Hess, Hitler and Churchill

by Peter Padfield

  On 22 November, coincidentally or otherwise the day after he resumed command at Turnhouse, MI5 informed Henry Hopkinson, private secretary to Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, that they proposed to forward the letter to Hamilton ‘provided you do not object’.39 Hopkinson, who acted as Foreign Office liaison to the head of MI6, replied on 7 December that they had done nothing about the letter and had no objection to it going on to Hamilton.40

  Meanwhile, on 12 November, by coincidence the day Hamilton had started his leave, Albrecht had written to his mother, Martha Haushofer: ‘From L [Lisbon] nothing. It will doubtless come to nothing.’41

  MI5

  Hess made his first attempt to fly to Britain on 10 January 1941, so he told Lord Simon in June 1941.42 His adjutant, Karl-Heinz Pintsch, who accompanied him on all visits to Messerschmitt’s Augsburg airfield, when interviewed by the author James Leasor in the 1950s, also named 10 January as the date of his chief’s first attempt to fly to Britain.43 The mission was abandoned, Pintsch said, when a fault developed in one of the plane’s ailerons. Ernst Bohle, who translated sections of Hess’s letter to Hamilton intermittently from October 1940 until early January 1941, told his interrogators after the war that he had heard Hess made his first attempt in mid-January.44

  The date cannot be verified from the Augsburg control tower logs since most were destroyed during Allied air raids in 1944,45 but weather conditions on 10 January were favourable. After a bitterly cold week with snow and mist throughout Europe, the skies cleared on the 9th, allowing RAF Bomber Command to raid German naval bases in ideal conditions: The Times reported, ‘the moon shone brightly and there was no cloud or even ground haze.’46 Clear weather persisted through the 10th with bright sunshine and good visibility. Given reasonably accurate Wetterdienst reports Hess could have anticipated this.

  It is, nonetheless, difficult to accept that he made a serious attempt to reach Britain in January. His experimental long-distance flights had shown him the need for more technical preparation if he was to be his own navigator, and he requested modifications to equipment throughout the following months. Helmut Kaden, his mentor at the Messerschmitt works, began a series of test flights on his machine lasting from 29 March to 6 May.47 Hess was thorough in everything he undertook. He would not have attempted such a demanding solo flight until both he and Kaden were completely satisfied with his machine and fittings. Besides, as will appear, he admitted later while in captivity in England that he made his first attempt to fly to Britain on 10 May.48

  * * *

  Two documents discovered recently in the Moscow State Archives suggest that his flight to Britain was preceded by months of negotiation with the British.49 One, the testimony of Karl-Heinz Pintsch, who accompanied him to the Messerschmitt airfield from where he took off for Scotland, even states that the flight was made ‘by prior arrangement with the English’.50 Historians are sceptical since both documents were based on statements made by Germans close to Hitler or Hess under duress in Soviet captivity, who subsequently denied them when freed. Yet the statements, made separately, do corroborate each other in many respects – as will become clear. Besides, it defies common sense to suppose that the Deputy Führer flew off into enemy territory on the off chance of meeting someone sympathetic to his views and powerful enough to conduct meaningful talks. There must have been prior negotiations. Perhaps the most widely held view is that on the British side the negotiations were bogus – that he was lured across by an arm of British intelligence.

  If there was a trap, it was not prepared by the internal security service, MI5. This is demonstrated by Guy Liddell’s diary – as will be seen. On 11 January 1941 John Maude of ‘B’ division, MI5, approached the chief of Air Intelligence, Air Commodore Archie Boyle, about the possibility of providing the Duke of Hamilton with cover for a journey to Lisbon to contact Albrecht Haushofer. Boyle’s response was positive, and Maude wrote to Major T.A. ‘Tar’ Robertson, the head of section B1a, which ran double agents:51

  This goes to you now because it seems likely that the Duke of Hamilton (formerly the boxing Lord Clydesdale) is going to make an interesting double agent …

  Boyle is perfectly prepared to send the Duke to Lisbon and can give him perfect cover, a real Air Force job.

  Boyle wants SIS [MI6] and us to run him, and he is most keen to help …

  It is impossible to say that the Duke never received the original [letter from Albrecht Haushofer] since we have lost it. Also we cannot say whether or not he has received any other communication from Haushofer …

  Guy Liddell noted in his diary, ‘The whole case looks like a peace offer.’52

  Discussing it with colleagues, Robertson concluded that not enough was known about Hamilton or Mrs Roberts to take the matter on. Instead, on the 20th, he saw Boyle and suggested the Duke be sent for, questioned about the letter and asked if he would be prepared to write a reply to Haushofer. ‘In the event of Hamilton agreeing to this we might then take up the case.’53

  However, it was not until nearly the end of February that Hamilton received a letter from Air Intelligence inviting him to a meeting in London; not until mid-March that the meeting took place and the Duke was asked if he would like to go to Lisbon to meet Haushofer and ‘see what it’s all about’.54 His response was not enthusiastic. Meanwhile Thomas Cook had provided Mrs Violet Roberts’ address in Cambridge, but she had still not been questioned.55

  MI5 had been in disarray for some time. Its veteran director at the outbreak of war, Sir Vernon Kell, had been in post since the service was founded before the first war. In poor health, he seems not to have coped with the vast expansion of staff required to deal with the wartime threats posed by aliens, enemy agents and home-grown extremists of right and left. By the time Hitler launched his western campaign in May 1940 the increased demands placed on the service had, in the words of its authorised historian, ‘brought its administration close to collapse’.56 In June 1940 Kell was replaced by his deputy, and in July the head of a recently formed Home Defence Security Executive was given executive control. The dual leadership proved ineffectual and it was not until February 1941, when Sir David Petrie, a former head of intelligence in India, was appointed Director General, that effective leadership was restored.

  In the meantime, to escape the bombing on London, the majority of staff and the Registry had been transferred from Wormwood Scrubs prison – where they had occupied cells vacated by prisoners – to Blenheim Palace, near Oxford. The move had taken place in October, just before Albrecht’s letter to Hamilton was picked up by Censorship; this may have accounted for the loss of the original. Certainly administrative difficulties had increased, as the senior officers and Guy Liddell’s ‘B’ Division remained in London and files had to be transferred between Oxford and London.57

  Any possibility that MI5 was directly involved in Hess’s flight is ruled out by Guy Liddell’s diary entry for 13 May 1941, after learning that Hess had flown to Scotland three days before: ‘Today’s sensational news is the arrival of the deputy Führer Rudolf Hess in a Messerschmitt-110 … He seems to have been carrying some sort of message to the Duke of Hamilton from Professor Karl Haushofer …’58 Had his division been implicated he would scarcely have named the wrong Haushofer. Liddell also speculated on Hess’s motive: ‘He has probably fallen out with his party … alternatively he may have come over with some kind of peace offer …’

  Indirectly, however, MI5 was undoubtedly involved through misinformation planted by the double agents run by ‘Tar’ Robertson, in conjunction with MI6 and other agencies, as will appear.

  MI6

  Unlike MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, was, to quote one of its serving officers at the time of Hess’s flight, ‘in the Hess thing up to their necks’; but, he went on, contrary to stories put out later for public consumption, ‘there was never any conspiracy to lure Hess to Great Britain’.59

 
MI6’s chief had died in 1939 shortly before the ‘Venlo incident’ which had resulted in the destruction of much of the agent network in western Europe. His deputy, Colonel Sir Stewart Menzies, succeeded him as ‘C’ – as the chief was known – against the wishes of Churchill, who was at that time First Lord of the Admiralty and a member of the War Cabinet.

  Apart from Menzies’ involvement in the disaster at Venlo, Churchill’s chief objection was that he belonged in those high Tory, court, City and service circles who viewed rapprochement with Germany and even a tacit alliance with her against Communism as the sole means of preserving the British Empire. He and his close circle, which included the Duke of Buccleuch, a fellow member of White’s Club in St James, had been known as ‘terrific anti-Bolshevists’. In the lead-up to the war, while MI5 had consistently advised standing up to Hitler, MI6 had backed Chamberlain’s policy of seeking to rectify what it termed ‘Germany’s legitimate grievances’60 – since characterised as ‘appeasement’.

  Menzies had been born at the centre of British power, in all probability the illegitimate son of Sir George Holford, a court grandee, who married Menzies’ mother, a great beauty and favourite at the court of Edward VII, the year after her husband, John Menzies, died; in Who’s Who Stewart Menzies described himself as the son of Lady Holford. He had served with distinction in the first war, while inwardly detesting the slaughter that cut down all his year group from Eton. Posted to the intelligence section of the staff in France at the end of 1915 he had found his true métier.

  On confirmation as ‘C’ in November 1940 Menzies exerted himself to overcome Churchill’s distrust and they eventually formed a close bond. His control of the ultra-secret decrypts of intercepted German code messages produced by the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park helped after Churchill became Prime Minister. The more important decrypts, code-named ‘Boniface’ – known later as ‘Ultra’ – he brought to Churchill every day in ancient buff-orange boxes to which the Prime Minister alone had the key. Throughout his career Churchill had had a passion for secret intelligence.

  Together with ‘Boniface’ in the boxes, Menzies delivered intelligence derived from his enemy opposite number, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr. Once a committed supporter of Hitler and National Socialism, Canaris had been profoundly shocked by the abominations committed by SS Einsatzkommandos in Poland and had turned against the regime. Lamenting in private that ‘Our children’s children will have to bear the blame for this’,61 he had become convinced that the future of Western civilisation depended on Britain’s survival; and besides sheltering officers opposed to Hitler, he conveyed information to Menzies through several covert channels.62

  One agent sent to Britain in December 1940, a young Yugoslav banker named Dusan ‘Dusko’ Popov, was probably not sent by Canaris personally; after recruitment into the Abwehr he had contacted the MI6 station in Belgrade on his own initiative and offered his services to the British as a double agent. The Abwehr officer who briefed him for his mission in Britain was a former university friend, Johann Jebsen, who was, Popov told his MI5 interrogators later, ‘very pro-British, and I think if he was sure he would be safe he would come over here.’63

  According to Popov’s post-war memoirs Jebsen told him, among other things, that Rudolf Hess had been saying that high personalities in Britain were seeking contact with Germany; also that the Abwehr was in touch with Welsh nationalist circles in which there was talk of Lloyd George becoming Prime Minister and negotiating peace.64

  It is interesting that Jebsen should have singled out Hess: he was practically the only top Nazi leader not so far implicated in putting out peace feelers; doubly interesting that he should link this with talk of Lloyd George coming back as Prime Minister and negotiating peace. For that was precisely Hess’s aim – if not Lloyd George, then Halifax or Sir Samuel Hoare or some other figure on the appeasement wing.

  On arrival in London Popov was met by Major ‘Tar’ Robertson, head of MI5’s B1a division running double agents, whom he described as ‘like Hollywood’s concept of a dashing British military type.’65 Appearances apart, Robertson was an exceptionally able officer and shrewd judge of character. His first double agent, who had been caught writing to his Hamburg controller even before the war and ‘turned’ to work for the British was a Welsh electrical engineer code-named SNOW. Shortly after the outbreak of war Robertson had sent him on a mission to his Abwehr case officer in company with a retired Swansea police inspector, code-named GW, who had posed as a Welsh nationalist explosives expert.66 These two no doubt accounted for Jebsen’s reference to Welsh nationalist circles.

  After Popov had been appraised by Robertson over a drink at the Savoy bar, he was subjected to intense interrogation for some days by MI5, MI6 and service intelligence officers. Finally inducted into Robertson’s double-agent system under the code name SCOUT – changed later to TRICYCLE – he was introduced to Sir Stewart Menzies, who invited him to spend the New Year weekend with him at his brother’s place in Surrey. There Menzies talked to him alone about Admiral Canaris, and said he wanted information about anyone closely connected with him. It was apparent to Popov that Menzies and Churchill viewed the Abwehr chief as a catalyst for anti-Hitler elements in Germany, and he gained the impression that Menzies was ‘contemplating a dialogue with Canaris with a view to ousting Hitler.’67

  Popov’s memoirs do not reveal whether he said anything to Menzies about Hess’s belief that high personalities in Britain sought contact with Germany; nor is it known whether he said anything about this in his initial interrogations, since the record of these is missing from his recently released MI5 file. It would be surprising, however, if he failed to mention it, particularly in view of the impressions he was instructed to convey to the Abwehr when he was flown out to Lisbon on 3 January: on the one hand he was to emphasise the strength of British defences against invasion, on the other to suggest that British morale was being so undermined by bombing ‘that many politicians thought it was time to overthrow Churchill and his “clique” and negotiate a peace.’68

  The aim was, of course, to persuade Hitler that an invasion of England would be too costly and was in any case unnecessary since the British would shortly come to terms, so encouraging him to turn east against his real enemy without invading first. Within this overall aim it is easy to imagine Popov’s inside information on Hess giving Menzies the idea that he might target the Deputy Führer with disinformation about the prospects for a negotiated peace.

  That is speculation. What is not in doubt is that two weeks later one of Menzies’ top experts on Germany flew to Lisbon. Frank Foley had been head of the MI6 station in Berlin before the war under the customary guise of Passport Control Officer at the British Embassy, where he had used his position to help thousands of Jews flee the country, sometimes sheltering them in his own home at great personal risk. He was well acquainted with the Nazi leadership.

  His journey to Lisbon has only recently come to light with the emergence of his wife’s diary. A brief entry records his departure for Lisbon from Whitchurch aerodrome, near Bristol, on Friday 17 January 1941.69 This was six days after ‘Tar’ Robertson had been alerted to the possibility of sending Hamilton to Lisbon – and it will be recalled that Air Commodore Archie Boyle had wanted MI5 and SIS (MI6) to run him in tandem.70

  After a fortnight in Lisbon with his secretary as cover Foley returned to Britain on Saturday 1 February. What he had been doing there is not recorded in the diary. The service’s files have not been released to the public, but an MI6 historian told a Daily Telegraph reporter that while much of the Hess material has been destroyed, a single more recent reference reveals plans for a ‘sting’ operation in response to Albrecht Haushofer’s letter to Hamilton – a copy of which had been sent to MI6 on 6 November, over two months before. According to the recollections of old MI6 hands, Foley on his return reported that a ‘sting’ would be too risky.71

 
There, it is assumed, the matter was allowed to drop. Yet, as noted, it was taken up with Hamilton himself towards the end of that month by Air Intelligence. In the meantime, on 2 February, the day after Foley had left Lisbon, Albrecht Haushofer had flown to Sweden, returning on the 5th. What he was doing there and whom he saw is unknown, but he must have gained clearance to go from Hess, who summoned him on the 21st for three days of talks.72

  It is interesting in this connection that the King of Sweden’s offer to mediate a peace settlement was the subject of a letter from Menzies to Henry Hopkinson, his liaison at the Foreign Office, on 19 February. He wrote that he had just learned via their Dutch intelligence link that Franz von Papen, German Ambassador in Angora (Ankara), had urged the King of Sweden to try to bring the war to an end in collaboration with the Pope, but the King ‘did not think that the time was yet opportune for a [peace] move of this sort’.73 The bottom half of this letter has been torn off neatly in a straight line just below ‘Yours ever’, so removing the ‘C’ in green ink with which Menzies signed his correspondence – continuing a tradition set by the first head of the Secret Service.

  The question is what, beside his ‘C’, had Menzies written below the typed message that was so sensitive it had to be torn off before this file was released to the public in 2007?

  SOE

  The Special Operations Executive, SOE, was formed in July 1940 to take the war behind enemy lines with sabotage, subversion and propaganda. Churchill intended it to ‘set Europe ablaze’, or as an officer recruited in November 1940 recalled being told, ‘to do to [German-occupied] Europe what Pitt had done to France before 1807.’74 The organisation was formed from the sabotage and propaganda Section D of MI6, the guerrilla warfare section of the War Office and the propaganda department of the Foreign Office, and placed under the Minister of Economic Warfare, Hugh Dalton.