Journalism In autumn of 1930, Wiskemann visited
Berlin, staying for a period of nine months, to continue her historical research and improve her command over the
German language. In the 1920s,
Germany was a favorite destination of British
intellectuals disenchanted with British life, and it was common for those intellectuals seeking an "
alternative lifestyle" to settle in Germany, usually in Berlin. In the "Golden Twenties" as Germans called the years between 1924-1929, Germany was perceived in Britain as the home of "
liberalism,
modernism, and
hedonism...
avant-garde art and
architecture...
social deviance and
sexual decadence". The image of Germany in the
Golden Twenties across the
North Sea was of a more open and free
society, and as such tended to attract homosexuals such as
Christopher Isherwood and
W. H. Auden who wanted to live in a society where it was less likely they would suffer
criminal convictions for their sexuality or women such as
Jean Ross or Wiskemann who wanted to "learn about life" and have careers. Wiskemann recalled that moving to Berlin was a liberation from her "miserable" years at Cambridge, where had been grudgingly tolerated by the male-dominated faculty doing her
postgraduate research. She recalled that in circles of
left-wing intellectuals that she associated with in Berlin that she felt more valued than she had ever been at Cambridge. The American historian Colin Storer wrote it was no accident that Wiskemann chose to settle in Berlin, a city that was identified with
modernity and was viewed as the home of the "
New Woman", able to make a career for herself instead of waiting for the right man to marry. Wiskemann seems to be greatly influenced by photographs of German women working as
pilots, driving
sports cars and working as
scientists. The German historian Katherina von Ankum wrote that Wiskemann had an already outdated image of German women as a "resurrection of traditional notions of (German) womanhood" was already on the rise when she arrived in Berlin as a part of a backlash against the gains that German women had made with the November Revolution of 1918. Over the next six years, she divided her time between Cambridge, where she worked as a tutor in history at
Newnham College, and Germany, using the time to travel through Europe as well. She socialised there with
Phyllis Dobb,
Arthur Koestler,
Erich Mendelsohn, and
George Grosz, recounting her experiences in her memoir,
The Europe I Saw, as well as in letters to friends, including
Julian Bell. In Berlin, she worked as a translator and English teacher, preparing documents for the
British Embassy and tutoring German diplomats in English. During this time, she closely observed political developments, witnessing in particular the rise of Nazism, and her interest was enabled by a friendship with the journalist
Frederick A. Voigt, who was reporting for the
Guardian. in 1932, she began writing for the
New Statesman, reporting on German politics and warning about the dangers of
Nazism, to which she was firmly opposed, and her writings were widely read. During the writing of her book, Toynbee-who supported appeasement-was opposed to Wiskemann's "pro-Czech" book and made a number of efforts to "correct" her book. Toynbee came under pressure from the Foreign Office not to publish her book in the spring and summer of 1938. The diplomat Robert Hadow wrote to Toynbee on 16 May 1938 that publishing Wiskemann's book would be "a set-back to the very real effort...which is being made to bring M. Benes to a sense of the "realities" of the situation and so to direct him into negotiations with Henlein". Despite his own opposition to the book, Toynbee published
Czechs and Germans. The book, a historical account, received praise, as "indispensable introduction to the closer study of the problem of Czechoslovakia," in
International Affairs, and "...an excellent account of the relations between Czechs and the Germans in Habsburg times," in the
American Historical Review. The chief limitation of this work was Wiskemann's limited grasp of
Czech, and the book also faced some opposition from the British Foreign Office, who saw it as espousing Czech causes. It also received substantial attention in the press, as
Lord Runciman, delegated to mediate in Czechoslovakia, was photographed by media sources reading the book as he left for Prague. Following the publication of this book, Wiskemann engaged in a lecture tour, visiting the United States of America, while continuing to publish on issues of central European politics. In New York, she accepted an invitation from Oxford University Press' office to write an account of German politics after the
Munich conference, publishing
Undeclared War in 1939. The book focused on the impact of the Third Reich on Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, and was written in three months. Noting the haste, the historian
R.W. Seton-Watson nonetheless called it a "valuable and welcome contribution to the contemporary history of south-eastern Europe". Richard Coventry, writing for
The New Statesman, called it "the best book of the year so far as European politics are concerned." In 1939, she published a book,
Undeclared War, which was written in the spring of 1939, but published shortly after Poland was invaded in September. She was to regret the title of her book, which made it seemed dated even before it was published.
Intelligence was the eponymously named department that operated out of
Electra House. Both the buildings and the department were overseen by
Campbell Stuart. In 1939, Wiskemann turned down a job offer from the
BBC, and applied for jobs in the field of intelligence, eventually being recruited by the Foreign Office's
Electra House (precursor to the
Political Warfare Executive), which was primarily working in
propaganda. She was sent to Switzerland, where she was ostensibly writing a book for the
Oxford University Press, and later worked as an attache to the British legation in Bern, while continuing to report for various publications. During this time, Wiskemann was charged with gathering information, particularly from Germany and territories occupied by the Germans. During her time as an intelligence officer, Wiskemann remained closely involved with German resistance members, passing on information about the Holocaust to British intelligence officials despite receiving instructions that she was not to report on the subject, receiving a letter in 1944 instructing her that they were "not interested at this stage in the war in German atrocities in the occupied territories or in the shootings of Jews in Poland and Hungary." As public attitude changed in 1945, Wiskemann's reports of the genocide of Jewish people gained more attention. After the end of World War II, Wiskemann was invited to remain in intelligence work, primarily to stay in Germany and work in 're-education' of German citizens. She refused the offer, and returned to working in academia and journalism. In 1945, after Wiskemann retired from her work as an intelligence officer during World War II, she relocated to Italy to study political conditions there for her next research project. During this time she financially supported herself through journalism, reporting on Italian politics for
The Economist,
Spectator, and
The Observer. She wrote weekly book reviews for the
Times Literary Supplement, and in addition, undertook translations for publishers during this time.
Return to Academia After World War II, Wiskemann began her next project, on Italian political history. She relocated to
Rome, supporting herself through journalism, and published two books on Italian political history. She first published
Italy (1947) for Oxford University Press, a brief overview of the country's politics as part of a larger series for the publisher. In 1949, she published a pioneering study of the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini, titled
The Rome-Berlin Axis, drawing from their personal papers and letters as well as eyewitness accounts
. The book received positive reviews and was widely read, becoming a standard text in reading lists on this period with historian
Hugh Trevor-Roper describing it as "a definitive work of contemporary history", although it was criticised by
A.J.P Taylor for being, in his view, too sympathetic to the Italian point of view. In 1953, Wiskemann was invited by historian
Hugh Seton-Watson to write a volume about the population of Germans displaced from the eastern German border in 1945, and she published
Germany’s Eastern Neighbours: Problems Relating to the Oder-Neisse Line and the Czech Frontier Region, the first English-language book to address the subject, in 1956. In this work she rejected post-war German demands to its former territories now being part of
Poland, and concluded that in the past territorial gains brought out the "worst elements" in Germany, she wrote that nobody wanted German minorities back in Eastern Europe, considering their record in the past. Along with Sir
John Wheeler-Bennett, Sir
Lewis Namier,
A. L. Rowse and Margaret George, Wishemann was a leading member of the "guilty men" school of histography, which condemned the "appeasers" as the "guilty men" who aided and abetted the rise of Nazi Germany. In 1965, she wrote she "could make no claim to detachment about the history of Europe between 1919-1945". About efforts to rehabilitate the reputation of Neville Chamberlain, she was uncompromising, declaring that Chamberlain was a "stubborn, vain, naïf and ignorant" prime minister. About Chamberlain's three visits to Germany in September 1938 for summits with Adolf Hitler at
Berchtesgaden,
Bad Godesberg, and
Munich, she wrote: "Hitler was insatiable and he asked for everything in the name of preserving a peace he despised". Along with many other British historians, she assigned a decisive importance to the
Yugoslav coup d'état of 27 March 1941 to the course of World War Two, writing: "The attack upon Russia was originally to have taken place in the middle of May [1941], but the crushing of Yugoslavia delayed it for about five weeks". In this way, she argued that the invasion of Yugoslavia, which had prompted by Hitler's anger about the coup in Belgrade, delayed Operation Barbarossa for a crucial five weeks with momentous consequences for the war. During the 1950s, she continued to publish, writing a history of the Swiss newspaper
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a memoir titled
The Europe I Saw (1968), and directing a research project on the territorial dispute in
Trieste for the
Carnegie Foundation. From 1958 to 1961 she was
Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at
University of Edinburgh, becoming the first woman to hold a chair in any field of study at the university. and was a tutor in
Modern History at the
University of Sussex from 1961 until 1964. In 1965 she received an honorary degree from the
University of Oxford. == Personal life ==