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The untold story of how Germany's top aristocrats contributed to Hitler's secret diplomacy during the Third Reich, providing a direct line to their influential contacts and relations across Europe, especially in Britain.
List of contents
Preface; Introduction; Part I: Go-Betweens Before Hitler; 1 What are Go-Betweens?; 2 Go-Betweens in the Great War; 3 Bolshevism: The fear that binds; Part II: Hitler's Go-Betweens; 4 Approaching the Appeasers: the Duke of Coburg; 5 Horthy, Hitler and Lord Rothermere: Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe; 6 Munich to Marbella: Prince Max Hohenlohe; Conclusion: Did Go-Betweens make a difference?; Notes; Bibliography; Index
About the author
Karina Urbach ist Senior Research Fellow an der Universität London. Sie habilitierte sich 2009 über die politischen Verknüpfungen des europäischen Adels im 20. Jahrhundert. Sie war an mehreren BBC-Dokumentationen über das viktorianische Zeitalter beteiligt.
Summary
This is the untold story of how some of Germany's top aristocrats contributed to Hitler's secret diplomacy during the Third Reich, providing a direct line to their influential contacts and relations across Europe - especially in Britain, where their contacts included the press baron and Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and the future King Edward VIII.
Using previously unexplored sources from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the USA, Karina Urbach unravels the story of top-level go-betweens such as the Duke of Coburg, grandson of Queen Victoria, and the seductive Stephanie von Hohenlohe, who rose from a life of poverty in Vienna to become a princess and an intimate of Adolf Hitler. As Urbach shows, Coburg and other senior aristocrats were tasked with some of Germany's most secret foreign policy missions from the First World War onwards, culminating in their role as Hitler's trusted go-betweens, as he readied Germany for conflict during the 1930s - and later, in the Second World War.
Tracing what became of these high-level go-betweens in the years after the Nazi collapse in 1945 - from prominent media careers to sunny retirements in Marbella - the book concludes with an assessment of their overall significance in the foreign policy of the Third Reich.
Additional text
From peace-feelers in the First World War to appeasers on the eve of the Second World War, this unique book makes fascinating reading
Report
"A fascinating page-turner about Hitler's secret diplomacy in the 1930s, which was intended to secure British amity and then neutrality when he led Germany to war ... Urbach combed her way through archives across Europe to construct this image of a decaying aristocracy using their connections in the cultivation of appeasers in Britain. They were not without influence." (Lawrence Goldman, Books of the Year 2015, History Today)
