Everyone was mad about everything. Society was changing with independent women demanding equal opportunities in education, jobs, politics, and sports. Workers worried that new technology and immigrants were stealing their jobs. The wealthy were getting richer while everyone else was struggling to pay their bills.
Britain in the 1930’s was a chaotic mess of seething fears as everyone was convinced that they would be the biggest losers in a changing society. One group with deep-seated fears were the aristocrats. The upper crust of England was in deep trouble.
Aristocrats had been struggling for generations to keep up appearances. They didn’t want to “smell of the shops” by getting a paying job. However, a centuries-old tradition of alcoholism (“drunk as a lord”) and gambling didn’t help their bank accounts.
Maintaining the family pile, whether a Georgian mansion or a castle, was hideously expensive. Finding servants was difficult. The prestige of being “in service” was no longer attractive when workers could move to the city and make money working in a factory. Much of the land was entailed, meaning held in trust for the next generation, but still subject to inheritance taxes that could bankrupt a family.
Then World War I killed off a generation of aristocrats who served as military officers. The empire they fought for began to crumble as their colonies demanded independence. Voters were increasingly restless, feeling that the aristocrats running the country were out of touch with everyday problems.
Aristocrats could feel their power and privileges oozing away. On top of all their other troubles, they felt threatened by communism. Lenin wanted to spread Russian communism around the world which scared the hell out of those paying attention to the rising body count as Russia purged enemies of the state. England wasn’t facing the level of violence seen in Germany where communists and fascists fought street wars with military grade weapons, but every labor strike was viewed as the first domino falling in a communist takeover.
Who could the aristocrats turn to for answers to their fears? In 1933, Mein Kampf was published in England. Adolf Hitler’s book explained that nothing was their fault because they were victims of an international Jewish conspiracy.
In the 1930’s, Jews comprised about 0.65% of England’s population. Despite this, a group of aristocrats saw Jewish conspiracies everywhere. Like the QAnon conspiracies of today, their conspiracies ranged from laughably ridiculous to scarily nihilistic. Jews controlled the British film industry. Jewish bankers controlled the world by lending money at high interest rates so that the whole world was in hock to them. Jews controlled English newspapers that pumped out fake news about honest, pure-hearted fascists. Jews in New York were plotting to start another world war.
For fascists, like QAnon believers today, a lack of actual evidence was proof that the conspiracies were true. It allowed them to believe that they were victims of circumstances beyond their control. The fact that Hitler blamed Jews supported the existing world view of English aristocrats who were already prone to anti-Semitism.
Hitler was a chameleon like all populist politicians, telling his audience what they wanted to hear. One English newspaper praised Hitler for being “definitely Christian in his ideals”.
Carefully stage-managed interviews portrayed him as being opposed to war, even as he began rearming Germany.
The English fascists continued to support the policy of appeasement even after England declared war in 1939. They blamed Jews for starting World War II and believed that Nazi Germany would win easily because its military was superior to England’s. Their rationale is eerily similar to the U.S. and European politicians who blame Ukraine for Putin’s invasion and who have been shocked by Ukraine’s spirited defense.
The English fascist movement revolved around a small group of right-wing aristocrats who met for country house weekends and dinners at their London houses, living in an echo chamber of complaint about how Jews were destroying the world. They tended to be members of a few families or of the same social clubs. A well-known example are Unity and Diana Mitford who were raised in a rightwing, anti-Semitic household.
Diana Mitford was the mistress of Sir Oswald Mosely, an aristocrat and Member of Parliament who founded the British Union of Fascists (BUF), also known as the Black Shirts. Diana used her first husband’s money to fund BUF activities. In 1936, Diana married Mosely in Berlin after they had dumped their cuckolded spouses.
Unity Mitford moved to Munich and chased after Hitler like a groupie chasing the lead singer of her favorite rock band. In her eyes, Hitler could do no wrong. When Hitler ordered the murder of Ernst Rohm and other leaders of the Sturm Abteilung (SA), Unity wrote that it was so sad for Hitler to have been betrayed by Rohm.
English fascism never caught on. They blamed their lack of popular support on “fake news” that vilified them, never mind that they had their own newspapers spreading their “truths”. When England declared war, they were arrested. After the war, Oswald and Diana Mosely moved to Paris where they lived near their old friends, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Unity Mitford was repatriated from Germany in 1940 and died of meningitis in 1948.
Victimhood continues to be attractive socially and politically. Victimhood allows believers to never take responsibility for their own actions; they can simply blame every real and perceived setback and loss on others. (If it sounds tedious and depressing, that’s because it is.)
For a quick read about English fascists and Unity Mitford’s pursuit of Hitler, see Hitler’s Girl, by Lauren Young (2022).
