The Hitler–Hess Deception

by Martin Allen

  Meanwhile, in Britain, there was also much concern and speculation. At Ditchley Park, Churchill was being kept abreast by telephone of events back in London, following the appallingly heavy air raid the previous night. Ditchley Park was no mere country residence. It had been transformed into an extremely well-equipped command centre, complete with communications rooms kitted out with numerous secure telephone lines, deciphering equipment, teletypes and a transmitter powerful enough to communicate with the farthest reaches of the globe. If German troops ever reached London, Churchill would have temporarily retreated to Ditchley, from where he was as fully in command as if he had been in the Cabinet War Rooms deep beneath Whitehall.

  Churchill first heard official news of the mysterious German emissary’s arrival while he and a select band of guests were watching a private showing of a Marx Brothers film. ‘Whilst the merry film clacked on,’ he would later write, ‘a secretary told me that somebody wanted to speak to me on the telephone on behalf of the Duke of Hamilton … [and] I asked Mr Bracken to hear what he had to say.’15

  The identity of the person delegated to speak on behalf of Hamilton has never been revealed, but what he had to say caused Bracken to pale in surprise. ‘After a few minutes,’ Churchill went on, ‘Mr Bracken told me that the Duke … had an amazing piece of information to report. I therefore sent for him. On arrival he told me that a German prisoner whom he had interviewed alone said he was Rudolf Hess. “Hess in Scotland!” I thought this was fantastic’

  Such was Winston Churchill’s official version of the events of Sunday, 11 May. Yet it is disingenuous, for he certainly knew a great deal more than he ever let on. It should be realised that Churchill’s literary works after the war occasionally deviated from precise fact. He was after all the victor writing his version of history for posterity. Rex Leeper’s deception plan was far from the only such secret British operation during the Second World War, and Churchill deliberately excluded many of them from his multi-volume history of the war.16

  Several hours before Churchill received notification of Hess’s arrival, the Duke of Hamilton, in the company of a German-speaking RAF interrogation officer, Flight Lieutenant Benson, had gone to Glasgow to officially interview Hess. However, as soon as the Duke was ushered into Hess’s presence, the first thing he did was to surprise Benson by announcing that he would interview Hess in private, promptly dismissing both Benson and the officer of the guard from the room.

  What Hess and Hamilton talked about is not known, but towards the end of their discussion Hess asked Hamilton if he could assemble leading members of his faction ‘to talk over things with a view to making peace proposals’.17 He also repeated his request for Emma Rothacker in Zürich to be notified that ‘Alfred Horn’ was in good health. Then, curiously, the Deputy-Führer of a nation engaged in a bitter war with Britain asked Hamilton if it might be possible for King George VI to grant him parole – freedom to come and go as he wished – on the understanding that he would not run away.

  Hess, it seemed, was unaware that his chain of peaceable intent had been inexorably broken. In fact, he was unaware that it had never really existed to start with. There was in actuality no peace faction, no politico-constitutional coup d’état in the offing, and no line connecting the King with the presumed intriguings of Sam Hoare and Lord Halifax.

  The only action the British authorities undertook in response to Hess’s request for parole was to remove him from the danger of being accidentally killed by a German raid on Glasgow, and take him under strong guard to Drymen Military Hospital in Buchanan Castle, on the banks of Loch Lomond several miles to the north of Glasgow.

  Several years later the Duke of Hamilton described the chain of events that led to Brendan Bracken taking his call at Ditchley Park. As soon as he left Maryhill Barracks Hamilton

  tried to get in touch, by telephone, to report the matter to the Permanent Secretary, Sir Alexander Cadogan. I got through to his secretary and asked for an interview with Sir Alexander himself. I was informed that Sir Alexander was an extremely busy man … and I got into a tremendous argument with the Secretary …

  Suddenly, in the midst of this rather acrimonious discussion a strange voice said, ‘This is the Prime Minister’s secretary [‘Jock’ Colville] speaking. The Prime Minister sent me over to the Foreign Office as he is informed that you have some interesting information.’18

  According to Hamilton, Colville then asked him, ‘Has somebody arrived?’19

  After confirming that ‘somebody’ had indeed arrived, Hamilton was immediately ordered to fly straight down to Oxfordshire to brief the Prime Minister. After a complicated journey from Glasgow back to Edinburgh, from Edinburgh to London, and thence out to deepest Oxfordshire, an exhausted Duke of Hamilton eventually arrived at Ditchley Park late on Sunday evening. Churchill immediately waved across to the ducal Wing Commander as he was ushered into a room, heavy with the smoke of after-dinner cigars, where the Prime Minister was holding court among his friends and colleagues. ‘Now,’ Churchill insisted, ‘tell us this funny story of yours!’20

  Mindful of the sensitivity of his news, Hamilton responded that the matter was extremely sensitive and important, and endeavoured to impress upon the Prime Minister that he thought it best if he initially gave his report in private. Eventually everyone left the room, Hamilton recorded, except Churchill and the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair. It is likely that Brendan Bracken also remained to hear the extraordinary news.

  When Hamilton revealed exactly who had perilously arrived the previous night, Churchill’s good mood suddenly vanished, and it was obvious that he was ‘rather taken aback’. He undoubtedly realised the possibly disastrous consequences of such an act by one of the top leaders of Nazi Germany, a close friend of Hitler, and a man pivotal to Rex Leeper’s Messrs HHHH deception operation. Rudolf Hess’s appearance in Bohle’s stead was not the harmless act of a madman; it had the potential for disaster.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me,’ Churchill said very deliberately, ‘that the Deputy-Führer of Germany is in our hands?’

  Hamilton confirmed that this was so, and produced photographs of Hess from his wallet. Both the Prime Minister and the Air Secretary were forced to agree that the man did indeed look ‘rather like Hess’.

  Suddenly the Prime Minister’s mood changed again. He no longer wished to talk with the man who had flown all the way from Scotland to see him. ‘Well, Hess or no Hess,’ he growled, ‘I am going to see the Marx brothers!’

  This famous remark has always been attributed to Churchill’s belief that Hess’s arrival in Britain was the act of a madman. However, in reality it reveals a man who, confronted with an important and dangerous situation, chose not to enter into complex debate with his minions, but rather withdrew into himself to ponder the intricacies of the situation before making any comment or taking any decisions.

  While his guests enjoyed the antics of Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx on the big screen, Churchill’s mind was playing to an entirely different tune. His decision to postpone his discussion with Hamilton had been taken so that he could sit in the dark, largely oblivious to the chuckles of amusement around him, ponder the implications of Hess’s arrival and consider his next move. It had most definitely not been any part of SO1’s plans to capture a top Nazi. Would Rudolf Hess’s unexpected arrival affect the outcome of the Messrs HHHH operation? Was it still possible to manoeuvre Hitler towards the original objective of an attack on Russia?

  Later that night, after all the other guests had retired to bed, Churchill, Sinclair, Bracken and the Duke of Hamilton sat down to debate this new and highly dangerous development. The details of what was discussed have never been revealed. All that is known is that the meeting continued until 3 a.m., and that at dawn on Monday, 12 May the Duke of Hamilton and Winston Churchill were driven ‘very rapidly’, ignoring all speed limits, back to London in the prime ministerial limousine. It was evidently imperative that whatever action was needed had to be undertaken
immediately.

  Once they reached Downing Street another discussion took place between Hamilton and Churchill, this time in the presence of Anthony Eden. By now Churchill’s primary concern seems to have been that the man being held in Buchanan Castle might not be Hess at all, but a ‘double’. That would have been a very serious development indeed, for it would reveal that it was German Intelligence, rather than SO1, which had the upper hand in the deception campaign against Hitler; that the Germans were engaged in a dangerous deception of their own, and had sent a nobody to negotiate with the representative of Britain’s ‘man of influence’. This would also mean, horrifyingly, that Hitler’s Hess-Haushofer peaceable attempt was a sham, that Hitler had given up attempting to make peace with the British, and quite possibly changed his mind about invading Russia in the immediate future. That would leave only one possibility for the latter half of the fighting season of 1941 – the Middle East. With the loss of Britain’s oil would also go any chance she had of emerging victorious from the war.

  The meeting with Churchill concluded, Hamilton and Eden walked quickly along Whitehall to the Foreign Office, where they met Sir Alexander Cadogan to discuss what should be done next. Soon Stewart Menzies, the head of SIS, was summoned to advise on how best to verify whether or not it really was the Deputy-Führer of Nazi Germany who was cooling his heels in Buchanan Castle. It was decided to dispatch Ivone Kirkpatrick with Hamilton to vet the prisoner.

  Kirkpatrick was a sound choice. He had been First Secretary at the British Embassy in Berlin through much of the 1930s, and had thus met Hess many times, in both an official and a private capacity. He had also participated in Leeper’s deception operation over the past nine months.

  Robert Bruce Lockhart, out at Woburn, was soon to comment: ‘Immense excitement over Hess … Ivone Kirkpatrick has been sent to see him and talk with him.’21 However, Bruce Lockhart went on to observe that Kirkpatrick was ‘not the man I should have chosen, for he has no knowledge or understanding of psychology’. This may indicate that a subtle behind-the-scenes struggle was already taking place between SO1 on the one hand, and the more generalised body of British Intelligence (MI5 and MI6), the Foreign Office, or even the upper echelons of government about who would to take control of Hess. SO1 may have had its own notions about how it wanted to use Hess to further Rex Leeper’s stratagem of covert political warfare.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Bruce Lockhart went on, ‘the Prime Minister who hopes (perhaps too wishfully) to obtain valuable military information out of Hess has taken complete control. No ammunition for the propagandists. Valentine Williams and Sefton Delmer not allowed to go to Glasgow.’

  The Duke of Hamilton and Ivone Kirkpatrick, meanwhile, were driven to Hendon aerodrome, from where the Duke piloted a De Havilland Rapide back to RAF Turnhouse. There they were greeted with the news that while they had been airborne, a communiqué had been broadcast over the German home stations announcing that: ‘Party member Hess, who has been expressly forbidden by the Führer to use an aeroplane because of a disease which has been becoming worse for years, was in contradiction of this order able to get hold of a plane recently. Hess started on Saturday, 10 May at about 1800 hours from Augsburg on a flight from which he has not returned …’22

  There was no mention of the facts that for months ‘Party member Hess’ had not only been flying regularly all over Germany, and indeed to foreign countries as well, but had been well enough to commission improvements to a powerful military aircraft placed at his personal disposal. Hitler, it seemed, was rapidly covering his tracks. The communiqué concluded: ‘The Führer at once ordered the arrest of Hess’s adjutants who alone knew of his flight and who, in contradiction of the Führer’s ban … did not prevent the flight nor report it at once. The National Socialist movement has unfortunately in these circumstances to assume that Party Comrade Hess has crashed or met with a similar accident.’

  It was already late by the time Hamilton and Kirkpatrick received this news, but any thought of rest vanished when the Duke received an urgent call from Sir Archibald Sinclair, almost certainly at Churchill’s behest. Sinclair insisted that he and Kirkpatrick proceed post-haste to Buchanan Castle. It seems that Churchill needed to know that very night whether or not it was the real Hess who had arrived in Scotland the previous evening. Hamilton and Kirkpatrick immediately set off on the long and tortuous drive to Buchanan Castle, where they would attempt to probe Hess’s mind, and in so doing try to discern whether Messrs HHHH was still on track.

  At Woburn Abbey, Rex Leeper ordered his secretary, Mr Foss, to type up a memorandum. It was a note of few words, but it spoke volumes about the level of disquiet fluttering through Woburn Abbey: ‘The Director has asked me to say that he does not wish Minutes to be kept of the Saturday 12 o’clock meeting in future. He feels that, even as an informal record, it is not desirable that an abbreviated report of statements made by, for instance, Brigadier Brooks or Mr Ingrams, should be made …’23

  Back in Scotland, meanwhile, the Duke of Hamilton and Ivone Kirkpatrick were not having a comfortable time interviewing Hess; the Deputy-Führer, for his part, also had his problems. He could not reveal the real reason he had appeared on British soil, for fear of compromising what he still believed to be an anti-Churchill faction about to enact a democratic usurpation of power. Behind his brave façade, however, Hess must have suspected that, to use a favoured expression of his own, everything had ‘gone to smash’.24

  Hess was inclined to talk peace, but would say nothing that might compromise the imaginary political clique. He could name no names; could indicate a willingness to negotiate with the British government, but not which British government. Along with Germany’s Deputy-Führer, the British had also acquired the papers Hess had brought with him for his meeting at Dungavel House. These almost certainly included detailed proposals for a peace treaty, undoubtedly one of the documents Hess and Hitler had drafted together, which Ernst Bohle had been instructed to translate the previous weekend. From Churchill’s point of view it was also almost certainly the case that it would be better for these papers to vanish completely, which indeed they did.

  The first meeting between Hess, Kirkpatrick and Hamilton began at midnight on Monday, 12 May, and lasted more than three and a half hours. It soon became apparent to Kirkpatrick that the man seated before him really was Rudolf Hess. The Deputy-Führer, drawing upon notes he had spent much of the previous day drafting, began a lengthy monologue on Anglo–German relations, detailing the entente promoted by Edward VII in 1904.

  As Hess droned on, Hamilton and Kirkpatrick must have realised it was going to be a very long night indeed. At 1 a.m. they were given a brief respite when they were summoned to the telephone. It was Anthony Eden, asking on Churchill’s behalf whether the prisoner was the real Hess. To Eden and Churchill’s undoubted relief, Kirkpatrick confirmed that it was.

  On Kirkpatrick and Hamilton’s return, Hess resumed his monologue, repeatedly emphasising the injustices he believed Germany had suffered at the hands of the Allies in 1919, and the worthy cause she was now applying herself to: reorganising Europe on more efficient lines that would promote peace long into the future. He even claimed that Hitler had delayed launching the horrors of the Blitz on Britain ‘partly out of a sentimental regard for English culture and English monuments’.25 On he went for hour after hour, declaring Germany’s sincere wish for peace, how the war with Britain was an unmitigated disaster for all concerned, how the hand of friendship should be grasped and the prospect of peace held on to. Hamilton fell asleep at one point, waking some time later to find Hess still talking, and a mesmerised Kirkpatrick staring at him with eyes that were glazing over. Kirkpatrick would later record that he had not interrupted Hess, or contradicted any of the points he raised, ‘since I realised that argument would be quite fruitless and would certainly have deprived us of breakfast’.26

  It is strange that Hess, now that he finally had a chance to put Germany’s case before real representatives of the Brit
ish government, did not say anything about the peaceable intent of his mission. Nor did he give vent to the lapel-grabbing offers he had previously made via the Papal Nuncio and Albrecht Haushofer to Sam Hoare, such as Germany’s withdrawal from occupied France, Holland and Belgium, or that Hitler would accept some form of autonomy for Poland and national identity for Czechoslovakia.

  It may be that Hess did not want to say anything that might compromise all the hard work of the previous months of negotiation. His three-hour monologue was therefore largely a stalling tactic. He would have realised that he could not remain silent, which would have made the British authorities really suspicious. It might even have prompted Churchill to order the Intelligence Services to investigate the true reasons for his arrival. He therefore had no choice other than to talk, to give Kirkpatrick something to think about, while not going into sufficient detail to undermine his and Haushofer’s negotiations with Hoare.

  A clue that Hess was stalling came at the very end of his meeting with Hamilton and Kirkpatrick, when he commented that it was known in Germany that Churchill had been planning a war with the Reich since 1936, and thus the Prime Minister and his confederates were not men with whom the Führer could negotiate.27 In covert language, Hess was laying his cards on the table: We won’t talk with Churchill and his clique, but we will negotiate with another party. Hess may even have been subtly asking Kirkpatrick whether he was a supporter of the anti-Churchill faction. Unfortunately for Hess, he was not.

  However, next morning, Tuesday, 13 May, Kirkpatrick telephoned Sir Alexander Cadogan and suggested that ‘in view of the reservation that Germany could not negotiate with the present government’, Hess might talk more freely to ‘some member of the Conservative Party who would give him the impression he was tempted by the idea of getting rid of the present government’.28