Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford (8 August 1914 – 28 May 1948) was a British fascist and aristocrat known for her relationship with Adolf Hitler. Born in the United Kingdom, she belonged to Hitler's inner circle of friends and was a prominent supporter of Nazism, fascism and antisemitism.
Unity was one of the Mitford sisters, six girls born to David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney Bowles (1880–1963), namely Nancy (born 1904), Pamela (1907), Diana (1910), Unity (1914), Jessica (1917) and Deborah (1920). The sisters had one brother, Tom (born 1909) who was killed in action in 1945.
Unity was in Munich when the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, whereupon she attempted suicide by shooting herself in the head, inflicting extensive brain damage. She was returned to England but never recovered, ultimately dying in 1948 from consequences of the wound.
Early life
The Mitford family is an aristocratic family tracing its origins in Northumberland back to the 11th-century Norman settlement of England. Unity Mitford was the fifth of seven children born in Kensington, London, to David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife, Sydney, daughter of Thomas Gibson Bowles, known to the children as Farve and Muv. Unity was a first cousin once removed of Winston Churchill's wife Clementine Churchill.
Mitford was, coincidentally considering her later beliefs, conceived in the town of Swastika, Ontario, Canada, where her family had gold mines. The Mitford children lived at Asthall Manor in Asthall, Oxfordshire. Unity was educated at home by governesses, then attended Trinity Congregation Church and was educated at Oakdene private school in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire and St Margaret's School in Bushey, Hertfordshire. She was nicknamed "Boud" by her siblings.
As a young girl, Unity was described by her mother as a sensitive and introverted child who would hide under the dining room table if anything was said to upset or embarrass her. As she grew older she became disruptive, and developed a tough shell of sullen defiance. Sent away to boarding school when she was fourteen, she was expelled from three schools in succession.
Diana Mosley's biographer, Jan Dalley, suggested that "Unity found life in her big family very difficult because she came after these cleverer, prettier, more accomplished sisters.". Accessed 26 August 2010. Another biographer, David Pryce-Jones, said: "If you come from a ruck of children in a large family, you've got to do something to assert your individuality, and I think through the experience of trying to force her way forward among the sisters and in the family, she decided that she was going to form a personality against everything."
Unity's younger sister, Jessica, with whom as a girl she shared a bedroom, had beliefs at the opposite end of the political spectrum, later becoming a dedicated communist. The two drew a chalk line down the middle to divide the room. Jessica's side was decorated with hammer and sickles and pictures of Vladimir Lenin, while Unity's was decorated with swastikas and pictures of Adolf Hitler. Dalley commented, "They were kids virtually, you don't know how much it was just a game, a game that became deadly serious in later life."
Social debut
Mitford came out as a debutante in 1932, though social events bored her and she was considered "a little eccentric by her contemporaries." At a Court ball held at Buckingham Palace, she drew attention to herself by stealing the writing paper.
The same year, her elder sister Diana left her husband Bryan Guinness to pursue an affair with Oswald Mosley, who had just founded the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Their father was furious at the disgrace and forbade any member of the family to see either Diana or "The Man Mosley", as he termed him.
Unity disobeyed and she met Mosley that summer at a party thrown by Diana, where she became an instant convert to his ideas. Mosley's son, Nicholas Mosley, recalled: "Unity became a very extrovert member of the party, which was her way... She joined my father's party and she used to turn up, she used to go around in a black shirt uniform, and she used to turn up at communist meetings and she used to do the fascist salute and heckle the speaker. That was the sort of person she was". He added that although his father admired Unity's commitment, Mosley felt "She wasn't doing him any good, because she was making an exhibition of herself." A friend of Unity, Claud Phillimore, said that Unity "had quite a masculine streak in her. She would go off to BUF meetings in Oxford, donning her black shirt which couldn't be taken seriously. She enjoyed doing it to provoke." She also wore a Nazi armband on her BUF uniform.
Unity, Tom and Diana Mitford travelled to Germany, as part of the British delegation from the BUF to the 1933 Nuremberg Rally, seeing Hitler for the first time. Mitford later said, "The first time I saw him I knew there was no one I would rather meet." Biographer Anne de Courcy confirms: "The Nuremberg rally had a profound effect on both Diana and Unity.... Unity was already, as it were, convinced about Hitler, but this turned conviction into worship. From then on, she wanted to be near Hitler as much as possible".
Arrival in Germany Mitford returned to Germany in mid-1934, aged 19, enrolling in a language school in Munich close to the Nazi Party headquarters. Dalley notes "She was obsessed with meeting Hitler, so she really set out to stalk him." Pryce Jones elaborates:
After ten months, Hitler finally invited Mitford to his table at Osteria Bavaria, where they talked for over 30 minutes, with Hitler picking up her bill.. Accessed 26 August 2010. In a letter home to her father, Mitford wrote that: "It was the most wonderful and beautiful [day] of my life. I am so happy that I wouldn't mind a bit, dying. I'd suppose I am the luckiest girl in the world. For me he is the greatest man of all time." She also wrote of an encounter with Hitler in her diary: "'Lunch Osteria 2.30. THE FUHRER comes 3.15 after I have finished lunch. After about ten minutes he sends the Wirt [owner] TO ASK ME TO GO TO HIS TABLE." Hitler became smitten with the young blonde British student, the embodiment of the Nazi ideal of "Aryan" womanhood. He was also struck by her curious connections to Germanic culture, including her middle name, Valkyrie. She was invited to sit by Hitler at dinner parties, film screenings and Nuremberg rallies. He was known to hold her hand and stroke her hair while she sat at his feet, but scholars had stated that Mitford "probably never had intimate sexual relations with Hitler".
Mitford's grandfather, Bertram Freeman-Mitford, had been a friend of Richard Wagner, one of Hitler's idols, and had written introductions to two works of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Dalley says, "Hitler was extremely superstitious, and he believed that Unity was sort of sent to him, it was destined." Mitford subsequently received invitations to party rallies and state occasions and was described by Hitler as "a perfect specimen of Aryan womanhood".
Hitler and Mitford became close, with Hitler reportedly playing Mitford off against his new girlfriend, Eva Braun, apparently to make her jealous. Braun wrote of Mitford in her diary: "She is known as the Valkyrie and looks the part, including her legs. I the mistress of the greatest man in Germany and the whole world, I sit here waiting while the sun mocks me through the window panes." Braun regained Hitler's attention after an attempted suicide and Mitford learned from this that desperate measures were often needed to capture the Führer's attention. During this period, Mitford was also courted by Nazi supporter Count János Almásy, who supposedly could not understand why she rejected his advances.
Mitford attended the Hitler Youth festival in Hesselberg with Hitler's friend Julius Streicher, where she gave a virulently anti-semitic speech. She subsequently repeated these sentiments in an open letter to Streicher's paper, , which read: "The English have no notion of the Jewish danger. Our worst Jews work only behind the scenes. 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." Hitler rewarded her with an engraved golden swastika badge, a private box at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and a ride in a party Mercedes to the Bayreuth Festival.. Accessed 26 August 2010. "Fascist tourism" to Germany and Italy also became popular among British women rank and file members of the fascist movement, following Unity's example.
Inside the inner circle
From this point on, Mitford was inducted into Hitler's inner circle, and remained with him for five years. When Hitler announced the Anschluss in 1938, she appeared with him on the balcony in Vienna. She was later arrested in Prague for distributing Nazi propaganda. Pryce Jones reports that "She [Mitford] saw him, it seemed, more than a hundred times, no other English person could have anything like that access to Hitler","Hitler's British Girl, Part 1" (2007), Channel 4. Accessed 26 August 2010. and the suspicions of the British SIS were aroused.
MI5 officer Guy Liddell wrote in his diary: "Unity Mitford had been in close and intimate contact with the Führer and his supporters for several years, and was an ardent and open supporter of the Nazi regime. She had remained behind after the outbreak of war and her action had come perilously close to high treason." A 1936 report went further, proclaiming her "more Nazi than the Nazis", and stated that she gave the Hitler salute to the British Consul General in Munich, who immediately requested that her passport be impounded. In 1938, Hitler gave her a choice of four apartments in Munich.
Immediately prior to this, Mitford had lived in the house of Erna Hanfstaengl, sister of early Hitler admirer and confidant Ernst Hanfstaengl, but was ordered to leave when Hitler became angry with the Hanfstaengls. In the summer of 1939, Hitler arranged for a Jewish couple to be dispossessed from their apartment in Munich so that Mitford could move in. Mitford is reported to have visited to discuss her decoration and design plans, while the soon-to-be-dispossessed residents sat in the kitchen crying. On June 5 Unity wrote to her sister Diana that she had found an apartment which belonged to a "'young Jewish couple who are going abroad'". According to Mary S. Lovell's book The Sisters, Unity saw the couple and "apparently amicably" purchased some furniture from them.
Many prominent Nazis were also suspicious of Mitford and her relationship to their Führer. In his memoirs, Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer said of Hitler's select group: "One tacit agreement prevailed: No one must mention politics. The sole exception was Lady [sic] Mitford, who even in the later years of international tension persistently spoke up for her country and often actually pleaded with Hitler to make a deal with Britain. In spite of Hitler's discouraging reserve, she did not abandon her efforts through all those years". Mitford summered at the Berghof where she continued to discuss a possible German–British alliance with Hitler, going so far as to supply lists of potential supporters and enemies. Mitford was at Berghof while the Hitler-Schuschnigg meeting took place in February 1938.
Mitford was not the only woman who was vying for Hitler's attention: there was also the Austrian aristocrat Stephanie von Hohenlohe. Mitford developed a great dislike of von Hohenlohe and a jealousy of her closeness to Hitler. Mitford tried to share her suspicions with Hitler that von Hohenlohe was a double agent and questioning why he would keep someone of suspected Jewish origin around him. Hitler, despite Mitford's warnings, did not act on them.