Saturday, March 28, 2015

‘You Are Always Close to Me’: Unity Mitford’s Souvenirs of Hitler

THE SPECTATOR: Hitler’s adoring notes to Unity Mitford – and her family’s campaign to stop my book

The English aristocracy has had its fair share of misfits, and one of the most far-fetched was Unity Mitford. No novelist would dare invent the story of a young woman of 19 who settles in Germany in 1933, determines to captivate Hitler, and succeeds. Eva Braun, the long-term mistress whom Hitler married in the last days of his life, gives way in her diary to jealousy and spite. There is evidence provided either by Unity herself or Nazi officials that Hitler held her hand, stroked her hair and called her ‘Kind’ (child). During his preparation for world war in the summer of 1939, he found time to arrange for a Jewish couple to be dispossessed from their apartment in Munich in order for Unity to have it. He also paid various expenses. » | David Pryce-Jones | Saturday, March 28, 2015