How the ‘Fuhrer turned on charm over meal at our f lat’

PRINCE Philip’s older sister Sophie met Adolf Hitler and his henchman Hermann Goering after she married a German aristocrat.

In a previously unpublished memoir, written in her old age, she described how family friend Goering came for tea at her flat near Frankfurt before the Nazis rose to power.

She wrote: ‘He talked a lot about the new political party which he had joined, the “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei”.

‘He was very enthusiastic about it all, especially about the party leader, a man called Adolf Hitler.

‘As Germany was going through hard times and there was a lot of poverty and general dissatisfaction everywhere, we were interested to hear about the great improvements his party was planning to do.’

Princess Sophie later met the Nazi leader at her home.

‘As Goering was insistent we should meet Hitler personally, we decided to ask him to lunch at our flat,’ she wrote.

‘I had been warned he was a vegetarian, and found it difficult to plan an appropriate meal. In those days we had a cook-housekeeper, which was just as well, as my ideas about cooking and housekeeping were fairly hazy (being only eighteen at the time).

‘We settled for an assortment of vegetables which turned out to be a great success.

‘I have to say here, that, although Chri [her husband Prince Christoph von Hessen] and I changed our political view fundamentally some years later, we were impressed by this charming and seemingly modest man, and by his plans to change and improve the situation in Germany.

‘This explains why Chri joined the SS in 1932, as his new friends had urged him to do.

‘In 193 he was appointed head of the “Forschungsamt” [research bureau] of the Air Ministry.

‘Its employees were pledged to secrecy and Chri never spoke about his work.’

The couple married in 1930 when Sophie was 16. Her meetings with Goering and Hitler appear to have taken place in 1931 or 1932.

Prince Christoph was killed in a plane crash in 1943 and his wife died in 2001.

Excerpts from her private memoir were read by the couple’s son – Prince Rainer von Hessen – as part of the Channel 4 Secret History documentary Prince Philip: The Plot To Make A King. The programme is due to be shown at 9pm on July 30.

‘We were impressed’