by Martin Allen
Thus Churchill decided to relieve Lord Halifax of his position as Foreign Secretary, and post him to Washington as Britain’s new Ambassador. This appeared to be a resounding slap in the face for someone of Halifax’s political stature, and it has long been believed that he was yet another of those banished because of his support for appeasement and a compromise peace. Yet this is a fallacy. The impression that Halifax was banished to the United States was very useful to SO1. In fact the last thing Winston Churchill would have done during Britain’s darkest hour would have been to send a powerful political rival to the very place where he had the potential to cause the most harm. Such a person, as Albrecht Haushofer had joked in 1939, would in reality have found himself appointed as Consul to ‘Paramaribo’ in deepest South America, or banished to somewhere such as the Bahamas, where he would be isolated and in no position to pursue policies at odds with the British government’s line.
While it was true that Halifax had supported Chamberlain’s policies of appeasing the dictators of Europe, and had been Churchill’s main challenger for the premiership in May 1940, he had also provided an effective counterbalance to the Prime Minister’s more radical ideas. This did not necessarily mean they were political enemies. Undoubtedly Churchill had his own reasons for wanting to oust Halifax from the Foreign Office and replace him with his loyal stalwart Anthony Eden. However, Churchill was a pragmatic leader, and would not have dismissed his Foreign Secretary and sent him to Washington for merely personal motives.
A number of people had been proposed for the Washington post, including Sir Robert Vansittart, Lord Cranborne, Sir Dudley Pound, Oliver Lyttelton and Sir Ronald Lindsay. Indeed Lady Astor and Lady Diana Cooper even canvassed for their own husbands to have the posting,35 so desirable was the appointment as Ambassador to Washington.
Despite this, by the time Churchill and Eden settled down to watch a private screening of Gone with the Wind at the Prime Minister’s country retreat, Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, on the evening of Sunday, 22 December, it would seem that the identity of the new Ambassador had already been decided upon. Churchill would first offer the appointment to David Lloyd George, knowing that the elderly former Prime Minister would turn it down. This he duly did, pleading ill health, and Lord Halifax, publicly expressing dismay at his sudden demotion and banishment, decamped for Washington in the first few days of 1941.
Although a loyal supporter of Churchill, the new Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, was no mere yes-man. He had attained his first political post at the Foreign Office under Austin Chamberlain in the early 1930s, and had quickly gained a reputation as an expert in foreign affairs.36 His career thereafter had been meteoric, and in 1935 he became Britain’s youngest Foreign Secretary since 1807. However, his career had suddenly stalled in 1938, when he resigned from Neville Chamberlain’s Cabinet over Chamberlain’s acceptance of Mussolini’s conquest of Abyssinia. Thereafter he became a natural member of Churchill’s camp, and it was through Churchill that Eden became Secretary of War in May 1940. No one had any doubt that he owed his return to the helm of the Foreign Office to his patron Winston Churchill.
The German leadership believed that this new development offered them much hope. It matched exactly what they perceived to be the political situation in London, as they had come to understand it through the expert advice of Albrecht Haushofer. As they interpreted events, Lord Halifax, a man receptive to peace, had been banished to Washington by a Churchill fearful of a political challenge. This undoubtedly reassured Hitler, Hess and Haushofer that Halifax, who had almost become Prime Minister in May 1940, would be more amenable than ever to a compromise peace.
In the first few weeks of a particularly bitter and cold January 1941, British Military Intelligence was commissioned to assess for Churchill the likelihood of a German attack on Russia. Their assessment was most enlightening, not only for its conclusions, but for what it revealed about the British politico-military state of mind at that time. It was a great fear of the British government that the fighting season of 1941 would see Germany consolidate her strategic and military superiority with a push eastwards into the Middle East via Turkey and North Africa. If Britain lost her Middle Eastern oilfields, her war effort would come to a shuddering halt, and Germany would almost immediately emerge victorious. Thus Britain’s entire hope of surviving the fighting season of 1941 lay in ensuring that Germany attacked Russia, and did not aim for the Middle East.
The ‘SECRET’ report, headed ‘Military Indications of German Intentions towards Russia’, began by stating: ‘There have been a number of suggestions recently that Germany may be intending to attack Russia. We have examined all the available evidence to see whether there are any military indications that such a move is contemplated.’ The report examined Germany’s military dispositions in Norway, Finland, Poland and east Prussia, Slovakia and Romania, before going on to look for more subtle signs of German intentions. However, it gloomily continued: ‘There have been no reports of improvements to communications between Roumania and Russia. The improvements to roads in Roumania indicate that the Germans are preparing for a S.E. rather than a N.E. move.’ It concluded: ‘To sum up. The military evidence available does not at the present support the view that Germany intends to attack Russia. The most significant factor against this view is the low proportion of divisions of the field army in Poland. German troop dispositions and other military preparations in the neighbourhood of the Russian frontiers cannot at the moment be described as anything but normal.’37
The outlook was sombre, for if Hitler was not preparing for a campaign against Russia, it was reasoned that his primary objective for the fighting season of 1941 would be to knock Britain out of the war, almost certainly through the strategy of taking the Middle East. It appeared that Hitler required further persuasion that Britain was not going to be Germany’s primary opponent for much longer. SO1’s activities took on a new importance.
In the early hours of Sunday, 19 January 1941, a ciphered telegram was received at the Foreign Office that immediately set alarm bells ringing in Woburn Abbey, Whitehall and Downing Street. The telegram had originated from Britain’s Ambassador in Berne, David Kelly, who earlier that day had made a disconcerting discovery about events taking place on his ‘patch’:
SECRET
Information has come to my attention that the Ambassador to Spain Sir Samuel Hoare was in Berne today. How can this be. Please advise. I need not inform you of the delicate situation here particularly with respect to the Swedish courier Blonde [sic] whom I do not wish to compromise.38
This brief telegram, which gives the impression that David Kelly was flustered and annoyed at being kept in the dark, is important not only for what it reveals about Sam Hoare’s movements (yet again he was in Switzerland for a covert Saturday meeting), but because it further demonstrates that there were different strata of trust within the British government, Foreign Office and Intelligence Services. Kelly, despite his position as British Ambassador in Switzerland, and the fact that he was of an eminence to be conducting his own secret missions, was not sufficiently trusted to be told of Hoare’s mission. This must have come as a devastating realisation to him when, within seventy-two hours, he received a stinging ciphered reply that in effect told him to mind his own business and keep his mouth shut:
The Foreign Secretary acknowledges receipt of your information.
To confirm or deny presence of the Ambassador to Spain might compromise his future work. You may be assured that if matters relate to Anglo Swiss relations you will be informed.
Please refrain from enquiry if such an instance comes to your attention again.39
This firm rejection of his query must have left Kelly wondering what was taking place, for he was no diplomatic nonentity sitting serenely in Berne. He too had been engaged in deep covert diplomacy aimed at concluding the conflict, and had secretly met not only Himmler and Ribbentrop’s private emissary Prince Hohenlohe, but also Baron Bonde, an eminent Swedish diplomat stationed
in Switzerland who was acting as a confidential intermediary to Göring. The crucial difference was that the SO1 line was targeted directly at Adolf Hitler himself.
It is at this point that an important point should be noted. The real attempts at an Anglo–German understanding, like all the others of 1940–41, were rejected out of hand. As Churchill communicated to Eden later that January: ‘Our attitude to all such inquiries or suggestions should be absolute silence’40 – i.e. real diplomatic peace initiatives should be ignored, because they could undermine the war effort and the government’s resolve to see Nazism defeated once and for all. The effort being undertaken by Sam Hoare on the other hand, as the instrument of SO1’s Messrs HHHH operation, was fulfilling an entirely different function. It was not real. Its objective was deception and the undermining of Adolf Hitler through the medium of political warfare. What Hoare was doing was so sensitive that it had the potential, if it came to light, to cause catastrophic disaster. Not only would Hitler discover he was being duped, but he would finally understand that there was no prospect of peace with Britain, and would thus turn his military attention towards the Middle East and its oil, rather than towards Russia.
Throughout the winter of 1940–41, Rudolf Hess had been test-flying his Messerschmitt 110 around Germany, from airfields as far apart as Kiel and the Thuringian forests in the north, to the Alps in the south. Furthermore, he was requesting unusual technical improvements to his aircraft that were designed to enable a lone pilot to more easily handle a plane designed for three people. Among these requests were: ‘Is it possible to install an automatic pilot in the cockpit?’ and ‘Can the wireless set mounted in the rear for use by the observer/wireless operator … be moved to the pilot’s cockpit?’41
On the morning of Saturday, 18 January 1941, Germany’s Deputy-Führer was preparing to fly again. While he was waiting for his plane to be prepared he handed his adjutant, Lieutenant Pintsch, two sealed letters. One was addressed to Adolf Hitler, the other to Pintsch himself. Hess instructed Pintsch that if he did not return in four hours, he was to open his letter, and take the other to Hitler personally.42 Helmut Kaden, evidently believing that this was Hess’s second unsuccessful attempt to fly to Scotland, recalled: ‘Hess … [again] returned after about three and a half hours. On this occasion, he reported that there was something wrong with the Anflugnavigation approach system, a form of radio compass which had been installed in the machine … Josef Blumel, the Chief Radio Operator at the Messerschmitt works, explained’ that Hess had not tuned the equipment to the correct wavelength.43
Pitsch’s evidence, however, makes it clear that Hess had had no intention of flying to Scotland on 18 January 1941, for he had made it clear that he intended to return within four hours. As before, it would have been perfectly possible for Hess to fly the 150 miles from Augsburg to Zürich in about thirty minutes, have had a two-hour meeting, then flown home again.
Wartime Switzerland – an alpine island of peace amidst a European sea of conflict – was not only bursting at the seams with refugees, but was a place where enemies encountered each other in neutral territory. It was therefore a hotbed of intrigue, subterfuge and, most importantly of all, surveillance. Thus Sam Hoare’s presence there on 18 January was undoubtedly noted by someone from the British Embassy, who promptly reported it to David Kelly, who in turn queried the situation with the Foreign Office.
Back in London, meanwhile, other intelligence was flowing across the desks of Whitehall, and it was making grim reading. At the end of January, the War Office had been requested to prepare another paper for the Directors of Military Operations and the Prime Minister. This was to be both an assessment of the current military situation and an attempt to predict the direction of the war during the fighting season of 1941. The assessment began by declaring: ‘Germany is the main enemy and has the initiative. Her army is stronger than is necessary for actual operations – excluding a war against USSR which is unlikely for the present – and she still has great numerical superiority in the air, though relatively less than she had in 1940.’44
It then noted that ‘from the economic point of view Germany’s situation is less favourable; she may suffer from shortage of oil in 1941 and her difficulties in the transportation and distribution of goods and foodstuffs must increase … [It was therefore essential to forecast] Germany’s probable strategy so as to plan countermeasures and organise our available resources to check, and if possible defeat her in action.’ The paper went on to assess German military strength, and the possible courses of action available to her in 1941. One section, headed ‘General Axis Strategy in the Mediterranean’, concluded: ‘There are many indications that Germany may be contemplating action through Spain, France, Italy or the Balkans, extending possibly into French North Africa, and even against Egypt via Libya or Turkey.’
This last point would have been read with concern by Churchill, for as the report stated, if Germany could ‘persuade Greece to make peace with Italy … she would probably demand the occupation of Salonika – which Greece, under threats, could not refuse’. The report went on that it was most likely that Germany would continue with her objective of heading towards the Middle East, attacking Turkey and then Egypt:
It is probable that Germany might defeat the Turks in Thrace and reach the Straits [of the Dardanelles] in not more than six weeks after the occupation of Salonika – say by the middle of May … [and] it might be possible for a German force to establish itself south of the Taurus by the end of July – this depending on the degree of Turkish resistance – it is estimated that eight divisions (increasing to twelve after two months) could be maintained through Anatolia for an advance via Syria on Egypt.
Finally, the report concluded:
It seems that Germany has sufficient land forces for:-
(a) The occupation of the whole of France.
(b) The occupation of Spain and Portugal, and an attack on Gibraltar.
(c) Action against French Morocco.
(d) Occupation of the Balkans and Greece.
It is unlikely that she could, at the same time, undertake operations through Anatolia against Turkey, Libya or Tunisia. The campaigns in Anatolia and Libya would be difficult operations employing considerable air forces, and would not immediately influence the result she aims at, the decisive defeat of Great Britain. But any of the operations (b) to (d) above would directly threaten our hold on the Mediterranean.
It is now known that Germany did not have a strategic plan for the invasion of Anatolia in the fighting season of 1941, even if this could have led to an invasion of the Middle East; but Britain’s analysts at the War Office did not know that, and the results of such a move would have been disastrous. It must therefore have been regarded as imperative that the Messrs HHHH operation should successfully undermine the German leadership’s plans for the fighting season of 1941. Inciting Hitler to open a second front by declaring war on Russia had the potential to cause Nazi Germany’s downfall, whereas an all-out German offensive against British forces, whether in North Africa or the Middle East, would see Britain fall to certain defeat.
With the benefit of hindsight, the War Office’s strategic analysis of early February 1941 was incorrect, for a push towards the Middle East was very low on Hitler’s list of priorities. That he was already planning a completely different eastern campaign of conquest for the fighting season of 1941 is perhaps the clearest indication that the Messrs HHHH operation was beginning to have a discernible effect. Hitler’s decision to turn German forces on Russia – thus making a new and potentially lethal enemy – does not make sense unless there was some other set of factors at play.
Hitler was not so trusting as to declare war on Russia solely because he thought he had an inside track to peace with Britain. Despite Sir Samuel Hoare’s eminence, he was in reality only a high-echelon middle-man, and the German leadership needed verification that he was acting on behalf of more influential figures. It was this seeking of verification that gave London the fir
st sign that Hitler and his close associates had hungrily grabbed the bait proffered by SO1’s operation.
On Saturday, 8 February 1941, Lord Halifax, newly installed as Britain’s Ambassador in Washington, sent a confidential message to his replacement at the Foreign Office, Anthony Eden. Halifax revealed that an intermediary acting on behalf of the German Ambassador had attempted to make contact with him directly. This new development was potentially a serious complication, for it indicated yet again the instability of the top Nazi leadership. They would not play by the rules – albeit rules dictated by London – and negotiate solely through Sam Hoare. Instead they had made an attempt to open a direct line of communication to the man they thought they were ultimately dealing with, Lord Halifax – when in reality the only people they were negotiating with were the members of the inner circle at SO1 Woburn.
Lord Halifax had recoiled in horror at the thought of Nazis attempting to contact him directly. To him it was a sign of deep deceit – and deceivers can be unpredictable. All concerned, not least Halifax, would have been aware that if the Americans found out about the secret peace negotiations, and mistakenly believed they were genuine, it would deal a potentially mortal blow to the Anglo–American relationship. Any revelations now about a possible generous peace offer from Germany could be catastrophic for Britain’s efforts to obtain American aid, and might also undo all Churchill’s hopes of eventually dragging the United States into the war on Britain’s side.