A chronicle of the British establishment’s flirtation with Hitler

IN AUGUST 1936 Henry “Chips” Channon and his wife, Lady Honor Guinness, went on an official visit to the Berlin Olympic games along with a bunch of other British grandees. They had a simply wonderful time. They didn’t pull off the ultimate social coup of having dinner with Hitler—the closest they got to the Führer was when he visited the Olympic stadium and “one felt as if one was in the presence of some semi-divine creature”. But the rest of the Nazi elite went out of their way to entertain the visiting Britons.

Hermann Göring was “flirtatious”, “gay” and “charming”. Frau Göring was “tall”, “handsome” and “nearly naked”. The Ribbentrops’ party lent “dignity to the new regime”. Just as thrilling was the spectacle of daily life. Everyone kept raising their arms and saying “Heil Hitler!” in a thoroughly captivating manner. And what about the rumours of terrible things going on in labour camps? Being a responsible MP Chips took a trip to one such camp and was impressed by what he saw. It looked “tidy, even gay”. The purpose of the camps was to wipe out “class feeling”—not something Chips was normally in favour of getting rid of—and such feeling “has become practically non-existent in Germany”. Chips concluded that “England could learn many a lesson from Nazi Germany”.

These vignettes are all taken from the first of what...