Mrs Guinness
Page 23
As much as Magda understood the pains of suffering such melancholy, she was alarmingly without a sense of empathy. Although she permitted her household staff a free reign, there was always a vast turnover of employees and Magda was forever in search of nannies and cooks. Once, she hired a young maid who forgot everything and if she didn’t forget, she got it wrong. When Magda scolded her and threatened to dismiss her, the maid ran to the kitchen, turned on the gas tap and lay under it. Fortunately, she was discovered in time. Magda showed little kindness towards the girl and said: ‘If a person’s so out of control that she wants to kill herself for a justified scolding, I have no sympathy.’68
The household ran on a strict schedule; at seven o’clock in the morning Goebbels’ manservant came into his bedroom to wake him up, bringing with him a small tea trolley of black coffee, a plate of three different vitamin tablets and two slices of wholewheat bread, each cut into quarters. After breakfast, it then took Goebbels exactly forty-five minutes to dress.
Magda, too, adhered to an unchanging routine. She woke up at the same time every morning, regardless of whether she stayed up late or felt unwell. When she brushed her hair, she counted every stroke and spent the same amount of time brushing her teeth from right to left and top to bottom. It was a foolproof routine, which allowed her to get ready in an astonishingly short time. Always immaculately turned out, she never had a hair out of place. It was also a compulsive ritual for Magda to change her clothes for lunch and to reapply her make-up. This provided her with an armour to distract from how deeply insecure she felt.
There was a common thread running through Unity and Magda’s lives. They each idolised Hitler, and this sense of belonging to the movement, along with her own personal power and luxurious lifestyle, made it easier for Magda to bear her husband’s cruelty. Goebbels admitted: ‘I don’t treat her well. Must devote myself more to her. She is so kind underneath. But sometimes she has her moods; like all women. Then you have to show her your teeth.’69
This militaristic way of life took its toll on Diana and she felt an air of contempt from Goebbels, avoiding him as best she could. He was jealous of her access to Hitler and was suspicious of Mosley. In many ways, Diana’s physical presence made Goebbels feel inferior; standing at a diminutive 5ft 4in tall, Diana and Unity towered over him, his head was much too large for his body and ‘in his emaciation he resembles Ghandi’. Unlike ‘the two great blondes’, his appearance did not conform to the Germanic racial categories and he ‘would be taken at first sight for an Italian or even a Jew’. An ethnologist once produced a treatise on a Germanic group referred to as Nachgedunkelnter Schrimpfgermane – approximately translated as ‘dwarf Germans who later became darker in colour’ – and he placed Goebbels in this category.
However, Diana found Magda easy to talk to and she often spent the afternoons chatting to her and admiring her small children. Unlike Diana and Unity, she was not witty and never made jokes but she liked to laugh at other people’s nuances. Magda seemed to be more of an empty vessel, absorbing the atmosphere of those around her and reflecting it as best she could. She was quick to dismiss people with whom she had little in common, but felt an intense loyalty to those she was close to. Like Unity, Magda was deeply superstitious and often had her fortune told by gypsies; they predicted she would die an unnatural death between the age of 40 and 45. This she told Diana during her stay at Schwanenwerder.
Diana’s perception of Goebbels proved correct. She was right in believing him to be a spiteful man, prone to exaggeration. He wrote in his diary that Diana came to him pleading for the Nazi Party to loan Mosley £100,000. This was contradicted by Diana’s own diary in which she wrote the best Hitler could offer her was £10,000. Goebbels also claimed that Diana had used her visit to the Olympic Games as an opportunity to ask Hitler for more money, which Goebbels took great pleasure in refusing her. If his diary entries are to be believed, then Diana asked once and was successful, but was consequently turned down after that.
As for Unity, many of Hitler’s staff – Goebbels included, and particularly his intelligence team – were baffled at his tolerance of this boisterous English girl. What purpose did she serve? It was a simple theory: the Nazis courted young, upper-class English girls to see whom they knew – it was a question of networking, and Unity knew everyone. Diana, however, really did know everyone and she did not exaggerate her closeness to whomever Hitler was interested in. In cynical terms, it was a friendship of convenience.
Hitler’s in-house doctor, Dr Theodore Morell, offered a different theory to this closeness between Hitler, Unity and Diana: ‘In 1936 … he could still laugh out loud and often did. He was a good natured man. The stories of violent tantrums are hugely exaggerated: I often had to admire how much he had himself under control.’70 Dr Morell simply confirmed this ease with Unity and Diana was down to Hitler’s approachability.
More extraordinarily, Diana succeeded in establishing a close relationship with Hitler away from Unity, whose giddiness and comical remarks often distracted from the seriousness of whatever he and Diana were discussing. Hitler admired her intelligence and he could easily talk politics with her. Mosley’s preference for leadership lay with Mussolini, whom he thought more virile, and he openly referred to Hitler as a ‘terrible little man’. But he was wise enough to notice that Hitler, quite taken with Diana, could be useful and she became his channel to him: ‘It was a habit of Hitler to convey to me his views of events through Diana.’
Finally, this gave Diana a sense of power and a central role in the BU. Baba, too, admired Hitler and had travelled to Berlin for the 1936 Olympic Games, but she was always juggling several affairs and could not be relied upon to provide any real substance for Mosley’s cause. Although it was the one thing Baba and Mosley had in common, she was not as tactful as Diana or as focused to set out on a mission and see it through. Hitler became Diana’s mission and soon Mosley would see that. With Diana on Mosley’s side, he and the BU might have a future.
The energy surged through the streets of Berlin ahead of the Olympic Games. Prior to the games, signs were placed around popular tourist attractions stating ‘Jews Not Wanted’. However, in a rare moment of defeat, Hitler withdrew his regulation that Jews and black people were forbidden to participate when several nations threatened to boycott the games.* Despite the impression of a peaceful nation bracing itself to host the Olympics, it was a chilling reminder of how deceptive Hitler could be. Only two days after the games, Captain Wolfgang Fürstner, head of the Olympic village, committed suicide when he was dismissed from the military service because of his Jewish ancestry.
It was an opportunity for Hitler to camouflage the Nazi regime and to impress foreign visitors. Streicher’s anti-Semitic newspaper, Der Stürmer, had been removed from news kiosks, though it continued to be published. The streets of Berlin underwent a massive clean-up and Hitler ordered the arrest of all Romany Gypsies, to be detained in a concentration camp close to a sewage dump in the suburb of Marzahn.
Overlooking the controversy surrounding the games, many international brands viewed it as an ideal platform for advertising. Guinness, in particular, was one brand who was eager to capitalise on this, and they drew up advertising posters of SS men holding a pint of beer and bearing the slogan: ‘Es is zeit fur ein Guinness.’ The English offices were reluctant to be associated with Nazi Germany and they opposed the advertising campaign. They subsequently clashed with the brewery at St James’s Gate in Dublin, who were busy negotiating with a Berlin importer. The recent breach of the Versailles Treaty in March with the remilitarisation of the Rhineland caused some to feel suspicious of the future of Nazism and, because of that ill-feeling, the English offices exerted their authority and the deal did not go ahead.
Another exciting form of commercialisation was under way – the games were the first to have live television coverage and for some it was a display of majesty. For others it was a chilling reminder that Nazism was a disease spreading at a rapid pace.
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br /> Hoping to instil calmness in those Britons panicked by Hitler, Lloyd George championed the cause of the Nazis. He had visited the German ambassador to Britain (later the foreign minister of Nazi Germany), Joachim von Ribbentrop,* and Hitler in Berchtesgaden, where he, too, became smitten with the Führer’s personality. Reporting back to the British people, Lloyd George assured them: ‘Hitler is a born leader of men with a magnetic dynamic personality. The Germans have no longer the desire themselves to invade any other land … They have definitely made up their minds never to quarrel with us again.’ The veil of deception eventually evaporated and soon Lloyd George sensed the dangers of Hitler, but this vocal misjudgement would remain a blemish on his political career.
In spite of the escalation of terror spreading through Hitler’s opponents, the excitement of the Olympics still inspired optimism in some – one being Deborah Mitford, who wrote to Unity: ‘Would you send me a letter with a German stamp with an Olympic Games on it … DON’T FORGET.’71 But as the theatrics dazzled the onlookers in Germany and abroad, more quietly the concentration camps were filled and the road to war was paved.
Irene abhorred the wave of ceremony sweeping through Berlin, turning the heads of foreign visitors. Provoking further agitation, Irene received an official invitation from Hitler. ‘I did not want to be the guest of the German government,’ she later explained. When she learned many prominent English people were going to Berlin for the Olympic Games, she reluctantly agreed to go, too. There was nothing remarkable about Irene’s presence in Germany. However, it is a unique insight when considering her point of view on what she had witnessed in contrast to Diana, Unity and Baba’s positive impression of the Olympic Games and of Hitler.
Flying alone to Nuremberg, Irene was jolted into the hall of the National Hotel, where she was crushed in a bedlam of Blackshirts, brownshirts, generals, officers of the army and navy, and journalists. She observed the spectacle of the city, overrun by Nazi propaganda, and she gathered her thoughts upon hearing Hitler speak. Unlike Diana and Unity, she was not so captivated as to overlook the sinister points of his speeches. She understood him perfectly, having spent a year in Dresden prior to her debutante season. When Irene met the Führer, she felt his dark eyes knifing through her soul and far from being charmed by his manners – an attribute Diana constantly praised – she recoiled when he kissed her hand and silently critiqued his unkempt hair. Hair cream, she advised, would tame the wandering strand that hung over his low brow. Despite the Nazi’s trademark hospitality, the meeting had left her cold.
Further astonished by the German hospitality which Diana so loved, Irene did not mince her words when she was invited to a dinner given for the German head of all the sports and physical training in Germany. When elderly German women in white linen coats distributed packets of sausages, Irene turned to an SS man and scolded him. She suggested that he, a strong man, should be delivering the sausages and that Nazis only used their women for breeding and cooking. Disgusted at what she had witnessed, Irene fled.
Every day, Diana and Unity motored to the games in a procession of Mercedes cars following the Führer. Fortunately for Diana, who disliked sports, she and Unity were seated in a separate section from Hitler and his party, free to wander from the stadium that held 100,000 spectators. Jesse Owens, the black American runner ‘who dashed along faster than anyone else’, captured her attention and it was a ‘pleasure to watch him’ but, except for this fleeting spectacle, Diana was bored.
Diana’s spirits were lifted when the games were finally over and she and Unity were treated to the Bayreuth Festival, which was ‘as heavenly as the Olympic Games were boring’. An avid music lover, it was the most divine experience of Diana’s summer; she listened to ‘The Ring’, which she knew from Covent Garden, and for the first time she heard Parsifal. Confiding to Hitler, Diana said she liked it least of Wagner’s operas. Hitler reminded her ‘that is because you are young. You will find as you get older you love Parsifal more and more.’ A prediction, Diana discovered, that came true.
It was a summer of endless suppers with Hitler in a restaurant near Festspielhaus, the venue where Diana met Frau Winifred Wagner, a great friend of the Führer. British-born Winifred Wagner took a critical view of the overexcited Unity, but she held her grandfather Bertie Redesdale in high regard. Unity must have been unaware of Frau Wagner’s disapproval, for she wrote to her mother: ‘She’s such a nice motherly person.’72
When the celebrations drew to a close, Diana decided it was time to talk business, and away from the festivities she finally had a chance to speak with Hitler alone. Preoccupied all throughout the Olympic Games, the two-week-long sporting event seemed like a lifetime to Diana. She had dreamt up a canny operation which, if Hitler agreed to it, would provide the floundering BU with funds and also net a profit for the Nazi Party. Hitler might have been a generous host to Diana but he was not so lenient as to pour money into a foreign political party without gaining something in return.
Mosley always claimed his party received no foreign aid, he even denied the generous handouts from Mussolini, which by 1936 had stopped. He was also keen to dispel any evidence that Hitler invested in the BU, but MI5 files reveal that Hitler had given money to the party. When such files came to light and were shown to Diana in her later years, she simply dismissed the accusation in that typical Mitford way: ‘Oh well, if it’s in the documents, then it must be true.’73 It was true and it was exactly the reason Diana travelled to Berlin. Before this significant visit in 1936, her earlier trips had been for pleasure and to see Unity. Her later trips, however, were calculated and encouraged by Mosley, who desperately needed money. Diana was on a mission and she was determined the Führer would oblige her request.
Diana thought up the concept of a radio station, Air Time Limited, which would transmit to British airwaves. In Britain, the BBC had a monopoly over the airwaves and, since Mosley was banned from speaking on air, Diana had to think up creative ways to launch her plan. Any independent radio station would have to be founded on foreign soil, and she had carried out enough research to realise that similar stations had been successful. One such station, the International Broadcasting Company, had secured a licence from the French government to operate Radio Normandie, broadcasting to Great Britain from France. The basis of this radio station idea was surprisingly apolitical; Diana’s scheme involved selling household goods and she had ambitions to manufacture a cosmetic line. She knew where her pitch lay: Germany needed hard currency and her household items, sold in sterling, would draw the type of profit beneficial to them both.*
In Mein Kampf, Hitler spoke of the importance of marriage, it was an institution which he regarded as holy, and one of the central themes of Nazi propaganda was family values. But this self-righteousness did not stop Hitler’s own hypocrisy; publicly he proclaimed he was a bachelor married to the German nation, though privately, as Diana and Unity discovered, he was involved with Eva Braun. As much as Unity boasted that she knew every aspect of Hitler’s life, she did not imagine that he was sleeping with Fraulein Braun.74 Even Diana dismissed that Hitler was capable of having a sexual affair with anyone.75 As such, she sensed Hitler’s disapproval of her arrangement with Mosley. With this in mind, would his opinion be swayed towards the BU if she and Mosley were to marry? This gave Diana an incentive to discuss marriage with Mosley, and, for the first time, he considered the idea a possibility.
NOTES
* Hitler had also given Unity a flat in Munich which had belonged to a Jewish couple who had ‘gone abroad’.
* Prior to the games, Jewish athletes were disqualified from the teams selected to compete. To appease the international countries competing, Hitler consented to Helene Mayer, the fencing champion who was half Jewish, to represent Germany.
* Leading society hostesses entertained von Ribbentrop, most notability Nancy, Lady Astor, who helped to make Nazism fashionable amongst the smart set. When war was declared in 1939, Lady Astor violently opposed Hitler.
68 Magda Goebbels, Anja Klabunde.
69 Joseph Goebbels’ diary entry, 11 May 1936. Published in Magda Goebbels, Anja Klabunde.
70 The Secret Diaries of Hitler’s Doctor, David Irving.
71 A letter from Deborah to Unity, (month unknown) 1936. Deborah also signed off her letter with: ‘Well DON’T FORGET about the Olympics stamp.’ The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters, Charlotte Mosley (ed.).
72 Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler’s Bayreuth, Brigitte Hamann and Alan J. Bance.
73 Nigel Dorril said of the documents proving that Mosley had received funding from the Nazis: ‘When I showed Diana what I had found, not long before she died, she said in that typical Mitford way: “Oh well, if it’s in the documents, then it must be true.” Oswald Mosley was a financial crook bankrolled by Nazis’. Article by Ben Fenton, Telegraph, 20 March 2006.
74 Hitler’s doctor confirmed that Hitler and Eva Braun had a sexual relationship. Following their suicide in 1945, Gretl Mittlstrasse, when questioned by authorities, confessed that Eva would send her to Hitler’s in-house doctor who would give her medication to suppress her period during Hitler’s visits at the Berghof. The Lost Life of Eva Braun, Angela Lambert.