Maxwell, The Outsider

by Tom Bower

  Maxwell's ambition also deeply impressed Major-General L.O. Lyne, of the 59th (Staffordshire) Division, who recommended his promotion to second lieutenant. Simultaneously, Carthew-Yourston suggested that du Maurier and Jones were no longer suitable names. The Brigadier proposed a Scottish one, Robert Maxwell. Jan Hoch was not quite prepared to lose his identity completely and therefore adopted Ian as his first Christian name. Long after the war, Ian Robert Maxwell could not quite decide which Christian name to use.

  It was usual for a soldier promoted from the ranks to be transferred to another regiment. Maxwell was posted to the Fifth Battalion of Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) then stationed near Brussels. Carthew-Yourston's letter of introduction to the regiment was flattering: 'This man has a very strong personality. He is well disciplined but will for various reasons give far better results if he has a certain amount of freedom of choice and movement than in a post where he is surrounded by too many rules and restrictions. His sense of duty is outstanding and his desire to kill Huns a driving force. I hope you will enjoy his company. I know that you have acquired a most valuable officer.' While waiting for the next battle, Maxwell regularly travelled, on a captured German motorbike with a sidecar attached, from Belgium down to Paris to court Betty. Their relationship was interrupted in December when the regiment moved up towards Holland. In the midst of bitter, snowy weather he arrived at Vloed and introduced himself to his new commanding officer, Major D.J. Watson of 'A' Company.

  Watson remembers Second Lieutenant Maxwell as a 'popular and outstanding officer' who quickly displayed the qualities which Carthew-Yourston described. The Fifth were preparing for a push towards the River Roer on a twelve-mile front, codenamed 'Operation Blackcock', which would be supported by three armoured groups. Conditions were worsening as Maxwell's battalion moved forward at 2 a.m. on 17 January 1945. A thaw had turned the snow into thick mud which, combined with fog and the darkness, frustrated their attempts to move their guns across the dykes. By daylight, the Germans were counter-attacking and in the fierce fighting many British lives were lost. During the day, the British position worsened, their casualties increased and the tanks sank further into the mud. It was twelve days into the attack that Maxwell's moment of destiny occurred. During the night of 29th/30th a large number of German troops crossed the river and successfully attacked a village which was occupied by Maxwell's battalion. It was a critical battle which was closely monitored by the senior staff at Corps headquarters. In fierce fighting, two platoons found themselves under heavy fire and effectively cut off. Maxwell, according to Watson, 'splendidly led' his platoon in a frontal assault against the Germans now ensconced in the houses. By all accounts, Maxwell rushed a window under withering fire, and after killing the machine-gunner led a counter-attack, forcing the Germans to retreat with heavy losses. Major Watson was impressed by the 'brisk and spirited action which is not mentioned in any history book' and recommended the young officer for an award. His citation read:

  During the attack on Paarlo on 29 January 1945, Lieutenant Maxwell was leading his platoon when a heavy artillery concentration fell on and near the platoon killing and wounding several men. The attack was in danger of losing momentum, but this officer showing powers of leadership of the highest order controlled his men with great skill and kept up the advance. During the night another platoon of this company was counterattacked and partially overrun. An attempt to restore the position with another platoon failed but Lieutenant Maxwell repeatedly asked to be allowed to lead another attempt which request was eventually granted.

  This officer then led two of his sections across bullet-swept ground with great dash and determination and succeeded in contacting the platoon who had been holding out in some buildings.

  Showing no regard for his own safety he led his sections in the difficult job of clearing the enemy out of the buildings, inflicting many casualties on them, and causing the remainder to withdraw. By his magnificent example and offensive spirit this officer was responsible for the relief of the platoon; and the restoration of the situation.

  Maxwell had fought courageously. The critical action had been so particularly closely followed by anxious chiefs at headquarters that they warmly endorsed Watson's recommendation. In March, Maxwell was awarded the Military Cross by Montgomery in person. He then drove to Paris, where on 14 March at the townhall of the sixteenth arrondissement, he married Betty. Carthew-Yourston was among the guests who watched the bride in a traditional white dress and veil, which Maxwell had raced around Paris to procure, pledge her vows. Possibly to impress his new in-laws, Maxwell told the deputy mayor to record in the marriage certificate that his father was an engineer rather than a cattle dealer. Two weeks later, Maxwell was again in the midst of battle.

  His battalion formed part of Montgomery's final thrust across northern Germany towards Hamburg. On 8 April, the battalion began a pincer movement against a company of the SS Training Division. Maxwell's own platoon killed no fewer than fifteen SS soldiers and took fourteen prisoners. After disjointed fighting against lacklustre resistance, the regiment entered Hamburg on 3 May. 'When Hamburg was reached,' records the official history, 'the Battalion was weary, but the casualties had been so few that the fighting strength was hardly affected.' Hostilities officially ceased five days later. For Maxwell, it had been a glorious war.

  Because he was wounded soon after 'Blackcock', Watson had not witnessed Maxwell's receipt of the MC but he does remember when they next met, soon after the German surrender. Maxwell was based at Iserlohn in the Ruhr interrogating prisoners of war. Maxwell's sister Sylvia, who had learned of her brother's whereabouts, arrived at the regiment's temporary headquarters but Maxwell had already moved on to Berlin. Sylvia and her sister Brana had remained hidden in Hungary throughout the war, but the remainder of the Hoch family had perished. The Holocaust had ravaged Slatinske Doly, but only in 1944. For the previous five years, the villagers had suffered increasing hardship. Most males were forced into labour units where many died, some as the victims of sadistic games played by the Hungarian guards, such as hosing water on to the workers in winter and watching their painful, freezing deaths. In the village itself, the women were compelled to watch a succession of executions, including those of some rabbis. Increasingly, they heard accounts from Polish refugees of the production-line killing through the gas chambers, but escape was by then too difficult. The true horror began on 17 April 1944 shortly after Adolf Eichmann's visit to Budapest. A ghetto was built in the centre of the village and five thousand people were crammed inside; fifteen to twenty people were assigned to each room of the small houses. The brutality, sadism and torture which the villagers suffered during the ensuing four weeks was, according to the survivors, worse than anything they endured at Auschwitz extermination camp, to which they were transported on 20 and 23 May. Most of those who tumbled out of the packed cattle trucks and saw the flames spouting from the crematoria's chimneys, were gassed the same day. Among them was Hannah Hoch. Her husband escaped the gas but was shot dead. Maxwell learned of his parents' deaths when he drove to Prague in the summer of 1945 to discover the fate of his family. Strangely, for the next forty years he showed little public interest in the Holocaust, but felt guilt that while he had survived and enjoyed a 'good' war, his family had suffered so catastrophically.

  For all refugees, the end of the war produced a mixture of emotions - the joy of victory was tinged by sorrow for those who had been murdered. Until May 1945, there is little doubt that Maxwell, like most front-line soldiers, accepted that he would quite probably die in battle. But having escaped the poverty of Slatinske Doly, the Holocaust and the perils of the battlefield, he sensed that he was thereafter living on borrowed time. All the anguish, the humiliations and the defeats which he would endure during the remainder of his life could always be rationalised by the thought that fate, or in his words 'the Gods', had been particularly kind. It is a sentiment which can only be properly appreciated by those who have shared his experience. Con
sequently, during those first weeks in Berlin, Maxwell's hitherto exclusive preoccupation with survival was replaced, despite the self-confident image which developed in later years, by a temporary uncertainty about his future. Unlike the majority of his fellow officers, there was no home beckoning to him. As a penniless nobody, he was unsure about his ambitions. Only the army, where his status was established, offered glowing prospects.

  After Germany's defeat the victors could enjoy almost unlimited spoils. For a single packet of cigarettes, the officers of the occupying armies could buy an extravagant lifestyle. A simple scrap of paper decorated with a military stamp and signature was sufficient to requisition any house, its entire contents and the Mercedes in the garage. Throughout Germany, the most menial Allied officer lived in a style to which he was unaccustomed. Copious supplies of food, alcohol and entertainment were on tap while the Germans themselves struggled to survive starvation and illness. Understandably, for the Allied soldiers who had survived the war and seen the horrors of the concentration camps, there were few pangs of conscience about the way their enemy was treated. Maxwell had more reason than most to dislike the Germans and to relish the privileges which would disappear like melting butter if he returned to London and demobilisation. If he remained in the army in Berlin, however, there were unrivalled opportunities which an ambitious and talented officer could exploit.

  The government of occupied Germany (and, separately, of the city of Berlin) was divided between the four Allies. In its own zone, each Allied army wielded sovereign power, subject only to the Four Power agreement concluded at Potsdam in August 1945. In each of the three western zones, there was a sharp distinction between the regular army of occupation which was responsible for security and combat in any future conflict, and the section of the military which had replaced all the former civilian ministries of the deposed German government. That section was called the military government, known in the British zone as the Control Commission. Politically, the Control Commission was answerable to the Foreign Office in London but it was staffed by military officers, who either were on secondment from the regular army or, as was increasingly the case, were civilians enjoying temporary military rank. By October 1945, there were no less than twenty-four thousand British officers employed by the Control Commission whose responsibilities covered education, health, the judiciary, transportation, denazification and housing. In effect, the military government officers were dictators who wielded enormous power with little occasion to answer for their decisions. In the exercise of this almost unfettered discretion they could either enrich or impoverish a German individual or business.

  The quality of those temporary British civil servants was dramatically uneven. Initially, among the higher echelons were talented and impassioned idealists who were dedicated to the rebuilding of a sound democracy. Many were middle-aged men unfit for combat but deemed to possess the special talents needed to govern the defeated enemy. After inadequate briefing during the last months of the war, they arrived in Germany ill prepared for their task, if only because no Allied planner had foreseen the sheer scale of devastation and demoralisation which would be inflicted upon the enemy. But as demobilisation rapidly robbed the Commission of those qualified staff, many of their replacements were less able men attracted by the promise of privilege and high reward which would be barred to them in Britain. Unmotivated by any higher calling, they exploited their power. It was in that atmosphere that Maxwell had to work during the summer of 1945.

  Initially, Maxwell had continued with Field Security duties of interrogating Germans but he possessed one talent which enjoyed an important premium in the British occupation army - his fluency in nine languages. Few British officers spoke German and hardly any spoke Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Polish, Ruthenian and Romanian. His languages, war record and self-presentation made him an ideal candidate for the army's information control section, which in the British sector in Berlin was organised by a section of the Control Commission known as the Public Relations and Information Services Control or PRISC, situated in Berlin's Klaus Grothstrasse. PRISC's more important task was acting as a cultural licensing agency. Germans who wanted to show films, stage plays or publish books and newspapers had to obtain permission from PRISC, whose discretion was guided by two objectives: first, the eradication of every vestige of Nazi philosophy from Germany's cultural life, and second, the reintroduction among the Germans of democratic aspirations. To that end, priority was given to the re-establishment of diverse and liberal newspapers edited by German journalists. Maxwell was appointed Berlin's press chief by Colonel 'Red' Edwards, head of PRISC in the city. It represented the end of his association with any British Intelligence activities and his introduction to a profession which would shape the rest of his life.

  Among those who applied for a licence to publish a newspaper in the British sector of Berlin was Arno Scholz, then forty-one years old, whose proposed newspaper would be called Der Telegraf. Scholz was an independent socialist who until 1933 had written for Vorwarts, a left-wing newspaper. Soon after Hitler's election he had been arrested and, although later released, he was forbidden to work throughout most of the war. His application was considered by Nicholas Huijsman, the South African-born PRISC officer who was in charge of the press section for the whole British zone, and then by Edwards. After careful vetting, a licence was issued on 12 March 1946. Maxwell's role in that process is uncertain. In 1969, Maxwell told the Sunday Times, ‘I had nothing to do with licences. I certainly could do no such thing as help get a licence for Der Telegraf. It had a licence already.' The actual dates are at variance with Maxwell's version, and Huijsman says that the recommendation for awarding the licence was forwarded to him by Maxwell. Maxwell's reluctance to take any credit remains puzzling.

  To obtain the precious permit, Scholz guaranteed to PRISC that both he and his journalists would submit to total censorship by the Control Commission. It was Scholz's good fortune that the officer appointed to supervise the Telegraf s operations in their ramshackle premises spread over the suburb of Wilmersdorf was Robert Maxwell, recently promoted to captain. In theory Maxwell's job was, in Huijsman's words, 'completely negative'. Each article of the newspaper had to be vetted to exclude any offensive comments about the four Allied powers or the Control Commission. The temptation for any British officer was to control the newspaper's balance very strictly but Huijsman is certain that Maxwell was generously restrained and intervened on only a minimum of occasions. At 3 a.m. the young officer would solemnly 'press the button for democracy' and the printing presses would roll. In retrospect, Maxwell's determinedly laissez-faire attitude contrasts oddly with his later interventionist behaviour, but this liberalism was undoubtedly spawned by his admiration for Scholz, with whom he formed a friendship which was to prove as important as his earlier relationship with Carthew-Yourston.

  Maxwell's contemporaries in the Control Commission had by then recognised his intelligence, energy and instinct, but inevitably, because of his apparent fluency and self-confidence, overlooked his emotional need for a mentor and father-figure. Denied a respected male teacher (other than his grandfather) whose example and advice he could depend upon during his childhood, Maxwell was naturally attracted in Berlin to anyone who could compensate for that lack. Although Scholz was not Jewish, he did share a certain common heritage with Maxwell, and by all accounts the Berliner spent many hours talking to the Czech, moulding his political outlook and trying to satisfy his appetite for a vehicle which would provide him with both a fortune and power. Like so many others in Berlin, Scholz was besieged by Maxwell's requests for introductions to important people which he obliged because he liked Maxwell, upon whom he depended daily to further his own ambition to create a successful newspaper.

  PRISC's licence permitted Scholz to publish the newspaper but did not guarantee him the means for printing and distribution. In common with all German industry amid the postwar chaos, Scholz faced an hourly struggle. Production was constantly interrupted by break
downs and by the absence of replacements for broken parts of the printing presses. Paper and ink were severely rationed and there were strict daily limits on the allocation of electricity. Often, even these slender quotas could not be fulfilled. Scholz was entirely dependent upon the British military government in the person of Maxwell, who would have to use his influence and ingenuity to find a solution somewhere in the city's devastation. In Huijsman's view, 'Maxwell was marvellous at it.' In addition, to give 'his' newspaper an advantage, Maxwell acted for the first and only time as a journalist, using his rank (according to Huijsman) to 'worm out' from military government officials good stories which the Telegraf could publish.

  The results were hugely successful. According to a confidential Control Commission survey, up to 260,000 copies of the eight-page tabloid were sold six days a week, making it the best-selling newspaper in the British sector. Sixty thousand copies were sold daily in the Soviet zone and a reported 300 copies were flown to Moscow. Within two months of its launch, it incorporated its competitor, Der Berliner. Scholz, with firm British support, was destined to build a flourishing business, coincidentally inspiring Maxwell's appetite to own a newspaper. Maxwell did not always reflect his subsequent image as an energetic, nascent newspaper owner, especially in his dealings with Soviet officers who were based in the eastern zone of the city. Maxwell's relationship with the Russians in Berlin has often excited curiosity due to the paucity of information. Since his childhood had been spent near the Soviet border, it was natural that Maxwell would have found much in common with Russian soldiers, especially since he spoke their language and shared many of their customs and attitudes. As relief from the austere, class-conscious British officers, Maxwell escaped for entertainment to drink with his former neighbours, some of whom he met when he subsequently travelled to Russia on business. That camaraderie was witnessed on one of the more official occasions by Detlev Raymond, who later became one of Maxwell's employees.