Soldier, Banker, Diplomat, Spy

I am currently working on a proposal for a non-fiction book based on the unpublished diaries of an unsung British hero from the two world wars who began life as a soldier before becoming a spy involved in the unmasking of Mara Hari (as liaison officer to the Deuxième Bureau), spying in Russia in 1921, and then joining the family’s banking firm. As they say, once a spy . . . and such was the case with this gentleman. He became a favourite ‘go to’ person for high level contacts, served again in the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF) until May 1940, and in 1941 became a diplomat sent to Washington D.C. His mission? To bring the United States into the war. Aristocrats, despite many in Continental Europe having suffered a loss of political and cultural standing after World War I, still rightly viewed themselves as a close-knit multilingual international elite. And Hitler planned to use them to his advantage: as spies, women of mystery, gentlemen infiltrators, diplomats with a remit to penetrate the power circles of the countries to which they were accredited, industrial sabotage agents, and more. . . . They were the trusted voices disseminating his political and cultural propaganda for the “New Germany.” Then, too, there were the German industrialists—45 of whom would find themselves arrested at the end of the war and brought up on charges of ‘crimes against humanity.’ Names like Thyssen, Krupp, and IG Farben are in my cast of ‘aristocrats’, too. Unlike the royal families, it was these corporate aristocrats who rearmed Germany or kept the Nazi Party afloat in the early years and helped to promote the move to a war economy before the British and French declarations of war prior to September 1939. But German aristocrats were only at the beginning in the chain of propaganda promoting Hitler. American banks, most notably the House of Morgan, American corporations like Ford, General Motors and ITT all assisted in the fantasy that Hitler’s Germany meant peace. American isolationists in Congress and the press actively worked to keep Hitler off the political agenda, even when given proof that there was a German fifth column in America. Men like Henry Ford and Jack Morgan helped to spread anti-Semitism in America. James D. Mooney of General Motors acted as both an adviser to President Roosevelt and a propagandist for Hitler. Like the royal families of Europe, their “jobs” and friendships transcended international boundaries. International business had to find ways of ‘accommodating’ Hitler to keep their trade alive. In Britain, social hostesses like Lady Edith Londonderry, American-born Lady Maud “Emerald” Cunard, and even the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII and then Duke of Windsor) fell under Hitler’s spell. Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists and married to the beautiful Diana Mitford, (and brother-in-law of Hitler’s ‘Valkyrie’ Unity Mitford), were the most obvious faces of fascism. But others in the political and aristocratic hierarchy lurked behind the scenes and were equally if not more powerful in the desire to accommodate Hitler. Hitler’s Aristocrats helped promote Nazi propaganda in both Britain and America in board rooms, drawing rooms, cocktail parties, and weekend retreats, carrying out some of his most secret plans. They were the trusted voices disseminating his political and cultural propaganda for the “New Germany.” The question I answer is why by showing how.