Where would literature be without the Second World War?

A new book about Hitler has convinced Simon Heffer that history scholarship can always improve

Hitler's lover Eva Braun (Juliane Koehler, left), Adolf Hitler (Bruno Ganz, middle) and Albert Speer 

 

 

Where would literature be without the Second World War? The fiction mostly came early on – the Sword of Honour trilogy, as well as fine novels by such underrated writers as Nicholas Monsarrat and Eric Ambler. The non-fiction, too, began as the Germans signed the surrender on Lüneburg Heath, but the steady disclosure of documents and archives, especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall, has continued to provide new angles for the best historians.

Hitler – with his unfathomable depths of evil – remains the most analysed figure, but other leaders of the Third Reich have also been endlessly investigated.

There seem to be three consequences of this. The first is that more and more books pour out each year. The second is that most of them are pretty poor, being rewrites of other books that themselves were not much good to start with. The third is that the quality of scholarship for the very best works becomes better and better.

A couple of years ago Peter Longerich wrote a life of Himmler of such quality that no one will need to think for decades of writing another. This year, he has produced an even better book, about Goebbels: a more fruitful subject, lacking as he did Himmler’s obtuseness, and possessing that rarest of traits for a Nazi, a sense of humour.

But just when one thinks every possible aspect of this war has been covered, along comes a surprise. Such is Karina Urbach’s highly original new book, Go-Betweens for Hitler. The book describes the aristocrats who went on missions for Hitler with other powers in the Thirties and during the war. 

 

 ^{Go-Betweens for Hitler: Karina Urbach’s "highly original new book"}

 

The first part explains the unique nature of diplomacy among aristocrats before the Great War, assisted by widespread intermarriage between royalty and nobles from different European countries. Urbach then shows how this system developed during the war, despite the difficulties met by those who felt they belonged to two, sometimes opposing, nations.

The main figure in the book is Carl Eduard, Duke of Coburg, an English prince who, by accident of birth, became ruler of a German statelet. He was a grandson of Queen Victoria – the hub of the aristocratic/diplomatic network – by her son, the Duke of Albany. He was brought up English but, aged 15, his father having died and there being no other suitable candidate, was made ruler of Coburg. He was effectively apprenticed to the Kaiser to learn how to be German – and became German with a vengeance. He fought against Britain in the Great War, for which he was stripped of his British titles: but, as Urbach shows, this only served to equip him all the better for service to the Nazis.

In the Thirties Hitler was keen to make an alliance with the British. Coburg, as a cousin of our royal family, was crucial in this, and work began long before the abdication of Edward VIII provided a disaffected senior royal for the Nazis to work on. Further down the food chain, Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe – a middle class Viennese adventuress who got lucky – worked on the press baron Lord Rothermere, who supported appeasement. Then, until Pearl Harbor, she sought to cultivate pro-German opinion in the United States.

What makes this book so much more than what a friend of mine calls “Nazi porn” is its superb scholarship. It is the product of five years of archival research in England and Germany – Urbach is bilingual, and it shows, as does her detailed understanding of high society in both Britain and Germany.

So sensitive is the subject, however, that she found many archives closed to her – the Royal Archives make available none of the correspondence relevant to Edward VIII; the Rothermere papers are closed on this subject; and files for ministers who met go-betweens such as Lord Halifax and R A Butler, have been “weeded”. It is a terrible pity: I hope they will eventually be opened, as memories of the shame of having collaborated with the Nazis fade – and that Urbach will be around to update what, until then, will remain an unsurpassable work on this intriguing subject.