Susan Ronald, acclaimed author of Hitler’s Art Thief takes listeners into the shadowy world of the aristocrats and business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic who secretly aided Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Hitler said, “I am convinced that propaganda is an essential means to achieve one’s aims.” Enlisting Europe’s aristocracy, international industrialists, and the political elite in Britain and America, Hitler spun a treacherous tale everyone wanted to believe: he was a man of peace. Central to his deception was an international high society Black Widow, Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, whom Hitler called “his dear princess.” She, and others, conspired for Hitler at the highest levels of the British aristocracy and spread their web to America’s wealthy powerbrokers.
Hitler’s aristocrats became his eyes, listening posts, and mouthpieces in the drawing rooms, at the cocktail parties, and on the weekend retreats of Europe and America. Among these “gentlemen spies” and “ladies of mystery” were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Lady Nancy Astor, Charles Lindbergh, and two of the Mitford sisters. They were the trusted voices disseminating his political and cultural propaganda about the “New Germany,” brushing aside the Nazis’ atrocities. Distrustful of his own Foreign Ministry, Hitler used his aristocrats to open the right doors in Great Britain and the United States, creating a formidable fifth column within government and financial circles.
In a tale of drama and intrigue, Hitler’s Aristocrats uncovers the battle between these influencers and those who heroically opposed them.
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“Unearths the efforts of dozens…who helped pave the way for getting Hitler’s ‘big lie’ accepted by so many…[A] highly readable drama of highborn traitors who enthusiastically aided the Nazi ascent to power.”
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Kirkus Reviews