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| Winifred Williams, pictured alongside Adolf Hitler, was a close confidant of the evil dictator |
The story of how a Welsh orphan became a key confidant to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler sounds like the stuff of fiction.
But for Winifred Williams her upbringing in Brecon was long forgotten when she married into one of Germany’s most prominent families – and in turn became close to the Fuhrer himself.
Born to a Welsh journalist and his German wife in 1898, Winifred was orphaned by the age of 10. Though her father’s family lived in Brecon she left Wales after being adopted by relatives of her mother and she went to live in Germany in 1908. It was the start of a chain of events which saw her become a Nazi sympathiser who almost married Hitler during his rise to power.
The pair were so close that it was Winifred who provided the paper on which he wrote his evil manifesto Mein Kampf – a declaration of his vision and his hatred of Jews – in jail.
By 17 Winifred had married composer Richard Wagner’s son Siegfried to hide his homosexuality. By this time she was already growing closer to one of Wagner’s biggest fans – future Nazi leader Hitler.
When Winifred became a widow in 1930, Hitler reputedly became like a second father to her four children.
Throughout the 1930s talk of marriage between the pair was rife within the country – as well as the badly-kept secret the pair were involved in a sexual relationship.
Winifred became a founding member of the Nazi Party and wrote about the “thrill” of seeing the swastika raised in 1933.
The affinity of the Fuhrer for his Welsh girlfriend was evident to the German public when he personally intervened to save the Wagner music festival in Bayreuth, which nearly collapsed through financial propblems.
Hitler turned up the festival to draw in the crowds, in turn saving it. The festival is still running to this day. In a thank you note Winifred wrote: “My dear, dear friend and Fuhrer... You provide happiness which is beyond words.”
Their relationship began to sour when Hitler – who was having relationships with other women, including Eva Braun who would go on to be his wife – failed to ask Winifred to marry him and they became distant.
Nevertheless she still exerted some influence over him as she persuaded him to release several Jewish singers and musicians who had been captured as part of the Nazi regime. When the war ended and Winifred was put on trial 50 Jews sent letters of support and 30 more testified that she had saved their lives.
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| Hitler pictured alongside Rudolf Hess at a Nazi Party meeting in or around 1939 |
Winifred died in 1980 but even after World War Two she told interviewers she would love to see Hitler again.
“If Hitler came through this door today I’d be as happy as ever to see him and to have him here,” she said. “I know there was a dark side to him but that side doesn’t exist to me. I’m not familiar with that side of him.”
