Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters (24 page)

In early 1934 Unity achieved her desire of living in Munich when she arrived at the home of the Baroness Laroche, who took girls
en pension
. It is unbelievable, really, that the Redesdales let her go. She was already a debutante; she did not need to be ‘finished’, as her older sisters had been, and Jessica would be, in Paris. Her parents had expressed horror at the recent visit to the Parteitag. So who knows what their idea was; other than that the baroness was a woman of the utmost respectability, and that Unity’s nagging may have been such that it was simply easier to let her get this energetic obsession out of her system. Unity was on a girlish high. Might she still have come down from it, had the Redesdales refused to let her return to Germany? Diana thought not – ‘Unity was a revolutionary’ – and she knew her sister very well. Nevertheless Unity’s cousin Clementine, who stayed with her in 1937 and who, to a lesser degree, succumbed to the Nazi spell, later said: ‘In no way was she a person who wished to escape her background. I think she would always have come home.’
³⁵

Unity’s intention in 1934 was to meet Hitler. And again, there was something in this of the schoolgirl, dreaming that she will catch the eye of the man on her bedroom wall. However hard it is to see Hitler in that light, there is no doubt that
Unity
did: up to a point. Then there was another factor, the desire to compete with the sublime Diana. All right, so Diana had Britain’s Fascist-in-Chief in tow, smouldering at her across the dinner table and chatting in baby talk down the telephone. But Hitler: do admit. That was something more. The man with the real power, the one who had
putsched
his way to the top and had the whole of Germany swaying to his oratory, whom even hard-headed British people sought to encounter on their visits to Munich. If Unity were able to write to her sister and say oh, by the way Nard, you’ll never guess who I’ve met... Well. In that sense, therefore, Hitler represented something comprehensible in the context of a young girl’s imagination, a bizarre crush plus an ace of trumps in the lifelong Mitford game of sister whist. Yet there was also the unknown factor, the dark and terrible tide in whose shallows Hitler already swam, to which Unity responded in the same way as Diana did to the Mosley rallies. The times in which this pair lived were terrifying: most people crossed their fingers, shut their eyes and prayed for it all to be over. For reasons that can never quite be explained, these aristocratic young women embraced it instead.

So Unity, frantically learning German, began visiting the same restaurants as Hitler (as Deborah later put it, today she would have been arrested as a stalker). This is where that extraordinary blithe Mitford confidence played its part. She seems to have had no doubt that she could command the attention of this player on the world’s political stage: if she sat there, in all her Anglo-Aryan splendour, the Führer would recognize her for what she was. Most people (assuming that they actually wanted to meet Hitler) would have worried about what to say, how to hold his interest and seem like something more than just a power groupie. Unity had no such fears. She would chat away, as Mitfords did, and she would amuse him. As indeed she did. In June 1934 a friend summoned her to the Carlton tearooms where the small Hitler party had just arrived. She wrote to inform Diana of the sighting. The following month she wrote to Nancy, warning her that she could not possibly publish
Wigs on the Green.
By this time her tone, although buoyant and brisk, held a faintly manic quality; ‘No I didn’t fumble with Röhm at the Brown House’ was her PS to Nancy. The reference was to Ernst Röhm, who a couple of weeks previously had been dragged from his bed and shot on Hitler’s orders (the Brown House was the Nazi HQ in Munich). Around a hundred brown-shirted officers were executed in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives, an efficient purge leaving the way clear for the ultra-loyal black-shirted SS led by Himmler. To read of this in the Mitford idiom is to come up, about as hard as is possible, against the sisters’ adamantine mystery. ‘I am so
terribly
sorry for the Fuhrer – you know Röhm was his oldest comrade & friend,’ wrote Unity to Diana.

Around this time Sydney and, surprisingly, Jessica visited Munich. So again Unity was receiving encouragement, rather than disapprobation; it was beginning to seem that the ‘murderous gang of pests’ had been forgiven. Either that, or the Redesdales wanted to keep an eye on their daughter (David would go to see Unity in early 1935). Sydney, who had visited Tom in Austria back in 1927, now discovered that she rather liked Germany. Nevertheless her attitude to her daughter’s hysterical saluting and so on is ambivalent; in her letter to Nancy, Unity wrote that Sydney ‘isn’t in a
very
good temper. I am though.’

The two Fascist girls again attended the Parteitag in 1934, after which Diana took a flat for them both in Munich. Possibly Diana was staying away from home deliberately, with the aim of bringing Mosley to heel; he was still pursuing his affair with Baba Metcalfe, cheered on from the sidelines by Irene Ravensdale. He was also charged with an allegation of ‘riotous assembly’ – in Worthing, of all places – along with the BUF member William Joyce, later known as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’.
³⁶
They were acquitted in December. That same month a dance was held for Jessica, then seventeen, at Rutland Gate. The court pages calmly reported that dinner parties were hosted before the ball by Mrs Winston Churchill and Mrs Somerset Maugham, Lady Cunard and Lady Rennell; the known world still spun on its axis. In March 1935, Jessica was presented at Buckingham Palace wearing a white satin dress by Worth of Paris, which was later dyed purple and sold to help fund her life as a Communist fugitive. In tribute to her beloved Boud, who had stolen writing paper from the palace, Jessica snaffled some chocolates and hid them in her bouquet. Hons and rebels, eh. By that time beloved Boud had met her Führer: they spoke for the first time at the Osteria Bavaria restaurant in Munich on 9 February.

VIII

Hitler’s sexuality has been much speculated over, but there is no doubt that he responded favourably to women of Unity’s type. Although she still wore the red lipstick that had so distressed Putzi Hanfstaengl, in every other way her strong, fair, healthy youth was perfectly designed to please. He said, she later recalled, that she had beautiful legs. Diana almost certainly attracted Hitler in the conventional way; like most men whom she met, he found her beautiful and desirable. She in turn found him immensely good company. It should be emphasized that she was not alone in this. Hitler was courteous to women, he had old-fashioned manners of the kind to which the Mitfords were accustomed, albeit with Teutonic embellishments; and he was capable of commanding love, particularly that of unstable girls. Eva Braun, his mistress since 1932, attempted suicide twice; Hitler’s adored half-niece Geli Raubal killed herself. Years later, in a television documentary, Winifred Wagner – daughter-in-law of the composer, and the director of the Bayreuth Festival during the war – would attempt to explain the nature of her friendship with Hitler (‘Wolf’), his kindness to her children, his ‘Austrian tact and warmth’. It was quite clear that, to those inclined to see him in that way, he had the ability to step away from the Nazi backdrop – ‘I except Hitler quite generally from that whole crowd,’ said Winifred Wagner, meaning creatures like Himmler – and produce a direct stream of high-octane charm. The truth, of course, was that the Nazi backdrop was always there, a dark shimmer behind the eyes, and this was the root of the attraction. The idea of talking to the Führer as a
man
was thrilling because he was the Führer; he had a dual identity that could never be divided: there is nothing more exciting, to the susceptible, than a man who is more than a man. The whole time that he and Unity were sharing jokes, they remained the devil and his disciple.

Why he wanted to share jokes with her is another story. ‘Bobo said whatever came into her head, and spoke to him as she might have done to anyone, and he loved it,’ was the recollection of Clementine Mitford, and this seems to have been at least part of the truth. If Hitler could turn on charm, the Mitfords embodied it. And Hitler, it would seem, fell for Unity’s particular version. At their first meeting in February, he sent the restaurant owner to invite her to his table. Then they talked for half an hour – about Wagner, London, films (his favourite being
Cavalcade
)
³⁷
and so on. And one can imagine the appeal of such a girl, talking in what Nancy called the family’s ‘loud sing-song voice’, fearless in the face of somebody who operated on terror. She was like a great blonde lion cub in a pit full of black mambas: not incapable of violence herself, but without the smiling glint of malice aforethought. In the next four and a half years she and Hitler would meet some 140 times. She was treated like an honoured guest at rallies, at events such as the Berlin Olympics of 1936 and the Bayreuth Festival; she was twice invited to his retreat at Berchtesgaden. (Eva Braun was not happy about this. ‘She is known as the Walküre and looks the part,’ wrote Braun, ‘especially her legs.’) Effectively Unity was admitted to Hitler’s inner circle. They were almost certainly not lovers, although naturally this has been claimed. Diana thought that Unity would have slept with Hitler had he asked, but he never did. She later dismissed a book claiming that the pair were seen, by a maid, on a sofa at the Wagner house in Bayreuth, ‘in a compromising position’ (as Winifred Wagner made clear, Unity never actually stayed at the house
³⁸
).

Recently a story emerged that Unity had given birth to Hitler’s child:
³⁹
a fascinating notion, but there was no real evidence. Anyway one has the sense that Unity was in a preferable position to a mistress, more protected because not dependent upon that mutable physical tie. She could sit and babble away as a mistress would never have dared. Her intimacy with Hitler was odder than that. She was light relief, a combination of younger sister, court jester and talisman; he may also have enjoyed the fact that his henchmen did not really want her there, but could not say so. He was impressed by Britain, fascinated by its ability to command an empire, and like so many people he was compelled by the British aristocracy. In his way he was probably impressed by Unity herself. Quite simply he felt happier with her around, calling him blissful Führer and laughing at his impersonations of Mussolini. Whereas with Diana he engaged in the cautious dance of semi-courtship, and she herself was always careful to display decorous respect, the relationship with Unity was more relaxed. In photographs she has an air of compliance, but she also looks as though she belongs next to Hitler. On one occasion he showed his temper, in what must have been a terrifying scene, and ‘thundered – you know how he can – like a machine gun’, wrote Unity to Diana. ‘It was wonderful.’

So Unity was obsessed with Hitler, and by what she saw as a miracle he took pleasure in her company. But this was the world of the Nazis, and blissful Führers looking to conquer great chunks of Eastern Europe are not content merely to chat with a fresh-faced young girl. It is impossible not to think that Unity was by Hitler’s side because of
who
she was, as well as what she was. She was a hotline to England with her connections (not just Mosley and the Churchill family; early on, for instance, Hitler mentioned the pro-German Rennells of Rodd, only to find out that Unity’s sister Nancy was married to their son). Unity gabbled out opinions – von Ribbentrop was the wrong man to be German ambassador in London; Hitler should not have received the Londonderrys, as the political hostess Lady Londonderry was not a
true
admirer – and within the nonsense there would have been something to learn. Of course he had official channels, but her very indiscretion was a gift of sorts. He admitted as much in a recorded conversation: ‘She and her sisters are very much in the know, thanks to their relationship with influential people.’
⁴⁰

Conversely she was also a potential liability, to either side. Although Hitler was not at this point Britain’s enemy, the then ambassador in Berlin Sir Nevile Henderson – who met Unity at a party held by Himmler, where ‘she squeaked “
Heil
Hitler!”’ as she and Henderson were introduced – was very aware of her loose tongue. He reported her conversations back to London: ‘Subject to certain reservations I have little reason to doubt the accuracy of what she occasionally tells me.’ It is rather amazing that London did not worry more about this. On the Munich side, Hitler’s inner circle were wary of both Mitford sisters, but the Führer himself seems never to have been suspicious of Unity, at least. His instincts must have been pin-sharp, and as it happened he was right to be sure of her loyalty, both to Germany and to her own country. In 1935 he reached a naval agreement with Britain, and noted that an ‘Anglo-German combination would be stronger than all the other powers.’ The following year he discussed the idea with Unity. As she reported to Diana, ‘he said that with the German army & the English navy we could rule the world. Oh if we could have that...’ It is perhaps unsurprising that Unity began to see herself as a figure of some importance within the regime, the one who could bring about the Grand Alliance between the two nations that she loved.

That same year, Hitler saw Unity’s influence in action. In 1935 David Redesdale had stayed with his daughter in Munich; although he did not meet Hitler, one has the sense of a clever puppet-master pulling his strings when he wrote a fiercely pro-German letter to
The Times
in March 1936 – ‘If our persistently un-English treatment of Germany is the result of treaties and pacts, would it not be wiser to disentangle ourselves’ – and made a speech to the House of Lords that could have been written by Dr Goebbels himself. The anti-Nazi propaganda in Britain was absurd, he said, with ‘the greatest exaggeration in such matters as the Nazi treatment of the Jews’. After reading British newspapers, ‘the last thing one would expect to see was a Jew, but the place was full of Jews.’ They were everywhere, said David, and nobody interfered with them, ‘so long as they behaved themselves and adhered to the regulations laid down for Jews’. If the Germans thought that they were a danger, the Germans should be allowed to deal with that danger. Hitler had countered Communism, restored German self-respect, and now longed to live in peace with his neighbours. After such a speech, which represented a volte-face of staggering dimensions, it is hardly surprising that David (and Sydney) attended a dinner of the Anglo-German Fellowship at the Dorchester Hotel, along with the Londonderrys, and a reception for the von Ribbentrops at which Lord Londonderry proclaimed the Fellowship ‘a great factor for good’.