Unity Mitford and Adolf Hitler

In June 1933 Unity Mitford and Diana Mitford, joined the British Union of Fascists, the extreme right-wing group founded by Oswald Mosley the previous year. Mosley described her as "young, ingenuous, full of enthusiasm, in a way stage-struck by the glamour and panoply of the national socialist movement and the mass admiration of Hitler" She was active in the women's section headed by Esther Makgill, the daughter of John Makgill: "I created the women's section of the BUF... Unity Mitford didn't mean anything to me in those days. She was swept in by her sister." Her friend, Mary Ormsby-Gore, said that she sold The Blackshirt on the streets of London: "She began to go to the East End, and I went to one meeting with her... One day she took me to Selfridges saying, let's make a record, and she spoke into it, The Yids, The Yids, We've gotta get rid of the Yids." 

Unity told Armida Macindoe that she was determined to meet Hitler: "She used to go to the Osteria Bavaria restaurant and sit waiting for Hitler. She'd sit there all day long with her book and read. She'd say, I don't want to make a fool of myself being alone there, and so she'd ask me to go along to keep her company, to have lunch or a coffee. Often Hitler was there. People came and went. She would place herself so that he invariably had to walk by her, she was drawing attention to herself, not obnoxiously but enough to make one slightly embarrassed. But the whole point was to attract his attention. She'd talk more loudly or drop a book. And it paid off."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WRmitfordU.htm

The rest of the Blog can be seen here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html

Claud Cockburn and his fight against Appeasement.

Claud Cockburn worked for The Times during the Great Depression. In the summer of 1932 Cockburn decided to resign from the newspaper for political reasons. The editor, Geoffrey Dawson, replied: "It was foolish to give up working for The Times simply on account of one's political views... The Times was a vehicle which could be used by people of the most varied opinions... For myself, I have always regarded The Times as something of an organ of the Left... Though never, I hope, of the extreme Left... It does seem rather bad luck that you of all people should go red on us." 

Cockburn now returned to London where he intended to start up his own business. He had originally got the idea while working in New York City where he saw for the first time a mimeograph machine. He later recalled: "A mimeograph machine is one of the few remaining weapons which still gives small and comparatively poor organizations a sporting chance in a scrap with large and wealthy ones." 

This impression was reinforced in Germany where he had seen supporters of Kurt von Schleicher using mimeograph machines to produce political propaganda. Cockburn had also been inspired by inspired by the French satirical paper Le Canard Enchainé. He considered it "the best-informed publication in France" and although some of it was "in execrable taste" it carried no advertisements, received no subsidies, and still broke "a little better than even". Cockburn was also attracted to the way it exposed government corruption. Something that Cockburn was keen on doing in Britain. 

Claud Cockburn had decided to call his newsletter, The Week. As Richard Ingrams has explained: "Started on a capital of £50 provided by his Oxford friend Benvenuto Sheard, the paper, which was all his own work, was produced in a one-room office at 34 Victoria Street, and was obtainable only by subscription. Although he relied on information supplied by a number of foreign correspondents including Negley Farson (Chicago Daily News) and Paul Scheffer (Berliner Tageblatt), it was his own journalistic flair which gave the paper its unique influence. Cockburn was not an orthodox journalist. He pooh-poohed the notion of facts as if they were nuggets of gold waiting to be unearthed. It was, he believed, the inspiration of the journalist which supplied the story. Speculation, rumour, even guesswork, were all part of the process and an inspired phrase was worth reams of cautious analysis."

The first issue of the newsletter appeared on Wednesday, 29th March 1933. As Norman Rose has pointed out: "It was preceded by scenes of great editorial confusion. The actual production of the paper was left until Wednesday morning in order, Claud argued, to pre-empt the existing weeklies with as much hot ness as possible. Claud wrote the entire issue - a modest three pages of foolscap - and cut the stencils, touching up the material as he progressed, a routine that excluded any prospect of efficiency... The Week finally emerged in what would become its distinctive format, smudgy in appearance, lively in content." The first edition had as its lead story "Black-Brown-Fascist Plan". It told of how Benito Mussolini had sponsored a four-power arrangement to regulate the affairs of Europe. It revealed that a definite proposal had been forwarded to London and Warsaw that envisaged granting concessions to Germany in the Polish Corridor while compensating Poland with a slice of Russian Ukraine." 

The rest of the article can be found here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html

Secret Negotiations with the Nazis in 1940

On the outbreak of the Second World War, a former senior figure in MI6, Sir William Wiseman approached Lord Lothian (British ambassador in the United States) and Lord Halifax (British foreign secretary), and promised that for £100,000 he could set up "the best possible intelligence service in the United States" for the British. Lothian and Halifax, both strong members of the pro-appeasement group, now approached Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, with the offer. Menzies told a Foreign Office meeting that Wiseman was regarded with considerable suspicion by the US Embassy in London and that "both his predecessors (Mansfield Cumming and Hugh Sinclair) had very strong views about Sir William Wiseman and had recommended that he should on no account be employed by His Majesty's Government." 

Wiseman now returned to the United States where he was a partner in the Wall Street banking firm Kuhn, Loeb & Company. However, he was back in London on 6th June, 1940, where he had lunch with Lord Halifax, who was still foreign secretary despite the fact that Winston Churchill had replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister. According to Jim Wilson, the author of Nazi Princess: Hitler, Lord Rothermere and Princess Stephanie Von Hohenlohe (2011): "Halifax briefed Wiseman to assist Lothian and help him to find some way to starting peace negotiations that would be effective. Before the outbreak of war a substantial number of the British Establishment (prime movers in political, aristocratic and financial circles) many egged on by the princess' activities, were totally opposed to the coming conflict. When, despite their efforts, war broke out, these people continued to believe that it should be resolved as quickly as possible through a negotiated peace." Interestingly, Joseph Goebbels was that month recording in his diary that Adolf Hitler had told him that he had been approached by the British about peace negotiations. Hitler had told them he was willing to negotiate but only with Lord Halifax. 

Scott Newton, the author of Profits of Peace: The Political Economy of Anglo-German Appeasement (1997) has argued that Wiseman represented a group that included Lord Halifax, Lord Rothermere, Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, Ronald Nall-Cain, 2nd Baron Brocket, Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry, Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 8th Duke of Buccleuch, Charles McLaren, 3rd Baron Aberconway and Henry Betterton, 1st Baron Rushcliffe. "All its members shared a profound fear that the domestic and international order which had sustained liberal-imperialist Britain was about to be irrevocably changed... With some justification it was believed that total war meant the socialization of Britain and a ruinous conflict in the heart of Europe from which only the Soviet Union could benefit."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Stephanie_von_Hohenlohe.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/William_Wiseman.htm


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Fritz_Wiedemann.htm

For the rest of the article see:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html

Robert Vansittart's Spy Network

At the age of only forty-eight, Robert Vansittart was appointed permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor on 30th January 1933, Vansittart became his leading opponent in the Foreign Office. He wrote on 6th May: "The present regime in Germany will, on past and present form, loose off another European war just so soon as it feels strong enough … we are considering very crude people, who have very few ideas in their noddles but brute force and militarism." Norman Rose, the author of Vansittart: Study of a Diplomat (1978) has argued: "But how would he combat the German menace? First, by redefining the aims of British strategy, by isolating Germany as Britain's most immediate danger, and then by boosting the British defence programme to meet this changed order of priorities. Well out of the public eye as a member of high-powered government committees, Vansittart laboured ceaselessly to realize these aims." 

Robert Vansittart worked very closely with Admiral Hugh Sinclair, the head of MI6, and Vernon Kell, the head of MI5. According to Christopher Andrew, the author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009): "Robert Vansittart, permanent under secretary at the Foreign Office, was much more interested in intelligence than his political masters were... He dined regularly with Sinclair, was also in (less frequent) touch with Kell, and built up what became known as his own private detective agency collecting German intelligence. More than any other Whitehall mandarin, Vansittart stood for rearmament and opposition to appeasement."

Vansittart recruited Wolfgang zu Putlitz, First Secretary at the German Embassy and Jona von Ustinov, a journalist to work for MI5. Putlitz later recalled: "I would unburden myself of all the dirty schemes and secrets which I encountered as part of my daily routine at the Embassy. By this means I was able to lighten my conscience by the feeling that I was really helping to damage the Nazi cause for I knew Ustinov was in touch with Vansittart, who could use these facts to influence British policy." Putlitz insisted that the only way to deal with Adolf Hitler was to stand firm. 

Charles Higham argues that Vansittart received information from the Russian secret agent Anatoly Baykalov, that Wallis Simpson was was a Nazi collaborator. Baykalov had obtained this information, while posing as a White Russian, in the group that included Anna Wolkoff (she was Wallis's dressmaker). Vansittart had two reliable plants in the German embassy who could inform him when any material arrived for transmission to Germany in the diplomatic bags.

See the rest of the article here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html

British Newspaper Reporting of Appeasement and Nazi Germany

Appeasement provides an interesting way to look at how the subject was reported in British newspapers. The two major press barons, Lord Rothermere (The Daily Mail, The Sunday Dispatch and The Evening News) and Lord Waldorf Astor (The Times and The Observer) were both strong supporters of appeasement and so the public had a very distorted picture of the negotiations. Rothermere and Astor both used their newspapers to provide a positive image of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. So much so that their activities were being monitored by MI5. In doing so, they discovered that both men were seen on a regular basis in the company of Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, a Nazi spy who had been under observation as a German agent since receiving information from French Intelligence in 1928.

One of the most important journalist in this campaign was George Ward Price. There is virtually nothing available on the web on the activities of Ward Price. I have therefore produced a very detailed page on his reporting. He was the Daily Mail's foreign correspondent. During the 1930s he developed a close relationship with Adolf Hitler. According to the German historian, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen: "The famous special correspondent of the London Daily Mail, Ward Price, was welcomed to interviews in the Reich Chancellery in a more privileged way than all other foreign journalists, particularly when foreign countries had once more been brusqued by a decision of German foreign policy. His paper supported Hitler more strongly and more constantly than any other newspaper outside Germany."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/George_Ward_Price.htm

For the rest of the article see:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html

Paul Dacre, The Daily Mail and Fascism

In today's Guardian Paul Dacre made an attempt to defend Geoffrey's Levy's attack on Ralph Miliband. "Surely, we reasoned, the public had the right to know what influence the Labour leader's Marxist father, to whom he constantly referred in his speeches, had on his thinking. So it was that Levy's article examined the views held by Miliband senior over his lifetime, not just as a 17-year-old youth as has been alleged by our critics. The picture that emerged was of a man who gave unqualified support to Russian totalitarianism until the mid-50s, who loathed the market economy, was in favour of a workers' revolution, denigrated British traditions and institutions such as the royal family, the church and the army and was overtly dismissive of western democracy. Levy's article argued that the Marxism that inspired Ralph Miliband had provided the philosophical underpinning of one of history's most appalling regimes – a regime, incidentally, that totally crushed freedom of expression."

Of course it is completely untrue that Ralph Miliband "gave unqualified support to Russian totalitarianism until the mid-50s." Miliband was in fact one of the leading Marxist critics of the Soviet government during this period. As his biographer, Michael Newman, has pointed out: "Miliband was... politically homeless in post-war Britain. He regarded himself as a Marxist, but was increasingly critical of the Soviet Union and Communist Party allegiance to it. He had several friends in the Labour Party, but there is little to suggest that he had any great enthusiasm for it and, in any case, the Labour Left seemed extremely weak." In 1968 he wrote to his great friend, Marcel Liebman: "The invasion of Czechoslovakia show very well that this oppressive and authoritarian Russian socialism has nothing in common with the socialism that we demand, and we must state this very loudly, even at the risk of seeming to be anti-soviet and to echo bourgeois propaganda."

Dacre's claims that "the Marxism that inspired Ralph Miliband had provided the philosophical underpinning of one of history's most appalling regimes – a regime, incidentally, that totally crushed freedom of expression" is of course ridiculous. But what about the owner of the Daily Mail who championed Adolf Hitler in the 1930s? Was he not "underpinning of one of history's most appalling regimes"?

The liberal press has made the point several times over the last couple of weeks about the articles published by Lord Rothermere in the lead up to the Second World War. However, no references have been made to the treasonous letters he sent to Hitler during this period. These were released by MI5 in 2005. However, it was several years earlier that the FBI made their files available on Lord Rothermere. Surprisingly, the national press don't seem very interested in this story. However, it is one of the most interesting of the Second World War. 

The story begins in 1927. At that time Rotheremere's personal wealth was around £25 million and he was estimated to be the third richest man in Britain. Rothermere spent three months of the year gambling in Monte Carlo. It was here he met Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe in 1927. According to a FBI file, Stephanie had targeted Rothermere. It said that "she was reputedly immoral, and capable of resorting to any means, even bribery, to get her ends." They both enjoyed gambling and she described Rothermere as "a fabulous plunger at the casino tables". 

Princess Stephanie persuaded Rothermere that the defeated nations had been badly treated by the Treaty of Versailles. Rothermere was impressed by her arguments and her understanding of the problem. Rothermere agreed to write an editorial on the subject. On 21st June, 1927, The Daily Mail argued: "Eastern Europe is strewn with Alsace-Lorraines. By severing from France the twin provinces of that name the Treaty of Frankfurt in 1871 made another European war inevitable. The same blunder has been committed on a larger scale in the peace treaties which divided up the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. They have been created dissatisfied minorities in half a dozen parts of Central Europe, any one of which may be the starting point of another conflagration." 

In 1931 Princess Stephanie now moved to London where she took an apartment on the sixth floor of the Dorchester Hotel. An American banker, Donald Malcolm, spent a great deal of time with Stephanie and advised her to negotiate a contract with Rothermere. According to Jim Wilson, the author of Nazi Princess: Hitler, Lord Rothermere and Princess Stefanie Von Hohenlohe (2011): "Clinching the contract was not difficult to achieve. She reminded Rothermere of the success of her intervention over Hungary, and persuaded the press baron to appoint her as his emissary in Europe. She argued - and this was undoubtedly true - that she had the contacts to gain admittance to many of Europe's most powerful people, and that she could open doors to almost every exclusive social circle on the Continent." It was later revealed that Rothermere paid the Princess Stephanie £5,000 a year (equal to £200,000 in 2013) to act as his emissary in Europe.

In November, 1933, Lord Rothermere gave Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe the task of establishing personal contact with Adolf Hitler. Princess Stephanie later recalled: "Rothermere came from a family that had experienced the novel possibility of influencing international politics through newspapers and was determined to sound out Hitler." Stephanie went to Berlin and began a sexual relationship with Captain Fritz Wiedemann, Hitler's personal adjutant. Wiedemann reported back to Hitler that Stephanie was the mistress of Lord Rothermere. Hitler decided that she could be of future use to the government and gave Wiedemann 20,000 Reichsmarks as a maintenance allowance to ensure that she had her hotel, restaurant bills, telephone bills and taxi and travel fares paid. Wiedemann was also allowed to buy her expensive clothes and gifts. 

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/HISmiliband.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/BUrothermere.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Stephanie_von_Hohenlohe.htm


For the rest of the article see:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html

Wallis Simpson and Nazi Germany

While in Shanghai in 1925 Wallis Spencer had an affair with the handsome fascist, Count Galeazzo Ciano, who was later to become the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini. The affair resulted in a pregnancy, and a carelessly carried out abortion had left Wallis unable to have any more children. Wallis eventually divorced her husband in 1927. 

Wallis then met the divorced businessman, Ernest Simpson. The couple married in 1928 and moved to London. They became friends with Lady Thelma Furness, a mistress of the Prince of Wales. On the 10th January, 1931, Furness invited them to her country house at Melton Mowbray where they met the heir to the throne. Prince Edward was fascinated by Wallis and it was not long before he was having an affair with her. 

Colin Matthew has pointed out: "By 1934 the prince had cast aside both Lady Furness and Freda Dudley Ward (the latter cut off without, apparently, any personal farewell). The prince saw Mrs Simpson as his natural companion in life, both sexually and intellectually.... A man accustomed to get his way, when he knew what it was that he wanted, the prince of Wales seems to have thought from 1934 onwards that matters would turn out as he wished. Though he appears from an early stage to have wanted Wallis as his queen, he made no effort to test or prepare the ground, even with those whose support would be vital. Nor do those around him seem to have sounded him as to his intentions (and as his accession was clearly imminent they could not have been blamed if they had done so). Neither the prince's father nor mother seems to have raised with him either the affair or its likely result. Thus the prince of Wales's affair with Mrs Simpson, pursued with a passion evident to all who observed it, occurred in a political and constitutional limbo."

Wallis Simpson left her husband and went to live in an apartment in Bryanston Court. Also living in the building was Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, a Nazi spy being monitored by British intelligence. The two women soon became close friends. This was unfortunate for Simpson because of a tip off from French Intelligence, MI6 was intercepting Princess Stephanie's correspondence and tracking her movements in and out of the country since early in 1928. 

For the rest of the article see:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/spartacus-blog.html

You might also be interested in these pages.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SSsimpson.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/MONedwardVIII.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Stephanie_von_Hohenlohe.htm