Indpendent
By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent
01 March 2005
The former owner of the Daily Mail wrote to Adolf Hitler congratulating Germany on its annexation of Czechoslovakia, and urging the Führer to march into Romania, British secret service files, released by the National Archives for the first time today, reveal.
Lord Rothermere even hired a glamorous German spy to introduce him to leading Nazi figures in the run-up to the Second World War. MI5 papers, reveal how Rothermere, owner of Associated Newspapers, paid Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst to further his contacts with Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Ribbentrop. The Austrian-born princess, described as London's leading Nazi hostess, was closely watched by the secret services after she arrived in Britain in the 1920s and began "worming her way into society circles".
The MI5 file describes her as an intriguer who "must be regarded as an extremely dangerous person" because of close connections with Nazi leaders.
But as war with Germany became inevitable Rothermere stopped paying her retainer. She in turn sued him for breach of contract, and threatened to publish his letters to Hitler and other Nazi leaders.
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