Authors: Jim Wilson
My parents, brother and I arrived at Hole Farm in the summer of 1938. It must have been a huge shock for my mother to leave a modern, well-equipped suburban house in Surbiton, and move to an isolated farmhouse which had neither electricity nor mains drainage and, until a bathroom was installed when we moved in, only the traditional outside brick-built privy in the garden. Water came from the original farm well and had to be pumped by petrol engine up to a storage tank in the roof. My father was 28 and had never farmed in his life. He had to learn fast to make the venture a success. Agriculture had gone through hard times in the 1930s, but with war now almost certain, it was clear that British farming would have to face the challenge of feeding the nation. The threat that Hitler’s U-boats would cut off supplies by decimating Britain’s merchant fleet was real and potentially devastating. I remember Rothermere visiting us just before Christmas 1938 bearing lavish presents for my brother and myself. It was the press baron’s last Christmas at his beloved Norfolk retreat. If Rothermere seemed unaware of the dangers of invasion, should Hitler’s armies break through to threaten Britain’s shores, my father certainly recognised the possibility. He equipped himself with a six-chamber revolver to go alongside the more familiar farmers’ arsenal of a 12-bore shotgun and 2.2 rifle.
The day after Beaverbrook was appointed to his role as Minister for Aircraft Production, in May 1940, Rothermere sent his fellow press baron a telegram saying he was overjoyed that the government had found some use for the ‘Beaver’s … glittering abilities’. It was the appointment Rothermere had been campaigning for, and he offered Beaverbrook his help for the duration of the war.
3
Beaverbrook replied the same day, saying that he would value Rothermere’s services in America in helping to negotiate practical aid from the States, in particular helping to provide the essential materials which would be required by the aircraft factories in the rush to rapidly expand the RAF’s squadrons. Rothermere claimed Beaverbrook had asked him to make arrangements at once to travel to the States. When Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax objected to Rothermere being recruited to undertake an official mission of this nature, given his record of dealing with Hitler now clearly exposed in the very public High Court hearing, Beaverbrook countered by saying he thought Rothermere was already in the States.
Collin Brooks was also anxious to play his part, giving tangible help to the war effort. He was already working in a key role for the National War Savings Scheme, but he jumped at the chance when Rothermere asked him to accompany him on a rearmament mission to America. Brooks had played a vital role in the establishment of the National League of Airmen, and was as committed as his employer to the cause of a strong air defence. The two left for the States by transatlantic liner on 25 May 1940. But it soon transpired that the ‘mission’ was not as official as Brooks had thought, and Rothermere had led him to believe. In his journal Brooks recorded:
After a few days at sea R gradually let me know that what had really happened was that when he heard of Beaverbrook’s appointment he had wired his congratulations and had said ‘I am going to America almost immediately, can I be of use to you there?’ The Beaver had wired back saying that he might well be of use in America. Morison [Rothermere’s assistant] then told me that he believed that the Beaver had consulted Esmond Harmsworth [Rothermere’s surviving son] and that the whole thing had been fixed so that R should have a good excuse for being out of the country. (It is possible that they, like R himself, feared that his friendship with Hitler and his known defeatist attitude might bring him under arrest). So the mission was not really a mission at all. I was angry, having been taken from War Savings on false pretences.
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In the final months before war was declared, Brooks had been under pressure from Rothermere to help him prepare three books he had written for publication:
My Fight to Rearm Britain
,
Warnings and Predictions
and
My Campaign for Hungary
. All three were published in 1939 against a very tight publishing deadline. There is strong evidence Rothermere and Brooks worked to place in these books, in the best possible light, all that had passed between Rothermere and the Nazi leadership during the years in which Princess Stephanie was his go-between; when she was engineering the meetings, the correspondence and the propaganda with Hitler and his Nazi colleagues.
In a careful entry in his journal for 3 December 1939, written when he was at Stody in Norfolk, Brooks recorded:
I wish I had time to log here the machinations of the Princess and the full reasons for the urgent haste of this new book – begun on Monday and sent to press in seventeen days. In going over the files I found one letter which might be awkward if she published her photostats.
The letter Brooks referred to was one in which Rothermere had written, ‘You know I have always been a fervent admirer of the Führer’. In war, Brooks commented, the populace get angry with fervent admirers of the ‘arch-villain’.
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The Times
, reviewing Rothermere’s book
My Fight to Rearm Britain
, gave Rothermere the benefit of any doubts it may have had about his relationship with the Nazis. ‘Wisely or unwisely, it must be left to readers of his correspondence to decide, but obviously with complete sincerity he made personal approaches to the Nazi leaders Hitler, Goering and Ribbentrop, right up to the eve of war in his efforts to effect a peaceful settlement.’ Referring to Rothermere’s rearmament campaign,
The Times
said: ‘Some of his efforts might not win full approval but there is little doubt of the value of his services to the cause of national safety.’
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What would the attitude of the British government have been had Rothermere stayed in Britain? Would he have been interned, as Mosley and his wife and many of his Blackshirt followers were? Or would friends in high places, Churchill in particular, have shielded him? It is impossible to know, but clearly the possibility of arrest and internment was on Rothermere’s mind when he decided to take flight across the Atlantic. When intelligence files were published in 2005 it became clear that Rothermere was sending supportive telegrams to Nazi leaders just weeks before the outbreak of war, messages that were routinely intercepted by British agents. At the same time, he was also appealing to Hitler not to provoke war, and was writing to Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, calling for an international conference ‘to settle outstanding problems’. Nevertheless, Rothermere might have seen that war was inevitable. In correspondence with Ribbentrop just before war was declared, he wrote: ‘I have never known the British people more warlike than they are today … They are talking as they did at the outbreak of the Great War and the Boer War.’
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Ribbentrop’s reply a few days later gave an even stronger threat:
If these two countries should ever clash again, it would this time be a fight to the very end and to the last man. And this time every German conscious of the tremendous power of these 80 million people behind one man and of Germany’s powerful allies, is convinced that this war would end with a German victory.
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When war was declared the
Daily Mail
printed a powerful patriotic leader, but it had an ironic ring given the views its owner had been expounding in his private correspondence to Berlin. ‘No statesman, no man with any decency could think of sitting at the same table with Hitler or his henchman the trickster von Ribbentrop, or any other of the gang,’ the
Daily Mail
declared. ‘We fight against the blackest tyranny that has ever held men in bondage. We fight to defend and to restore freedom and justice on earth.’
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In New York, in late October 1939, Rothermere was having cash problems and said he needed to move to a sterling area. He travelled by liner from New York to Bermuda. Several days after his arrival there he became seriously ill and was taken to the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital. He partially recovered, but during the following months his health gradually deteriorated again and he died on 27 November 1940. He was buried in the churchyard of St Paul’s in Paget, Bermuda, the following day. Meanwhile, in the United States, the FBI, alerted by their colleagues in British intelligence, were closely monitoring Princess Stephanie’s movements there, aware that had she not fled to seek asylum in America she would have undoubtedly been imprisoned in Britain.
On 11 December 1939 Princess Stephanie, accompanied by her mother and both travelling under false names, boarded the Dutch liner SS
Veendam
at Southampton for the journey across the Atlantic to the safety of a country that was still neutral. She did not wait long enough to discover if the British government would imprison her for espionage, her close relationship with Hitler, her espousal of his Nazi policies and the persuasive way she had worked to influence people in Britain to support the Third Reich. Lady Snowden had arranged for an MP to put down a question in Parliament enquiring whether it was the government’s intention to expel her. In response, the Home Secretary made it clear that as the princess had already left of her own volition, no further action was necessary. But, he added, she had better not try to return to Britain, because he guaranteed that entry would be refused.
Stephanie arrived in New York, elegantly dressed and bedecked in her usual array of expensive jewellery. A report in the
New York World Telegram
described her as having her auburn hair combed straight back and wearing a silver-fox turban with a ‘provocative pink rose perched on it’. She wore a three-quarter-length silver-fox fur coat, a black silk jersey dress and black kid Perugia sandals with very high heels and sky-blue platform soles. Expensive diamond ear-clips and a scintillating diamond brooch gave the finishing touches to an outfit designed to make an impression.
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She possessed only a visitor’s visa, but the 106 pieces of luggage she brought with her, and the knowledge that she could never return to England, suggested that she thought she was in America to stay. MI5 had made sure the FBI were waiting for her. Ever since Fritz Wiedemann’s arrival to take up his diplomatic appointment in San Francisco, the FBI had been told to track her movements if she should ever try to join him in the United States.
Predictably, the first phone call Stephanie made was indeed to Wiedemann in San Francisco. She asked him not to travel to New York to meet her. She calculated that it would not be wise for her to be seen so soon in the company of probably the most notorious Nazi in the country. Instead, she stayed some time in New York, having well-publicised meetings with literary agents and publishers who wanted articles about her close relations and first-hand knowledge of Hitler, his intentions in starting a war in Europe and his character – although it appears from letters from some of these publishers, now among the princess’ papers, that Stephanie was loathe to tell her story as truthfully and openly as the press wanted, perhaps for fear of incriminating herself. She was more concerned with painting herself as innocent of the label of spy, confidante of Hitler and political intriguer, than telling the real story of her relationship with the Nazis. Her lover, Wiedemann, was also concerned about his own position. A letter from Hearst Magazines Inc. made the point:
She will have to go a little bit more into some of the legend in order to explain that it is not true. She must explain the true story of the activities that brought her so much uncalled for publicity. She says that up to 1932 she was a private citizen and cannot understand why she has become so celebrated and misunderstood.
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The journalists thought she was concealing the real story in order to protect herself. In March 1940 Wiedemann was writing to her about the possibility of her publishing her memoirs: ‘Certain information you have could only have been received from me and you must consider my position. Only something outstanding and sensational will interest the public – for that sort of thing your name is too good.’
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Wiedemann knew publicity would damage the covert work he was intent on pursuing in America.
In January 1940 an article appeared in the
New York Times
under a headline referring to the princess’ role in Nazi ‘diplomacy’. It said the princess was a star among a whole group of female members of the former German aristocracy who had been recruited by Hitler for a wide variety of operations, many of a secret nature. The newspaper described these people as ‘political spies, propaganda hostesses, social butterflies and ladies of mystery’. The publicity all this attracted probably persuaded her that she needed the support only her lover could give her, but it also enhanced her glamour and notoriety. The idea of a Nazi princess electrified some in society and she was invited to many social events which only enhanced the opportunities for her to spread a pro-Nazi message in America. Her loyalty to Nazism and Germany remained strong, despite Hitler’s suspicions of her.
In late March 1940 Stephanie decided to travel to California to meet Wiedemann. The reunion took place in the holiday resort of Carmel, 90 miles south of San Francisco. Both of them must have been aware they were likely to be watched by the FBI, but they probably had no idea that they would be under the intense 24-hour observation the FBI had put them under. The pair clearly realised they needed to be discreet, because their next meeting took place in an obscure hotel in Fresno, where Princess Stephanie booked in under the name of Mrs Moll. She received a telephone call in her room and the agents listening in picked up the arrangement for Wiedemann and the princess to meet and dine at a nearby restaurant. As they dined the princess’ hotel room and her possessions were searched. Agents then watched them as they later drove to the General Grant National Park, and from there to the Sequoia National Park, where they rented a chalet under the name of Mr and Mrs Fred Winter from San Francisco. Finally, they drove on to the San Francisco suburb of Hillsboro, where the German Consul General’s residence was located. Wiedemann and the princess had clearly agreed any further efforts to cover their tracks and to escape surveillance would be futile. The princess and her mother moved into 1808 Floribunda Avenue, the German Consul General’s official residence, where they stayed, perhaps rather surprisingly, with the approval of Wiedemann’s wife, whose forbearing in the face of her husband’s passionate romantic attachment to the princess must have sorely strained her Nazi loyalty.