The contributions of conservative elites to the rise and legitimation of National Socialism have long been a subject of debate among historians of modern Germany. Yet the scholarship has focused primarily on the military, big business, and the East Elbian lesser nobility, the Junkers. Moreover, if historians have noted the sizable numbers of aristocrats in the SS, they have not explored the broader relationship between Nazism and the once sovereign German princely houses. Having received unprecedented access to family archives, Jonathan Petropoulos fills this gap in his new book on the Princes von Hessen, Philipp (1896–1980) and his younger brother Christoph (1901–43). The brothers joined the Nazi party before Hitler assumed power and both occupied important positions in the Third Reich, Philip as governor of Hesse-Nassau, and Christoph as a key official in Göring's intelligence office, the Forschungsamt. In turn, the brothers become the means by which Petropoulous examines the Hessen family's broad and intricate social connections in order to argue that “German princes as a whole were much more supportive of National Socialism than has generally been recognized” (p. 164). Even if the majority, unlike Philipp and Christoph, did not join the party until after January 1933, the aristocracy's sympathy for Nazism, and the Nazi party's own desire for the social and political validation that the aristocracy provided, overcame points of tension between the two sides until impending military defeat encouraged the regime's all-out assault against the upper crust.

The influence of the Nazi-sympathizing Crown Prince August-Wilhelm and the patronage of Hermann Göring, with his deep ties to social elites, encouraged Philipp and Christoph to commit to the Hitler movement. In addition to joining the party, Philipp became a member of the SA, while his brother signed on with the SS. Believing in the sincerity of Hitler's promises of a Hohenzollern restoration, Nazism had much to recommend the brothers, who despised the Versailles Treaty (especially the clauses that weakened the military) and abhorred Bolshevism, especially because the Bolsheviks had executed a family member, Princess Alix von Hessen, Empress Alexandra of Russia. Philipp in particular adhered to corporatist notions of bettering the condition of the working class, which in part arose from his attraction to Italian Fascism. His marriage to Mafalda, the daughter of the Italian king Victor Immanuel III, and the couple's decision to reside in Italy for part of the year, deepened Philipp's admiration for Mussolini. Although eschewing the rabid anti-Semitism of the Nazi leadership, the brothers von Hessen nonetheless shared a salonfähig dislike of Jews. Material considerations intervened as well. Until 1939 Hitler allowed the high nobility to maintain their property in foundations, which left open the possibility of becoming hereditary holdings.

Philipp's passion for art gave him frequent access to Hitler and a possibly homoerotic friendship. Philipp in fact became the Führer's art agent in Italy as Hitler sought to purchase works for his planned museum in Linz. Yet as Petropoulos convincingly shows, the brothers' roles in the Third Reich went well beyond catering to the social and aesthetic ambitions of the Nazi elite. Christoph's contributions in the Forschungsamt to radicalizing the Nazi dictatorship most likely included providing the intercepted communications that convinced Hitler to murder Ernst Röhm in June 1934. Philipp's connections to the Italian royal family and his close relationship to Mussolini made him useful as Hitler's personal emissary, who neutralized Italian objections to the annexation of Austria and facilitated the conclusion of the Pact of Steel following the Munich agreement. Philipp's efforts and those of other Hessens to exploit the pro-German sympathies of the British royal family to prevent an Anglo-German war, made credible by the family connections between them, make for fascinating reading. Subsequently, as governor of Hesse-Nassau, Philipp agreed to the transfer of the Hadamar sanitarium to the Ministry of the Interior despite his sqeamishness in doing so, even though he knew its ultimate purpose, the destruction of “life unworthy of life.” His interventions against the confiscation of Jewish property and the deportations of Jews were conspicuously half-hearted.

Similar to other aristocrats, the Nazi regime's increasing radicalism, especially in its church and cultural policies, began to disillusion the Hessens. That disenchantment deepened during the war as the Nazi leadership, embittered by military reversals, waged class war against the nobility, whom they suspected of treason because of their international familial connections. Whereas Philipp's Italian ties once proved useful to Hitler, they suddenly became a liability when the Italian king and the military removed Mussolini in 1943. Suspected of participating in the Duce's overthrow, Philipp was removed from office and remanded to a concentration camp, while Christoph died in a suspicious plane crash. Yet the disillusion of the Hessens and others produced little fundamental opposition to Nazism's inhumanity, which helps to explain the belated and feckless coup attempt of July 20, 1944.

Although dependent on Philipp and Christoph's sons for access to family papers and subject to the defensive jabbing of Christoph's brother-in-law, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (“Why did you pick on the Hessens?,” Philip asked at the beginning of his interview with the author), Petropolous has produced a fair-minded but damning account of the Hessens' complicity in the Nazi regime's criminality, as well as that of the German aristocracy in general. To be sure, his conclusions will likely not surprise those familiar with the partially symbiotic and partially antagonistic relationship between the conservative and Nazi right. Nevertheless, Petropoulous' probing and richly detailed study reinforces Arno Mayer's controversial argument as to the “persistence of the old regime,” at least in the German case. Whereas in recent decades, historians of Germany have underscored Nazism's radical populism and its fundamental threat to elites, Petropoulos reminds us of the importance of the other side of the story.