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Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany

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Philipp and Christoph von Hessen-Kassell were great-grandsons of Queen Victoria and nephews of Kaiser Wilhelm II. They were born into the highest circles of wealth and privilege in pre-World War I Germany, living in a variety of palaces and castles and secure within a wide family circle which extended into nearly every royal dynasty in Europe. Petropoulos' central story examines how such men could have been seduced into participating in the highest levels of one of the most thuggish regimes in modern times.

The Hessen family, like other royal/noble clans, was severely shaken by World War I. Although they did not lose all their property (or their lives) as so many of their relations did, Philipp and Christoph's family saw their status slip and some of their wealth vanish. This, along with the terrible suffering more ordinary Germans underwent in the post-World War I period, made the Hessen princes prime targets for the appeal of Nazism: militarism, aggressive nationalism, revenge for past defeats.

After Hitler's coming to power in 1933 and the establishment of the Third Reich, the Nazi Party made a concerted effort to win the support of highly placed individuals and families. Much of the German aristocracy and many members of former royal houses joined the Party, and while they may have privately sneered at the lumpenproletariat side of the Nazis and contrasted it with their own urbane sophistication, they were not above working for and doing the bidding of those they considered so uncouth. Philipp and Christoph were two prime examples. Philipp assisted Hitler in cultural affairs and, since he was married to a daughter of the Italian king, often served as an envoy to Mussolini. Christoph ran one of the Nazi intelligence agencies and served as a fighter pilot in World War II. Both were members of the SS, and both were used by Hitler to try to win influence with their cousins, the British royal family.

Having so much access to Hitler meant making a lot of moral compromises for the Hessens. Neither was particularly anti-Semitic (at least by the standards of the time) and had Jewish friends, but both were silent participants in the early stages of the Final Solution and similar atrocities. Both were artistic and fairly well educated by the standards of their caste, but neither protested the Nazi book-burnings or the destruction of art deemed insufficiently Aryan. Petropoulos does a good job contrasting this lack of action by the Hessens with the opposition of such aristocrats as Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, who with his family suffered enormously because he refused to collaborate.

As so often happens to those who cooperate with evil, Philipp and Christoph became victims themselves. Philipp and his wife (the beautiful Princess Mafalda of Savoy) ended up in concentration camps where Mafalda died after terrible sufferings. Christoph was killed in a suspicious plane crash after he too lost the Nazis' favor. After the war Philipp spent time in POW camps and went through a long drawn out denazification process before being allowed to retire, poorer and hopefully wiser, to what was left of his estates.

Petropoulos had the cooperation of many members of the Hessen family and other German nobles as well as that of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who was Christoph's brother-in-law. He does a good job depicting the two men as the cultivated, charming cosmopolitans they were, and the reader is left with a disturbing question: If men such as these could be corrupted by the Nazis, is anyone really safe from similar extremism?

Petrouplos'has a remarkable knack for gathering valuable hisotrical information, not to mention wangling an interview with the formidable Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. He is a serious academic historian and his work includes a list of previous books he's written about the Nazi era and the holocaust. His fluency in German, and his academic background, put him in a league of his own among royalty writers. The book is written with the stiff prose of an academic research paper, but on its face, it may appeal as much to royalty buffs as to historians of World War II and the Nazi movement.Often the sensational facts underlying the story are dulled by the musty language. However, the reluctance to sensationalize gives the book more credibility. Petroupols downplays the sizzling hot genealogy of the principal players, Christoph and Philipp von Hessen. Even the family tree fails to branch out as far as it could, straight into the heart of the living royal family of England. A typical royalty writer such as Kitty Kelley would have put the facts in big bold font: the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of the Queen of England, had three sisters and three brothers-in-law who became members of the Nazi party. The facts are interesting, if deplorable. Petroupolus seeks to lay out the facts objectively, looking at root causes. Maybe there is enough distance between us and the Nazi era to admit with some calmness the appeal of the movement. Royalty buffs may want to turn their idols into saints, but this book makes it evident that some royals backed Hitler long and enthusiastically. One vivid passage in the book quotes a conversation between Phillip von Hessen and Hitler, and the Prince sounds both subservient and fanatical: 'Jawohl, mein Fuherer!'he says, several times in one minute.

I admit to being a royalty buff, and I bought this book because my current obsession is the house of Hesse. I found mayself seeing Princess Margaret of Hesse-Kassel in a new light. A daughter of Victoria, the English Empress of Germany, who was herself the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Margaret and her husband became devout fans of Hitler and Nazism. The root cause seems to have been a hatred of Communism and an admiration for the German economic and social renaissance ushered in by the Nazis. True, many German nobles gradually or quickly became disillusioned by the regime as it showed its profoundly evil side...and suffered military defeat. One can't help wondering how one would have acted in the same circumstances. And how our own reaction to the policies of the current administration will be viewed.

We all get caught in our times. Petroupolos's book doesn't convey this vividly, and it is not a miracle of literature. But the facts he discloses resonate long after the last page is turned.

In written prose, the masses and even the elusive "educated general public" prescribe a certain compromise between scholarship and entertainment. Something that is too scholarly creates boredom and confusion, while a product too colloquial smacks of capitalization of the faddish aspects of popular culture and contributes a negligible modicum of understanding of the past. Therefore, a published scholar in popular media inevitably walks an unquantifiable tightrope between scholarship and entertainment. In Jonathan Petropoulos' third novel, Royals and the Reich, the author interweaves scrupulously-researched facts with a compelling narrative that offers the reader an unprecedented view into the relationship between the Princes Philipp and Christoph von Hessen and Hitler during the Third Reich.

In the sixty years since the end of the Second World War, there has been much speculation but little scholarship on the interaction between the aristocracy and Adolf Hitler. Hitler courted the German aristocracy in attempt to make his regime socially acceptable, and later turned on them as he did many other entities with which he at one time enjoyed an alliance. Additionally, there exists speculation that he conspired to install a pro-Nazi monarch in the United Kingdom, a theory that has failed to be discredited due to affirmative circumstantial evidence and the continued secrecy exhibited in the closure of archives during this period. It is a testament to the author's perseverance and diplomatic skills that he succeeds in convincing the Hessen estate to grant him unprecedented access to their archives.

Philipp's biography allowed the author to saliently interweave facts intriguing to popular culture that are also relevant to an understanding of his personality. The author examines a homosexual relationship between Philipp and an Englishmen, something on the surface that appears to be nothing more than an attempt by the author to add tabloid sensationalism to his novel. However, Philipp's elusive bisexuality saliently illustrated his conflicted role in the war effort. Like many aristocrats, Hitler's promise of restoration of the monarchy and of a stronger Germany elicited the support of Philipp. However, if his testimony is to be believed during his denazification trial, he reluctantly followed some of Hitler's edicts and contemplated an assassination attempt.

Additionally, Christoph's interest in automobiles and aviation is sure to intrigue the American male audience, as both are essential elements to the machismo culture, as most young boys fantasize of flying the plane. The reader may also infer some timely differences between the European and American elite. In a tradition rooted in the Middle Ages, male aristocrats view it as their patriotic duty to enter the officer corps and lead their peasants into battle. The concept of shared sacrifice contrasts sharply with a large trend among the American elite, which is to use their money and influence to avoid military service. While outside of the purview of this book, it would have been helpful to judge Philipp's denazification trial against the verdicts of other perpetrators.

Royals and the Reich offers the reader an unprecedented view (although at sometimes hindered by the Hessens) into the complex relationship between Hitler and both German and British aristocratic families. Hopefully, it will serve as a catalyst for continued research on the interaction, and increase pressure for full disclosure on the aristocracy involved in the Third Reich.

Petropoulos goes where no one has gone before. I had often wondered about the rumors surrounding the Windsors for which JP carefully separates facts from fiction. I had also wondered about what had become of the many royal houses of pre-Weimar Germany. With this book, I understand a lot more about their post WWI history.

This is not just a story of the von Hessen princes, while they are the focus, they are used as a benchmark for many royals in this period.

The devastation of Germany in WWI (22% of its young men killed) was followed by a new governance and the Weimar Republic arose. It exiled the Kaiser, rescinded royal titles, and voted on the status of lands formerly owned by a patchwork of royal sovereignties now abolished. While this vote on the lands failed passage, it was alarming to the aristocracy.

Noting this, and perhaps the fate of the Romanovs, and the socialistic/communistic aspects of the times, the royals and aristocrats were seduced by Hitler's message. They joined the Nazi party earlier and in greater proportion than any other demographic.

The prose in this book is heavy, and for someone like me, without much background in the history of Germany in this period was a slow read. It was, nevertheless, a page turner. Because I didn't know this family, what they did, nor their fate, I was glued to it. A map would be useful for readers, like me, with little background in Germany and its geography.

You came to understand the thinking and the loss which would compel the royals to do something, anything, following their loss of status and wealth. The Nazi party with its militaristic overtones was a match for their feudal ideals. JP documents the anti-Semitism of the aristocracy. He also notes that while their childhood training taught them their role above others, it also inculcated a sense of honor which should have precluded the activites they later got caught up in.

Philipp and Christoph, perhaps typical of royals and aristocrats, were deeply entrenched in the party as it turned homicidal. Phillipp either approved or ignored the conversion of the former mental hospital to a torture and/or elimination facility in the town over which he presided. As the author notes, due to the heavy censorship of the times, and his inability to confide, we don't know the disposition of Phillipp (and the other royals and aristocrats in similar situations, nor their feelings and motivations as the party turned on them) as events careened into deeper madness. We do have Philipp's denazificaiton testimony, which of course is steered to his defense.

A debt is owed to not just the author for assembling this massive amount of material, but to the von Hessen family who provided full access to their personal papers.

A VERY WELL DOCUMENTED BOOK REGARDING THE RELATIONS BETWEEN GERMAN PRINCELY FAMILIES AND THE NAZI REGIME FOCUSING PRIMARILY ON THE HESSEN-KASSEL BRANCH.

UPON READING IT WE CAN SEE HOW THE PROMISES OF THE REICH AND THEIR DEFINITE HOSTILITY TOWARDS COMMUNISM MADE THESE PRINCES SUCEPTIBLE TO THE NAZI REGIME. AFTER ALL ON THE WAKE OF THE DISASTER OF WW I, THEY WERE DISPOSSED OF THEIR TITLES, POSITIONS AND IN MANY CASES THEIR SOURCE OF WEALTH.

HOWEVER, IT IS NOT QUIET CLEAR IF THEIR ASSOCIATION WAS A MEANS OF SURVIVAL AND FINANCIAL BETTERMENT (OR AT LEASE A STATUS QUO) OR AN ACTUAL POLITICAL/ECONOMIC CONVICTION BY THEM OF THE NAZI RPHILOSOPHY AND REGIME.

THE BOOK IS VERY WELL DOCUMENTED...BUT A BIT TEDIOUS READING. NOT SOMETHING YOU READ FOR ENJOYMENT BUT FOR ITS SCHOLARLY INFORMATION.

STILL, AN INTERESTING BOOK ON AN INTERESTING CHAPTER IN HISTORY.

The answer is that being from an aristocrat family who had relatives in Great Britain that had influence in the government, he was trying to keep Britain from fighting Germany by meeting with those relatives. His solitary confinement after the war (both unique and with no justification) silenced the story. Many royals were part of an anti-Churchill peace party.

P.341 "In all likelihood, Blunt was instructed to keep a lookout for any incriminating documents involving the Duke of Windsor (name changed to coverup German roots) or the royal family. Certain retainers around the royals expressed the belief that there were files in Germany that needed to be secured. Was there a royal connection at play in the 1930s and 1940s where members of the Windsor family and Philipp von Hessen cooperated in an attempt to avert a war? The evidence suggests yes. Recall too, that the British and Hessen princes were approximately the same age and that they were cousins."

P.343 "Contact during the Third Reich between members of the British royal family and German officials has been a sensitive subject for many who seek to preserve the monarchy. Winston Churchill endeavored at war's end to cover-up evidence concerning the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's interactions with German officials. When the so-called Windsor file was discovered in 1945, he called for it to be expunged from the historical record. He was not able to do this (largely because the Americans microfilmed the documents before handing the originals over to the British). In 1953, when Churchill was again prime minister, he wrote to President Eisenhower in an attempt to delay the publication of the Windsor Documents for at least 10-20 years."

They are still "secret," along with files from President Lincoln during the Civil War with information regarding the British government of that time. Unless a "Yeltsin" comes to power and opens the archives, no one will ever have the full story.

Those who appreciated the revelations of this book, and the moral questions it certainly raises, should also check out at least the reviews (including my own) for 'The Russian Roots of Nazism' by Michael Kellogg, as it outlines the connection between the early NSDAP and the Russian monarchy.

Sort that much out first - and it's truly an eye-opener - and you'll be better prepared to make sense of these later interactions between the royals of Germany and other nations in their dealings with the National Socialists.

It will also convince you that 'Royals and the Reich' is an especially important piece of the big picture. There are countless books on WW2 but the sum total of these two books came the closest to answering what it was all about for me.

Both authors have an incredible modesty for the master historians they are; for they not only had to locate long suppressed files, sort the wheat from the chaff, and assemble the puzzle as best as possible, but then had to find the words to explain it all to us.

A rich account with impeccable sholarship of a German royal family's historical roots, European connections, and role in the Third Reich.