Behind the millions the Thyssen-Bornemiszas spent on a Bermuda court battle over their inheritance, is the story of a dysfunctional family, whose wealth and art collection have deep connections to a Nazi past.

This past forms part of the revelations in “The Thyssen Art Macabre”, a new book by British writer David Litchfield.

Another part is his assertion that the family’s modern patriarch, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaz|0xf3|n, managed to basically fool the Spanish Government into paying an enormous sum for an art collection it does not own.

Litchfield had a unique access to the inside details.

He was first contracted about the mid-90s by Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaz|0xf3|n, the family’s modern day patriarch, to write an “official” biography.

For various reasons that biography never got published. Meanwhile, Litchfield slowly gained his confidence though the years, becoming witness to his final wine-soaked confessions, up until the time the Baron died in April 2002.

Litchfield then went ahead and wrote his own truthful version of the family, fleshing out a story of how a German industrial family built up an enormous stash through the generations — and came to spend a good chunk over the years fighting for it in the courts.

Above all, he showed up the Thyssen-Bornemiszas as fakers, denying their connection with their German roots, and the extent of their relationship with the Nazis.

Even the claim to Hungarian title is suspect, gained through a convenient marriage and legal sleight of hand by the Baron’s father, one of the sons of the legendary German industrialist August Thyssen.

The title, and the claims to a Hungarian past, were part of a strategy to protect the Thyssen empire — built on coal, steel, shipping and banking — from the impending war. The other part of the strategy included setting up offshore units in Holland and Switzerland during the 1920s, thus avoiding the deflationary effects of the German mark and the link with that country.

The part of the family that stayed in Germany kept the bit of the empire known as Thyssen AG, and now as ThyssenKrupp AG, while the Thyssen-Bornemiszas mainly kept control of the banking and shipping side.

Litchfield tracks down how both arms of the family ended up willingly financing the Nazis right from the start of their drive to power. During the subsequent war years the family used a high proportion of slave labour to run the factories and profit from the conflict.

In one particularly damming passage, Litchfield heavily implicates the Baron’s aunt, Margit, in the massacre of Jews at drunken Nazi parties held while she was living at the Thyssen-Bornemisza’s castle in Hungary.

The claim to be art lovers is also exposed as a sham as Litchfield details the indiscriminate spending on paintings started by the Baron’s father during this period. Art was always an investment for both father and son, another way of moving money around.

With so many formerly wealthy people desperate to sell their art before and during the war years, it was an opportune time to be a cash-rich collector. Other purchases were made through sales of confiscated art by Vichy France and the Nazis, helping to turn it into one of the world’s best known private art holdings.

Quite a bit of the art turned out to be fake, or of questionable provenance, according to the meticulous tracing done by Litchfield.

At the war’s end the family largely came out with their wealth intact, despite investigations by the wartime authorities and tax collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. With the death of his father in 1947 the Baron gained control of the Thyssen-Bornemisza part of the empire.

He continued collecting art like postage stamps and in 1989 sold half of it for $350 million to the Spanish government through a secret contract. The 800-plus paintings are housed in Madrid at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

It is cited by those in the know as the “art coup of the century”. As the Baron finally admits to Litchfield, the complicated contract meant he actually charged Spain $600 million to look after the paintings, while leaving the government little control over the collection.

Setting up offshore holdings to avoid tax was another of the Baron’s obsessions. His first Bermuda company was incorporated in 1961. The Baron would later chose Bermuda as the inheritance trust headquarters for the entire Thyssen-Bornemiza Group (TBG).

The trust was set up during the 1980s to insure the $2.7 billion in assets held by the group did not fall into the hands of the Baron’s four ex-wives. It also meant that his son Georg gained control of TBG. In return the Baron was promised a healthy annual sum to live on.

But with his marriage to a fifth wife in 1985, the former Spanish beauty queen Tita Cervera, the sum suddenly became too small and the Baron sued Georg in Bermuda to break up the inheritance trust.

With $150 million in legal fees spent on a futile battle, the Thyssen squabble was dubbed the “most expensive case in legal history” by The Lawyer magazine. Most of the money went to a circle of UK lawyers, who shared the crumbs with Bermuda’s top law firms.

The case started in October 1999 with one of the longest opening speeches in trial history. The Baron’s lawyers went on for nine months summarising what was to come.

With lots of winks between each other, the lawyers and the judge sat in court on a luxurious five-hour day, four days a week, prolonging the battle at the expense of the family.

According to Litchfield, the key to its eventual settlement was Judge Denis Mitchell’s dog Ban, which he brought with him to Bermuda from Hong Kong on being hired to conduct the case. It was Mitchell’s wife, Jennette, who revealed to Litchfield they had only intended to stay on the Island until the dog was eligible for return to the UK without it having to be quarantined for six months.

She also turned out to have a high degree of intolerance to black people, sentiments she expressed openly in front of Litchfield during a memorable lunch at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

“Not only was she quite openly opposed to the new black government and the black judges but she also made her disdain of any black women who held a political position particularly obvious by describing both the president and the leader of the opposition as ‘black, racist dykes’,” he writes.

For whatever reason Mitchell quit the case in March 2001, while still only on the defence’s opening speech. By February 2002 the Baron came to his senses and settled the case, leaving control firmly remaining in the hands of Georg.

Litchfield speculates the Baron started the whole expensive case simply to ensure his squabbling family would have an interest in him through his final years. Two months after the settlement, in April 2002, the Baron died of a heart attack, leaving behind the legacy of the art collection.

Even that is now bound to draw controversy in Spain and elsewhere.

With the publication of Litchfield’s book, many in the art world are demanding an investigation of whether some of it is tainted by profiteering from the Third Reich and should be returned to the owners’ descendents.