Nazi Princess

by Jim Wilson

  The year 1936 was in many ways the pivotal one leading to the Second World War. It has been described as the ‘hinge of the Devil’s decade’. It began with the death of King George V, encompassed Mussolini’s rape of Ethiopia, Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the battle of Cable Street in London in opposition to Mosley’s Blackshirts and the Jarrow hunger march. It ended in the Abdication Crisis. For those alert enough to recognise the signs, it was the year the world changed from a post-war era to a pre-war one.

  Although the Londonderrys were unable to attend the Summer Olympics, they were back in Germany in October 1936 at Goering’s personal invitation. After a hunting trip to Carinhall, they again had an audience with Hitler, who as ever was keen to express his thanks for everything Londonderry and his wife were doing to encourage friendship between Germany and Britain. Privately, by the end of 1936 Londonderry was beginning to get increasingly gloomy about his chance of preventing war by pursuing an overtly pro-Nazi line. He blamed the disastrous attitude taken by the Foreign Office and wanted Britain to pin Hitler down on his policy options, and ensure he adhered to a peaceful policy whatever the circumstances.

  In September 1937 Londonderry paid his third visit to the Nazis, again accepting an invitation to hunt with Goering at Carinhall. Goering told him that because Britain had shown repeated unwillingness to take the still-offered German hand in friendship, Germany had had to seek allies elsewhere, namely Italy and Japan. Britain appeared forever reluctant to help Germany attain her rightful place as a world power.24 Londonderry, like others who had been the recipients of Nazi hospitality, detected growing impatience from his hosts. The leaders of the Third Reich were beginning to feel that all their wining and dining of British aristocrats was producing very small dividends. Londonderry was disappointed and frustrated. His report back to Chamberlain was treated by the British Prime Minister with only superficial interest. But Lord Londonderry was nothing if persistent. In November he was invited, again personally by Goering, to attend a banquet in Berlin to launch the International Hunting Exhibition. To his disappointment, when he was in the German capital he had only a fleeting discussion with Goering and no opportunity to meet Hitler. In June 1938 Londonderry made his last trip in a final effort to try to win a lasting peace through personal diplomacy. The British government was far from keen for him to go, concerned that someone so well known as a German sympathiser would send out the wrong messages. Londonderry had the opportunity on this occasion for talks with Himmler and Ribbentrop. He also made another visit to Carinhall for a further chance to indulge in the sport he loved. But when he reported back in London, the British government was dismissive of what he had been told by the Nazi leaders. They thought he had swallowed far too much propaganda, particularly from Goering.

  Princess Stephanie commented on an embarrassing encounter between Goering and Lord Londonderry during one of these visits to Carinhall. She recalled Reichsmarschall Goering asking her: ‘Tell me Princess, is it true that Lord Londonderry’s daughter is married to a Jew?’ Stephanie said there was no way she could deny that Londonderry’s daughter, Helen Maglona, had indeed committed what the Nazis called Rassenschande, by marrying the Hon. Edward Jessel, a Jew. If she had been a German citizen, that very fact would have been enough to declare the marriage null and void, and her ‘crime’ would have been punished by a sentence of three to five years’ hard labour. ‘Goering seemed perturbed. He threw his arms up and shouted: That’s dreadful. I made a terrible blunder. I was arguing with Lord Londonderry about race and religion and I asked him what he would do if his own daughter should want to marry a Jew.’ Stephanie said she asked Goering what answer Londonderry had given. Goering said: ‘He didn’t. Imagine, he never said a word. It wasn’t fair. He let me go on and never said a word. He should have stopped me. How tactless of him. Would you expect an aristocrat to behave like that? It just wasn’t fair.’25

  As the Czechoslovakian crisis began to boil up, Londonderry’s passionate overtures to the Nazi hierarchy, after a period of three years, effectively came to an end. In the public’s view, when war came Londonderry was the most notorious German sympathiser of all. Though Rothermere’s track record of praising Hitler in his private correspondence with the Reich Chancellor, even as late as Hitler’s march into Prague in 1939, was a good deal more outrageous, it had not been public knowledge. Indeed, the bulk of that highly damning evidence remained classified in MI5 files until 2005. Rothermere’s close confidant Collin Brooks was well aware of what was contained in most of Rothermere’s correspondence with the Nazi leaders. Nevertheless, when he heard of his master’s death in December 1940, as Britain stood alone and in great danger of invasion and defeat, his verdict on Rothermere’s wooing of Hitler and other leading Nazis was generous. He wrote in his diary: ‘Everybody now seems to realise that the nation owes him a true debt both for the rearmament campaign and the attempts to keep Germany and Britain in some kind of accord.’26

  11

  THE PRINCESS, THE KING AND WALLIS

  MI5 noted in the late 1930s, with some obvious alarm, that Princess Stephanie had, in their words, ‘wormed her way into British society’ through her contacts with an expanding circle of aristocrats and political power brokers.1 Her charm, her devious and disarming skills and her title took her to the very top of British public life, though she failed in her mission to deliver what Hitler most wanted: an ally, sympathetic to his policies, on the English throne.

  The abdication of King Edward VIII in December 1936, to allow him to marry Wallis Simpson, his twice-divorced American mistress, caused a shockwave throughout Britain. In Germany, Hitler viewed it as little short of a disaster. For Princess Stephanie it was a rare failure for the brand of intrigue in which she excelled. She had worked hard behind the scenes, no doubt on instructions from Berlin, to steer the king and his mistress further towards the Nazi cause. Both Edward and Wallis were sympathetic to National Socialism. That much was becoming disturbingly clear to government ministers. But it was a key aim of the princess, and of Hitler’s diplomats in the German Embassy in London, to keep Edward on the throne, preferably with Wallis at his side.

  The princess had an apartment in Bryanston Court, close to London’s Marble Arch. It was no coincidence that her apartment was in the very same building in which Mrs Simpson was living. Stephanie had known Edward when he was Prince of Wales. He was a keen golfer and she had met him at some of the well-known golf clubs he frequented in England and in the south of France. Before and after he became king there were social functions both of them attended in London.

  The Prince of Wales was not the only member of the royal family the princess knew well. She was also close to Edward’s youngest brother, Prince George, Duke of Kent, who, like the heir to the British throne, also showed a deep interest in the political philosophy of the Nazis. He regarded Hitler as a worker of economic and social miracles in Germany. He had met Hess and the influential Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, and dined frequently in London with Ribbentrop. From the early 1930s Prince George was involved in fostering closer relations between Britain and Germany, and as war loomed he was a participant in moves to avert hostilities. His involvement in the mysterious flight Hess made to Scotland in May 1941, and his subsequent death in an air crash in Scotland, has left many questions still unanswered.

  Stephanie’s closeness to Prince George is illustrated by the fact that letters between them were invariably handwritten and personally signed and addressed. One letter that has survived in the princess’ personal papers is an effusive note to her from the prince dated 10 November 1934, expressing ‘a million thanks’ for the present of an expensive piece of furniture. There is no doubt the two saw a great deal of one another and shared political views. Indeed, both were at the lavish party given by Ribbentrop at the German Embassy in London to mark the coronation of King George VI in May 1937.

  The Nazi hierarchy knew Stephanie had positioned herself adroitly to cultivate Edw
ard and Wallis’ fascist sympathies, in the same way she had influenced others in the upper reaches of the British aristocracy. What was almost certainly known to Stephanie – but definitely not common knowledge in London – was that while in Shanghai in 1925 with her first husband, an officer in the US Navy, Wallis had had an affair with the handsome fascist Count Galeazzo Ciano, son-in-law of Mussolini. Ciano was soon to become Italy’s Foreign Minister in Mussolini’s Fascist government and was a key figure in the alliance between the dictators of Italy and Germany. The affair had resulted in a pregnancy, and a carelessly carried out abortion had left Wallis unable to have any more children. But the friendship persisted, and it gave Wallis a direct link to the Italian dictator.2

  Edward cherished his German ancestry. He felt a strong affinity with Germany and he spoke the language fluently. Until the First World War the name of the British royal family, indeed the name Edward was born with, was German – Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Because of the need to distance the court from its German ancestry during the First World War, the royal family name was changed by George V to the very English title of the House of Windsor. Edward regretted the deep divisions the First World War had caused with his German relatives. In his teens he had been very friendly with the kaiser’s family and he had spent many of his youthful holidays in Germany in the company of his favourite cousin, the Eton-educated Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who under the Third Reich became a member of the Schutzstaffel, the SS. When the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was in London, representing Hitler at the funeral of George V, he told Edward there should be a high-level meeting between the British Prime Minister and the Führer. Edward welcomed the idea and the duke reported back to Hitler that as head of state in Britain and head of the British Empire, the new king fully supported bringing Britain and Germany closer together. Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, Conservative MP, leading socialite and commentator, noted in his diary that Edward ‘was going the dictator way and is pro-German. I shouldn’t be surprised if he aimed at making himself a mild dictator – a difficult enough task for an English King.’3

  One of Stephanie’s closest friends in London was Lady Emerald Cunard, an American who had married the heir to the Cunard Steamship line. She was well known in society circles as a lavish and generous host, and her parties in London were a major centre of Nazi influence. Wallis and Edward were frequent guests at her house in Grosvenor Square, and they regularly shared her box at the opera at Covent Garden. One commentator described Emerald’s parties:

  Her drawing room, glowing with Marie Laurencin paintings, was alive night after night, with excited conversation about the merits and demerits of Mussolini, of the British prime minister, and of the new Führer. The conversation would eddy and flow as Emerald twittering and extravagant on her tiny feet and bedecked in gold lame, would lead Wallis, the prince, Ernest [Wallis’ husband whom she divorced in favour of Prince Edward] and all her other guests into the dining room … 4

  Joachim von Ribbentrop, by then German ambassador, was frequently among the guests, and naturally Princess Stephanie was a regular part of the company too. As MI5 recorded: ‘She has succeeded through introduction from Lady Oxford, Lady Cunard and others in worming her way into certain society circles where she speaks favourably of the present regime in Germany.’ British intelligence also noted that the Nazi leadership had a scheme to invite people of influence in England to meet Hitler personally. ‘The difficult job of selecting from British “neutrals” possible future friends of Hitler and Nazi Germany has been given to some of Hitler’s most trusted friends in this country. Hitler is counting on the help of Princess Hohenlohe, his Vienna-born friend and talent spotter.’

  Emerald Cunard was Wallis Simpson’s greatest supporter. She kept her guests in thrall using her waspish and frequently cruel tongue; stimulating provocative conversation in support of the National Socialist views she passionately espoused. Chips Channon was another regular at Lady Cunard’s celebrated soirées. His diary records: ‘Much gossip about the Prince of Wales’ alleged Nazi leanings; he is alleged to have been influenced by Emerald Cunard (who is rather eprise with Herr Ribbentrop) through Wallis Simpson.’ Channon went on to note the Prince of Wales had made an extraordinary speech to the British Legion advocating friendship with Germany; ‘If only the Chancelleries of Europe knew that this speech was the result of Emerald Cunard’s intrigues, themselves inspired by Ribbentrop’s dimple!’ To which Channon might have added, ‘and Princess Stephanie’s duplicity’.5 According to a Metropolitan Police Special Branch report, it was at one of Lady Cunard’s parties in January 1935 that Edward, then Prince of Wales, first met Oswald Mosley.

  The prince showed keen interest in the Blackshirts and questioned Mosley on the strength and the policies of his British Union of Fascists. He was later to comment that Mosley would make a first-rate prime minister.6 Edward was never much worried about expressing indiscreet views in public. In July 1933 Sir Robert Vansittart, a diplomat and socialite, recounted in his diary that at a party where there was much discussion about the implications of Hitler’s rise to power, ‘The Prince of Wales was quite pro-Hitler and said it was no business of ours to interfere in Germany’s internal affairs either re- the Jews or anyone else, and added that dictators are very popular these days and we might want one in England.’7 In March 1935, with scarcely concealed motives, the January Club became the Windsor Club; its members for the most part well-connected right-wingers.

  Princess Stephanie was being referred to openly in reports in newspapers abroad, circulated by the International News Service, as ‘Europe’s Number One secret diplomat’ and ‘Hitler’s mysterious courier’. The New York Mirror described how she was exerting her influence in London:

  Her apartment has become the focus for those British aristocrats who have a friendly stance towards Nazi Germany. Her soirees are the talk of the town. Prominently displayed in her drawing room is a huge portrait of Hitler. So it was only natural that her efforts on the Führer’s behalf would also bring her into contact with the ‘Cliveden set’ whose members include some of the most important statesmen of the British Empire.8

  Stephanie was a regular weekend guest at Cliveden, the home of Lord and Lady Astor, as notes she wrote herself confirm. The Astors’ house parties became notorious for attracting members of aristocratic society supportive of Hitler and his policies, and for enthusiasts of appeasement. Lord Astor owned both the Observer and The Times; Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times, was another of Princess Stephanie’s acquaintances and also regularly attended at Cliveden. The house parties were therefore fruitful occasions for Stephanie to work her brand of subtle propaganda: persuasive, clever conversation which traded heavily on her personal contacts with Hitler. She was to later write, in an effort to distance herself from her energetic dissemination of Nazi propaganda in London in the 1930s: ‘It is true that at Cliveden a number of recurrent guests were those in favour of appeasing the new Germany, but appeasement was by no means a bad word at that time.’9

  Ribbentrop, a regular visitor to London even before he was appointed Hitler’s ambassador to Britain in October 1936, became one of the most sought-after party guests in the capital. He was a natural social climber, and dressed to give the impression of being the perfect English gentleman. He liked nothing more than rubbing shoulders with royalty and aristocrats, and was frequently seen in London’s most fashionable circles with ardent pro-Nazis like Emerald Cunard, Lord and Lady Londonderry and others in Wallis’ and Princess Stephanie’s circles.

  Princess Stephanie’s work with others who agreed an alliance with the new German regime was the way forward, and led to a campaign to form influential organisations, working within British society, who were sympathetic to the Nazis. Prominent names stand out as having common connections or membership with several of these organisations. The Link, which received financial backing from Berlin, included many members of the Cliveden set and of the Anglo-German Fellowship, though on a more modest scale also encompassed
members from the Cliveden and London house parties. Stephanie and Ribbentrop were both regulars at Cliveden weekends, and in a report to Hitler on Anglo-German relations written in December 1937, Ribbentrop described the Cliveden set as a group trying hard to impress on Chamberlain the need to really understand Germany and Nazi policy. But he said they were being sidelined by unconditional opponents of Germany, in particular from hostility within the Foreign Office.10

  The Link was overtly pro-German and expressed strong anti-Semitic and fervent pro-Nazi views. It had been founded by Sir Barry Domville, a retired admiral who had also been a one-time director of naval intelligence. Domville was another prominent figure in British society with whom Stephanie had forged a friendship. The Link’s membership spanned both the upper and middle classes. It included a number of retired military officers and businessmen, but there was also an important element of the aristocracy among its ranks. They included Lord Redesdale, father of the Mitford girls; Lord Semphill and the Duke of Westminster – all of them friends with Hitler’s ‘dear Princess’. By the middle of 1939 The Link had around 4,300 members.11 Significantly, The Link’s founder, Sir Barry Domville, is picked out in MI5’s files as a particularly close contact of Princess Stephanie and with him she seems to have been one of the prime movers in the organisation’s creation. Domville was among those interned by Churchill as a threat to national security under the 18B orders in May 1940. The Duke of Westminster, one of the richest men in England, joined The Link as late as 1939 when even some of its most ardent supporters were beginning to have second thoughts about Hitler’s Third Reich. It was said one of his motives for joining was to try to prevent Hitler dropping bombs on London, because he owned so much of it!