Philip Mansel

The Prince and the F

Anyone interested in the history of Germany, of nationalism or of dynasties will be gripped by this book. Born at the start of the 20th century, heirs of an ancient German dynasty, Princes Philipp and Christopher of Hesse-Kassel were good-looking, modern young men. English was their second language, Queen Victoria’s liberal daughter the Empress Frederick their grandmother. No other German princes, however, rose so high in the Nazi party.

Prince Philipp became a member of the Nazi party and the SA in 1930. Prince Christopher joined the SS in 1932. The timing of their adhesion, before Hitler came to power, proves its sincerity. Their mother ‘Mossy’ invited Hitler to tea and flew the swastika from Schloss Kronberg, the German Balmoral which she had inherited as the Empress Frederick’s favourite daughter. In 1933, sworn in by Göring himself, Prince Philipp became Oberpraesident of the provinces his ancestors had ruled as Landgrafs.

Wounded pride, Jonathan Petropoulos shows in this thorough and thoughtful book, was one motive. Nazism helped the old elite recover a few shreds of the power and status lost in 1918. Defeat and deposition had been all the more traumatic for being unexpected. In October 1918, Prince Philipp had been designing furniture for the palace which his father had expected to occupy as the newly elected king of Finland. A month later he and his family were citizens of the Weimar Republic.

Petropoulos exposes the sympathy not just between Nazism and the Hesses in particular, but between Nazism and German dynasties in general. Some princes stayed aloof. More felt sympathy for Nazi elitism and anti- communism. Göring and Himmler, moreover, were keen to employ noble officers. Hitler frequently met the leader of the German Noble Association and, when it suited him, promised to restore the monarchy.

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