Go-Betweens for Hitler - Paperback

Using previously unexplored sources from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the USA, Karina Urbach unravels the story of top-level go-betweens such as the Duke of Coburg, grandson of Queen Victoria, and the seductive Stephanie von Hohenlohe, who rose from a life of poverty in Vienna to become a princess and an intimate of Adolf Hitler. As Urbach shows, Coburg and other senior aristocrats were tasked with some of Germany's most secret foreign policy missions from the First World War onwards, culminating in their role as Hitler's trusted go-betweens, as he readied Germany for conflict during the 1930s--and later, in the Second World War.

Tracing what became of these high-level go-betweens in the years after the Nazi collapse in 1945--from prominent media careers to sunny retirements in Marbella--the book concludes with an assessment of their overall significance in the foreign policy of the Third Reich.