The Sisters_The Saga of the Mitford Family

by Mary S. Lovell

  Almost the last thing Pam did before leaving New York was to arrange a singing telegram for Decca’s twenty-second birthday in September. Then they set off for England. Three years earlier, a transatlantic flight of any kind was still deemed worthy of a tickertape parade but aviation in the thirties represented the exposed cutting edge of technology. Aircraft evolved in that decade from flimsy club biplanes through classic racers and record-breaking fuel carriers, to the sophisticated fighting machines of the Second World War. The Jacksons went home in a Caribou flying boat. ‘Our flying journey’, Pam wrote to Decca, ‘was wonderful, but rather frightening when we took off. The plane seemed far too small to battle all across the Atlantic. We came down at Botwood in Newfoundland, and were able to go for a walk while the plane was being filled with petrol. The next stop was at Foynes in Ireland. The whole journey only took 28 hours!’21 Pam was probably among the first hundred women to fly the Atlantic, and although she is always regarded as ‘the unknown sister, who never did anything’, this flight in 1939 represented a quiet act of courage. No fuss, no nerves: it was typical of the daughter who most resembled Sydney.

  Other members of the Mitford family besides Decca, Unity and Diana were now taking up partisan positions. David had swung round in a U-turn and for him the Germans had once more become ‘the beastly Hun’. Sydney was having none of this: she had met Hitler and liked the man; she had seen for herself the ‘marvellous’ things that his administration had done for a country brought to its knees by the previous war, and she continued to support him. Hitler’s arguments about encirclement by unsympathetic neighbours made perfect sense to her and, in her opinion, if a war was impending it was Churchill and the British government who were the cause for they had it in their power to stop it. For Debo, the only child left at home, this was a traumatic time. She was the only witness of the effect on her parents of Decca’s elopement, the worry over Unity, and the continuous disagreement between them about Hitler and the looming conflict. With the exception of Pam, whom they hardly saw, her family seemed to have become somehow totally enmeshed in politics.

  Even Nancy became actively involved. In the late spring of 1939 she travelled to Perpignan where Prod was working as a volunteer with international charity organizations in the Roussillon region near the Spanish border. The area was inundated with half a million supporters of the previous Spanish government who had fled across the border to escape retribution under Franco’s regime. The French could not cope and herded the men into wire-enclosed camps. The women and children quartered wherever they could. It was left to international organizations such as the Red Cross to feed, clothe and care for them.

  The plight of the refugees was a shock to Nancy: there were few frivolities here and she was genuinely affected by the plight of the dispossessed families.

  If you could have a look, as I have, at some of the less agreeable results of fascism in a country [she wrote to Sydney], I think you would be less anxious for the swastika to become a flag on which the sun never sets. And whatever may be the good produced by that regime, that the first result is always a horde of unhappy refugees cannot be denied. Personally I would join hands with the devil himself to stop any further extension of the disease. As for encirclement, if a person goes mad he is encircled, not out of any hatred for the person but for the safety of his neighbours & the same applies to countries . . . if the Russian alliance does not go through we shall be at war in a fortnight, & as I have a husband of fighting age I am not particularly anxious for that eventuality.22

  Nancy joined the volunteers, working ten hours a day and more to help the refugees find food, clothes, accommodation, medication and, ultimately, transportation to Mexico, Morocco or other parts of France. The biggest logistical problems concerned the loading of refugees on to the ships, and sometimes she and Peter could not find time to go to bed or even talk to each other for days at a time. When the departure of one ship was delayed by a hurricane Nancy worked among the women refugees stranded on the quayside, helping where she could. There were two hundred children under two who had to be fed, many with bottled milk, and changed every four hours. Some women were in the last stages of pregnancy. But amid the chaos and despair Nancy could spot a joke: ‘Peter said yesterday one woman was really too greedy, she already had 4 children and she wants 3 more,’ she told her mother. ‘I thought of you.’23 At last the ship was able to dock and the men were allowed to rejoin their families. ‘None of them had seen each other since their retreat . . . you never saw such scenes of hugging. The boat sailed at 12 yesterday, the pathetic little band on board played first God Save the King for us, and then the Marseillaise & then the Spanish National anthem. Then the poor things gave three vivas for an Espana which they will never see again. I don’t think there was a single person not crying. I have never cried so much in all my life.’24 By the time Nancy returned to England she was a fully committed ‘rabid anti-Nazi’,25 but though a socialist by inclination she never tipped over the edge into radicalism. ‘There isn’t a pin to put between Nazis & Bolshies,’ she wrote that autumn to Mrs Hammersley. ‘If one is a Jew one prefers one & if an aristocrat the other, that’s all as far as I can see. Fiends!’26

  On Saturday 2 September Unity telephoned Rudi von Simolin (later Baroness von St Paul), a friend of Janos von Almassy and Erna Hanfstaengl. Rudi was visiting her father at Seeseiten, about an hour’s drive from Munich, when Unity rang, and there followed a long conversation. Unity said that she had heard from the British consul that there would now be war within days. All her efforts of the past two years, to persuade Hitler that there could not be war between their two countries, had been in vain, she said, and she intended to shoot herself when war was declared. ‘I was terrified for her,’ Rudi told Unity’s biographer.27 She urged Unity to do nothing until Monday when she would return to Munich and they could work out what should be done for the best. The war might not last long, she said, and there was no need for her to shoot herself. She reminded Unity of their plan for an autumn riding holiday. All the same, when she put down the phone Rudi had the feeling she had not got through to Unity and tried to ring back, but the receiver was off the hook.

  On the following morning Unity received a message that there was a telegram for her at the British consulate. She walked round to collect it and was informed that Britain had declared war on Germany that morning. Immediately she went home and wrote to her parents: ‘This is to say goodbye . . . I send my best love to you all and particularly to my Boud [Decca] when you write. Perhaps when this war is over, everyone will be friends again and there will be the friendship between Germany and England which we have so hoped for . . .’28 She hoped that they would see Hitler often when the war was over and that Tom would be safe. It was light, matter-of-fact, final. The consul would deliver the letter for her, which was guaranteed to chill the heart of a parent.

  Her next act was to go to Gauleiter Wagner’s office and ask if she was to be interned as an enemy alien. He assured her that she was not, and even offered to obtain some petrol for her car. Despite his reassurance she seemed distracted and she requested him to ensure, should anything happen to her, that she was buried in Munich with her signed photograph of Hitler and her Nazi Party badge. He was concerned enough about her demeanour to order that she should be discreetly followed, and she was next observed calling on the wife of her singing teacher. She had paid some outstanding bills from the money David had sent her, but a thousand marks remained and she gave this to the woman, saying she had no need of it. She also gave her an envelope containing keys and asked if they could be delivered to Rudi the following day. Then she walked back to her flat.

  A little later she returned to Wagner’s office in her car and handed him a large, heavy envelope. Her former agitation had disappeared but nevertheless she bade him goodbye in something of a hurry. Wagner was half persuaded that there was no need to worry and it was not until he had dealt with the matter in hand that he opened the envelope Unity had left with his name on it.
In it he found a suicide note saying that she was unable to bear the thought of a war between England and her beloved Germany, a sealed letter for Hitler, and her two most precious belongings: the signed framed photograph of Hitler which she took with her even when she travelled back and forth to England, and her special Party badge. He made enquiries, but no one had seen her drive off or knew which direction she had taken. All he could do was alert the police.

  Unity drove to the Englischer Garten, the beautiful three-mile-long park beside the swiftly flowing River Isar, just east of the Schwabing district. It was familiar territory, one of Unity’s favourite places in Munich and quite close to her flat on Agnesstrasse. She had often walked her dogs along the winding paths under willow trees between the flower-beds, and exercised them on the open grassy spaces, before finding new homes for them a few months earlier. She even kn ew of a secluded little glade where, on occasions, she had sunbathed naked, giggling helplessly at the thought of what Sydney would say if she knew. She was not laughing on 3 September and she did not seek seclusion. Just inside the park, a few yards from the Königinstrasse, and close to the Haus de Kunst, an art gallery built under Hitler’s direction, she took her pearl-handled pistol from her handbag and shot herself in the temple.

  For her it was a warrior’s exit, an honourable departure from a situation she regarded as intolerable. Metaphorically, she fell on her sword. ‘She put her life and ambition into avoiding a war,’ Rudi told Unity’s biographer. ‘She had been on a pedestal and therefore was mistaken into thinking that she had influence. She was too loyal to her beliefs.’29

  A Frau Koch and her two sons were out walking in the Englischer Garten a little after noon on that fateful Sunday. Unity had just passed them when the shot rang out. The elder of the two brothers turned at the sound and caught Unity almost as she slid to the ground. With his mother’s help he carried her from the pavement and laid her on the grass. Blood was streaming down her face.30 Just across the road there was a military establishment and Frau Koch ran over to appeal for help. Within a short time a Luftwaffe car drove out, picked up Unity and drove off with her. Later, the Kochs were questioned by the police and told not to talk about the incident with anyone. They only learned Unity’s identity a few days later.31

  On the following day Rudi returned to Munich. She called first on Unity’s music teacher whose wife handed her the envelope Unity had left. She said she had heard that a young woman had shot herself in the Englischer Garten. The envelope was found to contain the keys to the Agnesstrasse apartment so the two women hurried off there together. They found the apartment sealed off by the authorities, so Rudi called on Gauleiter Wagner. He told her what had happened, that Unity was alive, but in a coma and not expected to regain consciousness. Rudi went immediately to the hospital and was told that the bullet had entered Unity’s right temple, and was embedded at the back of the skull from where it could not be removed. Later a doctor said that had he tried to follow the track the bullet had taken with a scalpel even with his years of experience he could not have done so without killing the patient. It was something of a miracle that Unity had survived.

  Rudi spent the next weeks visiting the hospital daily, having been given a petrol allowance for the purpose by Gauleiter Wagner. She also wrote or cabled Janos von Almassy daily to keep him advised of the situation. Hitler visited Unity on 10 September before she regained consciousness. A day or so later she came round, although she was deeply confused and paid no attention to her visitors, her carers, or the banks of flowers that had been sent in by Goebbels, Ribbentrop, several gauleiters and Hitler. Hitler sent roses. On 13 September, ten days after the shooting, Unity managed to say one or two words to Hitler on the telephone. He did not visit her again until 8 November; by then she could understand better, and even hold a short conversation. He asked her what she wanted to do. She said she would like to go back to England for a few weeks, then return to Munich.32

  According to Julius Schaub, Hitler’s adjutant, Hitler was ‘deeply shaken’ by Unity’s appearance and manner, as was everybody who saw her over the next few months. She seemed to have no memory of the suicide attempt (although she made a further attempt to kill herself by swallowing her swastika badge which had to be removed from her stomach with a probe), only a limited ability to speak, and she was partially paralysed. Her face was badly swollen due to the wound in her temple and there was little resemblance to the beautiful, alert and lively girl she had been. Instead, she had the empty fixed stare of someone who had suffered a stroke.33 Hitler asked Frau Schaub if she would watch over Unity by visiting each day, and went off to discuss her case with her doctors. Subsequently he set in motion an arrangement to get her to Switzerland as soon as it was feasible for her to travel. Once again he made himself personally responsible for her hospital bills. Her suicide attempt was declared a state secret, and after the first report of the anonymous woman, it was never mentioned by the German media. It is difficult to know whether Hitler did this out of consideration and affection for Unity, or whether he felt uncomfortable that yet another young woman with whom he was connected had attempted suicide. Two other women who were sexually linked, by rumour or fact, with Hitler, committed or attempted suicide with varying degrees of success: Geli, his half-niece, and Eva Braun, who made two attempts.34

  The Mitford family knew nothing of this, although Gauleiter Wagner told Rudi they had been notified, and that all frontier checkpoints had been advised that Lord and Lady Redesdale and Mrs Diana Mosley would be permitted to cross.35 In the early days of the war, however, there no way in which they could have been contacted, and the German press silence meant that the news was confined to those most closely involved with the incident. Tom and Diana were in no doubt that Unity would have shot herself, as she had so often said she would. Her hint about the Tyrol gave a spark of hope, but in their hearts they feared the worst.

  Sydney, David, Debo and Nancy were at Inch Kenneth when war was declared. Nancy immediately left for London and Sydney drove her to the Oban ferry. During the journey Nancy made a rude remark about Hitler, and Sydney told her to shut up or get out and walk. Realizing that her mother was worried and wretched about Unity, Nancy chose to shut up. There was no talking to Sydney about Hitler: her high regard for him had been borne of a genuine fear of Communism and nurtured over tea-cups in Munich when Unity had translated polite conversations between the two. During September they had no news of Unity, only rumours. On 15 September Nancy wrote to Mrs Hammersley: ‘Bobo, we hear on fairly good authority, is in a concentration camp for Czech women which much as I deplore it has a sort of poetic justice.’36 She also referred to an interview in the Daily Mirror in which David had ‘publicly recanted like Latimer’ and said he had been wrong about Hitler.

  It was not until 2 October that the Redesdales heard from Teddy von Almassy, brother of Janos. He was in Budapest, which was neutral so had postal communications with England and Germany, and he wrote to say that Unity had been ill but was in hospital and was now recovering. Sydney and Debo left David at Inch Kenneth and travelled down to live at the mews cottage in London. It was a curiously changed London with sandbags everywhere, windows criss-crossed with brown paper, barrage balloons, hardly any traffic and almost everyone, it seemed, in uniform. But even there, pulling strings, Sydney could not get any reliable news of Unity, so she busied herself by closing Rutland Gate ‘for the duration’ and putting the furniture into storage. Most of this was lost in a warehouse fire within a few weeks but as Sydney wrote to Decca, ‘Things don’t seem to matter much when one thinks of the terrible world conflagration.’37 They had another brief communication, this time by cable from Teddy von Almassy, advising that Unity was making good progress, but no further explanation of what was wrong with her. ‘It is a terrible and continual worry,’ Sydney wrote to Decca. ‘One cannot bear to think what agonies of mind she must have been through as she never believed a war could happen between the two countries.’

  There was considerable animo
sity between Nancy and Sydney now. Following the declaration of war Nancy was furious at Sydney’s open support of Hitler. ‘She is impossible,’ Nancy wrote to Mrs Hammersley. ‘Hopes we shall lose the war and makes no bones about it. Debo is having a wild time with young cannon fodder at the Ritz etc. Apparently Muv said to her “Never discuss politics, not even for 5 minutes, with Nancy.” Rather as some devout RC might shield her little one from a fearful atheist!’38

  Nancy, working in an underground casualty depot in Praed Street, was already bored with the degree of sacrifice and discipline demanded for no apparent reason throughout the months of the Phoney War. She was telling everybody she had been given an indelible blue pencil with which to write names and other details on the foreheads of the dead and injured, and asking what she was supposed to do ‘if a coloured person was brought in’. Derek Jackson was away on a mission for the RAF, Tom, Prod and the Bailey and Farrer brothers were all in the Army, Debo was planning to work in a canteen. Ten days after they first met Randolph Churchill married Pamela Digby, to whom he had become engaged within twenty-four hours of setting eyes on her. ‘She’s rather a friend of Debo’s – pretty with red hair and lovely colouring,’ Sydney wrote to Decca.

  Both Sydney and Pam kept Decca updated with the latest news. Aunt Iris had become an all-night telephone operator and Uncle Jack had joined the auxiliary fire brigade. ‘Coal was rationed and though food was not rationed yet, it soon would be,’ Pam wrote. Everyone was busy making blackout curtains, the barrage balloons over London were very pretty and some London refugees had been billeted on them at Rignell House. ‘Fortunately they spent only a few nights before deciding it was too far from the pub and returned to the East End.’ Sydney wrote that London was ‘much less gloomy than it was in the first weeks and there is a lot of entertaining in restaurants, all of which, and all the nightclubs, are full’.39