EFFORTPOST The Mitfords- Part 2: Sisters, Sapphism, (National) Socialism & Suicide. The conclusion of an effortpost.

In the first part:

https://rdrama.net/h/erstory/post/310720/the-mitfords-bonglands-most-dramapilled-family

We learned about Tom the Jap-bashing bussy-blaster, Diana the super-smart-and-witty-but-repeatedly-cucked fascist and Decca the communist proto-redditor. Let's continue our look at the dramafull Mitford family...

Deborah

'Debo' was the baby of the family and the longest-lived. She only died in 2014. She lived long enough to hear Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday- imagine that.

_{I'm only putting this here because it'll totally frick with people who just scroll through this post to see the images}

Debo married into serious money and position and became the Dutchess of Cavendish. She and her husband were Nazi sympathisers, but much more circumspect and low-key about it than Tom, Diana or Unity. Nevertheless, Decca still felt the need to rat them. These facts never really came to light until the couple decided, after decades of keeping their heads down, to suddenly enter politics and campaign for the newly-formed Social Democratic Party* in the 1980s. The official reports on them and their family, including salacious details provided by Decca, were circulated in the press. When the SDP merged with the Liberal Party, the Libs kicked the Cavendishes to the curb. The Liberals have a habit of attracting embarrassing supporters...

_{*Minor note on the SDP: this party was formed by five prominent members of the Labor Party who quit after the party took a hard-left turn in the late 70s. They merged with the Liberals and disappeared. This is ironic because, under Tony Blair, the Labor Party effectively became the SDP. Their leader, David Owen, flapped around helplessly as a European envoy to Bosnia during their horrible war, eventually getting recalled after a vote of no-confidence by the Euro Parliament. He got a peerage and became 'Lord Owen' for doing what everyone does in the politics of Europe- frick all.}

There's not much else to say about Debo except that her very recent death might explain why nobody's ever tried to make a TV show about the Mitfords.

Pamela

Pamela lived in the country and briefly married the physicist Derek Jackson. Jackson married 5 other women and blasted many a bussy although he went to Rugby school and served in the RAF so Tom was not one of them. Jackson was famed for his work in atomic spectroscopy (how atoms absorb and emit radiation- useful for a whole bunch of things in medicine and science), his riding career- including riding a horse in the Grand National and the enviable amount of fricking he got done. His biographer Simon Courtauld describes him as a "rampant bisexual". He shacked up at one point with two half-sisters and was banging both at the same time.

Behold the King:

After her break-up in 1951 Pamela lived with Italian horse-rider Giuditta Tommasi. The nature of their relationship was never disclosed but Decca described her, somewhat chuddily, as a 'You-Know-What-Bian'. Diana's letters reveal she thought their relationship was platonic but was not bothered one way or another. Make of that what you will.

Nancy

Nancy was the nearest thing to the normal one, which is darning considering this is a longpost about a Dramapilled family. She was also, apparently, a decent writer. Like many of her sisters, she had a nickname... 'Woman'. Yes, her sisters called her 'Woman'. Not 'The Woman' just 'Woman'. This was because she was the eldest and the most sensible. Nancy managed to stay on good terms with her whole family- despite a brief falling out with Diana during WW2. She was smart, sensible, good at what she did and got along well with others. What a crushing bore- let's move on to the most dramapilled of them all...

Unity

As a child, Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford was the Jan Brady of the Mitfords. Her sisters were smarter than her, better looking than her and more socially adept than her.

In the words of Diana's biographer Jan Dalley:

"Unity found life in her big family very difficult because she came after these cleverer, prettier, more accomplished sisters."

While another biographer, David Pryce-Jones, added:

"If you come from a ruck of children in a large family, you've got to do something to assert your individuality, and I think through the experience of trying to force her way forward among the sisters and in the family, she decided that she was going to form a personality against everything."

So, in short, she became a Dramatard.

What could she do to stand out?

How could she make herself special?

Who could help to really make everyone notice poor little Unity?

Hitler was to Unity what stickyposts were to Masterlawlz.

"I think the desire to shock was very important, it was the way that she made herself special. When she discovered Nazism and discovered that it was a fantastic opportunity to shock everybody in England she'd discovered the best tease of all."

-Jan Dalley (Diana's Biographer)

Her younger sister, Decca, with whom she shared a bedroom, was (as we saw in the previous episode) a dedicated communist. The two drew a chalk line down the middle to divide the room. Decca's side was decorated with hammer and sickles and pictures of Vladimir Lenin, while Unity's was decorated with swastikas and pictures of Adolf Hitler.

Unfortunately neither had the common sense to realise this was childish larping. Decca had a long life to do so... Unity did not.

In 1934, Unity had enrolled in a German language school close to the Nazi headquarters in Munich. She was determined to stalk Hitler and, as it happened, this was pretty easy to do.

One of the great lies that always gets told is that we, the good guys, are virtuous simple folk while our enemies are decadent and addicted to opulence. Hence Hitler is always presented in stately rooms with high-ceiling, wearing shining jackboots and a crisp uniform while sitting upon cushioned luxury chairs. Some of the Nazis definitely were like that but in the early 30s, when not attending official functions, Hitler generally wore an old tweed jacket with a crumpled fishing hat stuck on his head. He often drank coffee and ate strudel at the same restaurant he had visited years ago before the Great War. He walked around Munich without guards and would speak to any passerby who spoke to him, even if they were critical of him and his party.

Unity was literally able to just sit in the same place Hitler took his breakfast. She didn't approach him, however: like Landlord Messiah hanging around a slutty-and-used-up-but-strangely-likeable pornstar, she just sat there and stared. Eventually- after months of this shit- Hitler asked her over. They spoke for over 30 minutes- Hitler paid her bill.

She wrote to her father; "It was the most wonderful and beautiful [day] of my life. I am so happy that I wouldn't mind a bit, dying. I'd suppose I am the luckiest girl in the world. For me he is the greatest man of all time"

Hitler was taken by this strange Bong girl too and fascinated by her middle name- Valkyrie. Turned out that Unity's grandmother had been a friend of Richard Wagner who was, of course, Hitler's fav. He was very superstitious- a trait later used to justify fantastic theories of how he intended to dispell Christianity and reintroduce worship of the Germanic gods- or worshipping the Warlords of Atlantis... or the Ark of the Convenant but less Jewish. Or maybe some other shit, IDK. Aliens probably. Anyway, he thought Unity was destined to be in his life.

The big question is whether she got a taste of the old meat-and-one-veg.

Well, there was one person who definitely saw it as a possibility...

Eva Braun was intensely jealous of the attention her boyfriend was suddenly paying to this Bong strumpet. She wrote to a friend;

"She is known as the Valkyrie and looks the part, including her legs. I the mistress of the greatest man in Germany and the whole world, I sit here waiting while the sun mocks me through the window panes."[

Hitler would spend days away, apparently with Unity. He often did not come home at night and would claim he had business at the office doing Nazi stuff when Eva would demand to know where he had been.

Eventually Eva did what most foids would do in this situation and tried the old attempted suicide trick. This got Hitler to cut back on his time spent with the Bong. As Wikipedia puts it, Unity "learned from this that desperate measures were often needed to capture the Führer's attention."

Unity knew there was one thing Adolf loved more than blondes and that was ragging on Da Joos. She attended the Hitler Youth festival in Hesselberg with Hitler's friend Julius Streicher, where she gave the kind of speech about God's Chosen People that would get standing ovations in many American universities today. She subsequently repeated these sentiments in an open letter to Streicher's paper, 'Der Stürmer', which read:

"The English have no notion of the Jewish danger. Our worst Jews work only behind the scenes. We think with joy of the day when we will be able to say England for the English! Out with the Jews! Heil Hitler!

P.S. please publish my name in full, I want everyone to know I am a Jew hater."

This caused an outrage in some parts of the Bong media, but Hitler rewarded her with an engraved golden swastika badge, a private box at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and a ride in a party Mercedes to the Bayreuth Festival. So the first part of "Operation: Sit on the 'Dolf Peepee" had been accomplished.

She was inducted into the inner circle of the Nazi Party, appearing on the balcony with Hitler when he declared the Anschlauss and she was sent on a mission to meet with pro-Nazis in Prague where she was arrested.

A 1936 MI5 report called her "more Nazi than the Nazis."

In 1938, Hitler gave her a choice of four apartments in Munich. Unity visited one apartment to discuss her decoration and design plans while the soon-to-be-dispossessed residents, a Jewish couple, sat in the kitchen crying. She was given special treatment even Hitler's closest confidants did not have. Albert Speer wrote that nobody was allowed to talk about politics to the Furher except Unity.

Although Hitler told Unity many times that an alliance with Bongland was unlikely, she kept pressing for it and even drew up plans with lists of potential allies. Some of the names that were mentioned were Lord Halifax (Churchill's Tory rival to lead the coalition government) and eccentric Scottish soceror and self described "sensual adventurer" Aleister Crowley. Both men expressed horror when they were told of Unity's beliefs that they might be pro-Nazi. Crowley, who the Daily Mail called "the wickedest man in the world" seems very unlikely to have supported Hitler.

In 1939 Unity and Diana were in Germany when Hitler told them both that they should leave as soon as possible because he believed war with Bongland would follow within weeks. Diana left, Unity didn't.

Diana said later: "She told me that if there was a war, which of course we all terribly hoped there might not be, that she would kill herself because she couldn't bear to live and see these two countries tearing each other to pieces, both of which she loved."

After war was declared, the fate of Unity was initially unclear. She had visited the office of the Bavarian governor to ask if she would be detained as a enemy alien. He told her she would not be but was concerned enough about her mrntal state to mention her visit to Hitler who, apparently, did not look up from his papers when Unity was mentioned. There are some stories that Unity tried to see Hitler and even resorted to calling Eva Braun to try and get Adolf's atrention.

Rumors started trickling through to Bongland that Unity had been arrested and shot by the Nazis. This was only half true- she had shot herself.

Fricking ineptly, as it happens. She used a pearl-handled pistol given to her before her mission to Prague by Hitler himself. He visited her several times in hospital despite the huge amount of work he had organising a fricking world war. She remained unaware throughout that he was beside her.

Despite the war, the Germans and British cooperated to have her repatriated. She was initially sent to Bern in Switzerland where her mother and Debo went to collect her. Debo said in an interview many years later:

"We were not prepared for what we found – the person lying in bed was desperately ill. She had lost 2 stone [almost 29lbs], was all huge eyes and matted hair, untouched since the bullet went through her skull. The bullet was still in her head, inoperable the doctor said. She could not walk, talked with difficulty and was a changed personality, like one who had had a stroke. Not only was her appearance shocking, she was a stranger, someone we did not know. We brought her back to England in an ambulance coach attached to a train. Every jolt was agony to her."

She arrived in Bongland in January 1940:

Showing she still had a bit of the old dramatard in her she declared she "was glad to be back in England even though I'm not on your side."

Her mental age was likened to that of a 10-year-old, or a "sophisticated child" as James Lees-Milne (cousin of Winnie the Pooh creator and a bussy-buddy of Unity's brother Tom) called her. She had a tendency to talk incessantly, had trouble concentrating her mind, and showed an unusually large appetite with sloppy table manners. Lees-Milne observed her to be "rather plain and fat, and says she weighs 13+1⁄2 stone [189lbs- fricking Bongs and their weird weights]". She did however, retain at least some of her devotion to the Nazi party; her family friend Billa Harrod recalled Unity stating that she wished to have children and name the eldest Adolf.

In 1941 she was caught banging an RAF pilot and MI5 reported that she had been seen trying to solicit other airmen around an RAF base. The men said she would ask them "intelligent questions" about their planes and missions. The pilot she was banging was reassigned to the supersonic propellor tests in the north of Scotland (fly your Spitfire up really high and dive towards the ground- see if you can break the sound barrier). He died, believe it or not.

Unity Valkyrie Mitford died of meningitis after the area around the bullet in her head began to swell. It was impossible at that time to remove the bullet.

She, was buried at Saint Mary's Church in Swinbrook Oxfordshire. Her sisters Nancy and Diana would join her later.

I hope you enjoyed this overview of the Mitfords:

Tom, Diana, Decca, Debo, Pamela, Nancy and Unity.

And let's not forget the amazing suppporting cast which included Oswald Mosely, King Edward and Queen Wallis, numerous bussy-blasting pals of Tom, Derek 'Action' Jackson, Tay Zonday, The British SDP/Liberal Alliance Party and, of course, Adolf Hitler himself.

Goodbile.