DIANA HAD LEFT Ravello at the end of August. Instead of going home, she went direct to Munich, to join Unity there. The sisters had found the first Nazi Party Congress the previous year so exciting that they were determined to go again. The 1934 Parteitag was to take place in the first week of September.
Since her visit to Munich in the autumn of 1933, Unity had bombarded her parents with requests to allow her to go back. The Redesdales were naturally unwilling: it was an era when most girls lived at home until they were married, and Unity was only nineteen. But she said, with truth, that she longed to learn German, a plan of which both Sydney and David approved. From Unity’s passionately single-minded viewpoint, this was preparation for the hoped-for moment when she would meet her hero (Hitler did not speak a word of any other language) rather than cultural aspiration. Accordingly, in May 1934, she was installed by Sydney in the house of a respectable elderly baroness who made ends meet by taking in young foreign girls of good family.
Unity soon had a circle of friends. As well as the other English girls staying with the baroness, she met young Germans through Putzi Hanfstaengl’s sister Erna. She also met a young artist, Derek Hill, who had been in Munich studying theatre design since the previous autumn. Pam, who had known Derek Hill when he was a schoolboy, had told him to look up Unity, and the two of them often went sightseeing or walking in the mountains together.
It was through Derek that Unity had her first sight of Hitler at close quarters – at six p.m. on 11 June in the Carlton Teeraum.
Derek knew that on Mondays Hitler often patronised these tearooms on his way from Berchtesgaden to Berlin. When Derek’s mother and an elderly aunt from Scotland were visiting him in Munich, they asked if there were any chances of seeing ‘this new man everyone’s talking about’. He told them the best chance was at the Carlton Teeraum and took them there the following Monday.
The small party sat sipping tea and waiting. Suddenly, when they had almost given up hope, Hitler, followed by Goebbels, Hess and various henchmen, swung into the long room. Derek, who like all her friends knew of Unity’s obsession, went straight to the telephone. ‘The führer’s here – if you want to look at him you’d better come quick.’
Unity was pathetically grateful. ‘This is the kindest thing that’s ever been done for me in my life. I’ll never forget it.’ She rushed out, jumped into a taxi and arrived in a state of breathless excitement. She was trembling so much as she stared at Hitler that she was unable to drink her chocolate and had to hand her cup to Derek. Later, he was to recall a more bizarre manifestation of Hitler’s extraordinary charisma: his mother and aunt, strongminded, apolitical Scotswomen, were so affected by this sight of the führer that they gave the Nazi salute as they left the Teeraum.
This glimpse of Hitler among the palms and teacups of the Carlton so increased Unity’s obsessional devotion that henceforth she would ascribe to him a kind of saintliness. Even his brutal massacre of his close friend and associate, Ernst Ro¨hm, and eighty-odd other leaders of the SA (on what became known as the Night of the Long Knives less than three weeks later on 30 June) elicited from Unity only pity for the führer. ‘It must have been so dreadful for Hitler when he arrested Ro¨hm himself and tore off his decorations,’ she wrote. On Ro¨hm’s photographs in her scrapbook she drew black crosses and scrawled the word ‘Schwein!’
By the time Diana arrived in Munich, Unity, back there again after the summer holidays at Swinbrook, spoke German with fluency. Though this year there was no Putzi to help them get into events during the Parteitag, they had the luck to run into one of the original members of the Party, whereupon Unity was able to tell him their problem. He solved it by sending them with a note to the accommodation office of the Parteitag, which fixed them up with the necessary tickets and a room in a small hotel.
If the first Party Congress had impressed the sisters, the second was to do so more profoundly still. It was the one featured in Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will, made to celebrate the glories of a risen Germany embarking on its thousand-year Reich.
From its opening shots of the Leader’s aeroplane, descending through the clouds like the silver chariot of some Teutonic hero-god to the strains of Wagner, there was but one theme: the invincibility of Germany. The eagles, the spearlike flagstaffs with red and black banners hanging from them, the menacing, helmeted figures silhouetted against firelit darkness, the juxtaposition of stillness and movement, the marching columns, their goosestepping suggestive of a robotic implacability trampling all beneath it – all declared an unconquerable Master Race. When Hess, in one of the speeches heralding the Leader, proclaimed, ‘A country that does not maintain the purity of its race perishes,’ a hundred thousand throats roared their belief in Aryan supremacy.
The Parteitag opened at eleven a.m. on Wednesday 5 September, in the Luitpold Hall. Its huge auditorium was decorated in the colours of blood and fire, against a background of sacrificial white. The pillars supporting the high roof were draped in red, with twining yellow and orange artificial flowers. White canvas covered the walls and festooned the roof. To stirring marches, banner after scarlet banner was borne in, each inscribed with the name of a different German city, until all were ranged under a huge red flag, a black swastika at its centre, hanging on the far wall. As each flag appeared, the 30,000 audience rose with the Nazi salute and a shout that drowned the music.
Hitler, of course, was well aware of the power of uniforms and hierarchy in a country where even town hall officials were known by their titles. He understood the potency of symbols, of dramatic momentum – he never spoke until one or more of his associates had already roused the crowd to a frenzy – and, knowing the German temperament, he did not fear the ridicule often evoked elsewhere by fascist theatricality.
Every appearance was carefully staged. As the führer entered from the back of the auditorium, powerful spotlights cut through the darkness to focus brilliant light on his solitary figure. To a fanfare of trumpets and accompanied at a respectful distance by Goering, Goebbels and Hess, he marched to his place on the platform. As he raised his right arm in salute, arc lights sprang on, bathing the white canvas in dazzling light, glittering from polished buttons, from eyes shining with excitement, from the flash of teeth in mouths open and shouting. ‘Heil Hitler!’ thundered out as from a single, gigantic throat. The next moment, the orchestra’s conductor, silver hair gleaming against his chocolate dress suit, raised his baton for the overture to Die Meistersinger, Hitler’s favourite piece of music.
The parades outside, in the Zeppelin Meadow three miles from the centre of the city, were equally dramatic. All day long columns of men marched, wheeled, saluted, listened, roared their loyalty and finally marched back to Nuremberg in torchlit procession. All were in uniform – Storm Troopers, Nazi officials, detachments from the army and navy and the so-called civilians. First came the Soldiers of Labour, an ostensibly peaceful force who learned drill along with digging, their spades taking the place of rifles. As Hitler saluted, the command ‘Shoulder your spades!’ rang out and 52,000 blades flashed as they rose from foot to shoulder of the earth-brown Labour uniform.
On the last day, Hitler arrived at twilight, taking his place on the grandstand in a blaze of white light. On the far slope of the huge field, powerful searchlights lit up a force of 181,000 men. Every ninth man held a scarlet banner. As the silent army advanced to fill the field, the flagbearers marched through them and forward until they arrived beneath the podium on which Hitler stood. Here, vivid as a pool of blood in the spotlights, the flags were dipped in salute to the fallen as the poignant, mournful air ‘Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden’ stole out through the growing darkness. Then came Hitler’s voice, magnified by loudspeakers, speaking of Germany’s unconquerable strength and declaring that she would willingly hold her hand out to all those foreign nations who would accept it. It was euphoric, it was overwhelming, it was like being caught up in a whirlwind.
For Diana, enthralled by the spectacle, touched by the pulsing electricity of excitement but frustratingly unable to understand the German language, the scenes she had just witnessed crystallised a growing urge to find some meaningful occupation to fill her life while Mosley stumped the country on speaking engagements. With his encouragement, she decided to learn German. This also meant that she would see plenty of Unity who was now the sister to whom she was closest. Munich was cheap, there was opera, there was skiing, there were museums. Diana took a flat, complete with Biedermayer furniture and a cook found for her by Unity, who moved in straight away and enrolled in a German course for foreigners at Munich university.
While Diana was settling into her Munich life, the BUF was holding a Blackshirt Rally in Hyde Park. Although it was the largest such open-air parade they had yet mounted, Mosley was uneasily conscious that, now that Rothermere had withdrawn his support, membership was declining. It was time to inject fresh impetus – in the form of another leaf torn out of the German book. There was no better moment to do this than at the next large meeting: at eight p.m. on 28 October at the Royal Albert Hall.
A large audience had gathered to hear the Leader speak. The BUF had sent letters to potential supporters, inviting them to apply for tickets (these cost from 1s to 7s 6d) so that they might witness ‘yet another stage in the advance of fascism’. This would turn out to be Mosley’s declaration that anti-semitism was henceforth to be one of the main planks of the movement. ‘A dynamic creed such as fascism cannot flourish unless it has a scapegoat to hit out at, such as the Jews,’ he told his sister-in-law, Irene.
On the day of the meeting, the fascists assembled at their King’s Road headquarters and at 5.45 set off for the Albert Hall, down wide streets in which there was no obstacle to their purposeful marching. They went along Sloane Avenue and Pelham Street, past South Kensington underground and up the Exhibition Road, arriving at the south door of the Albert Hall. They entered straight away, to prepare the stage and take up position.
This time, there was a much greater police presence than at the Olympia meeting in June. Large numbers of anti-fascists had gathered in Trafalgar Square in the afternoon and they had regrouped in Hyde Park for further speeches and demonstrations before arriving at the Albert Hall. The police expected trouble and were there in strength to deal with it: there were 1,236 constables, 88 mounted police and almost 200 officers, under the command of a Superintendent.
Pam, sitting near the front, found it difficult to conceal her distaste for what she called ‘ridiculous play-acting behaviour’ as she watched Mosley march up the main aisle, arm outstretched in the fascist salute, to the chanting of the BUF’s Teutonic-sounding anthem, ‘Mosley, Leader of Thousands!’
‘This great meeting tonight is another milestone on the irresistible march of the Blackshirt movement to power,’ he began, to loud applause.
In the past few months [it] has passed through various attacks, misrepresentations and physical violence such as no other movement in the history of this country has been called on to survive . . . the Press of this country combined with the old hens of Parliament have succeeded in creating in the minds of the public the impression that Blackshirts are responsible for disorder on the streets and disorder at meetings simply from the fact that fights have taken place at our meetings.
He went on to repudiate charges of violence, to advocate protectionism and, finally, in a rousing peroration, to attack the Jews:
The power of organised Jewry is mobilised against fascism. They have thrown down their challenge . . . the way in which Jews attack fascism is when there are six Jews to one fascist. The point we can prove is the victimisation of employees of Jewry, men and women who have been dismissed for no better reason than that they were Blackshirts.
Next came the familiar charge that the Jews controlled international finance before his unequivocal conclusion:
They admit they owe allegiance not to our Empire but to friends, relatives and kith and kin in other nations and they know that fascism will not tolerate anyone who owes allegiance to a foreign country. They have been striving for eighteen months to arouse feeling in this country to raise the banners of war with a nation with whom we made peace in 1918. We fought Germany once in a British quarrel. We shall not fight Germany again in a Jewish quarrel.
It was horribly reminiscent of the conclusion of a recent speech by Rudolf Hess: ‘The country that does not maintain the purity of its race perishes’ – and the Blackshirts were quick to take up its theme. It was not long before they were marching through the East End to the chant of ‘The Yids! The Yids! We’ve got to get rid of the Yids!’
Some reacted with outrage, some with ridicule. One of the latter was Nancy, whose natural weapon was mockery and who had to the full the novelist’s instinct to transmute personal experience into copy, as well as a habit of basing her characters on clearly identifiable family or friends. Her brief passage with fascism had given her plenty of material, which she had been busy pouring into a novel, Wigs on the Green. Its heroine, Eugenia, a pretty, fair-haired eighteen-year-old who spouted fascist ideology on the village green though still obedient to Nanny, and who rode a horse called Vivian Jackson (Pam’s husband Derek had a twin brother called Vivian), would have been recognisable only within the family circle as Unity – but its unseen fascist supremo Colonel Jack with his band of loyal Jackshirts could have been identified by anyone who read a newspaper.
With the fun of writing past and the book nearing publication, Nancy was becoming worried at the effect it would have on Diana. On 7 November she wrote placatingly:
I am calling it the Union Jack movement, the members wear Union Jackshirts & their Leader is called Colonel Jack. But I shall give it to you to edit before publication because although it is very pro-fascism there are one or two jokes & you could tell better than I whether they would be Leaderteases.
She was soon to learn what Diana thought.
After watching, with Unity, a ceremony on 9 November commemorating the deaths of sixteen men in one narrow Munich street during the 1923 putsch, from which stemmed Hitler’s rise to power, Diana gave up her flat in Munich and went home to London. Over the course of a long luncheon with Nancy at the Ritz she detailed her objections to the Leaderteases, making her displeasure coldly clear.
Unity, still in Munich, moved into a students’ lodging house. Her fatal meeting with Hitler was only three months ahead.