Schacht1 – and in my immediate circle – that meant me – who are not in agreement with my policies. I am dismissing you as adjutant and appointing you Consul-General in San Francisco. You can accept the post or decline it.’ Wiedemann replied briefly that he accepted the position.
The recent biographer of Hitler, Ian Kershaw, describes the relationship between the Führer and his personal staff: ‘Genuine warmth and affection were missing. The shows of kindness and attentiveness were superficial. Hitler’s staff, like most other human beings, were of interest to him only as long as they were useful. However lengthy and loyal their service, if their usefulness was at an end they would be dispensed with.’2
The dismissed adjutant certainly did not want to earn less than he had been up till then – 1,500 Reichsmarks a month. Hitler assured Wiedemann that consuls were well paid and that in financial matters he would always see him right. In the end, Wiedemann succeeded in negotiating a better salary than that of his predecessor Baron Manfred Killinger. He was to receive 4,000 Reichsmarks a year more than Killinger, on the grounds that he had served for four years as the Führer’s personal adjutant.
Wiedemann later described how, during this dressing down that lasted only a few minutes, Hitler constantly tugged at his own nose while gazing at the ceiling with a bored expression; the Führer also spoke to him about his relationship with the princess and said he must break it off immediately, since she was ‘under suspicion’.
Goebbels once again commented that ‘Princess Hohenlohe now turns out to be a Viennese half-Jewess. She has her fingers in everything. Wiedemann works with her a great deal. He may well have her to thank for his present predicament, because without her around he probably would not have made such a feeble showing in the Czech crisis.’
Wiedemann was forced to accept a further humiliation. He now had to take orders from his arch-enemy, the Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.
On 13 January 1939, shortly before Wiedemann’s dismissal, the Reichsführer SS and head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Himmler, produced further damning revelations. He submitted a report to Hitler, which had been received from an undercover agent of the German Secret Service in England and contained credible evidence that for some considerable time Princess Hohenlohe had been working for British intelligence. This news was enough to send Hitler into a terrible rage, and he ordered a warrant to be issued for the princess’s arrest. In hand-written notes by Stephanie that still exist, though they are undated and scarcely legible, we read this sentence: ‘Gratitude of the Nazis: [I] was to have been arrested in Berlin a year ago.’ However, the warrant was never enforced.
Nevertheless, material on the princess was also being gathered by the office of Himmler’s second-in-command, SS Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. But in late 1938 a report was made by SS Obersturmführer Bielstein of Department III, for his departmental chief, SS Oberführer Jost. It was pointed out to Jost that
the file on the ‘Princess Hohenlohe case’ was not being maintained in the regulation manner. Documents had not been sent to the correct offices. Thus Heydrich had received a report on the princess’s racial origins, which had not been drafted by the department responsible for Jewish Questions, run by Adolf Eichmann. This report had been ‘full of inconsistencies’; and ‘only an expert in this field’ could give ‘a really conclusive assessment’. One of Eichmann’s staff, SS Obersturmführer Hagen, then gave his ‘professional verdict: half-Jewess.’
Once Hitler had been informed of the close liaison between his adjutant and Stephanie von Hohenlohe, it emerged that his closest henchmen had long been privy to the open secret. Each of them now did his bit to show up the princess, even more than Wiedemann, in a far from favourable light.
Wiedemann found out to his great astonishment that the military intelligence service, the Abwehr, had also taken a close interest in him and his mistress. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,3 head of the Abwehr and attached to the Armed Forces High Command, was on cordial terms with Wiedemann. Thus it is no surprise that as early as the end of July 1938 Wiedemann was invited for a chat with Canaris. The Abwehr chief had no choice but to warn Hitler’s adjutant about the intrigues that were clearly building up against him. Afterwards Wiedemann immediately discussed this with Stephanie, who was planning to sue the newspapers that had published defamatory articles about her. To help her in this, Wiedemann turned once more to Admiral Canaris, writing to him on 29 August 1938, at the Reich Ministry of War in Berlin:
Dear Admiral,
(1) I enclose a report from an agent, which may interest you. It comes from the famous Lescrinier.
(2) Princess Hohenlohe wishes to put an end once and for all to the gossip about her, and to answer the latest reports by foreign newspapers, by picking on one of the papers and taking legal action to force it to withdraw the false statements. As her legal adviser she has chosen the attorney Dr Sack, whom of course you know.
However, in order to pursue this action, I would be most obliged to you, Herr Admiral, if you could for the time being pass over to me all the newspaper reports about Princess Hohenlohe that have appeared in the last six months. I need hardly mention that I – who am always named in connection with the princess – also have a certain interest in seeing these matters finally laid to rest.
With a German salute!
Your very devoted
Wiedemann – Adjutant to the Führer
In his book Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte (‘The man who wanted to command’) Wiedemann described his posting as he wanted to see it: ‘Just a few weeks earlier Colonel Oster,4 who had particularly good contacts with the Foreign Ministry, told me that I was to be appointed Consul-General in San Francisco. The posting there was the final gesture of personal benevolence that Hitler showed me, as his former subordinate. For, when I returned from my trip to America in the autumn of 1937, I had told those who would listen: “Anyone who wants to do me a good turn can send me to San Francisco as Consul-General.” This had even reached Hitler’s ears. Ribbentrop actively supported my posting, since he had always suspected me of wanting to become Foreign Minister one day. He was happy to get rid of me in this way.’ However, Ribbentrop had spelled out very clearly to Hitler that Wiedemann was closely involved with the Jewish Hohenlohe woman.
The diplomat Ulrich von Hassell,5 who in 1938 was dismissed as Germany’s ambassador to Rome, noted in his diary for 25 January 1939: ‘I hear, incidentally, that Wiedemann has also been brusquely shown the door by H[itler] in person, interestingly also with the parting words: “… should you wish to accept the post.” From a senior source I learned additionally that H[itler] told him he wanted to spare him any conflict between his own opinions and “those of the Führer”. This would confirm my suspicion that Ribbentrop, with whom W[iedemann] was in considerable dis-agreement, is behind it all.’
Another diplomat, Reinhard Spitzy, who had been First Secretary at the German embassy in London since 1936, gives an unvarnished account of those events: ‘However, our ambassador quickly noticed that Wiedemann was plotting with Hitler against him and Madame [Ribbentrop’s wife] immediately declared him to be one of their most dangerous enemies. It wasn’t long before Ribbentrop did in fact succeed in shooting Wiedemann down in flames, as he charmingly put it.’ Spitzy goes on to write about Wiedemann’s acquaintance with Princess Stephanie and recalls that she was described as the daughter of a Jewish dentist. Ribbentrop then really began to ‘turn on the heat’ and soon Wiedemann was ‘out of the game’.
Leni Riefenstahl, the actress and film-maker whom Hitler so admired, recalled that Wiedemann’s ‘relationship with Hitler became more distant because of his half-Jewish girlfriend’.
From the day of his dismissal Wiedemann only entered the premises of the Reich Chancellery one last time. Shortly before his departure for the United States in early March, Hitler summoned him once more and walked up and down the drawing-room with him. Later Wiedemann found out from a friend that Hitler already regretted having dismissed him. Wiedemann was unable to say anything negative about his employer. Hitler had always treated him kindly, Wiedemann said, and never gave him any assignment that would have brought him into conflict with his conscience.
In his memoirs Wiedemann only makes very brief mention of his mistress, Princess Stephanie. Once when Forster, the Gauleiter of Danzig, had returned from a trip to England and reported that there ‘they were thinking of inviting Göring for a visit … I immediately phoned a friend of mine, Princess Hohenlohe, and asked her to find out how much truth there was in this rumour’. And then again in connection with Stephanie’s plan to set up a personal meeting between Hitler and Rothermere. There is not a single word about his love for her. And yet his greatest concern was to know that his mistress and her son Franzi were safe in Schloss Leopoldskron.
He confided to Göring:
I ask you to protect my honour and to intercede with the Führer in my behalf. When I took my leave of the Führer, he warned me against Princess H. in the interest of my future career. The Führer does not believe the princess can be relied upon and thinks that various anti-German articles in the foreign press can be traced back to her.
I have informed the Führer
(1) that I vouch absolutely for the princess’s integrity and loyalty to the Third Reich and its Führer …
(2) that of course I have given the princess, as a foreigner, no information that might not be in the national interest.
I cannot prove these things, but on the other hand I can prove that the princess had a decisive influence on the attitude of Lord R[othermere] and thus of the Daily Mail …
After my departure, my enemies and those who are jealous of me will once again impugn my honour. I am defenceless against them. But I would like to be justified to some degree in the eyes of the Führer.
From a wide variety of sources, Hitler knew more about his staff than he let on. The Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von Below confirms that it came as a complete surprise to everyone else, when they heard one day that Wiedemann had been dismissed without reason and transferred to the Foreign Service. True, von Below was glad he would not have to meet Wiedemann again. He found the man inscrutable and had always been suspicious of his high-profile links with foreign diplomats and politicians.
Although Wiedemann’s dismissal created quite a stir in the German and foreign press, it appears that in Salzburg Governor Reitter knew nothing about it. Nor could he have guessed that the princess would leave Schloss Leopoldskron more or less overnight. As late as 18 January 1939 the provincial governor informed Stephanie that Professor Joseph Gregor of the National Library in Vienna had approached him about the Max Reinhardt library in Leopoldskron. Gregor, who claimed to be a leading historian of modern theatre, was entirely in favour of keeping the Reinhardt library locked away in Leopoldskron. Yet he was of the opinion that it should not remain a dusty exhibit, but that it could be of use to those interested; and selected scholars of reput
e should from time to time be allowed access to it for research purposes.
Governor Reitter doubted whether the princess, for all the generous hospitality she had brought to Leopoldskron, would agree to the professor’s request to be allowed to visit her and discuss the matter.
Reitter’s letter was not answered by the princess but by Wiedemann, from Berlin. He informed Reitter that the library belonging to Professor Max Reinhardt ‘has been restored to him on the express orders of the Führer’.
At the end of January the princess, together with her mother, left Leopoldskron en route for London. The dream of the châtelaine to live in one of the most magnificent parts of the Ostmark had proved a brief one. She travelled with only a few personal belongings, but then gave her lover in San Francisco the task of arranging for everything else to be sent on to London after her. This operation took a long time. At the end of August 1939, the Governor of Salzburg province, Dr Reitter, assured Wiedemann, now in San Francisco, that he would make every effort to deal with the matter to his fullest satisfaction. In fact, the housekeeper at Schloss Leopoldskron, Frau Gwinner, who had been employed there in Reinhardt’s day, was able to say exactly what belonged to the princess. Yet since there had been differences between the princess and the housekeeper, Frau Gwinner does not seem to have been prepared to offer much assistance.
Schloss Leopoldskron now became the residence of the local Gauleiter – until the Americans arrived in Salzburg at the end of the war. After the war the Schloss was given back to the Reinhardt family. Today it is the property of ‘The Salzburg Seminary – A Community of Fellows’.
As far as Stephanie’s widowed mother was concerned, Stephanie counted herself lucky that, at the end of the 1938 Salzburg Festival that summer, her mother married the ninety-year-old Hungarian, Kalman Negyessy de Szepessy, in the little provincial town of Boldva in Hungary. The ‘groom’ imposed no conditions whatsoever on his ‘bride’. He remained in Hungary, while Ludmilla Richter returned to Leopoldskron as the Baroness Kalman de Szepessy. This meant that, like Stephanie herself and her son, Ludmilla also held a Hungarian passport. Stephanie knew more than enough about anti-Semitism at the highest level. On 9 November 1938, as already mentioned, the pogrom known as the Kristallnacht took place. This night of terror, echoing to the sound of shattering glass, spread with unremitting brutality right across the German Reich which, since 12 March 1938, had of course included Austria; 91 people were murdered and countless others injured, 191 synagogues were torched, some 7,500 shops were smashed up and looted, and nearly every Jewish cemetery vandalised. No fewer than 30,000 Jews were thrown into concentration camps. That was just the beginning; the night of pogroms was followed by unparalleled discrimination against Jews, and their progressive exclusion from the community – culminating in their death in the gas chambers.