The Hitler–Hess Deception

by Martin Allen

  Eden was fortunate that the German agents were apprehended, for there is little doubt that they would have killed both his driver and the policeman, before attempting to make off with him to some hidden and secure spot where they would interrogate him about the truth concerning Hess’s situation, and perhaps also about the peaceable intent emanating from Woburn. It may even have been part of the parachutists’ orders that they were to hold Eden hostage until Hess was delivered safely to neutral territory, such as Ireland, Spain or Sweden.

  All this must, to a certain degree, be speculation; but it has a basis in the known documentation, combined with our knowledge of SO1’s endeavours over the previous nine months. It is therefore certainly within the realms of possibility, particularly if undertaken by very determined men with everything to play for.

  However, Woburn Abbey contained equally determined men. George Hill wrote to Rex Leeper: ‘Mr O’Neill is of the opinion that they [the parachutists] have no useful information and can now be duly dispatched. I do not believe that these man can be turned or otherwise used, and agree with Mr O’Neill, but if you have any other wishes, please let me know.’49

  As it happened, Leeper did not have any contrary wishes, which sealed the fate of the three agents. He duly scrawled across the bottom of Hill’s letter: ‘I see no reason to keep these men. Yes – MI-5 can conduct their usual services but notify Sir Robert Vansittart first. R. Leeper.’50

  Following Hess’s arrival, some of the more radical members of the House of Lords began making statements that indicated a lack of stomach for continuing the war. Some were even openly suggesting that Britain would have to sue for peace by the autumn.51

  One of the most dangerous of these peers was the Duke of Bedford, who by strange coincidence was the owner of Woburn Abbey. On the very day of Hess’s arrival he had written to a political acquaintance suggesting that now was the time for David Lloyd George to make his stand for a peaceable accord with Germany. Lloyd George, the Duke wrote, should issue a public statement setting out Britain’s terms for peace, to which Germany could respond. The Duke went so far as to comment that Lloyd George was ‘obviously the one man who could save the country’.52

  Churchill would had been well aware of this rising tide of antiwar sentiment, and he must have wondered whether SO1 had unintentionally created a many-headed Hydra that would destroy his premiership before Hitler attacked Russia and Britain could broach the tide of war.

  Time was what it came down to. Was there time for Hitler to launch his greatest folly, the committing of Germany to war with Russia, before the frightened peers and politicians of Westminster gained sufficient impetus to challenge Churchill’s leadership, and force through a compromise peace with Germany? Or would Hitler, suspecting that something was seriously amiss with the supposed Hoare–Halifax peace faction, lack sufficient confidence at the last moment to launch his invasion of the Soviet Union?

  On Tuesday, 3 June 1941, Churchill’s confidence received a substantial boost from Military Intelligence’s most optimistic assessment to date. Headed ‘Recent German Activities and Possible Intentions’, the two-page report commented: ‘A continued advance through North Africa into Egypt combined with a pincer movement from the north on Suez must certainly be tempting, but there have been no signs of the recent reinforcement of German troops in North Africa.’53

  Military Intelligence believed it was much more likely that Russia would soon be subjected to aggressive German attention:

  During May there was first of a spate of rumours, many of which could be traced to German sources, announcing an imminent German attack on Russia …

  Germany undoubtedly wants certain food-stuffs and raw materials from the Ukraine and oil from the Caucasus … There is said to be a difference of opinion between the political and the military leaders in Germany as to whether these aims should be achieved by persuasion or by force, and it is probable that Hitler has not yet taken a decision on the point.

  The assessment ended with a brief handwritten afterthought: ‘Meanwhile reports of train movements suggest that Germany intends to be in a position to implement her threats if the Soviet [Union] should prove obdurate.’ This last comment was more important than much of the prior document, giving as it did the first clear indication that things were definitely afoot in the east. Unbeknownst to many at the War Office, Churchill was already beginning to learn this from his highly secret daily caseload of Bletchley Park decrypts.

  At the very time MI14’s appreciation of 3 June was being disseminated in Whitehall and Downing Street, Hitler’s interpreter, Paul Schmidt, was writing his notes on a meeting which had taken place the previous day between his Führer and Benito Mussolini at the Brenner Pass, which links Austria and Italy. Much had been discussed by the two dictators during their day-long meeting, ranging from Axis relations with Japan to the military situations in North Africa and the Middle East.

  During the course of the conversation, the subject of Churchill had come up, and what Hitler told the Duce revealed something of his understanding of the political situation in Britain: ‘If Churchill resigned, [Hitler said, he felt that] … perhaps Lloyd George or Sir Samuel Hoare would take over the government; in any event, the English would not fight to the last ounce of their supplies.’54 In fact this analysis was far from the truth, but so long as Hitler believed it there was every chance that he would take the catastrophic decision to attack Russia while still committed to war with Britain and her allies.

  On Saturday, 14 June, Hitler attended a conference with his military high command to discuss the final details of Barbarossa, which was destined to be launched the following weekend. This would be a war like no other, Hitler told his generals, not only as a fight to the finish between two totally opposing political ideologies, but also in terms of the Reich’s expansion to make living space for its peoples at the expense of the sub-humans to the east. General Franz Halder, chief of the army General Staff, concerned by Hitler’s tone, noted that the Führer ‘said that the struggle between Russia and Germany was a Russian struggle. He stated that since the Russians were not signatories of the Hague Convention, the treatment of their prisoners of war did not have to follow the Articles of the Convention.’55

  This was one of the first ominous notes to be sounded about the campaign to come, a murderous war that would see millions die, as a result of direct military action, or of disease and starvation as the Red Army struggled to hold Hitler’s forces at bay. Stalin’s only advantage would be the same one that had defeated Napoleon 130 years before – the vastness of Russia, and the appalling severity of her winters.

  On the day following Hitler’s meeting with his high command, Churchill dispatched a ciphered telegram to President Roosevelt informing him:

  From every source at my disposal, including some most trustworthy [Ultra], it looks as if a vast German onslaught on Russia is imminent … Should this new war break out we shall of course give all encouragement and any help we can spare to the Russians, following the principle that Hitler is the foe we have to beat. I do not expect any class political reactions here, and trust a German–Russian conflict will not cause you any embarrassment …56

  Later that week, Robert Bruce Lockhart was invited down from Woburn Abbey to Downing Street. After dining with the Prime Minister and a few other select guests, he noted in his diary: ‘Arthur Yencken [was] there – sent by Sam Hoare … I cramp Yencken’s style. Brendan [Bracken] comes in … [and he is] very anti-Dalton …’57

  Why Arthur Yencken, Minister Plenipotentiary based out at the Madrid Embassy with Captain Hillgarth and therefore Sam Hoare’s second-in-command, had been sent all the way to Britain by Hoare is not clear. It is known that he reported on Serano Suñer’s gastric ulcer, and had some criticisms of SO2 to pass on, but these were all items that could have been conveyed in a ciphered telegram. There must have been an additional reason for his presence at 10 Downing Street.

  During the period between Rudolf Hess’s surprising appear
ance in Britain and the dispatch of Arthur Yencken to London, Sam Hoare had been visited by another friend of Albrecht Haushofer’s, Don Joachim Bar. In a ‘most secret’ memorandum, headed ‘Subsequent Note on the Candid Proposals of DJB’, Hoare reported to London that Bar had revealed that he had recently been visited by Ribbentrop’s agent in Paris, Hans Gardeman, yet another old friend of Albrecht Haushofer, who had helped Gardeman secure his much-coveted posting to Paris. Gardeman, Hoare reported, had asked Bar to act as an intermediary between himself (Hoare) and the German government.

  Hoare must have blanched at the thought of resuming his extremely difficult and distasteful role as make-believe peace envoy for a non-existent political force poised to topple his own government. He deftly fended Bar off, reporting to London that once again Germany was wielding her ‘big stick’, intimating that Britain should make peace soon, or she would suffer the consequences, ‘with new destructive methods so terrible … that anything done hitherto will seem mere child’s play’.58 The men in London were not impressed. Germany had done her worst for nearly a year, and the ‘big stick’ had been found wanting.

  On Monday, 16 June, Bletchley Park issued its analysis of the latest decrypts, reporting to Churchill their belief that a German attack on Russia was imminent, and could come at any time after 19 June – only three days away.59

  Despite this heartening sign that Hitler was about to make his fatal blunder, there was still much cause for concern. The Foreign Office was not convinced that ‘Germany intended to attack Russia’, and believed it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Hitler was conducting a potentially war-winning bluff of his own, and that Germany’s tremendous military build-up might be a ruse to force Stalin to accept Hitler’s territorial and economic demands.60 This belief was strengthened on 19 June, when the Foreign Office received information from the Swedish government that it expected Germany to issue economo-territorial demands to Russia within the next week.61

  Despite these concerns, Winston Churchill, who received much from Bletchley Park that the Foreign Office was completely ignorant of, was absolutely convinced that the latter half of June would see Hitler take the plunge into probable disaster. On Friday, 20 June, Churchill withdrew to Chequers to await developments, convinced that ‘the German onslaught upon Russia was a matter of days, or it might be hours’, away.62

  On Saturday, 21 June, Churchill’s Private Secretary ‘Jock’ Colville arrived at Chequers. As the two men took an evening stroll around the croquet lawn after dinner, Colville tentatively asked the Prime Minister ‘whether for him, the arch anti-Communist, this [inevitable need to support and join forces with Russia] was not bowing down to the House of Rimmon’. Churchill was in a good mood that evening, and had chuckled, replying: ‘Not at all. I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified therein. If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.’63

  He did not have long to wait, for Hitler was about to invade a Hell of his own making. Even as Colville and Churchill strolled around the grounds of Chequers that Saturday evening, in eastern Europe, along a front nearly 450 miles long, Axis corps commanders were receiving their final orders, and tanks, armoured cars and footsoldiers numbering nearly four million were dispersing to their jumping-off points for an attack that would be launched at dawn the next morning. Operation Barbarossa was about to begin.

  ‘When I awoke on the morning of Sunday, the 22nd,’ Churchill would later recall, ‘the news was brought to me of Hitler’s invasion of Russia. This changed conviction into certainty.’64 It was the event that Churchill had long hoped for. Ever since the debacle of Dunkirk, and through the Battle of Britain, he had known that Britain could not defeat Germany on her own. Yes, she had the support of the dominions, the Free French, and a few exiled Czechs, Poles, Dutch and Belgians. However, Nazi Germany was a prodigious foe, which now had most of occupied Europe to supply her war needs. It was, as Rex Leeper had commented during one of SOl’s Saturday meetings in February 1941, becoming increasingly clear that Britain was probably unable to win in Europe.65 The Axis was just too big, the territorial losses just too vast for Britain to recover from. Yet this had not meant that Nazi Germany was invincible, and the men of Whitehall had come to the conclusion that Britain, with the help of the United States and the Soviet Union, could win a world war.66 That high-risk formula had eventually won through little more than twenty years before, when Germany had found herself in the fatal situation of fighting a two-front war. Now, it seemed, Hitler had made exactly the same mistake.

  Later that evening, having spent much of the day writing his speech, Churchill broadcast to the nation:

  The Nazi regime is indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. It is devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination. It excels all forms of human wickedness in the efficiency of its cruel and ferocious aggression. No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years … But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, and its tragedies, flashes away …

  I see advancing [upon Russia the] hideous onslaught of the Nazi war machine, with its clanking, heel-clicking, dandified Prussian officers … the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of locusts . .. [And] behind all this storm, I see that small group of villainous men who plan, organise, and launch this cataract of horrors upon mankind …

  We have but one aim and one single, irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn us – nothing.

  Perhaps allowing himself a little private irony, Churchill went on:

  We will never parley, we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air, until … we have rid the earth of his shadow and liberated its peoples from his yoke … if Hitler imagines that his attack on Soviet Russia will cause the slightest divergence of aims or slackening of effort in the great democracies who are resolved upon his doom, he is woefully mistaken. On the contrary, we shall be fortified and encouraged in our efforts to rescue mankind from his tyranny …67

  During the autumn of 1941, Hitler was to comment to his guests over dinner one evening: ‘On the 22nd of June, a door opened before us, and we didn’t known what was behind it. We could look out for gas warfare, bacteriological warfare. The heavy uncertainty took me by the throat. Here we were faced by beings who are complete strangers to us. Everything that resembles civilisation, the Bolsheviks have suppressed it.’ In a chilling portent of the horrors to come, he commented: ‘I have no feelings about the idea of wiping out Kiev, Moscow or St Petersburg.’68

  On Tuesday, 16 December 1941, one of Albrecht Haushofer’s assistants at Berlin University, Frau Irmegard Schnuhr, was alarmed to receive a sudden and discreet summons to the Reich Chancellery.

  In the months following the collapse of the Hitler–Hess–Hoare–Halifax negotiations, Albrecht’s fortunes had waxed and waned in accordance with the progress of the war. At times his position would seem secure, and the leaders of the Reich would actively seek his counsel; at others, top Nazis such as Goebbels would snipe at his racial background. At one low point he lost his prestigious post as Secretary-General of the Society of Geography. But Albrecht Haushofer remained in Germany, and did not flee to the safety of Switzerland although he could easily have done so.

  Haushofer moved quickly to realign himself with several new and powerful champions. The first was Rudolf Hess’s replacement within the chain of command at the Chancellery, Martin Bormann. Within a short space of time Haushofer was busily writing reports for Bormann. However, these were not on foreign affairs, but rather pandered to Bormann’s personal ambitions. They were Haushofer’s secret assessments of the top personalities in Nazi Germany, such as Göring, Ribbentrop, Goebbel
s, Ley and others. Appraisals of their standing in internal and foreign politics, and whether or not they might one day pose a threat to Bormann.

  Haushofer’s other new alliance was an altogether more sinister and dangerous one, with the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. Himmler had been a political ally of Hess’s – which was curious, for the two men were opposites in many ways. Despite being head of the quasi-mystical Schutzstaffel, sworn to the service of the Führer, Himmler had no intention of going down with the Nazi Party should Germany lose the war, and he too began to use Haushofer to further his own ends of negotiating a peace settlement with the Allies. It was an alliance that would protect Haushofer’s life, even after he became involved in the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler, but only until the exact moment he outlived his usefulness to Himmler.

  In the meantime, in the autumn of 1941 Albrecht was still in favour, and in November he had written a twenty-page report for Hitler on the possibilities of still negotiating a peace agreement with Britain.69 This was a far-reaching and complex document. It not only explored the failings of the prior peaceable attempts (primarily that of 1940–41, which Haushofer had participated in with Hess) and made suggestions for the conditions under which future discussions should take place, but went into great depth on matters such as American influence in the Pacific, Japanese influence in the Far East, the dangers posed by a unified Anglo–American power-base, and Germany’s future role in Europe, the Middle East, Russia and the Indo-Pacific regions.