Munich Playground: (Expanded, Annotated) by Ernest R. Pope

Author:Ernest R. Pope [Pope, Ernest R.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: BIG BYTE BOOKS
Published: 2014-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

TEA FOR TWO

As I was walking past the Regina Palace Hotel one afternoon, about a year after Neville Chamberlain had checked out of the hotel upon signing the Munich Conference agreements, I almost bumped into a tall blonde who had just left the Regina beauty parlor.

“Why hello, Unity! Are you back from the Berchtesgaden mountains already?” I exclaimed. “Did you see the write-up I gave you in the Express? Tell me all about your visit and I’ll give you another one.”

“You don’t know the half of it, Ernest Pope, and you never will,” replied Miss Unity Freeman-Mitford, daughter of Great Britain’s Lord Redesdale, sister-in-law of the British Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and former sweetheart of Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler. But she gave me a friendly smile and added, “Excuse me, but I must dash off to have tea with the Gauleiter.”

Nobody will ever know all about the strange affair between the supreme Nazi dictator and this statuesque English girl—the only British woman who has spent weekends on the Ohersalzberg at Berchtesgaden as Hitler’s guest. But I learned quiite a bit about Unity during my frequent encounters with her and her associates in the party capital.

“Next to my wife, Miss Mitford is the most beautiful Nordic woman I have ever seen,” Marshal Hermann Göring once declared. This remark explains in part why, next to Chamberlain, Unity was also the most successful appeaser Hitler ever met. For Lord Redesdale’s daughter was a very selfish person, who used all of her influence over the Führer to prevent a war between Germany and England. Such a war meant the end of her happiness and personal ambitions. When it came in spite of her efforts, Unity faked a suicide attempt, and has not yet recovered from the blow to her own ego.

In Life magazine of March 17, 1941, there is a picture of an embittered, much older-looking Unity. The caption under the photograph reads: “Unity Freeman-Mitford, ‘the woman who trusted Hitler,’ was in Cotswold last fortnight apparently recovered from a mysterious illness which confined her for more than a year. Jilted by Hitler when the war broke, she collapsed, was landed in England with armed escort. Note sagging stockings.” Unity doesn’t care any more. She cannot live the life she gloried in during the prewar days of the Third Reich. From her point of view, it was a wonderful life.

Whenever Unity stayed in Bavaria, I was constantly getting queries from my London chiefs about rumors that Hitler’s English girl friend was about to become a German citizen. Although I knew the answer in advance, I would interview Unity about the matter, and she would always reply “Not this year!” The explanation of her paradoxical reluctance is simple.

Unity Mitford would never consent to becoming a German citizen except as Hitler’s wife. For a while she even hoped secretly that the Führer would propose. Until the Czech crisis in 1938, Adolf openly advocated an Anglo-German entente, in which England was to control the seas, while the Reich, with a “free hand in the East,” was to police the Continent.

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