by Jim Wilson
I urge all British young men and women to study closely the progress of the Nazi regime in Germany. They must not be misled by the misrepresentations of its opponents. The most spiteful detractors of the Nazis are to be found in precisely the same sections of the British public and press as are the most vehement in their praises of the Soviet regime in Russia … They have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call ‘Nazi atrocities’ which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consists of a few isolated acts of violence such as are inevitable among a nation half as big as ours, but which have been generalised, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny.
Collin Brooks, at the time one of Rothermere’s editors, later to become his close confidant, wrote in his journal that Rothermere’s mood was one of deep depression over what he saw as Britain’s decline.12 The country had lost its former militant virtues and was adopting policies that were beginning to sap the traditional self-reliance the British had demonstrated so successfully in the past in its role of empire builder. Rothermere had long been attracted to Germany, its national character and its historic cities. He had travelled widely in the country, had studied its culture and its history, and he owned a superb collection of photographs and postcards of Germany’s towns and cities.
Once Hitler had achieved power Rothermere said there were three possible policies Britain could pursue: negotiate with Hitler and disarm in order to reassure him; give not an inch to Hitler’s demands and rearm at full speed (the line Churchill advocated); or open a dialogue with Germany while steadily rearming. The latter was the view Rothermere took, and there were plenty of others in public life and among the Establishment in Britain who echoed it. One who espoused very similar views was Rothermere’s neighbour and fellow Norfolk landowner Lord Lothian, whose country seat was at Blickling Hall. Lothian later went on to become British ambassador to Washington from 1939–40.
In November 1933 the press baron gave Princess Stephanie the task of establishing personal contact with Hitler. It did not take her long. She was soon reporting that she was making progress through contact with someone who she conspiratorially called ‘my friend in Berlin’. That friend turned out to be none other than Hitler’s personal adjutant, Captain Fritz Wiedemann. The princess, using the female wiles she had so often employed to her advantage, set out to form an intimate relationship with the already married Wiedemann. It was to be a long-lasting liaison that would prove both passionate and productive for many years, continuing well after the start of the Second World War across the Atlantic in the then neutral United States.
Fritz Wiedemann was a handsome, 6ft tall, dark-haired professional soldier who had known Hitler since the First World War. They had served together in the 16th Reserve Infantry Regiment. At that time Wiedemann had been Hitler’s superior officer, a staff adjutant, while Hitler was a mere messenger; a humble soldier in the lower ranks. The future Führer never rose above the rank of lance corporal and was based behind the lines at regimental headquarters. When he was not required to deliver a message, he passed his time painting and talking politics. There was no obvious demonstration to his fellow ‘squaddies’ of the mesmerist qualities that were later to bring him to power. Indeed, it is a mystery how someone so relatively undistinguished managed to gain for himself the award of the Iron Cross. Aside from a brief scribbled entry, Hitler’s army pay book contains no evidence of the incident that led to the award, and Hitler later saw to it that his military records and correspondence were destroyed or falsified. Nazi propagandists in the early 1930s found it difficult to present to the public, in any convincing way, the historical facts about the award. The chances are Wiedemann knew the real background of how Hitler had contrived to gain such a distinction when he was rarely, if ever, close to any front-line action. If so, Hitler must have realised that he needed to ensure his former senior officer remained a close confidant.
Following the Armistice, Wiedemann left the army in the rank of captain and became a farmer in south-west Bavaria. In 1933, suffering financial difficulties, he asked two former army friends to approach Hitler, remind him of their former active service together, and ask whether Hitler would pull strings to get him into the regular army. Hitler went further. He offered him the post of his personal adjutant. So, in a remarkable role reversal, Wiedemann, who once in wartime France had ordered Hitler to paint the unit canteen, was now personal adjutant to the Führer at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin and was one of the most influential men in the new Germany. There was undoubtedly a close bond of friendship between the two men. Hitler trusted Wiedemann implicitly and they enjoyed one another’s company. Wiedemann was at Hitler’s side daily; he attended to the Führer’s private correspondence, acted as his gatekeeper, ensured the smooth running of his office and even accompanied him on important visits abroad to confer, for instance, with Mussolini. Hitler frequently gave his old commander expensive presents, on one occasion a six-seat Mercedes-Benz saloon. For the princess, Wiedemann was to turn out to be an important and influential conquest.
Hitler initially approved of the princess’ friendship with his adjutant, though later he was to change his mind. As the friendship blossomed he authorised Wiedemann to spend lavishly in order to encourage the relationship to become even closer. It was Hitler’s personal instruction that Wiedemann should use a fund of 20,000 Reichsmarks as a maintenance allowance to ensure the princess had her hotel, restaurant bills, telephone bills and taxi and travel fares paid. Sometimes the generosity even extended to purchasing expensive clothes and gifts for her. In early December 1933 she used her friendship with the Crown Prince, the kaiser’s son, and her closeness to Wiedemann to gain her first meeting with Hitler in Berlin. The Führer appears to have been highly impressed by her sophistication, her intelligence and her charms. At that first meeting she wore one of her most elegant outfits, calculating it would impress him. It seems to have done so, because Hitler greeted her with uncharacteristic warmth, kissing her on the hand. It was far from usual for Hitler to be so attentive to women, particularly women introduced to him for the first time. The princess was invited to take tea with him, and once seated beside him, according to her unpublished memoirs, Hitler scarcely took his piercing eyes off her.13 The princess handed the Führer a personal letter from Rothermere, and passed on a verbal message to the effect that on the day the outcome of the Reichstag election had been announced, Rothermere had told some of his staff: ‘Remember this day. Hitler is going to rule Germany. The man will make history and I predict that he will change the face of Europe.’14 As she took her leave, Hitler, in an ostentatious show of affection that did not go unnoticed by members of his staff, kissed her and presented her with a personally addressed reply, asking her to convey it direct to Lord Rothermere in London.
After he came to power, Hitler had the reputation of often being downright rude to his women, even to those he knew intimately. But if he thought that it was in his interests he could also be charming in a rather over-sentimental way: kissing their hands, presenting them with huge bunches of flowers and addressing them in endearing terms by pet names. He had mastered the technique of disciplining his behaviour. One minute he could be charming and sentimental, the next he could become a demanding demagogue. But, by the accounts she left in notes for her memoirs, the only side of Hitler’s behaviour Princess Stephanie saw whenever they were together was of generosity, warmth and affection. He began referring to her as his ‘dear Princess’, or ‘Hochverehrte Prinzessin’ – ‘revered princess’. Writing some years later, and with an eye to distancing herself from the many allegations and suspicions that surrounded her, Stephanie commented:
Seldom in history has a former enemy demonstrated as much goodwill to a dangerous dictator than the British in the Thirties. There I stood near the centre of events. Rothermere came from a family that had experienced the novel possibility of influencing international politics through newspapers and was determine
d to sound out Hitler. He chose me for a ‘consultant’ and several times between 1934 and 1938 I witnessed history from a very close perspective.15
Hitler’s first letter to Rothermere, like the majority he exchanged with the Daily Mail proprietor, was long and rambling. Hitler wrote as he spoke, using lengthy, ponderous sentences. His letter made clear that Germany was determined to defend herself against attack, but he assured the British newspaper owner he had not the slightest intention of provoking a war:
As old soldiers of the World War – I was myself in the frontline 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 sympathy 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.
In a reference to the hated humiliations of the Treaty of Versailles, he wrote:
This cannot definitely be achieved for Europe unless the treatment of the critical problem, whose existence cannot be denied, is transferred from the climate of hatred in which victors and vanquished confront each other, to a basis where nations and states can negotiate with each other on an equal footing.
Adopting a more personal tone about Rothermere’s Daily Mail article, Hitler wrote:
I should like to express the appreciation of countless Germans, who regard me as their spokesman, for the wise and beneficial support which you have given to a policy that we all hope will contribute to the final liberation of Europe. Just as we are fanatically determined to defend ourselves against attack, so do we reject the idea of taking the initiative in bringing about a war … I am convinced that no one who fought in the front line trenches during the world war, no matter in what European country, desires another conflict.16
Hitler thanked Rothermere profusely for his ‘shrewd and well directed journalistic support’ of his policies. He wrote that he saw no reason for war either in the west or the east, but he emphasised his demand for Germany to establish an army of 300,000 men which he said would constitute a menace to no one, given that Germany faced over 600,000 men across her frontier with France, 370,000 in Poland and 250,000 in Czechoslovakia.
Encouraged by the success of her first mission, Rothermere arranged for the princess to travel again to Berlin. This time she was bearing a gift for Hitler, a portrait photograph of Rothermere, mounted in a solid gold frame, made by Cartier of Paris and worth more than £50,000 at today’s prices. On the reverse of the frame was a reprint of the page from the Daily Mail of September 1930, which reproduced Rothermere’s initial editorial, hailing the ‘New Germany’. In Berlin it fell to Stephanie to translate the article for Hitler, and the Führer was duly impressed, as well he might be. Rothermere was delivering the propaganda he sought, and putting it in front of the largest newspaper audience in the whole of the British Isles. As he said goodbye to the princess, Hitler insisted Stephanie convey his warmest thanks to the press baron. He urged Rothermere to continue to use his publications to convince the British people that a strong and contented Germany was the best guarantee of lasting European peace. Hitler’s hopes were more than fulfilled. In all his newspapers Rothermere proclaimed loudly that the Reich Chancellor had only peaceful intentions; that a defeated Germany had at last found its saviour.
There is no doubt after that first meeting with the new chancellor that Hitler was deeply impressed by Princess Stephanie. She certainly believed she had won his confidence and his respect. But there were people in Hitler’s immediate circle who resented the favours the Führer was showing her. His press spokesman, Dr Ernst von Hanfstaengl, warned the Führer against getting too involved with Stephanie, describing her as a ‘professional blackmailer and a full-blooded Jewess’. (Ironically, Hanfstaengl, Nazi Party press chief from 1933–37, defected and fled to America before the war began, later serving as a White House expert on Nazi policy.) Hitler promised Hanfstaengl he would have the princess’ family history researched. And in answer to a later warning to exercise caution, Hitler said the Gestapo had investigated her background thoroughly and had found the allegations that she was Jewish totally unfounded. The Nazi leader probably calculated that Stephanie’s value to him at that time greatly outweighed any vague allegations of Jewish heritage.
Princess Stephanie’s son, in his book about his mother, puts a rather different complexion on the episode. He claims his mother was acting only as a ‘high-ranking postmistress’ and as a result she acquired two camps of enemies. The anti-Nazis in Britain and elsewhere in Europe and the United States called her ‘Hitler’s mistress’, ‘Hitler’s spy’, ‘Germany’s paid agent’. Whilst those in Germany, jealous of the attention she was receiving from Hitler and others in the Nazi hierarchy, cast aspersions on her ‘non-Aryan’ origins.17
In March 1934 the invitation Rothermere had been angling for – a face-to-face meeting with Hitler – finally arrived. Making another visit to the Reich Chancellery at Hitler’s express request, Stephanie was handed a letter by the Führer which invited his ‘kindred spirit’ – Rothermere – to visit him in Germany. Princess Stephanie had at last delivered on the task Rothermere had set her. But who, now, was she working for – the British press baron, or the German Führer?
7
THREAT FROM THE SKY
An objective commentator might have concluded that Hitler had far more to gain from any association with Princess Stephanie than Rothermere. But the press proprietor believed that the opportunity to give wide-scale publicity to Hitler’s policies was in fact a patriotic duty. In British political circles Rothermere was not universally liked. Some regarded him as a maverick, unreliable in certain of his judgements and apt to be dominated by impulse. He was passionately anti-communist and it was his firm belief that by offering friendship to Hitler, and allowing him the freedom to confront and destroy Bolshevism, was in Britain’s national interest. He regarded it as the only policy that would avoid another disastrous war in Europe. Rothermere was also a passionate proponent of British rearmament, particularly the strengthening of the country’s air force.
He may not have had the general support of most mainstream politicians in Britain, but he was a good deal more far-sighted than many who held office in Parliament and public life at the time. His apprehension about Europe’s lack of stability, threats from Communism and fear of the possibility of war devastating Europe once more were genuine, and they contrasted with a lack of concern being expressed about these issues in government. To someone with Rothermere’s insight, who frequently visited the countries of central Europe and was well-acquainted with their history, it was clear Hitler and those around him in 1933 represented a significant new force. He regarded them as resolute men who felt deeply the degradation of their race, who believed they had much to avenge and who had attained power by the exercise of determination and self-sacrifice. Rothermere pointed out that:
The new German Chancellor was a man of obscure origins. The Austrian house-painter who had been battalion runner and a corporal in the German army had raised a standard of revolt in Munich, only to be cast into prison for his pains. It seemed to the unimaginative eyes in London and Paris that his appointment as Reich Chancellor was rather in the nature of a bad joke than an event in the serious history of Europe.1
But Rothermere concluded that, ‘a man of known resolute and daring character pledged to the wiping out of the Peace Treaties who had made himself in a very few years the master of the German Parliamentary machine was a man neither to be derided nor ignored’.
There was no secret about Hitler’s aims for those willing to look for them. His three most significant objectives were his pledge to wipe out the humiliating clauses imposed by the peace treaties, to win the return of Germany’s ex-colonies and to recognise the Jew as an alien. Rothermere wrote:
Germany, a decade and a half after the end of the World War was in odium surrounded by armed neighbours and herself unarmed … It was surely a simple deductio
n that such men as now controlled the German nation would turn from requests to demands, and would strive to back those demands with adequate military force, whatever the rejected treaties might say.2
He argued that demands for redress from a revitalised Germany could only be addressed to two nations – France and Britain. Of these Britain had, in pursuit of her treaty pledges, spent fifteen years reducing her armaments, and now the British government was showing no signs of waking up to the menace which the new National Socialist government in Germany posed.
In November 1933, a month before the princess had her first meeting with the German chancellor, Rothermere published a peculiarly prophetic article in the Daily Mail headlined ‘We Need 5,000 War-Planes’.3 In it he predicted that the next war in Europe would begin with mass air attacks upon the cities of the weaker powers. Britain, he argued, was powerless to resist these perils. Successful defence in the air demanded a lead in aircraft numbers of at least 2:1, and of all the great European powers Britain was weakest, with a home defence force of a mere 490 aircraft. The French in contrast had 3,000, the Italians 1,500. Rothermere wrote:
No other country on earth is so exposed to devastating air attack. Our capital city offers an almost ideal target for enemy bombers. It lies in the corner of the kingdom which is most accessible to air-raiders with a broad estuary to guide them to its heart … Though we were to double the size of our Navy and our Army we could at present be decisively defeated in any new European war by aerial action alone.