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English Site > Europe > World War II > Young Women from Britain in 1930s Nazi Germany

Bri.sh Girls in the Third Reich

'We Had the Time of Our Lives'

In the 1930s, many English families sent their daughters to nishing school in Nazi Germany. Rachel Johnson, sister
of the London mayor, interviewed several for her most recent book. She told SPIEGEL ONLINE about
Britain's enthusiasm for Hitler's Reich.

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June 13, 2013 05:56 PM

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In February 1936, Daphne and Betsy, two girls from Oxford, discover the charms of
Munich in Nazi Germany. Rachel Johnson, 47, tells the unique story of young Bri,sh
women in Hitler's Third Reich from the perspec,ve of two c,onal characters. The
Bri,sh press has praised the book for being both entertaining and historically accurate.
Johnson, who is the sister of London Mayor Boris Johnson, only recently discovered that
her own family had close ,es to Nazi Germany.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Ms. Johnson, how did you nd out that some members of your family
were in Bavaria in the 1930s?
Johnson: A couple of years ago, the BBC did a program on my brother Boris and our
family history. We had always been told that my paternal grandmother was French, but
it turned out she was German. Her last name was originally von Pfeel, and we had
descendants from Munich. My maternal grandmother went to Bavaria as a schoolgirl in
the 1930s. Later, when I married, I discovered that my mother-in-law had been to
Munich at roughly the same @me.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: A strange coincidence.
Johnson: The strangest thing of all was that my mother-in-law was sent from England
to Munich in April 1938, when Hitler was already preparing to invade Czechoslovakia
and Poland. She watched as the Annexa@on of Austria took place. She even ran out to
Hitler's car.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How did you decide to address that past in a novel?
Johnson: I did a radio documentary about the English colony in Germany before the
war, but didn't have enough for a non-c@on book. The English girls in Bavaria were
fascina@ng nonetheless, so I decided to write a novel from their perspec@ve. These girls
were there just before the outbreak of war, and in some cases they were even close to
the government, hanging out with Hitler and Hess. Sending your daughters to nishing

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Young Women from Britain in 1930s Nazi Germany - SPIEGEL ONLINE

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SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why?

Johnson: Germany was probably our closest European partner at that @me. And don't
forget that George V. changed the name of his family from "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" to
"Windsor" only in 1917, during the First World War. There were s@ll aristocra@c
connec@ons and friendships to Germany between the wars. Two newspapers dealt with
Anglo-German rela@ons and printed ar@cles about how wonderful Germany was, how
amazing the scenery and how great Hitler was. The Bri@sh liked that Germany was very
clean.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Where did the Bri@sh girls in Germany typically go?
Johnson: Some moved to Berlin or Dresden, but Bavaria with its mountains, castles,
museums and beer cellars was more a rac@ve. Oberammergau was well known in
England. My maternal grandmother was in Bavaria in the 1930s, she was Jewish. She
enjoyed the opera in Munich, skiing in the mountains and later fell in love with a ski
instructor from Freiburg, a member of the Na@onal Socialist party. His family called her
"die Jdin," the Jewess. Their rela@onship went disastrously wrong and she came back
to England. I met a dozen English women while researching my book who were in
Germany between 1935 and 1938, most of them over 90 by the @me I interviewed
them.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What did they tell you?
Johnson: They said: "We had the best @me of our lives." They felt fantas@c being in
Germany during the Third Reich. "It was the highlight of my life," one told me. To them,
it was a rich experience, because England was very stuy at that @me -- lots of
unemployment, terrible food and nasty weather. In Bavaria they had the crisp
mountain air, a healthy life, the opera, the mountains and handsome Germans in
uniform. They couldn't believe their luck! No chaperons, no parents. They had
everything, including sex.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What did they think about the Germans?
Johnson: They loved them! I asked the women: "Were you in love at that @me?" And
they said: "All the @me, with everybody." They typically spent six months there, went to
par@es and were celebrated. Of course, they were not poor. The exchange rate was
favorable for them.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Were they aware of the dangers posed by the Nazis?
Johnson: They weren't aware of anything at all. They would see a sign at a swimming
pool saying "No Jews," and they'd think: "What is a Jew?" They didn't know any Jews.
Also, they were upper-middle class English girls, so almost by deni@on their fathers
were probably quite an@-Semi@c. It was an an@-Semi@c @me, not only in Germany. We
had the rise of the far right, the brown shirts, and Oswald Mosley, leader of the Bri@sh
Union of Fascists. My mother-in-law's family was typical of aristocra@c aKtudes of this
period. They were very pro-German. My mother-in-law's father was chairman of the
Anglo-German Alliance, which was set up to bring the two countries closer together. He
would make speeches in the House of Lords saying Hitler is a sound chap.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What did the women say about Hitler in the interviews with you?
Johnson: They're not saying anything good about him, but they won't change their
opinion of what they felt before the war. To them, it was the perfect @me. Maybe they
saw the SS marching on the street, but basically they enjoyed themselves. "Hitler was
marvellous, the problem was, he went a li le bit too far," one of the women told me.
Others said they couldn't believe that these wonderful people they spent such a happy
@me with could be capable of things like these. You have to remember England in the
1930s suered from a widespread depression. And then these girls go to Germany, and
on the surface everything looks good. They didn't know what the regime was doing,
they didn't know about the Nuremburg laws. One of them told me about her music
professor, who suddenly disappeared. He was Jewish and had to ee. Nobody became

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SPIEGEL ONLINE: When did this change?

Johnson: The English turned against Germany in September 1939, aQer the invasion of
Poland. Most Britons had to leave Germany that summer. The only one leQ in Munich
was Unity MiRord, a prominent Bri@sh Nazi, big Hitler fan and part of his inner circle. In
some way, Unity was an extreme example of the English fascina@on and admira@on for
Hitler. Her parents went to Germany and tried to get her to return to England, but she
refused. They had to leave without her.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Despite its subject, "Winter Games" is not an unhappy or even tragic
novel. What has the response been like?
Johnson: It's been a quite dicult book to promote. People s@ll think it's a dangerous
topic. I talked about it during the Jewish Book week in London. The audience was
almost en@rely Jewish. The rst ques@on was: "What was the appeal of the Nazis for
you, Rachel?"
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You went to Berchtesgaden, where many of the top Nazis had
vaca@on homes, on a research trip. What was your impression?
Johnson: I found it really dark. By accident, I went there on Hitler's birthday. People lit
candles on the site of the Berghof, his former residence. That was quite weird. The
mountains and the scenery around the Knigsee lake are beau@ful, but it's very hard to
avoid the history -- or, as the tourism people call it, "the challenging past."
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why are the Bri@sh s@ll so obsessed with Nazis, Hitler and World War
II?
Johnson: It's bizarre, isn't it? I think there are more English books published on Nazism
than on any other subject. It remains a period of great fascina@on, a @me of great
danger, but also of great English bravery. I thought it was important to try to tell this
part of our past from the perspec@ve of some young and slightly naive women.

Interview conducted by Christoph Scheuermann

Ar.cle...

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(06/12/2013)
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Related Topics
World War II

Adolf Hitler

United Kingdom

History

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satansle;hand@gmail.com 08/30/2013
11. Funny indeed...
Yes, it's funny how right-wingers like to project their own nega@ve traits onto leQists; for example, "ba ling for
dominance". Huh?! One of the core traits of leQ-leaning thinkers is a general distrust in authority and
an@-authoritarian aKtudes. And oh by the way, communism and socialism are not the same thing. -Doro

cbrad4334 09/27/2013
12.
This book sounds interes@ng -- as if the author had lived during the 1930s. Reading books, not Hitler himself, but
the people around him, can be quite enlightening for people studying that @me.

vicshere 05/04/2014
13. Ooops
Oh, dear. I do hope she meant "Bri@sh bravery,' rathan English.

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