Hitler's Valkyrie

by David R L Litchfield

  * * *

  By now Unity was beginning to develop her own persona as a young woman rather than a juvenile, and was not without her admirers. John Betjeman said:

  When I knew Unity she was just out of school. I always used to call her Unity Valkyrie, by both names. She was a joyful version of Miss Pam; she spoke like them all, she used all those phrases of theirs. Unity Valkyrie was funny, she had a lot of humour which doesn’t come out in the accounts of her.

  But out of all the Mitford girls, Diana was far and away the most attractive, blessed with the additional allure of Bryan Guinness’ fortune. The combination proved an irresistible flame of attraction for London’s ‘tout le monde’. Their attraction was even further enhanced by the purchase of 96 Cheyne Walk, Whistler’s old house in Chelsea. Even to Unity, who began to visit the house regularly while Diana and Bryan were busy becoming ‘the acknowledged leaders of London Society’. Rich, young, intelligent and beautiful, there was hardly a ball or party to which Guinnesses were not invited. Diana was either entertaining or being entertained. She also lunched with Bryan every day, usually at the Savoy, close to the Inns of Court where he was working. He obviously found time to work quite diligently, admittedly an unfamiliar pastime for the Mitfords, for in 1930 he was finally called to the bar. He didn’t need to work of course, but having failed to complete his studies at Oxford, there was probably a degree of self-respect involved.

  Bryan certainly preferred the languid weekends when they escaped from London and drove down to Biddesden where, apart from entertaining the usual house-guests, he could escape the constant round of parties and balls and spend his time writing, riding and generally ‘pottering about’. Diana also gave every appearance of enjoying the time she spent alone with Bryan, her new baby and her beautiful house. Everyone appeared content. But it was not to last.

  That autumn, the Guinnesses made ‘the annual pilgrimage to Venice. It had become a customary event in their circle’7. A circle which included Oswald Mosley who, considering his ambitions, would have been better advised to have stayed at home and attended to politics. This might also have been the first time that Mosley and Diana met and possibly the start of their affair. Meanwhile, the Mitfords, in an effort to minimise the duration of Diana’s promiscuous relationship, claimed it did not start until 1932, when Barbara St John Hutchinson invited both to her twenty-first birthday party and seated them next to each other. The sexual electricity apparently did the rest. But while many women obviously found him quite irresistible, many men, including Jamie Gladstone, Daisy Fellowes’ grandson, found him to be ‘deeply unpleasant’. James Lees-Milne said:

  He was in those days a man of overweening egotism. He did not know the meaning of humility … he was overbearing and over-confident. He brooked no argument, would accept no advice. He had in him the stuff of which zealots are made … he was madly in love with his own words.

  * * *

  By the beginning of February 1931, the plans for Mosley’s New Party were well advanced. It advocated a national policy to meet the economic crisis that the Depression had brought, with particular reference to unemployment. ‘They favoured granting wide-ranging powers to the government, with only general control by Parliament and creating a five member Cabinet without specific portfolio’8; edging towards totalitarianism. It was soon discovered that the Prince of Wales looked on the New Party with considerable favour.

  ‘On 4 February Cimmie, lunching with Harold Nicolson at Boulestin, secured his promise to join; neither of them saw anything incongruous in discussing the miseries of the “working man” in an elegant and expensive setting …’9 Nicolson was convinced that Mosley would some day become Prime Minister, and the New Party leader also received the encouragement of George Bernard Shaw (who always professed, somewhat contradictorily, to be a committed socialist) and the financial backing of Sir William Morris (later Lord Nuffield), who was sufficiently sympathetic to Mosley’s political aims and ambitions to contribute £50,000, which in those days was a very considerable amount of money.

  The New Party’s journal, Action, was used to recruit a number of young upper-class intellectuals. They also recruited a body of stewards, or what were to become known as ‘Mosley’s Biff Boys’, whose role was to combat communist violence. Effectively it was a paramilitary force, trained in martial arts by Peter Cheyney, the legendary detective novel writer. They were of little assistance in preventing the collapse of the New Party at the 1931 election when it failed to gain a single seat. But Mosley did not give up. This time he made the decision to follow a path closer to his true convictions and in 1932, having once again visited Rome to see fascism in action, he set about absorbing the remnants of the New Party into his newly formed British Union of Fascists with evangelical zeal, having, in the style of Adolf Hitler, also awarded himself the title of ‘Leader’.

  Meanwhile, the Nazis continued their policy of seducing the aristocracy, Hermann Göring personally making two visits to the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II in Doorn, Holland, in January 1931 and May 1932, where he was living courtesy of the Bentinck family, the Dutch aristocratic family into which Unity’s German friend, Gaby Thyssen, would marry. As Carin Göring recalled, ‘The Kaiser has probably never heard anybody express an opinion other than his own, and it was a bit too much for him sometimes. Göring expressed support for the restoration of the monarchy, while the Kaiser wanted more – “the restoration of the entire princely brotherhood”.’

  Later, the Nazi government provided the Kaiser with an annual subvention. This came about as a result of an agreement signed by Göring in his capacity as Prussian Minister President and a representative of the House of Hohenzollern, Friedrich von Berg, which was signed in late summer 1933: from then on, ‘the Kaiser, the Crown Prince and the remaining Prussian princes received a substantial annual allowance from the Prussian state’.10

  It was said that, as a condition of this arrangement, the Hohenzollern pledged never to publicly criticise Hitler or the Nazis.

  * * *

  The Redesdales gave Unity another chance to enjoy some semblance of formal education when, at the beginning of the winter term of 1931, they sent her to Queen’s College in London’s Harley Street, a school designed to encourage an interest in the arts rather than academia. Unfortunately, while this suited Unity, Sydney was not socially equipped to deal with the college’s somewhat informal attitudes:

  I asked my mother if I could have some girls to tea the following Saturday. ‘To tea? Oh no, darling, of course not. If you have them to tea they’ll invite you to tea with them, and you wouldn’t be able to go. You see, I don’t know any of their mothers’.

  London’s art galleries gave Unity the opportunity to immerse herself in Blake’s fantasies, while the recently opened Queens Ice Rink in Bayswater allowed her to indulge her passion for skating and flirting. But Unity’s intellectual and sexual development made it increasingly difficult for her to accept the restrictions involved in being a schoolgirl, with or without her mother’s support. This was also evident in her blossoming physical appearance. As Dora Carrington noted, ‘… the little sisters were astonishingly beautiful and another of sixteen (Unity) was very marvellous or Grecian’.

  Though it was claimed that Tom had read Law at Berlin University and he was indeed called to the Bar at the Inner Temple, there is no record of his having passed any bar exams or undertaken any kind of formal pupillage. This was in the days when qualifying as a barrister was an even vaguer process than it is today and positions could be, and often were, dependent upon ‘funding’. Despite not being individually named as a practising barrister at 4 Paper Buildings, he apparently still managed to practise his profession ‘quietly and competently’ if not with a great deal of diligence. Tom preferred spending extended periods of time in Austria with his friend Janos Almasy at his schloss in Bernstein and his neighbours, the Erdödys, at Kohfidisch. They consisted of two young countesses, ‘one known as Baby and the other, somewhat confusingly, as Jimmy’11. Diana
remained convinced that her brother was also, ‘at one time rather in love with Baby Erdödy’. As well as introducing Unity to Janos, Tom also took Bryan Guinness to Bernstein in August 1931.

  That summer, Diana, still only 21 years old, was already pregnant with her second son, Desmond, born in September 1931. Sydney and the three youngest Mitford girls stayed at Biddesden to keep her company while Tom and Bryan, who were obviously under no pressure to work (or in Bryan’s case, to stay with his wife), idled away the summer with their Austrian chums.

  By November, Harold Nicolson, who was said to have been attracted by the virile and manly youths of the better classes, had joined the New Party but refused to give his support to the British Union of Fascists, claiming that his old friend Mosley’s ideals were no longer worthy of his support. ‘He believes in fascism. I don’t. I loathe it.’ So it was somewhat puzzling why he should have agreed to accompany Mosley on a visit to the two fascist leaders, Hitler and Mussolini, in early January 1932. Given his journalistic experience and political ambitions, it seems highly likely that he was persuaded by the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service or MI6) to accompany Mosley. ‘In the last issue of Action, published on 31 December 1931, they explained that they were going in order to study “new political forces born of crisis, conducted by youth and inspired by completely new ideas of economic and political organisation”.’12

  With the value of the pound collapsing and unemployment running at 22 per cent there were certainly plenty of people in positions of power and influence who believed that the parliamentary system was running out of options. ‘It was this situation that made 1932 such a propitious time to mount a fascist challenge to conventional politics.’13

  In Germany conditions were even more fertile. ‘By 1932 there were 60,000 unemployed academics, [and] most students had no prospect of finding work. Theatres and opera houses closed. Three quarters of all musicians became unemployed. Writers’ incomes collapsed, [while] painters and sculptors couldn’t sell their work.’14 It was the end of the Weimar’s golden creative age and signified a bad time for everyone, except those who had kept their money in healthier currencies or invested in tangible assets such as gold, cognac or art. The practising of various occult sciences, such as theosophy, increased, while mystics such as Gurdjieff and Ouspensky found themselves in greater demand than ever before.

  Meanwhile, not everyone was entirely convinced by Mosley’s role as a fascist leader, probably because he spent so little time actively attempting to achieve such a position. But at least he dedicated a small part of the summer recess to composing his 40,000-word manifesto, The Greater Britain, though much of it was written well ‘South of Calais’ an expression in common usage to the accompaniment of plopping tennis balls and throbbing diving boards, while white-gloved waiters refreshed his drink. Mosley displayed considerable determination to avoid abandoning his hedonistic lifestyle; ‘even Mussolini criticised him for spending too much of the summer on the Riviera and in Venice. “It’s not a place for serious reformers to linger in villas or grand hotels for more than a few days,” he told Lord Lymington.’15

  * * *

  In Germany’s elections in July 1932, the National Socialists won 230 of the 608 seats in the Reichstag. But even this limited success had only been achieved after ten years of considerable effort. After the abortive putsch in 1923 and the short term banning of the SA, the Nazis soon resumed their brutalisation of all opposition despite the fact that Hitler had decided to concentrate on gaining power by political means rather than armed insurrection. This was successful largely as a result of his decision to leave the administration in the hands of Philip Bouhler, Franz Xaver Schwarz and Max Amann, while he concentrated on increasing the party’s membership and developing his personality cult by use of theatrically staged rallies and his gift for aggressively coercive oratory. The political satirist Kurt Tucholsky stated, ‘The man doesn’t exist; he is only the noise he makes.’ But it worked; the proof, if any were needed, came when Hitler’s plane was delayed and a crowd of 40,000 enthusiastically waited several hours for him to arrive; shortly before the sun rose.

  Despite the fact that Goebbels had a lot to do with the writing of his speeches, Hitler, in his own words, strove to achieve ‘an encroachment upon man’s freedom of will’. He was, without doubt ‘a shrewd psychologist and a superb stage manager’16, who drew his energy and much of his sexual fulfilment from the crowd.

  In 1932 the government was becoming increasingly nervous about the size and power of the 2.9 million strong SA and banned them yet again. But Hitler soon persuaded the chancellor to lift the ban and their armed conflict with the Communists rapidly progressed to the point where it could have more accurately been described as a civil war.

  The aristocratic Chancellor von Papen, having launched an unconstitutional coup against the ‘leftist’ Prussian government, arrested the chiefs of the Berlin police and appointed himself as their replacement. With dictatorial power, an emergency decree and the support of the army, he declared a military state of emergency. Konrad Heiden, the journalist and author stated, ‘This was the last gasp of the crumbling, unwanted and now surrendered freedom of the Weimar Republic.’

  It would be von Papen who would also persuade President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor in the mistaken belief that he could control him, thus opening the (albeit unbelievably complicated) political route to the door through which the Führer needed to pass in order to gain full dictatorial power.

  After thirteen years of freedom, the party was over; Germany was no longer democratically ruled and would not be again for another sixteen years. At least by 1932 the Depression had come to an end, which may have distracted people’s attention from the fact that Hitler, sensing that power was within his grasp, had established a Berlin headquarters at the Kaiserhof hotel. There was little evidence to support the subsequent claim that ‘Hitler staying in the Kaiserhof caused the same “fear and terror” in Berlin that the cry “Hannibal ante Portas” once did for ancient Rome.’17

  Despite increasing censorship and trials, there was still as much freedom of expression in Germany in 1932 as in most other European countries. There were also plenty of opponents of Nazism. They just were not very effective, or not as effective as the Nazis’ propaganda. In England, despite his commitment to fascism and authoritarianism, Mosley remained friends with Randolph Churchill and other upper-class grandees, while many members of London society would soon be far more interested in what was going on with the Prince of Wales and Wallis Simpson than who was, or was not, running the country.

  Back in Germany, Hitler and his high command continued their successful courting of the redundant aristocracy, who were reacting with predictable enthusiasm and commitment to the fascists’ return of at least some degree of their military power. Prince Philipp von Hessen claimed to have been informed at the end of 1932 that Hitler had awarded him an honorary rank in the SA. Other princes were also ‘invited’ to accept fascist military power. Furthermore, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, Hitler’s elite personal guard, and the chief of the SA, Ernst Röhm, were said to have particularly favoured the policy of appointing princes as commanders, in the knowledge that they would inspire loyalty and deference.

  ‘Himmler, while holding ambivalent views about aristocrats, conceived his order as “a new knighthood” and liked to surround himself with nobles. The Reichsführer-SS conceived his order as a Blutadel (blood nobility) and drew upon the resources and traditions of the aristocracy.’18 He also displayed considerably greater commitment to mysticism, occult sciences and the more extreme racial theories than other members of the Nazi leadership.

  SS Brigadeführer Karl Maria Wiligut was Himmler’s personal spiritual adviser. Wiligut claimed to follow an Irminic religion based on a German deity called Irmin. He also claimed to worship a Germanic god called Krist, who he insisted the Christians had used as the basis for Jesus Christ. According to Wiligut, Germanic culture and history could be traced ba
ck to 228,000 BC. At that time there were apparently three suns and Earth was inhabited by giants, dwarfs and other mystical creatures. In the 1920s he developed paranoia and became convinced that his family was the victim of a continuing persecution of Irminists conducted by the Catholic Church, Jews and Freemasons. He blamed the same people for the loss of the First World War and the downfall of the Habsburg Empire.

  One of the more outrageous mystic sciences encouraged by Himmler was the Welteislehre (WEL for short), the cosmological ‘World Ice Theory’ of the Austrian Hans Hörbiger, who was convinced all cosmic process was based on ice; a theory he came to by means of a vision rather than scientific research. His followers also wanted, presumably with his encouragement, to cleanse the world of all Jewish science.

  * * *

  Mosley and Nicolson arrived in Rome on the evening of 1 January 1932 for another audience with Mussolini. There, they were met by author and Oxford acolyte Christopher Hobhouse and installed in the most luxurious suite at the Excelsior Hotel, which Mosley firmly believed befitted his social status and political position. It was a political position that Hitler had already criticised as lacking ‘harshness, provocation and violence’; elements that were already becoming part of British fascism, even while, at that time, Mosley seemed more impressed by the milder Italian model.

  It was actually far more likely that a man with so little political integrity – but so obsessed with women and his own appearance – would simply have found the fascist uniforms and women in Italy more appealing. Despite Martin Pugh’s insistence to the contrary, it would have been of no possible consequence to Mosley that Mussolini suppressed the Mafia, drained the Pontine Marshes or made Italy’s trains run on time.