The Rest Is History - 375. Hitler and the Mitford Sisters

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

The Mitfords were the most glamorous aristocrats on the London scene in the 1920s, with at their head Diana, the most beautiful woman in London, who would eventually marry Oswald Mosley. However, her younger sister Unity would strike up a relationship with her own fascist leader: Adolf Hitler. Having first moved to Berlin in 1934, Unity would eventually become part of the Führer’s inner-circle: having described them both as “perfect example of aryan womanhood”, her and Diana were his guests at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, sat next to Eva Braun. Unity would introduce her parents to Hitler, and he even visited her when she was in hospital during the opening weeks of WWII. Join Tom and Dominic in the final episode of our series on British fascism, as they delve into the life of Unity Mitford, her family, and her relationship with Hitler. Was she trying to seduce Hitler and form an Anglo-German dynasty? Did the violence of the SS not unsettle her? And was she carrying Hitler’s child upon her return to Britain? Listen to find out… *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. I can't spell it right. So you just give a fake name, your cafe name, Julia. But the more you use it, the more it feels like you're in witness protection. Wait a minute. What kind of espresso drinks does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this because you could have just made your espresso at home.

Shop now at KitchenAid.ca. I met her in the Osteria Bavaria. She was very romantic. The Osteria was a small inn. It's still there and it hasn't changed much. Small tables. There was a wooden partition and behind it a table to seat eight. An adjutant would phone the owner to warn that Hitler might be coming and to have the table clear. There was also a courtyard with one table under a pergola and this was Hitler's favourite seat when the weather was not cold.

Unity was quite often there. I was invited only every second or third time. Like me, Mitford would be invited by the adjutant Schaub. She was highly in love with Hitler. We could see it easily. Her face brightened up, her eyes gleaming, staring at Hitler. Hero worship. Absolutely phenomenal. And possibly Hitler liked to be admired by a young woman. She was quite attractive. Even if nothing happened, he was excited by the possibility of a love affair with her. Towards an attractive woman, he behaved as a 17-year-old would. So that was international man of mystery and all-round villain, Rudolf Hess, talking about unity in Mitford. And Tom, we ended last time with the British fascist movement, I think it's fair to say, in the doldrums. World War II had broken out. A lot of the leading fascists, but not all of the aristocrats, but a lot of the other leading

fascists, including Sir Oswald Mosley, have been put into prison. But we're now going to backtrack a little bit because you're very keen to tell the story of the person you regard as Britain's most notorious Nazi. And I say Nazi, not British fascist, because this is somebody, as we've just heard in that sort of barbara cartland-esque prose yes you know she's not at cable street she's not going to grimy meetings and of the sort of scunthorpe branch of the buf she is actually there in germany with the fuhrer and that's unity mitford it is i mean she is probably i mean not probably she is the, I mean, not probably, she is the British person who has the most access to Hitler. I mean, possibly of any foreigner. She has meetings with Hitler over 140 times. And I would go further

and say that although obviously Oswald Mosley and indeed Unity Mitford's sister Diana, who marries Oswald Mosley, are more significant figures within the history of British fascism. I would say that Unity Mitford is probably the best known British fascist among the general public, simply because there is such a fascination, enduring fascination with the Mitford sisters. And so I think that it's worth having an episode on her, partly because of the inherent fascination of the story. I mean, she is an intriguing figure, but also because I think the fact that a self-avowed Nazi can be integrated into a crucial part of the heritage industry is really, really interesting. So the first biography that was written of Unity Mitford, one of the six famous Mitford sisters, was by a man called David Price-Jones in in 1977 and he subtitled

it the frivolity of evil which is a play on the banality of evil it's a i think a brilliant title yeah and i think that there is a sense perhaps in which part of the appeal of fascism and by extension nazism in 1930s britain there is an element of that the frivolity of it do you think among the upper classes uh i well i think we talked in the last three episodes about the paranoia among much of the upper classes. So there are definitely people like the, I don't know, in the 1920s, the Duke of Northumberland, very rich, very entitled people who feel genuinely,

almost hysterically afraid of Bolshevism and of sellout by the mainstream political parties and so on. But in the case of the Mitfords, I agree with you. There's a slight sense of incredibly sinister sort of role playing that has got out of control. Yeah. But I think the fascinating thing you said about the heritage industry. So I live, as lots of listeners will know, in North Oxfordshire, very close to the Mitford family estate.

And there are walking tours. There are Mitford walking tours. I know people. I mean, I know people, Tom, otherwise sane, well-adjusted people who are obsessed with the Mitfords, who love the Mitford sisters, who like going to the graveyard

and seeing the Mitford's graves, who have lots of books on the Mitfords. Now, for a lot of our overseas listeners, this will all be babble. They won't know who the Mitfords are. So perhaps you should explain just who this extraordinary family are and why they have this hold over the british imagination okay so the mitfords are a very ancient family they had lands in england even

before the norman conquest given to them by edward the confessor up in northumberland very near my scottish estate as it happens on the banks of tweets but there's a kind of junior family from hampshire and these are the ones that end up with lands in the Cotswolds. And the thing about the Mitfords is there are aspects of their heritage that seem to precondition them for a particular interest in Nazism. So I'll go through Unity Mitford's grandparents. So her grandfather on her father's side, so that's the Mitford side. He was a very distinguished diplomat, served in Japan and all over the world, incredible linguist. And he became a very good friend of Richard Wagner.

He went to Bayreuth. He saw all the Wagnerian operas, including Die Walküre. So all these operas that Hitler was obsessed with. Absolutely. So Hitler will come to know this and they tell the story of statuesque goddesses, blonde hair, who gallop around on horses, picking up the fallen dead and taking them to Valhalla. While he's at Bayreuth, he meets Houston Stuart Chamberlain, Dominic, who we've had calls to mention in this series and indeed in the episode that we did on the rise of the Nazis. So he is British, but he becomes actually in 1916. So during the First World War, he becomes a naturalized German subject and he is vehemently anti-Semitic and the Mitford sisters grandfather translates

his book, the foundations of the 19th century into English. So he'd written it in German. So, you know, there's a bit of history there. Her paternal grandmother was the sister of clementine churchill's mother so the woman who clementine who marries winston churchill yeah so so that's an additional part of the mix and the mitford sisters in fact often go to chartwell to see cousin winston and churchill wasn't particularly interested in most of the Mitford sisters, although he admired Diana, who was by some way the most beautiful. And Randolph, his son, has a massive, massive crush on Diana, as pretty much everyone in London society does. So their grandfather on their mother's side, he was also an absolutely massive anti-Semite. He goes on a journey through the Holy Land, goes to Jerusalem, and he says of the Jews, if they have been expelled from jerusalem they are the rulers of london paris and berlin and his daughter so

that the mother of the mitfords sydney seems to have inherited this instinctive anti-semitism although she was a great admirer of the mosaic dietary laws because she firmly believed that jews never got cancer and attributed this to their not eating pork or shellfish. So she... That's a very unusual medical opinion, isn't it? Yes. Yes. So their father, David, who in Nancy Mitford's pursuit of love is Uncle Matthew, you know, hates foreigners, damn foreigners, all that kind of thing.

So he becomes lord reedsdale when his his brother dies in the in the first world war so he's the younger son but inherits the title because his brother dies he is a spectacularly hopeless investor so every investment he makes goes wrong and at one point he um decides to go gold prospecting in canada so he buys a gold mine at a place called Swastika. You couldn't make that up, could you? It'd be on parody. He goes out there with Sydney, his wife,

and there Sydney conceives their fourth daughter and fifth child, who, when she is born, is given the name not just of Unity, but of Valkyrie. So after Di Valkyrie. Yeah. On the recommendation of her paternal grandfather. So she is unity Valkyrie Mitford. And so all of this is giving her a certain pedigree, a certain heritage. So she is one of seven children. So the oldest is Nancy in 1903, Pamela in 1907, Pamela is the boring one. Tom, 1909, he's the male one. Diana in 1910,

she's the beautiful one. And then there is a gap of four years. And so Unity is born in 1914 during the first world war, which makes the fact that she's given this name of Valkyrie all the more extraordinary. And then you have Jessica who comes to be known as Deca and then Deborah, who comes to be known as Debo. So it's an amazing accumulation of children. And all of them will have astonishing careers, which is why they are objects of such popular fascination. But I think for our purposes, by miles, the most interesting one is Unity, because she goes even further than Diana.

Even further than Diana, who's actually married the leader of the British Union of Fascists. And in fact, because Unity, Jessica and Deborah are born, you know, several years after Diana, they are kind of grouped together as the young girls. And so they all slightly live in Diana's shadow. Diana is incredibly beautiful, incredibly glamorous. And so Unity, I think in particular, feels that she has to show off if she is going to make a mark. And so that's what she does. And her character is enhanced by the fact that compared to the other girls, she is very big bone. She's very galumphing. Statuesque, you might want to say. And she has these kind of incredibly large, baleful eyes. And she developed the technique of sitting at table slowly shoveling mashed potato

into her mouth gazing at her father and her father would become more and more furious by this and he'd bellow at her stop staring at me and she would continue to stare at him then he would absolutely explode and she would slide under the table and stay there and refuse to come out and she obviously took a pleasure in rousing her father to a condition of absolute fury. And I think there's a sense in which of all the girls, she is perhaps the most difficult to handle. So the Reesdales, like a lot of aristocratic families at this time, did not approve of sending their daughters to school. They saw that as vulgar. Nancy Mitford said of her father that he thought one got thick calves from playing hockey. He didn't want that at all.

Yeah. But they find unity so stressful to have around that they do actually send her to school. And on both occasions, she ends up being expelled. And the final time she's 17, Lord Reesdale himself goes to the school to try and persuade the headmistress to take her back. And the headmistress refuses. Right. Meanwhile, as unity is kind of going to school being expelled

coming out of school wondering what to do diana is out there she is a society beauty she's a bright young thing um she's married brian guinness who's fabulously rich evelyn war is dedicating bodies to her and for unity you can see that this makes her even more glamorous than she'd been uh when they were children and she kind of like a moth drawn to a a flame she immediately starts hanging out with diana yeah and thinking you know this is the person who i want to impress so 1932 she comes out which doesn't mean that she doesn't have the connotation that it has today. It means that she joins this kind of circle of gals who are upper class, who are being presented at the court, who are circulating around various dances and parties and so on with the aim of meeting a handsome young man. But Unity, she cuts a tremendous dash.

So the Daily Express in the summer of 1932 uh comments on her that she was the prettiest girl right because it's a bit like red carpets today people are interested in debutantes devs as they're called yes um but unity is i think an intimidating figure to men she's she's very as i said statuesque. She has a fondness for stunts. She has a rat, Ratchela, which she keeps in her handbag. And at dances, she will take it out and stroke it. That's very Ron Weasley behavior, Tom, for our Harry Potter listeners. She also has a snake called Enid.

And the story goes is that she kind of will on occasion wear it instead of a necklace. Now, I'm not entirely convinced whether that's true. These stories seem to come from her younger sister, Jessica, who is prone to exaggeration. And the simple reason I'm hesitant about that, applying all my historical acumen, is that I think rats and snakes don't necessarily get on well. Well, Theo, our producer says this is all very Nazi behavior. I mean, this is very kind of Nazis in an Indiana Jones film. Except that at this point, Unity still has absolutely no interest in politics, let alone in fascism. Right. But 1932 is the year in which Diana Guinness, as she is by this point, starts her affair with Oswald Mosley.

And Unity is kind of coming along in the train. So that actually, you know, they all go to a ball hosted by Lady Rothschild, who is obviously a very significant Jewish society figure. Neither Diana nor Unity have any problem with this at all. But by October 32, Mosley is starting to go full fascist. So he's putting on the black shirts, he's holding his rallies. You know, we talked about this in the previous episode. Exactly. Yes. Meanwhile, Unity is, she's still oblivious to this she's become an art student she actually seems to be very good at art and you could imagine her becoming a kind of bohemian figure a posh bohemian figure yeah i love posh bohemian figures as you know tom

i know you do dominic i know you do but we talked in the previous episode how Moseley's wife, Simi, who is the daughter of Lord Curzon, even as Oswald Moseley is having his affair with Diana, she falls very dangerously ill. So she has a burst appendix. Moseley goes to hospital with her, spends the morning with her, then goes out and has lunch with Diana. And Unity is with Diana. And she is immediately besotted with him idolizes him calls him the leader joins the fascists and becomes actually you know you were saying that she's not out there walking the streets actually she does start walking the streets she starts selling the black shirt on the streets of oxford she takes it quite seriously yeah although seriousness with

the mitfords is always relative so there's a brilliant account by Anthony Rumbold, who's the son of Horace Rumbold, who was ambassador to Germany in the buildup to the Nazis taking power. And he goes down to Swinbrook, the Mitford estate. Which is lovely, by the way. Swinbrook is a beautiful village. David Cameron went there with François Hollande for a pint. So if you go to the pub, there's pictures in the wall of Cameron Hollande. Yeah, I bet he did. Anyway, so Unity is there with Jessica, the communist, and the two girls set on this poor chap, Anthony Rumbold, and say, are you a fascist or a communist?

And he says, well, I'm neither. I believe in democracy. And they answer, how wet? Oh, God. Which is very, very Mitford. So actually Unity seems to, you know, she's thrown herself wholeheartedly into fascism in exactly the way that her younger sister, Jessica has become an absolutely committed Stalinist. They're both very into their respective dictatorial figures. But I think there is a sense in which for unity that the trudging around streets selling

fascist magazines is already becoming boring and she is already thinking i want to go beyond what you know diana has by this point has bagged oswald mosley they haven't got married but they're clearly together she's thinking how can i go one better than diana and of course you know diana has her fascist leader but there's an even more significant fascist leader who unity decides to go after so just before we get onto that can i just ask a sort of slightly serious question i mean this is such a these are such unserious people i think that it seems weird to ask a serious question but i'll do it anyway so we talked a little bit early in the episode about other aristocrats who are drawn to fascism because of fear, because of their kind of paranoia and whatnot.

With Unity Mitford, you haven't mentioned her at any point reading a book, for example. Is she somebody who is, this is frivolity that has got completely out of hand, the frivolity of evil, or is there any seriousness and genuine ideological commitment to this at all? I think at this stage, it's absolutely frivolity, a desire to shock. I think with Diana, who's very bright, very well-read, very, very smart, I think it is thought through. I think that she commits herself to Oswald Mosley, not just because he's incredibly good looking and charismatic, but also because she completely comes to believe in what he's saying. So she is a thinker. Unity is not a thinker.

It seems to be much more instinctive. So Nancy Mitford, the eldest of the Mitford girls who will become very famous novelist, one of her novels, she gives a portrait of Unity as a fascist and compares her to the suffragettes, says that in an earlier earlier age her yearning for a cause the sense that she wants to be part of something bigger than herself might well have led her to campaign for votes for women yeah and i think that maybe you know a few decades later she might have become a kind of marianne faithful equivalent she might have become she's gone out of mcjaggott posh groupie yes yeah exactly so i think that she is looking for kind of charismatic men. I think she's looking for excitement. She wants to shock. I mean, I think all these kind of elements that you can see very much in the way that people behave in the 60s, I think it's already there in the 30s, which may well be why people, you know, through the 60s and into the present day identify with the Mitford so strongly. There's something quite 60s about their whole

attitude. But obviously with unity, it goes in a very, very dark direction. And she gets her opportunity to meet Hitler because in August 1933, she travels to Nuremberg as part of a delegation of British fascists that actually includes William Joyce, who will go on to become Lord Haw Haw again, who we talked about in earlier episodes. And at Nuremberg, Unity sees Hitler. And she says of him, the first moment I saw him, I knew there was no one I would rather meet. Right. Very good. Love at first sight. Lovely voice. So she goes back to England. And this is when Nancy spoofs her because she is going around mooning over Hitler

in the way that she might have done in the 60s over Mick Jagger so she is giving the Hitler salute to everyone you know she'll go down to the post office click her heels and say hi Hitler and it's all very odd and for say for Jessica her younger sister who's the communist who you think would be vehemently opposed to this. On one level she is, but it's still a bit of a game. It's like they've kind of chosen their rival pop stars. You know, Unity's chosen Mick Jagger. Jessica's chosen Paul McCartney.

And this obsession leads to her the following year. So in the spring of 1934, going to Munich, where she knows Hitler has his main base. And she enrolls in a language school right next door to the Nazi headquarters. And she is joined by Diana. All that summer, all that autumn, she spends hanging out in the Osteria Bavaria, as described by Rudolf Hess. She goes to the Nuremberg rallies, you know, again, a bit like going to a Glastonbury or something, get caught up in the excitement of the crowd. She's wearing her black shirt. She becomes an object of absolute fascination to all the SS officers. You know, this very Valkyrie-like, fascist, blonde aristocrat in her fascist uniform.

She's advised by them, don't wear too much makeup. Hitler doesn't like makeup. So she watches that very carefully. 10 months after she started going to the Osteria, Bavaria, finally someone comes over and says the Fuhrer would like to meet you. She goes over to hang out with Hitler and she writes to her father, to Lord Reesdale, it was the most wonderful and beautiful day of my life. I mean, what on earth is going on in her head when she's meeting Hitler, when she's hanging around with these people who already at this stage, for the avoidance of doubt, who already steeped in violence and in bloodshed and have made no secret of their, I mean, frankly, anyone who's read Mein Kampf or Hitler's speeches in the 1920s will know, and we discussed this on our Rise of the Nazis series, they have made no secret of their general societal ambitions. So what on earth is she thinking? So she does have a copy of Mein Kampf signed by Hitler and also signed by pretty much every other luminary in the Third Reich, like a kind of autograph book. The question of what she's thinking, so Nancy Mitford, who remained devoted to her, even though Nancy was very much on the left, she wrote later about

unity that with her, the whole Nazi thing seemed to be a joke. She was great fun. She used to drive around Central Europe in a uniform with a gun. Unity was absolutely unpolitical. No one knew less about politics than she did. That is the classic posh dilettante's get out. Oh, it's great fun. We knew nothing about politics. So I think there is an element of that. I think there is an element. Oh, it's all tremendous laugh. And if, you know, and if people are shocked, then so much the better. I think there is also undoubtedly a sense of kind of erotic fascination, particularly with the SS and the family nanny, who rejoices in the splendid name of Bloor, she says, I do wish you wouldn't keep going to Germany, darling. All those men. So she certainly identified something that's going on. or it's all just a tremendous laugh, or she's doing it to shock, does not excuse her. Because she goes full in on the darkest aspects of Nazism. She knows that if she's going to keep

Hitler's attention, she has to keep herself kind of absolutely within his gaze. She has to nail her colours to the Nazi mast. And so she does this by taking up with a man who, even by the standards of the Nazis, is a monster, Julius Streicher, who edits De Sturmer, the stormtrooper. A man who, you know, shaven head, moustache, looks like a thug. And, you know, to put it into context, at the Nuremberg trials, the other Nazis kind of avoided Streicher because they regarded him not merely as vulgar, but as they regarded him as a monster. I mean, that's the kind of person we're talking about. Yes. And also quite a lot of people in Britain from her aristocratic circle say, but he's so common. But I think there's an element in which the Mitfords are so posh that that doesn't bother them. You can imagine George Orwell, for instance, tying himself up

in knots about this, feeling incredibly embarrassed for the for the mitfeds there's a sense in which the fact that so many of the nazis are very non-you yeah to use nancy mitfeds terminology you and non-you you is acceptable seven percent of the population and non-you is the other 93 so unity feels absolutely no requirement to kind of compromise with her own upper class mores or or behavior because she knows that actually people like Stryker will love that. So there's a kind of sense of a commonality between the upper classes and the lower classes that again, someone like Orwell would never be able to buy into. He'd be far too embarrassed about it. So unity goes in big with Stryker who is, you know, in charge of the press. So it's

quite a significant figure for Moseley. And so when Moseley gives a speech in Leicester, Stryker sends him a telegram saying, you know, congratulations, I very much approve of the speech you gave. And Moseley sends him a telegram back saying the power of Jewish corruption must be destroyed in all countries before peace and justice can be successfully achieved in Europe. So he's going in big on the antisemitism as well. And actually intriguingly, that apparently was not quoted in the Lord Skidowski biography. can be successfully achieved in Europe. So he's going in big on the anti-Semitism as well. And actually, intriguingly, that apparently was not quoted in the Lord Skidowski biography. It was quoted in the David Price Jones biography of unity, caused quite a stir.

But I mean, Mosley definitely sent it. And there's a sense in which unity is acting as a broker between the significant power players in Nazi Germany and the British Union of Fascists. And it's interesting that this is the exact point when Mosley is beginning, 1934 or so, 1935, Mosley is going all in on the antisemitism himself, something that he hadn't really mentioned in 1932 when he set up the British Union of Fascists. So I wonder whether his sister-in-law, presumably his wife, they're all in this atmosphere of increasing anti-Semitism.

I think Diana and mostly definitely less so. And you can tell that because you just have to look at what Unity is doing, who is going full in. So she writes a letter to Der Sturmer in which she says, we urgently need a publication like Sturmer to tell the people the truth. They will soon see it is to be hoped that in England too, we shall be victorious over the world enemy in spite of his cunning. So she's talking about the Jews there. We look forward to the day on which we shall declare with full power and might, England for the English, Jews out, with German greetings, Heil Hitler, unity Mitford. P.S. If you should happen to find room in your paper for this letter, please print my name in full. I do not want my letter initialed UM, for everyone should know that I am a Jew-hater. So she is absolutely pinning her colors to the mast. And Stryker, when he prints this letter, which he does, he blazes it over his newspaper. He also makes sure to tell his readers that unity is related

to Winston Churchill. and this makes her incredibly newsworthy in britain in germany and of course it achieves exactly what unity wants it to achieve namely it gives her credibility with hitler well tom before we started i said i made it very clear to you that i disapproved very strongly of the mitfords and i'm i have to say that nothing you've said in the last half hour has changed that position one iota. In fact, I hate them even more than I did before we started. So on that bombshell, I think we should take a break and we will return after the break to find out what happened to Unity Mitford, her relationship with Hitler. And Tom, you will be able to solve, I hope, one of history's most intriguing mysteries. We love a mystery on The Rest is

History, don't we? Did Unity Mitford have Hitler's child? Wait a minute. What kind of espresso drinks does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this because you could have just made your espresso at home. Shop now at KitchenAid.ca. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free

listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. 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, Hitler felt happier with her around. So that, Tom, is Laura Thompson in Take Six Girls, The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. So this is the real core of the story, isn't it? Unity Mitford's relationship with Adolf Hitler. And the extraordinary thing is that this posh airhead, who you might think has nothing to offer at all, becomes part of Hitlerler's inner circle yeah

so laura thompson's book is brilliant it's about all as the title implies it's about all the mitford sisters and she is much more generous to unity than david price jones is in his biography both of them are agreed that uh almost certainly there wasn't a sexual relationship between Hitler and therefore the entire premise of this episode has been destroyed. No, we'll come to the story that maybe Unity was carrying Hitler's love child later in the episode. But for now, let's act on the assumption that there's a platonic quality to Unity's relationship with Hitler. If that's the case, then what is going on? I think Laura Thompson absolutely fixes on it, which is that Hitler is charmed. So Laura Thompson talks about all the Mitford sisters having this yearning towards lightness,

which I think is a kind of wonderful phrase. Even when you're going into the dark, they speak the language of the nursery. They talk to people with utmost confidence that everyone is going to be interested in what they have to say. And so that means that Unity perhaps is relaxed with Hitler in a way that very few people are, because most people are either terrified of him or desperate for something. But Unity has already got what she wants.

She wants to hang out with him. And so now she can just kind of prattle away using all her kind of nursery language. Dear sweet Hitler. Is that what she calls him? The blissful Fuhrer. Yes. Oh, God.

Am I right in thinking, Tom? I read in your notes, she encourages Hitler to do impressions. She does. Yes. So she gets him to tell jokes and she gets him to do impressions, particularly of Mussolini, which apparently she finds so funny. So it's evident that Hitler is able to kind of relax with her and to be a tremendous laugh.

All his impressions, all his gags flowing out in a way that normally, you know, doesn't associate with the dear, dear Fuhrer. So definitely unity amuses him. But I think there is also a sense he feels that she has been sent by fate because of the fact that her middle name is Valkyrie, because she was born in in swastika because her forebears are such significant figures in the history of anti-semitism he feels you know what are the odds that this girl would come from Britain with all these markers and he's quite superstitious you know he's the man of destiny I think that there's a slight element of that as well and so he he gives her considerable marks of favor so he gives her a gold swastika badge with his signature engraved on the back that are given to very, very few people.

He invites both Unity and Diana. So Unity introduces Diana to him. And you can imagine what a thrill that must have given the younger sister to introduce the glamorous elder sister to the Fuhrer. They get given splendid seats at the Olympic games. Hitler, rather naughtily, sits her next to Eva Braun, who is incredibly jealous and in fact stages a suicide attempt to try and get attention. And Hitler promptly does pay attention to Eva Braun. And so that again kind of alerts unity to the fact that melodrama and histrionics, this is how you keep hitler um interested i think unity is also playing a a kind of political role in a very gauche clumsy way because she is unbelievably indiscreet so anything she's told she will blab so hitler knows this so he can use her basically to communicate with upper class

circles in britain so there's an occasion where he he lets slip that he's crossed with Mussolini. Unity immediately reports that to all her contacts back in London. And before you know it, Foreign Office and Number 10 are buzzing with possibilities for peeling Hitler off Mussolini. And likewise, she's very indiscreet about what she's heard in London. So she tells Hitler that according to Randolph Churchill, London has no air def defenses. I mean, and this is verging on the treasonous. I don't think she thinks of it in those terms, but she is blabbing away. And I think what unity, what she is very patriotic. She's very, you know, she's very proud to be British, but she also loves Germany. She loves her darling Fuhrer.

And I think she wants Britain and Germany to be in an alliance. And it may be that at the margins of her thoughts, she's thinking that she perhaps could play a role if perhaps the darling Fuhrer would marry her, you know, a kind of dynastic alliance. So as a school girl, she had told a friend of hers, her ambition when she grew up was to become the power behind a mighty throne. So perhaps there's an element of that i mean just to put that into context before the first world war the british elite had been very very pro-german people had loved traveling to german holiday when we did that podcast about holidays and people get those terrible spas all of that kind of thing people love german literature they love german philosophy you know intelligent thinking people and between the wars there are lots of people it's rather like

lord darlington and kazuya shiguro's novel the remains of the day people who think gosh the first of all was such a tragedy a friendship between britain and germany you know they're so like us they're so highbrow the germans tremendous culture all that sort of stuff so actually unity she's a very outlandish version of this yeah but there'd be lots of aristocrats back in britain and an intelligent well-educated people who would say yes britain and germany should be friends and actually should be the two great pillars of the world order and all this kind of stuff and the mitfords are all fascinated by germany with the exception of nancy who's a tremendous francophile and her fascination with power you know she goes to live in paris she has a famous romance

with a colonel in the the free french and she is making a statement there that she is not part of this obsession with germany that has shaded into overt sympathy with with fascism and nazism because diana is not the only member of her family who unity introduces to hitler so she gets her parents over lord reedsdale, aka Uncle Matthew, famous for thinking, you know, once a hun, always a hun. He's immediately charmed by Hitler. So also is Lady Reedsdale, who the first time she meets Hitler, despite not speaking German, she lectures him on the best way to make bread. Lord Reedsdale is completely won over by Hitler and he goes to the House of Lords and defends the Anschluss.

Lady Reesdale goes even further, goes back, starts writing articles overtly in favor of Hitler, becomes very hostile to Churchill, calls him that wicked man, becomes devoted to the protocols of the elders of Zion. That very sinister text, you know, all the darkest anti-Semitic tropes and kind of writes too true and i always said so in the margin oh so lady reestel is going full in meanwhile of course there's diana uh hitler is very taken with diana as well very handsome and describes diana in unity as perfect examples of aryan womanhood and diana in turn is able to smooth the way for mosley so they go over to germany and they actually get married in goebbels drawing room even though goebbels doesn't like them hitler insists on it and hitler is at the wedding unity interestingly isn't because it's still the wedding has to be kept secret at this point and they know that if unity's there she'll blab she'll tell

everybody but of course hitler and mosley didn't think much of each other did they because we were talking a previous episode about whether mosley would have been the british fuhrer i don't know if the nazis invaded britain or something and actually hitler and mosley held each other in quite low regard but i think there's a sense of you know alpha males kind of squaring up right and so the uh again this is part of the the social dynamic of what's going on i mean it's like a kind of very dark social comedy so pamela the second mitford sister she meets hitler describes him as being like an old farmer in a brown suit and she goes on to marry a fascist sympathizer who nevertheless serves very bravely in the war tom the uh the the only son he he meets hitler and

his sympathies with Germany and by extension, Nazism are such that he insists on serving against the Japanese where he dies in the war in Burma. Deborah, who is very, very apolitical, but she goes and meets him. In fact, the only members of the family who don't meet Hitler are Nancy and Jessica, the communist. And Violet Hammersley, who was a family friend of the she wrote to Nancy and said you Mitfords you do like dictators which is obviously very true but obviously for aristocratic people like the Mitfords to go back to your thing about class as well Tom they would regard democracy and sort of non-violence and stuff they'd regard them as awful vulgar suburban middle-class values wouldn't? No, I don't think so.

Not necessarily. I mean, Deborah Debo, who goes on to marry the man who in due course becomes the Duke of Devonshire. I mean, she's a kind of classic conservative. Yeah, but the others, but Diana, Unity, they would think of them as middle-class and bourgeois and boring. And they would think of dictators as fun, wouldn't they? They love dressing up. Isn't that wonderful?

Yes, I think that's true. And I think that that hence the phrase frivolity of evil. But I think if you are tempted by that to think there isn't really any harm being done, there are dimensions to unity's behavior that I think are completely shocking. So this terrible story is told that she comes back from Germany and she tells her siblings how in Germany she'd met an old woman who was very obviously Jewish, loaded down with lots of bags. And the woman asks Unity the way to the railway station. And Unity, I told her the wrong way because I saw how heavy the bundle was. Wasn't that wonderful of me?

Oh, what a monster. What a monster. And here is a former friend of Unity's who'd been at art college with her. Once she boasted that it was such fun to have supper with Stryker as you'd have the Jews in after the meal they'd be brought up from the cellar and be made to eat grass that entertained the guests oh Tom this is very bad form I mean this is there's there's no um no there's nothing funny about that at all and so she becomes increasingly notorious in England so there's um a famous ditty is published in one of the papers about her you can't criticize Unity with impunity if If you try to belittle her, you have to answer to Hitler. She gets caught up in a riot in Hyde Park,. And she stays committed to Hitler,

even as it becomes increasingly evident that Britain is going to be going to war with Germany. So 1939, she goes to Bayreuth, the festival there with Diana. And Hitler basically says to them, look, you should get out of Germany because we are going to be going to war. And Diana duly goes back home,

but unity stays there. And maybely goes back home but unity stays there and maybe one of the reasons why unity stays there and a very physical evidence both of Hitler's favor and of her desire to become German is that Hitler has given her a flat so he had given her a choice of four flats in Munich she'd gone around she'd chosen the one that she wanted went around the house saying oh these curtains won't do at all. We must get rid of this awful sofa. Meanwhile, the two people who are being dispossessed, both of whom are Jewish, are sitting in the hallway sobbing. She pays them no attention at all. So this is the background to the most famous incident in her life, which is when war is declared.

Britain declares war on germany she goes she's in munich she's in her flat that where she's living that's been taken from the jewish couple she goes to the english garden in munich uh she has a very small caliber kind of pearl handle pistol she shoots herself through the head cracking but the bullet is isn't sufficiently you know it's a small caliber bullet so it doesn doesn't kill her. She's found, she's bundled into an ambulance, taken to the hospital. She's recognized. Hitler sends her flowers, Goebbels, Ribbentrop, they all send her flowers. And on the 10th of September, you know, even as the war with Britain is in its opening weeks, Hitler finds time to come and visit her. And she doesn't recognize him because she's mentally shot. And as she comes to, she tries to commit suicide a second time by swallowing

her swastika badge, but that doesn't work. And it's only after six weeks that she recaptures her ability to speak. And on the 8th of November, Hitler comes again. It's the last time they meet. And Hitler says, you know, what do you want? Do you want to stay here? Or do you want to be sent back to England? And she says, I would like to go back to England and so he arranges for her to be taken to Bern in neutral Switzerland and the phony war is still on so it's perfectly possible for her to be taken by rail from Switzerland all the way back to England so her mother and Debo her younger sister go and get her I, it must have been hideous for her that, you know, being jolted along the bullet in her head. When she arrives in Folkestone,

there's a kind of tremendous scandal because there seem to be armed guards everywhere. And this will become the subject of much public criticism. And it's uncertain whether the armed guards are there to stop people from looking at her or whether they're just coincidental. But there is this feeling that she is getting special treatment that would not be afforded to other people. To protect her from the crowds and the press, presumably. Yes. And so in the comments, Herbert Morrison, who will of course go on to become Home Secretary in the coalition government, he describes her as a British subject who had been openly assisting the cause of an enemy government and asks, would a working class person receive similar treatment? Well, he's right. Yeah, he is absolutely right.

Think about the cases of British citizens, British subjects. Yeah, Shamima Begum. Who have been, you know, working with the Islamic State or whatever. I think Unity Mitford should have been dropped into the channel from a great height, personally. Well, so lots of people do, but she isn't. She goes to the Radcliffe in Oxford. There, they say there's no chance of extracting the bullet from her brain.

And so she is left, essentially, it's said, the mental age of a 10-year-old, a bright 10-year-old. She's left permanently incontinent. She's kind of described by people as a kind of large dog. She's shambolic. She's kind of her limbs going everywhere. She's like a kind of, you know as a kind of large dog. She's shambolic. She's kind of her limbs going everywhere. She's like a kind of, you know, a big, an enormous puppy. Tom, just on the suicide attempt.

The suicide attempt is the day that Britain declares war on Germany. Is that right? The 3rd of September. And this is because it's not just that her two beloved countries are going to war with each other. But is it also that she has been proved so comprehensively wrong that all her silly who knows daydreams and fantasies uh oh we just don't know we just haven't is there any sense of guilt before she does it i mean she never says she never really talks about it does she remember it nobody knows and i i i don't know i'm guessing it's the tension you know all her dreams were vested in this dream of this alliance between Britain and Germany.

But anyway, basically, to cut a long story short, she never really recovers. And in due course, she gets meningitis and dies at the age of 33. So I think in 1948. So yes, after the war, she's never in prison. So unlike her sister, Diana, who gets locked up in Holloway, she's never imprisoned. On her parents, her parents, they split up in the war, didn't they? They do, because the moment that Britain declares war on Germany, Lord Reesdale, who is an absolute patriot, swings behind the British war effort, goes back to thinking that the Huns are beastly. Lady Reesdale doesn't. Lady Reesdale remains an enthusiast for Hitler. Yeah. And, you know, succession of tragedies over one. So they split up. Jessica, the communist

sister, has gone to America. She doesn't come back. She, you know, kind of absolute sense of rupture between her and her parents. Tom dies in Burma. And then you have the death of Unity in 1948 of meningitis. And the question, Tom, which Theo, our producer, desperately wants you to answer, is whether she was carrying Hitler's child when she returned to Britain. Right. So this was a theory that was prompted by the release of declassified documents in 2002, which quoted an MI5 officer called Guy Liddell, who said, we had no evidence to support the press allegations that she was in a serious state of health, and it might well be that

she was brought in on a stretcher in order to avoid publicity and unpleasantness to her family. So that led to the theory that she'd never actually shot herself. And if she'd never shot herself, why did Hitler let her go away? And so the theory that then came that actually she was burying his child. This is how she came back. And Martin Bright, who was the political editor of the New Statesman at the time, he received a phone call from a woman who claimed that Unity Mitford had gone to a private maternity hospital in Oxford. And so putting two and two together and coming up with eight. The theory was that Unity Mitford had Hitler's love child, that this child was then taken away, brought for fostering. And therefore, Dominic, the Hitler dynasty may be roaming the Cotswolds, even as you sit there now. I mean, frankly, if you met some people from the Cotswolds, you wouldn't be entirely surprised.

Well, there you go. So I think it's unlikely. Let's put it like that. It seems very unlikely to me. Well, I don't think any Hitler biographer would give this theory the slightest house room, would they? Or indeed, I think many Mitford scholars either. And the fact that there are Mitford scholars, the fact that they are the subject of such enduring fascination, I think is interesting because I think there is a sense that what both Unity and Diana did, as I said, it's become part of the heritage industry. And I think the reason for that is basically that Nancy Mitford, when she wrote The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, these are such brilliant novels, such an affectionate rendering of her upbringing. And

she takes elements of her various sisters and folds them into characters within the narrative that it's made the fascist affiliations of both diana and unity seem something eccentric something glamorous i think glamorous there's the glamour of evil i think that's as horrible as that sounds especially when you hear the stories of unit's behavior yeah so with unity you have the you know that her early death and with lady mostly have the fact that she remained stunningly beautiful right the way up to the end. So Laura Thompson in her wonderful book describes her in her final years, a tall wraith

like a long exquisite wisp of grey white smoke, entirely beautiful at the age of 90. Well she would be appearing on these chat shows Tom wouldn't she in the 1970s, 1980s? Well Dominic I'll read you what she said on Desert Island Discs when Sue Lawley the presenter asked her about the holocaust and whether she believed in the six million figure and her reply i don't really i'm afraid believe that six million people

were killed i think this is just not conceivable it's too many but whether it's six or whether it's one makes no difference morally it's completely wrong i think it was a dreadfully wicked thing so that's pretty mind-blowing i mean, sure, she's acknowledging that Hitler did wicked things, but she is engaging in Holocaust denial on the BBC's premiere radio interview show. Yeah. In 1989. It's extraordinary. And actually, I mean, neither Lady Mosley nor Sir Oswald ever really seemed to have been crippled by guilt or had any sense of guilt or regret or any of these things. And I think with Diana, it's precisely because

she absolutely holds to her devotion to Oswald Moseley. And also because they both have this sort of aristocratic, this bumptious self-confidence, don't they? They don't ever think, you know, again, it would be bourgeois and suburban to say, oh, I feel sorry I've made mistakes and all these kinds of things. They have this kind of invincible assurance self-assurance i mean we left mosley just to wrap up his story we left mosley in prison didn't we in um in the second world war he was released on medical grounds in november 1943 and actually the rest of his story his life is kind of an irrelevance really he's released's released, he's kind of a toxic figure. He sets up something called the Union Movement, arguing, bizarrely as it may sound, for European

unity. But it's a sort of, you know, Christian unity against Bolshevism and all this kind of thing. It's kind of the European Union as a kind of disguised fascist bulwark against communism. He then moves into anti-immigration so that it's not so anti-semitic but it's more racist against people who've moved to britain from south asia and the caribbean so that's in the late 1950s he actually stands for election again in north kensington in 1959 and receives eight percent of the vote so this is in an area where there have been racist riots and he still does very badly yeah notting hill so he still does very badly which is a sign of how toxic his reputation

has been the british union of fascists obviously has broken up it goes into eventually into other far-right movements you know the british national party the national front in the 1970s 1980s but i mean ultimately these are quite small organizations that are never remotely likely to win a single parliamentary seat and meanwhile he's gone to paris yes exactly you know a bit like the duke and duchess of windsor yeah and actually his close neighbors the thing that we forget because in the certainly i remember growing up you know oswald mosley was this sort of name he was the symbol of of far- racism, but also he was a ludicrous figure because he was such a failure.

But actually, forget that in the 1920s and 1930s, there were a lot of people who thought he might one day be prime minister, that he was a serious and imaginative political thinker. And then he made those series of stupid gambles, leaving Labour Party the new setting up the new party then the BUF that actually led nowhere because fascism I think in Britain had nowhere to you know it didn't have enough space to expand into because the parliamentary system was too resilient crucially Britain won the first world war so actually it ends up being associated with the eccentric people like the Mitfords and never really wins over middle England I would say what do you think Tom well having done four episodes on it,

saying that fundamentally it wasn't very important is perhaps not the nature of which to end. I think there's a, I think there's a difference between being important and being interesting. Absolutely. Well, so hence, hence unity.

Yeah. I mean, she strikes me, you were so keen to do, I thought you were going to present a kind of revisionist account of the Mitfords, but actually I held them in very, very low regard before we did this.

And I actually held them in lower regard now than i did an hour ago tom so um the people who run the mitford heritage industry you know they should not be ringing to thank you although probably the nature of their story is such that probably there'll be people who listen to this and think i'll go over to that graveyard and swinbrook and check out their graves and well i as i say i think it's all down to nancy who i think was a great great novelist writer and i think that it's testimony to the power of her fiction that um she has cast such a kind of golden luster over the all the other more monstrous sisters she was also an absolutely towering snob so not a friend of the rest is history in my mind mind at least. Okay, Tom, thank you very much.

That was absolutely fascinating. Thank you to everybody for listening. And we will be returning next week on Monday with some absolutely non-fascist themed material. So we will see you then. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.