New Statesman Scotland

Spin-doctoring, we are told, has become the political art de nos jours. Our politics are in thrall to a few highly placed, media-manipulating warlocks. If this be true, then perhaps the time has come to see what can be learnt from earlier practitioners of the dark art. So, in the spirit of helpfulness, this diary would like to recall that now-forgotten maestro of spin, Dr Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, fixer, fund-raiser and spinmeister to Adolf Hitler.

Putzi was a huge, lantern-jawed Bavarian from a wealthy family. He was educated in Munich (where his teacher was Heinrich Himmler's father) and at Harvard University. After graduating (just) he joined the family art-dealing business in Manhattan and socialised with the likes of Henry Ford (Hitler's favourite American), Charlie Chaplin and the young senator Franklin D Roosevelt. Putzi spent the first world war in the USA and then returned to Munich, where he fell under Hitler's spell. So entranced was Putzi that he funded the fledgling Nazi party when it was in dire need. Hitler was duly grateful and became a regular visitor to Putzi's art-stuffed home. The pair spent many a jolly evening warbling around the piano. It was at one such event that Hitler met Eva Braun.

In 1933 Putzi became the Nazi regime's liaison with the American and British media. His job - to get glowing press coverage for the Third Reich, a task he carried out with big-spending, chaotic enthusiasm that earned him the loathing of Goebbels. As the 1930s wore on, Hitler began to doubt Putzi's commitment. The Fuhrer suspected him of using his job to spin a mark or two. Putzi used to negotiate big fees with the US press for articles by Hitler and then cream off a third of the money. In 1937, when Putzi was invited by top Nazis to drop by parachute into the middle of the Spanish civil war, he took fright and legged it to England.

When the second world war started he was shipped off to internment in Canada. Incredibly, Putzi pulled strings with his old Harvard University chums and ended up living in splendour in a Washington mansion as a "special adviser" to President Roosevelt. Until, that is, the Americans saw him as useless and dumped him back in Canada. At the end of the war Putzi was shipped back to Germany.

As one of the Nazis' earliest backers and noisiest advocates, Putzi should have been in serious bother. But once again his winning ways and contacts prevailed. Hitler's spin-doctor emerged unscathed to live on in Munich with his art treasures until he died in 1975, aged 88. Putzi proved it takes more than a world war, 60 million dead and the ruin of half a continent to keep a good spin-doctor down.

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