An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew(44)
As in the previous world war, the United States tried to stay out of the conflict that had ignited in Europe. And again, the country found itself involved nevertheless. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, America joined the Second World War.
That same month, Allene organized a party at Beechwood on a scale that hadn’t been seen in Newport for years. It included a fashion show, a dog show, pony races, and a children’s carnival to raise money for the local branch of the Red Cross. In a New York that was ringing with patriotism as in the old days, she worked on numerous charity events behind the blackout curtains in her apartment at 740 Park.
Behind the scenes, the Kotzebues had a lot of contact with Juliana, who now was living in Canada with her three children while Bernhard remained in London with Queen Wilhelmina. They sponsored a “Blankets for Holland” fundraiser, which was held in the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton in New York in April 1944. It was also Allene who ensured, via her extensive network, that Bernhard’s mother and brother, who had remained in Germany, had sufficient funds and uncensored mail.
During the winter of 1942–1943, the tables turned in the war. After Hitler suddenly turned on the Soviet Union, the German advance was stalled by the tenacious Russian resistance at Stalingrad. The Germans lost in North Africa, too, and in June 1944, the Allies began a massive invasion of Europe from England. On August 25 that year, Paris was freed after four years of occupation. But it was still too early for Allene and Paul to pack their bags again. Just as in the previous world war, the Germans did not concede easily, and it wasn’t until spring 1945, following Hitler’s suicide, that Germany finally surrendered.
For Bernhard, who, thanks to Wilhelmina, had been promoted to commander of the resistance groups in the occupied Netherlands after the invasion, the delay was a blessing. The Allied command had turned a blind eye to the promotion of the future prince consort, who was completely inexperienced in military matters, because the war seemed practically at an end at that point. But because the war lasted longer than expected, Allene’s protégé was able to expand his new role, wielding more power than he could have dreamed of in his future role as prince consort. At the same time, it also brought him lifelong fame as a war hero.
There was another commander in this war with whom Allene shared some history, and this was Robert Greim, the pilot who had shot down her son Teddy’s plane in September 1918. Greim had become one of Hitler’s most faithful adherents, and after Hermann G?ring fell out of grace in April 1945, he took over his role as commander in chief of the Luftwaffe. Just a few days after his promotion, he fell into the hands of the Allies. Fearful of being delivered to the Russians, he ended his life in late May 1945 by swallowing a poison pill.
11
Oceans of Love
Blue—that was the color of Allene’s old age, just as green had been the color of her youth. The deep blue of the sea in this period increasingly becoming the leitmotif of her life. The bleached blue of the fabrics she used to decorate her houses. And the practical blue of the sheets of airmail paper that she covered, one after the other, with her still-elegant handwriting or filled with type using the mini Hermes portable typewriter she took everywhere with her.
Organized as she was, Allene had letterhead stationery printed for each house, from the Rue Barbet-de-Jouy to Park Avenue to Beechwood. Since her divorce from Henry, she often used paper with just a stylized A with a crown above it. Officially she had lost her royal status, but in her eyes she was still a princess—an American princess.
During the postwar years, Allene’s letters were mainly directed to another legacy of her marriage to Henry: her stepson, whom she’d come to consider even more her own as time passed. In 1918, Allene hadn’t been able to save Teddy from the grasping claws of world history, but in 1945, she was given a second chance with Heiner. And she made full use of it, despite her age—she turned seventy-three that year.
Heiner had still been living at Trebschen with his father at the outbreak of the Second World War, but in 1941, when this last remnant of the Reuss estate had to be sold due to lack of funds, he moved into his sister’s house in Berlin. Marlisa was newly married to a Berlin businessman who was not of noble birth, and she was mother to a baby daughter. The previous month, their father died. Marlisa’s husband disappeared from the scene, and the brother and sister spent the rest of the war together with the child, moving to ever-shabbier abodes, driven on by the Allied bombings systematically reducing the German capital to ashes.
Heiner’s war efforts remained limited to some translation work for the Wehrmacht. In addition to the perception that he was both physically and psychologically unfit for active service, he benefited from his title for once in his life: from 1940 onward, members of deposed royal houses were banned from joining the Wehrmacht.
Heiner managed to stay under the radar even after the fall of Berlin in the spring of 1945. Like almost all adult men left in the German capital, he was interned for a while, but his interrogators soon realized that there wasn’t a rabid Nazi or a war criminal concealed inside this slender, feminine young man and let him go again.
But Heiner was not allowed to leave occupied Berlin—that right was restricted to those who could prove they were victims of Nazi terror. For him and his sister, there was nothing to do but try to survive in the ruined, starving city without any money, without profession or useful contacts, and with their former stepmother as their only lifeline. Allene was saving her own clothing coupons far away in America so that she could provide Heiner with shoes and clothes and did everything she could to get him out of Germany. She ignored Marlisa, who had insulted and hurt her so badly before the war. Allene had washed her hands of Marlisa for good.