A glance through the diary offers a far greater insight into Hassell than the dense, coded entries in his own diaries:
1 Feb 1933: Hindenburg has nominated Adolf Hitler as chancellor. My father is appalled …
2 May 1933: Today trade unions have been banned in Germany … at dinner my father said that Germany is going from bad to worse, and quickly.
2 Sept 1933: My father has returned from Berlin, where he met Hitler. He says that conversation with him is impossible. He never stops talking and always on whatever subject happens to interest him at that moment. Any kind of discussion is out of the question … Since Hitler abolished all other political parties last July, my father thinks that democracy is over in Germany …
7 July 1934: We heard about the massacre that Hitler organized with the help of the SS.fn2 My father is horrified; I have never seen him so pale. He says that the foreign newspapers are right to consider the whole lot a bunch of gangsters … He is in a state of turmoil and asks himself infinite questions. Can one avoid their domination? What can one do? Is it still useful to work with them to avoid worse things?
18 Sept 1935: My father has just come back from the Nuremberg rally and is horrified by the militaristic display of it all. But that is nothing in comparison to the anti-Semitic laws that have been announced. My father is terribly worried for his Jewish friends.
12 May 1937: We no longer talk about politics at table, since my father has found out that Reinecke has been spying on him.fn3 That pig!
From a political and social perspective, 1937 had been a year ‘the likes of which’, Hassell admitted, ‘I have never experienced before’.28 Following the declaration of the Rome–Berlin Axis in October 1936, an agreement informally linking the two Fascist countries, there had been a flood of official visits from Germany. Hermann Göring, the chief of the Luftwaffe, visited five times and Himmler twice. Rudolph Hess, Hitler’s deputy, and Robert Ley, head of the Nazi labour movement and editor of a virulently anti-Semitic newspaper, had also stayed at the embassy, along with a host of government ministers and army generals. Entourages had to be accommodated; dinners, lunches and receptions hosted; sightseeing parties organized; and shopping expeditions arranged. ‘There is no limit!’ Hassell wrote in his diary.29
Regardless of political differences, the overblown behaviour of the visitors offended Hassell’s Prussian sensibilities. None more so than Göring. To Hassell’s embarrassment, that January, at a ball held in his honour at the Palazzo Venezia, the Luftwaffe chief had toured the room tapping the emeralds on the tiaras of the assembled principesse, complaining that they were not as big as Frau Göring’s.30 A few months later, passing through Rome on his way to Naples, he was back again: ‘Göring will come in the next few days, totally privately, “with almost no retinue” – 5 railway carriages!’ Hassell noted on 21 April.31 The visit got off to a bad start after he met him at the station in his official car: ‘He found our car completely not up to scratch.32 We had to have a 200 horsepower Mercedes, like Ribbentrop. I told him I wasn’t Ribbentrop.’
Later that day, he showed Göring around Rome, finishing at the Vatican, the highlight of the tour. Crossing the square in front of St Peter’s, oblivious to its splendour, Göring outlined his and Hitler’s foreign-policy objectives for the coming year. ‘His remarks were in the style of a newly qualified cadet turned Caesar,’ Hassell wrote.33 ‘We had to swallow Austria soon, that was our priority, and also Czechoslovakia. He thought no one would complain!’
When at last he stopped to look up at St Peter’s, Göring was unimpressed. ‘It’s just a toy compared to the Führer’s new hall at Nürnberg,’ he told Hassell.34 ‘When it’s finished the hall will be twice as tall and twice as wide. Big enough to dangle that cupola from the ceiling, like a chandelier.’
‘These were the thoughts St Peter’s Square inspired in him, displayed as it was in front of us in all its beauty and glory,’ Hassell noted drily.35
The strain of having to kowtow to the stream of unpleasant visitors from Berlin and to maintain the charade that he was loyal to the Nazi Party took its toll on Hassell. He was receiving medical treatment for stress-related digestive problems and his doctor had placed him on a special diet. Repeatedly, Hassell questioned whether it was right to serve such an immoral regime. But he always came back to the same conclusion; on the ‘outside’, it would be impossible to influence the Nazis’ foreign policy. Keeping up the pretence of loyalty was a necessary compromise if he was to continue to fight for his principles and to pursue his dream of reviving Germany’s fortunes in a United States of Europe. ‘Pour moi l’Europe a le sens d’une patrie’ – a quite extraordinary statement for his time.36
By the autumn of 1937, however, Hassell recognized that his dream was unobtainable. Mussolini’s euphoria following his trip to Germany indicated that a formal alliance with Hitler was inevitable. Convinced that such an agreement would lead to war, particularly with two such unpredictable and explosive heads of government, Hassell tried to persuade Hitler to confine an alliance with Italy to cultural and economic cooperation. He continued to argue his case, even after both Mussolini and Göring warned him that if he persisted in his opposition Hitler would dismiss him.
His lone campaign also placed a strain on his family. Though Ilse, his wife, and their four children were staunchly anti-Nazi, they too were forced to lead a double life. The two boys, Hans Dieter and Wolf Ulli, were away at school and university, but the girls – Fey, aged nineteen, and Almuth, twenty-five – were living at the Villa Wolkonsky. With the Gestapo’s spies installed at the embassy, the family no longer had any privacy or the opportunity to vent their feelings against the regime. After the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, Fey, then fifteen, had started having recurring nightmares about the Nazis, which she recorded in her diary. ‘I saw the Bay of Naples, which was almost black, and above it, a yellow full moon. Gradually the moon turned into Hitler and became ashen coloured, like ice. Then it changed into a skull.’ At sixteen, she was required to join the local branch of the Hitler Youth, where she would be bullied by one of the cadets who worked as a gardener at the embassy. He had wanted to oust the leader, a close friend of hers, and had complained to Berlin that the man was unsuitable as he took the group to church and to parties. Fey’s response was to compose a letter to Berlin, stating her support for the leader, which she persuaded twenty people to sign. When the gardener found out, he asked her to hand over the letter and threatened to report her, saying that such activities now carried the death penalty in Germany. Fey found the threats absurd, but they were nonetheless upsetting.
Prior to the dinner at Villa Madama, there had been another unpleasant incident, involving her elder sister, Almuth. After drinks at the embassy, Hassell and his wife had taken Heydrich and Himmler to watch Antony and Cleopatra, which was being filmed at Cinecittà, the new studios built by Mussolini. Almuth went with them, travelling in one of the embassy cars with Heydrich and his deputy, Kurt Daluege. As soon as they arrived, she went over to her parents and quietly begged them to let her travel back in their car, as the Gestapo chiefs’ ‘crude and brutish jokes’ were too much for her.37
The inevitable move against Hassell came the day after Himmler and Heydrich left Rome. On the evening of 21 October, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Ambassador in London, landed at a military airport outside the city. The purpose of his visit was cloaked in secrecy; the press reported that it was a private trip with his daughter, who was recuperating after a car accident. In fact, Ribbentrop, acting as special envoy for the Führer, was in Rome for a secret meeting with Mussolini. His task was to persuade the dictator to agree to Italy becoming a signatory to the Anti-Comintern Pact, an agreement concluded between Germany and Japan to contain the spread of Communism.
Hassell was at the airport to meet him. When Ribbentrop stepped off the plane, he handed him a document, signed by Konstantin von Neurath, the German foreign secretary, granting Ribbentrop the right to conduct all negotiations with the Ita
lian dictator. Hassell was even excluded from the meeting. He saw it as a personal betrayal; hours before, Neurath had told him that he had ‘full authority to scupper Ribbentrop’s plan’.38 By the end of the following day, Italy’s inclusion in the anti-Communist alliance was a fait accompli. It signalled the reorientation of German foreign policy against Britain and France and, as Hassell believed, towards world conflict.
Mussolini did not sign the pact until 6 November. In the interim, in meetings with Ribbentrop and Neurath, Hassell continued to argue against it, condemning the alliance as ‘block-building’ and ‘dangerous adventure politics’.39, 40 Repeatedly, he asked for a private audience with Hitler to convince him to leave Italy out of the pact. But the Führer refused to see him.
Both in Germany and Italy, Hassell’s enemies were already calling for his removal. On 27 October, Ciano saw Hess, Hitler’s deputy, who was also in Rome. ‘I took advantage to ask for von Hassell’s head since he has been playing both ends against the middle for too long.41 I have documented the reasons for our mistrust in the man. Hess nodded and will speak to the Führer about it. He asked me for suggestions about a successor. I told him that a Party man would be fine. The alliance between the two countries is based, above all, on the identity of political systems that determines a common destiny. Simul stabunt, simul cadent [Together we stand, together we fall].’
Hassell was dismissed at the beginning of December. So great was his humiliation, he did not record the details in his diary. It was left to Fey to write about it in hers: ‘My father says that it is already all over for him. Ciano and Ribbentrop are clamouring for his dismissal because he stands in the way of their warmongering policies.’
One of Hassell’s last acts before leaving was to ask Himmler, who was in Rome on another visit, to stop persecuting Professor Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Prize-winning German physicist. The professor had been publicly attacked in Das Schwarze Korps, the SS newspaper, for refusing to renounce Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.42 Branding Heisenberg ‘a White Jew’, the editorial stated that he should be made to ‘disappear’.fn4 During the meeting at the embassy, Himmler reiterated that he would only rehabilitate Heisenberg if he ‘disassociated himself from Einstein’s Theory’.43
‘Politics and diplomacy teach one a great deal about intrigue and lies.44 But I must confess that I never thought such an infernal mess possible,’ Hassell wrote in January 1938. At the time, he was still expecting Hitler to offer him another posting. Flattered throughout his career by his Weimar contemporaries, who believed him to be the most promising diplomat of his generation, he was guilty of hubris. He could not believe that it was all over. He had also allowed his love for Germany to cloud his judgement; while the evidence was growing in plain sight – and he saw it – he could not believe that his country would ever fully embrace the Nazis. The ‘gangsters’, as he called them, were some sort of temporary aberration. Once they were removed, Germany would be handed back to its traditional Prussian ruling class.
Kristallnacht – Hitler’s pogrom against the Jews in November 1938 – was a turning point for Hassell. Using the pretext of the murder by a young Polish Jew of Ernst von Rath, a German diplomat based in Paris, the SS and Gestapo carried out a wave of attacks against Jews across the Reich, assisted by civilians. On the night of 9 November, some 250 synagogues were set on fire; simultaneously, in excess of 7,000 Jewish shops and businesses were vandalized and Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools and homes looted, while police and fire brigades stood by.45 Dozens of Jews were killed and more than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to the newly built concentration camps at Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Dachau.
‘I am writing under crushing emotions evoked by the vile persecution of the Jews after the murder of von Rath.46 Not since the world war have we lost so much credit in the world,’ Hassell wrote in his diary on 25 November, two weeks after the riots. ‘I am most deeply troubled about the effect on our national life, which is dominated ever more inexorably by a system capable of such things … There is no doubt that we are dealing with an officially organised anti-Jewish riot which broke out at the same hour of the night all over Germany! Truly a disgrace!’
Two days later, he saw Hugo Bruckmann, owner of a publishing conglomerate and an early supporter and promoter of Hitler: ‘Conversations with B—— as to what one could do to give public expression to the general abhorrence of these methods.47 Unfortunately, without success: without office we have no effective weapon. Any action on our part would lead to our being gagged – or worse.’
In the coming months, Hassell would hold a series of secret meetings with two similarly minded men. They were General Ludwig Beck, who had just resigned from his position as Chief of the General Staff in protest against Hitler’s policies, and Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig and Reich commissioner for price control.
Together, led by General Beck, they would form the core of the German Resistance – a clandestine movement whose central objective was to kill Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime.
8.
Ebenhausen, Bavaria, 6 March 1943
The house, once owned by Hassell’s father-in-law, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, stood on its own on the edge of the village. There was a church nearby, hidden by ancient yews. Otherwise, the house was situated in open country, the view stretching across the valley.
From the top floor, Hassell peered through the slats of the shutters. There was no one in sight but he could not throw off the sensation that he was being watched.
Retrieving a pair of binoculars from a drawer in his desk, he opened the shutters a fraction and focused on the ridge opposite. Trees ran along it and, when he had last looked, he was sure he had seen two men on the edge of the wood.
After some minutes, satisfied there was no one there, he put the binoculars back in his desk and took out a sheaf of papers, which he stuffed into his pocket. Then he went downstairs, and out into the garden. Stopping briefly to double-check there was no one about, he crossed the lawn to an old stone outhouse. The garden was well laid out and, to the casual observer, the building had the appearance of a carefully conceived grotto. But Hassell had purposely allowed the roses that climbed over the ruins to grow wild. Stooping down, he parted the undergrowth, looking for the foxhole.
It was a ritual he went through every time he returned to Ebenhausen. In his pocket were the latest pages of his diary. He did not make daily entries; it was not safe to travel around Germany with incriminating papers and far too risky to keep them in his flat in Berlin. Instead he would wait until he was at Ebenhausen to write up the events of a week or two, based on notes he had jotted down on scraps of paper and concealed in the lining of his jacket. Then he added the entries to the tea caddy that he had buried by the outhouse.
His entries had none of the reticence of his Rome diaries. Singularly focused on the conspiracy to overthrow Hitler, Hassell recorded every secret assignation, every rumour he heard regarding the Führer’s health and mental well-being, and every whisper of an opposition move. His informants were among the most highly placed men in the Nazi regime: army generals, serving with the Wehrmacht’s High Command; agents working for the Abwehr, German military intelligence; officials in the Foreign Office; men attached to the personal staff of Hitler’s immediate entourage. There were reports, too, of Hassell’s meetings with representatives of the US and British governments who, he and Beck hoped, might help precipitate a coup.
For Hassell, the diary was a dossier. He was working closely with Hans Oster and Hans von Dohnányi, leading conspirators in the Abwehr, who were also compiling material on the crimes of the regime: on atrocities committed by SS and Nazi leaders; on criminal and immoral practices in the Hitler Youth; on profiteering and infringements of the law; on the ill-treatment of prisoners in both Germany and Nazi-occupied countries; and on the pogroms against the Jews.1 The evidence was to be used not only to convince key individuals of the necessity of regime change but also subsequently for l
egal proceedings against the culprits.
So great was the danger to Hassell, so explosive the contents of the diary, that, in May 1942, he was forced to abandon it. Leaving the notebook buried in the foxhole, it was not until later that summer that he had the courage to resume. ‘For several months I have been unable to write up my diary,’ his entry on 1 August began. ‘Certain information I received toward the end of April made it imperative to exercise more caution.’2
The information came from Ernst von Weizsäcker, Hassell’s mole in the Foreign Office. While he was state secretary, one of the highest-ranking officials, he met regularly with Hassell to keep him abreast of developments. They were close friends of long standing and Weizsäcker, though unwilling to resign his position, professed to support a coup against Hitler. On 29 April, he had asked Hassell to meet him at his house. Hassell assumed it was to discuss Hitler’s recent reshuffle at the Foreign Office, yet to his dismay, despite many years of friendship, Weizsäcker had summoned him to break off contact. ‘He carefully closed the windows and doors, and announced with some emphasis that he had a very serious matter to discuss with me,’ Hassell wrote.3 ‘For the time being, he had to ask me to spare him the embarrassment of my presence.’4
Rumours had reached the state secretary that Hassell had been overheard criticizing the regime and calling for Hitler’s removal, thereby placing Weizsäcker himself in great danger and costing him ‘sleepless nights’. ‘When I started to remonstrate he interrupted me harshly,’ Hassell continued.5 ‘He then proceeded to heap reproaches on me as he paced excitedly up and down. I had been unbelievably indiscreet, quite unheard of; as a matter of fact, “with all due deference”, so had my wife. This was all known in certain places (the Gestapo), and they claimed even to have documents. He must demand, most emphatically, that I correct this behaviour. When I attempted to interrupt he became annoyed and said again and again: “Get this straight! If you do not want to understand me then I must break off” … I had no idea, he said, how people were after me (the Gestapo). Every step I took was observed. I should certainly burn everything I had in the way of notes which covered conversations in which one or another of us had said this or that.’
The Lost Boys Page 6