Unity Mitford

1914–1948. Full name Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford. Part of the "Mitford Sisters" and ardent fan of Adolf Hitler.

Unity Mitford was born in Kensington, London, on 8 August 1914 as the fourth out of six daughters of Lord and Lady Redesdale. Unity and her sisters Diana, Nancy, Jessica, Deborah and Pamela were known as the Mitford Sisters. Her parents, Sydney Bowles and David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, also had one son called Thomas. Unity briefly attended Queen’s Gate School in London, but Unity’s mother and governesses mainly educated her at home. One of her nicknames was Bobo.

Unity Mitford went down in history as Hitler’s / the Führer’s groupie. She joined the British Union of Fascists in June 1933. Due to Hitler’s accession to power, she came to Germany in 1933 with her sister Diana, who later married Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascist, and the Tory politicians Victor Montagu and Nigel Birch. In May 1934, she then settled in Munich to learn the German language. In the following years, Unity became Hitler’s personal stalker. Almost every day, she reserved a table in the same restaurant where the Führer used to eat regularly (the Osteria Bavaria). There she waited for him and when he turned up she stared at him. After a couple of months, on 9 February 1935, Hitler finally sent one of his companions over and invited Unity to his table. Later she became part of Hitler’s inner-circle.

“Thereafter she met Hitler on 140 occasions before the outbreak of war in 1939 – finding him always sweet and unaffected. Her veneration of him was so absolute that she became a blindly fervent devotee of his political creed” (Davenport-Hines 2009).

“The fixity of her admiration for Nazidom was unreasonable: her conduct and conversation became exaggerated. She saluted the postmistress of Swinbrook, Oxfordshire, with raised hand, ‘Heil Hitler!’, collected Nazi trophies, chanted blackshirt rhymes about Jews, […]” (Davenport-Hines 2009). Even the letters that she sent to her sisters were signed with: “Heil Hitler! Love, Bobo” (Münder 2008).

Since Unity could not bear Britain and Germany being at war, she wanted to commit suicide. On 3 September 1939 she shot herself in the head with a pistol, but she was only seriously injured and did not die. The bullet was stuck into her brain. Unity was returned back to England in January 1940 on Hitler’s command. There Lady Redesdale cared for her until Unity’s death on 28 May 1948. In the end, the bullet’s wound had caused a meningitis.

Bibliography

DAVENPORT-HINES, Richard. “Mitford, Unity Valkyrie Freeman-‘ (1914-1948).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004; online edition May 2009) <http://www.oxforddnd.com/view/article/58824>. last date of access: 6 January 2016.

MÜNDER, Peter. “Die verrückten Mitford-Schwestern. Heil Hitler! Love, Bobo.“ SpiegelOnline (2008) <http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/die-verrueckten-mitford-schwestern-a-947885.html>. last date of access: 6 January 2016.

PRYCE-JONES, David. “Hitler’s Fräulein. New documents on the remarkable, regrettable Unity Mitford.” National Review 67/6 (2015): 37-38.

SIMKIN, John. “Unity Mitford.” Spartacus Educational (1997; updated August 2014) <http://spartacus-educational.com/WRmitfordU.htm#source>. Last date of access: 6 January 2016.

Hitler’s British Girl, Part 1-5, Channel 4, Documentary 2007 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9kBH47Ohlg&list=PLptMQlY6j0-HLcGAMFjXKfbxFU4Pg_rWh>. Last date of access: 6 January 2016.