Aristocrat Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford wearing a Nazi badge in 1938
Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford was a British aristocrat who was in love with Adolf Hitler. She did not love Hitler despite his vicious antisemitism—she loved him because of it.
Mitford’s newly discovered diaries have just been published by the Daily Mail newspaper. They drip with the self-obsessed entitlement characteristic of the British aristocracy, but laced with the poison of virulent
antisemitism.
Mitford constantly refers to Hitler as “heavenly”, “an angel”, “divine” and “terribly sweet”. She records her appointments at the hairdressers and her extravagant lunches alongside her assignations with Hitler and a spot of afternoon Sieg Heiling.
The Daily Mail pants over the “tantalising prospect” that Unity Mitford had sex with Hitler.
But what the Mail will not tell us is that half the British establishment was infatuated with Hitler in the 1930s. That included one Viscount Rothermere—the owner of the Daily Mail—who personally wrote a full-page editorial headlined “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!” in January 1934.
Unity Mitford was in her early 20s when she started wearing a Blackshirt uniform. Her older sister, Diana, dumped her wealthy husband to live with Oswald Mosley, who set up the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932.
Unity and Diana Mitford went to the 1933 Nuremburg Rally as part of the British delegation from the BUF.
In 1934 Mitford moved to Munich so she could be close to the Nazi Party HQ. She attended Baroness Laroche’s finishing school and began to follow Hitler around. When Hitler finally invited her to his table, she wrote, “It was the most wonderful and beautiful day of my life. For me he is the greatest man of all time.”
Mitford wrote to Nazi Julius Streicher’s paper, Der Sturmer, saying, “We think with joy of the day when we will be able to say England for the English! Out with the Jews! Heil Hitler! P.S. please publish my name in full, I want everyone to know I am a Jew hater.”
Mitford simply loved to dine at Streicher’s. He had Jewish people dragged up from the cellar and forced to eat grass for entertainment.
Hitler rewarded her with an engraved golden swastika badge, a private box at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and a ride in a Nazi party Mercedes to the Bayreuth Festival.
Mitford was inducted into Hitler’s inner circle. When Hitler announced the take-over of Austria in 1938, she was at his side on the balcony in Vienna.
Nazi Mitford was not a despised outcast in Britain—the whole British establishment was a cesspit of antisemites and Nazis. King Edward VIII, who “advocated putting Jews against the wall”, supported Hitler. So did his wife Wallis Simpson and his mother Queen Mary of Teck.
The Windsors visited Nazi Germany in 1937, hobnobbing with Hitler and giving Nazi salutes. The old queen mother taught a young Elizabeth II to Sieg Heil.
Anglo-German Prince Carl Edward, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and cousin to George V, joined the Nazi party in 1933. He acted as a go-between for the Nazis and the British royal family.
The Tory party was riddled with antisemitism. Tory leader Stanley Baldwin exploited antisemitism to win the 1924 election. The next Tory leader, Neville Chamberlain, called Fleet Street a “Jew-infested sewer” and denounced any future war with Germany as a “Jewish war”.
Winston Churchill was both a Zionist and an antisemite. The Zionists were “good Jews” but the world communist movement was under the control of “international Jewry”.
The Cliveden Set were posh Nazi sympathisers who included Nancy and Waldorf Astor and Edward Wood, Viscount Halifax. Nancy Astor got her husband to stop employing Jews on his paper, The Observer.
Mitford shot herself in the head when Hitler declared war on Britain. She survived and lived the rest of her days in luxury, protected by her class status.
King Charles milked his photo op at last week’s Holocaust Memorial event. But many of his relatives would have welcomed Hitler to Britain.
