The Splendid and the Vile

by Erik Larson

  Over the next six hours, 505 bombers carrying 7,000 incendiaries and 718 tons of high-explosive bombs of all sizes swarmed the sky over London. Thousands of bombs fell and ripped into all corners of the city, but they did especially grave damage in Whitehall and Westminster. Bombs hit Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, the Law Courts. One bomb sliced through the tower that housed Big Ben. To everyone’s relief, the clock’s immense bell boomed just minutes afterward, at two A.M. Fire consumed a large portion of the famous roof of Westminster Hall, built in the eleventh century by King William Rufus (William II). In Bloomsbury, flames raced through the British Museum, destroying an estimated 250,000 books and devouring the Roman Britain Room, the Greek Bronze Room, and the Prehistoric Room. Happily, as a precaution, the exhibits in these rooms had been removed for safekeeping. A bomb struck the Peek Frean cookie factory (which now also made tank parts). Two parachute mines blew up a cemetery, scattering old bones and fragments of monuments over the landscape and launching a coffin lid into the bedroom of a nearby house. The irate homeowner, in bed with his wife at the time, carried the lid out of the house and brought it to a group of rescue workers. “I was in bed with my missus when this bloody thing came through the window,” he said. “What do I do with it?”

  In Regent’s Park, at No. 43 York Terrace, ninety-nine members of the Group for Sacrifice and Service, the English affiliate of a California cult, gathered in an apparently abandoned house for a service held to worship the full moon. The roof was made of glass. A full dinner buffet had been laid out in the central hall of the house. At one forty-five A.M. a bomb struck, killing many of the worshippers. Rescue workers found victims dressed in white robes that appeared to be the vestments of priests. Against the white cloth, blood appeared black. The group’s archbishop, Bertha Orton, a devotee of the occult, was killed. A gold cross encrusted with diamonds still hung around her neck.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS NEARLY ELEVEN P.M. The Me 110 flown by Rudolf Hess was almost out of fuel. He had only a vague idea as to where he was. After flying past the west coast of Scotland and then turning around, he again descended to a hair’s-breadth altitude to get a better look at the landscape. Pilots called this “contour flying.” He flew in a zigzag pattern, clearly hunting for a recognizable landmark, as his fuel dwindled. It was now dark, though the landscape below was bathed in moonlight.

  Hess, realizing that he would never find the landing strip at Dungavel House, decided to bail out. He increased his altitude. After flying high enough to allow for a safe jump, he shut off his engines and opened his cockpit. The force of the onrushing wind held him pinned to his seat.

  Hess remembered the advice of a German fighter commander: that in order to escape an aircraft quickly, a pilot should roll his plane over and let gravity help. Whether Hess did so or not is unclear. The plane entered a steep upward climb, at which point Hess lost consciousness. He awoke and fell from the cockpit, striking a foot on one of the plane’s twin tail fins as he fell through the moonlit night.

  * * *

  —

  HARRIMAN’S SECRETARY, ROBERT MEIKLEJOHN, spent that Saturday at work. Harriman left at one-thirty in the afternoon to return to the Dorchester, “the only place where we can really get anything done,” Meiklejohn wrote in his diary. Meiklejohn wound up having lunch at his desk and working until five P.M., much to his disgust. Afterward, he went to a “girl show” at the Prince of Wales Theatre called Nineteen Naughty One. He had hoped for something bawdy and risqué but instead got a tame vaudeville show that lasted from six-thirty until nine o’clock, after which he returned to the office to see if a reply had come to a cable Harriman had sent to the United States that morning. Meiklejohn was on his way home at about eleven o’clock when the air-raid sirens sounded. He heard gunfire, but otherwise the night was quiet, the city bright under the full moon. He reached his apartment safely.

  “All of a sudden about midnight [I] heard a rain of objects on the roof and against the building and saw bright flashing blue lights through the drawn curtains,” he wrote in his diary. “Took a look out and saw dozens of incendiaries sputtering around in the street and small park below, making a bluish light like electric sparks, my first close contact with incendiaries.” As he watched, he heard noises in the hall and found that his neighbors were heading down to the shelter in the building’s basement. A visiting airman had advised them that incendiaries were invariably followed by bombs.

  “I took the hint,” Meiklejohn wrote. He put on his treasured fur coat—“I didn’t want it to get blitzed”—and headed downstairs to begin his first-ever night in a shelter.

  Soon high-explosive bombs began to fall. At one A.M. a bomb landed just beyond a corner of the building, igniting a gas main that lit the night so brightly, Meiklejohn believed he could have read a newspaper by its light. “This caused considerable stir among those who knew what it was all about,” he wrote, “because it was almost a sure thing that the bombers would concentrate on us with the fires as a target.”

  More incendiaries fell. “Then the bombs started coming down fast for a while, in ‘sticks’ of three and six that sounded like gun salvos.” The upper floors of neighboring buildings caught fire. Detonations shook the building. Several times during lulls in the bombing, Meiklejohn and a trio of U.S. Army officers left the building to examine the accumulating damage, careful not to venture more than a block away.

  * * *

  —

  JUST AFTER ELEVEN P.M., an observer in Eaglesham, Scotland, about twenty-five miles inland from the west coast, reported that an aircraft had crashed and burst into flames. He reported, too, that the pilot had bailed out, and appeared to have landed safely. The time was now nine minutes after eleven. To the south, hundreds of German bombers were crossing the English coastline.

  The mystery pilot drifted to earth near Floors Farm, on Bonnyton Moor, where a farmer found him and took him to his cottage. The farmer offered him tea.

  The pilot declined. It was too late in the day for tea. He asked for water instead.

  Police arrived, and took the man to their station in Giffnock, about five air miles from central Glasgow. They locked him in a cell, which offended him. He expected better treatment, like that afforded in Germany to British prisoners of high rank.

  * * *

  —

  UPON HEARING HOW CLOSE the crash site was to Glasgow, Major Donald, the assistant group officer in Glasgow, set out in his car, a Vauxhall, to locate the wreckage, telling his superiors to give the RAF a message: “If they cannot catch an Me 110 with a Defiant, I am now going to pick up the bits with a Vauxhall.”

  He found fragments of the plane strewn over an acre and a half. There was minimal fire, suggesting that when the aircraft crashed it was almost out of fuel. The plane was indeed an Me 110 and, what’s more, appeared to be brand-new and looked as though it had been stripped of all excess weight. “No guns, bomb-racks, and surprisingly (at the time) I could find no fixed reconnaissance camera,” Major Donald reported. He found a portion of the fighter’s wing that bore a black cross. He put this into his car.

  He drove to the Giffnock police station, and there found the German pilot surrounded by police officers, members of the Home Guard, and an interpreter. “They did not, by then, appear to be making great headway,” he wrote.

  The pilot identified himself as Hauptmann Alfred Horn, Hauptmann being the German equivalent of captain. “He simply stated that he had not been hit, was in no trouble, and had landed deliberately, with a vital secret message for the Duke of Hamilton,” Major Donald reported, supplying the underscore.

  The major, who spoke rudimentary German, began asking the prisoner questions. “Captain Horn” was forty-two and from Munich, a city Major Donald had visited. He said he hoped he had landed near the Duke of Hamilton’s home, and pulled out a map with the location of Dungavel House clearly marked. The airman had c
ome remarkably close: Dungavel was only ten miles away.

  Major Donald pointed out to Captain Horn that even with extra fuel tanks, the aircraft could not possibly have made it back to Germany. The prisoner said he had not planned to return, and repeated that he was on a special mission. The man had a pleasant demeanor, Major Donald wrote in his report, adding, “and he is, if one may apply the term to a Nazi, quite a gentleman.”

  As they spoke, Donald studied the prisoner. Something about his face struck a chord. A few beats later, Donald realized who the man was, though his conclusion seemed too incredible to be true. “I am not expecting to be believed immediately, that our prisoner is actually No. 3 in the Nazi hierarchy,” Major Donald wrote. “He may be one of his ‘professional doubles.’ Personally I think not. The name may be Alfred Horn, but the face is the face of Rudolf Hess.”

  Major Donald recommended that the police take “very special care” of the prisoner, then drove back to Glasgow, where he telephoned the headquarters of the RAF sector commanded by the Duke of Hamilton and told the controller on duty that the man in custody was Rudolf Hess. “The message was somewhat naturally greeted with incredulity,” according to a subsequent RAF report, “but Major Donald did his best to convince the Controller that he was in dead earnest and that the Duke should be notified at the earliest moment.”

  The duke met the prisoner at about ten o’clock the next morning in a room at a military hospital, to which he by now had been transferred.

  “I do not know if you recognize me,” the German said to the duke, “but I am Rudolf Hess.”

  * * *

  —

  THE BIG RAID ON LONDON continued throughout the night, until the city seemed aflame from horizon to horizon. “About five AM I took a last look around,” wrote Harriman’s secretary, Meiklejohn, “and saw the full moon shining red through the clouds of smoke which were reflecting the fires from the blazes below—it was quite a sight.”

  That morning he shaved by the glare from the burning gas main outside. His apartment was eight floors above the street.

  The last bomb fell at 5:37 A.M.

  CHAPTER 99

  A Surprise for Hitler

  AS COLVILLE LAY IN BED on Sunday morning, for no particular reason he began thinking about a fanciful novel he had read, whose plot centered on a surprise visit to England by Hitler himself, via parachute. The author was Peter Fleming, the older brother of Ian Fleming. Colville made note of the moment in his diary: “Awoke thinking unaccountably of Peter Fleming’s book Flying Visit and day-dreaming of what would happen if we captured Göring during one of his alleged flights over London.” It was rumored that Göring had flown over the city during one or more air raids.

  At eight o’clock Colville set out from 10 Downing Street to walk to Westminster Abbey, where he planned to attend an early church service. He found a stunning spring day, with bright sun and cerulean skies, but soon encountered great shrouds of smoke. “Burnt paper, from some demolished paper mill, was falling like leaves on a windy autumn day,” he wrote.

  Whitehall was crowded with people, many of them merely out to see the damage, others whose blackened faces suggested they had been up all night fighting fires and rescuing the wounded. A teenage boy, one of the sightseers, pointed in the direction of the Palace of Westminster and asked, “Is that the sun?” But this glow was fire, emanating from the flames of massed blazes still burning south of the Thames.

  When Colville reached the abbey, he found the way blocked by police officers and fire trucks. He approached the entrance but was stopped by a policeman at the door. “There will not be any services in the Abbey today, Sir,” the officer said. Colville was struck by his quotidian tone—“exactly as if it were closed for spring cleaning.”

  The roof of Westminster Hall was still burning with visible flames, and gusts of smoke rose from somewhere behind it. Colville spoke with one of the firemen, who pointed to Big Ben and with satisfaction told Colville about the bomb that had passed through the tower. Despite clear signs of damage, Big Ben was indeed still marking out double British summer time, though, as was later determined, the bomb cost the British Empire half a second.

  Colville walked onto Westminster Bridge, which crosses the Thames directly in front of the tower. Just to the southeast, St. Thomas’ Hospital was in flames. Fires burned all along the Embankment. It was clear that the night’s raid had caused deep and lasting damage of a kind the city had not experienced before. “After no previous raid has London looked so wounded the next day,” Colville wrote.

  On his return to 10 Downing, he had breakfast, then telephoned Ditchley to tell Churchill about the damage. “He was very grieved,” remarked Colville, “that William Rufus’s roof at Westminster Hall should have gone.”

  Colville walked to the Foreign Office to talk with a friend who was Anthony Eden’s second private secretary, and just as he entered the office his friend said into his telephone, “Hold on a minute. I think this is your man.”

  * * *

  —

  ON SUNDAY MORNING, MARY and Eric set out for Ditchley, to spend the day with Clementine and Winston and the rest. The night’s bombing had closed train stations, which forced the couple to take a roundabout route involving unexpected transfers. This turned the trip from a relatively quick journey into an arduous and tedious one, during which Mary’s doubts became more concrete. “I became aware,” she wrote, “of very definite misgivings.”

  Pamela’s advice kept running through her mind: “Don’t marry someone because he wants to marry you.”

  She told Eric of her concerns. He was understanding, and gentle, and did what he could to ease her anxiety. They arrived to find Ditchley full of guests, among them Averell Harriman. Immediately, Clementine took Mary into her bedroom.

  * * *

  —

  IN LONDON, AT THE Foreign Office, Anthony Eden’s private secretary placed his hand over the receiver and told Colville that the caller had identified himself as the Duke of Hamilton and was claiming to have news that could only be delivered to Churchill in person. The duke—if indeed the caller was a duke—planned to fly himself to the RAF’s Northolt air base, outside London, and wanted to be met there by one of Churchill’s men, meaning Colville, who was on duty at 10 Downing Street that day. The duke also wanted Alexander Cadogan, Eden’s undersecretary, to come along.

  Colville took the receiver. The duke declined to offer details but said his news was like something from a fantasy novel and involved a German aircraft that had crashed in Scotland.

  “At that moment,” Colville wrote, “I vividly remembered my early waking thoughts on Peter Fleming’s book and I felt sure that either Hitler or Göring had arrived.”

  Colville again telephoned Churchill.

  “Well, who has arrived?” Churchill asked, with irritation.

  “I don’t know; he wouldn’t say.”

  “It can’t be Hitler?”

  “I imagine not,” Colville said.

  “Well, stop imagining and have the Duke, if it is the Duke, sent straight here from Northolt.”

  Churchill directed Colville to ensure, first, that the duke really was the Duke of Hamilton.

  * * *

  —

  ON THE MORNING OF Sunday, May 11, Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer, came to the Berghof to show him some architectural sketches. In the anteroom to Hitler’s office, he found two nervous men, Karl-Heinz Pintsch and Alfred Leitgen, both adjutants to Rudolf Hess. They asked Speer if he would permit them to see Hitler first, and Speer agreed.

  They gave Hitler Hess’s letter, which he immediately read. “My Führer,” it began, “when you receive this letter I shall be in England. You can imagine that the decision to take this step was not easy for me, since a man of 40 has other ties with life than one of 20.” He explained his motive: to try to bring about a peace settlement with England. “A
nd if, my Führer, this project—which I admit has but very small chance of success—ends in failure and the fates decide against me, this can have no detrimental results either for you or for Germany: it will always be possible for you to deny all responsibility. Simply say I was crazy.”

  Speer was looking through his drawings when, he wrote, “I suddenly heard an inarticulate, almost animal outcry.”

  This was the start of one of the tantrums, or Wutausbrüche, that Hitler’s men so dreaded. One aide recalled that it was “as though a bomb had hit the Berghof.”

  “Bormann, at once!” Hitler shouted. “Where is Bormann?”

  Hitler told Bormann to summon Göring, Ribbentrop, Goebbels, and Himmler. He asked adjutant Pintsch if he knew the contents of the letter. Upon Pintsch’s affirmation that he did, Hitler ordered him and his fellow adjutant, Leitgen, arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Albrecht Haushofer was arrested as well, and sent to the Gestapo house prison in Berlin, for interrogation. He was later released.

  The other leaders arrived. Göring brought along his chief technical officer, who assured Hitler that it was highly unlikely that Hess would reach his destination. Navigation would be Hess’s biggest problem; high winds would almost certainly drive him off course. Hess would probably miss the British Isles completely.

  This prospect gave Hitler hope. “If only he would drown in the North Sea!” Hitler said (according to Albert Speer). “Then he would vanish without a trace, and we could work out some harmless explanation at our leisure.” What Hitler most feared was what Churchill would do with the news of Hess’s disappearance.