by Jim Wilson
For his part, mindful of the potential damage to his reputation and the possible consequences he himself might face with war now a reality, the press baron was at pains to make clear that his campaign for friendship with Germany had been before, as he put it, ‘Hitler had run amok’, and that he had simply been working for peace between the two countries. When he was asked if the princess had acted as his ambassador, Rothermere, who had engaged a legal team of seventeen to mount his defence, frostily told the judge, ‘I am not a sovereign state, yet!’ He said it was preposterous that he had agreed to support Princess Stephanie ‘for the rest of her life’. Between 1932 and 1938 he had paid her considerably more than £51,000 (almost £2 million in today’s money) and added testily, ‘there was no opportunity of “giving” her money because she was always “asking for it” … she was always pestering and badgering me, so I sent here away to Budapest and Berlin’. But wasn’t that a little hard on Hitler? the princess’ counsel enquired. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Rothermere replied, ‘Hitler richly deserved it.’
Sir William Jowitt said the decision to fight the case had required very grave consideration on the part of Lord Rothermere’s legal advisers and not a little courage by Lord Rothermere himself. It was perfectly easy for Lord Rothermere ‘to pay all, and more than all, this lady desires. He has deliberately not taken this course because the view which he seeks to present to the court is that the claim this lady is making is not an honest claim.’ It was shocking, Sir William told the court, that ‘this lady’ had had his client’s letters photocopied behind his back by the Special Photographic Bureau of the Department of the German Chancellor. In his summing up, Sir William referred to the fact that Britain was at war. ‘Who can say,’ he asked, ‘whether if Lord Rothermere had succeeded in the endeavours which he made, we might not be in the position in which we are today.’
After six days of legal argument, under the intense spotlight of the press and in the unreal circumstances that relations between one of the most powerful newspaper proprietors in Britain and the Führer and his Nazi agent were being picked over, just as the two countries had entered a disastrous war, Mr Justice Tucker ruled against the princess. He said her claim that Rothermere had promised her a lifelong retainer for acting as his special foreign-political representative in Europe was entirely without justification. There was no evidence to support her contention. The judge added that Lord Rothermere had never contractually undertaken to vindicate the princess in relation to the damaging press reports in foreign newspapers.
As the court case closed, Princess Stephanie realised that she was now facing substantial costs which threatened to ruin her.27 Her reputation in London was already in tatters. Time Magazine in America reported on just one incident of many where she was publicly abused as a spy. When she walked into the Ritz, four society ladies – the Duchess of Westminster, Lady Dufferin, Lady Stanley and a Mrs Richard Norton – saw her and a loud remark was directed at her: ‘Get out you filthy spy!’ Other newspapers described her as ‘a spy, a glamorous international agent and a girl-friend of the Führer’. Aristocratic friends who had welcomed her in the past now shunned her and wanted nothing more to do with her. But some still stood by her. The day before the court case began, Margot Lady Oxford sent her a consoling note. It read:
Dearest Stephanie, We are all with you. I have always told you Rothermere is no good. I respect you for having challenged him. Never mind the outcome. He is finished here. I know what I am saying. The most important things in life are: 1. To love and to be loved. 2. To be trusted. Rothermere has neither!28
Soon after the trial finished, Rothermere, desperate to draw a line under the whole affair and limit the damage to his own reputation, used Lady Snowden as an intermediary and sent the princess a message to say he would meet all her costs if she undertook to get out of the country and return to Europe. The reply came back via Lady Snowden that Princess Stephanie would accept Rothermere’s generous offer, but she and her mother would go to America. This was not what Rothermere had in mind at all. In America, the princess could use the offers she had received from the press to publish and further blacken Rothermere’s name. He was adamant she should not set foot in the United States. He fulfilled his promise to pay her legal bills, but refused any further funds to enable her to travel to America. Nevertheless, Stephanie found the funds herself to buy tickets to travel to the States. It is possible the money came from Berlin or via Wiedemann in San Francisco. Within weeks the princess and her mother were on a liner heading for New York. As Time Magazine commented: ‘The curtain fell swiftly on the comic-opera lawsuit of Her Serene Highness Stefanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst [sic] versus Viscount Rothermere.’29 But British intelligence certainly weren’t laughing.
MI5 were aware of her intention to go to the States, well before the court case had started. An entry on her file, dated 13 October 1939, recorded that she had applied for permission to go to America where, she claimed, her son was seriously ill. British intelligence was not convinced that this was the true reason. The case officer noted that they were inclined to believe her objectives were to see Wiedemann, whose mistress she had been for a considerable time, and to get out of the country before the security services could place her under internment as a Nazi agent. They speculated that a third reason might have been to get an American lawyer to help her blackmail Rothermere from the other side of the Atlantic. ‘She could very well threaten him with all sorts of publicity in the US,’ the officer noted. ‘Of course,’ the MI5 record went on, ‘it is also possible someone [Rothermere perhaps?] had offered her a considerable sum to leave the country.’30 For the time being, it was decided by the British authorities that she would not be given a permit to travel. That might be reviewed later, her file noted, but any permission granted should make it clear that it was a one-way ticket. Any return to the United Kingdom was strictly ruled out.
When that ‘no return’ permit came to be issued to her, the decision to grant it became a matter of discussion in the House of Commons. The MP for Wolverhampton East asked the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, why she was being allowed to leave the country. He asked if the minister knew that ‘this woman is a notorious member of the Hitler spy organisation’. The Home Secretary replied that he needed notice of the question, but in any case she had been granted only a ‘no return’ permit; there were no circumstances in which she would be allowed to return to Britain. The Wolverhampton MP was clearly outraged. With Britain at war, he felt someone who had been so instrumental in spreading Nazi propaganda and who had worked as an agent of the Third Reich should be arrested and tried for espionage. ‘She is a political intriguer and adventuress of the first water and should be treated with the utmost suspicion,’ he declared.
15
EXILE
In the summer of 1939, shortly before Germany invaded Poland with sixty of her divisions, Rothermere wrote to Churchill predicting that, with the approach of war, his old friend’s time for greatness was approaching. If Churchill was aware of the private words of praise Rothermere had heaped on Hitler in his correspondence with Berlin as the war-clouds gathered, it might have taken the shine off those warm words from the newspaper owner. Once again, Rothermere showed remarkable foresight. He told Churchill: ‘I can very well see a great responsibility may be placed upon you at an early date.’1
When war was finally declared on 3 September 1939, the British ultimatum over Poland having expired, just as Rothermere had predicted Churchill was recalled to the Admiralty. Seven months later, in May 1940, as invasion of Britain appeared imminent, Churchill replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister. One of his first acts was to appoint Max Beaverbrook to the new Cabinet post of Minister for Aircraft Production. It was an appointment that reflected another prediction Rothermere had long been making, and had campaigned for vigorously for years: Britain’s need to build up meaningful air defences against the inevitable blitz to come from a powerful German bomber force.
Rothermere’s concern a
t the devastation German bombers could inflict in this new and terrible kind of air warfare that would strike indiscriminately at civilians, women and children alike, moved him to ensure at least two families could leave London for the relative safety of the countryside. Ever since 1932 Rothermere had had his country estate at Stody in North Norfolk. Having purchased the extensive arable and sporting estate, he spent a considerable sum rebuilding Stody Lodge after the previous house had been gutted by fire. He also laid out the famous azalea and rhododendron gardens that have remained ever since a distinctive feature of the grounds at Stody, and he improved the glasshouses and gardens. In 1938, obsessed by the dangers of aerial blitzkrieg in the war he now thought was inevitable (in spite of his continued pro-Nazi correspondence with Hitler), Rothermere offered his close colleague and confidant Collin Brooks the opportunity to leave London and move with his young family to The Mount, a large house on his Norfolk estate. At the same time he made my father a similar offer. My father’s job as company secretary of Rothermere’s cigarette factory, originally established at the time the Daily Mail was looking favourably on Sir Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts, had ended. The project had been wound up and Rothermere suggested my father and his family should move to another house on his Norfolk estate, Hole Farm at Hempstead. My father was to take the tenancy of the farm and run it, as well as establishing a business breeding traditional Norfolk black turkeys for the Christmas market.
It is clear from Collin Brooks’ diaries that Rothermere made these offers to give both families, and particularly the children concerned, the opportunity to escape the devastation from the air which he believed would obliterate large sections of the capital. He himself had suffered the loss of two of his sons in the First World War and had never fully recovered from the pain. He wanted to protect two families from suffering similar pain. But what Rothermere had not considered, if Hitler succeeded in overrunning France and the Low Countries, was a German invasion along the east coast. Parts of the east coast, notably in the vicinity of the North Norfolk village of Weybourne, were favourable for a beachhead landing. In conjunction with a force striking across the Channel, such a manoeuvre would have enabled the Germans to mount a pincer attack on London. In May 1940 this possibility was taken so seriously that eighteen east coast and south-east coastal towns, together with areas inland up to 10 miles from the coast, were subject to strict control orders resulting in the evacuation of nearly 50,000 children. Rothermere offered Brooks The Mount in March 1937, but it was not until September of that year that Brooks accepted the offer. In a letter to Brooks, the press baron wrote: ‘I can’t bear the thought of your children being bombed in London.’2
My parents, brother and I arrived at Hole Farm in the summer of 1938. It must have been a huge shock for my mother to leave a modern, well-equipped suburban house in Surbiton, and move to an isolated farmhouse which had neither electricity nor mains drainage and, until a bathroom was installed when we moved in, only the traditional outside brick-built privy in the garden. Water came from the original farm well and had to be pumped by petrol engine up to a storage tank in the roof. My father was 28 and had never farmed in his life. He had to learn fast to make the venture a success. Agriculture had gone through hard times in the 1930s, but with war now almost certain, it was clear that British farming would have to face the challenge of feeding the nation. The threat that Hitler’s U-boats would cut off supplies by decimating Britain’s merchant fleet was real and potentially devastating. I remember Rothermere visiting us just before Christmas 1938 bearing lavish presents for my brother and myself. It was the press baron’s last Christmas at his beloved Norfolk retreat. If Rothermere seemed unaware of the dangers of invasion, should Hitler’s armies break through to threaten Britain’s shores, my father certainly recognised the possibility. He equipped himself with a six-chamber revolver to go alongside the more familiar farmers’ arsenal of a 12-bore shotgun and 2.2 rifle.
The day after Beaverbrook was appointed to his role as Minister for Aircraft Production, in May 1940, Rothermere sent his fellow press baron a telegram saying he was overjoyed that the government had found some use for the ‘Beaver’s … glittering abilities’. It was the appointment Rothermere had been campaigning for, and he offered Beaverbrook his help for the duration of the war.3 Beaverbrook replied the same day, saying that he would value Rothermere’s services in America in helping to negotiate practical aid from the States, in particular helping to provide the essential materials which would be required by the aircraft factories in the rush to rapidly expand the RAF’s squadrons. Rothermere claimed Beaverbrook had asked him to make arrangements at once to travel to the States. When Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax objected to Rothermere being recruited to undertake an official mission of this nature, given his record of dealing with Hitler now clearly exposed in the very public High Court hearing, Beaverbrook countered by saying he thought Rothermere was already in the States.
Collin Brooks was also anxious to play his part, giving tangible help to the war effort. He was already working in a key role for the National War Savings Scheme, but he jumped at the chance when Rothermere asked him to accompany him on a rearmament mission to America. Brooks had played a vital role in the establishment of the National League of Airmen, and was as committed as his employer to the cause of a strong air defence. The two left for the States by transatlantic liner on 25 May 1940. But it soon transpired that the ‘mission’ was not as official as Brooks had thought, and Rothermere had led him to believe. In his journal Brooks recorded:
After a few days at sea R gradually let me know that what had really happened was that when he heard of Beaverbrook’s appointment he had wired his congratulations and had said ‘I am going to America almost immediately, can I be of use to you there?’ The Beaver had wired back saying that he might well be of use in America. Morison [Rothermere’s assistant] then told me that he believed that the Beaver had consulted Esmond Harmsworth [Rothermere’s surviving son] and that the whole thing had been fixed so that R should have a good excuse for being out of the country. (It is possible that they, like R himself, feared that his friendship with Hitler and his known defeatist attitude might bring him under arrest). So the mission was not really a mission at all. I was angry, having been taken from War Savings on false pretences.4
In the final months before war was declared, Brooks had been under pressure from Rothermere to help him prepare three books he had written for publication: My Fight to Rearm Britain, Warnings and Predictions and My Campaign for Hungary. All three were published in 1939 against a very tight publishing deadline. There is strong evidence Rothermere and Brooks worked to place in these books, in the best possible light, all that had passed between Rothermere and the Nazi leadership during the years in which Princess Stephanie was his go-between; when she was engineering the meetings, the correspondence and the propaganda with Hitler and his Nazi colleagues.
In a careful entry in his journal for 3 December 1939, written when he was at Stody in Norfolk, Brooks recorded:
I wish I had time to log here the machinations of the Princess and the full reasons for the urgent haste of this new book – begun on Monday and sent to press in seventeen days. In going over the files I found one letter which might be awkward if she published her photostats.
The letter Brooks referred to was one in which Rothermere had written, ‘You know I have always been a fervent admirer of the Führer’. In war, Brooks commented, the populace get angry with fervent admirers of the ‘arch-villain’.5
The Times, reviewing Rothermere’s book My Fight to Rearm Britain, gave Rothermere the benefit of any doubts it may have had about his relationship with the Nazis. ‘Wisely or unwisely, it must be left to readers of his correspondence to decide, but obviously with complete sincerity he made personal approaches to the Nazi leaders Hitler, Goering and Ribbentrop, right up to the eve of war in his efforts to effect a peaceful settlement.’ Referring to Rothermere’s rearmament campaign, The Times said: ‘Some of his effort
s might not win full approval but there is little doubt of the value of his services to the cause of national safety.’6
What would the attitude of the British government have been had Rothermere stayed in Britain? Would he have been interned, as Mosley and his wife and many of his Blackshirt followers were? Or would friends in high places, Churchill in particular, have shielded him? It is impossible to know, but clearly the possibility of arrest and internment was on Rothermere’s mind when he decided to take flight across the Atlantic. When intelligence files were published in 2005 it became clear that Rothermere was sending supportive telegrams to Nazi leaders just weeks before the outbreak of war, messages that were routinely intercepted by British agents. At the same time, he was also appealing to Hitler not to provoke war, and was writing to Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, calling for an international conference ‘to settle outstanding problems’. Nevertheless, Rothermere might have seen that war was inevitable. In correspondence with Ribbentrop just before war was declared, he wrote: ‘I have never known the British people more warlike than they are today … They are talking as they did at the outbreak of the Great War and the Boer War.’7 Ribbentrop’s reply a few days later gave an even stronger threat:
