Hitler's Valkyrie

by David R L Litchfield

  Nancy was to be the first of the Mitford girls to be entered for this social steeplechase. While she described Sydney’s function as that of chaperone, this was far from the full extent of her role.

  The Court ruling was that the preferred person to present young women was the mother, who had herself already been presented. Failing this, a friend or relative would be acceptable. Thus, Sydney not only acted as presenter but, as the whole purpose of the fiendishly expensive and time-consuming process was to get her daughters married to young men with suitable financial and social credentials, also had to act as agent and promoter. Finally, in perhaps her most difficult role, particularly in the case of Diana, she did indeed have to act as chaperone, mainly to ensure the avoidance of what would have been a disastrous pregnancy, before a successful marriage had been achieved.

  It was hardly surprising that she would have preferred to have had six boys or that she appeared to have cared so little about her one, rather attractive son’s homosexual dalliances that began while he was still at Eton. Known rather coyly as ‘the love that dares not speak its name’, it was considered quite acceptable and certainly preferable to one’s son getting one of one’s friend’s daughters pregnant.

  ‘Tom had the rare good fortune to enjoy his preparatory school’,22 but not so much as Eton, which he entered in 1922. For, when not being whipped and kicked or taught the finer points of fagging, he was apparently proving ‘above average in his schoolwork’ and, more importantly, in what was politely referred to as his ‘social interactions’23. One such recipient of this ‘interactive’ passion was a boy called Milton, who he assumed his mother knew nothing of. But having gossiped on the subject to Diana, it was not long before all his sisters were party to the most intimate details of his affair de coeur.

  According to Jonathan Guinness, who also went to Eton, ‘Once Tom brought a friend home to stay [presumably the aforementioned Milton]. The house was full, so Sydney asked if the friend would mind sharing with Tom. She was [or pretended to be] surprised when one after the other all her daughters filed out of the room, doubled up in mirth.’ They considered the whole matter ‘Killing!’ or highly amusing, which it probably was if you were doing it at Eton, Winchester or similar public schools. Anywhere else it was of course considered a criminal offence, punishable, as in the case of Oscar Wilde some two decades earlier, by two years’ hard labour.

  * * *

  Germany continued to suffer from almost constant left and right-wing civil, political and military upheaval, often involving extreme, organised violence. The country seemed to be permanently poised on the edge of civil war. But in 1922 the turmoil was eclipsed by the new threat of hyperinflation, which reached its peak in 1923 and would not be stabilised until 1924. While it brought incredible hardship into many people’s lives, often wiping out lifetimes’ worth of savings, it served Germany well insofar as forcing the allies to accept the restructuring of their reparation payments. Meanwhile, those with access to foreign currency could use the situation to pay off their personal debts, while industrialists such as Stinnes used dollars to buy up whole groups of bankrupt companies, for virtually nothing.

  In 1922, Walter Rathenau, the Jewish businessman and German foreign minister, was assassinated by extreme right-wing, nationalist conspirators, who opposed his policy of abiding by the Treaty of Versailles. His murder illustrated the continuing antipathy towards the Weimar government by the anti-democratic, redundant nobility. New legislation sought to tackle this apathy:

  The government passed a law for the protection of the Republic, which included the so-called Emperor’s clause. This gave the government ‘the right to prevent members of the former ruling dynasties from entering Germany’. While this provision was not implemented in full, only the former Kaiser being prevented from setting foot in Germany, it had symbolic significance.24

  Many, including Jonathan Petropoulos, saw it as ‘part of the ongoing international decline of the feudal elite’.

  The old ruling class continued their fight to restore the monarchy by somewhat ironically forming themselves into counter-revolutionary groups such as the Steel Helmet paramilitary organisation or the German Aristocrats’ Association. Described by some as little more than a ‘toffs union’, some 28 per cent of the German aristocracy were members of the latter and openly supported the restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy. Membership could be instantly revoked if one were discovered to be supporting the Weimar Republic, while Jews, who formed about 1.5 per cent of the nobility, were excluded altogether. This was done under an ‘Aryan clause’, which had been introduced in the early 1920s; more than ten years before Hitler came to power.

  * * *

  The chances of the British aristocracy ever playing a similar role to the Germans in assisting a fascist party to assume power, regardless of the strength of their motivation, would be hampered by the apparent inability of many members of that social stratum to concentrate for more than 24 hours on anything other than sleeping with someone else’s husband, wife or mistress, and sometimes all three; as in the case of Lord ‘Charley’ Londonderry.

  The social commentator Charles Jennings25 saw little to admire in Londonderry’s amoral philandering, his entertainment value as an endless source of gossip or his lacklustre political ‘career’, but could not resist writing about him with that grudging degree of admiration the English reserve for ‘cads’.

  The 7th Marquess of Londonderry’s total assets were estimated to be worth in excess of £2.5 million. However, ‘worth’ may have been a misleading word:

  Like the latter-day Duke of Marlborough [Charley], was a walking compendium of deficiencies … slim, elegant, surgically well turned out and infected with the terrible restlessness of failure … He claimed never to have spent more than ten consecutive nights in the same place. He philandered constantly and pointlessly. He sired an illegitimate daughter, born six weeks after he married Edith. He ran off noisily with Consuelo Marlborough in 1905 … he then had a long and blowsy affair with the American-born Eloise, Countess of Ancaster … He reflexively made an attempt on Lady Diana Manners, shortly before she married Duff Cooper, in 1918. He was still at it well into the 1930s, with Olive Murray-Smith, daughter of Lord Burnham. It was infidelity on a pathological level.26

  Hardly surprising that Winston Churchill described Londonderry as a ‘half-wit’.

  The social elite throughout Europe and America often felt exempt from traditional sexual restrictions and taboos. Many aristocrats firmly believed that morals were for the lower classes; something invented to enhance the social and political control of the ruling elite. Another theory, garnered from first-hand experience, was eventually proposed by Lady Diana Mosley, née Mitford, who agreed that ‘upper-class Englishmen were constantly hopping into bed with each other’s wives’. (Or vice versa, for there was no less enthusiasm amongst the wives, liberated by marriage from the telltale dangers of pregnancy. That was of course assuming they avoided such reckless behaviour as taking red-haired lovers.) ‘I think it is because people had more leisure. Everybody had servants and people had nothing to think about except their lives and emotions and relationships. Nowadays, they simply haven’t got time.’27 This situation would have also applied to Unity, for without her family’s inherited wealth she would never have had the time or the money to have pursued Hitler.

  Londonderry’s sexual diligence had not prevented him from realising a considerable degree of political success, though many believed it to have been the fulfilment of his wife’s ambition, with which he shared fascist sympathies. Boosted by Edith’s marathon and eye-wateringly expensive social courtship of Ramsay MacDonald, Charley rose all the way to the position of Air Minister, before being sacked by Stanley Baldwin. He then crowned his political career by publicly attempting to conciliate Hitler shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.

  * * *

  While Germany and some in England were flirting with some form of right-wing authoritarian political sys
tem that would re-empower the nobility, Italy had stolen a march on everyone, literally!

  The fact that no one put up any resistance to Mussolini’s theatrical coup d’état did little to diminish the international publicity value it was awarded; a fact particularly appreciated by Martin Pugh, historian and author of Hurrah for the Blackshirts!

  King Victor Emmanuel III continued to retain a central role in Mussolini’s Italy which many conservatives, particularly in London, held up as proof ‘that the central role played by the monarchy would soften the alien qualities of a fascist system’28 while the same system would, in turn, protect both the monarchy and the aristocracy.

  When Mussolini came to London, he attracted the ‘admiring attention’ of several newspapers, including the Daily Mail and The Morning Post.

  ‘The second and most obvious explanation for the favourable reception of Italian fascism lay in the perceived threat of the Bolshevik Revolution … the Mussolini coup offered the first check to the forward march of this revolution’29 (which so many feared was imminent).

  Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail, was Mussolini’s most ardent supporter, largely due to his fanatical anti-communist stance and, of course, the fact that he managed to install an authoritarian fascist government while, initially at least, retaining the monarchy in the form of Victor Emmanuel III. This gave Mussolini a quite spectacular appeal to many amongst the English privileged class, including Winston Churchill and the Mitfords.

  * * *

  Mussolini also made an extremely favourable impression on the androgynous, militaristic figure of Mrs Rotha Lintorn-Orman who, funded by her mother, decided to form the British Fascisti in 1923. Initially it confined itself to the violent stewarding of Conservative party meetings and canvassing for the party while pledging to ‘smash the reds and the pinkos’. Later she changed the name to the British Fascists, after being accused of being in the pay of Il Duce.

  One of the British Fascists’ more telling or socially revealing policies was a call for a reduction in income tax, which they claimed would encourage the privileged classes to hire more servants, thus achieving a reduction in unemployment. They also wanted to award the House of Lords more power and, equally, to curtail the power of the trade unions. But the party lost a great deal of its momentum when the General Strike of 1926 failed to result in the ‘British Bolshevik Revolution’ that Lintorn-Orman and her supporters had pledged to fight (and which didn’t stop them adopting a strongly anti-Semitic stance and becoming ardent supporters of Hitler and the Nazi Party).

  The British Fascists attracted various members of the armed forces, the aristocracy, Members of Parliament and a number of frightfully well-bred women. Viscountess Downe (a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary), Lady Sydenham, Lady Menzies, Baroness Zouche and Nesta Webster, author of The Jewish Peril, were all members. But working-class and middle-class ‘toughs’ were also recruited to engage with the Communists. They excused their violence by insisting that organised physical resistance was the only possible means of defence against ‘such people’.

  However, eventually the best-known – or certainly most publicised and entertaining – recruit of the National Fascists (an off-shoot of the British Fascists) was Valerie Arkell-Smith, a transvestite who spent many years masquerading as Sir Victor Barker and thereby dragging the organisation into ridicule and disrepute. She also served to fuel the attitude of the many activists in the Labour movement who regarded the organisation as too ridiculous to constitute a serious threat.

  Had Lintorn-Orman been a more conventionally attractive and charismatic figure, the organisation may have flourished and metamorphosed into a fully developed political party – the ground certainly appeared to be sufficiently fertile – but the appearance of the party’s founder led to some doubt concerning her gender.

  She was in fact the daughter of General Sir John Arabin Lintorn-Simmons and the wife of Field Marshal Charles Orman; though one wonders what type of relationship he had with a woman of such masculine appearance, who was seldom out of a collar and tie. It was said that they used to sit up half the night studying foxhound breeding records and marvelling at the prolificacy of the great ‘Tipperary Growler’.

  It was ironic that despite the fact that the fascists opposed women’s rights and feminist influence on politics, most of the British fascist organisations enjoyed a high level of female membership.

  * * *

  By now Sir Oswald Mosley realised that if he wished to assume the degree of political power that he believed he deserved, and which would enhance his sexual attraction, he was probably going to have to resort to a fairly spectacular gesture. So, in 1924, after a brief flirtation with the ‘Asquithian’ Liberals, he crossed the floor of the House to sit with the Labour Party.

  It should have been obvious to even the most naïve politician that Mosley had absolutely no real interest in – or sympathy with – the Labour movement. Yet by 1927 he had reached the five-strong National Executive of the Labour Party; an extraordinary feat for a man from the other side of the class barrier who had been a party member for only three years. Indeed, while many believe Mosley to have been a deeply unpleasant man, one could certainly not accuse him of being unintelligent. Many women also found him quite irresistible. Mary Lovell, the Mitford family’s biographer, described him as being, ‘brilliant, gallant, confident, rich, darkly good-looking, over six feet tall and athletic’. What she fails to mention was that he was also unscrupulous, calculating, unethical, amoral and generally ‘blessed’ with all those other questionable qualities that were and still are mandatory for success in politics. He was also quite prepared to outrageously exploit what at the time was undoubtedly his greatest asset.

  Largely as the result of Cimmie’s charm and social skills, the Mosleys were now also close to the Labour party’s leader, Ramsay MacDonald.

  At the same time, according to Anne de Courcy, author of Diana Mosley, Diana Mitford was already developing an interest in politics. One of her many admirers was Winston Churchill’s son Randolph, whom Diana had known since he first came to stay at Asthall when he was 12. There was no evidence that Diana returned his admiration; she appeared far more interested in his father.

  Her mother encouraged their acceptance of the Churchills’ hospitality, while Tom and Diana were reputed to have ‘loved these visits to Chartwell’:

  One of the charms of staying with the Churchills was that the rule that children should be seen and not heard did not apply. Randolph was encouraged by his father to take part in intelligent conversation; Tom and Diana were treated as thinking beings … Diana realised the fascination of politics. Here, as a 16-year-old, she heard discussion after discussion about the General Strike and the long-drawn-out stand by the miners which followed; it became, in consequence, the first major political event to impinge on her consciousness. Her sympathies were all with the miners.

  In light of Diana’s background and her future, this claim seems somewhat unlikely, as did her interest in politics at that age. With her celebrated physical attraction already well developed, its effect on both men and boys would have been of far greater consequence to her, as well as a great deal more entertaining. Winston, recognising her dangerous potential, took to calling her ‘Dina-mite’.

  James Lees-Milne wrote in his diary that Diana was the most beautiful adolescent he had ever seen: ‘Divine is the word, for she was a goddess. More immaculate, more perfect, more celestial than Botticelli’s sea-borne Venus’. The diary was of course kept and the degree of Diana’s beauty repeated ad tedium, ad nauseam.

  * * *

  Unity, nick-named ‘Bobo’, was reputed to have been a sensitive child. It was a term that was often used for misunderstood, artistic children. In Unity’s case, her family’s lack of understanding of how to deal with her was reflected in her mother’s assertion that as a small child she was introverted and also that she was:

  … shy and easily upset. If anything was said at meals that she did not like or that caus
ed her embarrassment she just slipped quietly off her chair and disappeared under the table until such time as she felt ready to face the world again. It was an understood thing that no one took any notice.

  But as she grew up, Unity became more ‘boisterous’, her former behaviour having no doubt been due to the fact that like many highly intelligent, imaginative children she had created her own reality, fuelled by images she discovered in books and during visits to museums.

  While still in her early teens Unity drew well and while illustrating her fantasies became fascinated by the work of Hieronymus Bosch (probably best known then, as now, for his triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and numerous paintings of Purgatory featuring explicit sexual and violently gruesome images), Arnold Böcklin (whose work was as much admired by Hitler as it was by Marcel Duchamp) and Henri Rousseau, particularly his ‘Valkyrie’ painting, La Guerre (War, or the Ride of Discord).

  At the same time her taste in literature and poetry was also developing. She even began to display a ‘rather precocious talent for rhyming’. But while some of her poetry was admitted by various members of the family to have been ‘quite passable’, the reason given for none of it having been quoted is, or appears to be, in itself rather revealing. ‘Her bent was for the serious rather than, as Nancy’s was, for the comic and serious juvenilia are not very quotable’.30 Of course, this was still a time when being too brainy, especially for girls, was considered at best rather unseemly and positively off-putting to many potential suitors. So it would not have been something that one’s parents would have wished to call attention to.