I trust that Mr. Mallet will get the most categorical instructions. We have had much more than enough of Dahlerus, Goerdeler, Weissauer and company.7
Halifax himself was, of course, one of those who, not having yet learned this lesson, had in Vansittart’s estimation ‘learned nothing whatever’.
Mallet saw Ekeberg on the 7th, and told him he could not see Weissauer, but if the German wished to tell him, Ekeberg, more about his mission, he would be interested to hear what he said. The Swede, evidently believing Mallet’s interest indicated a significant move on the part of the British government, returned that afternoon in ‘a state of considerable excitement’ to tell him that Weissauer had been sent by Hitler, who felt responsible for the future of the white race, and consequently wished for ‘sincere friendship with England’. The ground had to be prepared first, after which official discussions could begin; until then conversations should be unofficial and secret.8
Hitler’s basic idea, Ekeberg went on, was that economies now had to be calculated over wide areas; continental Europe had to be considered as a single economic unit. On a previous visit Weissauer had discussed with Ekeberg how Sweden should fit into this German-dominated continental economy; in fact planning for a continent-wide economy under German leadership taking in all the peoples ‘from Gibraltar to the Urals and from the North Cape to Cyprus, with their natural colonial extensions’9 had been proceeding at euphoric pace in Berlin since the fall of France.
Mallet reported back to the Foreign Office after his interview with Ekeberg that Hitler’s concept was:
For the white race there must be two great economic units – Germany, the continental unit, and the British Empire and America as the centre of the world economy. England and America now have … the biggest navies and they need the oceans for their maintenance, Germany has the continent. As for Russia Weissauer gave the impression that she should be considered as a potential enemy. The two great groups could resist the encroachment of the Yellow Race.10
Weissauer had gone on to sketch peace terms comprising the permanence of the British Empire, the continental supremacy of Germany, restoration of a ‘Polish’ state, Czechoslovakia to remain German and sovereignty restored to other occupied countries. He suggested this would be the last chance for peace and, as Hess was to do later, warned of the terrible things that would happen if it were neglected.
Mallet’s report to the Foreign Office stressed that he had been ‘careful to rub in that I have absolutely no authority from you to discuss such high matters of state’, but he added that if they wanted any more questions asked he could easily get Ekeberg to put them to Weissauer ‘as though coming from me alone’.
The directive he received from Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, and agreed by the War Cabinet was as defiantly Churchillian as his original instructions; he was to reply to Ekeberg:
His Majesty’s Government did not enter this war for selfish aims, but for large and general purposes affecting the freedom and independence of many states in Europe … the intention of all the peoples of the British Empire to prosecute the war has been strengthened by the many horrible crimes committed by the rulers of Nazi Germany against the smaller states on her borders, and by the indiscriminate bombing of London without the slightest relation to military objectives …11
And it was repeated that before any peace proposals could be considered, freedom must be restored to France and the other occupied countries.
VIOLET ROBERTS
Hess conceived the idea of his peace mission in June 1940 while with Hitler during the French campaign, so he told Lord Simon in June 1941, a month after his flight to Scotland.12 The Führer had expressed the view then that the war could perhaps be the means for finally coming to the agreement with England that he had been striving for all his political life. When England subsequently rejected Hitler’s peace offer, Hess formed the impression that she had done so for reasons of prestige: ‘Therefore, I said to myself, I must more than ever realise my plan because if I were over there in England, she could use this as grounds for negotiations without losing prestige.’13 Whether he let Hitler into his idea at this early stage is unclear. At the time he told Lord Simon about it he was claiming that his flight was his own idea entirely; Hitler knew nothing about it.
The idea of flying on a personal peace mission to Britain would undoubtedly have appealed to Hess’s romantic idealism. It is remarkable, and no doubt a sign of his dissatisfaction with his party-political activities, that on the outbreak of war he had applied to Hitler for permission to join the Luftwaffe to fly as a front-line pilot. Hitler responded by making him promise to give up flying for the duration; Hess had managed to limit the prohibition to one year.
Directly the ban ended that September, 1940, he began seeking an aeroplane to fly. Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, refused him, as did individual aircraft factories, but finally Professor Willi Messerschmitt, designer of Germany’s front-line fighter aircraft, agreed to him having an Me Bf 110 two-seater fighter-bomber and his chief test pilot as instructor for practice flying from his factory and airstrip at Augsburg, little over 40 miles from Hess’s Munich-Harlaching home.14
Although Hess knew Messerschmitt it is unlikely that he told him at this early stage why he wanted an aeroplane. It is clear, however, from the post-war testimony of Hess’s secretaries that he had already formed the intention of flying to Britain. Thus his Berlin secretary stated that from ‘the late summer of 1940’ she had been ordered to obtain weather reports over the Channel, North Sea and British Isles;15 and his Munich secretary stated, ‘Beginning in summer 1940 … by order of Hess I had to procure secret weather reports about climatic conditions over the British Isles and over the North Sea, and forward them to Hess.’16
Their testimony is confirmed by a meteorologist working at that time at the Zentrale Wetterdienst Gruppe, or Central Weather Service, at Potsdam-Wildpark. Writing in 1993 as ‘Dr F.S.’ to conceal his identity, he stated, ‘Every day round 10.0 am, we received a call from Rudolf Hess’s secretary asking for the weather forecasts for the triangle formed by the cities Oslo–Kiel–Edinburgh.’17 Naturally, the meteorologist on duty complied and provided the information in comprehensible form. This went on for several months, Dr F.S. wrote, until one day the secretary said, ‘Thank you very much, gentlemen, from tomorrow my boss no longer needs your information.’ The next day they heard that Hess had flown to Scotland.18 In fact the announcement of Hess’s flight had been delayed two days; but Dr F.S.’s minor slip of memory is understandable after 50 years.
Meanwhile, at the beginning of August Hess had summoned Albrecht Haushofer and asked him about the possibility of approaching influential people in Britain opposed to the war; on the 15th he instructed him to prepare for the ‘special task’ of opening a way to such people,19 and on the 31st he drove to Karl Haushofer’s country estate, Hartschimmelhof, apparently expecting to see him again. Albrecht was not there, but Hess discussed the project with his old friend and mentor during a three-hour walk in the Grünwalder Forest and afterwards until 2.00 the next morning.
Karl Haushofer described their discussion in a letter to Albrecht three days later:
All is prepared, as you well know, for a very hard and sharp action against the island in question so that the top man only needs to press a button and it all goes off. However, before this unavoidable decision the thought again arises whether there is really no way of preventing the infinitely grave consequences. In this context there is a line of thought which I simply must pass on to you since it was obviously communicated to me with this intention. Can you see no way in which one could talk about such possibilities at a third place with a middleman such as the old Ian Hamilton or the other Hamilton?20
The phrasing here suggests that Albrecht had been pessimistic about the possibilities in his earlier talks with Hess. The ‘old Ian Hamilton’ was General Sir Ian Hamilton, certainly a fr
iend of peace, who had invited Hess to stay with him in Scotland in the summer of 1939. The ‘other Hamilton’ was, of course, Albrecht’s friend, ‘Douglo’ Clydesdale, now – since the death of his father – Wing Commander the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon.
Haushofer had suggested to Hess that centenary celebrations soon to be held in Lisbon would provide especially good cover for such a meeting on neutral ground, ‘in which connection’, he continued in his letter to Albrecht:
it seems to me a sign of fate that our old friend Missis [sic] V R evidently found a way, even after a long delay, of sending a card with kind and cordial good wishes not only for your mother but also for Heinz [Albrecht’s brother] and me, and added the address: [in English] Address your reply to:- Miss V. Roberts, c/o Postbox 506, Lisbon, Portugal. [reverting to German] I have the feeling that no good possibility should be passed up, at least it should be considered.21
The old friend was Mrs Mary Violet Roberts, a 76-year-old widow living in Cambridge. She and her late husband had known the Haushofers since before the First World War and had refreshed their acquaintanceship between the wars, visiting them at Hartschimmelhof at least twice in the 1920s.22 She had now taken advantage of a postal service provided by Thomas Cook which allowed friends to communicate across hostile borders via neutral Portugal; hence the Lisbon return address. Why she had done so is a mystery, which will be addressed later.
On 8 September Hess summoned Albrecht and quizzed him again about the possibilities of making Hitler’s serious desire for peace known to important persons in England. Albrecht, according to the summary of the discussion he sent his father a week later, suggested several diplomats, including Hoare in Madrid and Lothian in Washington. Then:
As the final possibility I mentioned a personal meeting on neutral ground with the closest of my English friends: the young Duke of Hamilton, who has access at all times to all important personalities in London, even to Churchill and the King. I stressed in this case the unavoidable difficulty of resuming contact, and again repeated my conviction of the unlikelihood of success – whichever course one followed.23
He added that he had had the strong impression the discussion was conducted with the prior knowledge of the Führer, and that he would hear no more about it unless Hess came to a further agreement with Hitler.
However, Hess wrote to Karl Haushofer on the 10th, just two days after the discussion – five days before Albrecht wrote his account of it – to say that on no account must the contact with the old lady friend of his family be disregarded or allowed to fizzle out.24 He considered it best if Karl or Albrecht were to write to her to ask whether she could enquire if Albrecht’s friend would be prepared to come to the neutral country in which she lived or had her forwarding address in order to talk to Albrecht.
Albrecht’s friend was, of course, Hamilton, the neutral country Portugal. By choosing Hamilton rather than one of the ambassadors Albrecht had suggested, Hess was seeking to bypass the diplomatic circles serving Churchill’s government which had proved impervious to all previous peace feelers; and, as will appear, it was Hamilton’s privileged access to the King which weighed as much in his calculations as Albrecht’s friendship with him or Hamilton’s published desire for ‘a healing peace … with a trusted Germany’ in his letter to The Times.
Karl forwarded Hess’s letter to Albrecht, who replied to Hess on the 19th – claiming that postal delays had prevented him receiving the letter until the day before. He agreed to write to Mrs Roberts, enclosing a letter for her to forward to Hamilton,25 and began drafting both the same day. On the 23rd he sent them by hand of Hess’s brother, Alfred, to the Lisbon postbox number.26
LETTERS TO HAMILTON
While Hess had been laying the groundwork for his peace mission, Hitler ordered Göring to destroy the defensive capability of the Royal Air Force to create the conditions for an invasion of Britain, code-named Seelöwe – ‘Sealion’. The resulting aerial contest known as the Battle of Britain reached a climax at the end of August; then pressure on airfields and aircraft factories eased as Hitler, responding to RAF raids on Berlin, shifted the focus of attack to the civilian population.
British cities suffered frightful destruction and loss of life, particularly London; on 10 September Goebbels noted reports from neutral observers representing ‘an apocalyptic picture’ of the city,27 and on the 17th Harold Nicolson, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information, recorded such bitterness at the devastation in the East End of London ‘that even the King and Queen were booed the other day when they visited the destroyed areas.’28
Hess was particularly distressed by the two Nordic races slaughtering each other. In his later interview with Lord Simon he explained that before his flight he had had ever before his eyes ‘not only on the German side, but also on the English side endless rows of children’s coffins with the weeping mothers behind them.’29 There is no reason to doubt this: there is ample testimony from his wife and adjutants of his health suffering, for whatever reasons. Goebbels noted on 15 October having to talk him out of his worries about the situation,30 and in November recorded: ‘Hess … appears very bad and is certainly not healthy. He is so decent a chap. It is a shame that his work energy is consumed in continual illness.’31
Ill health had not stopped his preparations for his mission. Cleared by Messerschmitt’s test pilot to fly solo on the Me 110, he had made numerous practice flights on his own. He had also started drafting a personal letter to the Duke of Hamilton, and on 9 October called in Ernst Bohle, the English-born, South African-educated head of his ‘Foreign Organisation’, for Germans living abroad, to translate the letter into English.
After the war Bohle told Dr Robert Kempner of the US legal team at the Nuremberg war crimes trials that Hess had explained to him that he wanted to write to the Duke, whom he had met at the Olympic Games and who had great influence, to suggest a meeting in Switzerland. He had sworn him to the strictest secrecy; above all the Foreign Minister, von Ribbentrop, was not to hear even a whisper of this intention as he would sabotage it immediately. Hess had then handed him the first part of the letter and asked him to translate it right away in an adjacent office.32
Subsequently Bohle was summoned every few weeks to translate further parts of the letter. By 4 November – according to Bohle’s testimony before the letter was completed – Hess evidently felt he was ready, for he wrote from Berlin to his wife and small son:
My dears
I firmly believe I will return from the flight I am about to undertake in the next few days and that the flight will be crowned with success. If not, however, the goal I set myself was worth going all out for. I know that you know me: you know I could not do otherwise.33
It is a curious note, particularly as there had been no reply to Albrecht’s 23 September letter to Hamilton via Mrs Roberts; indeed Hamilton had not received it. The letter had been retained at the Censorship department in London after arriving on 2 November on the desk of examiner 1021, who had reported:
Writer probably a German & possibly writing from Berlin [‘B’] requests addressee to forward a letter to the Duke of Hamilton, whom he knew as Lord Clydesdale & M.P. & intimates that it may be of significance for him and his friends in high office. Writer states he is sincerely convinced that it can do no harm & it is conceivable it may be ‘useful for all of us’.34
The examiner had copied out a part of the enclosed letter to Hamilton on the reverse side of his report:
If you remember some of my last communications in July 1939 you – and your friends in high places – may find some significance in the fact that I am able to ask you wether [sic] you could find time to have a talk with me somewhere on the outskirts of Europe, perhaps in Portugal. I could reach Lisbon any time (and without any kind of difficulties) within four days after receiving news from you. Of course I do not, know wether [sic] you can make your athorities [sic] understand so much, that they give you leav
e.
But at least you may be able to answer my question. Letters will reach me (fairly quickly; they would take some four or five days from Lisbon at the utmost) in the following way. Double closed envelope. Inside adress [sic]: Dr A.H.” Nothing more! Outside adress [sic]
Minero Silricola Ltd.
Rua do Cais de Santarem 32/I
Lisbon. Portugal.35
This was the cover address for the German Military Counter-Intelligence (Abwehr) station in Portugal.
Censorship first intended to send the letter to the Foreign Office and a photostat copy to MI12 for MI5, but on 6 November it was decided for some reason to send the original letter to MI12 for MI5 with photostats to the Foreign Office and the Interservices Research Bureau (IRB), a cover name for the Special Operations Executive (SOE).36
Since the public release of the diaries of Guy Liddell, head of the counter-espionage, ‘B’, branch of MI5, it is clear that receipt of Albrecht’s letter prompted an investigation into Hamilton’s loyalty, or as Liddell put it: ‘enquiries were started on the assumption that the Duke’s bona fides might be in question … these led to nothing …’37
Since July that year Wing Commander the Duke of Hamilton had been serving as station commander at RAF Turnhouse, outside Edinburgh. On 12 November, just six days after Albrecht’s letter went to MI5, he handed over to his second in command and took ten days leave.38 Whether this was connected with MI5’s enquiries is not known; nor is it known where he spent his leave, since his diary for 1940 is missing.
Hess, Hitler and Churchill Page 14