Thus on February 15, 1939, exactly one month before the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Group Captain J. L. Vachell, the British Air Attaché in Berlin, reported to London: “I feel that it is unlikely that Germany will undertake any military operation for the next two, or possibly three, months.” And on February 28, when the German troops were already at their battle stations for action against Czechoslovakia, Colonel [later General Sir] Frank Mason-Macfarlane, the military attaché, answered queries with the following double talk out of which no intelligence estimator at home could make head or tail:
“The German army is passing through a phase of its evolution in which very much that would normally be abnormal is in point of fact normal…. The great difficulty—even to skilled observers—is to decide when ‘normal abnormality’ merges into something more significant. Up to date [fifteen days before the march on Prague] I have no reliable information whatever to indicate that mobilization in any form has commenced, but I cannot say more than that.”
With so-called “information” of this kind coming in, it is hardly surprising that the evaluation work of the bumbling Blimps back in London was worse than useless.
On August 15, German preparations were practically complete and a tentative date—August 26—had been chosen for the commencement of hostilities against Poland.
And yet, on this same day, in a confidential dispatch to the British Minister in Warsaw, Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax still ventured the opinion: “I have the impression that Herr Hitler is still undecided, and anxious to avoid war and to hold his hand if he can do so without losing face.”
5
The Trojan Horses
At the dawn of war, Colonel Piekenbrock had given to the Wehrmacht the vast store of military intelligence it needed; yet, even in the face of such abundance, Hitler’s knowledge of his foes was incomplete—in fact, fatally deficient. The glittering, pampered and flamboyant German secret service combine also had its Achilles’ heel. It was totally inadequate in the vital sphere of political intelligence.
This function was claimed primarily by the Foreign Ministry, but it was also usurped by Heydrich’s organization and by two quasi-official agencies: Foreign Minister Ribbentrop’s private bureau (the notorious Buero Ribbentrop) and by the Foreign Affairs Bureau (Aussenpolitisches Amt), a quasi-diplomatic arm of the Nazi party, headed, in a whimsical manner, by Alfred Rosenberg, the Party’s mystic theoretician and frustrated diplomatist.
These agencies vied with one another in a mad scramble for diplomatic information. In their efforts to establish separate networks of their own, and in their competitive greed, they got into each other’s hair. The result was that Hitler received an enormous amount of political intelligence whose quality was not matched by its quantity.
From the very outset of the Nazi regime, political intelligence had been endowed and encouraged. How the network was built and cultivated in England was described in a candid report to the Fuehrer by Rosenberg: “Efforts,” he wrote, “to find persons in England who were favorably inclined toward the German cause date back to 1929. Our English agent, R., in Berlin, arranged my first trip to London as early as 1931. There a number of contacts were made that worked out well in a practical fashion in bringing about an Anglo-German understanding.”
If Rosenberg’s account is true (and it presumably is, since British prosecutors at the Nuremberg War Crimes trial allowed it as evidence), it is clear that his organization was successful in creating an unprecedented British network of sincere friends, misguided dupes and mercenary spies. “Most important of all,” Rosenberg wrote, “was Group Captain W., a member of the Air General Staff, a firm believer that Germany and England should stand together in the defense against the Bolshevik danger. As we succeeded in spreading this opinion, we expanded our circle within the Air General Staff. The Royal Aero Club became a centre of Anglo-German co-operation. In 1934, Group Captain W. came to Germany and was received by the Fuehrer.”
Rosenberg’s network also included a secretary of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald; a consultant of the War Office named Captain McCaw (one of Lord Kitchener’s aides) ; the aide-de-camp of the Duke of Connaught; a certain Archibald Boyle, whom Rosenberg described as “an adviser to the Air Ministry”; and “a great number of other contacts” among British politicians, officers and Members of Parliament. His influence extended even into the Royal Family. On at least one occasion, Rosenberg was received in clandestine audience by the Duke of Kent, who volunteered to present Germany’s case sympathetically to his brother, the King.
The sympathy and concrete co-operation of so many prominent Britons blinded dilettante diplomats like Ribbentrop and Rosenberg to the realities of the situation. They believed these Britons were plotters like themselves, figures in a vast conspiracy, the members of which preferred Mein Kampf to the Magna Carta. Some of these Britons were fools or dupes, to be sure, but they were not traitors.
After the occupation of Czechoslovakia, men and women who had championed Hitler’s cause suffered the horrible hangover of the morning after, with the bitter taste of Hitler’s perjury in their mouths. Overnight, the Nazis lost virtually all of their celebrated English friends, yet somehow this did not become apparent to Ribbentrop or Rosenberg.
The estimate prepared for Hitler by the Foreign Ministry and Rosenberg’s bureau was explicit. It stated unconditionally that Britain was bluffing and that Hitler need not fear intervention. This estimate was put in writing by Ribbentrop: “England will never dare to oppose the Fuehrer, or else she will be smashed as was Poland and thereby suffer the loss of her empire; while France, should she intervene, will be bled to death at the Westwall.”
To keep Hitler on this one track, Ribbentrop issued strict orders that only his point of view and his information be presented to the Fuehrer. He actually went so far as to issue a directive: “Should it come to my attention that any of the officials expressed a different view, I will personally shoot him in his office and assume the responsibility for the act vis-à-vis the Fuehrer.”
It is hardly surprising that those agents of the German diplomatic service who had some respect for their own skins began a hasty rewriting of their dispatches—or that the misguided Hitler felt safe in going to war.
But while the Nazis mistakenly believed they had an effective Trojan horse inside the British citadel, there was really just such a horse within their own camp; this was an invaluable opportunity which the British muffed badly. There was a gold mine of potential espionage within the highest councils of the Third Reich. It was a heterogeneous group of professional men, church leaders, high officials and officers, members of the upper classes and a sprinkling of Social Democrats, all of them bitterly anti-Nazi and pro-Western in their orientation.
Among them were: the valiant and invaluable Oster; Ulrich von Hassell, ex-ambassador to Italy, who became the diplomatic adviser of this secret opposition; General Ludwig Beck, the recently dismissed chief of the General Staff; Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, exmayor of Leipzig; and many more—generals on the active list, like Witzleben, Falkenhausen and Thomas; officials in the various ministerial departments, like Dohnanyi, Moltke and Popitz, all of them fretting and frustrated because their hostility to Hitler did not attract British imagination.
Foremost in the younger generation of German dissidents was an attorney named Ferdinand von Schlabrendorff. Since his student days in Halle he had been fighting the Nazis. As early as 1928, he had stood up in their meetings, heckled their speakers and endured beatings at the hands of the Storm Troopers.
Schlabrendorff had historic family ties with England. He was a descendant of Christian Friedrich Baron von Stockmar, the Anglo-Belgian statesman who was Queen Victoria’s mentor and the matchmaker of her marriage to Prince Albert. Schlabrendorff was, therefore, chosen by this underground to alert Britain to the danger confronting her. He was actually sent to London to carry vital secret information to Whitehall. But in London, Schlabrendorff found both sides of Downing Street strange
ly closed to him. He finally managed to get through to Lord Lloyd, an important Conservative politician outside Neville Chamberlain’s government, and to Winston Churchill. He was received in Charwell by the man who was the true voice of Britain, but who at that stage had neither authority nor responsibility.
Schlabrendorff was somewhat ill at ease as he sought to justify his mission to Churchill. After all, he was a German, yet there he was, betraying his government’s most momentous secrets. Facing Churchill in the idyllic environment of his country home, he began by saying: “Sir, I want you to understand that I am not a Nazi. I am a patriot.” A broad smile came over Churchill’s cherubic face. In a voice mellowed by that smile, he told Schlabrendorff, “So am I.”
As he later recalled, Schlabrendorff told Churchill that “the outbreak of the war was imminent, and that it would be unleashed with an attack on Poland, no matter what efforts might be made to mediate the crisis.
“Moreover,” he said, “I could advise him that an English rapprochement with Russia would be doublecrossed by the conclusion of a pact between Hitler and Stalin. Hitler sought to protect his back with such a pact.”
But there was nothing Churchill could do to act upon the information. Schlabrendorff’s mission ended in total failure.
Once the war had actually begun, however, Whitehall at long last bestirred itself to exploit the unprecedented opportunities it had so long neglected. Oster, from the very heart of the Abwehr, had been supplying immensely important information in a roundabout fashion through the Dutch, and London had made no real attempt to establish a proper liaison between its intelligence services and the vital source which he and his friends constituted. Now Stevens and Best in Holland were instructed to establish contact with the German anti-Nazi underground. At this point the Germans, hitherto ignored by Britain, came to occupy a paramount position in the Chamberlain government’s strategic designs. Whitehall believed that the war, which the German plotters so bitterly opposed, would enable them to oust Hitler and to end hostilities before they really began.
Chamberlain himself addressed a conciliatory proclamation to the German people via the plotters, telling them that Britain would not hold them responsible for Hitler’s sins if they rose up and overthrew him. Things were so far advanced that a D-day was set. The conspirators were to go into action early in November, assassinate Hitler, overthrow his regime and make peace with the West. Several plans were drafted to ambush the Fuehrer and it looked as if the war would be over before Christmas.
Unfortunately, Britain and the German plotters were no longer alone in the conspiracy. Just when Britain decided at last to deal directly with the plotters, there appeared in the background an intruder, Reinhard Heydrich. The contours of the plot were known to him, but at this stage he did not know enough of the details to strike. And, from a propaganda point of view, it was not propitious to expose the dissidence of such highly-placed Germans and thus destroy the myth of German unity.
Heydrich, therefore, decided to strike at the conspiracy indirectly, by hitting the British Secret Service, which sponsored it. The existence of Best’s organization and the nature of British activities in Holland were known to him in detail through the revelations Waldemar Poetzsch had made at the time of his arrest in Denmark the year before.
The Germans had additional information about the Stevens-Best organization from an unexpected source: Commander Richard Protze, the remarkable ex-head of the Abwehr’s Section III. Protze was in his late sixties when Canaris was forced to retire him, but Canaris invited him to settle in Holland and while away his retirement by spying on British spies. So in 1938 “Uncle Richard” moved to Wassenaar, a suburb of The Hague, ostensibly representing the German state railways.
In the summer of 1939, Uncle Richard looked out of the window of his villa and saw a stranger loitering outside. When he spotted him again several times during the next few days, he decided to invite him inside. The loiterer turned out to be a Dutchman named Walbach. He confided to Protze that he was indeed a British agent, working for Stevens and Best. He was a thickset man with a massive head and a piercing stare, and he was evidently for sale.
“What do the British pay you?” Protze asked, and when Walbach said, “Seven hundred guilders a month,” the German made him an offer. “I will pay you another eight hundred, in addition to what you are getting from them. Your job will be to keep me posted about the British Secret Service here in Holland.”
Soon afterward Walbach identified Stevens as the head of the Continental Secret Service and Best as the officer in charge of military intelligence. Walbach was diligent and, during those days, Canaris told an officer in his Abwehr, “I think Uncle Richard has penetrated the British Secret Service. He is sending me embarrassing reports from that quarter.” Among Best’s contacts was the mousy little German who called himself Dr. Franz and posed as a refugee from the Reich. Best had no reason to trust him unreservedly, if only because Franz was extremely loquacious, but the abundant information he supplied about the Wehrmacht invariably proved accurate.
Early in September, Franz, who until then had dealt with Best through a go-between, demanded to see the captain in person. He had some momentous information that he would entrust only to the boss himself. Contrary to his normal practice and somewhat against his better judgment, Best agreed to meet Franz. Franz revealed that the invaluable information he had been able to funnel to the Secret Service originated from a Luftwaffe major named Solms who was a member of the anti-Nazi underground. Now Solms had information about certain events that could lead to the downfall of Hitler, but he refused to entrust them to Dr. Franz. He had instructed the little doctor to arrange a meeting with Captain Best.
Best agreed and suggested that the major come to Amsterdam or The Hague. Solms replied through Franz that he could not come so far. Best then agreed to meet him at Venlo, an obscure little village on the Dutch-German frontier.
Solms turned out to be a big, bluff, self-confident, excitable Bavarian who talked as big as he looked. It soon became evident that he was only an errand boy for more important people. A second meeting was arranged for the following week, again at Venlo. This time the major was calmer and less boastful. He talked coherently of his mission, which was to get British support for an ambitious plot, headed by an anonymous general, to overthrow Hitler. Best made a minimum effort to check up on the man’s bona fides. He asked him a few technical questions and, when Solms answered them precisely, Best was satisfied that his man was on the level. No other efforts were made to check up on Solms or, for that matter, on Dr. Franz. Both men were accepted at face value.
During the second meeting a code was devised in which Solms would communicate with Best, via Franz and a mail-drop in the Netherlands. A few days later Franz told Best that he had received a call from another officer in Germany who informed him in the code that a letter had been sent to the drop for Best’s eyes only. The letter arrived and in it the anonymous correspondent advised Best that the mysterious leader of the plot, “the General,” was prepared to meet him in person, provided Best could convince him that he was, indeed, a top-ranking British agent. Attached to the letter was an ingeniously worded news item, which Best was to have broadcast by the BBC on its German beam. The item was broadcast twice on October 11.
Solms had faded out of the picture, with the explanation that the Gestapo had him under surveillance. The general was to handle things in person. As the plot thus moved to higher echelons, Best thought it advisable to draw Major Stevens into the maneuver. The developing drama was also revealed to General van Oorschot, director of Dutch military intelligence, who assigned a young Dutch intelligence officer, Lieutenant Dirk Klop, to act as his liaison.
At last, Franz told Best that the General was ready to meet him. A rendezvous was arranged for 10:00 a.m. on October 19, this time at the small frontier village of Dinxperlo.
The Germans arrived at noon, two hours late. There was no general in the group, only two officers, both in their earl
y thirties, who introduced themselves as Lieutenants Seydlitz and Grosch. Franz vouched for them. Best drove the party to an isolated roadside café, and there treated them to lunch. An undefinable tension arose during lunch and Franz in particular seemed to become very excited.
The party attracted attention, the worst thing that could have happened in a clandestine palaver. Best thought it advisable to remove to safer surroundings, called a friend in nearby Arnhem, and continued the conference in the friend’s dining room. Throughout proceedings thus far, many of the rules of good espionage had been violated. Best’s handling of the venture showed little professional skill. Now it seemed the whole enterprise would come to an untimely end.
The party had attracted the attention of a Dutch soldier who called the police and told them that a bunch of German spies were having a meeting, first at the café and then in the Arnhem house to which he had tracked them. Police surrounded the house, broke in and demanded an explanation. Klop explained everything to the policemen and they withdrew, but the basic security of the enterprise had been breached. During this episode the two Germans were in a panic and even tried to escape through the windows. Little Dr. Franz came close to passing out. Still, nothing kindled Best’s suspicions.
To a great extent, all of the excitement was in vain. The two Germans had brought no information. They were simply authorized to arrange another meeting, holding out the phantom general for bait. Best agreed and the next meeting was planned for October 25, then postponed to October 30. On that day, Klop alone went to Dinxperlo with instructions to bring the Germans to The Hague.
The general was still not in the group, but this time there were three officers instead of two. Seydlitz was missing, but Grosch was present, with a man who identified himself as Colonel Martini, and a Major Schemmel, who was apparently the leader of the group. He was a stocky young man in his late twenties, his baby face furrowed with dueling scars, making him far too conspicuous for such a secret mission. Although he looked like a dullard, he turned out to be exceptionally well-informed; he had a decisive manner and a firm control over the situation.
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