Hitler's Valkyrie

by David R L Litchfield

  The quite remarkably unattractive, white, four-storey, bow-fronted Inch Kenneth house is more reminiscent of the English Home Counties than the wild, western coast of the Scottish Highlands. And while Lady Redesdale was said to have liked to rear sheep, cattle, goats and hens between tending the garden and making her own bread, butter and cheese, life was not perhaps as primitive as one might believe; this despite the lack of telephone, mains electricity or anything other than the most basic plumbing. A resident husband and wife looked after the house and helped tend the animals, while Sydney also brought her own cook from High Wycombe and laundry was sent down to Harrods in Knightsbridge by rail, to be returned with the type of provisions not readily available in the Western Isles.

  In the spring of 1944, ‘Sydney, Unity and Debo, leaving behind her two small children, went up to stay with David on the island. It was not a happy visit.’ David was now virtually dependent on Margaret Wright, his ‘strong-minded’ nurse and companion. The ‘politically based antagonisms between the Redesdales’9 erupted constantly and it was to be the last time they would be together at Inch Kenneth, David preferring to spend his time with Margaret at Redesdale Cottage in Northumberland, where his mother Clementine had spent her last years.

  * * *

  In 1945 a war ended in which some 60 million people had died, though there was still no record of the main perpetrator having personally taken any lives, apart from his own. For Unity, Diana, Sydney and Tom it was the end of a dream. For the latter it was also the end of his life. For having been ‘unwilling’ to take part in the invasion of Germany he was posted to Burma where he was shot by a sniper. But while the family all suffered from tremendous grief at his passing, it did little to unite them.

  Tom was also deeply mourned by lovers of both sexes. “‘Beloved, handsome Tom”, Lees-Milne wrote when he heard, “who should have been married with hosts of beautiful children; Tom, caviar to the general … but to me the most loyal and affectionate of friends. It is hell”.’ The core of his grief lay in the fact that Tom had been his first love at Eton. “‘On Sunday eves before Chapel at five, when the toll of the bell betokened that all boys must be in their pews”, Lees-Milne recorded in his diary, “he and I would, standing on the last landing of the entrance steps, out of sight of the masters in the ante-chapel and all the boys inside, passionately embrace, lips to lips, body pressed to body, each feeling the opposite fibre of the other … when Tom left Eton it was all over. He never again had any truck with me and turned exclusively to women”.’ Or that was what Lees-Milne chose to believe.

  While the family seemed quite prepared to celebrate Tom’s bisexuality, the closest any of them could get to admitting that Pam was a lesbian was Jessica’s description of her as a ‘you-know-what-bian’.

  After divorcing Derek Jackson, Pamela Mitford had finally admitted to her sexual preference for women and spent the following forty-three years living with Giuditta Tomassi, an Italian horsewoman. For some inexplicable reason the Mitfords obviously found the whole thing too embarrassing for words.

  The year 1945 also saw Nancy publish The Pursuit of Love, featuring the Mitfords, minus the politics, as the Radlett children. The book was a tribute to her lover, Lieutenant Colonel Gaston Palewski, the Free French major of Polish Jewish descent, who had so transformed her life.

  In her letters to Decca, Nancy had ‘casually mentioned the book’ that she would describe as her autobiography.

  To her friend Evelyn Waugh, Nancy explained that although people might think she had copied from his recently published success, Brideshead Revisited, in that she was relating the narrative in the first person, her book was ‘about my family, a very different cup of tea, not grand and far madder. Did I begin writing it before Brideshead or after – I can’t remember’.

  According to Charlotte Mosley, it was also ‘her first truly accomplished novel. It was an instant success, selling in huge numbers, and almost for the first time the name “Mitford” appeared in the press unattached to scandal.’

  By 1945 Debo somewhat indirectly inherited the role and title of Duchess of Devonshire after her husband Lord Andrew Cavendish’s older brother was killed and he became the Duke of Devonshire; an identical situation to that which had served to raise David Freeman-Mitford to the peerage.

  But the most traumatic event as far as Unity was concerned was the death of Adolf Hitler by his own hand while she remained mortal, which underlined the fact that she had failed in her responsibilities as his Valkyrie. No amount of praying to her Christian god could overcome her profound sense of failure, futility and anger. Sydney bore the brunt of her angst, for no better reason than she spent most time with her. Particularly when they were staying on Inch Kenneth.

  On 4 October 1945, Deborah wrote to Diana:

  Darling Honks. I have been here for a week with Elizabeth and Anne [Cavendish] and at first Muv was really quite cheerful and so was Bobo, but after a day or two when they got used to us being here Birdie became furious with everyone and everything and Muv became silenter and silenter and she seems so sad and everything seems so pointless for her … I think Muv would be more or less alright looking after Bobo if only Bobo wasn’t so beastly to her, she never leaves her alone for a minute and as you know, is exactly like a child in that she has to be entertained the whole time and poor Muv can never sit down to read or enjoy herself for a moment. I do think we all ought to try and help her make some arrangement about Bobo which would leave Muv free, even for a few weeks or months, as I really do think the strain on her is too much, she looks so thin and tired and utterly miserable.

  By 1948 Unity appeared to be in full grasp of her faculties while her physical health was considerably improved. So much so that according to Mrs MacGillivray, ‘Unity and her mother were out in the boat a lot, the two of them, Unity rowing.’ The wind, tide and soft but tedious summer rain cannot have made pulling a heavy boat across the choppy, dark loch waters an entirely clement experience, but presumably Sydney felt obliged to accompany her short-tempered daughter.

  It must have been a considerable relief when she was considered fit enough to stay with friends while Sydney visited America. On her return, Sydney moved back once again to Inch Kenneth with the ever more trying Unity. The relationship between mother and daughter was becoming increasingly complex and strained. For while refusing to hand over the responsibility of looking after Unity to either Diana or Pam, Sydney professed to being increasingly concerned that Unity would outlive her and doubted that her sisters would be prepared to take on the amount of personal care involved. However, this was somewhat contradictory to Unity’s hopes and intentions, manifest in her increasing habit of conducting her own funeral services in the island’s old ruined chapel.

  * * *

  In mid-May 1948, three weeks after she arrived back on the island from southern England with her mother, Unity developed a feverish chill and was put to bed. There was no telephone on the island, only a very crude signalling system. ‘At Gribun the postmaster would hang a large black disc on Sydney’s garage door [where the postmaster kept an old Morris Minor] to signal that mail or parcels were awaiting collection, and Sydney scanned for signals every day with her binoculars.’ It was a remarkably dangerous means of communication, particularly if Unity, or anyone else on the island for that matter, should have an accident or suffer from some debilitating illness. ‘There was a similar device on the island to summon help in an emergency, but although the doctor was called, high winds and a rough sea prevented him from reaching Inch Kenneth for several days and during this time Unity’s condition worsened.’10

  Unity apparently complained of severe headaches and attacks of vomiting. Then, one morning, she suddenly looked up and announced loudly to God or her Führer, ‘I am coming.’ Sydney later said that her heart sank at this; though considering the way in which she had been treated by Unity, it might not have been any great surprise if she, albeit guiltily, enjoyed a degree of relief. There was also another threat to Unity’s
survival. When the doctor arrived on the island, he treated Unity with sulphathiazole, a drug that was used for the treatment of gonorrhoea, which, without displaying any symptoms, can lead to the development of meningitis. However, due to her belief in Christian Science, Sydney did not agree with conventional medicine and had already proved more than capable of throwing prescribed drugs out of the window when no one was looking. This could have been a contributing factor to Unity’s temperature remaining ‘obstinately high’, and by the third day the doctor noticing that the scar on Unity’s right temple was ‘bulging and tender’.11

  Suspecting a cranial abscess, the doctor called in a consultant; he diagnosed meningitis and Unity was transferred from the island to the mainland, an extremely unpleasant start to what must have been a nightmare journey:

  They arrived at the West Highland Cottage Hospital in Oban at midnight on the evening of 27 May and Unity was treated with penicillin. Arrangements were made to move her to the neurosurgery unit at Killearn Hospital on the following morning, but before she could be loaded into the ambulance she had an epileptic fit. She remained unconscious until she died at 10 o’clock that night. It was concluded that she had died of pneumococcal meningitis, caused by an infection in the site of the old head wound.12

  An autopsy was suggested but deemed unnecessary by Professor Cairns who had remained Unity’s consultant since her return from Germany; he was the only one who had ever taken any X-rays.

  Sydney, with a considerable amount of help from her retinue of staff, had been responsible for Unity’s well-being for nearly eight years and her death so soon after Tom’s was a cruel blow. But it could also have been seen as a blessing. Unfortunately, the guilt that Sydney experienced for having wished Unity dead would haunt her, literally, for the rest of her life.

  The MacGillivrays, who looked after the house and grounds, noticed:

  Photos and albums of Unity’s were lying in the drawing room and Lady Redesdale would think we’d known Unity before and would tell stories of her in the past. Afterwards she used to think Unity was around the house. Lady Resdesdale wouldn’t come with us to Iona on one occasion, because she was sure Unity was outside the house, waiting for her.

  But while the MacGillivrays were left with their memories of reality, ‘Brand Mitford’ proceeded to set the record straight. As Mary Lovell says, “‘Her only consolation”, Sydney wrote to a friend, “was something Unity had said to her while she was ill: “No one ever had such a happy young life as I did up to the war”.’

  David travelled up to Oban from Northumberland, before he and Sydney accompanied the coffin on the long journey south, by train, to Swinbrook. Unity was buried on 1 June 1948, close to the church, to the accompaniment of her chosen hymns. Most of the family attended, including the Mosleys, which did little to please many local village people, while on her tombstone Sydney had ordered the epitaph, ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth.’ The title of a poem by Arthur Hugh Clough, it doubtless reflected the feelings of the exhausted Sydney rather than the dreams of Unity, for whom Richard Wagner’s words ‘Imagination creates reality’ may have better suited.

  EPILOGUE

  I had always been somewhat baffled by the public appeal of the Mitfords but I now realise that it was not so much who they were as what they represented and when that gave them their allure. Despite the unmistakable signs that the sun was setting on both the British Empire and the future of the privileged classes, for many English the teens, twenties and thirties of the twentieth century were a golden period in our history and the Mitford girls symbolised all that was Great about Britain’s young, glamorous aristocracy.

  They were also a wonderful source of aspiration for the burgeoning middle class; particularly the newly urbanised women who dreamt of marrying into the peerage and learned the language of ‘U’ and ‘Non-U’ by heart while planning their ascent of England’s mysterious social pinnacles. Only one of the Mitford girls actually married a peer of the realm and the aforementioned linguistic barometer was, as you now know, coined not by Nancy Mitford, as is so often claimed, but by Alan S.C. Ross, a professor of linguistics at Birmingham University. It could of course have been their well-mannered duplicity and abject snobbery that aspirants found so appealing and delightfully typical of the Mitford ilk.

  As wealth became increasingly important in defining one’s social position, the fascination with the Mitfords took on a greater degree of camp nostalgia. But with signs of a re-emergence of the social significance of aristocratic status, particularly in Austria and Germany, the original motivation for the appreciation of the Mitfords appears to be making a comeback.

  Having immersed myself in their undoubtedly fascinating world for some time, I now also understand why so many people, regardless of their motivation, retain their affection for the Mitford girls by insisting on viewing them in the same spirit as Nancy; rather superficially, with a good deal of humour and a fair degree of imagination.

  In-depth research makes it considerably more difficult to appreciate the Mitfords, as it becomes increasingly evident that they were, in fact, right-wing fascists and malicious bullies, vehemently committed to Nazi principles.

  After the war, they remained largely unrepentant and their papering over the cracks in their fascist past with dismissive abandon can almost be considered predictable. What is less so, and of far greater concern, is the fact that so many journalists and authors appear to have been so easily persuaded to aid and abet the Mitfords’ efforts in refusing to accept any responsibility or guilt in supporting and encouraging a regime that was responsible for so much death, destruction and suffering.

  Unfortunately, I have also become convinced that given the right political, social and financial conditions and a suitably persuasive leader, the racial and military savagery that took place during the Mitford years could quite easily be repeated. In Germany or Britain. Though I still believe there to be considerably less risk of a totalitarian regime being accepted by the English.

  We still have a rather contradictory relationship with the Germans, whom we pretend to dislike while secretly respecting and even admiring them. This was never more evident than in 1947 when the British public displayed remarkably little concern for the fact that the heir to the throne saw fit to marry the product of German aristocracy, thinly disguised as a Greek naval officer.

  Many Germans, on the other hand, still display remarkably little regret for the actions of their forebears but a grudging appreciation for all things English. However, for some inexplicable reason they appear quite determined to deny the very existence of Unity Mitford, let alone her relationship with Adolf Hitler.

  From the evidence and opinion supplied to me over the years, particularly by Baroness Gaby Bentinck, Marie-France Reilly, Milly Howard-Brown and my mother, Kathleen Atkins, I firmly believe that Unity was a highly intelligent woman who, like Hitler, lived in a world of advanced fantasy, and that it was the culmination of the fusion of their fantasies that transcended and appeared to defy social logic. And of the latter, I wonder how many people appreciate the fact that Hitler probably never actually killed anyone, despite being responsible for the deaths of millions. It was his genius in the art of persuasion that was so dangerous and that also, I believe, led to Unity’s attempted suicide.

  Whether the blame is laid at the Führer’s feet or at the Germans’ does not alter the fact that, apart from Jessica, the Mitfords were so committed to Nazi ideology and determined to accept Hitler as a man of limitless charm that it would not be difficult to believe that their real ambition, or certainly Lady Redesdale’s and probably Diana’s, had in fact been the marriage of Unity to their beloved Führer. At the height of British appeasement in 1938, the intensity of interaction between the Mitfords and Hitler was certainly a persuasive indication of the parents’ marital ambitions, if not the Führer and his Valkyrie.

  When both this formalised union and Unity’s suicide failed to materialise and she was forced to return to England, it was her f
amily’s privileged social position that saved her from the ignominy of even the mildest interrogation, let alone the type of incarceration to which Diana and Oswald Mosley were subjected; though even in their case, the relationship between Winston Churchill and the Mitfords would eventually result in their dispensation, if not their recantation.

  But notwithstanding my tarnishing of their reputation, the global fascination for the Mitford girls will doubtless ‘kick-on’ and they will continue to delight.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  de Courcy, Anne, Diana Mosley, Chatto and Windus, 2003. Written with the consent of Diana who insisted it be published after her death. The book shows a marked degree of understanding towards Diana’s intransigence concerning her fascist beliefs.

  Channon, Chips, Chips, Phoenix, 1967.

  Devonshire Deborah, Wait For Me! Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister, John Murray, 2010. Contains remarkably little concerning fascism or her sisters’ relationship with Adolf Hitler. It is edited by Charlotte Mosley.

  Fest, Joachim C., Hitler, Vintage, 1974.

  Guinness, Jonathan (with Catherine Guinness), The House of Mitford, Phoenix, 2004. First published in 1984, it strongly argues the Mosley case. According to Mary Lovell, when Jonathan became chairman of the ultra-conservative Monday Club (1970–72), Decca branded him forever as a dangerous neo-Nazi.

  Jennings, Charles, Them and Us, The History Press, 2007.

  Lovell, Mary S.,The Mitford Girls, Abacus, 2001. Lovell displays a considerable degree of sympathy for the Mitfords’ fascist cause.