Editing Unity Mitford (section)

==Inside the inner circle==
[[File:Unity Mitford (1914-1948).jpg|thumb|right|Mitford in London in 1938, wearing a Nazi party badge]]
From this point on, Mitford was inducted into Hitler's inner circle and remained with him for five years.<ref Name="HBG"/> When Hitler announced the [[Anschluss]] in 1938, she appeared with him on the balcony in [[Vienna]]. She was later arrested in [[Prague]] for distributing Nazi propaganda.<ref Name="HBG4"/> Pryce Jones reports that "She [Mitford] saw him, it seemed, more than a hundred times, no other English person could have anything like that access to Hitler",<ref name="HBG">"Hitler's British Girl, Part 1" (2007), [[Channel 4]]. Accessed 26 August 2010.{{Full citation needed|date=August 2023}}</ref> and the suspicions of the British [[Secret Intelligence Service|SIS]] were aroused. 

[[MI5]] officer [[Guy Liddell]] wrote in his diary: "Unity Mitford had been in close and intimate contact with the [[Führer]] and his supporters for several years, and was an ardent and open supporter of the Nazi regime. She had remained behind after the outbreak of war and her action had come perilously close to high treason."<ref name="britishGirl"/> A 1936 report went further, proclaiming her "more Nazi than the Nazis", and stated that she gave the Hitler salute to the British Consul General in Munich, who immediately requested that her passport be impounded. In 1938, Hitler gave her a choice of four apartments in Munich.<ref Name="HBG4"/> 

Mitford is reported to have visited one apartment to discuss her decoration and design plans while the soon-to-be-dispossessed residents, a Jewish couple, sat in the kitchen crying.<ref Name="HBG4"/> Immediately prior to this, she had lived in the house of [[Erna Hanfstaengl]], sister of early Hitler admirer and confidant [[Ernst Hanfstaengl]], but was ordered to leave when Hitler became angry with the Hanfstaengls.<ref Name="HBG4"/>

Many prominent Nazis were also suspicious of Mitford and her relationship to their Führer.<ref Name="HBG4"/> 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 Britain. In spite of Hitler's discouraging reserve, she did not abandon her efforts through all those years".<ref name="albertSpeer">{{cite book|title=Inside the Third Reich|last=Speer|first=Albert|year=1971|publisher=Sphere Books|page=77}}</ref> Mitford summered at the [[Berghof (residence)|Berghof]] where she continued to discuss a possible German–British alliance with Hitler, going so far as to supply lists of potential supporters and enemies.<ref Name="HBG4"/> Mitford was at Berghof while the Hitler-[[Schuschnigg]] meeting took place in February 1938.<ref name=wch1/>

At the 1939 Bayreuth Festival, Hitler warned Unity and her sister Diana that war with Britain was inevitable within weeks and they should return home.<ref Name="HBG4"/> Diana returned to England, while Unity chose to remain in Germany, though her family sent pleas for her to come home.<ref Name="HBG4"/> After Britain's declaration of war on Germany on 3 September 1939, Unity was distraught.<ref name="theTimes"/><ref name="observer2"/> Diana Mitford told an interviewer in 1999: "She told me that if there was a war, which of course we all terribly hoped there might not be, that she would kill herself because she couldn't bear to live and see these two countries tearing each other to pieces, both of which she loved."<ref name="britishGirl"/><ref Name="HBG4"/> 

On the morning of 3 September, she visited the [[Gauleiter]] [[Adolf Wagner]] to inquire if she would be detained as an [[enemy alien]], receiving assurances from Wagner that she would not.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Six |author=Laura Thompson |year=2017 |pages=209–210}}</ref> He was concerned by her demeanour and assigned two men to follow her, but she managed to shake them off by the time she entered the [[Englischer Garten|English Garden]] in Munich, where she took a pearl-handled pistol given to her by Hitler for protection and shot herself in the head.<ref name="theTimes"/><ref Name="HBG4"/><ref name="observer2"/> She survived, though badly injured, and was hospitalised in Munich, where Hitler frequently visited her. He paid her bills and arranged for her return home.<ref Name="HBG"/><ref Name="HBG4"/>