In the 1930s, four princesses of royal blood became linked to the rise of Adolf Hitler's regime in Germany. They were the sisters of the young Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, who years later would become the Duke of Edinburgh.
Through their marriages to German aristocrats, they found themselves placed within the social and political circles that surrounded power in Berlin. What began as dynastic alliances typical of European royalty gradually became an uncomfortable association once Europe descended into war and the Third Reich revealed the true nature of its regime.
This is the story of Margarita, Theodora, Cecilia, and Sophie of Greece and Denmark.
To understand this story, we must return to the end of the First World War and the devastation it wrought upon Europe's monarchies. Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, father of Philip and his sisters, was a son of King George I of Greece.
Following Greece's defeat in the Greco-Turkish War of 1922, the royal family was expelled from the country. The infant Philip left Greece at just 1 year old, famously evacuated in a wooden orange crate while the family went into exile in Paris.
Their mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, came from the German House of Hesse and was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of Britain, giving her children a strong German lineage. Philip's four elder sisters, Margarita, Theodora, Cecilia, and Sophie, were largely raised in Germany after the family's exile from Greece, making it almost inevitable that they would form ties with princes of the German aristocracy.
During the 1920s and '30s, Europe was marked by political and economic upheaval. Germany, humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles, faced crisis and hyperinflation under the Weimar Republic.
Many German aristocrats, impoverished and fearful of the spread of communism following the Russian Revolution, viewed nationalist movements promising order and renewed national greatness with increasing sympathy. It was in this climate that the young Greek princesses began to marry influential German nobles, dynastic alliances that would soon carry dangerous implications.
The first marriage took place in December 1930, when the youngest of the sisters, Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark, born in 1914, married Prince Christoph of Hesse. Sophie was only 16 years old, and her marriage brought her into one of the German aristocratic families most closely associated with the National Socialist regime.
Christoph, himself also a descendant of Queen Victoria, embraced Hitler's ideas even before his rise to power and later became an officer in the notorious SS.
In 1931, two more sisters followed a similar path. The eldest, Margarita, born in 1905, married Prince Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, a great-grandson of both the German Kaiser and Queen Victoria.
Gottfried was a respected aristocrat who, in those early years, did not publicly display radical sympathies. Nevertheless, like many of his class, he saw in the emerging Nazi movement a force capable of restoring order. In time, he joined the Nazi Party and served as a commander in the German army.
The second sister, Theodora, born in 1906, married Berthold, Margrave of Baden, that same year. Berthold was the son of a former Imperial Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden.
Although he maintained a greater distance from National Socialism than some of his brothers-in-law, he ultimately served as an officer in the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, during the Second World War.
Finally, in 1931, the penultimate sister, Princess Cecilia, born in 1911, married Hereditary Grand Duke Georg Donatus of Hesse and by Rhine. At that time, Hitler had not yet come to power, but within German royal circles many believed that the rise of movements such as his might even restore fallen monarchies.
The couple settled in Darmstadt and soon had several children as Germany entered an increasingly dark new era.
These marriages placed Philip's sisters at the heart of the German aristocracy at the very moment Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party were ascending towards total control. In early 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and rapidly established a totalitarian state.
The four Greek princesses thus found themselves entangled within the social web of the Third Reich. Their husbands, some out of conviction, others out of convenience or pressure, began aligning themselves with the new regime.
With Hitler firmly in power, the relationship between Germany's traditional nobility and the Nazi regime deepened. The Führer understood the propaganda value of winning over the old aristocracy. He needed to project legitimacy both within Germany and abroad.
Many noble families, for their part, saw in Hitler a bulwark against communism and an opportunity to restore national prestige. In this climate, Prince Philip's German brothers-in-law moved from being mere observers to active, and at times enthusiastic, participants in the new order.
Particularly striking was the transformation of Prince Christoph of Hesse, husband of Princess Sophie. Christoph did not wait for Hitler to consolidate his regime. In 1932, even before the Nazi seizure of power, he had already joined the SS.
That same year, at the suggestion of the influential Hermann Göring, Christoph and Sophie invited Adolf Hitler to a private luncheon at their own apartment. The young couple were captivated by the Nazi leader.
Decades later, Princess Sophie herself acknowledged in her memoirs the impression that meeting had made upon them. She wrote that although they fundamentally changed their political views some years later, they were impressed by this charming and apparently modest man and by his plans to change and improve the situation in Germany.
That initial fascination led them to join the Nazi party shortly after the luncheon. Sophie and Christoph's commitment to National Socialism was reflected even within their family life. In 1939, they named their first son Carl Adolf in honor of Hitler.
Philip's other brothers-in-law did not remain detached. Prince Gottfried, already a member of the Nazi party, assumed military responsibilities and took part in the annexation of Austria in 1938 as a commander in the German army.
Prince Berthold of Baden, though less outspoken politically, served in the armed forces of the Reich and was wounded in action in France during the early years of the war.
Within the House of Hesse and by Rhine, where Princess Cecilia lived with her husband Georg Donatus, Nazi influence also became evident. In May 1937, Georg and Cecilia formally joined the Nazi party, aligning themselves with a regime that was coming to dominate every aspect of German life.
That same year, 1937, tragedy struck with devastating force. In November, Princess Cecilia, aged 26 and 8 months pregnant, boarded a flight with her husband and their two young sons en route to London, where they intended to attend a family wedding.
The aircraft never reached its destination. In dense fog, it crashed near Ostend, Belgium. There were no survivors.
Among the wreckage, rescuers found indications that Cecilia had gone into labor during the descent. The body of a newborn infant was discovered among the debris. The news sent shockwaves across Europe.
Newspapers reported that several high-ranking aristocrats had perished in the air disaster. It also became known that Cecilia's mother-in-law and other members of the House of Hesse had died.
The funeral was held in Darmstadt and became an occasion marked by overt Nazi symbolism. Senior figures of the regime attended to pay their respects. Among the sea of uniforms, Hermann Göring, one of Hitler's most powerful associates, was prominently present at the funeral procession.
In the streets, many local mourners gave the Nazi salute as the coffins passed. The young Prince Philip, just 16 years old, traveled from his school in Scotland to bid farewell to his sister.
Photographs of the teenage prince walking behind the coffins in the heart of the Third Reich and surrounded by uniformed officers would in later years become deeply uncomfortable reminders. Decades afterwards, those images would be cited as evidence of supposed links between the British royal family and Nazism, despite the fact that Philip would later serve in the Royal Navy fighting against Germany.
Walking beside him at the funeral was his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, in British naval uniform, representing the maternal side of the family. Yet the heavy presence of Nazi insignia at a family funeral foreshadowed how the shadow of the Third Reich would come to hang over the wider royal story.
The Second World War broke out in 1939, setting Britain and her allies against Nazi Germany. The conflict placed the Greek princesses and their husbands on the opposite side of the struggle from their brother Philip.
While Prince Philip served in the Royal Navy, his German brothers-in-law fought under the banner of the Third Reich. The situation was as extraordinary as it was painful. Philip might well have found himself indirectly engaged in a war against the relatives of his own sisters.
Prince Christoph of Hesse, Sophie's husband, held a significant position within the Nazi regime during the war. He was appointed a director within the Reich Air Ministry and served as commander of a Luftwaffe Reserve Squadron.
As an officer, he took part in campaigns in North Africa and Italy between 1940 and 1943. Christoph held both military and political rank. He bore the title of Oberführer, roughly equivalent to a colonel, in the SS and worked closely with Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe.
Yet the war spared no one, however well-connected. In October 1943, Prince Christoph was killed in an air crash in the Italian Apennines while on active service. Sophie, widowed at 29 with five children, was then living away from the bombing and received news of the death of one of the most prominent of Europe's so-called Nazi princes.
Meanwhile, Prince Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Margarita's husband, and Berthold, Margrave of Baden, Theodora's husband, fulfilled their military duty to Germany, though their loyalties began to fracture as the war progressed.
Gottfried served on the Eastern Front, fighting against the Soviet Union under brutal conditions. Berthold, after recovering from his wounds, carried out administrative duties within the German army.
Both came from aristocratic circles that were increasingly disillusioned with Hitler, particularly as the criminal direction of the regime and its mounting military disasters became evident.
In 1944, elements within the senior officer corps and the traditional nobility decided to risk everything to remove the Führer. Operation Valkyrie, the failed assassination attempt against Hitler on 20th July, involved several aristocrats who, disenchanted with the regime, turned to conspiracy.
After the plot collapsed, Hitler launched a ruthless purge within the army and among the old noble elite. In that atmosphere of suspicion, Gottfried was removed from active service amid investigations and reprisals following the conspiracy.
Berthold of Baden had already been released from frontline duty in 1940 after being wounded in France. Both men survived the war, though the collapse of the Reich marked the end of an era for the German aristocracy.
In May 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered. Europe lay in ruins and Germany's aristocratic families faced an uncertain future under Allied occupation.
Philip's sisters, positioned at the heart of the German aristocracy, witnessed not only the fall of the Nazi regime, but also the disintegration of the social and political order to which their lives had become tied.
Princess Sophie, for example, took refuge with her children on a family estate away from the devastation, while her brother-in-law, Prince Philip of Hesse, Christoph's brother and another high-ranking Nazi closely associated with Hitler, was arrested and for a time interned in an Allied camp because of his prominent role during the regime.
For Margarita, Theodora and Sophie, it was time to piece their lives together after the fall of the Reich. For their brother Philip, who had worn a British uniform in the fight against Germany, a different battle now began: that of explaining and reconciling his German family connections in the eyes of a victorious British society.
With the war over, Prince Philip of Greece returned to England as a decorated young naval officer. There, he resumed his courtship of Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth II, whom he had first met years earlier.
Yet, despite his distinguished service to Britain, Philip carried the burden of his origins. In the eyes of many in London, he was considered too German to marry the heiress to the British throne.
His father had been a Greek prince of Danish descent. His mother, a German-born princess, and his four sisters were married to German aristocrats linked to the Nazi regime. It was a past difficult to overlook in a country where memories of the Blitz and German bombs remained painfully fresh.
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, reacted with caution when Elizabeth expressed her desire to marry Philip. There were significant family tensions. The princess's parents distrusted the foreign suitor and his Teutonic connections.
According to later accounts, Elizabeth was even taken on a 6-month official tour of South Africa in 1947 in the hope that distance might cool her attachment. Yet the relationship endured and eventually the formal engagement was announced.
Even so, Philip was required to take painful steps in order to be accepted into the British royal house. He renounced his titles as Prince of Greece and Denmark and formally relinquished his place within the House of Glücksburg.
He became a naturalized British subject and adopted the surname Mountbatten, the Anglicized form of Battenberg, his mother's German family name altered during the First World War to shed its German associations. He also abandoned the Greek Orthodox faith and was received into the Church of England.
These measures were intended to dispel any doubt regarding his loyalties. In a victorious, yet deeply anti-German Britain, it was essential to signal a clear break with his German past.
The royal wedding was set for November 1947. Yet one stark decision revealed how heavily Philip's family ties still weighed. None of his three surviving sisters was invited to the ceremony.
The royal advisers considered it unacceptable for princesses who had through marriage been part of the German elite during the Third Reich to attend. His father, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, had died in 1944 while the war was still ongoing.
Thus, on the 20th November 1947 at Westminster Abbey, the only direct member of Philip's immediate family present was his mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg.
For the proud princesses Margarita, Theodora, and Sophie, being excluded from their brother's wedding must have been a bitter experience imposed by diplomatic necessity and the sensitivities of post-war public opinion.
Contemporary authors note that Philip accepted the exclusion with discretion. Ingrid Seward, one of his biographers, has observed that the prince was a little hurt by the situation, though he acknowledged that it was probably the right decision given the depth of anti-German feeling that still prevailed in Britain in 1947.
Indeed, the sight of British officers, many of them war veterans, sharing a ceremony with German aristocrats who had been associated with the Nazi regime would have been politically unthinkable. Philip, ever pragmatic, understood that if he were to begin his new life as Duke of Edinburgh beside Elizabeth, there had to be a visible public separation from his German brothers-in-law.
Paradoxically, Philip's mother, Princess Alice, had taken a very different path during the war from that of her daughters and sons-in-law. While they had, at least for a time, embraced Hitler's ideology, Alice remained in Athens under German occupation and devoted herself to saving lives.
She sheltered and protected a Greek Jewish family, the Cohen family, in her own home, risking her life in the process. For that humanitarian act, she was later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by the Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem.
Within the same family existed two starkly opposing realities: a mother who hid Jews to save them and sons-in-law who had worn the uniform of the Nazi regime. That contradiction perhaps captures more clearly than any speech the tensions and moral dilemmas that marked Europe's royal houses during those turbulent years.
After the wedding, family relations gradually began to normalize. Princess Sophie had already remarried in 1946 to Prince George William of Hanover and went on to have three more children. In time, she resumed participation in family gatherings and later became godmother to Prince Edward, the youngest son of Queen Elizabeth II.
Margarita and Theodora remained in Germany, devoted to their husbands and children, and largely removed from the political prominence that had marked the 1930s.
Theodora died in 1969 at the age of 63. Margarita in 1981 at 76. And Sophie, the youngest and last surviving sister, passed away in 2001 at the age of 87.
For decades, the House of Windsor avoided publicly addressing the family's links to Nazism. The story of Margarita, Theodora, Cecilia, and Sophie illustrates how members of a European royal family became connected, directly or indirectly, to the Nazi regime through marriage.
It is an episode rooted in the broader historical context of the 20th century, one that for many years was treated with caution within the official royal narrative.