Unity

The Mitford misfit

The life of Unity Mitford should be the subject of an opera, yet it has become more like the punchline to a sick joke – ‘And then war was declared and she shot herself!’– than the astonishing, murky tragedy that it was.

This is a quote from my book The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. And this post is in reaction to a strange recent story: the ‘discovery’ of Unity Mitford’s diaries. I had intended to publish on Monday, as is usual with my part-paid essays, but that was Holocaust Memorial Day. Not a day for this subject.

Unity’s diaries cover the period between 1935, the year that she met Adolf Hitler, and 1939, when she put a bullet in her brain (she survived the suicide attempt, although from that point her life was effectively over). They have been serialized in the Mail Online and, as I said in a recent Note, I was pretty sceptical at first, there seemed something so hey presto about their appearance… Yet historians and the like have vouched for their authenticity, which they would not do lightly after (for instance) the Hitler diaries debacle. Therefore I suppose I believe in them.

And they are fascinating - how can they not be? They are also, essentially, confirmation of what is already known: Unity’s increasingly manic obsession with Nazi Germany, and more specifically with its leader, whom she met on 139 documented occasions (all written up in red in the diaries, a touch that I did find convincing in its schoolgirlish, Hitler-as-Harry-Styles lunacy). In fact no British person spent more time with the Fuhrer than Unity Mitford. She mingled with the Nazi high command, wrote to her cousin-by-marriage Winston Churchill to tell him how thrilled the Austrians were about the Anschluss, called Brownshirts ‘darling Storms’, and espoused anti-Semitism with a deranged and atrocious fervour.

The diaries are not an explanation, because Unity defies such a thing. Today she would no doubt receive a diagnosis of some kind, as her mental health was clearly impaired, but diagnoses are not really explanations either.

She had first visited Munich in 1933, aged nineteen, with her sister Diana (above, centre; Unity left, Nancy right). Hitler had recently taken power and, according to Diana, ‘he was a very interesting and fascinating man’. The previous year, Diana had left her husband and become the mistress of Oswald Mosley. Unity had joined Mosley’s newly-formed British Union of Fascists, and there was a weird sense in which she sought to ‘outdo’ Diana - the twin influencer, along with Nancy, among the Mitford girls - by getting close to Hitler.

This is the extraordinary thing about the Mitfords - the politicized sisters, that is to say. They were showing off to nanny, sparking competitively, as when Nazi Unity and Communist Jessica were said to have divided up the room that they shared, with swastikas at one end and red flags at the other. At the same time they meant what they did. They were not ‘signalling’. They paid high, hard prices. As a fascist sympathizer and, from 1936, the wife of Mosley, Diana was jailed for more than three years. As a Communist who turned away from privilege and lived in the then slums of Rotherhithe, Jessica lost a baby in a local measles epidemic. And Unity shot herself.

Back in the early 1930s, when she was fangirling over the Nazis, speed-learning German and going back and forth to Munich, she behaved - as another sister, the gloriously sane Deborah, put it - rather like a stalker, sitting in the Fuhrer’s favourite restaurant every lunchtime and waiting for the call to his table. This finally came in February 1935 (‘the most wonderful day of my life’).

In The Six I described that first meeting at the Osteria Bavaria, at which Unity and Hitler talked for half an hour about London, Wagner and his favourite film: Cavalcade. The extract is slightly edited.

‘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 Berschtesgaden. 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….

‘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 – and he may 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 lightly-worn power of 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. 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 Europe are not content merely to chat with a felicitously Aryan-looking 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 direct and powerful connections. 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.’

‘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 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.’ On the Munich side, Hitler’s inner circle were wary - Goebbels especially so, as the diaries confirm - but the Führer himself seems never to have been suspicious of Unity. His instincts must have been acute, and as it happened he was right to be sure of her loyalty, both to Germany and to her own country.’

Unity shot herself, after all, because she could not bear the thought of war between those two beloved nations.