Authors: Jim Wilson
The telephone call from the princess – who by then, because of all the press commentary, was well known as a notorious pro-Nazi, a close friend of Hitler and had been exposed as guilty of working as an agent of the Nazi regime – must have been highly embarrassing for my father. The exchanges in court received prominent publicity not only in the London newspapers, but also in the pages of the
Eastern Daily Press
in Norfolk. It led to some unfortunate, hurtful and damaging finger-pointing at my father by those keen to unmask pro-German sympathisers, fifth-columnists and even possible spies at a time when Britain was at war. People were happy to assume that someone who had fairly recently moved from London, was obviously known to the princess and was now living in relative isolation on a remote North Norfolk farm, fitted the bill.
In court the princess’ case was that in 1932, when Rothermere had promised to engage her as his European political representative on an annual salary of £5,000, she had understood the engagement was ongoing. She made it clear to the judge that if she lost the case she would not hesitate to accede to requests to publish her memoirs in America, giving prominence to the political activities she had carried out on behalf of Rothermere, their implications for relations between Britain and Germany now the two countries were in a state of war and Rothermere’s alleged numerous, often indiscreet, liaisons with women.
Gilbert Beyfus KC for the princess said the contract she had with Rothermere was a ‘general hiring’, requiring twelve months’ notice for it to be concluded. Rothermere, he said, had been corresponding with the ex-kaiser, the ex-Crown Prince of Germany, Hitler, Ribbentrop, Goering and others as though he himself was a sovereign power dealing with them on equal terms. The princess denied suggestions she had been a spy. She denied that in the early 1930s a blank cheque and secret correspondence had been discovered by French intelligence agents in a secret drawer of a bureau in her Paris flat, which had led to her being gravely libelled in European newspapers as a spy. Asked what effect the alleged libels had had on her, Princess Stephanie said that ‘people did not want to have anything more to do with me. They cut me off and I was excluded from functions which I was entitled to attend – it was a humiliation.’ She said there had been innumerable instances of hurtful allegations since the slanderous reports had appeared in some European newspapers several years previously. Lord Rothermere’s attitude to the libellous reports, she claimed, seemed to point to him sacrificing her interests and her reputation to protect his own.
Sir William Jowitt asked the princess if she had used the services of Wiedemann to put pressure on Lord Rothermere to pay her a large sum of money. Princess Stephanie replied: ‘I have not.’ The court heard that Wiedemann had written a letter to Rothermere in which he said Hitler greatly appreciated the work done by the princess, adding that it had been carried out with ‘great ability, astuteness and tact’, as Rothermere well knew. The princess told the court she had handed a short statement of her case against Rothermere – together with all the correspondence between Rothermere, Herr Hitler and others in the Nazi leadership – to the Führer’s adjutant. She said she felt it was important to get Herr Hitler’s permission if the Führer’s private letters were to be read in an English court. Sir William quoted an extract from Wiedemann’s letter to Rothermere, which said: ‘You know that the Führer greatly appreciates the work the princess did to straighten relations between our countries … it was her groundwork which made the Munich agreement possible.’ ‘Is that true?’ Sir William asked. To which the princess replied: ‘Yes.’ Sir William went on to say that Wiedemann’s letter stated Hitler was prepared to act with chivalry and magnanimity and would grant any help needed to re-establish Princess Stephanie’s honour, although it could be very unpleasant for him. ‘Why would it be unpleasant?’ Sir William asked. ‘Because he hates publicity, he does not like journalists or newspapers. Because he has been treated, shall I say, unkindly,’ she replied.
For his part, mindful of the potential damage to his reputation and the possible consequences he himself might face with war now a reality, the press baron was at pains to make clear that his campaign for friendship with Germany had been before, as he put it, ‘Hitler had run amok’, and that he had simply been working for peace between the two countries. When he was asked if the princess had acted as his ambassador, Rothermere, who had engaged a legal team of seventeen to mount his defence, frostily told the judge, ‘I am not a sovereign state, yet!’ He said it was preposterous that he had agreed to support Princess Stephanie ‘for the rest of her life’. Between 1932 and 1938 he had paid her considerably more than £51,000 (almost £2 million in today’s money) and added testily, ‘there was no opportunity of “giving” her money because she was always “asking for it” … she was always pestering and badgering me, so I sent here away to Budapest and Berlin’. But wasn’t that a little hard on Hitler? the princess’ counsel enquired. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Rothermere replied, ‘Hitler richly deserved it.’
Sir William Jowitt said the decision to fight the case had required very grave consideration on the part of Lord Rothermere’s legal advisers and not a little courage by Lord Rothermere himself. It was perfectly easy for Lord Rothermere ‘to pay all, and more than all, this lady desires. He has deliberately not taken this course because the view which he seeks to present to the court is that the claim this lady is making is not an honest claim.’ It was shocking, Sir William told the court, that ‘this lady’ had had his client’s letters photocopied behind his back by the Special Photographic Bureau of the Department of the German Chancellor. In his summing up, Sir William referred to the fact that Britain was at war. ‘Who can say,’ he asked, ‘whether if Lord Rothermere had succeeded in the endeavours which he made, we might not be in the position in which we are today.’
After six days of legal argument, under the intense spotlight of the press and in the unreal circumstances that relations between one of the most powerful newspaper proprietors in Britain and the Führer and his Nazi agent were being picked over, just as the two countries had entered a disastrous war, Mr Justice Tucker ruled against the princess. He said her claim that Rothermere had promised her a lifelong retainer for acting as his special foreign-political representative in Europe was entirely without justification. There was no evidence to support her contention. The judge added that Lord Rothermere had never contractually undertaken to vindicate the princess in relation to the damaging press reports in foreign newspapers.
As the court case closed, Princess Stephanie realised that she was now facing substantial costs which threatened to ruin her.
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Her reputation in London was already in tatters.
Time Magazine
in America reported on just one incident of many where she was publicly abused as a spy. When she walked into the Ritz, four society ladies – the Duchess of Westminster, Lady Dufferin, Lady Stanley and a Mrs Richard Norton – saw her and a loud remark was directed at her: ‘Get out you filthy spy!’ Other newspapers described her as ‘a spy, a glamorous international agent and a girl-friend of the Führer’. Aristocratic friends who had welcomed her in the past now shunned her and wanted nothing more to do with her. But some still stood by her. The day before the court case began, Margot Lady Oxford sent her a consoling note. It read:
Dearest Stephanie, We are all with you. I have always told you Rothermere is no good. I respect you for having challenged him. Never mind the outcome. He is finished here. I know what I am saying. The most important things in life are: 1. To love and to be loved. 2. To be trusted. Rothermere has neither!
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Soon after the trial finished, Rothermere, desperate to draw a line under the whole affair and limit the damage to his own reputation, used Lady Snowden as an intermediary and sent the princess a message to say he would meet all her costs if she undertook to get out of the country and return to Europe. The reply came back via Lady Snowden that Princess Stephanie would accept Rothermere’s generous offer, but she and her mother would go to America. This was not what Rothermere had in mind at all. In America, the princess could use the offers she had received from the press to publish and further blacken Rothermere’s name. He was adamant she should not set foot in the United States. He fulfilled his promise to pay her legal bills, but refused any further funds to enable her to travel to America. Nevertheless, Stephanie found the funds herself to buy tickets to travel to the States. It is possible the money came from Berlin or via Wiedemann in San Francisco. Within weeks the princess and her mother were on a liner heading for New York. As
Time Magazine
commented: ‘The curtain fell swiftly on the comic-opera lawsuit of Her Serene Highness Stefanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst [sic] versus Viscount Rothermere.’
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But British intelligence certainly weren’t laughing.
MI5 were aware of her intention to go to the States, well before the court case had started. An entry on her file, dated 13 October 1939, recorded that she had applied for permission to go to America where, she claimed, her son was seriously ill. British intelligence was not convinced that this was the true reason. The case officer noted that they were inclined to believe her objectives were to see Wiedemann, whose mistress she had been for a considerable time, and to get out of the country before the security services could place her under internment as a Nazi agent. They speculated that a third reason might have been to get an American lawyer to help her blackmail Rothermere from the other side of the Atlantic. ‘She could very well threaten him with all sorts of publicity in the US,’ the officer noted. ‘Of course,’ the MI5 record went on, ‘it is also possible someone [Rothermere perhaps?] had offered her a considerable sum to leave the country.’
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For the time being, it was decided by the British authorities that she would not be given a permit to travel. That might be reviewed later, her file noted, but any permission granted should make it clear that it was a one-way ticket. Any return to the United Kingdom was strictly ruled out.
When that ‘no return’ permit came to be issued to her, the decision to grant it became a matter of discussion in the House of Commons. The MP for Wolverhampton East asked the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, why she was being allowed to leave the country. He asked if the minister knew that ‘this woman is a notorious member of the Hitler spy organisation’. The Home Secretary replied that he needed notice of the question, but in any case she had been granted only a ‘no return’ permit; there were no circumstances in which she would be allowed to return to Britain. The Wolverhampton MP was clearly outraged. With Britain at war, he felt someone who had been so instrumental in spreading Nazi propaganda and who had worked as an agent of the Third Reich should be arrested and tried for espionage. ‘She is a political intriguer and adventuress of the first water and should be treated with the utmost suspicion,’ he declared.
In the summer of 1939, shortly before Germany invaded Poland with sixty of her divisions, Rothermere wrote to Churchill predicting that, with the approach of war, his old friend’s time for greatness was approaching. If Churchill was aware of the private words of praise Rothermere had heaped on Hitler in his correspondence with Berlin as the war-clouds gathered, it might have taken the shine off those warm words from the newspaper owner. Once again, Rothermere showed remarkable foresight. He told Churchill: ‘I can very well see a great responsibility may be placed upon you at an early date.’
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When war was finally declared on 3 September 1939, the British ultimatum over Poland having expired, just as Rothermere had predicted Churchill was recalled to the Admiralty. Seven months later, in May 1940, as invasion of Britain appeared imminent, Churchill replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister. One of his first acts was to appoint Max Beaverbrook to the new Cabinet post of Minister for Aircraft Production. It was an appointment that reflected another prediction Rothermere had long been making, and had campaigned for vigorously for years: Britain’s need to build up meaningful air defences against the inevitable blitz to come from a powerful German bomber force.
Rothermere’s concern at the devastation German bombers could inflict in this new and terrible kind of air warfare that would strike indiscriminately at civilians, women and children alike, moved him to ensure at least two families could leave London for the relative safety of the countryside. Ever since 1932 Rothermere had had his country estate at Stody in North Norfolk. Having purchased the extensive arable and sporting estate, he spent a considerable sum rebuilding Stody Lodge after the previous house had been gutted by fire. He also laid out the famous azalea and rhododendron gardens that have remained ever since a distinctive feature of the grounds at Stody, and he improved the glasshouses and gardens. In 1938, obsessed by the dangers of aerial blitzkrieg in the war he now thought was inevitable (in spite of his continued pro-Nazi correspondence with Hitler), Rothermere offered his close colleague and confidant Collin Brooks the opportunity to leave London and move with his young family to The Mount, a large house on his Norfolk estate. At the same time he made my father a similar offer. My father’s job as company secretary of Rothermere’s cigarette factory, originally established at the time the
Daily Mail
was looking favourably on Sir Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts, had ended. The project had been wound up and Rothermere suggested my father and his family should move to another house on his Norfolk estate, Hole Farm at Hempstead. My father was to take the tenancy of the farm and run it, as well as establishing a business breeding traditional Norfolk black turkeys for the Christmas market.
It is clear from Collin Brooks’ diaries that Rothermere made these offers to give both families, and particularly the children concerned, the opportunity to escape the devastation from the air which he believed would obliterate large sections of the capital. He himself had suffered the loss of two of his sons in the First World War and had never fully recovered from the pain. He wanted to protect two families from suffering similar pain. But what Rothermere had not considered, if Hitler succeeded in overrunning France and the Low Countries, was a German invasion along the east coast. Parts of the east coast, notably in the vicinity of the North Norfolk village of Weybourne, were favourable for a beachhead landing. In conjunction with a force striking across the Channel, such a manoeuvre would have enabled the Germans to mount a pincer attack on London. In May 1940 this possibility was taken so seriously that eighteen east coast and south-east coastal towns, together with areas inland up to 10 miles from the coast, were subject to strict control orders resulting in the evacuation of nearly 50,000 children. Rothermere offered Brooks The Mount in March 1937, but it was not until September of that year that Brooks accepted the offer. In a letter to Brooks, the press baron wrote: ‘I can’t bear the thought of your children being bombed in London.’
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