Socialite, the daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale, and sister of Diana, Jessica, and Nancy Mitford. She was notorious for her associations with Hitler and other leading Nazis in Germany, but returned to Britain during World War 2 in January 1940, suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The Hon.
She is said to have been conceived in the town of Swastika, Ontario, where her family owned mines;
Mitford's parents held right-wing political views and supported the British Union of Fascists and in 1936 their daughter, Diana Mitford, married its leader, Oswald Mosley.
Unity went to Nazi Germany and met Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Herman Goering, Joseph Goebbels and other leaders of the Nazi Party.
British SIS reports from 1936 stated that she saw a lot of Hitler whenever he was in Munich and they viewed her as "more Nazi than the Nazis".
After Britain's declaration of war on Germany in September of 1939, a distraught Mitford sent a farewell letter to Hitler and shot herself in the head in the English Garden in Munich.
She was buried at Swinbrook Churchyard, Oxfordshire, England.
In his memoirs, Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer said of Hitler's select group: "One tacit agreement prevailed: No one must mention politics. The sole exception was Lady [sic] Mitford, who even in the later years of international tension persistently spoke up for her country and often actually pleaded with Hitler to make a deal with England. In spite of Hitler's discouraging reserve, she did not abandon her efforts through all those years."
Swastika legend
There is a legend Unity Mitford suggested to Hitler that he adopt the swastika as the Nazi symbol due to the name of the place where she was conceived but this is wholly unsupported.
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