This picture taken in the 1930s shows two of the famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) Mitford sisters, posing with a group of quite amiable-looking SS officers. On the left (notwithstanding the filename of the photo)is Unity, who had spent some considerable time in Munich hanging around Adolf Hitler during his rise to power. Shortly after the outbreak of war in September 1939, so distressed by the conflict between her country and Germany, she tried to commit suicide in a public park by shooting herself in the head. She did not die but was repatriated to England via Switzerland through Hitler's intervention on her behalf. She made a partial recovery but soon after the war died of meningitis, probably precipitated by her wound.
On the right, her sister Diana, who had already come to fame in the 1930s, married first to one of the Guinness family. She was regarded in her youth as one of the most beautiful women in England:
and she became the mistress of the Blackshirt leader Oswald Mosley. She was married to Mosley in Germany in the presence of Hitler and Goebbels in the 1930s. When war broke out Mosley ordered his blackshirts to fight in the British forces (one of the first armed forces casualties was a member of Mosley's party); but the couple were regarded as a security risk and were both interned, at first separately and then together in Holloway Prison. After the war they decamped to Paris and lived in some luxury there, Mosley making periodic unsuccessful attempts to revive his political career. Their marriage was a very happy one, and Diana a woman of great charm with many friends. But she never quite seemed to have got over the hypnotic effect of Der Fuhrer. Did she ever bother to read Mein Kampf?
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