Go-Betweens for Hitler

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.

Karina Urbach, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Karina Urbach is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Historial Research, University of London, having previously been Assistant Professor of History at the University of Bayreuth in Bavaria. She has published several books on nineteenth and twentieth century history, including Bismarck's Favourite Englishman. Lord Odo Russell's Mission to Berlin (2000) and a biography of Queen Victoria. Her most recent book is Secret Intelligence and the International Relations of Europe in the 20th Century (2013), co-edited with Jonathan Haslam. She has also contributed to several British and German TV documentaries, and was the historical advisor for BBC 2's Royal Cousins at War (2014).

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