Did Nazi-loving English aristocrat give birth to Hitler's lovechild?

The dictator, impressed by her social connections, showed her off to his guests in pre-war Berlin.

But now the story of Unity Mitford, the daughter of Lord Redesdale, who was obsessed with Hitler, has taken a surprising twist with the allegation she gave birth to his lovechild in a nursing home in a Cotswolds village. It is claimed the baby was quickly adopted and may be living in Britain today.

Hitler is believed to have considered Unity, a cousin of Winston Churchill, "too unbalanced" to remain a close confidante.

He was proved correct when, devastated Britain had declared war on the Third Reich in September 1939, she shot herself in the head using a pearl-handled pistol in Munich.

She suffered serious brain damage and returned to Britain via Switzerland. As the history books tell it, Mitford then lived as an invalid with her mother in the Cotswolds until her death, at the age of 33, in 1948.

Martin Bright, writing in the New Statesman, describes a telephone call he received from a woman called Val Hann suggesting all was not what it seemed: "She explained her aunt Betty Norton had run a maternity home to the gentry in Oxfordshire during the war and Mitford had been one of her clients.

"Her aunt's business, in the tiny village of Wigginton, had depended on discretion and she had told no-one except her sister that Unity had a baby. Her sister had passed the story on to her daughter Val."

When asked who the father of this child might be, Ms Hann paused before replying: "Well, she always said it was Hitler's."

However, Mr Bright visited the aunt's former business, at Wigginton and met resident Audrey Smith.

She had been told Mitford was at the home to recover from a nervous breakdown.

Mitford's surviving sister, the Duchess of Devonshire, disparaged Mr Bright's investigations. "She was adamant that there was nothing in the Wigginton story and claimed she could produce her mother's diaries to prove it."

Unity, a committed antisemite, was one of six well-known and politically diverse sisters who included Diana, the wife of Sir Oswald Mosley, and Jessica, a committed communist.

She first went to Germany in the early 1930s, when the Nazis were on the rise, and was so overwhelmed by a visit to the Nuremberg rallies she became determined to meet Hitler. He described her as "a perfect specimen of Aryan womanhood".

Dr Richard Evans, professor of modern history at the University of Cambridge, said he hoped the lovechild story did not distort history.

"She was a hardline Nazi and a rabid racist and antisemite, and I'm worried that gossip about her personal life might take attention away from these facts."

A LIFE CUT SHORT BY TRAGEDY

UNITY Mitford was born on 8 August, 1914, the daughter of the second Baron Redesdale.

Her parents held right-wing political views and supported the British Union of Fascists.

Unity went to Germany where she met Hitler, Himmler, Gring, Gbbels and other Nazi leaders.

While living in Germany she took possession of a flat which had been owned by a Jewish family deported from Munich in 1938.

Secret service reports noted that in 1936 she gave a "Hitler salute" to the British consul general in Munich, who immediately requested that her passport be impounded.

She wrote Hitler a farewell letter and attempted suicide by shooting herself in the head in September 1939 after Britain declared war.

She entered a nursing home in England, but later became seriously ill on a visit to the family-owned island of Inch Kenneth. She was taken to hospital in Oban but doctors decided it was too dangerous to remove the lodged bullet. She eventually died in 1948, aged 33, of meningitis caused by cerebral swelling around the bullet.