How much of the outrage was genuine and how much it was designed to help promote the book is difficult to tell. The publication was certainly timed to take maximum advantage of Unity’s various anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi and pro-BUF letters and speeches and the resulting coverage in British newspapers.
The Stürmer letter was reported in the Evening Standard on 26 July 1935 and in three morning papers the next day. The Daily Mirror ran the story with the headline ‘Peer’s Daughter as Jew-Hater’.
The Jewish Chronicle had a leader pointing out the obvious. ‘Here was a scribbler so obscure that she begged Herr Streicher to “publish her whole name”. She realised that without her title, which was, of course, a mere accident of birth, her vaporing’s could have been of no more concern to the public than those of any other irresponsible young hussy out to get her name in the papers.’35
Exactly who had alerted the media, reminding them that Nancy’s books were such thinly disguised accounts of this aristocratic, ‘eccentrically’ fascist family is not known, but it must have helped the sales of Nancy’s books no end.
Once the newspapers had got the bit between their teeth and realised what a good and potentially long-running story they had, the Mitford girls in their various guises made regular appearances. If they had managed to gain knowledge of Unity’s sexual ‘Sturm und Drang’ nights, the practice of which had increased dramatically since Hitler had given the impression of accepting, if not actually blessing her erotic ‘Eucharists’, one can only imagine how much coverage she would have been awarded. As it was, Unity and Diana’s various Nazi-related appearances and utterances remained a particularly rich source of material.
On Monday 11 September 1935, the Daily Mirror ran yet another news feature about Unity being a guest of honour at the Congress of Nazi Groups Abroad, held at Erlangen, Bavaria. ‘She and her sister, said the British United Press, were given seats at the speaker’s table, where Julius Streicher, Germany’s Jew-baiter Number one was addressing the congress.’
Streicher had apparently interrupted his speech to introduce those present to his guests of honour, the ladies Leni Riefenstahl; Frau Troost, wife of Paul Ludwig Troost, Hitler’s foremost architect; and Unity and Diana Mitford.
* * *
Diana and Mosley had been together, on and off, for more than three years but while they were said to have, ‘remained very much in love’, he was still sexually involved with Baba Metcalfe and numerous other women. Diana was encouraged to ‘treat Mosley’s philandering as he had once advised Cimmie to do’, as a ‘tiresome silliness’ that was beyond his control. But, despite the fact that she also took lovers, Diana claimed to have suffered ‘agonies of jealousy’36. The only contradiction to this opinion was the amount of time she spent in Germany, with no record of being distraught by their separation.
Diana’s celebrated beauty assured her of a constant stream of admirers, which, while reassuring for her, proved less pleasing for Mosley, who like most philanderers was ‘apt to be jealous’37. Such mutual jealousy inevitably resulted in major rows, particularly concerning Baba Metcalfe.
Despite Mosley’s extracurricular activities, the active membership of the BUF had reached 10,000, plus a claimed 30,000 non-active members and supporters, while Mosley insisted that fascism in Britain had grown faster than anywhere else in the world. In an early Gallup poll, 70 per cent of people under 30 apparently chose fascism rather than communism because they were all so terrified of the threat of communism. Though many of the privileged classes might indeed have been in favour of a fascist style of government to protect them from the lower orders at least and the Communists at most, what these English fascist sympathisers had in mind was a long way from Germany’s violent, extreme right-wing dictatorship.
While Hitler had undoubtedly displayed flashes of genius in his ability to sell his message to both the masses and the social and industrial elite, his financial and industrial achievements (underwritten by direct and indirect loans from American banks) would be overshadowed by his appalling social and racial policies.
On 14 September 1935, Unity and Diana heard Hitler read out the Nuremberg Laws, which deprived German Jews of their citizenship and most of their legal and humanitarian rights, thus recalling the ‘eugenic’ principles of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and initiating policies that would lead to the extermination camps of Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor and Auschwitz.
News of the Nazis’ treatment of Jews and other social and political victims was beginning to filter through to Britain, not only through political publications but also through national newspapers which were running stories about those people, particularly Jews, who were being humiliated and stripped of possessions, and whose shops and businesses were being looted and closed. There were also reports of German towns erecting signs boasting that they were ‘Jew free’. Park benches were marked ‘Aryan’ and ‘Jew’, while shops proclaimed that Jews would not be served.
When questioned about the Nazi regime’s attitude to Germany’s Jewish population, Mosley replied, ‘Whatever happens in Germany is Germany’s affair, and we are not going to lose British lives in a Jewish quarrel.’
Despite her commitment to fascism both in Germany and England, Unity, like Mosley, displayed no inclination to curtail her social life. She spent most of October on an excursion to the mountains with her sisters Pam and Jessica, and Erich, one of the few SS officers with whom she enjoyed a relatively conventional, one-to-one relationship.
* * *
It was hardly surprising that Hitler still preferred Munich to Berlin, where he was constantly under the inevitable pressure that went with the role of Reich Chancellor, pestered by statesmen, diplomats and journalists. In Germany, Berlin was, and still is, famous for the ill humour of its people and, being at the political centre of the Reich, when he was there Hitler was left with little time to enjoy long lunches or tea with young women. However, when Hitler returned to Munich, his senior staff and ministers had little choice but to follow him to the city and even establish secondary homes and offices there. Goebbels, for one, hated it, but was all too aware that to remain in power one needed to be in constant attendance, as Hitler tended to view absence as a form of betrayal. So, it was through her regular attendance that Unity would soon meet ‘everyone who was anyone’ in the upper echelons of power.
Her presence was not appreciated by everyone; many failed to see why they often had to share Hitler’s attention with an English girl and sometimes her friends and family, who were quite reasonably considered as being of little consequence or importance. There was a great deal of gossip, particularly amongst the wives, concerning the reason why Hitler chose to spend so much time with Unity, as he had a perfectly good mistress who appeared quite prepared to share his bed without the need to share his table and the company of his various friends and ministers.
Back in Munich, Diana having returned to England on 21 October, Unity and Mary Woodisse moved to Pension Doering, 17B Ludwigstrasse, and Unity returned to her constant vigil. Success apparently warranted a red-ink announcement in her diary and over-excited letters to either Sydney or Diana, usually the latter:
I didn’t expect to see the Führer, as he apparently hasn’t been to the Osteria for weeks. However today at last he came, it was wonderful and he was tremendously surprised to see me. He immediately asked me, as he came in (himself, for the first time), to go and sit with him. A bit later Max Schmeling came with Hoffmann and sat on the Führer’s other side. He remembered you and me from the Parteitag. The Führer was heavenly, in his best mood and very gay. There was a choice of two soups and he tossed a coin to see which one he would have and he was so sweet doing it. He asked after you and I told him you were coming soon. He talked a lot about Jews, which was lovely…
The most amazing piece of news of all is Baum [Unity’s language teacher] is out of the Partei! She was in the Osteria yesterday and Rosa told me. According to Stadelmann she was discovered to be a half-Jüdin (Jewess). Isn’t it amazing. S
he also hasn’t any work poor thing, as there was a big row in her Mütterheim at Starnberg and she was kicked out. I am really sorry for her, as the Partei and her hate for the Jews were really all she had.
This seemed particularly hypocritical, as the increasingly jealous Ms Baum had previously attempted to denounce Unity for having an affair with a Jew. The Jew in question was Brian Howard, both homosexual and Christian by birth. The fact that Baum’s information was so inaccurate had not diminished Unity’s fierce retaliation. She actually gained considerable satisfaction from Baum’s fate, introducing her Führer to the English expression, ‘People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’, which apparently made him ‘roar’.
* * *
In the autumn of 1935, when Duff Cooper was made British Secretary for War, Chips Channon, the wealthy American political socialite now at home among Britain’s aristocracy, observed that ‘everyone (was) enchanted’, which seemed a rather strange choice of words. But when the pro-Nazi Emerald Cunard, an enthusiastic member of the Anglo-German fellowship, telegraphed him ‘Hail Mighty Mars’, it is not unreasonable to assume that, like many politicians, Duff may not have been quite as anti-fascist, anti-appeasement as he claimed. Having been awarded an ambassadorial posting to Paris, he could make no greater contribution to international intelligence than seeing fit to warn the British government that they should be wary of a Russian-German alliance! Like Mosley, Duff spent too much time jumping in and out of bed with other peoples’ wives to be capable of contributing anything very useful in his role as a diplomat. Unfortunately, the British Empire had been remarkably effective at breeding such men.
Of course, what so many people, including Hitler, failed to appreciate was that the British Empire had been both created and held together by ‘boxwallahs’ (those involved in commercial activities), not the aristocracy or the military, who still considered trade in any form as frightfully common and something one paid others to do. Unfortunately, the upper classes had a dreadful habit of offloading their surplus sons or ‘remittance boys’ into the diplomatic or foreign service, where they developed a remarkably inflated opinion of their own importance and often did untold damage.
Back in Germany, Hitler and Göring continued to recruit their own redundant aristocracy, while they also courted the British royalty. Sometimes they used one to achieve the other, as in the case of Duke Carl Eduard von Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha, whom in 1936 they persuaded to approach his ‘cousin, the new British monarch Edward VIII, in order to explore the possibilities of a meeting (with an eye on a rapprochement between the two countries)’38. But, unfortunately, at this time the British Crown was heading towards the buffers, while the social elite was frantically taking sides, both pro- and anti-American, in the matter of Wallis Simpson. In Chips’ case, his sympathy lay more with Wallis than King Edward VIII. Or that was what the snob in him claimed after the king was inaccurately said to have sympathised with the striking miners, describing him as ‘Over democratic, casual and a little common’. A view he shared with many of his English chums.
* * *
By 1936, the Anglo-German Fellowship boasted forty-one corporate members including Thomas Cook, Dunlop, Price Waterhouse, Unilever, Midland Bank, Lazards, Vickers Steel and British Steel:
Among the many members were The Marquis of Clydesdale, Sir Thomas Moore, A.T. Bower, Loel Guinness, Sir Ernest Bennett, Sir Asshelon Pownall, Sir Robert Bird, JRJ Macnamara, Duncan Sandys … plus Ministers such as Lord Londonderry, known derisively as ‘The Londonderry Herr’, plus peers Lord Brocket, Lords David and Malcolm Douglas Hamilton, Lord Redesdale, Lord Galloway, the Duke of Wellington, Lady Downe and Lord Nuffield.39
Apparently, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby infiltrated the organisation on behalf of the Foreign Office; or so it was said. ‘Burgess even managed to mix business with pleasure when he and Macnamara went on a “fact-finding” mission to Germany, which became “homosexual escapades with sympathetic members of the Hitler Youth”.’ According to Martin Pugh, the Anglo-German Fellowship’s forte was:
The monthly ‘At Homes’ and the lavish dinners graced by Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Rudolf Hess (Hitler’s deputy), Field Marshal von Blomberg (German War Minister) and the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick. Members also organised country-house parties where they shot game, with delighted visiting Nazis, discretely raised the swastika among the rhododendrons, dressed up in jack boots and drank toasts to the Führer.
Such activities appealed to a clutch of society hostesses, including Lady Emerald Cunard, Lady Sibyl Colefax, Lady Londonderry and Nancy Astor (whose marital family had German roots), who happily entertained von Ribbentrop and helped to make Nazism fashionable in smart circles. Many of these hostesses along with the Redesdales, Lady Ravensdale … Lady Diana Cooper … eagerly awaited invitations to Nuremberg rallies and Nazi dinners in Berlin; it was there that Ernest Tennant (in a brief moment of inspired observation) spotted ‘the young and beautiful Miss Unity Mitford who really believes that Hitler is divine in the Biblical sense’.
Chips was, of course, frantically impressed by high society’s adoption of the Fellowship and, to a lesser degree, by von Ribbentrop; if not by his wife:
Frau von Ribbentrop is distinguished in the Berlin manner, that is she has intelligent eyes, appalling khaki coloured clothes and an un-powdered, un-painted face. How can the Germans be so silly about things that don’t matter, or is it because their women are so unattractive that the race is largely homosexual? … The Ribbentrops are intimate with the Londonderrys and he is known as the Londonderry Herr.
Many of the Fellowship were frantically impressed when they were invited to attend the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games as Hitler’s VIP guests.
* * *
From an international public relations point of view, the 1936 Berlin Olympics were the Nazi Party’s finest hour.
Lavishly entertained, every opportunity was used to impress the English contingent. They appeared to remain totally unaware that all the gypsies, or anyone who looked like one, had been arrested and placed in camps, and that all anti-Semitic signs had been removed and the police instructed not to enforce the law against homosexuality.
Aides-de-camp in Mercedes cars chauffeured by storm troopers ‘whizzed’ the guests to and from the Olympic Stadium. After an hour or so of watching the hurdling and running, the crowd suddenly bellowed ‘Heil!’; there was a sudden movement and a surge forward towards the large, rotund figure of Göring in his white uniform, followed by the brown-uniformed figure of Hitler with his Charlie Chaplin moustache. The frequent German victories were rewarded with the playing of Deutschland über Alles and the Horst-Wessel-Lied.
Later that evening, there was a state banquet at the Opera House and a lavish party, hosted by Göring who was reported to have been ‘flirtatious, gay and insinuating’. No one could have failed to have been impressed by the ‘surfeit of hospitality’, particularly Chips Channon:
The end of the garden was in darkness, and suddenly, with no warning, it was flood-lit and a procession of white horses, donkeys and peasants, appeared from nowhere, and we were led into an especially built Luna Park. It was fantastic, round-abouts, cafes with beer and champagne, peasants ‘dancing’ and ‘schuh-plattling’, vast women carrying pretzels and beer, a ship, a beerhouse, crowds of gay, laughing people, animals, a mixture of Luna Park and White Horse Inn. Old Heidelberg and the Trianon … Reinhardt could not have done it better. The music roared, the astonished guest wandered about. ‘There has never been anything like this since the days of Louis Quatorze’, someone remarked, ‘Not since the days of Nero’, I retorted, but actually it was more like the Fêtes of Claudius, but with the cruelty left out … Frau Goering asked if we would like to see the house, and eagerly we followed her indoors into the vast Ministerium where the Goerings live in theatrical magnificence.40
* * *
While many amongst the privileged classes remained superficially impressed by little more than the lavish excess of
the Nazis, others displayed a great deal more, albeit displaced, commitment. With increasing enthusiasm for the Nazi cause and impatience at media criticism, Lord Redesdale pointed out in the Anglo-German Review of November 1936, ‘Has any one of (Hitler’s) critics stopped to consider … what Europe would be like today if Germany had gone Red? By holding Bolshevism on the flanks of Western civilisation, a tragedy was averted.’ Even Churchill found himself on the same side as Mosley, in the sense that he regarded fascism as a necessary bulwark against communism.
Martin Pugh would later claim, ‘The main obstacle to improved relations between the two countries remained the Nazi persecution of the Jews and the gypsies, political opponents, homosexuals and cripples.’ But this was somewhat contradicted by the apparent lack of effort by the British government, or anyone else for that matter, to persuade the Nazis to stop. In 1936 the BUF were still exploiting the value of anti-Semitism for the rejuvenation of their party. Fortunately, a far smaller percentage of the ‘lower orders’ (than the aristocracy) were impressed by the fascist regime.
October heralded the BUF’s march through London’s East End, which many considered to be the beginning of the end of the party. Even the police were taken by surprise by the size of the 100,000-strong force of aggressive anti-fascists who beat back the BUF in what became known as ‘The Battle of Cable Street’. In fact, most of the fighting had been between the anti-fascists and the police. But as a result, the Public Order Bill was introduced on 16 November 1936, giving the police greater powers to prohibit such political marches and ban the wearing of political uniforms. It could also be used to punish incidents of violent language and actions against Jews.
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