fascism against the Third Reich. The MI5 papers also show that at the time Rothermere was paying an annual retainer of £5,000 to Stephanie von Hohenlohe (suspected by the French, British and Americans of being a German spy) as he wanted her to bring him closer to Hitler's inner circle. Rothermere also encouraged her to promote Germany to her circle of influential English contacts. She was known as "London's leading Nazi hostess". MI5 had been monitoring her since her arrival in Britain in the 1920s and regarded her as "an extremely dangerous person". As the Second World War loomed, Rothermere stopped the payments and their relationship deteriorated into threats and lawsuits, which she lost.Tweedie, Neil and Day, Peter. "When Rothermere urged Hitler to invade Romania", The Daily Telegraph (1 March 2005) The lawsuit greatly damaged Rothermere's reputation as his secret dabbling as an amateur diplomat all through the 1920s-1930s came to light and Hohenlohe produced letters by him where he declared: "You know I have always been a fervent admirer of the Fuhrer". Rothermere was opposed to the "guarantee" of Poland given by Chamberlain in the House of Commons on 31 March 1939. Given his long-standing support of Hungarian claims to Transylvania, Rothermere was outraged by the decision of the Chamberlain government on 13 April 1939 to "guarantee" Romania. During the Danzig crisis, Rothermere played the role of an amateur diplomat, attempting to avert a war as he wrote to both Nazi leaders and British politicians. Rothermere wanted the Danzig crisis to end with a Munich-type deal under which Poland would allow the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland) to "go home to the Reich" in exchange for which Germany would not invade Poland. The support offered by the Rothermere newspapers together with the Beaverbrook newspapers to the German claim to the Free City of Danzig helped to persuade Hitler that Britain would not go to war for Poland. On 27 June 1939, Rothermere sent a telegram to Hitler appealing to him not to invade Poland that read: ""My Dear Führer, I have watched with understanding and interest the progress of your great and superhuman work in regenerating your country." He sought to rebut the Nazi claim of British "encirclement" of Germany as he wrote that there was: "no policy which involves the encirclement of Germany, and that no British government could exist which embraced such a policy. The