Hitler's Spy Princess
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2 At that time the western border regions of Czechoslovakia, known as Sudetenland, were largely populated by ethnic Germans. After 1918, they claimed they were being disadvantaged by the Czech government and civil unrest developed under the pro-Nazi Sudeten leader, Henlein. Hitler saw this as the perfect pretext to invade Sudetenland and later the whole of Czechoslovakia.
3 This is not correct; she was Austrian by birth, but took Hungarian citizenship when she married.
10: Mistress of Schloss Leopoldskron
1 Stoiber, Des Führers Prinzessin (The Führer’s Princess).
11: Wiedemann’s Dismissal: Stephanie Flees Germany
1 Dr Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970). President of the Reichsbank 1923–9, he was appointed Reich Minister of Economics by Hitler in 1933 but, never a committed Nazi, he resigned his office in 1937. Suspected of implication in the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, he was imprisoned and narrowly escaped execution.
2 Kershaw, Ian, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis, London, 2000.
3 Wilhelm Canaris (1887–1945) fought as a young officer in the German navy at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914. He was captured but escaped through Chile and Argentina. From 1916 onward he worked in intelligence and was appointed head of the Abwehr in January 1935. However, as early as 1938 he was in contact with anti-Hitler resistance groups, and was able to play a complex double game. Not until the attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944 did he come under suspicion. He was tried and executed for treason in April 1945.
4 Hans Oster (1888–1945) was chief assistant to Admiral Canaris in the Abwehr. Ever since the purges of 1934, Oster had been strongly anti-Nazi but was protected by Canaris, who used him to make contact with Britain during the Czech crisis. Oster also tried to warn Denmark, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands of impending invasion. He was arrested after the July 1944 Bomb Plot and executed with Canaris in the last days of the war.
5 Ulrich von Hassell (1881–1944), an aristocratic diplomat, was ambassador to Rome from 1932 to 1938. When dismissed by Hitler for disagreeing with his policies, Hassell joined senior generals and civil servants in a plot to arrest Hitler and put him on trial in the summer of 1938. After the July 1944 Bomb Plot Hassell was arrested and hanged.
12: The Lawsuit against Lord Rothermere
1 Once Hitler was in power, he was anxious to remove senior political and military figures who were not in sympathy with his ambitions. Field-Marshal Werner von Blomberg, Minister of Defence from 1933 to 1938, was opposed to Hitler’s re-occupation of the Rhineland in 1935 and his invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. In that year Blomberg married a new young wife, and Göring, as chief of police, managed to find evidence that she had once appeared in a pornographic photograph. Blomberg was forced to resign. At the same time, the Commander-in-Chief of the army, General von Fritsch, was framed in a homosexual scandal and also made to resign. Hitler then took over both posts himself.
13: The Spy Princess as a ‘Peacemaker’ in the USA
1 Rudolf Kommer, like Stephanie, came from Vienna’s Jewish community. He died in 1943 and since he had no living relatives, his property went to the US government. The manuscript on which he worked with Stephanie disappeared.
2 Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) was appointed president of the Danzig senate in 1933 under the Nazi regime, but resigned a year later. In 1936 he emigrated to Switzerland and wrote a number of books attacking Hitler, including Germany’s Revolution of Destruction, Zürich/London, 1939. In 1940 he emigrated to the USA and took up farming.
3 Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist, was an early promoter of Hitler. However, in 1936 he denounced Nazi ideology and from 1940 to 1945 was held in the concentration camps of Oranienburg, Buchenwald and Dachau. Afterwards he wrote a book entitled I Paid Hitler.
4 Kommer’s thoughts are not easy to interpret here. The bombing of cities by German aircraft had certainly begun by this date, for example the destruction of Warsaw and Rotterdam by the Luftwaffe, but the London blitz did not begin until the autumn of 1940, and the saturation bombing of Hamburg, Cologne, Berlin, etc. later still. Kommer must have been extraordinarily far-sighted to predict, in May 1940, an Allied alliance even being formed, let alone Germany’s destruction and dismemberment.
5 Dr Heinrich Bruening (1885–1970), a centre-party politician, was Reich Chancellor under the late Weimar republic, from 1930 to 1932. In 1934, when Hitler began eliminating his opponents, he fled to Holland and then the USA. There, in 1939, he became Professor of Government at Harvard. He taught at Cologne University 1952–5 but died in the USA.
6 Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf (1896–1944) was a member of the Nazi Party and was elected to the Reichstag in 1933. He was appointed chief of police in 1935, but in 1938 joined the military anti-Hitler group. He was executed in 1944 for complicity in the July Bomb Plot.
7 Franz Halder (1884–1972), a career army officer, was appointed army chief-of-staff in 1938 and was instrumental in planning the invasions of Poland, western Europe and Russia. Yet he made cautious approaches to the anti-Hitler resistance without openly defying Hitler. In the Russian campaign Hitler increasingly took charge of operations and Halder was dismissed in September 1942. In 1944 he was arrested in connection with the Bomb Plot and imprisoned in Dachau for the rest of the war.
15: The International Journalist
1 Wiedemann was called to give evidence at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal (7 October 1945). He was in detention until 3 May 1948. He published his memoirs in 1964, and died at the age of 78 in Fuchsgrub on 24 January 1970.
2 Gerd Bucerius (1906–95) was an influential figure in the postwar German media. In 1946 he was co-founder of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, and from 1951 onward was the majority shareholder of Stern magazine.
3 Henri Nannen (1913–96), another key figure in the German media scene, was for many years editor-in-chief and then publisher of Stern, which grew to be Europe’s top-selling magazine.
4 Roy Jenkins (1920–2003), later Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, was Home Secretary, then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour government of 1964–70. In 1981 he was one of the ‘Gang of Four’ who formed the breakaway Social Democratic Party; this later merged with the Liberals. Later Jenkins was appointed President of the European Commission.
5 Axel Springer (1912–85) was a major publisher who, in the 1960s, became the figurehead of German conservatism. He owned, among other things, the tabloid Bild and the broadsheet Die Welt.
6 Ernst Cramer was one of Axel Springer’s closest associates and is still active in the Springer publishing concern.
Appendix I
1 Aspasía of Miletus, beautiful and intelligent, was only 20 when Pericles, the ruler of Athens, fell in love with her in 445 BC. Pericles was already 50 at the time, and had divorced his wife a few years earlier.
2 In Aristophanes’ comedy of the same name, Lysistrata persuades the women of Athens to withhold their sexual favours until their menfolk renounce war.
3 According to the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, the Amazons did exist and lived in the Caucasus region. They got their name, meaning ‘without breasts’, from the fact or legend that they cut off their breasts in order to fire their longbows more effectively.
4 Powerful Italian wife of the French king, Henri II, in the early sixteenth century.
5 Madame Sans-Gêne was a comedy by Sardou about intrigue at Napoleon’s court, first performed in 1893. Its chief character is Madame Lefebvre, wife of one of Napoleon’s marshals. Originally a laundress, she was nicknamed ‘Madame Sans-Gêne’, meaning ‘thick-skinned’ or ‘inconsiderate’.
6 Owner of the most famous hotel and restaurant in Vienna.
7 She was married to H.H. Asquith (1852–1928), British prime minister 1908–16.
8 Nancy, Viscountess Astor, was the first woman to take a seat in the House of Commons, in December 1919.
9 Wife of Philip Snowden (1864–1937), who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour governments of 1924 and 19
29–31. Created 1st Viscount Snowden.
10 Beatrice Webb (1858–1943) and her husband Sidney (1859–1947) were joint authors of influential books on left-wing politics, such as The History of Trade Unionism, 1894. Sidney Webb held various cabinet posts in the Labour governments of 1924 and 1929–31.
11 Wife of US President Woodrow Wilson (in office 1913–21), the architect of the 1918 peace settlement in Europe.
12 Three American women whom Stephanie had met: Miss Perkins was probably a society figure, Mrs (Eleanor) Roosevelt, wife of President F.D. Roosevelt, and Dorothy Thompson, a journalist who interviewed Hitler in 1931.
13 Influential society hostesses in London in the 1930s.
14 The republics and kingdoms established by the Treaty of Versailles to replace the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania, etc.
15 The Treaties of St Germain (1919) and Trianon (1920) were subsidiary to the Treaty of Versailles, and signed by the Allies and Austria and Hungary respectively.
16 Historically, under the (German) Holy Roman Empire, a ‘mediatised’ prince or state was one reduced from being an immediate vassal of the Empire to one owing allegiance to a monarch (in this case, the King of Hungary) who in turn was subordinate to the Emperor.
17 Admiral Horthy was the Regent of Hungary after 1918, and Gömbös the prime minister.
Appendix II
1 The Saar is a German-speaking territory to which France laid claim unsuccessfully in the nineteenth century. It was ceded to France under the Treaty of Versailles in 1918, and was thus under French rule when this letter was written. However, a plebiscite in 1935 resulted in the return of the Saar to the German Reich. After the Second World War, the Saar came under the French zone of occupation, but following the creation of the German Federal Republic, the Saarlanders voted once again to be part of Germany.
2 This is Hitler’s indirect way of blaming the Jews for promoting war for financial ends – a frequent theme in his speeches and writings.
3 The Maginot Line was a series of massive underground defences built along France’s northern frontier in the 1920s. Ironically, in 1940, the German army simply bypassed this obstacle by invading France through the supposedly impassable forests and mountains of the Ardennes.
4 About half of this is represented by the river Rhine.
5 Formerly in East Prussia, Königsberg was captured by the Russians in 1945 and is now Kaliningrad, in the Russian enclave on the Baltic between Poland and Lithuania.
6 In the Saar plebiscite held on 13 January 1935, 91% of the votes cast were in favour of rejoining Germany.
7 Hitler is referring to the ‘general election’ held on 12 November 1933 to vote for an all-Nazi list of candidates for the Reichstag. The list received 92% of the poll. Simultaneously Hitler asked the electorate to ratify his decision, of 14 October, to withdraw Germany from the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference. Of the 96% who voted, 95% supported the withdrawal.
Appendix III
1 General von Seeckt was in charge of the Reichswehr (regular army) during the Weimar years. He secretly and illegally built up its strength and weaponry. Gustav Stresemann, Heinrich Bruening and Kurt von Schleicher all briefly served as Chancellor during the Weimar Republic, 1918–33.
2 The Stahlhelm (steel helmet) was a militant, right-wing, but non-Nazi ex-servicemen’s organisation founded in 1918 and dissolved in 1933.
3 Paul von Hindenburg was aged 85 in 1932, when he stood for re-election as President of Germany. Hitler stood against him and in the second round of voting polled 13.4 million votes against Hindenburg’s 19.4 million. Hitler had increased his poll by 2.1 million compared with the first round. Within a few months Hindenburg reluctantly appointed Hitler as his Chancellor. When Hindenburg died in 1934, the presidency was abolished.
4 Hitler, of course, had no intention of reviving the monarchy. His Potsdam speech was simply intended to win over the predominantly Prussian senior officers in the army.
5 Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, who flew to Britain in 1941, apparently on a self-appointed peace mission, and was disowned by Hitler; Ernst Röhm, Hitler’s longest-serving colleague, head of the SA storm-troopers, murdered on Hitler’s orders in 1934; Hermann Göring, the pleasure-loving chief of the Luftwaffe, who tried to replace Hitler in the last days of the war; Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda chief, who committed suicide with his wife and children, beside Hitler in April 1945; Walter Darré, agrarian ideologue, who ran the wartime food programme, but was dismissed for black-marketeering; Baldur von Schirach, upper-class student of partly American parentage, who built up the Hitler Youth movement, but later fell from Hitler’s favour.
6 King George V and Queen Mary.
Appendix V
1 On 3 October 1935, in defiance of the League of Nations covenant, Mussolini’s Italy invaded the ancient African kingdom of Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia). The League imposed partial economic sanctions on Italy, but they were timidly enforced. They did not cause Italy to halt the invasion, but had the effect of driving Mussolini into the arms of Hitler. The Germans were delighted with this turn of events. If Italy got bogged down in Africa, it would be less able to oppose Germany’s annexation of Austria (hitherto protected by Italy), and if Italy triumphed it would weaken the position of France and Britain. Either way, Germany would benefit.
2 This unusual word is probably a direct translation of the German ‘apodiktisch’, used in philosophy to denote a necessary and hence absolute truth.
3 Hitler’s version of history is typically distorted. The blockade of German ports was highly effective and in 1918 Germany was close to starvation. The German army was conclusively defeated for a combination of reasons: the increased effectiveness of American troops, the use of tanks by the British, but most of all by the German army’s lack of food and supplies. This caused the last German offensive to stall, when German troops started looting well-stocked French shops. Furthermore, there was no ‘revolution’ as such in Germany, though there were strikes in some cities, and a naval mutiny in Kiel, in the last weeks of the war. Political reform was urged on the Kaiser and his government by parliamentary parties of the centre and left joining forces in the Reichstag. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg was forced to resign in July 1917, over a year before Germany finally sued for peace.
4 The Treaty of Versailles, among other things, deprived Germany of its shortlived colonies in Africa and the Pacific.
5 Earlier in 1935, Hitler had blatantly flouted the military restrictions imposed on Germany under the Treaty of Versailles, among other things by introducing compulsory military service. This provoked the British, French and Italians to meet at Stresa on 11 April. They issued a statement condemning Germany’s action and reiterating their support of Austria’s independence and of the Treaty of Locarno (1925) under which Weimar Germany undertook to respect existing European frontiers.
6 Hitler is referring to US President Woodrow Wilson (in office 1913–21), who was instrumental in the creation of the League of Nations. He had indeed been a professor at Princeton University.
7 Sir Samuel Hoare was appointed Foreign Secretary in Baldwin’s National Government that was elected in June 1935. In September he made a powerful speech at the League of Nations, warning Italy against any invasion of Abyssinia, an independent country and member of the League. However, there was nervousness about splitting the Stresa Front, linking Italy, France and Britain. The Hoare–Laval Pact, negotiated shortly afterwards with France, effectively gave Italy carte blanche in Abyssinia. There was a public outcry in Britain and Hoare resigned early in December.
8 This bilateral treaty, signed in June 1935, allowed Germany to increase the size of its navy to 35% of that of the British navy, with submarines to at least 45% of the British strength, or to parity in the event of a threat from the Soviet Union.
Appendix VI
1 Herbert Scholz was a German, and an ambitious Nazi careerist. He had doubtless been placed in that post in order to k
eep an eye on Horthy. We do not know the date of Stephanie’s 1938 visit to Hungary, but we do know that on 23 November 1938, she asked Fritz Wiedemann to write to Scholz and send him a gift, because she wanted her son Franz to get a job in I.G. Farben, the company whose Finance Director was Scholz’s father-in-law (see Chapter 10).
2 Horthy did his best to maintain civilised government in Hungary, and was relatively benign towards the Jewish population, but during the war he was progressively undermined by the Nazis. Hungary had its own Nazi-type organisation, the Arrow Cross. By 1944, Horthy was trapped between a pro-Nazi prime minister, Sztójay, and a German ‘plenipotentiary’, Veesenmayer. As if this was not enough, the Nazis kidnapped his son in order to blackmail Horthy into doing their bidding, including the mass deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. Horthy chose to resign and spent the rest of the war under German ‘protection’ in Bavaria.
3 Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937) was leader of the Conservative Party 1921–2 and Foreign Secretary 1925–9. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his prominence in negotiating the Treaty of Locarno in 1925.
4 Chamberlain would have been 72 years old then and no longer in office as Britain’s Foreign Secretary.
Copyright
First published in 2002 by Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH & Co. KG,
Munich, under the title Hitlers Spionin.
This English translation first published in 2004 by Sutton Publishing Limited
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GLl5 2QG