Hitler's Spy Princess

by Martha Schad

  My memories … How old am I really …? Without the benefit of the doubt … just facing the stern realities of documents … I was born in Vienna in September 1899 [in fact, it was 1891. Tr.]. But they must think me much older, if they want ‘the story of my life’ … How pompous, anyhow … Of course, I have a grown-up son … an Oxford graduate … That dates me, definitely … But still – my memoirs … ‘As a political woman.. .’ A political woman … a political woman … how heavy! A political woman …! Am I a political woman? What is a political woman??

  Let’s begin at the beginning … the Bible … well, there was Potiphar [she presumably means Potiphar’s wife, who tried to seduce Joseph. Tr.] … a woman in her dangerous age … that’s all … The Queen of Sheeba [sic] … Judith, cutting off the head of Holofernes … patriotic, by all means … but more characteristic of an angry woman than of a political woman … Queen Esther intervened … intervened gloriously, on behalf of her persecuted nation, but she is more like a lovely phantom out of ‘A Thousand and One Nights’ than a political schemer … And as to all others out of both Testaments … well, they are just lovers, mothers, sisters, daughters … They are all so feminine, because the Bible is so masculine … Written by men, of course …

  Aspasia1 … was she a political woman? What was she anyhow? The Greeks had a word for it … [Stephanie adds the word hetaira, meaning ‘female companion’ or ‘courtesan’, but has crossed it out.] … The friend or the mistress of statesmen, philosophers, poets and rich men … Was she a bluestocking, because she allowed poets to lie at her feet, or was she a political woman, because she let statesmen do likewise? … Who can tell? … Then there was Lysistrata … Was she a real person, or just a character in a comedy?2 Anyhow, she was a practical pacifist … Her idea to get the boys out of the trenches by bedtime, was eminently more political than Henry Ford’s idea to get them out by Christmas … It was political all right … And what about the Amazons?3 Mythological or real – it was politics to organize a state of women … I wonder if they really existed …?

  The empress Theodora [of Byzantium] was certainly a political woman … Lucrezia Borgia …? She was for the Borgias, that was all. Did she really use poison …? Was it politics, or was it murder for profit? … No, she was not a political woman … Catherine de Medici4 … Yes! … All the French ladies of the French Louis? Decidedly, no! … They were interested in Kings, but not in political ideas or systems … Court intrigues – yes; politics, no! … Joséphine Beauharnais [Napoleon’s first wife] … a courtesan amongst politicians, but was not a ‘political woman’ … the Empress Eugénie [wife of Napoleon III] … perhaps …?

  The Empress Maria-Theresa [of Austria] … She preserved an embattled empire … She fought several wars … She withstood Frederick the Great [of Prussia] … But was she a political woman? No, she was a mother, a mother of her family, a mother of her country, always the mother … If she had inherited a laundry instead of an empire, she might have been Madame Sans-Gêne,5 if she had inherited a restaurant, she might have been Frau Sacher,6 smoking a cigar … How amazingly like her was Queen Victoria! The same motherly virtues, the same amorous devotion to the husband, the same jealousy of her power and divine rights, the same puritanism and the same vast progeny … Surrounded by statesmen for more than sixty years, she still remained the woman Victoria … Both used the best political minds of their age, but both remained almost naively apolitical …

  But Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen … Yes, a thousand times, yes! … The political woman, par excellence … Obviously I cannot formulate a definition … Yet, I feel somehow the meaning of the phrase … Elizabeth was political! In instinct, in desire, in thought, in action … Perhaps because she was childless … perhaps because she was a virgin … even if she wasn’t one …

  And the suffragettes …? I’m probably wrong, but they seem to me more hysterical than political … Isn’t it telling that they achieved the vote, but not the power …? How strange that hardly one of the militant suffragettes ever received the votes they secured! Wherever the women’s suffrage movement succeeded, the suffrage leaders disappeared. Where are the Pankhursts e tutti quanti …? Gone with the votes …

  Is Margot Asquith, Lady Oxford, a political woman? … No, she was merely devoted to her husband7 … Is Lady Astor8 a political woman …? No, she is simply annoyed by tobacco and alcohol … Are Lady Snowden9 and Mrs Sidney Webb10 political women? Was Mrs Woodrow Wilson11 a political woman? Perhaps, although … no offence meant … I suspect she only wanted to be cheered in the Champs Elysées … what about Miss Perkins, Mrs Roosevelt, Dorothy Thompson?12 … I wonder … And the Duchess of Atholl, Lady Londonderry, Mrs Greville13 … I don’t know … Political hostesses are not necessarily political women, nor are wives concerned with the political careers of their husbands, nor trade union leaders or officials of similar pseudo-political [sentence unfinished] …

  Damn that letter … Who wrote it anyhow? … How like a businessman … utterly illegible signature … Ah … I beg your pardon, sir … the name is typed as well as written … My mistake, Mr Thompson … Who are you, Mr Thompson? … What are you like? … Apart from being a Vice-President of a literary agency … And why in heaven’s name do you consider me a political woman?!? … Am I? …

  Well, I am at a loss … When might I first have felt or thought politically? … certainly not as a ‘flapper’ … As a war nurse, perhaps? … I was only seventeen … There was no time for thinking … I am sure my disposition was not cerebral … Cursing the war was not exactly thinking … I was a Red Cross nurse … My soul, my heart, my mind were just Red Cross … nothing else … I wanted to help and I did help … It hardly mattered on which side I nursed …

  Did political passion surge up in me at the fall of Austria-Hungary? Did I thirst for revenge? … Did I think about ways and means of reconstructing the stricken monarchy? … Did I think at all? … No, I didn’t … My mind was fully occupied with the day-to-day problems of any individual in a defeated and starving country … First I had to get back from the Isonzo front to Vienna … That was not as simple then as it sounds … Thereafter came the hourly problems of lighting, heating, feeding … of money and a thousand other necessities in the dying, decomposing capital of a state that had suddenly vanished … Like millions of others I was just a stunned human being … a stunned human being, yes … but not a ‘political animal’ …

  Then came love … marriage … childbirth … No time for politics … The horizon seemed to be clouded by nasty monsters called the succession states14 … but that was all … Names like Versailles, St Germain, Trianon15, filled the air … but when did I find myself first directly concerned with a political problem? I suppose it must have been much, much later … probably in London … probably in the late Twenties … at the time when the propaganda for the resurrection of Hungary first started … the reunion of the lands of the crown of St Stephan [sic] …

  Strange … I was born in Vienna … I grew up in Vienna … I loved Vienna … I was a Vienna girl … And like all the others I sang: ‘Wien, Wien, nur Du allein.. .’ at my most sentimental … Yet it never occurred to me to dream or to think of a reborn Austria-Hungary … An almost pleasant nostalgia for the past filled our hearts and eyes … but the future never reached our imagination … My family and my friends certainly desired the return of the Hapsburgs [sic, the correct spelling is ‘Habsburgs’, something an Austrian ‘princess’ should surely have known] … but it was more the proper façon de parler than the expression of political thoughts or emotions … There was no backbone to it … The renaissance of a Danubian empire or, at least, an economic federation of the Danubian countries was a frequent conversational topic … but hardly more than that …

  I had married a Hungarian prince … that is to say my husband belonged to the Hungarian branch of a mediatized16 German dynastic family … Thus I became a Hungarian citizen, which I still am … But when I found myself agitated by the bleeding frontiers of Hungary, when I began m
yself to agitate for the healing of ‘the wounded land’ … why, at that time I had already been divorced from my husband for several years … Would I have acted for Tschecho-Slovakia [sic] if I had married a Prince Lobkowitz instead of a Prince Hohenlohe? … It might have happened … No, no … my language was Viennese, my sentiments were Austrian, my tastes were cosmopolitan and my reactions were humanitarian … The political intermezzi in my life, such as they were, must have been due to circumstances, but not to political impulses … No, no, I don’t think I am a political woman, Mr Thompson … You probably think so because my name has been linked with Lord Rothermere and other such celebrities or notorieties as Adolf Hitler, Admiral Horthy, Gömbös17 … Isn’t that a little superficial? … I believe that I have a friendly and helpful disposition … I like human beings … I enjoy helping others … and, God knows, this is a time when help is needed … but …

  What, Anna? … It’s eleven?! … I hate you, illegible Mr Thompson … Your letter set me day-dreaming … I missed my manicure and my massage … memories … I shall have to forego a good deal of my present, if I am to start remembering … What indulgence! … Do you want me to? Even if I am not really a political woman?

  I must admit that there is much to remember … My years of maturity fell into a most turbulent period … I happened to be near the whirlpool … and I escaped … But there are many things I wish I could forget … You want me to remember them particularly? … I’ll try.

  II: LETTER FROM ADOLF HITLER TO LORD ROTHERMERE, 7 DECEMBER 1933

  It should be noted that Hitler wrote this letter only a few weeks after taking Germany out of the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference in October 1933. There is evidence that Hitler feared sanctions by the League of Nations, in the form of physical invasion of Germany by France, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Had this taken place, Germany would not have been strong enough at that time to repel it.

  This helps to explain Hitler’s uncertain tone, a mixture of injured innocence and veiled threats.

  It was Hitler’s custom to dictate or draft a letter in German and then have it translated by one of his staff, often his interpreter, Paul Schmidt. The English is far from perfect. Tr.

  Dear Lord Rothermere,

  You have been good enough to communicate to me through Princess von Hohenlohe a number of suggestions for which I wish to express to you my most sincere thanks. I would furthermore like to give expression to the feelings of numberless Germans who consider me as their spokesman, for the journalist support, both wise and happy, of the policy of which we all hope that it will contribute to the final liberation of Europe. Princess von Hohenlohe gave me a translation of the great article written to which I took the liberty of referring already some time ago. I particularly welcomed the reference contained in this article with regard to the usefulness of an Anglo-French defensive alliance. I am convinced that an Anglo-French friendship for the maintenance of a real peace can be very useful. Germany herself has no aggressive intentions against France; however fanatically we may be resolved to defend ourselves against an attack we are against any idea of provoking, ourselves, a war. As old soldiers of the world war – I was myself in the front line for four and a half years facing British and French soldiers – we have all of us a very personal experience of the terrors of a European war. Refusing any community with cowards and deserters we freely accept the idea of duty before God and our own nation to prevent with all possible means the recurrence of such a disaster. This cannot be definitely achieved for Europe unless the treatment of the critical problem, whose existence cannot be denied, is transferred from the atmosphere of hatred in which victors and vanquished face each other, to a basis on which nations and countries deal with each other on a footing of equality. This equality for Germany does not involve any danger for French security, for:

  In the first place this equality of rights is at the same time connected with a solemn recognition of the territorial situation as created between Germany and France by the world war subject to the return of the Saar Territory.1

  In the second place I am moved by the idea to attempt thereby to put an end, once and forever, to the fruitless struggle of the two nations against each other. Nobody can deny that the importance of the objects and the greatness of the results which might in all cases be achieved, would be in no proportion to the consequences of a war between the two nations, which might only too easily degenerate also in future into a new world war. Even if the parts were equally distributed, any possible gain would not be justified if compared with the unspeakable sacrifices. A reconciliation of these two nations however would take a burden from everybody except perhaps a small international clique, who wants fighting and disagreement among the nations because it may require these for political and other transactions.2 In particular however I want to express my conviction that no soldier who served during the Great War at the front, of whatever nationality he may be, desires another war.

  Such reconciliation would however presuppose the removal of the defamatory provisions of the peace treaties. Material differences can be discussed objectively but dishonourable defamations and insults cannot.

  In the third place: From the military point of view, France would not be menaced either by such a development. France has surrounded herself with a system of fortification3 which can even resist the material means of attack used in a world war. The fact is that without the most enormous sacrifices and without the heaviest offensive arms any attack against this system would be absolute madness. Germany has not the slightest intention of attacking. This is also the reason why we are ready in principle to renounce the possession of such aggressive arms, which might perhaps appear dangerous to France. But even if France is anxious to strengthen her security when Germany is no less anxious, we are therefore not inclined to renounce the possession of defensive arms. Germany would have more reason to feel herself menaced by France’s offensive armaments than France has to fear Germany’s defensive arms. France has a common frontier with Germany of hardly 400 kilometres [240 miles].4 Behind that front there is the greatest instrument of war of all times. Germany has a frontier of over 3,000 kilometres [1,800 miles], and what is there behind it? We are not inclined to recognise the situation as permanent, nay even as one corresponding to the laws of nature. We are ready to disarm to the last, but only subject to the condition that the other nations will do the same. If they don’t, we are not prepared to allow ourselves to be permanently treated as a second-rate nation. Nor can we admit this in the interest of the guarantee of peace. A country like Germany which has economically such an important element constitutes, if it is completely defenceless, by the mere fact of its existence in disturbed times, a certain incentive to become the object of an attack!

  In the fourth place: The demand for an army of 300,000 men, particularly when it is put forward together with a renunciation of heavy aggressive arms, and if account is taken of Germany’s situation in regard to her military defence, constitutes a menace to nobody. Across her frontier, Germany has France with over 600,000 men, Poland with 370,000 men, Czechoslovakia with 250,000 men.

  All these nations possess offensive arms of the heaviest kind. Apart from the wholly inadequate fortress of Königsberg,5 Germany does not even possess defensive works at her frontiers. To speak of a menace means deliberately mis-stating the truth.

  In the fifth place: Germany has no more ardent desire than to achieve with the other European nations a situation excluding the use of force in Europe for the future, possibly by a system of non-aggression pacts, in order thereby to relieve the economic life which is suffering from depression in all countries from the nightmare of warlike complications.

  The objection according to which we would thereby separate France from her allies is not intelligible. Germany has no reason to oppose alliances which, in so far as they are defensive, only constitute an increased guarantee of peace. In the same way it is wrong to object that, by an anticipated settlement of the Saar problem, we would b
e depriving France of one of her rights. For, in the first place, this solution can only be found by agreement among the two countries, and in the second place it is not a right which France holds in respect of the Saar Territory, but Germany was given a concession in so far as the population of the Saar territory would be placed in a position in 1935 to decide upon their future. This decision will be almost 100 per cent in favour of Germany.6 Now I believe that in these circumstances a settlement of this problem before 1935 would already mark a beginning of détente in Europe and above all [would] be liable to influence most favourably the relations between France and Germany. If I wished for triumph, then I could only want the plebiscite because it will involve a heavy defeat for France. I could therefore quietly wait another 18 months. But I want understanding and conciliation and therefore I believe that precisely this problem should already be dealt with in the spirit of this new development. The allegation, however, that I need this or a similar success for reasons of internal policy can only be made in complete ignorance of the situation in Germany.

  I can assure your Lordship that I and the present German regime do not need such cheap successes of popularity. Our regime cannot be destroyed in Germany, not because we are holding the power, but because the hearts of the whole nation belong to us. The nation cannot give me in future more confidence than it has given me on 12 November.7 If I favour the settlement of Franco-German relations I do so merely because I desire to substitute a real peace of conciliation for a situation overladen with hatred. Finally it must also be borne in mind that I am offering the friendship of a nation of 66 million and which is not valueless in other respects. And just as I see no reason for the war in the west, I don’t see any in the east. The endeavour to reach an understanding between Germany and Poland springs from the same desire to exclude force and to approach soberly and dispassionately the various tasks set to us. In how far however, the re-establishment of equality of rights for Germany should affect Great Britain in her relations to France I am all the more unable to understand. I believe on the contrary that equality of rights to Germany could only enhance the value of an Anglo-French friendship or alliance.