The Hitler–Hess Deception

by Martin Allen

  Before the end of the week, another meeting took place between Hess, Kirkpatrick and Hamilton. It became clear that the Deputy-Führer had reformulated the conditions under which he was prepared to talk to the British government, and he requested that two particular German prisoners of war he knew should be appointed as his assistants if peace talks were opened.29 The precise details of this discussion have remained secret, however, for as was noted in the margin of a statement Churchill was preparing to make to the House of Commons, Hess had ‘also made other statements which it would not be in the public interest to disclose’.30

  There is, though, one clue which both indicates the direction of Hess’s pronouncements and reveals much about the British government’s concern that the whole matter should remain completely under wraps. Following his second meeting with Hess, the Duke of Hamilton flew back to London, where, after visiting Sir Alexander Cadogan to discuss the situation, he had lunch with the King at Buckingham Palace.31 Within a few days, Hess was transferred from Scotland to Mytchett Place, a large house near Aldershot in Surrey. Here the Deputy-Führer would be within easy reach of a select band of Intelligence personnel who intended to interrogate him with any means at their disposal. There was a second reason for moving Hess: in the unlikely event that the Germans decided to target him, he would be more secure near Aldershot than in the wilds of Scotland.

  The week following the loss of Hess had been an uncomfortable one for Adolf Hitler as the public-relations exercise to distance him from his Deputy was set in motion. On Monday, 12 May he gave the order for official communiqués about the Deputy-Führer’s disappearance to be issued. He summoned his Reichsleiters and Gauleiters – his loyal conduit to the German people – to explain the embarrassing situation. Many of them were alarmed by the broken look of their Führer, who seemed to have aged overnight. The Governor-General of Poland, Hans Frank, noted that Hitler, looking completely shattered, ‘spoke to us in a low, halting voice, expressing an underlying depression beyond words’.32

  The extent to which this depression was caused by the loss of Hess is impossible to tell. Its primary cause may rather have been Hitler’s realisation that all his peaceable endeavours of the past nine months, through Hess, Haushofer, Papal Nuncios, British Ambassadors and a multitude of lesser middle-men, had been for nothing. At the very moment when a peace deal had seemed so close, it had all suddenly gone wrong. Hitler may even have wondered if the disaster had been caused by his agreement to Hess’s suggestion that he, rather than Ernst Bohle, was the best man to attend a meeting with a British VIP. It may be that Hitler suspected that some deep perfidy by the British had cost Hess his freedom, and that all the offers of peaceable negotiations had merely been a subterfuge of British Intelligence.

  Regardless of Hitler’s depression and uncertainties during those first days of Hess’s incarceration in Britain, what happened next was a sure indicator that he had not entirely abandoned his old friend.

  On Tuesday, 20 May, Sir Samuel Hoare in Madrid wrote a letter headed ‘PERSONAL AND SECRET’ to Anthony Eden:

  … I have just written Winston a short personal note in view of the fact that he took so much interest last year in agreeing to our secret plans. I thought that he would like to known that during the last two or three weeks they have worked out very much as we hoped …

  I am enclosing a curious and very secret note that has just been sent me from Beigbeder. The suggestions in it bear a remarkable resemblance to what I imagine Hess has been saying in England. You will therefore no doubt wish to take it into account in connexion with anything that you get out of Hess.33

  The ‘curious and very secret note’ from Beigbeder long ago vanished from its appropriate place within the Foreign Office archives. However, it is known that Albrecht Haushofer had been in contact with both his old friend at the German Embassy in Madrid, Eberhard von Stohrer, and Beigbeder over the previous year, and it is likely that Hoare had been contacted by Beigbeder on Haushofer’s behalf in an attempt to discover what was really going on. Much depended on whether, regardless of the loss of Hess, the Hoare–Halifax faction still intended to try to oust Churchill. Hoare commented to Eden: ‘I feel sure that in each case our reply will be a very definite negative … That is why I should much like your definite instructions as to the form of any answer that you may wish me to make to Beigbeder. He is sure to return to the charge and I must then either say that we do not intend to make any answer or that our answer is such and such.’34

  It is not known what Eden responded, or whether Hoare subsequently contacted Beigbeder to impart a message for German ears – although it is extremely likely that he was instructed to do so. What is known, however, is that Hitler was still desperately clinging to his hopes of peace with Britain, rather than allowing the loss of Hess to cause its abandonment, which would result in him sinking into a maelstrom of total and unremitting war.

  The many complex strands of Operation Barbarossa were by now coming together with relentless speed. Hitler’s initial plan had been to attack Russia in the middle of May, but because of Germany’s unplanned commitments in the Balkans, and the flooding in the Pripet Marshes, he had had to delay the invasion until the second half of June. Given what is now known about Hess and Hitler’s plotting behind the scenes with a British clique they believed was about to oust Churchill from power, it is possible that there was also a secret political element in Hitler’s decision to delay Barbarossa. Had he been hoping to see a new British government in place before he opened a new and terribly costly second front?

  The decision to attack the Soviet Union raised issues well beyond mere military strategy. Russia was still providing a vast range of resources to the Reich: over two hundred thousand tons of grain and ninety thousand tons of petrol in April 1941 alone. Even as Hitler planned the invasion and subjugation of Russia, a heavy cruiser was being built for the German navy in Leningrad, and the trans-Siberian railway was shipping over two thousand tons of raw rubber into the Reich every month.35

  With the launching of Barbarossa, Hitler knew that Germany would suffer an immediate, and possibly critical, shortage of previously imported supplies. He therefore had to be extremely sure that he was not about to bite off more than he could chew by attacking Russia before he had done as much as he could to remove the threat posed by Britain. Added into this complicated calculation was the fact that any Russian campaign had to take place within a small weather window of opportunity: after the draining of rivers and marshes swollen by the previous winter’s snow, but before the next winter set in. Churchill, like Hitler, was also fully aware of the situation, and a German attack on Russia could give Britain a unique opportunity to strike at Hitler.

  Several years after the war, Churchill would write: ‘Nemesis personifies the Goddess of Retribution, who brings down all immediate good fortune, checks the presumption that attends it … and is the punisher of extraordinary crimes.’36 It would be natural to assume that that Churchill was referring to Hitler’s Germany, but in fact he was writing about Russia, stating with much truth that throughout the disasters of 1940, the Soviet government ‘had shown a total indifference to the fate of the Western Powers’.37 However, by late 1940 it had become obvious to many in Britain’s government and Intelligence Services that while Stalin had undoubtedly been rubbing his hands in glee as he watched western Europe implode, he was also aware that it would not be long before Hitler began contemplating his stated ambition of creating a Greater German Reich, by slicing off a vast swathe of western Russia.

  After the war Churchill would write that ‘up till the end of March [1941] I was not convinced that Hitler was resolved upon mortal war with Russia’, and he remained extremely fearful about the fate of the Middle East. Nor were his concerns eased by British Intelligence’s persistent fence-sitting in their assessment of which direction the war would take in the fighting season of 1941 – north-east into Russia, as per Hitler’s ambitions for territorial expansion into the Ukraine and Caucasus; or sout
h-east into the Middle East, as strategic expediency dictated, to remove the dangers posed to the Reich by continued war with Britain.

  A ‘most secret’ strategic assessment of 26 May 1941 did not help resolve these fears. In many ways it made extremely grim reading, for it declared that ‘the German General Staff does not believe that Germany can achieve her aims by threats or by peaceful penetration of the Ukraine’. Pessimistically, it went on: ‘rumours of an imminent German attack on Russia have given place to reports … that Russo–German discussions are in progress and even that an agreement has been reached, more particularly for the delimitation of spheres of influence in the Middle East, and that German troops assembling at Lvov are to move through the Soviet Union to Iran with Russian consent’.38

  There was much cause for concern in this report, particularly when Churchill read an intelligence submission from Romania which alleged not only that ‘German troops are preparing to embark from a Romanian port for Beirut’, but also that, incredibly, ‘Many German tourists are said to be going to Iraq through Iran, and it is reported that war materials are being sent to Iraq, through Turkey.’

  The implication was clear. These German tourists were in reality troops – special forces – dispatched to Iraq to foment unrest and revolution. Even this paled into insignificance when compared with the report’s comment that: ‘The Germans are stated to be bringing pressure to bear on Iran to hamper the movements of British warships in the Shatt-el-Arab. They are also reported to be urging Iran to cancel British oil concessions and take over the oilfields.’39

  SO1’s efforts to make Hitler feel confident enough to attack Russia seemed to have fallen flat; and Rudolf Hess’s shocking arrival in Britain had only served to confuse the issue still further.

  On Tuesday, 27 May, a little over a fortnight after Hess had come drifting out of the Scottish night sky, Air Vice Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory summoned an old acquaintance of his, a young army officer named John McCowen, to a meeting. Major McCowen had served with the Territorial Army during the inter-war years, and had spent over a year in Hanover during the 1930s, becoming a fluent German-speaker. By May 1941 he was an intelligence officer serving on the General Staff. His duties included gathering intelligence on the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris, and Professor Willy Messerschmitt; he also assisted with the interrogation of prisoners of war and captured enemy agents.

  Expecting his linguistic skills to be called upon once again, McCowen was surprised when Leigh-Mallory revealed to him that he had received important information concerning a recent coded message broadcast from Germany. This decrypt probably emanated from Bletchley Park, whose codebreakers by 1941 had completely broken the Luftwaffe Enigma code, and were thus able to read virtually every single Luftwaffe communication. Leigh-Mallory informed McCowen that the Germans intended to drop several SS parachutists in the Luton area that very night, and he was ordered to accompany an anti-aircraft unit to assist in the capture of these dangerous men.

  Later that evening, four 40mm anti-aircraft guns, together with two searchlights of the 73rd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, were deployed at Chalton, several miles north-west of Luton,40 and Home Guard units and armed police were put on full alert. It is doubtful if many of those on the ground realised the importance of the area they were guarding. A mere five miles to the north-west stood Woburn Abbey, with its panoply of deep and covert thinkers dreaming up ingenious ways to politically wrongfoot, undermine and sabotage the enemy. Five miles to the west lay Bletchley Park, Britain’s priceless code-breaking facility that daily decrypted the Reich’s top secrets. Churchill would later call Bletchley the ‘goose that had laid golden eggs’, and he would not lightly forgive anyone whose lax security put such a valuable facility in jeopardy.

  A little after 3 a.m., the distant boom-boom-boom of antiaircraft fire alerted those waiting on the ground that a wave of German planes had arrived over Luton, dropping several sticks of bombs over the town and its environs. The men immediately went on full alert, for it was known that the Germans often sent a parachute plane to accompany a bombing raid.

  That was the case on this particular night: a Luftwaffe He-111, seconded to the Abwehr and piloted by Hauptmann Gartenfeldt, was tailing the raid.41 During the previous months Gartenfeldt had developed a very successful stratagem for dropping agents over enemy territory. His ploy was to tail the raid into British airspace, and then, just before the bombers commenced their attack, break away from the formation, banking his aircraft to quickly lose altitude before levelling off to drop his parachutists as low as possible (an absolute necessity, as agents were more likely to evade capture if they reached the ground as quickly as possible). After dropping his charges, Gartenfeldt would quickly regain his original altitude, endeavouring to join the raid formation for the flight home.

  As soon as the raid began, it was reported by the local military command centre: ‘Parachutist agent believed to have dropped immediately after bombs, is armed and will have parachute marks. Probably making for the road Dunstable–London.’42 A thorough search of the area failed to locate any enemy agents, but at 4 a.m. a second urgent report was issued to the anti-aircraft unit, Home Guard and armed police units, stating: ‘Parachutists believed down one mile east of Sundon [four and a half miles south-east of Woburn Abbey]. May have travelled some miles or may be lying up. Do not withdraw patrols. Have country searched.’43 Still no traces of any parachutists were found, and the patrols were withdrawn at 8.45 a.m.

  However, hiding out in the English countryside during wartime, with every farmer, Home Guard and policeman – and, in this case, armed police and officers of MI5 – on the lookout for suspicious characters, was well-nigh impossible. Later that day (Wednesday, 28 May) three parachutists were spotted, cornered and captured ‘not many miles away, but in another county [, destined] never to return to the Fatherland’.44

  Many years later, in 1996, the then eighty-nine-year-old John McCowen was to reveal that he had participated in the interrogation of these three enemy agents at Ham Common, an interrogation centre run by MI5’s double-cross specialists, 20 Committee. McCowen maintained that he had forgotten the men’s names, but said they had been dropped in Britain with the intention of murdering Hess, in order to prevent him revealing details about Barbarossa. According to McCowen, the agents believed Hess was being held at Cockfosters on the outskirts of London, thirty-five miles south-east of Woburn Abbey, where Luftwaffe prisoners were normally interrogated. Finally, McCowen stated that after they had been interrogated, all three were executed by firing squad at the Tower of London.45

  The historian who interviewed McCowen in 1996 was to comment that ‘these assassins could not have expected to burst into the cage at Cockfosters and gun down Hess in his cell’.46 Cockfosters was an intermediate detention centre, consisting of just a few barrack buildings and an administration block, surrounded by a security fence and guard posts. If there really was a desperate German need to prevent Hess revealing details about Barbarossa, it is by no means beyond the realms of possibility that Hitler would have ordered the Cockfosters camp completely destroyed by a concerted and well-targeted raid. If he wanted Hess dead, that would be the only means to assure such an end.

  There is however, another aspect of this story that John McCowen, as a relatively junior Intelligence officer, was unaware of. On 8 June 1941, George Hill, based at Woburn Abbey, wrote a letter, headed ‘SECRET’, to his old friend Rex Leeper. Hill was one of the old gang who had participated in Churchill’s endeavours via Bruce Lockhart, Leeper and Sidney Reilly to destabilise the Bolshevik state in 1918. He was thus one of the trusted few. He began his short missive by revealing that ‘[Con] O’Neill has now finished his liaison with MI.5 over the matter of the parachutists. He attended several of the interrogations, but they are astutely sticking to their story of being sent to rescue our recent acquisition, in the vain hope, I suspect, of believing such a tale will save their skins.’47

  Thus, far from intending to assassinat
e Hess, the agents revealed, after what was undoubtedly a drawn-out and possibly unpleasant interrogation, that their real objective had been to rescue him. This raises a further problem: How did they hope to find a single prisoner held deep in enemy territory?

  There was another alternative, which might explain the particularly hard line taken with these agents. What if their orders from Berlin had not been to kill or rescue Hess, but rather to find out what was taking place in Britain with regard to him? Their true objective is revealed by Hill’s comment to Leeper: ‘However, as we all know their intentions were significantly different [from the purported rescue of Hess], we must be thankful that Mr E[den] was saved from their obvious intentions.’48

  This becomes clearer when it is understood that the young, good-looking and capable Foreign Secretary, who acted as a very effective foil to Churchill’s elder-statesmanlike presence in British politics, was widely regarded as the Prime Minister’s most loyal lieutenant. The truth is a little more complicated, but that is certainly what would have been believed by Hitler, who since the Anglo–German diplomatic shutdown of 1939 had increasingly lost touch with the subtleties of the British political scene.

  Hill’s comment to Leeper suggests that the three parachutists had been sent to Britain with the intention of kidnapping Anthony Eden. This does not however, necessarily present us with the slightly ludicrous picture of trench-coated German agents pouncing on the Foreign Secretary in Whitehall; the whole matter becomes a great deal more serious and deadly when other factors are taken into consideration.

  Firstly, there is the location where the men were parachuted into Britain: less than five miles from Woburn Abbey, a large estate deep in the Bedfordshire countryside. Secondly, they arrived during the early hours of Wednesday, 28 May.

  The significance of these two factors is that on virtually every Saturday morning between the summers of 1940 and 1941, including that of Saturday, 31 May 1941, Anthony Eden would leave London by car, accompanied only by his driver and, occasionally, a plain-clothes policeman, to attend the lunchtime meeting of SO1 at Woburn Abbey. Eden’s journey took him north-west out of London along the old A5 Watling Street road. At Hockliffe, a small market town four miles beyond Dunstable, his car would turn right onto the much narrower road to Woburn, the A4012. Just a mile along this country lane is a sharp left bend, surrounded by hedges and high trees – the only real place for an ambush on the whole road. It is also a mere two miles cross-country from Chalton, where the parachutists landed.