Lady Diana Mitford

[Tholzel]

Apropos of my question of how many women are on this forum, here is an obituary in today's (8/16/03) Boston Globe about an infamous 3rd Reich woman:

Lady Diana Mosley, at 93; was WWII Nazi sympathizer
LOS ANGELES TIMES
LOS ANGELES - Lady Diana Mosley, the widow of Britain's prewar fascist party leader who was imprisoned with her husband as a Nazi sympathizer and was regarded as the most beautiful and most controversial of the famous Mit-ford family sisters, died Monday in Paris. She was 93.
Mrs. Mosley, who knew Win-ston Churchill and Adolf Hitler, died in her flat after suffering a stroke a week earlier. Her death, according to the notice posted by her sister, Deborah, the duchess of Devonshire, was "peaceful."
Mrs. Mosley was an aristocrat who became known as "the most hated woman in England" during World War II.
Her second husband, Sir Oswald Mosley, was founder of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, and Mrs. Mosley gave him her full support. She traveled to Germany frequently in the 1930s and often met with Hitler. In 1940, the Mosleys were imprisoned as national security risks.
Despite criticism over the years, Mrs. Mosley never stopped championing her husband's political views and defending his reputation. He died in 1980.
Although she ultimately conceded that Hitler's actions were wrong, she never expressed regret over her friendship with him, a man she found "extraordinarily fascinating and clever."
"We all know he was a monster, that he was very cruel and did terrible things," she said in a 1994 interview. "But that doesn't alter the fact that he was obviously an interesting figure. No torture on Earth would get me to say anything different."
Born Diana Freeman-Mitford on June 17, 1910, she was the fourth of seven children of David Mitford, the second Baron Redes-dale, and his wife, the former Sydney Bowles.
Novelist Nancy Mitford, one of Diana's sisters, captured their sheltered and privileged upbringing — and their eccentric relatives — in three books: "Highland Fling," "In Pursuit of Love," and "Love in a Cold Climate."
whose circle of friends included society photographer Cecil Bea-ton, poet and author John Betje-man, painter Dora Carrington, biographer and critic Lytton Strachey, and novelist Evelyn Waugh.
She had two children during her marriage to Guinness, but the union was short-lived. In 1932, she met Mosley and left her husband to live openly with the married political maverick. Mosley's wife, Lady Cynthia Curzon, died of peritonitis in 1933.
Mrs. Mosley was enthralled by her older husband, who had recently left the Labor Party to found the British Union of Fascists. She later said she "followed him politically, absolutely blindly." Indeed, she is said to have sat quietly in the crowd at her husband's fascist party rallies, even when things grew volatile.
Mrs. Mosley visited Nazi Germany for the first time in 1933 with her sister Unity and first met Hitler two years later. She later affectionately recalled the Nazi leader's "fine brown hair, chivalry, and elegant hands."
In October 1936, she and Oswald Mosley were secretly married in Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels's drawing room in Berlin. Hitler, one of only six guests, presented the newlyweds with a photograph of himself in a heavy, eagle-topped silver frame.
In May 1940, Oswald Mosley was being held in England's Holloway prison. A wartime British intelligence memo urging that Mrs. Mosley also be imprisoned, written in 1940 and released only last year, described her as being "far cleverer and more dangerous than her husband, and will stick at nothing to achieve her ambitions."
Mrs. Mosley, who was still nursing their 10-week-old second child, was imprisoned in a separate cell at Holloway a month after her husband.
Even then, in an interview with a Home Office Advisory Committee, she admitted that she would like to replace the British political system with the German one "because we think it has done well for that country."
In addition to Diana, Nancy, and Deborah, the other Mitford sisters included Unity, who generated controversy in the 1930s with her own pro-Hitler views; Jessica, the author, journalist, and one-time Communist Party member; and the less well-known Pamela, who married a physicist. Their brother, Tom, was killed in Burma in 1945.
In 1929, at age 18, Mrs. Mosley married brewing heir Bryan Guinness. After her marriage, she became a leading London hostess
Asked if she approved of the Nazi policies against Jews, she responded: "Up to a point. I am not fond of Jews."
Frequently mocked in the British press, she was a despised national figure. When buses pulled up outside the prison, where she lived in a tiny cell, the conductors would call out, 'This stop for Lady Mosley's suite."
The Mosleys were released in November 1943 due to Oswald's ill health, but were under house arrest for the remainder of the war.