However, his intentions were often in conflict with his actions, as Hitler was a man of endless contradictions. While he lusted after the power and glory of controlling a war, he would doubtless have preferred to go to war with Britain as an ally rather than an adversary. In the case of Unity there was an added complication: he yearned for the puissance to cause her to take her own life in fulfilment of their fantasies so she could wait for him ‘on the other side’, yet was undecided as to exactly when this should take place as he was still enjoying her mortal company.
Britain, of course, would display similar indecisions and contradictions by claiming to have gone to war in protection of Poland, while not lifting a hand in her defence for some seven months; by which time, the Reich controlled the west of the country including the prized Danzig, while Soviet Russia had taken the east.
Despite the appalling conflict, Hitler managed to retain his sense of humour, which Unity still managed to appreciate. ‘In a letter to Diana of 15 May she says he told her that he had made a new speed limit for the protection of German agriculture, because of a time when she and Diana had crashed into a manure cart.’3
Regardless of his humour, however, Unity admitted to Gaby Bentinck that the Führer’s apparent aversion to killing and thus qualifying as a warrior, continued to prey on her mind. Try as she might to remain steadfast, she was regularly, if briefly, suffering from moments of self-doubt concerning Hitler’s immortality and the whole basis of their transcendental relationship. If, as she still believed, Hitler was Odin the deity, what would be her relationship with him as a Valkyrie? How many other Valkyries would she have to share him with? Furthermore, as Odin was the god of gods, overseeing wisdom, war, battle and death as well as magic, poetry, prophesy and victory, or even if he was a marginally lesser deity such as Thor, surely he should be capable of killing her, rather than her having to do it.
Unity was all too obviously becoming less assured of her future. Even Jonathan Guinness recognised the change manifesting itself during that period, when she wrote to Diana:
(Adolf) Wagner said to me, ‘You are so silent’, and Wolf took my hand and said in his wonderful voice (you know what I mean) ‘The poor child is unhappy’, and then turned to me, with the sweetest look in his eyes, and said: ‘Child, you needn’t take it so tragically’. So then, as you can imagine, I felt that none of it mattered any more, just for the moment, but I felt I could kill the Umbrella (Chamberlain).
To reassure herself, Unity increasingly relied on the services of Max, Julius, Erich and other anonymous Storms, for fierce nights of ‘Sturm und Drang’.
* * *
Between 12 June and 7 July 1939, or thereabouts, Unity returned to England to see her parents and various other friends and relatives. With an introduction from Mosley, she also visited the gifted strategist and military historian, Major-General J.F.C. Fuller CB, CBE and DSO.
His theories and practice in the use and strategy of mechanised armour were to have a profound influence on the British Army, though it was the Wehrmacht, where his tactics became known as ‘Blitzkrieg’, who would prove to be his greatest proponents. Fuller was also the inventor of ‘artificial moonlight’, a means by which searchlights were used to facilitate night attacks. But it was his role as a fascist, mystic, occultist, disciple of Aleister Crowley, guest of Adolf Hitler and one of Mosley’s closest allies that attracted Unity, for she desperately needed divine reassurance from a man whose intelligence and metaphysical beliefs she respected and with whom she had no sexual agenda.
Major-General Fuller was the perfect choice, for according to Kathleen Atkins he was under no doubt that Hitler was indeed an earthly manifestation of Odin and that the same higher forces that had elevated him to that position had chosen Unity as Hitler’s own personal Valkyrie.
Shortly before she had arrived back in England, Lady Redesdale had also been busy reassuring Unity, while illustrating her political commitment and determination to keep ‘The Mitford Girls’ in the public spotlight and canvas support for the Nazis by writing an article ‘published on 10 June, for the Daily Sketch, arguing that National Socialism eliminated class warfare, raised living standards and strengthened religion, unlike its deadly opponent, Bolshevism’.4
As Unity was about to return to Germany, Mabel, the Redesdales’ parlour maid made an astonishingly profound statement. It was also one of the only instances where any of the Mitford biographers have seen fit to give any of the staff an independent voice while failing to award her the respect of a surname:
Unity had pictures of Hitler; she used to boast about meeting him and all of them. She was dead against the Jews. I said goodbye to her outside Rutland Gate, she was just going away the summer the war started, and she went and put her arms round me, Goodbye, she said, and don’t hate Hitler so much, you’ll come in with Germany, you’ll see.
It was not the rarity of such comment, or the equally rare identification of any of their many servants (apart from nannies and governesses) by name, that justified its inclusion, but her subsequent statement. ‘Then I prayed, kneeling upstairs in my little kitchen, “Please God will you let Russia help us” and it came out that way.’ So saying, Mabel displayed a remarkable political awareness and wisdom.
* * *
Diana, who was still spending a considerable amount of time in Germany, had returned home in time for Mosley’s ‘last hurrah’: the ‘demonstration for peace’ in the Earls Court Exhibition Hall on 16 July. Anne de Courcy recorded:
The backcloth to the platform was, as usual, a huge Union Jack; as Mosley marched up to the platform many of the 20,000-strong crowd gave the fascist salute … speaking for 2 hours, as usual without notes, Mosley gave a ‘virtuoso’ performance that played on what he held to be his despairing longing for ‘peace’. His peroration roused the crowd to a delirium of hope as he [who had obviously heeded Mabel’s advice] urged that Hitler should be allowed unrestrainedly to go east, ‘and then he would not want to fight Britain’.
According to Mary Lovell:
Tom [Mitford also] attended Mosley’s huge ‘peace rally’ at Earl’s Court. Here, Tom, by now an officer in the Territorials, greeted his brother-in-law with the Fascist salute as he walked past them. The newspapers took it amiss that a serving officer in His Majesty’s Forces should behave like this. Tom’s commanding officer was interviewed by reporters, who [according to Mary Lovell] were clearly hoping to ‘stir up trouble’, but the colonel merely told them he wasn’t going to be deprived of one of his best officers over the matter of a salute.
After Hitler had invited Unity and Diana to Bayreuth again, for the last time, Diana was soon on her way back to Germany, leaving her with little time to support her husband or his political ambitions, let alone her children. It was also at Bayreuth that Gerhard Engel (Hitler’s adjutant) reported a statement by Hitler that displayed a far greater appreciation of the English character than the English could display themselves, or certainly those for whom fascism held any attraction. He pointed out the main and rather simplistic reason why Mosley’s seduction of the English would never be successfully requited:
At Wahnfried [Wagner’s house in Bayreuth] we would sit down 10 or 12 at table, with Frau Winifred and her daughters. In 1938 and 1939 Unity was there with her sister Diana, and very interesting conversations developed about England and the English fascist movement. At one lunch in particular Lady Mosley launched out into optimism about the movement’s future. She believed that anti-Semitism had at last taken firm hold. Not for the first time, Hitler answered that fascism did not lie in the English character and that although Mosley might be a fine person and had grasped the weakness of English politics, he could not seduce a whole nation.
This statement appeared to consist of two opinions, the latter concerning Mosley’s lack of political commitment in his refusal to curtail his womanising and other recreational activities. One suspected that it was only out of respect for Diana that Hitler made any attempt to disguise his impatience and lack o
f respect for Mosley. The former opinion concerned the reason why the English did not adopt fascism. This could have been to do with the fact that they would have had to abolish the monarchy together with the entire courtly process of privilege, power and snobbery and the aforementioned 600-year history of democracy. The threat of a communist revolution was not sufficiently immediate to justify such sacrifice. Finally, there was the English sense of humour, which Hitler had also admitted would have made the seizure of power by the likes of Göring in his music-hall uniform extremely difficult.
Unfortunately, for the future of both the Mitfords’ and the Mosleys’ political ambitions, embracing anti-Semitism would do little to increase the attraction of fascism in England. Lady Diana Mosley was also almost certainly making an assessment based on the fervour of her and, particularly, her sister’s extreme anti-Semitism. There can have been no doubt that Unity considered:
Streicher’s act in making Jews crop grass with their teeth amusing and that she approved when a group of Jews were taken to an island in the Danube and left there to starve. She told a friend, Mary Ormsby Gore, how an old Jewess, heavily laden, had approached her in the street and asked the way to the railway station. She deliberately sent her in the opposite direction and thought it an amusing thing to have done5.
But although many English people did not like Jews, or ‘wogs’, ‘wops’ and ‘diddicoys’ (pejoratives still in common usage at the time) for that matter, the Reich’s exterminatory policies were, for most English, more than a step too far; even when given the quasi-scientific title of ‘racial hygiene’. Furthermore, the adoption of forced sterilisation for alcoholics would have been unacceptable for the simple reason that it would have decimated the English upper classes.
A day before they were due to leave Bayreuth the sisters lunched with Hitler, and Diana remembered that he told them he believed England was determined to go to war. When they were alone together after luncheon, Unity again told Diana that if war were to be declared between England and Germany, she would shoot herself. Diana refused to take her threat seriously, considering it quite pointless as she was quite convinced that Britain would eventually be forced into some kind of capitulation and Mosley would assume the role of chancellor. While it was said that the Redesdales were growing more and more concerned about what would happen to Unity if and when war was declared, they did not seem sufficiently concerned to try and force her to return home. Presumably they were also still convinced of the victorious inevitability of fascism.
* * *
On 2 August, Hitler spoke to the sisters once again of the war that he claimed to be so determined to avoid and the British so determined to enter into. Unity’s diary quoted him as telling them, ‘If there is no miracle I see the outlook as very black. And I do not believe in miracles.’ Yet again Unity told Diana that she would kill herself if there was war; yet again Diana told her not to be so ridiculous. If she had known more about her sister’s mystical beliefs she may have tried harder to talk her out of it, which was probably what Unity was hoping for, but Unity remained inhibited by the risk of exposing herself to Diana’s ridicule.
According to Jonathan Guinness and Unity’s diaries, ‘she saw Hitler on 4 and 5 August, both times at the Osteria; on the fourth, he was “fascinating about his new buildings”, on the 5th he was “sweet”’. What she would later admit to Kathleen Atkins was that while they were having lunch and Hitler’s stammtisch (reserved table) friends were talking amongst themselves, the Führer’s sweetness consisted of him quietly announcing to her that their mortal relationship was coming to an end.
He would almost certainly have warned her of the inevitability of the impending war, how he would now need to spend more time in Berlin and the impossibility of spending time with her. When she asked how long he thought the war would last, he reminded her of her pledge to terminate her mortal existence and wait for him on the other side, where time did not exist. And while Unity’s eyes silently filled with tears, she whispered the words from her beloved Milton: ‘Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.’ Hitler took her hands in his and gave her one of his ‘loveable smiles’ before rising to his feet and announcing loudly, ‘Now I have work to do. Tyrants’ work’, and while everyone roared with laughter, he strode out of the restaurant with his entourage.
It was some time before it sunk in that this was probably also to be the last time they would meet as mortals. Unity remained seated at the table for some time, staring down at the small silver automatic pistol she had removed from her handbag and now held in her lap. She reminded herself how fitting it was for a Valkyrie to use the declaration of war as a signal for her move to the afterlife. She said later that decision had a surprisingly calming effect.
* * *
In order to fill the time, Unity set about decorating and furnishing her new apartment. She had even arranged the transport of various furnishings and books from Rutland Gate to Munich.
Her flat, comprising three rooms and a kitchen, was on the third and fourth floors of a three-storey block some ten years old. Its solid build prevented the transmission of any sound from other residents. Apart from the chatter of her cleaning lady who came every morning, the flat was silent, which could have contributed to Unity’s feelings of isolation and abandonment, as most of Munich’s foreign residents had already left or were in the process of doing so. But by 8 August Janos had arrived to help celebrate her twenty-fifth birthday by once again fulfilling her paraphilial demands while reinforcing his necromantic powers. She also had a putzfrau (cleaning lady) who came every morning.
The following day, after lunching outside at the Osteria, Unity and Janos made contact with Max, Unity’s favourite Storm, and Hubsie, her other lover who joined them for dinner in the Vierjahreszeiten cellar. Afterwards, all four of them returned to Unity’s apartment to assist her in celebrating her forthcoming adventure.
While Max returned to work, Unity’s friend Rudolfine ‘Rudi’ Simolin came round to the flat the following morning, and after lunching at the Regina Hotel they spent the afternoon searching for furniture amongst Munich’s antique shops. According to David Pryce-Jones:
Hitler had offered her drawing-room furniture, Janos matched him by buying her a dining-room table and a set of chairs to go with it … Hubsie [then] returned home to Stuttgart, but the others dined out at Lombardi, an Italian restaurant and later occupied the box at the opera which that night Gauleiter Wagner had put at Unity’s disposal … ‘All the singers knew [Adolf] Wagner’s box’, Rudi remembers, ‘so we received special bows from them’.
Surprisingly, there even appeared to be a few English left in Munich whose company Unity could enjoy. ‘Debo’s friend Mr Douglas Home [William – the playwright] and a … clergyman friend of his have been here for two days. I showed them round a bit and I dined with them at Walterspiel … Last night we all went, with the English Vice-Consul and his wife, to Platzl.’6
By now the imminence of war was becoming manifest in petrol and food shortages, obliging Unity’s friends from the country to arrive bearing gifts of butter and eggs. According to Jonathan Guinness, Unity wrote to Diana:
I wish I could make out … whether there is going to be a war or not. When I heard about the (non-aggression) pact with Russia, [which briefly gave the impression that Mabel’s prayers were to remain unanswered] I thought not. However, now it looks worse than ever. It’s nearly three weeks since I saw W.
The frustration of not knowing how long she had on this earth was compounded by the fact that, apart from Janos (and subsequently Gaby Bentinck and Milly Howard-Brown), there was no one else to whom she was prepared to disclose her reasons for being so insistent on remaining in Munich. Even when Wolston Weld-Forester, the British consul, ‘summoned’ Unity and ‘ordered’ her to return to England, she refused, only to be informed that she would forfeit British protection if she did not leave with the few remaining British subjects. Unfortunately, the Mitfords were not good at being either ‘summon
ed’ or ‘ordered’, particularly by members of the diplomatic service. The consul’s wife made this evident after she ran into Sydney on their return to London. ‘Lady Redesdale turned up on the very first morning “demanding” to see him (Weld-Forester). She wanted to know things my husband didn’t know.’ And doubtless things he was not prepared to tell her, particularly in view of her ladyship’s habit of treating members of the diplomatic service as extended members of her staff.
Unity’s general well-being improved immensely when Janos and Rudi returned once again. Apart from the not knowing, her life remained remarkably carefree. After nights of passion, she would spend the morning at the hairdressers before meeting with Janos for lunch at the Osteria. The afternoon would be spent swimming in the lake at Seeseiten. Despite a brief moment of ill humour between Janos and Unity, Unity was feeling sufficiently mollified in the evening to cook them all a supper of scrambled eggs; a feat of domesticity that was, for a Mitford girl, quite remarkable.
Rudi and Janos apparently left the following morning to visit Hubsie in Stuttgart without Unity, who now avoided lengthy travel in case there was a declaration of war while she was driving. Instead she organised the collection of Rudi’s Salzburg Festival tickets from the American Express office, leaving them for Rudi’s collection at the Regina Hotel before lunching alone at the Osteria.
Not knowing if she would ever see Janos again as a mortal, she spent 20 minutes with him in the Munich Bahnhof café while he waited for a connecting train to Vienna. The fact that she did not accompany him back to Bernstein illustrated her determination to fulfil her promise.
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