Hitler's Spy Princess

The Extraordinary Life of Stephanie von Hohenlohe

Throughout her life, Stephanie von Hohenlohe (1891-1972) was notorious as a secret go-between and even a professional blackmailer. Although she was the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish woman from Prague and a Jewish moneylender, Stephanie always claimed to be of pure Aryan descent. A shameless social climber, she acquired her title by marriage to an Austrian nobleman. Thanks to her remarkable gifts for networking and negotiation, she was employed as a society columnist by Lord Rothermere, with whom she had been having a long-standing affair. She gained access to the German Reich Chancellery in Berlin and got to know Adolf Hitler personally. Conveniently overlooking her Jewish origins, Hitler began to employ her on secret diplomatic missions. She reached the peak of her success when Hitler awarded her the Golden Insignia of the Nazi Party and gave her a castle in Austria. By this time Hitler's adjutant, Fritz Wiedemann, had been her lover for several years. However, when this liaison was discovered by the Fuhrer, Wiedemann was dispatched to the USA in a junior diplomatic post, and Stephanie followed him. In 1941 she was on the point of being expelled from the US as a German spy, but managed to avoid this by starting an affair with the head of the US immigration authority. After the war she returned to Germany and, without missing a beat, began an extraordinary new career in the Axel Springer media empire and on Henri Nannen's Stern magazine.