England recognises the seriousness of her position. The Führer intends to remove her with a KO blow. Despite it he would make peace today. Conditions: England out of Europe and our colonies … returned … He will certainly not destroy England nor destroy her empire …1
On the 25th, after another talk with Hitler, Goebbels noted that the Führer was determined to smash France, thereby removing London’s mainland sword, but ‘England can have peace if it keeps out of Europe and gives back our colonies.’2
On 10 May Hitler launched the strike against France with a feint by Army Group B through the Netherlands. Coincidentally, on the same day, the British government fell, rocked by failures in Norway. Churchill replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister and formed a coalition administration with Labour.
In Churchill Great Britain found a leader guided, like Hitler, by instinct, emotion and imagination. Like Hitler, he lacked formal academic training and tended to oversimplify complex issues and extemporise solutions – ‘a mind not judicial in any sense, not logical, not analytical,’ his doctor, Lord Moran, diagnosed,3 and Jock Colville, who now became his private secretary, observed that ‘his mind did not operate in predetermined grooves … a sudden whim or unexpected judgement caught his family or staff unawares no less frequently than the Cabinet or Defence Committee.’4
Yet he was a student of war and his intuition was informed by the long series of conflicts in which Great Britain had thrown her navy and her trading power and finance against the pretensions of Continental tyrants. His historical vision thus transcended the present balance which hypnotised Liddell Hart and most military men, and Lloyd George and the high Tory grandees. He divined that Hitler and Stalin must in the long or short term fight for mastery in Europe, and his priority was to hold on until he could somehow draw the United States actively into the war on Britain’s side.
Here the Jewish question assumed significance. Churchill was convinced, as noted earlier, that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 promising the Jews a permanent home in Palestine had been instrumental in mobilising American-Jewish support for US entry into the First World War. Since 1933 Nazi treatment of Jews had made the American-Jewish lobby a committed ally in his struggle against Hitler from the back benches. In this sense Hitler and Hess had grounds for their paranoia about an international Jewish conspiracy against Germany: they had called it down upon themselves.
Churchill had close family connections with the British line of the international Jewish banking house of Rothschild: the first Baron Rothschild had been his father’s intimate adviser at the Treasury, and Churchill knew the family socially as a guest at their country seat at Tring in Hertfordshire. In 1936 he had lent his backing to an association formed by Jews and Trade Unions called the ‘World Anti-Nazi Non-Sectarian Council’, soon renamed ‘The Focus’. The chief financial support came from British Jews, the main sources of intelligence from Jewish banking connections and the huge number of German-Jewish émigrés who fled from Hitler. In 1938, when Churchill found himself in such financial straits he was forced to put his beloved home, Chartwell, on the market, he was rescued by Sir Henry Strakosch, born a Moravian Jew, who paid the then substantial sum of £18,162 to clear his debts, after which Churchill withdrew Chartwell from sale.5
It would be a mistake to conclude that Churchill felt beholden to or was bribed by the Jewish interest, or on the other hand used the Zionists cynically for his own ends. He felt genuine compassion for the Jews in Germany and Poland. The Labour leader, Clement Attlee, described him one day in the Commons with tears pouring down his cheeks as he described what was being done to Jews in Germany.6 That he played the Zionist card for all it was worth in his attempt to tip the United States into the war is not, however, in doubt.
Churchill’s second card was Soviet Russia. Long before the war he had foreseen that the only way to counter German military expansionism was to weld the European nations, including Russia, into a ring around Germany. It was the failure of successive Conservative governments even to contemplate bringing the Soviet Union into a defensive alliance that had finally projected Stalin into Hitler’s arms. Churchill had no sympathy with Communism. He was an imperialist, as dedicated as high Tory and service circles to the maintenance and glory of the British Empire; unlike them, he saw Hitler as the greater threat.
It was a judgement he had made before the war. In power he followed it through ruthlessly to its logical conclusion. He had a boyish spirit and a strong heart, schooled in adversity. Aspects of his childhood had been shaped, like Hitler’s, by trauma, in his case parental neglect. He had known despair and continued to be subject to that dark malady, which he called his ‘black dog’. Probably only such a man, neither analytical nor stable, but touched with the spark of folly necessary to overcome the highest obstacles could have pulled the country through the crisis which now unfolded as tanks of General Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group A burst unexpectedly through the Ardennes, sliced through the French armies and divided them from the British Expeditionary Force in the north.
The British, trapped between von Rundstedt and Army Group B advancing through the Low Countries, fell back towards the coast. That substantial numbers were able to make good their escape was due to Hitler’s intervention. At von Rundstedt’s headquarters on 24 May he ordered the tanks to halt and not cross the canal line Lens–Bethune–St Omer.7 The order was not rescinded until late on the 26th, allowing the British time to establish a defensive perimeter around the beaches at Dunkirk, from where over the following days large numbers were rescued by Royal Navy destroyers and innumerable small craft.
The reasons for Hitler’s order remain subject to dispute. Probably the consensus view is that it was made on military grounds:8 the terrain towards the coast was unsuitable for tanks, and it was necessary to concentrate the armour for a strike against the main French force to the south; in any case the Luftwaffe was ordered to destroy the trapped enemy.
Hitler always maintained it was a political decision: he told Hess it would have been easy with the mass employment of their tanks, artillery and aircraft to destroy the British force and some 100,000 French troops with them, or compel their surrender in quick time: ‘But that was just what I did not want. I did not want to humiliate the British with a crushing military defeat, but on the contrary finally to bring them to an armistice and peace negotiations.’9
Senior staff officers present at a meeting between Hitler and von Rundstedt at the latter’s headquarters that day came to suspect that this was indeed the case: Hitler had deliberately spared the British. One of them, General Blumentritt, told Liddell Hart after the war that Hitler had been in best humour when he visited their headquarters and expressed the view that the war would be over in six weeks. He wished to conclude a reasonable peace with France, after which the way would be open for an agreement with Britain:
He then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilisation that Britain had brought into the world … He compared the British Empire to the Roman Catholic Church – saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she should acknowledge Germany’s position on the Continent.10
Hitler went on to say that the return of Germany’s colonies would be desirable, but not essential, and that he would even support Britain militarily were she to become involved in problems anywhere. This is virtually what Hitler had said to Goebbels the previous month. At the very least it is clear that Hitler’s priority was to force France out of the war, not to destroy the British Army.
As it was, the successful evacuation of the greater part of the British Expeditionary Force, the essential nucleus from which to rebuild the army, allowed Churchill to rally the country and send a message of defiance to Hitler:
We shall go on to the end … We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We s
hall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender …11
He made his long-term strategy equally clear: the British Empire would carry on the struggle ‘until, in God’s good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.’
THE ‘FIFTH COLUMN’
Those circles in Britain seeking a negotiated peace with Germany had already received rough warning of Churchill’s resolve. On 22 May Regulation 18b of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act had been strengthened to allow the internment without trial of anyone showing sympathy to an enemy power; habeas corpus was suspended and no appeal allowed. It was an affront to the principles of freedom under the rule of law for which Britain stood.
The first victims, rounded up the next day, were Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), some 30 of his leading adherents, and Captain Archibald Maule Ramsay MP, founder of the pro-Fascist Right Club. Hundreds more members of the BUF and other anti-Jewish or pacifist societies dedicated to a negotiated peace with Germany were to follow over the next weeks and months.12 Interestingly the real grandees calling for an accommodation with Germany, such as the Dukes of Buccleuch and Westminster and the Marquis of Tavistock, heir to the Duke of Bedford, were not interned.
Buccleuch was, however, removed from the high office he held in the Royal Household. This was apparently at the request of King George VI himself. In a note from Buckingham Palace dated 14 May Churchill had been informed that the King wished to change the Lord Steward ‘for reasons which are probably known to you but which I could, if required, explain.’13 No explanation accompanies this document in the file held at The National Archives. On 22 May, as the decision was taken to strengthen Regulation 18b, Churchill was informed by the Lord Chamberlain that Buccleuch had tendered his resignation as Lord Steward, and in his place the King desired to appoint the Duke of Hamilton.
This was Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, former Marquis of Clydesdale, whose father, the 13th Duke of Hamilton, had died recently. Churchill was advised in a brief note that the procedure now was for him to inform the Lord Chamberlain that he would have no objection to submitting the Duke of Hamilton’s name to the Palace. Across the top of the note, someone in Churchill’s office wrote in pencil, ‘PM says do whatever is necessary.’14 This note, dated 24 May, was withheld from the file released in the normal way to the National Archives, and was only restored to its place in the file in February 2005. Why it should have been withheld is a mystery. Undoubtedly Hamilton’s appointment as Lord Steward in the Royal Household with direct access to the King had a major bearing on Hess’s decision to target him in his peace mission the following year, but at the time of this note Hess had not even conceived the idea of intervening personally to stop the war.
Some of the circumstances that had led to the amendment to Regulation 18b and the internment of Fascist sympathisers appear similarly opaque. The swift German victories in Norway and the Low Countries were believed to have been aided by a ‘fifth column’ of pro-Nazis in each country overrun, and the possibility of a German invasion of Britain had raised fears of a British ‘fifth column’. Members of Mosley’s BUF seemed to fit this category. Guy Liddell, head of counter-intelligence in the internal security service, MI5, had no doubt about it, and had pressed for 500 selected BUF members to be interned.15 The submission had been rejected by the Home Secretary for lack of evidence; indeed Mosley had publicly exhorted his BUF members in the event of invasion to throw themselves into the national effort to drive the enemy from British soil.16
Liddell had finally gained his desired outcome on the back of a separate investigation. His section head in charge of countering political subversion, Maxwell Knight, had learned from undercover agents he had planted in Captain Ramsay’s Right Club that a key member, Anna Wolkoff, was associating with a cipher clerk at the US Embassy named Tyler Kent, and that he had shown her documents he had stolen from the embassy. Several were messages between President Roosevelt and Churchill when First Lord of the Admiralty, revealing Roosevelt’s strong support for Britain. Apparently Kent, a committed isolationist, hoped that by publishing the messages he could expose what he saw as a plot to bring America into the war.
Anna Wolkoff had introduced Kent to Captain Ramsay, who had also inspected the documents, and she had copied several and passed them to an attaché at the Italian Embassy.17 Italy was still neutral, but decrypts of intercepted Italian diplomatic traffic revealed that Rome was passing the documents to Berlin. In addition it appears that Knight’s agents had induced Wolkoff to send a message in code to William Joyce,18 a former member of the Right Club who had fled to Germany on the eve of war and was now broadcasting enemy propaganda to Britain from Berlin as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’.
For Churchill the leaked correspondence threatened his strategy for winning the war by drawing America in; for Roosevelt, fighting isolationist sentiment in the United States, Kent’s activities threatened his intended campaign for an unprecedented third term. There is no doubt he had already extended co-operation with Britain far beyond America’s formal neutrality, and according to the later testimony of both Kent and Knight some of the messages Kent had collected introduced the concept of ‘Lend-Lease’,19 the vital measure which was to turn America into the ‘arsenal of democracy’, but which would not be announced publicly until December that year after Roosevelt had secured his third term.
Kent and Anna Wolkoff had been arrested on 20 May. The following evening Liddell, accompanied by Maxwell Knight, attended a meeting with the Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, regarding the BUF. Anderson opened by saying he found it difficult to believe that BUF members would assist the enemy, and pointed to Mosley’s recent appeal to their patriotism. Knight, whom Liddell allowed to do most of the talking, replied that this was merely an example of how insincere Mosley really was; then, according to Liddell’s diary, he went on to describe
something of the underground activities of the BUF and also of the recent case against Tyler Kent involving Maude Ramsay. Anderson agreed that the case against Ramsay was rather serious but he did not seem to think that it involved the BUF. Max [Knight] explained to him that Ramsay and Mosley were in constant touch with one another and that many members of the Right Club were also members of the BUF.20
Anderson was still not convinced that he should lock up British subjects without firm evidence. Next day, 22 May, he reported to the War Cabinet that MI5 officers who had studied the BUF were unable to produce evidence against them, but were of opinion that some 25 to 30 per cent would be willing to go to any lengths on behalf of Germany.21 This was enough: with huge pressure for action against the ‘fifth column’, and Clement Attlee and his Labour members of Churchill’s coalition government wanting measures against the far right, and Churchill himself particularly alarmed by the Kent–Wolkoff case, the decision was taken to amend Defence Regulation 18b in the direction Guy Liddell required: the internment of anyone showing sympathy to an enemy power. So, as noted, orders were signed for the detention of Mosley, Ramsay and the first tranche of BUF members.
These measures were, above all, an indication of Churchill’s absolute resolve within his first fortnight in office to pursue his policy of wooing and supporting Roosevelt in his bid for a third term and to stamp on calls for a compromise peace with Hitler. Of equal or possibly greater relevance in view of Hess’s later mission was a parallel case of subversion under investigation at this time by Guy Liddell, which also involved the US Embassy in London.
In early February, some weeks before Tyler Kent met Anna Wolkoff, Liddell had received information that the German Secret Service had been and was possibly still receiving American Embassy documents including Ambassador Joseph Kennedy’s despatches to President Roosevelt. Kennedy was on sick leave at the time. In his absence Liddell wrote to the Counsellor at the US Embassy, Herschel Johnson, to report this.22 H
e made no mention of it in his diary, but five days later, on 12 February, recorded that he had ‘passed a report to Herschel Johnson which I received from SIS [MI6] regarding leakage of information relating to despatches between Kennedy and Roosevelt.’23 Then on the 14th he recorded Felix Cowgill, head of MI6 Section V – counter-intelligence – coming to see him ‘about a certain Kurt Jahnke, with whom he [Cowgill] had been indirectly in touch’.24
Jahnke was a Prussian who had emigrated to the United States before the First World War and become a naturalised American citizen. When America entered the war he had worked as a German intelligence and sabotage agent there. After the war he had built up contacts in intelligence circles in China, Japan and Russia, where he had worked for Soviet Military Intelligence; later he set up his own intelligence agency in Berlin and worked for Admiral Canaris, head of Military Counter-Intelligence (Abwehr). After Hitler’s accession to power he and his agency had been absorbed into Hess’s intelligence operation under Pfeffer von Salomon – known variously as the Abteilung (Department) von Pfeffer, the Büro Jahnke or Büro 1. In line with Hess’s mission to strengthen Anglo–German ties, he had cultivated British intelligence circles, and during the Polish crisis in 1939 had used his British contacts in the vain effort to prevent war with Britain and France.
Cowgill told Liddell that before the war Jahnke had been getting copies of MI6 reports, also the contents of Ambassador Kennedy’s despatches to Washington; his (Jahnke’s) informant was said to be a clerk in the Foreign Office, or the wife of a clerk. Liddell recorded that Cowgill was ‘anxious to know whether this Jahnke was identical with a man of the same name who had before Locarno [Treaty of 1925] been acting as an agent of the Russian 4th Department [Military Intelligence]’.25
They were one and the same. Liddell’s officers soon tracked down a Foreign Office man named Harold Fletcher, now working at the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park, who admitted having visited Berlin in 1935 and meeting both Pfeffer von Salomon and Jahnke. He was investigated, but it appears that nothing was proved against him.26
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