Hitler's Spy Princess Page 13

  Unfortunately Stephanie was unable to arrange permission for her aunt Olga, her mother’s younger sister, to travel with her to England. Soon after Ludmilla’s wedding, her sister Olga was arrested. She died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp on 27 September 1942.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Lawsuit against Lord Rothermere

  Stephanie von Hohenlohe returned with her mother from Salzburg to London where, as her son Franz confirms, she owned four houses. Exactly a year earlier, in January 1938, the princess had received her final cheque from Lord Rothermere in payment for her activities, together with the news that he no longer wished to employ her. Rothermere wanted to terminate her contract, since it might be ‘misunderstood’ if he were to continue his efforts to bring about an understanding between Britain and Germany. He had already told Stephanie this verbally, after she had given him a detailed report on the Blomberg-Fritsch1 crisis.

  Wiedemann found it inconceivable that Rothermere would want to go on taking Hitler’s side. Stephanie warned Rothermere, although at that point he had already sacked her:

  It’s important to know what is currently going on in Germany. The Germans are going through a serious crisis. Changes are taking place, which are of the greatest importance for the future of Europe. All the conservatives are being thrown out and only extremists are keeping their jobs or being recruited … You must be very careful in future. To be quite frank, I do not see how it will be possible for you, under these new conditions, to continue to support Hitler in future and at the same time serve the interests of your own country.

  She cleverly added: ‘Hold on to this letter, so that it will be evidence of how accurately I have kept you informed. I’m serious; don’t throw this letter away.’

  A professional collaboration lasting seven years, and a once very intense personal friendship, had come to an end. Rothermere told Stephanie that ‘he did not contemplate any more political missions’. However, through Wiedemann, she continued to be precisely informed about the correspondence between Rothermere and the Reich Chancellery, and knew that the press baron was certainly maintaining his contact with Hitler. Stephanie was pretty desperate, since the cancellation of Rothermere’s payments placed her in considerable financial difficulties. As she herself wrote, she had always been very lavish with money and so had thrown away the chance to be ‘one of the richest women in the world’. As soon as it became known that she was no longer His Lordship’s emissary, her own ‘market value’ would drop significantly.

  Placed in this predicament, Stephanie now hit upon an odd idea. She wanted to find out what Rothermere really thought about her. The next thing that happened was that a certain Baron Theodor Geyr von Schweppenburg, a minor official in the German Foreign Office, travelled to London, under the pretext of needing to speak to Rothermere in connection with an article he intended to write for a journal, the Deutsch-Englische Hefte. He carefully recorded his discussion with Rothermere and presented it to his lady ‘client’:

  At the end I mentioned in passing that I had picked up certain hints from an American journalist, to the effect that a big publisher in America was interested in publishing a story in which Lord Rothermere’s relationships with women, and in particular with Princess Hohenlohe, would be alluded to, with the intention of identifying Lord R.’s sources of political information. Lord R. seemed very embarrassed; he immediately said: ‘Haha! I haven’t seen the Princess for 14 months. I wish you would tell Herr von Ribbentrop that I consider her a very indiscreet woman. I don’t think he likes her and I believe she was not received at the embassy in London, when he was ambassador here…’ I immediately changed the subject and asked him what he thought of the political situation. He gave only a brief opinion and added: ‘But you will tell Herr von Ribbentrop, won’t you, that I have no communication with Princess H. and that I consider her very indiscreet!’ I told Lord R. that I had no opportunity to see Herr v. Ribbentrop, and that I was only one of his numerous staff, to which he replied that he would give me a present for Herr v. Ribbentrop (some 400-year-old Augsburg silver), and that when I handed it to him I could pass on Lord R.’s message. ‘Perhaps you can also take with you a present for the Führer?’ The Baron declined the request.

  Following Geyr von Schweppenburg’s mission, Stephanie von Hohenlohe decided to sue Rothermere. Unfortunately she had no-one at her side at that moment, who might have been able to dissuade her from this rash course of action.

  She sought out the most prominent law firm of the day, Theodore Goddard & Partners, who three years earlier had handled the second divorce of Mrs Wallis Simpson, so that she would be free to marry the former King Edward VIII. Even before coming to court, the costs to be met were considerable, and of the £800 she had to deposit in advance, £600 had already been used up. Stephanie was asked to make further payments, but she did not do so. Five days before the case was due to be heard, she was given an ultimatum. She had to deposit a further £500. She managed to scrape together another £200 and covered the balance with a post-dated and unsecured cheque.

  The case against Rothermere began on 8 November 1939 and lasted six days in a crowded courtroom of the King’s Bench Division. The plaintiff claimed that in 1932 Lord Rothermere had promised to pay her, as his European political representative, an annual sum of £5,000 for the rest of her life. Furthermore, he had agreed to restore her good name, since certain foreign newspapers had described her as ‘a spy, a vamp and an immoral person’. Stephanie also made it clear to His Lordship that, should she lose the case, she would not turn down an offer from an American publisher to publish her memoirs, with particular emphasis on the political activities of Lord Rothermere, and his numerous improper liaisons with women.

  In Germany Goebbels was following events closely: ‘A case is being heard in London between Rothermere and Princess Hohenlohe over a retainer which this “lady” is demanding from him. In it, all sorts of embarrassing details are being trotted out. Some of them about Wiedemann, too. Even so, I do not believe the Hohenlohe woman has been spying. Sometimes she has spoken up for us.’ Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Propaganda and National Enlightenment, and one of Hitler’s henchmen considered to have an astute mind, was clearly uncertain as to whether the princess had been a spy, and if so, for whom.

  Lord Rothermere, for his part, stated that his campaign for friendship with Nazi Germany ‘was before Hitler ran amok’. When asked if the princess had acted as his ‘ambassador’, he retorted ‘I am not a sovereign state yet’. He denounced as ‘preposterous’ the suggestion that he had agreed to support the princess ‘for the rest of her life’, and added: ‘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 her away to Budapest and Berlin.’

  ‘But it was surely a little tough on Hitler?’ the princess’s counsel suggested.

  ‘Oh, I’m not sorry,’ Lord Rothermere replied. ‘Hitler richly deserved it.’

  The court-case did not leave Fritz Wiedemann unscathed either. In particular, a letter from him to Lord Rothermere was mentioned, in which he pleaded the cause of the princess. The Reich Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop, immediately requested a cabled report and, if possible, a copy of the letter or, failing that, a precise indication of its contents.

  During the hearing, Lord Rothermere’s defence counsel produced a trump card. He was in possession of the letter in question, which Fritz Wiedemann had sent to Lord Rothermere in the autumn of 1938, on behalf of his mistress, and which, although marked ‘strictly secret and confidential’, the barrister read out to the court.

  Wiedemann informed Rothermere that the princess had approached him with the request to obtain Herr Hitler’s consent for the correspondence between himself and Lord Rothermere to be submitted as evidence in a possible lawsuit. ‘Your Lordship knows how very much the Führer values the princess’s work for the improvement of relations between our two countries … It was she who gave you an introduction to th
e Führer. A fact for which he is equally grateful … Under these circumstances, and taking into consideration the Führer’s noble and generous nature … I have no doubt that he will give her his permission to use the correspondence in question as evidence that she was in your service, since he will take the view that, in so doing, he will be helping her in her clash with a powerful man. Even though it is exceptionally awkward for him.’

  It is known that Rothermere reacted very angrily to this letter from Wiedemann and threatened to go and see Hitler in Berlin, in order to tell him about this ‘business Wiedemann and Hohenlohe have cooked up’. Thereupon Wiedemann indicated that as far as he was concerned there was no more to be said.

  When the judge gave his decision every last seat in the courtroom was occupied. Mr Justice Tucker ruled against the princess. The claim she had made for a lifelong retainer fee was, he said, without justification. There was no evidence that her former ‘employer’ had ever made such a promise.

  Lord Rothermere generously bore all the legal costs. But he refused to make any future payments either to her or her son. He did not even want her to go to the United States, but to stay in Europe. It is possible that he feared there would be further revelations on her part, which could be damaging to him at the very moment when he wanted to renounce his efforts on Hitler’s behalf. At about that time, Rothermere published his book, My Campaign for Hungary, with a foreword by Winston Churchill. It did not contain a single word about the princess or her role as an intermediary.

  On 3 September 1939, three days after the German assault on Poland, Britain declared war on Germany, and things which hitherto had been whispered about the princess often enough, were now spoken out loud: Stephanie von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, Jewish by birth, was a close friend of Hitler and was the Third Reich’s most prominent propagandist abroad.

  Now the American news magazine, Time, picked up on the events surrounding Stephanie von Hohenlohe in London. It reported an incident at the Ritz hotel, of which Princess Stephanie had been the focus. She had already become inured to abuse. But in the Ritz there was a sensational scene: when she walked into the hotel, she immediately caught the attention of four society ladies, the Duchess of Westminster, Lady Stanley, Lady Dufferin and Mrs Richard Norton. ‘Even before the princess could be escorted to her table, mutterings could be heard from these grandes dames. Then the tranquillity of the dining-room was broken by a loud clear voice: “Get out, you filthy spy!” However, without batting an eyelid, the princess took her seat and the ladies went on with their meal. But when they left the room Mrs Norton stopped and informed the head-waiter that in future she and her aristocratic women-friends intended to dine elsewhere, for as long as the princess continued to be allowed into the Ritz.’ Thus, Stephanie’s financial predicament was further aggravated by social ostracism.

  She had to admit to herself that, because of losing her lawsuit, no-one would want anything more to do with her, ‘an unattached woman’. So in December 1939 she decided to leave London for America. She had realised long ago that Hitler was heading for a world war. Many American friends sent her invitations, although in the American newspapers, too, people could read that she was ‘a spy, a glamorous international agent and a girl-friend of Hitler’.

  Four days after judgement had been given against her in her case against Lord Rothermere, she wrote him a ‘begging letter’, which Lady Snowden – still a good friend of Stephanie – personally handed to the press baron. It read:

  I don’t know if you planned to ruin me, but in any case you have succeeded. This letter to you is the culmination of your victory over me. I will try to be as unmelodramatic as possible, which is not easy, since you have turned my life into a horror-play. One kind word to me from you could have prevented everything. You never had a better or more devoted friend than me. I would have gone through fire for you, and my devotion to you was like that of a faithful dog. You knew that, you knew it very well. And you knew it when you came to court. It was the cowards around you, the ones who hate me, who confused your sense of justice and turned you against me, which, as you know, I do not deserve.

  Your barristers and solicitors, seventeen of them all told, and all your other friends, filled half the court when the case was being heard, while I was only accompanied by my 78-year-old mother, since my son has abandoned me, because he could no longer tolerate the passive resistance which arises from the allegation that I am a spy, and from my reputation as a spy. You had millions, I only had £250 – that was all I had left after my lawyers had milked me dry, and I had been forced to exist for two whole years without the income on which I had built my life. The fact that I am still in the land of the living today, is only due to my wanting to spare my boy from being the victim of a further sensation – his mother’s suicide. But my indescribable misery will perhaps make me forget even this consideration.

  ‘I say all this without trying to plead for your sympathy,’ she wrote, yet she did precisely that. She appealed to Lord Rothermere as the father of a son, to think of her son as well, and not to ‘ruin’ his future. Then she resorted to another form of guile. She told Rothermere about the amazing financial offers the press had made to her, and their downright ‘perverse’ interest in the part of her life she had spent with him. She would never, of course, give any interviews or write any articles about it, she said, but added threateningly that she hoped she would never have to. She asked him to spare her from complete social humiliation and to guarantee her a carefree life, at least for the next three years. Should he no longer wish to communicate with her directly, he could do so through her one selfless friend, Lady Snowden.

  Stephanie ended her letter: ‘You hold the lives of two human beings in your hands, that of a young man full of hope for the future, and mine, which you have robbed of any future. – It is for you alone to decide what shall become of these two lives! S.H.’

  At that time Rothermere would in fact have been prepared to finance Stephanie’s upkeep, together with her mother and her personal maid, in somewhere like Mallorca, but certainly not in the United States where her lover was awaiting her.

  Princess Stephanie and Lord Rothermere, who had attracted so much attention through a number of spectacular political initiatives, were never to meet again. Rothermere died in Bermuda scarcely a year after the court case.

  As Time magazine put it: ‘The curtain swiftly fell on the comic-opera lawsuit of Her Serene Highness Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst versus Viscount Rothermere.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Spy Princess as a ‘Peacemaker’ in the USA

  ‘One of the most fanatical exponents of National Socialist ideology … was Stephanie, Princess Hohenlohe-Schillingsfuerst, the “princess” in quotation-marks, because she was not born in silk and satin. She became a princess by marriage… She was one of the first female agents sent abroad by the Nazis before they came to power.’

  This statement comes from the German-Jewish journalist, Bella Fromm, who from 1939 onwards lived in exile in the USA. In the unpublished writings she left on her death, Fromm goes into more detail about Nazi espionage activities in the United States during the Second World War. She wanted to reveal how effective and widespread the operations of Hitler’s women agents had been. Many of those involved in political intrigue in the US were second generation German-Americans, others were visitors from Germany. The women Bella Fromm knew to be Nazi spies included Lily Barbara Stein and Elizabeth Dilling from Chicago, and a Brooklyn waitress named Hedwig Engemann. The American aviatrix Laura Ingalls was in close contact with two of Himmler’s most dangerous operators, Baron Kurt Ludwig von Gienanth and the German cultural attaché, Richard Sallet. Since these two Nazis held diplomatic passports, it was a long time before their anti-American activities were discovered. In addition to#aa#af’ these, there was the ‘beautiful Nazi spy’, Inga Arvad, who hit the headlines by becoming romantically involved with the young John F. Kennedy.

  ‘Hitler’s sp
y princess’, Stephanie von Hohenlohe, turned her back on Europe in December 1939. ‘By this time even I was convinced that Hitler had chosen the path of destruction.’ She and her mother headed for a country that was still neutral and where her friend Fritz Wiedemann was now working as Consul-General in San Francisco.

  If the princess in fact wanted people to believe she had left England voluntarily, this was not wholly correct. As a precaution, her friend in London, Ethel Snowden, got an MP to put down a question in the House of Commons early in December, asking whether His Majesty’s Government intended to expel the princess ‘in view of her close relationship with the German Reich Chancellery’. However, since it had come to the notice of the Home Secretary that the lady in question, a Hungarian citizen, had already taken steps to leave the country in the next few days, he for his part did not propose to take any action.