The long-lost secret diaries of “Hitler’s English girlfriend” have now been revealed by the DailyMail. The leather-bound diary of aristocrat Unity Mitford provides further data on the close ties of the British aristocracy to the Nazi regime and raises the question of why this dangerous behavior was repeated generations later with Vladimir Putin and the “new” Russia.
Unity was one of the notorious Mitford sisters and raved in her flowing handwriting about the Nazi leader she had accompanied for years. She acted as a kind of lobbyist for the plan to forge a pact between Germany and Britain; exactly what Hitler and his “geopolitics” adviser Karl Haushofer were aiming for. Haushofer became a board member of the German-English Society, founded in 1935.
What the British press is currently hiding is the gigantic deception that Britain’s elite had already orchestrated long before Hitler even came to power, and in which Unity Mitford probably participated, consciously or unconsciously. In the second half of the 19th century, the high nobility of the Guelphs, Wettins and Reginars, whose history in Germany goes back over 1000 years, infiltrated the nationalist movement in Germany and Austria. The British cultivated the modern conspiracy mythology, which revolved around the idea that Jewish figures like the Rothschild family had gained control of the British Empire.
Anti-Semitism and elite nationalist ideas later made it much easier to infiltrate the Nazi movement. Louis Kilzer published a detailed study with “Churchill’s Deception”. In his book on the Anglo establishement, Professor Carroll Quigley urged that Britain’s elite needed a new level of transparency. Lord Milner’s group was involved in the grand deception and it turned out to be a disastrous decision. It would have been preferable to take a clear stance against the Nazis early on. Quigley warned of a repetition of events, which ultimately happened during the Putin era, when KGB money was allowed to flow into the City of London”.
Unity Mitford was tall, pretty and her middle name was “Valkyrie”. She was closer to Hitler than any other Briton and wrote in her diary for five years. The famous historian Lord (Andrew) Roberts congratulated the Daily Mail on this “remarkable scoop”. What is not mentioned is that the Daily Mail was under the control of the Lords Rothermere. Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere of the Privy Council, supported the Nazi movement and the British fascists. His closeness to Winston Churchill suggests that he was (consciously or unconsciously) involved in the great deception.
In October 1922, the Daily Mail endorsed the fascist “March on Rome” on the grounds that democracy in Italy had failed and that Benito Mussolini must establish his fascist dictatorship to save the social order.
During the 1930s, Rothermere used his newspapers to try to influence British politics, reflecting in particular his strong support for the policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. By 1937, the Daily Mail had a daily circulation of 1,580,000 subscribers and was the only popular broadsheet newspaper with a predominantly middle-class readership.
Rothermere visited and corresponded with Adolf Hitler on several occasions, for example after the 1930 election. On 5 October 1930, Rothermere published an article in the Daily Mail:
“I frankly admit that the Jewish race has shown a conspicuous political imprudence since the war. … Those in public administration also feel a great deal of resentment against the activities of wealthy Jewish individuals and organizations who use all financial, social, political and personal means to try to influence British government departments and members of parliament for Jewish ends.”
The conspiracy propaganda of the time cultivated an obsession with the Rothschild family, originally recruited by the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel and showing absolute loyalty to the crown. The poorly forged “Protocols of Zion” were promoted by the British press under the direction of nobles such as Seymour Bathurst, 7th Earl Bathurst in the Morning Post. The series of articles under the headline “The Cause of World Unrest” was also published in book form. The newspaper was later under the direction of Alan Percy, 8th Duke of Northumberland and he promoted the conspiracy author Nesta Webster.
From December 1931, Rothermere began discussions with the British aristocratic fascist leader Oswald Mosley (whose father-in-law was the Viceroy of the Colony of India and Foreign Secretary) on the terms under which the Daily Mail would support his party.
In 1932, Rothermere sent Princess von Hohenlohe to the deposed German Emperor Wilhelm II to to discuss a plan to restore the monarchy after Hitler came to power. From January 5 to 8, 1937, Rothermere stayed with Hitler and Goebbels at the Berghof in the Bavarian Alps. Hitler and Rothermere discussed the desirability of an Anglo-German alliance against the Soviet Union, and Rothermere did not deny Hitler’s claims that Winston Churchill was working for Jewish businessmen. Goebbels wrote in his diary:
“Lord Rothermere, a real Englishman. If all Englishmen thought as he did! Against Versailles, for our rearmament, for our colonies, friendship between Berlin and London. In the end he calls me ‘the greatest propagandist in the world.'”
Rothermere met Princess Stephanie of Hohenlohe, who soon became his lover. The meeting was no coincidence; Hohenlohe had traveled to Monte Carlo to seduce Rothermere and had previously conducted extensive research into his love life. The MI5 papers also reveal that Rothermere was paying Stephanie von Hohenlohe an annual fee of £5,000 at the time. On 6 July 1939, Rothermere sent a telegram to Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, asking him to help organise an international conference to resolve “all outstanding problems”. When Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, Rothermere publicly supported the war.
The Daily Mail, it is said, has taken every precaution to ensure that the newly discovered Mitford diary is not a forgery. One of the world’s leading scholars on Unity, the historian and her biographer David Pryce-Jones, said: “I am convinced they are genuine.”
Unseen for 80 years, Unity’s diaries cover the years 1935 to 1939. When she was 20, she moved to Munich to obsessively stalk the Nazi leader. The last entry in her diary is dated September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, when war was declared, Unity – the 25-year-old daughter of the peer Lord Redesdale, a first cousin of Sir Winston Churchill’s wife Clementine – was so distraught that she shot herself in the head in Munich’s English Garden. She failed to kill herself, although she suffered brain damage and the bullet lodged in her skull. She returned to Britain, where she died in 1948, aged 33.
Of all the Britons who met Adolf Hitler, Unity Mitford is surely the one who met him most often and therefore probably knew him better than anyone else. The six Mitford sisters have been relatively well known. The eldest was Nancy, a novelist and biographer. The third sister Diana was a fascist and married the leader of the Blackshirts Sir Oswald Mosley.
Their father Lord Redesdale was a member of the Right Club in the 1930s. The group was led by a Tory MP who wrote an anthem called ‘Land Of Dope And Jewry’ which ended with a call to hang Jews.
In the mid-1930s Unity spent a lot of time in Munich and frequently visited the restaurant near the Führer’s apartment for the chance to meet him. On Saturday 9 February 1935 the 20-year-old’s wish was finally granted and her reaction, as her diary shows, was exuberantly ecstatic.
“Lunch Osteria 2:30pm. THE FÜHRER arrives 3:15pm after I finish lunch. After about 10 minutes he sends the innkeeper [owner] to ask me to come to his table. I go and sit next to him while he eats his lunch and we talk. THE MOST WONDERFUL DAY OF MY LIFE. He writes a postcard for me. After he leaves, Rosa [waitress] tells me he has never invited anyone like that.”
The Mitford family is an aristocratic family whose origins in Northumberland date back to the Norman settlement of England in the 11th century. Unity and Diana Mitford traveled to Germany as part of the British Union of Fascists’ British delegation to the 1933 Nazi Party Rally.
Mitford returned to Germany in the summer of 1934 and enrolled in a language school in Munich, near the Nazi Party headquarters.
She had set out to get close to Hitler and she discovered that Hitler’s movements were traceable. Hitler was easy to find before the war. You knew which cafe he would be in, you knew which restaurant he would be in, which hotel. And he had a habit of eating at the Osteria Bavaria in Munich and she herself began to sit in the Osteria Bavaria every day. After ten months, Hitler finally invited her to his table where they talked for over 30 minutes and Hitler paid her bill.
He was bimpressed by her connections to Germanic culture, including her middle name, Valkyrie. Mitford’s grandfather, Algernon Freeman-Mitford, had been a friend of Richard Wagner, one of Hitler’s idols. Hitler was extremely superstitious and believed that Unity was somehow sent to him by Providence; she was destined for him.” Mitford later received invitations to party meetings and state functions and was described by Hitler as “a perfect example of Aryan femininity.”
Hitler and Mitford became close, with Hitler reportedly playing Mitford off against his new girlfriend Eva Braun, apparently to make her jealous. Braun wrote of Mitford in her diary:
“She is known as the Valkyrie and looks like one, including her legs. I, the lover of the greatest man in Germany and the whole world, sit here and wait while the sun taunts me through the window panes.”
Although Hitler strategically surrounded himself with women, he had not had typical attachments to women since his teenage days. Lothar Machtan’s study suggests that Hitler was largely gay.
Braun regained Hitler’s attention after a suicide attempt, and Mitford learned from this that desperate measures were often needed to get the Führer’s attention.
Mitford attended the Hitler Youth festival in Hesselberg with Hitler’s friend Julius Streicher, where she gave a vicious anti-Semitic speech. She later reiterated these views in an open letter to Streicher’s newspaper Der Stürmer:
“The English have no idea of the Jewish danger. Our worst Jews only work behind the scenes. We look forward to the day when we can say England for the English! Out with the Jews!”
From that point on, Mitford was welcomed into Hitler’s inner circle and stayed with him for five years.
The suspicions of the British SIS were aroused.
She had lived in the house of Erna Hanfstaengl, the sister of early Hitler admirer and confidant Ernst Hanfstaengl. Albert Speer said of Hitler’s select group:
“There was a tacit understanding: no one was allowed to talk politics. The only exception was Lady Mitford, who even in the later years of international tensions steadfastly advocated for her country and often actually begged Hitler to make a deal with Britain.”
The grand British deception had a major influence on Hitler’s decision to postpone an invasion of the British Isles and instead invade the USSR. Even just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler seemed convinced that he would not risk a really big war with the British.
Mitford spent a summer at the Berghof, where she continued to discuss with Hitler a possible German-British alliance, even going so far as to provide lists of potential supporters and enemies.
On the morning of September 3, 1939, she went to see Gauleiter Adolf Wagner to ask if she would be arrested as an enemy alien and received assurances from Wagner that she would not. He was concerned about her behaviour and assigned two men to follow her, but she managed to shake them off as she entered the English Garden in Munich, where she took a pearl-handled pistol given to her by Hitler for protection and shot herself in the head.
She survived the suicide attempt and was hospitalised in Munich, where Hitler visited her frequently. He paid her bills and arranged for her to return home. On 1 December 2002, following the publication of declassified documents (including the wartime diary of MI5 officer Guy Liddell), investigative journalist Martin Bright published an article in the Observer claiming that Home Secretary John Anderson had intervened to prevent Mitford from being questioned on her return from Germany. He also claimed that the shooting, which “has become part of the Mitford myth”, may have been invented to excuse this.
Bright cites the testimony of press photographers and others who witnessed Mitford’s return to Britain on January 3, 1940, that “there were no external signs of her injury.” On January 8, Liddell received a report from the security screening officers responsible for collecting arrivals, which stated that “there were no signs of a gunshot wound.”
Unity’s younger sister Jessica, with whom she shared a bedroom, was a staunch communist. The two drew a chalk line down the middle to divide the room. Jessica’s side was decorated with hammer and sickles and pictures of Vladimir Lenin, while Unity’s side was decorated with swastikas and pictures of Adolf Hitler.
Jesica Mitford became the inspiration of J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series :
My most influential author is undoubtedly Jessica Mitford. When my great aunt gave me Hons and Rebels when I was 14, she immediately became my hero. I think I’ve read everything she’s written. I even named my daughter after her, Jessica Rowling Arantes.