She was perhaps the most notorious of the six sisters who bestrode British high society in 1930s.
Unity Mitford was a debutante, socialite, and, most controversially, a raging anti-Semite who adored Adolf Hitler.
Now, in a world exclusive, the Daily Mail has tracked down the diary that Unity wrote as she worked her way into the affections of the Nazi dictator.
For the past eight months, a team led by Sandra Parsons, the Mail’s Literary Editor, have been working on the project to publish Unity’s private musings for the first time.
A Mail podcast that debuted yesterday reveals Unity’s own words at great length, allowing listeners to make up their own minds about her scandalous life.
Set across four episodes, Hitler’s English Girlfriend: The Secret Diary of Unity Mitford explores every salacious detail recorded by the debutante.
It also delves into the horrifying hatred of Jews that Unity expressed repeatedly. Her words are, as our Literary Editor says, ‘unrelentingly and chillingly anti-Semitic.’
And to quell any doubts about its authenticity, the diary has undergone rigorous testing by a forensic science laboratory.
Unity became known as ‘Hitler English girlfriend’ because of how close she got to the monstrous dictator.
They met on dozens of occasions, including in his Munich apartment. Their closeness sparked suggestions that the pair may even have had a sexual relationship.
As the Mail’s podcast reveals, Unity left tantalising hints in her diary that her bond with Hitler could have been more than a platonic one.
The first episode of the podcast details how Unity came to be infatuated with Hitler and asks why, as the clouds of war gathered over Europe, the Nazi leader was spending time alone with a woman half his age.
The series then goes on to explore how Unity went from being a sought-after debutante to a committed fascist and anti-Semite.
It also reveals Unity’s revelations on Hitler’s state of mind in the run-up to conflict with Britain.
The fact that Unity was, like her five sisters, very beautiful, is likely to have helped with her bid to needle her way into Hitler’s affections and the good books of other leading Nazis.
She got so close to the Fuhrer himself that she came to be viewed as a rival by his long-term girlfriend Eva Braun, who wrote that her beau’s photographer had told her he had a ‘replacement’ for her.
But when Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, after Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland, Unity was left in despair.
She was so distraught that she decided to take her own life in the most horrifying fashion.
Unity took a pistol to the English Garden in Munich and shot herself in the head.
But, remarkably, the debutante survived. She went on to be given the best medical care on Hitler’s orders and was then flown back to Britain.
Unity passed away eight years later as a result of the brain damage she suffered from the initial bullet wound. But that was not the end of the story.
More than 50 years later, bombshell claims emerged that Unity could have been pregnant with Hitler’s child when she returned to England gravely wounded.
A New Statesman article reported on the theory that she could have given birth in secret in a nursing home in rural Oxfordshire, and her child was then given up for adoption.
There was never any definitive proof for the claims.
But, as the Mail’s new podcast reveals, Unity did get close enough to Hitler for them to have been more than friends behind closed doors.
Listen to every episode of the new podcast and make up your own mind about what really happened.
All four episodes of Hitler’s English Girlfriend: The Secret Diary of Unity Mitford are available now.