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When you’ve fallen deep into a U.S. Nazi history rabbit hole, learning about titles like Hitler’s Aristocrats: The Secret Power Players in Britain and America Who Supported the Nazis, 1923–1941 creates so much excitement that it may be a sign to climb out fast. Until then for me at least, this book is a feast of drama and intrigue during the Nazi era in Continental Europe, the UK and the US. Over 400 pages, it features a star-studded cast of charlatans from the social set and business, and politicians. As previewed in the book promo, “Hitler’s Aristocrats uncovers the battle between these influencers and those who heroically opposed them.” (See the list.)
Among the selection, book author Susan Ronald points to a number of associates of former Nazi agent Philip Johnson (1906-2005), whose Glass House site in New Canaan was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997. To top it off, there’s a mention of an event hosted by Emily Hall Tremaine (1908-87), the famous, or notorious, art lady that worked out of Meriden and lived in Madison and New York.
The book is a fabulous overview of essential reading and it has had great influence here as a structure.
In this series of six installments, Hitler’s Aristocrats is positioned as a prompt to focus on the key arts figures active in this era that have recently been in the Connecticut and New York news. There are numerous questions particularly about the Tremaines and Philip Johnson’s activities and positions in the 1930s.
The goal is the identification of a fuller list of available sources with integrity, enabling stronger, fact-based accounts of the three acclaimed historical arts figures— during a complex and very opaque time.
The Nazi Duke pays a visit
In Chapter 34, I burst out laughing when I read, during 1940, “But Carl Edouard failed to show [up at Hindenburg Park in Glendale, California]. Instead he was meeting important Nazis in Santa Barbara.”
Here the book author is briefly referring to town art lady Emily Hall Tremaine (previously Spreckels), and a curious event that she co-organized, while she lived in California before WWII. It’s unclear if Emily was pro-Nazi, a US patriot-spy, or both.
This requires a little unpacking. First, it wasn’t until 1945 that Emily married Burton Tremaine. In 1940, he lived in Connecticut. Before WWII, Emily lived in Santa Barbara and, yes, she ended up hosting an event for Carl Edouard, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha at her splash villa.
The dodgy Duke is mentioned often in the book, but it doesn’t go into detail regarding this event and the Connecticut town art lady, Emily. The Duke was a British royal, Queen Victoria’s grandson. But the Queen sent him young to Germany to become the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. By the 1920s, he turned Nazi and became an ally to Hitler.
In 1939-41, the US remained neutral, and in March-April 1940, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was sent over from Germany to the United States on a propaganda tour. He was marketed as a British royal, then Head of the German Red Cross, and oh by the way, a Nazi.
Secret deposition of Emily
The whole “he’s a British royal”, pause, and “also the Head of the German Red Cross”, and then by the way “he’s also an ally to Hitler” spilled out in the American media on the Duke’s tour to varying degrees. Emily said in her secret deposition, that I unearthed buried in the Santa Barbara courthouse archive, that she had this “spilling out” experience over days. She said by the time she learned the man was a total Nazi, that it was too late to cancel the event.
Emily also said in her secret deposition that she did it for her friend Elza Chancellor, a silent film actress in the Hungarian avant-garde with stage name Elza Temary, who fled Berlin to America in 1933.
The guest list was supplied, she said, by the German Consul to Los Angeles, Georg Gyssling, who at times was passing on intelligence to the US military, I kid you not. This was detailed towards the end of Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews foiled Nazi plots against Hollywood and America (2017). (See the consular report in German from the Nazi-era archive in Berlin. There's isn't emphasis on the "British royal". It's all about the visitor reception to "Germany", and Gyssling talks about how he steered the press coverage for the Los Angeles area to the softer-touch society pages.)
Emily’s hosting of this event erupted months later in the national media in the shocking “I’m not the Nazi, SHE is” divorce case, starring Emily and her second husband in a brief marriage. The scandalous media coverage, with photos, is something to see.
Afterwards, Emily was seen publicly on a few occasions socializing with the top area US Naval Intelligence spy chief focused on the Nazi threat, Ellis M. Zacharias, and his wife. So, who knows if Emily was under deep cover as an anti-Nazi for the Americans, or pro-Nazi in media disguise for marketing purposes, or both.
Apart from the event for the Duke in Santa Barbara at Emily’s villa, events were held in splash hotels. A faction of the “fashionable” social set, including at least two mayors, a senator, and businessmen trading with Germany turned up, to give the Nazi the royal treatment.
Below shows one event at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, with Senator Ernest Lundeen from Minnesota speaking underneath the Swastika flag. These events also took place in Washington, DC, Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland, where Blue Bookers Philip Johnson and Burton Tremaine came from.
As Philip was enthusiastically pro-Nazi at this time, did he meet the Duke during his various trips to Germany? Did Philip meet the dodgy Duke and this crowd at events in New York and / or Cleveland?
It’s time to dig up the guest lists.
To go meet the British royal, or not?
This sub-title above actually was the topic of an article during the California leg of the Duke's slightly disguised Nazi propaganda tour.
Unfortunately, just a few years later after the war, Hitler’s American aristocrats and other royal fawners faced a dilemma: it came forward that the dear old Duke, he attended Eton by the way, was associated with the policy of exterminating the mentally ill and physically disabled. Yes.
That’s a tough pill to swallow— when one has a conscience and empathy, which definitely seemed in short supply with Hitler’s Aristocrats.
This may be the go-to book for a general survey on the disturbing society and business context of the pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi period leading up to WWII, with American inclusion.
With ongoing cultural and political battles in Connecticut, Hitler’s Aristocrats may be the perfect book for summer reading at the beach, and people watching, in upscale enclaves embracing powerful, new leftist authoritarian ideologies, today.
Ronald, Susan. (2023). Hitler’s Aristocrats. St. Martin’s Press. 464 pp.
Six installments, Hitler's Artistocrats et al.: part 1 | 2a | 2b | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | + Assassination Plot | + Martha & Hitler | + Thomas W. Lamont
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