The Mitford Girls

by Mary S. Lovell

  Remarkably, we have Hitler’s version of a similar conversation. ‘Churchill and his friends decided on war against us some years before 1939,’ he said, in a recorded conversation. ‘I had this information from Lady Mitford [Unity]; she and her sisters were very much in the know, thanks to their relationship with influential people. One day she suddenly exclaimed that in the whole of London there were only three anti-aircraft guns! Her sister [Diana] who was present stared at her stonily, and then said slowly, “I do not know whether Mosley is the right man, or even if he is in a position, to prevent a war between Britain and Germany.”’14

  His report of Diana’s reaction to Unity’s casual remark is interesting for it suggests that she was either shocked or displeased by its naïvety. But whether Unity’s statement was accurate or not is unimportant, for Hitler had a huge embassy in London, and the information about armaments provided by his intelligence service would have been far more informed than anything Unity could tell him. Diana thinks that the three anti-aircraft guns remark was the sort of joke then prevalent in UK newspapers and points out that Unity spent little time in England in 1939 so would not have known anything of any value. ‘I often disapproved strongly of things Unity said . . . but she was incapable of disloyalty to England.’15

  When the sisters were alone together after luncheon, Unity told Diana for the second time that if war was declared between England and Germany she would not live to see the tragedy unfold: ‘She simply felt too torn between England and Germany to wish to see them tear themselves apart.’ Diana was not the only person to whom Unity made this statement or others like it: she had also told Tom, Debo and Decca that she intended to ‘commidit’ (‘commit suicide’ in Boudledidge) rather than choose between England and Germany in a war. Diana never saw Hitler again, though Unity had lunch with him on the first two days following her return to Munich.

  Despite what Hitler had said to them, Unity did not seem to accept that war was so imminent for when Diana left on 3 August, she still hoped that her sister might be able to return on the eighteen with Jonathan and Desmond for the Parteitag. But Diana was pregnant again and, anyway, events unwound far more rapidly than anyone had anticipated. Within a month of her return to England it was already too late to travel to Germany. Instead Diana was at Wootton making the preparations for war that were suddenly obligatory for all householders. Blackout curtains had to be made for the numerous massive windows.

  Irene Ravensdale, together with Mosley’s children from his first marriage, joined the Mosleys there, so it could not have been a comfortable period for anyone concerned, given Lady Ravensdale’s much-aired antipathy towards Diana. Nor did it help relations, Irene Ravensdale wrote in her autobiography, that Diana prominently displayed in her drawing room the large autographed photograph of Hitler that had been his wedding gift to her. In fact, Diana had purposely removed this photograph before Irene’s visit because she was aware it might cause offence. ‘I wrapped it in brown paper and put it in a cupboard,’ she recalled. In June, shortly after Mosley was arrested, she deposited the brown paper parcel at Drummonds bank and has never seen it since.16

  Meanwhile, Unity amused herself by decorating her apartment. Janos von Almassy came to stay with her for a few weeks in early August, during which he bought her a dining table and chairs. When he left, the Wrede twins, half-Spanish princesses who had served as nurses in the Spanish civil war, stayed with her for a few days. It was only towards the end of the month that she began to feel isolated. Hitler was in Berlin, occupied with affairs of state, and the British consul summoned Unity and ordered her to return to England. She refused, and was told that she would forfeit British protection if she did not leave with the few remaining British subjects. She retorted that she had far better protection than that: Hitler’s. But she was miserable: most foreign journalists had now been withdrawn, and all her friends had pulled out, too. Even her German friends had retreated to their homes. Food was already rationed and becoming scarce, although Hitler sometimes remembered her and sent supplies to her flat. The few friends she did manage to see were frightened by the idea of war, and were also made uneasy by Unity’s assertions that if war was declared she would have no alternative but to shoot herself.

  On 22 August she wrote to Diana that she was thrilled to hear about the Nazi-Soviet pact for surely, she wrote, this would make Germany so strong that England would never dare oppose Hitler. A few days later she was writing that she was not so sure the pact had helped: war seemed even more certain. The worst thing was that she had not seen Hitler for nearly three weeks. ‘I wish he would come,’ she said plaintively. By now it was obvious to her that Diana could not fly out to Germany and all the borders were closed. ‘On thinking things over,’ Unity wrote, ‘I might disappear into the mountains in the Tyrol perhaps, if war is declared. Of course the other way seems the easiest way out, but it seems silly not to wait and see how things turn out, it might be all over within a week.’17 On 30 August she received two last letters from Diana and her parents. It seemed a miracle that they had got through for the city was now on full alert for war with mandatory blackout after dusk, and the postal services were spasmodic. David had sent her 1,500 German marks that he had left over from his last trip ‘for emergency’. She replied thanking him and telling Sydney about her idea of going to the Tyrol, and to Diana asking that ‘if anything was to happen to me and the English Press try to make some untrue story out of it against W[olf], you will see to it that the truth is known won’t you...’18 Her biggest fear, though, was that ‘I shan’t see the Führer again.’ These were the last letters that got through.

  While Unity idled away the last few weeks of August, working on the decoration of her apartment and sunbathing on its balcony, hoping against all hope for a reconciliation between Germany and England, Pam and Derek Jackson were in New York. He was engaged on a high-level mission for the Air Ministry, but they made time to call on Decca and Esmond at their flat in Greenwich Village. They just knocked on the door, without prior announcement. ‘I was amazed at Woman turning up here,’ Decca wrote to Sydney.19 As usual it was the meal that Pam most recalled about their visit. Forty years later she remembered that they ate roast chicken, which Pam cooked and carved. It was a ‘boiling hot day’, she reminded Decca, and even the effort of carving the chicken had brought her out ‘in a muck sweat’. The other thing she remembered was that Decca showed her where they hid their money, between the leaves of books. Pam worried for weeks that they would forget where it all was, or leave some behind when they left. It was pleasant for the sisters to meet, and Decca enjoyed telling them about her work and how they were managing. Derek and Esmond did not hit it off, though, and this made the occasion ‘uncomfortable and stiff’.

  Decca had just left her job at the dress shop, having been offered a better one at Bloomingdales. In the meantime she was working on a trade stand at the New York World Fair. The Jacksons went to the fair several times to see her there without Esmond. When it was time to leave the United States, they invited the Romillys to dinner at their hotel and Esmond was fascinated to learn that they proposed to fly back to England. The Americans had been operating a transatlantic service since June, which carried up to seventeen civilian passengers. On 4 August a British service was inaugurated and Derek arranged for them to be on the second trip. So unusual was the mode of transport that just before they took off the Jacksons were interviewed by journalists, who asked why they had chosen to fly to England. ‘Well, you see,’ Derek explained, ‘tomorrow is our little dog’s birthday so we are in rather a hurry to get home . . .’ He had in reality been allocated seats because he was carrying top-secret papers. ‘The embassy had asked him to give them to them for transmission in the diplomatic bag,’ Diana recalled. ‘Derek refused. He said later, “If I’d accepted, the Russians would have had them next day.”’20

  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 t
hey 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 knew 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