Nazi Princess
Page 23
After that public attack, the princess sought refuge out of the public eye on Schofield’s farm, Anderson Place near Phoenixville in Pennsylvania, although she retained an apartment at the Barclay Hotel in Philadelphia. They lived on the farm as man and wife until Schofield died in 1954. She must have felt her reinstatement into American society was complete when in 1953 she was named by the New York Dress Institute as one of the Ten Best Dressed Women in America. The Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin described her as dividing her time between fashionable society in Paris and Salzburg when not in her apartment at the Barclay Hotel on Rittenden Square, Philadelphia.8
Stephanie’s new image was shattered some months after Schofield’s death, however, when sensational claims were printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer in August 1955, headlined: ‘Wealthy Princess filed no Tax Returns for Three Years Agents Find’. The report described her as ‘a resident alien and international cosmopolite who occupies a sumptuous suite at the Barclay’. The princess’ apartment, the news report said, could be called a ‘royal suite … Its walls are hung with priceless tapestries and paintings by famous artists, among them those of Thomas Gainsborough.’9 The newspaper was wrong about Princess Stephanie’s tax returns, but right about her late lover’s tax debts. Schofield had failed to file returns for the last six years of his life, leaving a tax and penalty liability that approached $1 million, effectively wiping out his entire estate.
In the early 1950s Stephanie applied to become a US citizen. In a letter to the authorities, Schofield had written: ‘There never was a scintilla of evidence that her presence in this country was hostile or adverse to the best interests of the United States.’10 Her persuasive powers produced a sworn affidavit in support of her bid for naturalisation, in which she was described as ‘a person of great education, intelligent and of exemplary moral character’. Before the death of her lover she made a couple of trips with him to her old haunts in Europe, visiting France, Austria, Germany and Italy. On one of these she could not resist revisiting Schloss Leopoldskron to recall the days she had spent there as chatelaine courtesy of Adolf Hitler. In Germany she also renewed her friendship with Fritz Wiedemann, no doubt to talk over past memories of the Third Reich and the Führer.
With her financial support and her home gone, and little or no benefit from Schofield’s estate, Princess Stephanie did what she had proved she could always do in a crisis – she seduced another wealthy man. This time it was multi-millionaire Albert Monroe Greenfield, the richest man in Philadelphia. She went to live with him at his ranch at Cobble Close, New Jersey, and his riches and reputation gave her new opportunities to be welcomed in American society. In 1957 she was guest of honour at the influential Women’s Press Club of New York.
In 1959 she moved back to Europe, settling in Geneva in an apartment with a living room that looked out in one direction on Lake Geneva and on the other to Mont Blanc. There she signed a contract with the magazine Quick to act as a consultant, much as she had done years before for Rothermere, setting up contacts with important and newsworthy people, using her title and her network of friends to open doors. She became a personal friend of President Richard Nixon and, using her influence, her contacts and her fatal charm, she arranged interviews with successive American Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In an extraordinary turnaround from Nazi spy to American socialite, she was even invited to Johnson’s presidential inauguration ceremony in Washington in January 1965.11 An ex-prisoner of the United States, denounced as a danger to democracy and to American liberty, she was now an honoured guest of the President.
Two years later she signed a contract with Stern magazine in Germany – which became Europe’s highest-selling magazine – to develop story opportunities. In this role she arranged high-profile interviews with President Johnson, Vice-President Hubert Humphreys and Supreme Court Judge Earl Warren, who had been in charge of the commission investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. Further interview successes followed, notably with Grace Kelly when she became Princess Grace of Monaco, the wife of the Shah of Iran and Lady Bird Johnson, wife of the US President. She also worked for another influential publisher, Axel Springer, who owned, among other publications, the tabloid newspaper Bild and the broadsheet Die Welt, two of the most influential organs in West Germany in the 1960s. Perhaps fittingly, given Stephanie’s own Jewish heritage, Springer was intent on making a significant contribution towards reparation of the terrible wrongs done to the Jews in Europe under the Nazis. The princess reverted to the role she had played so successfully between Rothermere and Hitler, as fixer, go-between and manipulator. But this time the part she played did not include, as had been the case in pre-war Europe of the 1930s, the role of spy.
It took longer for the British government to forgive. In 1962 the British Consulate in Geneva refused her application for a visa to return to Britain. At that time Sir Frank Soskice, a friend of the late Lord Rothermere and one of the law team who represented him in the celebrated court case in 1939, was Home Secretary. In 1966, twenty-seven years after she had left England on the understanding she would never be granted permission to return, she wrote from Geneva to Soskice’s successor, Roy Jenkins, begging for the opportunity to explain personally why the ban on her returning to London, if only as a visitor, should be lifted. Her letter asked him not to pay any attention to her MI5 file. ‘It is made up for the major part,’ she wrote, ‘of newspaper stories, gossip, hearsay and a great deal of deliberate distortion.’ She said she did not want to return to England to reside but ‘merely to clear up this humiliating matter once and for all’.12
In a postscript to the letter to the Home Secretary, she wrote: ‘At the outbreak of war, on 20 December 1939, my mother and I left London for the United States. In other words we lived in war-time London for a full three months with the British authorities’ knowledge and consent unlike so many other foreigners who were immediately interned.’ (She failed to say that the only reason she was allowed to stay was because of the court case against Lord Rothermere.) Her postscript went on: ‘A year later Mr Esmond Harmsworth came to New York and asked Sir William Wiseman to do everything in his power to prevent publication of my memoirs.’ A fortnight later she was informed by the Home Office that she was free to apply for a British visa, if she chose to do so. After over a quarter of a century, the ban on her never returning to England had been lifted.
Three months before her 81st birthday, Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst died in a private clinic in Geneva. She was buried in the village cemetery at Meinier, in the mountains above the town. Among those who attended the funeral were the Consul Generals of Austria, the country of her birth, and Germany, the country she served under the Third Reich; and the wife of the American ambassador, the country that first interned her and then embraced her as a socialite. She had played an extraordinary role during her life and had lived in an extraordinary and colourful, if duplicitous, way. The deception she practised in life even followed her to her death. The small plaque on her grave records the year of her birth as 1905 – fourteen years later than her actual birth as a Jew in Vienna in 1891!
Finally, as a postscript and as testament to how close my father was to Rothermere and to Jack Kruse, my late brother was given Conrad as one of his three Christian names, from Captain Jack Frederick Conrad Kruse. I received as one of mine the name Harold, after Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere.
Notes
Public Record Office, Kew: Two British intelligence files record Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe’s activities. The first (PRO KV2/1696) covers the years 1928–39. The second (KV2/1697), covering 1939–47, is chiefly concerned with her application to leave the UK for America and subsequent steps to ensure that she did not return.
Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, California: ‘The Prinzessin Stephanie zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst Papers’, consisting of nine boxes of letters, telegrams, documents and biographical notes.
1
Twice Wed in New York
1 PRO KV2/1696
2 Memorandum re Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, New York, 28 October 1941: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
3 PRO J77/1933/483 & J77/2004/2811
4 S.J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere & the ‘Daily Mail’, p.253
5 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 5): Hoover Institution Archives
2 Rothermere and Churchill
1 Obituary, The Times, 27 November 1940
2 Churchill Papers: Churchill College
3 S.J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere & the ‘Daily Mail’, p.191
4 Obituary, The Times, 27 November 1940
3 The Golden Couple
1 PRO J77/1820 Marriage Certificate
2 Martin Pugh, We Danced All Night: Britain Between the Wars, p.352
3 National Motor Museum, Beaulieu
4 ‘Court Circular’, The Times, 1920
5 Tom Clarke, The Flying Lady, 2001/2: National Motor Museum
6 Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club
7 S.J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere & the ‘Daily Mail’, p.256
8 Ibid., p.253
9 Ibid., p.257
4 Throw of the Dice
1 Martha Schad, Hitler’s Spy Princess, p.214
2 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 5)
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 PRO KV2/1696
6 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 5)
7 FBI Memorandum to President Roosevelt, 24 October 1941: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
5 Whose Go-between?
1 Memorandum re Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, New York, 28 October 1941: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
2 PRO KV2/1696
3 Prince Franz Hohenlohe, Steph: The Fabulous Princess, p.37
4 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 5)
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Daily Mail, 21 June 1927
9 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 4)
10 PRO KV/1696
11 Hohenlohe, Steph, p.49
12 Letter from Prince Wilhelm to Lord Rothermere, 20 June 1934
6 A Friend in Berlin
1 Daily Mail, 24 September 1930
2 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 2)
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 PRO KV/1696
7 Memorandum re Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, New York, 28 October 1941: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
8 PRO KV2/1696
9 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 1)
10 Prince Franz Hohenlohe, Steph: The Fabulous Princess
11 Daily Mail, 10 July 1933
12 N.J. Crowson, Fleet Street, Press Barons & Politics: The Journals of Collin Brooks
13 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 5)
14 Ibid. (Box 2)
15 Ibid. (Box 5)
16 Letter from Hitler to Lord Rothermere, 7 December 1933
17 Hohenlohe, Steph, p.68
7 Threat from the Sky
1 Viscount Rothermere, Warnings and Predictions, 1939
2 Ibid.
3 Daily Mail, 7 November 1933
4 Stanley Baldwin speech, November 1932
5 Martin Pugh, We Danced All Night: Britain Between the Wars
6 Daily Mail, 3 April 1936
7 Rothermere, Warnings
8 Enter the Blackshirts
1 S.J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere & the ‘Daily Mail’, p.294
2 ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’, Daily Mail, 8 January 1934
3 Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: History of MI5, p.192
4 Stephen Dorril, ‘Blackshirt’: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism, pp.269–70, 285, 330, 337
5 Daily Mail, 8 January 1934
6 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 4)
7 PRO KV3/53
8 Daily Mail, 25 April 1934
9 PRO Home Office 144 20140/674216
10 Daily Mirror, 22 January 1934
11 N.J. Crowson, Fleet Street, Press Barons & Politics: The Journals of Collin Brooks
12 Ibid.
13 Daily Mail, 8 June 1934
14 House of Commons Debate, 14 June 1934
15 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p.192
16 Taylor, The Great Outsiders, p.284
17 Letter from Princess Stephanie to Lord Rothermere, 22 August 1934
18 PRO KV2/1696
19 Ibid.
9 Nazi Party Gold
1 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 4)
2 Letter from Hitler to Lord Rothermere, 3 May 1935
3 Letter from Hitler to Lord Rothermere, 19 December 1935
4 Letter from Rothermere to Hitler, 16 December 1936
5 Ibid.
6 Martha Schad, Hitler’s Spy Princess, p.40
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., p.41
9 Letter from Princess Stephanie to Hitler, 12 January 1937
10 Martha Dodd, My Years in Germany, pp.223–4
11 Prince Franz Hohenlohe, Steph: the Fabulous Princess, p.107
12 Letter from Hitler to Lord Rothermere, 20 May 1937
13 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 5)
14 Ibid.
10 The Language of Butter
1 Daily Mail, 7 October 1929
2 Daily Mail, 24 September 1930
3 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 1)
4 W.S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries, p.203
5 Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5, pp.203–6
6 Letter from Lord Rothermere to Neville Chamberlain, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, 5 October 1934
7 Letter from Lord Rothermere to Lord Tyrrell, British ambassador to France, December 1933
8 Letter from Lord Rothermere to Lady Vansittart, 19 February 1934 (Sir Robert Vansittart was Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1930 to early 1938. He stood for rearmament and opposition to appeasement more strongly than any other Whitehall mandarin)
9 S.J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere & the ‘Daily Mail’, p.301
10 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 1)
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid. (Box 2)
13 Telegram from Lord Rothermere to Churchill, 28 September 1938 (at the time of the Munich Agreement)
14 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 2)
15 Letter from Lord Rothermere to Churchill, 30 September 1938
16 Lord Lothian’s 29 January 1935 meeting with Hitler was arranged by Leopold von Hoesch, German ambassador in London
17 William E. Dodd and Martha Dodd (eds), Ambassador Dodd’s Diary 1933–38, p.411
18 PRO KV2/1696
19 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 3)
20 PRO KV2/1696
21 Durham Chronicle, 28 February 1936; Ian Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler, p.141
22 Manchester Guardian, 24 February 1936; Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler, p.142
23 Letter from Lady Londonderry to Hitler, 21 February 1936; Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler, p.145
24 Lord Londonderry’s conversation with Goering, 22 September 1937 – quoted in Marquess of Londonderry, Ourselves and Germany; Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler, p.203
25 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 3)
26 N.J. Crowson, Fleet Street, Press Barons & Politics: The Journals of Collin Brooks
1 PRO KV2/1696
2 Charles Higham, Wallis: The Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor (the author notes the source as Mrs Milton E. Miles, whose husband became an admiral in the US Navy. She was among navy wives in China and Hong Kong in 1925. ‘It was gossip among Navy wives in Hong Kong. It was an open scandal.’ At the time Wallis was in her first marriage to Earl Winfield Spencer, an officer in the US Navy.)
3 Henry Channon, ‘Chips’: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon
4 Higham, Wallis, p.81
5 Channon, ‘Chips’
6 Stephen Dorril, Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism
7 The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart 1938–45
8 Martha Schad, Hitler’s Spy Princess, pp.56–7
9 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 3)
10 Ian Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler, p.213
11 Ibid., p.247
12 Ibid., p.144
13 Higham, Wallis, p.84
14 Ibid., pp.120–1
15 Keith Middlemas & John Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography
16 Paul Schwarz, This Man Ribbentrop: His Life and Times
17 FBI Report to President Roosevelt, 1939
18 N.J. Crowson, Fleet Street, Press Barons & Politics: The Journals of Collin Brooks
19 Dorril, Blackshirt, p.403
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., p.404
22 Crowson, Fleet Street, Press Barons & Politics
23 Schad, Hitler’s Spy Princess, p.63
24 Ibid., p.64
25 ‘7 January 1937’, in Fred Taylor (ed.), The Goebbels Diaries 1939–41
26 Dorril, Blackshirt, p.406
27 Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop, p.123; Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler, p.189
28 Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler, p.160
29 Schad, Hitler’s Spy Princess, p.53
30 PRO KV2/1696
31 Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe Papers (Box 3)
32 Sûreté Nationale Report, 9 April 1934