The Sisters_The Saga of the Mitford Family

by Mary S. Lovell

  Prior to the Anschluss, having read about his anti-Hitler speeches, Unity had written to Winston Churchill setting out a number of facts for him about Austria and telling him of her own experiences. She received a kindly worded but firm reply that ‘a fair plebiscite would have shown that a large majority of the people of Austria would loathe the idea of coming under Nazi rule’.2 It must have seemed to Unity that Churchill was wrong, for on 14 March she was able to witness for herself the scenes of wild jubilation, German troops pelted with flowers, and the deafening chant of ‘Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!’ And ‘Heil, Hitler!’ that rang joyously through Vienna when Hitler appeared on the balcony of the Hotel Imperial. What Unity did not witness, of course, was the brutal treatment of anyone opposed to the new regime: the beatings, the arrests, the deportations to concentration camps.

  From Austria Sydney and Debo went on to stay with Unity at Pension Doering.

  12 June 1937,

  My darling Little D, We are leaving for home tomorrow . . . and it has been great fun touring around with Bobo . . . of course the little car has been a real comfort . . . yesterday we went out to Nymphenburg [and] I am hoping to go round one of the girls’ work camps before we go. I think the others told you of our tea party with the Fuhrer. He asked after Little D. I wished I could speak German I must say. He is very ‘easy’ to be with and no feeling of shyness would be possible, and such very good manners . . . All love, darling, and to E, Muv.3

  Decca and Esmond were not at all amused to learn that her name was on Hitler’s lips, but they decided that it was all that could be expected from Decca’s ‘Nazi family’. Sydney kept Decca au fait with all family news, writing every week while Decca was in France. David and Tom, she reported, had joined them in Munich for a few days, but Tom had gone on to visit Janos von Almassy, and David had returned home and rented ‘the fishing cottage’ (also, confusingly, called Mill Cottage) at Swinbrook for the summer, so that they could all go there for weekends if they wanted. While they were together in Munich, the Redesdales had been given a tour of the city by one of Hitler’s adjutants and years later, in Hons and Rebels, Decca would state that they were driven round in Hitler’s car. ‘Not true,’ Sydney pointed out, ‘you wouldn’t catch Farve in anything but his own Morris.’4 News of her father from other members of the family was the closest Decca would ever get to him. The day he put her solicitously on the train for Paris, tucking the travelling rug around her legs and handing her ten pounds as spending money, was the last time she ever saw him, although he lived for another twenty years.

  Debo, meanwhile, was thoroughly enjoying her tour and looking forward to her début as a Grown-Up when she returned home. ‘I think Munich is no end nice . . . if I had to live anywhere abroad I should certainly live here,’ she wrote to Decca. The Hitler tea party had been fascinating: ‘Bobo was like someone transformed when she was with him and going up stairs she was shaking so much she could hardly walk. I think Hitler must be very fond of her, as he never took his eyes off her. Muv asked if there were any laws about having good flour for bread, wasn’t it killing?’5 They spoke about the Anschluss and Hitler told Sydney, ‘They said England would be there to stop me, but the only English person I saw there [Unity] was on my side.’6

  Sydney was happy to get back to her bread-making at High Wycombe: ‘We had lovely times abroad but it is very nice to be at home,’7 she wrote, telling Decca that Debo was looking forward to attending Royal Ascot in the following week, and had received invitations to a number of smart dances including one given by the American ambassador for which she had bought a dress of white tulle. One cannot avoid wondering if, when relaying this sort of detail, Sydney hoped to make Decca regret what she had done, even at this late stage. ‘Tom spends all his time with the Territorials and will be going to camp with them. He is nearly every weekend shooting at Bisley or doing something of the kind. You know how thorough he is when he does anything.’ Tom, like David before him, had discovered a real enjoyment of military life and would subsequently go to Sandhurst with a view to making the Army his career. ‘Woman [Pam] is coming over to see us tomorrow,’ the letter concluded, ‘and Nancy has gone to Scotland to escape the hay fever.’8

  Decca now advised her sisters that the doctor had confirmed the anticipated date of confinement was 1 January: ‘Do you remember poor Lottie’s agonies [a pet dog] and I expect it’s much worse for humans . . . I do hope it will be sweet and pretty and everything. Goodness I have been sick but I’m not any more.’9

  ‘My darling Little D,’ Sydney wrote from High Wycombe, ‘Bobo tells me you have told her about the baby . . . No one else except Farve knows because I didn’t tell anybody, not even Nanny, but will now. She will be pleased. I wonder if you would like to have this cottage for 3 months from 8 December when we will be at Rutland Gate.’10

  Debo was staying with her parents at Mill Cottage, Swinbrook, by the time she wrote to Decca to congratulate her on the baby. ‘It is more than ever like a Russian Novel here, because Farve has taken terrific trouble to buy things he think Muv will like and she goes round putting away all the things that he has chosen. The worst of all was when she went up to her bedroom for the first time and saw two wonderfully hideous lampshades with stars on them and said, “I certainly never bought those horrors,” and Farve’s face fell several miles.’ However, despite the cold, she said, they were enjoying being back at Swinbrook and the trout fishing was good.11

  Debo was now embarked upon a round of débutante dances, two or three a week, and her Grown-Up status required her to be sophisticated about these:

  I must say they exactly are as you said – perfectly killing . . . Luckily for me Tuddemy has been to all the ones I have. He is simply wonderful and waits around until I haven’t anyone to dance with and then comes and sits on a sofa or dances with me. I must say it’s terribly nice of him. My conversation to the deb’s young men goes something like this:

  Chinless horror: I think this is our dance.

  Me (knowing all the time that it is and only too thankful to see him, thinking I’d been cut again): Oh yes, I think it is.

  C.H.: What a crowd in the doorway.

  Me: Yes, Isn’t it awful.

  (The C.H. then clutches me round the waist and I almost fall over as I try to put my feet where his aren’t.)

  Me: Sorry.

  C.H.: No, my fault.

  Me: Oh I think it must have been me.

  C.H.: Oh no, that wouldn’t be possible (supposed to be a compliment).

  Then follows a dreary silence sometimes one or other of us says, ‘sorry’ and the other ‘my fault,’ until . . . the end of the dance and one goes hopelessly back to the door to wait for the next CH.

  Besides her social life, she continued, ‘nothing has changed much, Farve goes off to the Lady and the House of Lords, and Muv paints chairs and reads books like Stalin, my Father, or Mussolini, the Man, or Hitler, my Brother’s Uncle, or I was in Spain, or The Jews, by one who knows them.’12 Debo’s letters, Decca said, made her ‘roar’.

  With the exception of Decca the entire family attended the Coronation of George VI, and Unity and David had places of honour aboard a royal escort vessel for the fleet review at Spithead. At her first ball Debo was presented to the King and Queen: ‘He looks a changed man since he was King, so much happier looking and alert,’ Sydney wrote to Decca. ‘She looks more serious.’13

  After the Coronation, Unity drove back to Germany, taking her cousin Clementine Mitford back with her for a short holiday. Munich was also en fête, she reported to Decca, and looked so gay that by comparison the Coronation decorations appeared insipid. Her friendship with Hitler went from strength to strength and her letters were full of incidents where he chanced to ‘spot her’ in the midst of a crowd and called her out. Often, now, he would invite her back to his flat: ‘We sat for hours, chatting, quite alone’ and ‘The next night I went with him to the opera to see Aida done by the Milan Scala company. It was lovely to be able to go as all t
he tickets had been sold out 3 months before and it was a wonderful performance.’ He invited Unity and Clementine to accompany him to the Bayreuth Festival, and sent his long black Mercedes to collect them. ‘We were there ten days,’ Unity wrote, and then they returned on Hitler’s special train, watching delightedly as loyal Germans lined the track waving swastika flags and saluting Hitler. ‘I have seen the Führer a lot lately which has been heaven, but now he has gone back to his mountain for a bit.’14

  Although she was only twice invited to Hitler’s mountain eyrie, the Berghof overlooking Berchtesgaden, which was the domain of his mistress, Eva Braun, Unity was now a frequent guest at gatherings of Hitler’s inner circle, and sometimes she saw him alone in his quarters. Some of Hitler’s senior officers regarded her naïve prattling with the Führer as potentially dangerous, and were concerned about the niche she had established for herself in his life. She now signed her name ‘Unity Walküre’, in the German manner, adding a small swastika underneath. She told people that she been named ‘Unity’ at the outbreak of the Great War because her pro-German family hoped that England and Germany would soon be at peace again. Probably she had even begun to regard this exaggeration together with the curious fact of being conceived in Swastika as evidence of her destiny. True, she saw Hitler only in his off-duty moments when – as the memoirs of those close to him testify – he could be immensely charming and jovial, especially when he was in the company of women. Diana, who also saw him in his off-duty periods, was never witness to the aggressive outbursts, megalomania or cruel humour that those who knew him for many years at a personal and professional level have catalogued. Unity saw him lose his temper twice, but she was so obsessed that she regarded the incidents with awe rather than disgust. ‘He got angrier and angrier,’ she wrote to Diana, ‘and at last he thundered – you know how he can . . . “Next time . . . I shall have him arrested . . . and sent to a concentration camp; then we shall see who is the stronger; Herr Gurtner’s law or my machine guns!” . . . It was wonderful. Everyone was silent for quite a time after that.’15

  Unity chatted to Hitler as she would to any member of her family, unselfconsciously bright, always seeking to amuse, entertain or impress. No one else in his life dared to treat him in the casual manner that Unity adopted. His adjutants and lieutenants were always aware that a chance remark made in fun might cause him to take fast, bitter retribution, and were guarded. Eva Braun, according to contemporary observation, was apparently cowed for much of the time and few people outside of the inner circle knew about her. Even during the time that Diana spent alone with Hitler, which was far more than most people realize, she was always aware of his position, and her radio-station agenda, and she addressed him accordingly.

  It has never been proved that Unity’s intimacy with Hitler damaged anyone, though there are accusations that – wittingly or otherwise – she denounced various people to their serious disadvantage. Whether it is true or not, it is clear that her apparent naïvety in such a situation made her potentially dangerous. Her letters show that she discussed Mosley’s activities with Hitler, for she wrote to advise Diana that Hitler thought Mosley had made a mistake in calling his movement Fascists or Blackshirts instead of something more acceptable to the British. When she asked him what he would have done in Mosley’s place, he told her he would have emulated Cromwell and called his followers ‘Ironsides’.16

  Albert Speer, another inner-circle member, recalled that ‘even in the later years of international tension,’ Unity – or Lady Mitford as he called her – ‘persistently spoke up for her country and often actually pleaded with Hitler to make a deal with England’.17 Increasingly, Unity regarded some form of alliance between the two countries as a personal mission: this was her destiny, to prevent war between the two countries she loved. And it was just this sort of conversation that worried and irritated Hitler’s chiefs. Nor did it go unnoticed by the British ambassador. On a number of occasions he reported back to London conversations he had had with Unity in which, he wrote, she was as open in telling him what Hitler had said to her as she undoubtedly was in telling Hitler what the British ambassador thought. The ambassador met Unity at the railway station when he went to greet the exiled Duke and Duchess of Windsor in September 1937. While they waited, she told him that Hitler disliked Mussolini but thought the Italian dictator’s forthcoming visit was useful in demonstrating to other countries the strength of the Berlin–Rome Axis. ‘Miss Mitford . . . said that she had heard it stated that HM’s Government had asked Herr Hitler not to receive the Duke of Windsor. Hitler had replied that he knew nothing of this and would gladly receive the Duke of Windsor.’18 He pointed out that he could not guarantee the accuracy of Unity’s statements, and he thought that she was so obsessed with Hitler that it was possible she sometimes put words into his mouth, ‘but I know that Herr Hitler is on familiar terms with her and talks freely to her . . . [and] subject to certain reservations I have little reason to doubt the accuracy of what she occasionally tells me of her conversations with the Chancellor’. As the situation deteriorated towards war, there were further conversations with Unity that the ambassador reported back to London.

  These vignettes underline Unity’s unique position among Hitler’s suite but there has always been speculation about her private, i.e. sexual, relationship with Hitler, and this was discussed at the time even in the Mitford family, judging from Esmond’s letter to his mother at the time of his elopement. Further research indicates that if there was ever any sexual element to this relationship, it was never fulfilled by physical intercourse. Diana also believes this is the case. She spent many evenings alone with Hitler, but she was an acknowledged beauty who had been courted and flirted with all her life; unlike Unity, she was experienced in assessing the motivations of men. She told me she thought Hitler was not very interested in sex, and she was convinced that Unity had never slept with him. ‘He enjoyed her company and it ended there, I think,’ she said. Had he asked Unity to sleep with him, would she have agreed? ‘Oh, yes,’ she replied unhesitatingly.19 That Unity was in love with Hitler is borne out by the testimony of many people who saw her over a period of years in his presence. One of these was another remarkable woman who had the ear of Hitler, Leni Riefenstahl.

  On one occasion she asked him about Angela ‘Geli’ Raubal, the half-niece he had loved, who had committed suicide. Geli had not been his only lover he told her frankly, but, he said, ‘my romances were mostly unhappy. The women were either married or wanted to get married.’ He did not mention Eva Braun in this conversation, although Leni knew about his secret mistress hidden away in the mountains.

  He was bothered, he told me, when women threatened suicide in order to tie him down, and he repeated that he could have married no one but Geli. I asked him what he thought of Unity Mitford, the pretty Englishwoman who, as the whole world knew, was so in love with him. His reply surprised me. ‘She’s a very attractive girl, but I could never have an intimate relationship with a foreigner, no matter how beautiful she might be.’ I thought he was joking, but he assured me, ‘My feelings are so bound up with my patriotism that I could only love a German girl.’ Amused, he said, ‘I can see you don’t understand. Incidentally . . . I would be completely unsuitable for marriage for I could not be faithful. I understand great men who have mistresses.’ The tone of this was lightly ironic.20

  That Unity wielded influence with Hitler is evident from her part in a matter involving Putzi Hanfstaengl, who suffered directly when Unity repeated a private conversation they had had while sailing his yacht on the Starnberg Lake. He told her that he had hated being stuck in New York during the 1914–18 war, and said it was a pity there was no fighting anywhere now except in Spain. He said he envied those fighting for Franco. He went on to criticize Goebbels, whom he thought was ‘schizophrenic and schizopedic’,21 and even criticized some things Hitler had done. ‘I may have gone too far,’ he said, in his autobiography.22 Clearly he had, for Unity turned on him and told him, ‘If you th
ink this way you have no right to be his foreign press chief.’ He countered, saying it was bad for the Führer to be surrounded always by yes-men, and thought that that was the end of the matter. Shortly afterwards, however, Unity wrote to Diana that Hitler planned to play a ‘wonderfully funny joke on Putzi’ to repay him for some remarks that she had passed on.23

  Unity regarded what followed as a practical joke, a Nancy-style tease. History does not relate what Hitler intended, though it seems a curious way to treat a man who appeared to have been consistently loyal to him through bad and good times.24 Hanfstaengl certainly did not find it amusing. He was ordered, quite normally, to report to an airport to carry out a project for Hitler. Once in the light aircraft he opened sealed orders, which advised that he was to be dropped behind the lines in Spain on a secret mission. He had no trouble making the connection with his conversation with Unity, and guessed that she had probably repeated his wild criticisms of Goebbels and Hitler. Knowing a good deal of how Hitler’s machine worked he immediately suspected that he was to be assassinated and his death written up as an accident. He begged the pilot, a fellow Bavarian, to put down somewhere. The pilot, who was puzzled by the whole affair, pretended that the aircraft had developed technical problems and made an unscheduled landing, whereupon Hanfstaengl made his escape and fled to Switzerland. Many years later he met the pilot, who told him that his orders had been to fly him round Potsdam for a few hours then await further instructions. He had been given to understand that Goering was entertaining high officials from overseas, and that the highlight of the military display was a demonstration of how they would shoot down a dummy on a parachute. ‘It still does not sound like a joke to me,’ Hanfstaengl wrote in his autobiography.25