Nazi Princess (21 page)

Wiedemann’s mission caused a flurry of speculation in the press. The
Daily Express
came out with a full-page article examining Wiedemann’s background, particularly the curious situation Wiedemann and Hitler had found themselves in among the muddy trenches of Flanders. ‘The orderly of Lieutenant Fritz Wiedemann was Lance-Corporal Adolf Hitler,’ the writer C.A. Lyon recalled. ‘Adolf Hitler saluted Lieutenant Wiedemann, clicked his heels, ran across the desert of shell-holes with the message and came back, reported, saluted and clicked his heels again. There was no friendship, that would have been impossible, but there in the trenches Hitler must have conceived an unforgettable respect for his officer.’
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Now the boot was on the other foot. ‘Hitler’s thoughts’ after he achieved supreme power, the article continued, ‘always turned to the man whose errands he had run and whom he admired … It was now the captain who ran the messages and clicked his heels to the lance-corporal.’ Wiedemann was recruited by Hitler as his closest adjutant and promoted to be his ‘listening-post, his contact man, negotiator, a checker-up, a man with a job without a name and without a parallel’. Wiedemann was trusted and Hitler continually found him new jobs to do.

A few months after his abortive trip to London, Fritz Wiedemann was sent to San Francisco to take up the appointment of Consul General. Was this punishment for the failure of his and Princess Stephanie’s mission to establish high-level talks in order to achieve an alliance between Britain and Germany? It certainly seemed like it – but perhaps there were other, more covert reasons.

The award of the Nazi Party Gold Medal was not the only reward Princess Stephanie received ‘for services she rendered to the Führer’. After the Anschluss Hitler directly commanded the Nazi government to put at her disposal one of Austria’s most magnificent mansions: Schloss Leopoldskron, a historic national monument in the southern district of Salzburg, dating from 1736. It is a vast rococo palace famous for its elaborate stucco work, which is regarded at its finest in the castle’s chapel and its vast ceremonial hall. The building had been confiscated by the Gestapo from its owner, the world-famous theatre director Max Reinhardt, on the grounds that he was ‘a person hostile to the people and the state’. He was in fact a Jew.

Reinhardt was among Germany’s greatest actors and theatre directors. He was a co-founder in 1920 of the Salzburg Festival and he used the castle as a glittering location for some of his most lavish stage productions. He used the whole building as his stage, with the audience moving from room to room as the production proceeded. Reinhardt had bought the mansion in 1918 and Leopoldskron was central to the lively social side of the famous festival with numerous patrons from all over Europe. It became a prominent gathering place for writers, artists, composers and designers. Reinhardt spent twenty years renovating the building and its famous Great and Marble Halls, and creating a library, a Venetian Room and also an outdoor theatre in the extensive gardens. In 1933 the Nazis offered Reinhardt ‘honorary Aryanship’, probably because Hitler admired great theatre. But Reinhardt vehemently rejected the offer. In October 1937, having criticised Hitler and been the victim of a bomb attack at Leopoldskron, he left his homeland and travelled to America as an immigrant. The grounds of the schloss, which have magnificent views to the Alps, were in the limelight again in 1965 when they featured in the film
The Sound of Music
.

Following its confiscation by the Nazis, the castle and its estate were offered personally by Hitler to the princess for use as a home and a ‘political salon’. She was given the task of transforming it into a guest house for prominent artists of the Reich, and as grand reception accommodation convenient to Hitler’s home at the Berghof, some 10 miles away. The intermediary, who made all the actual arrangements on behalf of the Nazi leadership, was the princess’ lover. The actress Helene Thimig, who later married Max Reinhardt in the United States, when she heard of the gift to Stephanie, wrote in fury: ‘What a macabre joke: Reinhardt’s creation – now a palace for the Nazis! And this Aryanised palace has been placed under the management of the Jewish Princess von Hohenlohe.’
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Despite the care and money Reinhardt had lavished on it, Princess Stephanie, as the new chatelaine and using Nazi funds, had extensive works carried out to match her own needs and to make it more suitable for the use the Nazis now required. She planned to hold large receptions there which would enable her to continue her work of lobbying and manipulating influential people from across Europe in support of Nazi policies even more effectively. To do this, extravagant catering facilities were installed. Also, to allow her to pursue her passion for tennis, she had a court built, and the castle’s extensive gardens remodelled. The considerable costs of all this were paid by the central government in Berlin. Wiedemann, who was agent for payment of the bills, commented that the Führer had said the renovations would increase the value of the schloss, and contribute to the tasks he wanted Stephanie to fulfil. As the mansion was now state owned, Hitler felt it was money well spent. In 1939, when Wiedemann had left Germany for his posting to San Francisco, the Reich Party Leader, Martin Bormann, took over as intermediary, paying all the bills at the princess’ request.

Princess Stephanie was by now not the most popular person in Austria, the country of her birth. After the Anschluss her fellow countrymen judged her critically, knowing her background and her close friendship with Hitler. She was not well liked in Salzburg, particularly after being installed as the chatelaine at Schloss Leopoldskron. To help her gain the support of the local authorities, and to demonstrate that she had powerful friends in Berlin and was carrying out Hitler’s direct orders, Wiedemann gave her an official note, signed ‘Adjutant to the Führer’. Dated 10 June 1938, it read:

Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe is personally known to the Führer. She has at all times stood up for the new Germany abroad in a manner worthy of recognition. I therefore ask all German authorities concerned with domestic and foreign affairs to take every opportunity to show her the special appreciation that we owe to foreigners who speak up so emphatically for today’s Germany.
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Whenever she was at Leopoldskron, Stephanie invited a number of French, British and American guests with a view to winning them over to Hitler’s regime, particularly by impressing them with the cultural and artistic events Salzburg offered. Goebbels was at pains to ensure that the famous Salzburg Festival should become a cultural pilgrimage dedicated to Hitler’s Reich, and the schloss was an important symbol of this. It fulfilled the role of luxury guest house for important visitors whose support and influence the Nazi state wished to win. It was conveniently close to Hitler’s and Goering’s Bavarian mountain homes on the Obersalzberg, just over the border in Germany. During the long, hot summer of 1938 numerous guests were entertained at the mansion: princes, European aristocracy, statesmen, bankers, and many from the worlds of music and the theatre. The princess was in her element as hostess and the Führer’s ambassador.

Among those she entertained were the famous American conductor Leopold Stokowski, the theatre critic Philip Carr and the wife of a prominent New York art dealer, Mrs Carroll Carstairs. Others who enjoyed her hospitality included Charles Bedaux, who, it will be recalled, had been instrumental with Stephanie in organising the visit to Germany of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Stephanie revelled in having charge of the schloss, with its extravagant furnishings and spacious grounds. It suited the style she loved to portray and it certainly impressed all those who visited her there, but she was disappointed Hitler himself never came to visit her at the mansion the Nazis had stolen from its legitimate owners. Germany’s ambassador to Britain, Herbert von Dirksen (after Ribbentrop he became Hitler’s Foreign Minister), did however visit the princess there on several occasions. He was a well-travelled man, skilled in diplomacy and an expert in foreign affairs, having also been the German emissary in Tokyo and Moscow.

While she was at Schloss Leopoldskron, Stephanie was primed by the Reich Chancellery to influence the British politician Lord Runciman. In 1938 he had been appointed by the British government as its official mediator in the dispute between the Czech and German governments over the Sudetenland. The western border regions of Czechoslovakia were largely populated by ethnic Germans. Under the pro-Nazi Sudeten leader, Konrad Henlein of the Sudeten German Party, serious civil unrest had been provoked in the Sudetenland. Hitler saw this as the perfect pretext to invade the territory and later to annexe the whole of Czechoslovakia. The dispute was dangerous; it was escalating fast and threatened to be the flash point leading to war. Runciman was sent by the British government to sound out the situation. It was suggested by Nazi authorities in Berlin that Princess Stephanie should invite Runciman to the schloss. After hours of tiring negotiations in Prague, trying to solve the Sudetenland problem amicably, Runciman and his wife were keen to escape at the weekends and visit some of the castles of the Austrian nobility. Runciman had a penchant towards the aristocracy.

Stephanie was not able to attract Runciman to Schloss Leopoldskron, so instead she used her connections to meet him at another Austrian schloss. Here she used the meeting to steer him towards a resolution that favoured the Nazi cause. The princess subtly spun him the pro-Nazi line, as she was so competent in doing, and the British government’s representative seems to have largely accepted her arguments. In America,
Time Magazine
described the affair:

Titian haired, 40 year old Stephanie Juliana Richter Princess Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, confidante of the Führer and friend of half of Europe’s great is scheduled to sail from England to the US this week. Since the fall of Austria, Princess Stephanie, once the toast of Vienna, has lent her charms to advancing the Nazi cause in circles where it would do the most good. As a reward the Nazi government ‘permitted her to take a lease’ on the sumptuous Schloss Leopoldskron near Salzburg, taken over from Jewish Max Reinhardt after Anschluss. During the Czecho-Slovak crisis she did yeoman service for the Nazi campaign. When Mr. Chamberlain sent Lord Runciman to gather impressions of conditions in Czechoslovakia Princess Stephanie hurried to the Sudetenland castle of Prince Max Hohenlohe where the British mediator was entertained.
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When he went back to London, Runciman reported to the British government that the Sudetenland wanted to be taken over by Germany and ethnic Germans there were desperate to be returned to their homeland. Stephanie had done a good job, but her efforts did not stop there. She was also involved in preparing the ground for the Munich Conference in September 1938, a summit between Britain, France, Italy and Germany which decreed – without Czechoslovakia even being present – that the Czech government must hand over the Sudetenland to Germany in return for vague promises of an international guarantee of integrity for the rest of Czechoslovakia. Hitler gave his assurance at Munich that the Sudetenland was his last territorial claim, but secretly he had resolved to ‘smash the rump of the Czech State’. It was this that eventually led, inexorably, to Hitler’s designs on Poland that proved to be the direct cause of the Second World War. The piece of paper Chamberlain brought back from Munich proved useless in the face of Nazi ambition. Fourteen months later, in the High Court in London, a judge was to hear that ‘it was the princess’ groundwork that made the Munich Agreement possible’.
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The day after Chamberlain returned in triumph to London with the paper bearing his and Hitler’s signatures, and declared ‘Peace with honour – peace for our time’, Rothermere sent a telegram addressed to Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler in Berlin. ‘Frederick the Great was a great popular figure in England, may not “Adolf the Great” become an equally popular figure? I salute your Excellency’s star which rises higher and higher.’
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From the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, at the end of the dramatic diplomatic exchanges that surrounded the Munich Agreement, the princess wrote to Hitler:

There are moments in life that are so great – I mean, where one feels so deeply that it is almost impossible to find the right words to express one’s feelings – Herr Reich Chancellor, please believe me that I have shared with you the experience and emotion of every phase of the events of the last weeks. What none of your subjects in their wildest dreams dared hope for – you have made come true. That must be the finest thing a head of state can give to himself and to his people. I congratulate you with all my heart.

She signed it, ‘in devoted friendship’.
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In 1938 Hitler began to reveal the true horrors of Nazism and National Socialism. When the year began, apart from the reoccupation of the Rhineland and Saar – portions of Germany temporarily wrested from the Fatherland after the First World War – Hitler had not yet grasped any vital chunks of European territory likely to pitch the Continent to the edge of war. By the time the calendar was counting down to the end of the year, the picture was totally transformed. Hitler, by bullying, bravado and guile, had occupied both his and his princess’ Austrian homeland, together with the Sudetenland – the ethnically German border region of Czechoslovakia – reducing the rest of the Czech territory to a virtually powerless morsel ripe for the swallowing. In Germany, the mass pogroms of Kristallnacht had signalled the way for the Holocaust; and Germany’s armed forces were ready for what now seemed imminent and all-out war. He had outwitted and demoralised his enemies; Europe lay at his feet. Much of his success had been to impose his will on ministers throughout the chancelleries and embassies where the Continent’s fate was decided. That was an environment in which Princess Stephanie moved with ease, where her title gave her access to people with influence and where she was adept at promulgating Hitler’s cause.