Traitor's Gate

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘I’m so sorry for imposing him on you like this. He was in a bit of a tight spot. You were the best people I could think of.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Hans-Jürgen, although he looked nervous. ‘How long will he be staying?’

  ‘A week perhaps? I don’t know, we’ll have to see.’

  ‘A week?’ Hans-Jürgen said dubiously.

  ‘He can stay as long as he wants.’ Elsa had appeared, her belly thrusting forward in her summer dress. ‘As long as he’s careful. He’s a charming man, although we’ve decided we shouldn’t know his real name. We call him Jan.’

  Theo climbed up the narrow stairs into what was little more than a roof space. There he found Conrad squatting on the floor with a copy of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.

  ‘Isn’t that banned?’ Theo asked.

  ‘I knew there was a reason the Gestapo were after me.’

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Bored to tears. But your friends are nice people. Are the Gestapo still chasing me or did your admiral call them off?’

  ‘I’m afraid he hasn’t. In fact, as far as the Gestapo are concerned, the Abwehr are after you too.’ Theo explained what Heydrich had said: that Conrad had been seen in Halle spying on the Gestapo.

  ‘Halle? I’ve never been there in my life. Schalke has set me up,’ said Conrad.

  ‘Well, you won’t be able to show your face around Berlin any more. We can probably work out an escape route for you back to England.’

  ‘I’d rather stay here until the coup. It should only be a couple of weeks now, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘Probably less, if Hitler starts the ball rolling at Nuremberg tomorrow. We’re ready.’

  ‘Excellent! I’m happy to help, Theo. I’d like to be involved. Perhaps you’ll need someone to talk to the British government?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Can you track down Warren for me? Tell him to let my family know I’m all right. And can you also ask him to get in touch with Wilfrid Israel and see if he has any news for me?’

  ‘The owner of the department store?’ Conrad hadn’t mentioned Wilfrid to Theo before.

  ‘That’s right. He might have news about Anneliese.’

  ‘All right, I’ll speak to him.’ Theo began to climb down the stairs. ‘I probably won’t come here again myself; I don’t want to risk leading the Gestapo to you. But I will send a message when I have news. Be patient, Conrad. And please be careful. These are old friends, I would hate them to be caught hiding you.’

  30

  It was 12 September, the seventh and last day of the Nuremberg rally, the annual celebration of the National Socialist Workers’ Party. For a week the Gothic façades and gabled roofs of the medieval town had been draped in crimson flags as tens of thousands – no, hundreds of thousands of men and women marched back and forth in the multitude of uniforms of the Third Reich. There were speeches and music everywhere: Beethoven’s Egmont overture, the overture to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, Hitler’s favourite, ‘Do You See the Sun Rise in the East?’, ‘The Heathlands of Brandenburg’ and countless other marches. Trains converged on the city from all over Germany bringing eager participants and spectators, and during the frenetic week the crowds and the marchers merged into one: ‘Ein Volk’. Among the goose-stepping thousands strutted the Nazi leaders, accompanied this year for the first time by swaggering Italians in white uniforms and gold tassels.

  The last day was ‘Army Day’, when, three miles outside the city on the Zeppelin Field Stadium, recently built by Albert Speer, infantry, tanks and artillery dashed about amidst bangs and flashes. Overhead the Luftwaffe flew in relentless formations, wave upon wave of modern monoplanes. From one rally to the next the people had seen their country grow more powerful. The tanks were sleeker, faster, bigger, as were the aeroplanes: the old biplanes were banished from the skies. The Arbeitsdienst, the massed ranks of young labourers goose-stepping along with shovels glinting on their shoulders were still there, but the crowd knew that in a matter of days they would be re-equipped with rifles and ready to fight for their fatherland.

  At the end of the day, tens of thousands were gathered to hear the Führer speak, their hearts full of the excitement, the glory, the promise of the Third Reich. On the platform were the Nazi leaders: Goebbels, Göring, Hess, Himmler and the generals who had spent the day watching the army manoeuvres. Behind them were foreign dignitaries, including Lords Brocket and McGowan, and Unity Mitford, Diana Guinness’s younger sister, and her mother, Lady Redesdale.

  Sitting next to Unity was Veronica de Lancey.

  Diana had been to the Nuremberg rallies many times before, but was unable to attend this one because she was seven months pregnant with Oswald Mosley’s child. But Veronica had heard so much about it that she wanted to go. It was Unity who had first successfully stalked Hitler in the Carlton Terrace Tea House in Munich and who had introduced Diana to ‘Uncle Wolf’. Unity was absolutely besotted by the Führer, so much so that Diana was worried about her mental stability. War with Britain, which seemed inevitable, would tear her apart.

  Veronica had arrived in Nuremberg as a detached observer, but her diffident cynicism had been worn away by the rousing music, the pageantry and the handsome men in their stylish uniforms. She hadn’t understood a word of the speeches, but the euphoria of the crowd, the mass of thousand upon thousand of ecstatic Germans, had affected her, sweeping her along so that she awaited the appearance of the Führer with as much eagerness as everyone else in the stadium.

  The Führer was late; the crowd wasn’t restless – he was always late, they knew that – but the anticipation grew. Finally, the catchy ‘Badenweiler March’ flowed out over the loudspeaker system, and Adolf Hitler appeared on the platform in a blaze of white light, a small man with a long shadow surveying the tens of thousands of upturned, expectant faces. For what seemed an age he saluted the cheering crowd and the wheeling, goose-stepping formations in front of him.

  And then he began to speak, very quietly at first, so quietly that every ear in that huge field strained to hear him. The speech grew in volume, as Hitler used every rhetorical device in his armoury. His voice, whether low and halting or loud and insistent, was laden with emotion, an emotion that was reflected and magnified by his audience a hundredfold. His Viennese-suburban accent, which on first hearing had sounded mildly unpleasant to his German listeners, was now familiar and intoxicating. As the speech rolled towards its end, he turned his attention to Czechoslovakia.

  ‘The misery of the Sudeten Germans is indescribable. The Czech state has sought to annihilate them. As human beings they are oppressed and scandalously treated in an intolerable fashion.’

  Horror and outrage rippled through the crowd.

  ‘I have not demanded that Germany should subjugate three and a half million Frenchmen, or that we should subjugate three and a half million Englishmen: my demand is that the subjugation of three and a half million Germans in Czechoslovakia shall stop, and that in its place they will have the free right of self-determination. If the English and the French support the continued subjugation of the Sudeten Germans, then their decision will have serious consequences! I serve peace best if I leave no one in any doubt on this point.’

  Then, his face flushed and his eyes bulging, his voice rose to a crescendo as he bellowed: ‘The German Reich has been asleep for long enough! The German people are now awake and are stepping forward to accept their rightful crown of the millennium!’

  The crowd erupted into a surge of Sieg Heils as the speech echoed around the stadium and beyond, across Germany, across the continent of Europe to Paris, London and Prague.

  They heard it in the Sudetenland. Spontaneous riots, long planned by the Sudeten German Party under the leadership of Konrad Henlein, broke out all over the region. But it rained, hard and long and cold. The Czechs declared martial law, but showed restraint and discipline. There was no massacre of Sudeten Germans; in fact casualties were low on both sides. The revolt splut
tered and fizzled out.

  In Paris, the Cabinet was split on whether to stand by France’s treaty obligation to the Czechs in the event of a German invasion. Georges Bonnet, the Foreign Minister, argued forcefully that peace should be preserved at any price. Édouard Daladier, the Prime Minister, dithered. Telegrams were sent to Moscow, to Washington and to London.

  In London, Chamberlain knew that Britain was entering a decisive phase in its history, and it was incumbent on him as Prime Minister to be decisive. German troops were massed on the Czech border, and it seemed highly likely that German tanks would roll into the Sudetenland within days, perhaps within hours.

  The information he had was frustratingly contradictory. Both Britain and Germany were rearming rapidly. The assessment of the majority of his advisers was that Britain needed another year at least to be ready for war, and that in an early war the German Luftwaffe would bomb Prague, Paris and London to obliteration within sixty days. Others thought that, on the contrary, Germany was still too weak to overwhelm the combined forces of Britain, France and Czechoslovakia.

  It looked as if the plot to overthrow Hitler that von Kleist had revealed to the British government was more real than Chamberlain had originally thought. All over Europe, from Moscow to The Hague, German military attachés and diplomats were whispering to their British counterparts that Britain must stand by Czechoslovakia. Two more emissaries, a retired colonel named Böhm-Tettelbach and Theo Kordt, the diplomat at the German Embassy in London, had had quiet discussions with British officials, Kordt even speaking to Lord Halifax himself in 10 Downing Street. Indications were that the coup could be launched at any time, according to some reports possibly even that very day.

  But relying on disaffected generals to save Europe from war seemed extremely risky to Chamberlain. Who knew what would happen if their coup were allowed to proceed? Chamberlain at least believed he could deal with Hitler; he did not relish the prospect of negotiating with unknown generals, traitors, throwbacks to the warmongering imperial Germany of the last war. He could not permit the plotters to throw a spanner in the works now: the time had come for him to seize the initiative. He, and he alone, could win peace for Europe.

  It was time for Plan Z.

  Unfortunately, Sir Nevile Henderson had counselled against Chamberlain’s original plan of flying unannounced to Berlin. There were all kinds of practical problems, one being that his aeroplane might be shot down by the Luftwaffe, and the other that Hitler was planning to go to Berchtesgaden after the Nuremberg rally, so he wouldn’t be in Berlin to receive him. So, after frantic discussions among those few members of government that knew of Plan Z’s existence, a telegram was drafted for Hitler:

  IN VIEW OF THE INCREASINGLY CRITICAL SITUATION, I PROPOSE TO COME OVER AT ONCE TO SEE YOU WITH A VIEW TO TRYING TO FIND A PEACEFUL SOLUTION. I PROPOSE TO COME ACROSS BY AIR AND AM READY TO START TOMORROW. PLEASE INDICATE EARLIEST TIME YOU COULD SEE ME AND SUGGEST PLACE OF MEETING. SHOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR EARLY REPLY.

  NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

  The reply came the next afternoon. The Führer would be happy to receive the Prime Minister at the Berghof, his mountain retreat in Bavaria, the following day, 15 September, and he was invited to bring Mrs Chamberlain if he so wished. Chamberlain informed the King, the Cabinet, and then the people what he was about to do.

  The plotters were ready. Canaris and his inner core of advisers, including Oster and Theo, were waiting at the Abwehr’s offices. They expected Case Green to be put into motion that afternoon, the 14th. This would be followed by Hitler’s return to Berlin from Bavaria, at which point the coup would be launched, General von Witzleben would arrest Hitler and the carefully prepared legal case against him would be put in motion. The army, the police, the lawyers, the politicians: they were all ready to undertake their assigned rolls.

  It was a long afternoon. Theo checked and double-checked the orders that were to be sent out to the regional commands of the Wehrmacht and the police the moment that the coup was announced. Oster found it impossible to sit still and paced around the offices trying to keep himself busy. Only Canaris remained calm.

  By eight o’clock there was no news and so the Abwehr officers stayed on to dinner at the Tirpitzufer. The conversation was stilted; any subject seemed irrelevant compared to the enormity of what lay ahead of them. In twenty-four hours, forty-eight at the most, the tyrant would be overthrown.

  Dinner was interrupted by a message for Canaris from the War Ministry next door. All eyes were on him: was this the announcement they had all been waiting for? Canaris opened the envelope and scanned the sheet of paper within. His already pale face went white.

  ‘What is it, excellency?’ asked Oster.

  ‘Chamberlain has announced that he will fly to see Hitler at the Berghof tomorrow to discuss a solution to the Czechoslovak situation.’

  It took a moment for the news to sink in. ‘A solution?’ Theo said. ‘You mean he’s going to give up the Sudetenland without a fight.’

  ‘It sounds very much as if he is,’ the admiral agreed, putting down his knife and fork. ‘I’m sorry. I seem to have lost my appetite.’

  Chamberlain flew to Munich the next day in a silver Lockheed Electra. It was the first time he had ever been in an aeroplane, and he took no agenda, no interpreter and no wife, just his special adviser Sir Horace Wilson, his umbrella and the conviction that peace was achievable. Henderson and von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, met him at the airport and joined him on the train to Berchtesgaden. Chamberlain was gratified by his reception by the crowd in the small Bavarian town; it confirmed his hunch that he was popular in Germany. The Berghof was high above the town on the slopes of the Obersalzberg, a mountain dividing Germany from Austria. Unfortunately that day the spectacular views were shrouded in cloud.

  Chamberlain thought his visit a success. Although he found Hitler the commonest little dog, he felt that his temperament was one of excitability rather than insanity. The British Prime Minister prided himself on his ability to understand the common man, and he was quite sure that he had made a favourable impression on the Führer. To Hitler’s assertion that he would start a world war if necessary to save the Sudeten Germans from Czech oppression, Chamberlain had said that he would need to consult with his colleagues, but for himself it was immaterial whether the Sudeten Germans stayed in Czechoslovakia or were included in Germany. In doing this he had held out the prospect of negotiations for Herr Hitler, negotiations that would meet Germany’s most important demands and that would thus bring peace.

  Hitler thought Chamberlain was ‘ein Arschloch’.

  31

  Klaus was trembling with excitement as he entered Heydrich’s office. What he had to tell him should make the chief sit up and take notice.

  ‘Ah, Schalke, any luck with the German politician who went to London?’

  ‘Not directly, Herr Gruppenführer. We haven’t been able to find a record of any politician leaving the country whose movements cannot be verified. But...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I have stumbled upon something that might be connected. A source whom I feel sure is reliable tells me that there is a conspiracy afoot to remove Hitler as soon as he orders the invasion of Czechoslovakia.’

  Heydrich frowned. ‘Who is this source?’

  Klaus told him.

  Heydrich shook his head. ‘It is just a rumour. If we jumped every time we heard a rumour that someone was unhappy with the Führer, we’d have the whole country locked up by now.’

  ‘There are more details,’ Klaus said. ‘The plans are at a very advanced stage. The army is involved, and the Abwehr, and the Foreign Office.’

  ‘And who is the leader of this revolt?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Klaus admitted. ‘But Lieutenant von Hertenberg of the Abwehr is involved. As is Conrad de Lancey, the British spy we are searching for.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised to hear that name?’ Heydrich said.

  ‘We know de Lancey is a s
py,’ Klaus replied. ‘Now we know what he’s really up to.’

  ‘I thought he was investigating my ancestry? I don’t see what that has to do with a plot against the Führer.’

  ‘He seems to be involved in all kinds of things.’

  ‘Is Göring involved in this plot?’

  ‘Not from what I’ve heard. I think de Lancey might have been pulling the wool over our eyes with that one.’

  ‘Or over the Abwehr’s eyes. Admiral Canaris more or less admitted to me that de Lancey had deceived them. They are looking for him as hard as we are.’

  ‘My understanding is that the Abwehr are involved in the plot too.’

  ‘Admiral Canaris?’

  ‘I don’t know how high up it goes,’ Klaus admitted.

  ‘You don’t know much, do you?’

  Klaus’s excitement had turned to frustration. ‘But what if this information is accurate? We’re not talking about a lone nutcase here. This is a widespread conspiracy against the Reich. We can’t just ignore it.’

  ‘What do you want me to do, Schalke?’ said Heydrich, his own frustration showing. ‘Throw every general into jail? Arrest Canaris? Even arresting Hertenberg would cause a stink. We were lucky to get away with the Fritsch case. The Führer needs the army now – he’s just about to start a world war, if you hadn’t noticed. The last thing he will want is us storming around the Bendlerstrasse locking up everyone in sight.’

  ‘If there is a putsch and the Führer is removed, you know what will happen to the Gestapo,’ Klaus said.

  Heydrich steepled his long fingers. ‘All right, Schalke. Get me some more evidence, something in writing, preferably. I want specifics: names, dates, plans. And find this spy de Lancey. I am beginning to share your distaste for the man.’

  Theo paid another visit to the Wedemeyers in Dahlem. There was no way of avoiding it: he had an important message for Conrad and he had to deliver it himself. He had used the same manoeuvre with his horse in the Tiergarten to lose the two Gestapo whom he had spotted on his tail. He had then taken a roundabout route, backtracking several times on the U-Bahn, before ending up at the Wedemeyers’ house. It all took a long time.