A Plot to Kill Hitler!

May 8, 2020 | Holkhome | 3 minute read

To celebrate VE Day 2020, we share an excerpt from the ‘Hitler’s Mess’ chapter in ‘Lady in Waiting’ by Anne Glenconner – who was born and raised at Holkham Hall.

Carey and I….became convinced that Hitler and all his henchmen would come to England and each choose a stately home to live in. We had some idea that Hitler was going to Windsor and presumed, rather grandly, that either Himmler or Goering would choose Holkham. We weren’t far wrong. It transpired that the Nazis had indeed planned to take over the country estates, although Hitler had his sights on Blenheim.

Carey and I, I suspect like many other imaginative children of the time, felt helpless in the face of the war. Knitting gloves and playing board games with Polish officers somehow didn’t feel helpful enough. Our father was fighting and our mother, we had been told, was doing ‘war work’, but we were doing nothing to stop Hitler.

Discussing the dire situation, Carey and I became convinced Hitler was bound to visit Holkham at some point, so we decided that, somehow, we would go back there to kill him. In preparation for the assassination, we created a poison that we called ‘Hitler’s mess’, a collection of jam jars containing anything really disgusting – scraps of food and medicine, muddy water and bits of fluff from the carpet. We hid it under our beds until it became so smelly that Billy Williams (our governess) made us throw it away and, determined, we were forced to start again.

We had decided to make Hitler fall in love with us, which, when I think about it now, was rather like the Mitfords. But, then, we were going to kill him – which, I suppose, was rather unlike the Mitfords, Of course, we had no real understanding of the situation and even less control over our own lives. That was why we devised our plan. We had heard he liked the Aryan look and we were both fair-haired, especially Carey, who was the blondest little thing with huge blue eyes. We thought we must take advantage of this in order to save Britain.

We used to practise by pretending our teddy bear was Hitler, sidling up to him and saying things like, ‘How lovely to see you. We’re so please you’ve come to Holkham’, and ‘Do you enjoy staying here? We’ve got a lovely drink for you, Mr Hitler – we’ve been saving it especially for you.’ We didn’t quite think through what would happen if we did actually manage to kill Hitler, but then I suppose we didn’t get that far. We were absolutely convinced, however, that we could and would do it.