Speaker 1: Height five fifty five kr CE DE Talk Station. A
Speaker 1: very happy Wednesday to you by Thomas Please to welcome
Speaker 1: to the fifty five CARC Morning Show. A renowned author,
Speaker 1: Richard J. Huddo. He served as the White House Appointment
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Carter family was chairman of the Georgia
Speaker 1: Council for the Arts. He is one of the foremost
Speaker 1: historians of the Gilded Age, author of a number of
Speaker 1: books on the Gilded Age. I don't want to pick
Speaker 1: this one out and mention it specifically. A peculiar tribe
Speaker 1: of people, murder and madness in the heart of Georgia.
Speaker 1: Not only was it adapted for television. I love what
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Journal Constitution talked about this twenty ten book.
Speaker 1: A Southern grotesque that comes complete with stately mansions, murder,
Speaker 1: most vile, forbidden sex, a pot boiling trial, and a
Speaker 1: duma worthy of a Greek tragedy, with an ending even
Speaker 1: Sophocles wouldn't wish on his worst enemy. Welcome, Welcome, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to read that one. Richard J. Huddo, author
Speaker 1: of a book we're talking about today, The Countess and
Speaker 1: the Nazis. It's a pleasure to have you on today. Richard,
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 1: I love that Atlanta Journal Constitution description. Anyhow, moving over
Speaker 1: to your new book, The Countess and the Nazis sometimes
Speaker 1: an American family's private war Gilded Age. The woman you
Speaker 1: write about, tell my listeners a little bit about her,
Speaker 1: and I guess I'm kind of curious to know where
Speaker 1: your fascination with the Gilded Age came in. That was
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds up to around nineteen hundred period of.
Speaker 2: Time married these titled husbands, and of course very few
Speaker 2: of them were love matches. Most of them were pretty
Speaker 2: crass exchanges of a title for money. You know, if
Speaker 2: my daughter is a duchess, then they have to accept
Speaker 2: me that kind of thing. But then when I came
Speaker 2: across this particular woman, Muriel White, she was totally different.
Speaker 2: She was out out of the ordinary, very very wealthy,
Speaker 2: privileged background, spoke five languages. I mean, she could have
Speaker 2: just been a social diletant, you know, having cocktail parties
Speaker 2: with her friends, but she didn't do that. She actually
Speaker 2: devoted herself to her family and to the families of
Speaker 2: the people who worked for her and of course bought
Speaker 2: the Nazis from within. Very unusual woman.
Speaker 1: So how did she get from America to well, what
Speaker 1: I ended up being Nazi Germany.
Speaker 2: Well, her father was probably the best ambassador of the
Speaker 2: United States has ever produced, at least Teddy Roosevelt said so.
Speaker 2: So her father had been an ambassador in France to France,
Speaker 2: but she was born there in Paris, but born to
Speaker 2: American parents, And so after the father was the first
Speaker 2: secretary at the USM Missige in London, then ambassador to Italy,
Speaker 2: and then ambassador to France. She had so of course
Speaker 2: traveled with them and learned very early on sort of
Speaker 2: all of the protocol that that was necessary. Her mom
Speaker 2: was ill quite a bit of the time, so Muriel
Speaker 2: would step up and sort of take over her mother's role.
Speaker 2: It was perfect for her. As I said earlier, she
Speaker 2: had just wanted to be a social boddice, but instead
Speaker 2: she turned to a life of service and ended up
Speaker 2: actually giving up her life because of it.
Speaker 1: Well, I understand she was the wife of a Prussian count.
Speaker 2: That's right. She was only twenty nine, or rather was
Speaker 2: twenty nine getting a little long in the tooth. According
Speaker 2: to some people when she married Count Monti Sehertass as
Speaker 2: you said, was a Silesian count. He was in the military.
Speaker 2: There very very old family. They moved though into the families.
Speaker 2: After she married, they moved into the family's secondary residence,
Speaker 2: which was sort of a dump. So she used her
Speaker 2: fortune to bring it up to standards, to put in
Speaker 2: running water and electricity and make sure that the servants
Speaker 2: didn't have to bring buckets of water in from outside.
Speaker 2: And she had then started taking care of all of
Speaker 2: the families of all of the people who worked for her.
Speaker 2: Her husband was not particularly helpful, but she kept doing
Speaker 2: it anyway. And then with the rise of fascism and
Speaker 2: also Nazism, she thought, I thought those things from within
Speaker 2: and got her two draft age sons out of the country.
Speaker 2: And for that, of course, the Gestapo kept coming to
Speaker 2: her and saying, you have to return your sons their
Speaker 2: marriageable age. You have to let us know where they are.
Speaker 2: Plus she had done other things like helping some pilots escape,
Speaker 2: and they wanted to know how she did that, and
Speaker 2: so that what they said to her was, unless you
Speaker 2: return your sons to us, unless you tell us how
Speaker 2: you've done all this, we're going to take you to Auschwitz.
Speaker 2: They gave her notice, and one particular morning she saw
Speaker 2: them turn into her driveway, knowing what they were doing,
Speaker 2: that they were coming to take her to Auschwitz, that
Speaker 2: she would be tortured, she climbed up to the tower
Speaker 2: of her castle and jumped to her death instead. Oh
Speaker 2: my word, yeah, quite a story.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, well that's amazing. Now did she
Speaker 1: she see the Nazis for what they were at the outset?
Speaker 1: I mean, the fall of the Prussian bureaucracy is widely known,
Speaker 1: which is what gave rise to the fascist movement. Was
Speaker 1: she aware of the evil that they represented early on?
Speaker 1: Or di did she become aware of it as they
Speaker 1: began to increase their power and ultimately get Adolf Hitler elected.
Speaker 2: A bit of the latter. The difference between her and
Speaker 2: her husband is that she saw the evil, as you said,
Speaker 2: she saw what they were doing. She knew what was
Speaker 2: going to happen eventually, where as her husband only wanted
Speaker 2: things to go back to.
Speaker 1: The way they were.
Speaker 2: He wanted to have you know, the Kaiser and all
Speaker 2: the nobility in and he thought, well, gee, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm against them only for that reason. So he was
Speaker 2: rather lackadaisical in what he did. But she, as you said,
Speaker 2: knew they were evil, knew what was coming, and was
Speaker 2: against them from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Well did she see the rise of the Italian fascists
Speaker 1: as connected with this whole problem and recognize them also
Speaker 1: for what they were doing? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, In fact, not only did she see it, she
Speaker 2: wrote about it, and I've got that never before published
Speaker 2: things in this book. But the reason she did that
Speaker 2: was because she was in Albania helping her husband's cousin, Geraldine,
Speaker 2: the young Queen of Albania, when she had her had
Speaker 2: a birth. The Fascist were coming in just at that
Speaker 2: moment to overtake Albania, so they threw Queen Geraldine, having
Speaker 2: had a Sceirian birth the day before, threw her into
Speaker 2: the back seat of a car and got out just
Speaker 2: as the Fascist were landing in Albania. And as I said,
Speaker 2: Muriel was there, saw at firsthand, and as they said,
Speaker 2: even wrote about it.
Speaker 1: Fascinating. Now, what drove her altruism? You grew up really
Speaker 1: really wealthy in the Gilded Age, as you kind of suggested,
Speaker 1: It's really unlikely that you would be so altruistic, and
Speaker 1: you know, sacrificial and willing to help out people rather
Speaker 1: than just go about your merry way and enjoy the
Speaker 1: fruits and luxuries of being one of the wealthy and
Speaker 1: the Gilded Age when there was so much poverty around.
Speaker 1: Influenced by what or she just was just a sort
Speaker 1: of an odd bird as we look at things, you know, objectively.
Speaker 2: I think she was a bit of both. Her father,
Speaker 2: as I said earlier, it's a great, great ambassador, but
Speaker 2: he was one of the five US signatories to the
Speaker 2: Verisy Peace Treaty ending World War One, and so she
Speaker 2: grew up with his influence. She also grew up with
Speaker 2: a father who had been very wealthy, and on the
Speaker 2: family's estate, they took care of their families, all of
Speaker 2: the people who worked for them. So she grew up
Speaker 2: with that as the ideal, and she continued to do it. Descendants, actually,
Speaker 2: if her servants family still talked about the Christmas day
Speaker 2: when all of the families and all of the children
Speaker 2: would be brought into the castle, have a huge breakfast,
Speaker 2: you know, and then gifts everywhere, and so there are
Speaker 2: people who still talk about that because of her kindness.
Speaker 2: She really was unusual for a time.
Speaker 1: How about that now, I presume that throughout the entire
Speaker 1: the Nazi regime there was some form of underground resistance.
Speaker 1: I mean many movies about that. You had the French
Speaker 1: underground resistance and all that kind of thing. Was she
Speaker 1: a part of some underground organized anti Nazi group or
Speaker 1: did she just sort of do what she was to
Speaker 1: do independently.
Speaker 2: She did it independently. There was one exception though, in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six, when the Nazi Olympics happened in Berlin.
Speaker 2: She and her husband were invited to one of the
Speaker 2: viewing boxes at the Olympics, and Hitler came and actually
Speaker 2: sat in their box. She said to him, I know
Speaker 2: who you are and what you're planning to do, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to do everything to stop you. He threw
Speaker 2: his head back and laughed and said, oh, Madam, don't
Speaker 2: be so serious. The same time they were that couple,
Speaker 2: they were meeting with other officers who were opposed to
Speaker 2: Hitler to try to find out ways to ways to
Speaker 2: oppose him. So they were part of that. But as
Speaker 2: I said earlier, it was a difference in many just
Speaker 2: wanting to go back to the old ways where Muriel
Speaker 2: knew of this evil and wanted to stop it. Now.
Speaker 1: Did she help the Jewish community anyway? Obviously, could Kaitler
Speaker 1: project very clear messages regarding his feelings about and what
Speaker 1: he was planning on doing what the Jewish population, rounding
Speaker 1: them up and putting them in slums and ultimately endeavoring
Speaker 1: to exterminate them. What was her connection, if any, to
Speaker 1: the Jews in the Greater German region.
Speaker 2: She was absolutely responsible for saving a Jewish family, the Letterers.
Speaker 2: He had been one of the court tailors.
Speaker 3: And when war was coming, when the Jews were being
Speaker 3: pushed out, he wrote to many of his clients, very
Speaker 3: very well well placed clients, saying, would you invite me
Speaker 3: in my family into your country so we can get out.
Speaker 3: No one would respond to him because they said that,
Speaker 3: you know, they didn't want to help a Jewish family,
Speaker 3: but Muriel did. She was able to get the money
Speaker 3: for them, She was able to arrange their visas, able
Speaker 3: to get them to England to get onto a ship.
Speaker 3: They eventually resettled in Australia, and they were always grateful
Speaker 3: to her because she was able to do that, not
Speaker 3: only for the money to move, but also because once
Speaker 3: they got there Australia didn't, of course want them to
Speaker 3: become wards of the state, so it required them to
Speaker 3: have a certain amount of money to start life. And
Speaker 3: so she arranged.
Speaker 2: All of that. The letter of family got all the
Speaker 2: way to Australia, and we're very happy there.
Speaker 1: Was her father still alive when she threw herself to
Speaker 1: her own death.
Speaker 2: Now her father had died in the twenties. After her
Speaker 2: mother died, her father remarried to one of come of
Speaker 2: Vanderbilt's granddaughters, and who was very helpful with money, because
Speaker 2: these heiresses had their funds cut off by the US Congress.
Speaker 2: The Congress said, look, if you're going to marry into
Speaker 2: a family that's going to fight your country, we're not
Speaker 2: going to let you have access to this money. So fortunately,
Speaker 2: using diplomatic pouches and all that sort of thing, she
Speaker 2: was able to get money from her stepmother and to
Speaker 2: be able to use that as well.
Speaker 1: She was able to keep her sons from being constricted
Speaker 1: in the Hitler's army. What became of her children.
Speaker 2: Great question of Four months after her death, her eldest
Speaker 2: son was in the United States. He went through basic
Speaker 2: training at Camp Wheeler and Macon, Georgia, took the oath
Speaker 2: of office, renounced his citizenship back in Silesia in Germany,
Speaker 2: and went back as a US officer. However, they would
Speaker 2: only let him go to London because they knew someone
Speaker 2: who looked as Arryan as he did with a double
Speaker 2: barreled German name would be recognized, so they changed. They
Speaker 2: changed his name only because they knew that that would be,
Speaker 2: you know, a mark for somewhat somebody to come across
Speaker 2: that name. But he went, as I said, back to
Speaker 2: England and he questioned imprisoned Germans to get information from them.
Speaker 2: You can imagine some of them who recognized him were
Speaker 2: rather cruel and mean about it, but that's okay. He
Speaker 2: did his job and in his mind he was able
Speaker 2: to avenge his mother's death in that way.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is an amazing story. Countess and the Nazis
Speaker 1: by my guest today, Richard J. Huddo, who is an
Speaker 1: expert on the Gilded Age and quite quite a few
Speaker 1: books on it. You can teck them out online and
Speaker 1: maybe get a copy of some of his other books.
Speaker 1: But also the Countess of the Nazis. We've rick. We
Speaker 1: put your book on my blog page of fifty five
Speaker 1: cars dot com. So my listeners can easily obtain a
Speaker 1: copy of it, which I'm sure they're going to want
Speaker 1: to do. It's Countess in the Nazis An American Families
Speaker 1: Private War. Fascinating conversation, Rick, I really appreciate you spending
Speaker 1: time with my listeners of me today, and thanks for
Speaker 1: putting us down a paper. You got a lot of
Speaker 1: the material I understand from never before published memoirs as
Speaker 1: well as declassified CIA documents. Real quick, How long ago
Speaker 1: were these documents declassified? I always find it fascinating that
Speaker 1: documents remain classified for literally decades and decades beyond the
Speaker 1: period of time that they relate to, for reasons wholly
Speaker 1: unknown to me.
Speaker 2: Well, in this case, they were from two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: I was when they were declassified, but most people had
Speaker 2: not gone through them. They relate to the invasion of Albania,
Speaker 2: the fact that she was there, and then what happened
Speaker 2: afterwards when the United States tried to put King Zog
Speaker 2: back on the throne. He was sort of the worst
Speaker 2: of our rather the best of some bad choices. And
Speaker 2: so that's where those documents came from. And as I said,
Speaker 2: they were declassified in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: Got to do your research. I come up with a
Speaker 1: book like this, and thanks for doing it. Rick, it's
Speaker 1: been a real pleasure having you on the program.