1938: Hitler's Gamble

by MacDonogh, Giles

  On 18 August Reuters announced Kendrick’s arrest by the Gestapo. He had been going on leave to join his daughter in the company of his South African wife and been stopped at Freilassung near Salzburg on the 17th after skirting close to Wehrmacht manoeuvres. He had been taken by train from Salzburg to Vienna and then to their HQ at the Hotel Metropole. He was interned in one of the attic bedrooms next to Louis Rothschild and Schuschnigg. No reason had been given so far for his arrest.37 On 22 August it was revealed that Kendrick was accused of espionage and had confessed.38

  The shooting at Garrowby was interrupted to inform the Foreign Secretary, Halifax. Kendrick had been running the MI6 office for thirteen years.39 It is to be assumed that both Henderson and Halifax were aware of his real role. Henderson believed that Richter’s arrest had started the ball rolling, and that ‘Kendrick’s attempted departure on leave immediately after it will certainly be interpreted as a guilty conscience’.40 Kendrick was interrogated for three days on end in eight-hour relays. The Foreign Office noted that these were ‘practices usually observed in Moscow’.

  Kendrick was released at midday on the 20th and went straight to his flat in Hietzing, to find his wife and members of the British consulate.41 He had orders from Berlin to quit the German Reich within twenty-four hours. He left for Budapest after lunch, as he had no visa to enter any other country, and landed at Croydon Airport on Monday the 22nd.42 The following day the Daily Telegraph ran a picture of his triumphant return. The German authorities maintained that he had been released only because they placed such importance on good relations between the two countries. It appeared that Ribbentrop was angry because he had been kept in the dark by the SD.43 The spirit of Munich was already in the air. The Anglophobe Ribbentrop wanted to show off the panache that would earn him the title of ‘the second Bismarck’.44

  After Kendrick’s departure the entire Vienna MI6 station had to be evacuated. His second-in-command, Kenneth Benton, and his wife Peggie were given twenty-four hours to leave and hot-footed it to Riga while the Gestapo sealed their flat.45 Mary Holmes and Betty Hodgson, the two MI6 secretaries, left in his wake.46 Eric Gedye, the Morning Chronicle’s man in Vienna, a thorn in the side of the Nazis and another suspected agent, was asked to leave. On 22 August he went to Prague, where his wife had established a Daily Telegraph bureau.47,48 The Vice Consul, Walker, who had been in Vienna for nine years, elected not to return after his leave.49 In Berlin, Frank Foley and his entire staff were recalled.50 It was the biggest disaster to befall the British Secret Service before the Venlo Incident of the Phoney War. As Halifax put it in a letter to Anthony Eden: ‘It is altogether a most unfortunate case, and as I expect you know the Consulate General in Vienna have been put at a great disadvantage by the Kendrick Affair and its ramifications.’51

  COLLARD AT THE METROPOLE

  After a lapse of a week, on 3 August the baptisms of Jews had started up again at the Anglican Church. A temporary incumbent, the Rev. Fred Collard, took over from Hugh Grimes. Bishop Batty had been behind the appointment. As Collard wrote later: ‘During my absence in Vienna in 1938 Dr B.S. Batty arranged for the chaplaincy [in Cologne].’52 Collard was an unusual priest: sixty-eight years old, he was a decorated former stretcher-bearer who had risen through the ranks in the Medical Corps. He was gazetted major on his retirement from the Army on the Rhine in 1924 and stayed on in Cologne after demob. He had been instrumental in having the mayor, Konrad Adenauer, award the Rathaus chapel for use by the Anglicans. In the thirties he appears to have been examined for ordination without doing any formal course. From 1935 he was attached as a curate to the church of Saint Anne and Saint Agnes in the City of London – Batty’s church. Possibly Batty ordained him in 1936, and, even if he did not, the bishop certainly knew all about him.53 After his ordination he returned to Cologne to officiate in the former Rathauskapelle.

  On the same day they let Kendrick go, the Gestapo burst into the flat of the chaplain to the British consulate, Grimes, at Lustig Preangasse 10. They found a large number of Jews receiving instruction in the Anglican rite in what was billed as a ‘temporary chapel’, since the church across the road was being redecorated. The Gestapo drove the crowd away and led off Grimes’s locum tenens, Collard, as well as the forty-six-year-old Pollitzer and an unnamed woman.54

  Collard was taken to the Metropole and interrogated at length until the Gestapo agent told him, ‘You can go now.’ He was badly shaken and asked for a police escort, as he feared for his life. The Gestapo preferred no charges but they had ransacked the flat and impounded the baptismal register for a while and confiscated all the money that had been collected from the Jews by Richter and Pollitzer. The latter was demanding an introduction fee of 50 RM a head.55

  Candidates for baptism were obliged to learn the Catechism and the Lord’s Prayer by heart. In return they received an – often backdated -baptismal certificate and the Prayer Book. There was no attempt to convert them properly, and, controversially, there was no immersion in water. Neither Grimes nor Collard ever imagined they would become Anglicans. By the time the loophole closed in September that year, more than 1,800 Jews had become members of the Church of England in this way.

  One likely path taken by Grimes and Collard’s freshly baked Christians was Jugoslavia. Wiesl recorded on 29 August that no anti-Jewish legislation had been enacted there yet, and that there were a ‘few hundred refugees in Jugoslavia’.56 That the Gestapo were also perfectly well aware of what was going on in the Anglican chaplaincy is clear from a report from Bovensiepen, the Gestapo chief in Eisenstadt, dated 11 August:

  In recent days the emigration has proceeded very slowly from here because Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and various other countries have either stopped transit or entry to their territories. They [the Jews] will try anything in order to receive an entry visa to a foreign country. A number of Jews have taken the decision to have themselves baptized according to the Anglican rite in order to obtain permission to cross Jugoslavia and enter Greece.57

  In Vienna Collard was also working overtime after the Gestapo gave him back his register. Huge numbers of hopefuls lined the Lustig Preangasse. Latterly he had started baptizing only every second day, because he needed to drill the candidates in their Catechism. He was receiving more and more Hungarian Jews, possibly because they could no longer enter their own country without Christian credentials. Collard, and Grimes before him, baptized many babies, but they also converted several people in their eighties.

  The converts were a mixed crowd: Melanie Adler, the daughter of the musicologist Guido; Margaret Bettelheim, the sister of the child psychiatrist Bruno; Oskar Bunzl from the leading paper manufacturer; the industrialist Willibald Duschnitz, whose villa had been designed by Adolf Loos; Kitty Fall, whose father Richard composed film scores in Hollywood; Joseph Kläger, an important figure in the IKG; the composers Arthur Kleiner and Erich Zeisl; the architects Oskar Neumann and Oskar Wlach; several members of the ennobled Pollack Parnau family; Lucie Rapoport von Porada and her husband, the parliamentarian Albrecht Freiherr Schey von Koromla; and Gertrude Rie, later Professor of Chemistry at Vassar.

  The British Union of Fascists member George Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers witnessed the scene.

  Approaches to the British consulate in Vienna were blocked with thousands of Jews clamouring for British visas. A large quota were besieging the British chaplaincy, applying for baptismal certificates in order to qualify for the special benefits and assistance in registering for employment in England under the schemes of the ‘Churches’ Committee for Non-Aryan Christians’ and other associated bodies. By the unflagging and persevering efforts of the temporary English chaplain, the permanent English chaplain being on leave, hundreds of Viennese Jews were weekly being baptized at the improvised font in the ‘Office Chapel’ at the English chaplain’s residence, which is situated opposite the English church.

  The church, unfortunately, was not then available owing to it being closed for the annual cleaning and redecorations. Through the
courtesy of the temporary English chaplain I received personal assurance that the good work of ‘conversion’ was proceeding with the utmost possible despatch. I gladly undertook to testify to the work of this hard-pressed representative of the Church of England, who, without other clerical assistance, succeeded in converting, preparing for baptism, and baptizing so many hundreds of Jewish candidates for entry into the Anglican community, of whom not one in a hundred can speak a word of English. Qualifications for baptism were strictly laid down and complied with. Only those were accepted who were furnished with a) a British visa, b) an Ausweis or release from the Jüdischer Kultur Bund [sic], or Jewish congregation; and c) the German police permit to leave the country – and not return. Of course, in addition, converts paid the moderate baptismal fees.

  I am informed it takes four days between application and baptism, during that time candidates are entitled to four hours of instruction in the tenets of the faith and in the Catechism. This, it must be admitted, is not too long a period for those who cannot speak a word of English. I am informed, also, that it is through the Anglican door of baptismal waters that alien Jews can most rapidly prepare for ‘assimilation and absorption’ in their new English homeland, flowing with milk – canned in Switzerland and imported under arrangements of the Milk Marketing Board, and honey – imported from Russia under arrangements of the Board of Trade.

  Comments like those caused concern in Canterbury and Batty was called to account. Lang had already expressed concern about Batty’s desire to send Grimes back to Vienna. They were worried that Grimes might be required to give evidence against Richter. Grimes was even prepared to forgo his £300 stipend. Batty must have lost heart.58 On 15 September, as war loomed, he recalled Collard to Cologne. Six weeks later he made a pastoral visit to Vienna. Little or nothing is known about what he did there, but the conversions ceased.

  Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers was by no means alone in his jaundiced view of Jewish refugees. On 20 August the Daily Express reported that Herbert Metcalf, a magistrate in Old Street in London, had called the idea of Jews coming into Britain ‘an outrage – I intend to enforce the law to the fullest’.59

  Nor were Grimes and Collard alone in their work: 1,702 Jews converted to Catholicism between March and September that year, joining around 8,000 Jewish Christians in Vienna. Father Bichlmair reported to Cardinal Innitzer on non-Aryan Christians. His Pauluswerk charity was dissolved in August and Bichlmair was later deported to the east. In October 1938 two priests and a verger were arrested for falsifying baptismal certificates. Another was taken into custody in February 1939. He admitted to fifty counts.

  The Swedish Church concentrated on Evangelical children of Jewish origin. The Swedish pastor, D. Göte Hedenquist, also admitted to baptizing thirty Jews.60 In the Seegasse at number 16 was the Swedish Mission to Israel, which had been seeking Jewish converts since 1920. After 1938 the mission was turned over to helping the Jews with emigration and housing, as well as providing food and a refuge at lunchtime. In his autobiography Hedenquist claimed to have helped over 3,000 Jews and Jewish Christians to escape. Younger members of the mission were permanently in Eichmann’s HQ obtaining the necessary papers.61

  It was now clear that the consulate had been a nest of spies. An official called Richter ‘a first class menace’. Sir Geoffrey Mander MP tabled one of his usual irate questions in the House, and ‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson made noises until she received a visit from MI5 to warn her that it was not in the public interest to proceed.62 When the storm broke, Grimes contacted the Foreign Office,63 which was responsible for his appointment (he was officially chaplain to the ambassador who was no longer an ambassador since Austria had been subsumed into Germany). The Foreign Office advised him not to return.

  On 25 August he went to see Gladwyn Jebb in Whitehall. He was asked about the various people involved in the scandal. Kendrick, said Grimes, was a Catholic. He had not had many dealings with him, although he admitted to asking for nine or ten passports: a clear allusion to a relief channel often to members of the embassy staff. When Grimes was asked about Richter ‘he registered no surprise and no great dismay . . . [Richter was] a slippery character, and though very useful had always been treated by him with considerable reserve.’ Grimes very possibly objected to Richter’s habit of feathering his nest.64

  The state visit of the Hungarian Regent Admiral Horthy and his Prime Minister Imredy began on 22 August. The Hungarians were present for the launch of the battleship Prinz Eugen in Kiel, at which the honours were performed by the Admiral’s wife and Seyss-Inquart. Prince Eugene of Savoy was an Austrian hero who drove the Turks from Hungary. After the festivities, there was a cruise on the Kaiser Wilhelms Canal. Goebbels was not feeling in the mood to join the party, and sulked in his cabin. The Hungarians were being pinned down about their role in the future Czech débâcle; they were supposed to march into Slovakia while the Germans made for Prague.

  In Berlin Göring was indulging in a little psychological warfare, and with some success. He had invited the French General Vuillemin to Berlin on the 18th and taken him round the country to show off the pride of the new Luftwaffe. Vuillemin took fright. Bella Fromm saw General Milch driving past with him in a cavalcade and wondered what was going on.65 Hitler was in Vienna on 26 August, staying at the Hotel Imperial. The following day the German bishops toed the Pope’s line by condemning the campaign against the Jews.66 Goebbels responded by impounding the pastoral and closing down the presses that printed it. Hitler returned to Vienna on the 28th, to go to the opera to see Hans Knappertsbusch conduct Eugen d’Albert’s Tiefland.67

  PUTSCH

  With the Opposition hoping for a British declaration of war, its members were spurred into activity to make sure that Hitler could not wriggle free. Beck remained at the helm; in Berlin police headquarters Helldorf and Schulenburg were primed. Hans Oster ran between Halder at the General Staff and Weizsäcker in the Wilhelmstrasse. Schacht too was playing his part. The Chancellery was to be literally stormed by troops commanded by General Witzleben. Erich Kordt had access to the building and was to make sure that the doors to Hitler’s study were kept open. The older men were anxious that Hitler should stand trial, whereas the younger ones were keener on the Nazi formula: shot trying to escape. It was important to make sure that Himmler’s SS were disarmed immediately. Naturally the Gestapo needed to be taken out and the radio station occupied at the same time.

  In London a meeting had been arranged between the diplomat Theo Kordt and Chamberlain’s advisor Sir Horace Wilson on 23 August, in Conwell-Evans’ flat in Cornwall Gardens. Sir Horace was told of the mood of the German Opposition and a report was drafted for the German Foreign Office in code. Sir Horace issued an assurance that Kordt’s message would be given to the Prime Minister but there was no promise of support. Theo Kordt was already doctoring all his reports from London to make the British appear more bent on war than was the case. Hitler’s information on whether the British would act had been supplied by Ribbentrop, who was more bellicose than his master. He insisted that the British would not move a muscle, and he was not wrong.v

  As this did not produce the declaration the Opposition required, Weizsäcker and Erich Kordt decided to send another message to the British government. This time it was transmitted by the Kordts’ cousin Susy Simonis, who committed the whole text to memory and took it to Theo Kordt in London on 5 September, who then wrote it down and conveyed it to Sir Horace Wilson in his office in Downing Street. The message provided exact details of Hitler’s plans to go to war and his refusal to believe that the British and French would stand in his way. Sir Horace promised to transmit the message to the Foreign Secretary, and told Cadogan of the visit. A secret meeting between Theo Kordt and Halifax was arranged at Downing Street for 7 September. He entered Number Ten by the garden. Once within, Kordt made it clear to Halifax that he had come as a representative of the Opposition and proceeded to repeat the need for a clear and unequivocal statement of intent on Britain’s part. He then des
cribed what would happen if this were to happen: Hitler would be eliminated. Halifax promised to inform the Prime Minister.

  Nothing ensued. Ciano summed the position up on 29 August when he said, ‘The English [sic] will do anything to avoid a conflict.’68 Weizsäcker sent for his friend, the Swiss High Commissioner in Danzig, Carl Burckhardt, and implored him to get in touch with the British. The only way forward, he said, was to send someone who could shout back at Hitler –

  none of these all-too-polite Englishmen of the old school. If Chamberlain comes, these louts will triumph and proclaim that some Englishman has taken his cue and come to heel . . . they should send an energetic military man who, if necessary, can shout and hit the table with a riding crop; a marshal with many decorations and scars, a man without too much consideration.69

  Burckhardt went hotfoot to Berne where he roused the British minister from his bed. He was able to tell him of Beck’s resignation and its cause. He followed this up by calling R.A. Butler, Minister of State in the Foreign Office, and once again he presented Weizsäcker’s views. In Geneva he consulted colleagues at the League of Nations about who was a suitable strong man to send to Hitler. The name suggested by Weizsäcker was General Ironside, a tough and powerfully built soldier who possessed the rare advantage of speaking fluent German.

  9

  SEPTEMBER

  Chamberlain went north to declare war on the grouse, while Henderson returned to Berlin and entertained Weizsäcker at dinner on 2 September. It had been the ambassador’s idea that Chamberlain should meet Hitler face to face; that way, he thought, Ribbentrop could be shouldered out.1 Henderson appears to have informed the German of Chamberlain’s ostensibly top-secret plans, because the premier didn’t tell his Inner Cabinet until the 8th and the main British Cabinet did not learn of the idea of the visit to Hitler until the 14th.2