Hitler's Aristocrats: The Secret Power Players in Britain and America Who Supported the Nazis, 1923-1941

by Susan Ronald

Overview

Susan Ronald, acclaimed author of Hitler's Art Thief takes readers into the shadowy world of the aristocrats and business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic who secretly aided Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Hitler said, “I am convinced that propaganda is an essential means to achieve one’s aims.” Enlisting Europe’s aristocracy, international industrialists, and the political elite in Britain and America, Hitler spun a treacherous tale everyone wanted to believe: he was a man of peace. Central to his deception was an international high society Black Widow, Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, whom Hitler called “his dear princess.” She, and others, conspired for Hitler at the highest levels of the British aristocracy and spread their web to America's wealthy powerbrokers.

Hitler’s aristocrats became his eyes, listening posts, and mouthpieces in the drawing rooms, cocktail parties, and weekend retreats of Europe and America. Among these “gentlemen spies” and “ladies of mystery” were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Lady Nancy Astor, Charles Lindbergh, and two of the Mitford sisters. They were the trusted voices disseminating his political and cultural propaganda about the “New Germany,” brushing aside the Nazis’ atrocities. Distrustful of his own Foreign Ministry, Hitler used his aristocrats to open the right doors in Great Britain and the United States, creating a formidable fifth column within government and financial circles.

In a tale of drama and intrigue, Hitler’s Aristocrats uncovers the battle between these influencers and those who heroically opposed them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250276568
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/14/2023
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	196,705
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Born and raised in the United States, SUSAN RONALD is a British-American biographer, historian, and author of several books, including The Ambassador, Conde Nast, A Dangerous Woman, Hitler’s Art Thief, and Heretic Queen. She lives in a quintessential English village with her writer husband.
Born and raised in the United States, SUSAN RONALD is a British-American biographer and historian of more than half a dozen books, including Conde Nast, The Ambassador, A Dangerous Woman, Hitler’s Art Thief, and Heretic Queen. She lives in rural England with her writer husband.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Dramatis Personae
Author’s Note
Prologue

PART I: THE MAGIC WEAVERS

1. Chaos
2. The “Big Lie”
3. The Alchemists
4. “Brideshead”
5. Duplicitous Émigrés
6. America and the Finance Wizards
7. The Gambler and Propagandist

PART II: A TAPESTRY OF LIES

8. Hope and Renewal
9. Winds of Change
10. Charade
11. The Wounded Giant
12. Saluting Hitler
13. “His Lordship’s Ambassadress”
14. “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!”
15. Corralling the Malcontents
16. Men on White Horses
17. Hitler’s “Listening Posts”
18. Man of Peace
19. Party Day Propaganda

PART III: JUGGERNAUT

20. Inevitability of War
21. Upping the Ante
22. Olympians and Titans
23. Fifth Columnists
24. Dashed Dreams
25. The Boiling Cauldron
26. Appeasement
27. Espionage
28. Secret Maneuvers
29. Swapping Horses Midstream

PART IV: THE UNRAVELING

30. Fall from Grace
31. Last Throw of the Dice
32. The Exiles
33. The American Dimension
34. Mysteries Within an Enigma
35. “Willi”
36. Herding Cats
37. Pearl Harbor
Epilogue

Appendix I: Letter from Fritz Wiedemann to Lord Rothermere
Appendix II: Tricycle’s American Questionnaire
Appendix III: HO 382/250 Princess Stephanie’s Home Office
File Assessed

Abbreviations and Glossary
Acknowledgments
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

01/02/2023

In this colorful yet familiar account, historian Ronald (The Ambassador) spotlights the “influencers and enablers who actively worked toward blinding Germany, Great Britain, and the United States to what Hitler and his fellow criminals were doing.” She profiles fascist sympathizers both well-known and obscure, including Princess Stephanie zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, a Hungarian divorcée who was on the payrolls of both Hitler and Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail; American ambassador to Britain Joseph P. Kennedy; and the Duke of Windsor. Also discussed are the American Liberty League’s plan for wealthy industrialists to overthrow President Roosevelt and install “a man on a white horse” who would end the New Deal, and the successful cultivation of author Laura Ingalls Wilder’s distant cousin, aviator Laura Houghtaling Ingalls, as an unregistered foreign agent for Germany. While Ronald convincingly details a great deal of sympathy for Nazi Germany and fascism in general among English-speaking elites, she focuses on summarizing previously known connections, rather than exposing how deep, widespread, and enduring these viewpoints were. Though Ronald’s insights into how quickly anti-democratic views can take root in the popular attitudes of the wealthy are relevant today, this case study doesn’t break much new ground. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Hitler's Aristocrats:

"Highly readable drama of highborn traitors who enthusiastically aided the Nazi ascent to power." —Kirkus Reviews

"Colorful…Ronald convincingly details a great deal of sympathy for Nazi Germany and fascism in general among English-speaking elites…her insights into how quickly anti-democratic views can take root in the popular attitudes of the wealthy are relevant today." —Publishers Weekly

“Well documented…Recommended for informed readers who want to know more about the international clandestine machinations that enabled World War II to occur.” —Library Journal

"Hitler's Aristocrats is an absorbing study of the ubiquitous nature of propaganda and the "murky puppeteers" who actively worked to blind the world to Hitler's crimes" —Shelf Awareness

Ronald’s unsettling account of the secret supporters of Nazism among the tiara-wearing classes offers a timely lesson in the fragility of democracy. Hitler's Aristocrats is by turns fascinating and heartbreaking as it sheds light on those who abetted rise to power, and also those who courageously opposed him. —Dr. Amanda Foreman, award-winning author of A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War

Praise for Susan Ronald:

“Seldom has the Joe Kennedy story been told in such a searing, remorseless way.” —Wall Street Journal on The Ambassador

"Ronald fashions a portrait of the ambitious Kennedy that brings to mind the mythological figure Icarus." —The Washington Post on The Ambassador

“[A] riveting portrait of Gurlitt, who detested the Nazis, and stole from them, but did their bidding in the name of ‘saving modern art’.” —The New Yorker on Hitler's Art Thief

From the Publisher

02/01/2023

A person such as Hitler, initially lacking position or connections, does not rise to power in a vacuum. Historian and biographer Ronald (The Ambassador) meticulously documents Hitler's rise to power by focusing on the societal and political entourage he cultivated. The book shows that Hitler's true source of eventual power came from the aristocrats who were willing to become spies, the governmental officials who pushed his agenda to the British and United States, and commercial giants that secretly supplied a future war effort. According to the author, well-known supporters included Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Joseph Kennedy, and British Monarch King Edward VIII. In exchange, the British elite wanted their lifestyle to continue uninterrupted, and Hitler assured them he could facilitate this outcome, although he downplayed the need for another world war. The book's claims are well documented with appendices, a glossary, notes, and a bibliography. VERDICT Recommended for informed readers who want to know more about the international clandestine machinations that enabled World War II to occur.—Jessica A. Bushore

Library Journal

2022-11-22
A character-driven chronicle of the numerous British and American elites who abetted Hitler’s efforts to seize and maintain power.

Many of these names (the Mitford sisters, Sir Oswald Mosley) will be well known to students of fascist history. However, British American biographer Ronald, author of Hitler’s Art Thief, among other books, capably unearths the efforts of dozens of others who helped pave the way for getting Hitler’s “big lie” accepted by so many. The inability to accept Germany’s defeat in World War I and the ramifications of the punitive Treaty of Versailles fed the fantasy that the old order of ruptured aristocracies could be restored. Shady characters with aristocratic ties—e.g., Ernst “Putzi” Sedgwick von Hanfstaengl, a German American businessman and “Nazi English-speaking foreign press service,” and Princess Stephanie zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, a wily spy and monarchist—acted as Hitler’s go-betweens in wooing the British and American upper crust to advocate for the Nazi regime, write favorable stories about Hitler, and infiltrate the embassies. Putzi coached Hitler on his rhetoric, while Princess Stephanie enlisted the favors of Harold Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, the British press baron, and got Hitler to appoint Joachim von Ribbentrop as head of the German foreign office in England. In this keen study, Ronald emphasizes the shocking extent to which American corporations like Du Pont and General Motors supported the pro-German fascist groups in the U.S., not to mention the behind-the-scenes support of Hitler’s own “alchemists” like I.G. Farben. The biggest-name sympathizers were, of course, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, ultimately exiled by Churchill to govern the Bahamas to keep them out of mischief. Even Martha Dodd, the daughter of William Dodd, the fervently anti-Nazi American ambassador to Germany, was seduced by the Nazi machine, and she went on to become an unrepentant spy.

Highly readable drama of highborn traitors who enthusiastically aided the Nazi ascent to power.

Kirkus Reviews