The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

by William Shirer

  To the Duke, Hess explained that he was on “a mission of humanity and that the Fuehrer did not want to defeat England and wished to stop the fighting.” The fact, Hess said, that this was his fourth attempt to fly to Britain—on the three other tries, he had had to turn back because of weather—and that he was, after all, a Reich cabinet minister, showed “his sincerity and Germany’s willingness for peace.” In this interview, as in later ones with others, Hess was not backward in asserting that Germany would win the war and that if it continued the plight of the British would be terrible. Therefore, his hosts had better take advantage of his presence and negotiate peace. So confident was this Nazi fanatic that the British would sit down and parley with him, that he asked the Duke to request “the King to give him ‘parole,’ as he had come unarmed and of his own free will.”85 Later he demanded that he be treated with the respect due to a cabinet member.

  The subsequent talks, with one exception, were conducted on the British side by Ivone Kirkpatrick, the knowing former First Secretary of the British Embassy in Berlin, whose confidential reports were later made available at Nuremberg.86 To this sophisticated student of Nazi Germany Hess, after parroting Hitler’s explanations of all the Nazi aggressions, from Austria to Scandinavia and the Lowlands, and having insisted that Britain was responsible for the war and would certainly lose it if she didn’t bring a stop to it now, divulged his proposals for peace. They were none other than those which Hitler had urged on Chamberlain—unsuccessfully—on the eve of his attack on Poland: namely, that Britain should give Germany a free hand in Europe in return for Germany’s giving Britain “a completely free hand in the Empire.” The former German colonies would have to be returned and of course Britain would have to make peace with Italy.

  Finally, as we were leaving the room [Kirkpatrick reported], Hess delivered a parting shot. He had forgotten, he declared, to emphasize that the proposal could only be considered on the understanding that it was negotiated by Germany with an English government other than the present one. Mr. Churchill, who had planned the war since 1936, and his colleagues who had lent themselves to his war policy, were not persons with whom the Fuehrer could negotiate.

  For a German who had got so far in the jungle warfare within the Nazi Party and then within the Third Reich, Rudolf Hess, as all who knew him could testify, was singularly naïve. He had expected, it is evident from the record of these interviews, to be received immediately as a serious negotiator—if not by Churchill, then by the “opposition party,” of which he thought the Duke of Hamilton was one of the leaders. When his contacts with British officialdom continued to be restricted to Kirkpatrick, he grew bellicose and threatening. At an interview on May 14, he pictured to the skeptical diplomat the dire consequences to Britain if she continued the war. There would soon be, he said, a terrible and absolutely complete blockade of the British Isles.

  It was fruitless [Kirkpatrick was told by Hess] for anyone here to imagine that England could capitulate and that the war could be waged from the Empire. It was Hitler’s intention, in such an eventuality, to continue the blockade of England … so that we would have to face the deliberate starvation of the population of these islands.

  Hess urged that the conversations, which he had risked so much to bring about, get under way at once. “His own flight,” as explained to Kirkpatrick, “was intended to give us a chance of opening conversations without loss of prestige. If we rejected this chance it would be clear proof that we desire no understanding with Germany, and Hitler would be entitled—in fact, it would be his duty—to destroy us utterly and to keep us after the war in a state of permanent subjection.” Hess insisted that the number of negotiators be kept small.

  As a Reich Minister he could not place himself in the position of being a lone individual subjected to a crossfire of comment and questions from a large number of persons.

  On this ridiculous note, the conversations ended, so far as Kirkpatrick was concerned. But—surprisingly—the British cabinet, according to Churchill,87 “invited” Lord Simon to interview Hess on June 10. According to the Nazi deputy leader’s lawyer at Nuremberg, Simon promised that he would bring Hess’s peace proposals to the attention of the British government.*88

  Hess’s motives are clear. He sincerely wanted peace with Britain. He had not the shadow of doubt that Germany would win the war and destroy the United Kingdom unless peace were concluded at once. There were, to be sure, other motives. The war had brought his personal eclipse. Running the Nazi Party as Hitler’s deputy during the war was dull business and no longer very important. What mattered in Germany now was running the war and foreign affairs. These were the things which engaged the attention of the Fuehrer to the exclusion of almost all else, and which put the limelight on Goering, Ribbentrop, Himmler, Goebbels and the generals. Hess felt frustrated and jealous. How better restore his old position with his beloved Leader and in the country than by pulling off a brilliant and daring stroke of statesmanship such as singlehandedly arranging peace between Germany and Britain?

  Finally, the beetle-browed deputy leader, like some of the other Nazi bigwigs—Hitler himself and Himmler—had come to have an abiding belief in astrology. At Nuremberg he confided to the American prison psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, that late in 1940 one of his astrologers had read in the stars that he was ordained to bring about peace. He also related how his old mentor, Professor Haushofer, the Munich Geopolitiker, had seen him in a dream striding through the tapestried halls of English castles, bringing peace between the two great “Nordic” nations.90 For a man who had never escaped from mental adolescence, this was heady stuff and no doubt helped impel Hess to undertake his weird mission to England.

  At Nuremberg one of the British prosecutors suggested still another reason: that Hess flew to England to try to arrange a peace settlement so that Germany would have only a one-front war to fight when she attacked the Soviet Union. The Russian prosecutor told the tribunal that he was sure of it. And so was Joseph Stalin, whose mighty suspicions at this critical time seem to have been concentrated not on Germany, as they should have been, but on Great Britain. The arrival of Hess in Scotland convinced him that there was some deep plot being hatched between Churchill and Hitler which would give Germany the same freedom to strike the Soviet Union which the Russian dictator had given her to assault Poland and the West. When three years later the British Prime Minister, then on his second visit to Moscow, tried to convince Stalin of the truth, he simply did not believe it. It is fairly clear from the interrogations conducted by Kirkpatrick, who tried to draw the Nazi leader out on Hitler’s intentions regarding Russia, that either Hess did not know of Barbarossa or, if he did, did not know that it was imminent.

  The days following Hess’s sudden departure were among the most embarrassing of Hitler’s life. He realized that the prestige of his regime had been severely damaged by the flight of his closest collaborator. How was it to be explained to the German people and the outside world? The questioning of the arrested members of Hess’s entourage convinced the Fuehrer that there had been no disloyalty toward him and certainly no plot, and that his trusted lieutenant had simply cracked up. It was decided at the Berghof, after the British had confirmed Hess’s arrival, to offer this explanation to the public. Soon the German press was dutifully publishing brief accounts that this once great star of National Socialism had become “a deluded, deranged and muddled idealist, ridden with hallucinations traceable to World War [I] injuries.”

  It seemed [said the official press communiqué] that Party Comrade Hess lived in a state of hallucination, as a result of which he felt he could bring about an understanding between England and Germany … This, however, will have no effect on the continuance of the war, which has been forced on the German people.

  Privately, Hitler gave orders to have Hess shot at once if he returned,* and publicly he stripped his old comrade of all his offices, replacing him as deputy leader of the party by Martin Bormann, a more sinister and conniving chara
cter. The Fuehrer hoped that the bizarre episode would be forgotten as soon as possible; his own thoughts quickly turned again to the attack on Russia, which was not far off.

  THE PLIGHT OF THE KREMLIN

  Despite all the evidence of Hitler’s intentions—the build-up of German forces in eastern Poland, the presence of a million Nazi troops in the nearby Balkans, the Wehrmacht’s conquest of Yugoslavia and Greece and its occupation of Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary—the men in the Kremlin, Stalin above all, stark realists though they were reputed to be and had been, blindly hoped that Russia somehow would still escape the Nazi tyrant’s wrath. Their natural suspicions, of course, could not help but feed on the bare facts, nor could their growing resentment at Hitler’s moves in southeastern Europe be suppressed. There is, however, something unreal, almost unbelievable, quite grotesque, in the diplomatic exchanges between Moscow and Berlin in these spring weeks (exhaustively recorded in the captured Nazi documents), in which the Germans tried clumsily to deceive the Kremlin to the last and the Soviet leaders seemed unable to fully grasp reality and act on it in time.

  Though they several times protested the entry of German troops into Rumania and Bulgaria and then the attack on Yugoslavia and Greece as a violation of the Nazi–Soviet Pact and a threat to Russian “security interests,” the Soviets went out of their way to appease Berlin as the date for the German attack approached. Stalin personally took the lead in this. On April 13, 1941, Ambassador von der Schulenburg telegraphed an interesting dispatch to Berlin recounting how on the departure of the Japanese Foreign Minister, Yosuke Matsuoka, that evening from Moscow, Stalin had shown “a remarkably friendly manner” not only to the Japanese but to the Germans. At the railroad station

  Stalin publicly asked for me [Schulenburg wired] … and threw his arm around my shoulders: “We must remain friends and you must now do everything to that end!” Somewhat later Stalin turned to the acting German Military Attaché, Colonel Krebs, first made sure that he was a German, and then said to him: “We will remain friends with you—through thick and thin!”91

  Three days later the German chargé in Moscow, Tippelskirch, wired Berlin stressing that the demonstration at the station showed Stalin’s friendliness toward Germany and that this was especially important “in view of the persistently circulating rumors of an imminent conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union.”92 The day before, Tippelskirch had informed Berlin that the Kremlin had accepted “unconditionally,” after months of wrangling, the German proposals for the settlement of the border between the two countries from the Igorka River to the Baltic Sea. “The compliant attitude of the Soviet Government,” he said, “seems very remarkable.”93 In view of what was brewing in Berlin, it surely was.

  In supplying blockaded Germany with important raw materials, the Soviet government continued to be equally compliant. On April 5, 1941, Schnurre, in charge of trade negotiations with Moscow, reported jubilantly to his Nazi masters that after the slowdown in Russian deliveries in January and February 1941, due to the “cooling off of political relations,” they had risen “by leaps and bounds in March, especially in grains, petroleum, manganese ore and the nonferrous and precious metals.”

  Transit traffic through Siberia [he added] is proceeding favorably as usual. At our request the Soviet Government even put a special freight train for rubber at our disposal at the Manchurian border.94

  Six weeks later, on May 15, Schnurre was reporting that the obliging Russians had put on several special freight trains so that 4,000 tons of badly needed raw rubber could be delivered to Germany over the Siberian railway.

  The quantities of raw materials contracted for are being delivered punctually by the Russians, despite the heavy burden this imposes on them … I am under the impression that we could make economic demands on Moscow which would even go beyond the scope of the treaty of January 10, demands designed to secure German food and raw-material requirements beyond the extent now contracted for.95

  German deliveries of machinery to Russia were falling behind, Schnurre observed, but he did not seem to mind, if the Russians didn’t. However, he was disturbed on May 15 by another factor. “Great difficulties are created,” he complained, “by the countless rumors of an imminent German–Russian conflict,” for which he blamed German official sources. Amazingly, the “difficulties,” Schnurre explained in a lengthy memorandum to the Foreign Office, did not come from Russia but from German industrial firms, which, he said, were trying “to withdraw” from their contracts with the Russians.

  Hitler, it must be noted here, was doing his best to contradict the rumors, but at the same time he was busy trying to convince his generals and top officials that Germany was in growing danger of being attacked by Russia. Though the generals, from their own military intelligence, knew better, so hypnotic was Hitler’s spell over them that even after the war Halder, Brauchitsch, Manstein and others (though not Paulus, who seems to have been more honest) contended that a Soviet military build-up on the Polish frontier had become very threatening by the beginning of the summer.

  Count von der Schulenburg, who had come home from Moscow on a brief leave, saw Hitler in Berlin on April 28 and tried to convince him of Russia’s peaceful intentions. “Russia,” he attempted to explain, “is very apprehensive at the rumors predicting a German attack on Russia. I cannot believe,” he added, “that Russia will ever attack Germany … If Stalin was unable to go with England and France in 1939 when both were still strong, he will certainly not make such a decision today, when France is destroyed and England badly battered. On the contrary, I am convinced that Stalin is prepared to make even further concessions to us.”

  The Fuehrer feigned skepticism. He had been “forewarned,” he said, “by events in Serbia … What devil had possessed the Russians,” he asked, “to conclude the friendship pact with Yugoslavia?”* He did not believe, it was true, he said, that “Russia could be brought to attack Germany.” Nevertheless, he concluded, he was obliged “to be careful.” Hitler did not tell his ambassador to the Soviet Union what plans he had in store for that country, and Schulenburg, an honest, decent German of the old school, remained ignorant of them to the last.

  Stalin, too, but not of the signs, or of the warnings, of what Hitler was up to. On April 22 the Soviet government formally protested eighty instances of border violations by Nazi planes which it said had taken place between March 27 and April 18, providing detailed accounts of each. In one case, it said, in a German reconnaissance plane which landed near Rovno on April 15 there was found a camera, rolls of exposed film and a torn topographical map of the western districts of the U.S.S.R., “all of which give evidence of the purpose of the crew of this airplane.” Even in protesting the Russians were conciliatory. They had given the border troops, the note said, “the order not to fire on German planes flying over Soviet territory so long as such flights do not occur frequently.”97

  Stalin made further conciliatory moves early in May. To please Hitler he expelled the diplomatic representatives in Moscow of Belgium, Norway, Greece and even Yugoslavia and closed their legations. He recognized the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali in Iraq. He kept the Soviet press under the strictest restraint in order to avoid provoking Germany.

  These manifestations [Schulenburg wired Berlin on May 12] of the intention of the Stalin Government are calculated … to relieve the tension between the Soviet Union and Germany and to create a better atmosphere for the future. We must bear in mind that Stalin personally has always advocated a friendly relationship between Germany and the Soviet Union.98

  Though Stalin had long been the absolute dictator of the Soviet Union this was the first mention by Schulenburg in his dispatches of the term “Stalin Government.” There was good reason. On May 6 Stalin had personally taken over as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, or Prime Minister, replacing Molotov, who remained as Foreign Commissar. This was the first time the all-powerful secretary of the Communist Party had taken government office and the general
world reaction was that it meant the situation had become so serious for the Soviet Union, especially in its relations with Nazi Germany, that only Stalin could deal with it as the nominal as well as the actual head of government. This interpretation was obvious, but there was another which was not so clear but which the astute German ambassador in Moscow promptly pointed out to Berlin.

  Stalin, he reported, was displeased with the deterioration of German–Soviet relations and blamed Molotov’s clumsy diplomacy for much of it.

  In my opinion [Schulenburg said] it may be assumed with certainty that Stalin has set himself a foreign-policy goal of overwhelming importance … which he hopes to attain by his personal efforts. I firmly believe that in an international situation which he considers serious, Stalin has set himself the goal of preserving the Soviet Union from a conflict with Germany.99

  Did the crafty Soviet dictator not realize by now—the middle of May 1941—that this was an impossible goal, that there was nothing, short of an abject surrender to Hitler, that he could do to attain it? He surely knew the significance of Hitler’s conquest of Yugoslavia and Greece, of the presence of large masses of German troops in Rumania and Hungary on his southwest borders, of the Wehrmacht build-up on his western frontier in Poland. The persistent rumors in Moscow itself surely reached him. By the beginning of May what Schulenburg called in a dispatch on the second day of that month “rumors of an imminent German–Russian military showdown” were so rife in the Soviet capital that he and his officials in the German Embassy were having difficulty in combating them.