THE BRITISH DECEPTION
Hitler’s idea of ending Britain’s resistance by smashing Russia had hardened over the late summer and autumn of 1940. It would remove Churchill’s last hope on the European continent before America could intervene. In any case, he dared not risk invading England without naval and air superiority; as Goebbels put it, ‘The Führer will not cross over. He dreads the water.’9
He maintained the pretence of preparing to invade England, but in December 1940 issued Directive No. 21 for the armed forces to be prepared by spring 1941 for a rapid campaign to crush Soviet Russia. It would bring on the two-front war his generals feared, but he was confident in the superiority of German leadership and materiel over those of the Red Army, and thought in any case the British might crack under the relentless bombing of their cities.10
British intelligence had, of course, attempted to foster this belief. Major ‘Tar’ Robertson’s double agents and prominent political and social figures selected to spread disinformation, together with British diplomats in neutral capitals had contributed to a picture of growing disaffection against Churchill’s government.
Traces of this subterranean campaign appear in reports to Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry from late summer 1940 on: a telegram of 19 August from Madrid recorded the Spanish Foreign Minister having stated, after a talk with the British Minister, that he had the impression England was possibly ready for negotiations.11 At the end of the month it was reported from Lisbon that the Duke of Buccleuch had been confined in his castle, and his imprisonment for spreading pacifist propaganda would ensue.12 Neither assertion was true.13 From Madrid at the beginning of September had come a report that the Spanish Ambassador in London had described British capitalists wanting an end to the war, and the City of London as ‘the stronghold of pacifism and pessimism’.14 A few days later Lisbon had reported that since the start of the air attacks the opposition to Churchill had come to life again.15 A more dramatic report from Lisbon on 17 September described ‘the organisation of London as completely destroyed by the air raids, accompanied by looting, sabotage and social tension’. ‘Anxious capitalists fear internal disorder,’ it ran. ‘Growth of opposition against cabinet is plain. Churchill, Halifax are blamed for sacrificing England to destruction instead of seeking a compromise with Germany, for which it is still not too late.’16
There were elements of truth in these reports, but also exaggeration; just how much is as difficult to judge now as it must have been for German intelligence then. At the beginning of September British postal censorship had reported the morale of the country as ‘extremely high’.17 Later in the month, after ten days of bombing on the capital, Harold Nicolson, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information, had, as noted earlier, entered in his diary that everyone was worried about the feeling in the East End of London, where there was much bitterness.18
Towards the end of the month Joseph Kennedy, the notoriously defeatist US Ambassador in London, had sent a message to President Roosevelt in a wire whose contents were revealed to the German Ambassador in Washington, thence reported to Ribbentrop, that England was completely finished.19 He meant financially. This was true. However, a despatch reaching the Foreign Ministry from the German Ambassador in Lisbon cited the Portuguese Military Attaché in London reporting the mood of the people good ‘in consequence of the English character and propaganda’.20
The difficulty of distinguishing between disinformation and genuine approaches to Germany by the British ‘peace’ faction is exemplified by the case of Sir William Wiseman in America. MI6 head of station in New York during the first war, Wiseman is described in the authorised history of the service as ‘the most successful “agent of influence” in the service’s first 40 years’;21 he was also, for some unstated reason, deeply distrusted by Menzies.22 Travelling to San Francisco in November 1940, Wiseman came to the attention of the FBI when he met the suspected German spy, Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe – once married to a distant relation of Prince Max von Hohenlohe. The FBI bugged Wiseman’s hotel room and heard him telling the Princess he represented a group of Englishmen who believed peace was possible, and asking her to sound out the German Consul General in the city, Captain Fritz Wiedemann, about possible terms acceptable to Hitler.23
Wiedemann had served as adjutant to Hitler and Hess successively before the war, and represented Hess’s Foreign Organisation. He met Wiseman the following evening and again the FBI bugged their conversation. Wiseman was heard to say that he spoke for a very influential political group led by Lord Halifax, which hoped to bring about lasting peace between Britain and Germany. The problem was how far any British government could trust Hitler – which led to a discussion about restoring the German monarchy.24
When Wiseman’s remarks were reported to the British authorities, they disowned him.25 It is indeed hard to believe that Halifax, a member of Churchill’s War Cabinet, would have authorised Wiseman to use his name as leader of a political grouping in opposition to government policy. Wiseman’s activities remain mysterious.
An equally puzzling incident occurred that December 1940 in neutral Switzerland. Sir David Kelly, British Ambassador in Berne, hinted to Ribbentrop’s agent, Prince Hohenlohe, that ‘an understanding between England and the National-Socialist [Nazi] regime was not outside the realms of possibility.’26 Significantly, Hohenlohe reported his impression that Kelly himself now inclined towards a compromise with Germany. At about the same time Göring’s earlier peace envoy, Baron Knut Bonde, serving at the Swedish legation in Berne, received a telegram from one of his closest British friends, Lady Barlow, which impelled him to set up another meeting with Göring.27 The wording of Lady Barlow’s wire, like that of Violet Roberts’ earlier message to Martha Haushofer, is not known, nor whether it was a genuine appeal or a strand of the British deception.
Bonde saw Göring on 14 January 1941. The interview convinced him that negotiations were possible if the British made positive proposals, and he wrote to Lady Barlow proposing a visit to London in order to meet Lloyd George and persuade him to try to move the government in this direction. His letter was forwarded to Cadogan at the Foreign Office by a mutual friend.28 By this time Cadogan had received a report on the Bonde–Göring meeting from Kelly,29 and also two messages from Samuel Hoare in Madrid suggesting from information received that Göring might be willing to separate from the Nazi Party and negotiate peace.30 Cadogan minuted on the Bonde file: ‘Note that Göring would welcome any possible message from our side. I have no doubt he would. He wants us to sue for peace. It is just what he won’t get …’31
Halifax had by this date been removed from the War Cabinet. Lord Lothian, British Ambassador in Washington, had died suddenly in December. Churchill had asked Lloyd George to go to Washington in his place, but he had declined, pleading doctor’s advice. In reality he believed Churchill was heading for disaster and intended holding himself in readiness to take over and negotiate a compromise peace.32 Churchill had turned to Halifax, who very reluctantly agreed to go to Washington. Churchill replaced him as Foreign Secretary with his liegeman, Anthony Eden.
Churchill now wrote to Eden saying he trusted he was keeping an eye on all the peace feelers: ‘Your predecessor [Halifax] was entirely misled in December 1939. Our attitude towards all such enquiries and suggestions should be absolute silence …’33 On 6 February instructions to this effect were wired to the British Ambassadors in Berne, Stockholm and Madrid,34 the three neutral capitals through which most German approaches had come. Meanwhile British intelligence continued to encourage the Germans to believe in the possibility of negotiations.
This is shown most vividly in a wire from the German Ambassador in Lisbon to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin dated 23 January 1941, enclosing a report from an ‘agent of the Abwehr about the present position in England’.35 The agent was undoubtedly the double agent Dusko Popov. Everything in the report matches the account he gave in his memoirs about his time in
England and subsequent flight to Lisbon, where he passed on false information to his Abwehr handler, greatly exaggerating the strength of the coastal defences, the number of army divisions available, and the effects of bombing on London. The final section is especially interesting:
As friendly towards peace the agent described:
1) Lord Brocket
2) Lord Londonderry
3) Lord Lymington
If one gave these three men the power they strive for, they would agree to any conditions.36
These were well-known as appeasers or, in Brocket’s case, pro-Nazi. Londonderry was hugely wealthy and influential, socially and politically – the King called him ‘Charley’. A former Secretary of State for Air, he had been dismissed when it was finally recognised that Britain had fallen behind German aerial re-armament. Nonetheless, believing the horrors of the first war must not be repeated, he had continued to court the Nazis, inviting von Ribbentrop – subsequently dubbed ‘the Londonderry Herr’ – to his palatial seat, Mount Stewart; going shooting with Göring at Karinhall; and taking his family to visit Hitler.37
Lymington was a more eccentric figure. One of the founders of a ruralist society called the English Mistery, much in tune with Nazi ideas of ‘blood and soil’, he had broken away later to form a more specifically racial group, the English Array. Just before the war he had founded the British Council against European Commitments with William Joyce, notorious after the outbreak as the Nazi radio propagandist ‘Lord Haw-Haw’.
Popov’s message about these men would have been readily accepted by German intelligence.
LONSDALE BRYANS – AGAIN
Lord Halifax’s erstwhile envoy, Lonsdale Bryans, had met the German oppositionist, Ulrich von Hassell, for a second time in Arosa in mid-April 1940. As noted earlier, their talks had come to nothing since by then Hitler had launched his assault in the west.38 Shortly afterwards Mussolini joined the war on Hitler’s side and Bryans had to leave Italy. He went to France and requested assistance from Cadogan. As France fell he moved to Lisbon, from where he wired his young friend, Pirzio, in Rome about the possibility of a further meeting with ‘Charles’ – von Hassell – in Spain. The reply was discouraging: ‘Charles not returning Spain. Impossible publish book at present. Write to me after the war.’39 The reference to publishing possibly referred to toppling Hitler, but probably did refer to Bryans’ book. Despite the apparent finality of the message, and silence from the Foreign Office, Bryans elected not to come home, but took ship to the Portuguese Atlantic island of Madeira, where he could live more cheaply than in Lisbon. His motives are open to question.
He had from his earliest days in Rome established what he subsequently explained as a ‘dual identity’ or ‘camouflage’ by writing to his pre-war publishers in Leipzig as if he were ‘an Englishman politically of pro-Nazi sympathies, deploring the war between our two countries as a “fratricide of fellow Nordics”’.40 He claimed his purpose was to ‘screen’ himself from possible Gestapo curiosity if he managed to enter Germany. To the same end he had had many talks with the Counsellor at the German Embassy about flying to visit Hitler in the private aeroplane of Prince Philipp of Hesse, who, he claimed, ‘seemed keen enough at first’.41
For an undistinguished visitor to Rome he had made extraordinarily high-level contacts. Prince Philipp was on personal terms with both Hitler and Göring and was married to the daughter of King Emmanuel III of Italy. As such he had often served as an intermediary between Hitler and Mussolini; he had also acted as an art agent for Hitler in Italy, having studied art history at University. He had many English contacts, including King George VI’s younger brother, the Duke of Kent.
The connections Bryans was able to make in Rome suggest channels previously opened to him by the grandees who backed him. Or perhaps Halifax’s name had been sufficient to prise open these lofty Roman doors?
Having arrived in Funchal, Madeira, Bryans wrote to Brocket for funds, but received no reply, due possibly to the circuitous route via Gibraltar taken by all mail from the island. Subsequently, on 22 October 1940, he wrote again to his former Leipzig publisher, a bombastic screed in which he deplored the outbreak of war between Britain and Germany as a folly caused by ‘the false slogans of democracy and machinations of a Jew-led “Front Populaire”’, and maintained that while he had not arrived back in England in August 1939 in time to prevent the course of events, he had established a ‘counter-influence’ with Lord Halifax in the direction of sanity; if he were able, with the publisher’s help, to enter Germany and have an audience with the Führer he could arrange everything ‘to the mutual satisfaction and future prosperity of our two countries.’42 He based his claim on the effect his book would have on Hitler.
He had evidently lost any hold on reality – as a reading of his book confirms – but his letter did contain a core of truth: ‘There are many who feel as I do in England and in USA, and some of them are people of supreme influence.’
Because of the length of time taken by post from Madeira, he entrusted this letter and another, to Brocket, to a Danish wine merchant named Ole Erik Andersen who was travelling to Germany via Lisbon. He had met him at his hotel in Funchal and found they had a common admiration for Nazi Germany and hatred of Jews.43 It proved Bryans’ undoing. Andersen was suspected of being a German agent and was removed from his ship on the way to Lisbon by a British naval patrol. Bryans’ letters to Brocket and the Herrn Direktor, Schwarzhaupter Verlag, Leipzig, were delivered to MI6, thence MI5 and a copy to the Foreign Office.
Tipped off by the British, the Portuguese authorities refused to renew Bryans’ Madeira permit and he too took ship for Lisbon, arriving in mid-December. From there he attempted to re-establish contact with Pirzio in Rome by sending him a ‘Happy New Year’ telegram. The response was immediate and enthusiastic: ‘Happy New Year; write; Charles sends greetings; writing. PIRZI.’44
Von Hassell was in Paris when he received a telegram from Pirzio to say that ‘the Doctor’ was in Lisbon requesting news of Wolf-Ulli – his asthmatic son. During his visit to the French capital von Hassell had noted increasing economic distress among the people, and he sensed that with Hitler’s failure to invade England, and Italian defeats by the British Eighth Army in north Africa, the mood was changing rapidly from a ‘not unfriendly’ attitude towards the conquerors to ‘masked hostility’.45 It was perhaps these impressions that led him to respond positively to Pirzio. He wired back that he would be in Arosa until Saturday 1 February, and made arrangements to meet Wolf-Ulli there in case Bryans should appear, commenting in his diary, ‘Above all it is interesting that the “Doctor” sends word. But the one who gave him his commission [Halifax] is no longer at the helm!’46
By remarkable coincidence, when von Hassell arrived in Geneva he was approached by Carl Burckhardt, acting president of the International Red Cross, with news of a recent approach from influential British circles wanting a negotiated peace47 – as will appear.
Bryans, meanwhile, failed to make the rendezvous in Arosa. He pestered the British Embassy in Lisbon, claiming that he had the ear of Lord Halifax, wrote to Brocket and sent urgent wires to Buccleuch pleading for funds – ‘Delay disastrous if forced home abandoning work.’48 Buccleuch arranged to see R.A. Butler – still Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs – on his behalf.49 To no avail. Any credit Bryans may have had was blown by the evidence of treachery in his letter to Schwarzhaupter Verlag found with Andersen, and further damning disclosures about his intentions from the Dane under interrogation. Cadogan minuted, ‘He is a wash-out and a crook and he never had any “roving commission” from Halifax’50 – a questionable assertion in view of the extraordinarily lenient treatment he was to receive on his return to England.
Andersen had been interrogated on 17 December 1940, around the time Bryans returned to Lisbon from Madeira. He had revealed that Bryans told him of his attempt to fly with the Prince of Hesse from Rome for an a
udience with Hitler, and that it remained Bryans’ intention to travel into Germany to see Hitler or von Ribbentrop. One of Andersen’s business connections was a wine merchant, Carl Henkel, whose niece was married to Ribbentrop; Bryans had asked him if he could arrange an interview with Ribbentrop for him through Henkel.51 Bryans had also wanted him to seek out a certain Stahmer in Berlin and solicit his aid in getting him into Germany. Andersen was to tell Stahmer that the Duke of Buccleuch would vouch for him – Bryans had also listed others who would do the same.52 The list was short, Bryans’ spelling erratic: ‘Lord and Lady Brockett’ (correctly Brocket), ‘Captain Fitzroy Viers G.V.o’ (Fyers), ‘H. Drummond Wolffe’ (Wolff), ‘Lord Limington’ (Lymington).53
It will be recalled that the two peers, Brocket and Lymington, had been described in ‘Dusko’ Popov’s deliberately suggestive report to his Abwehr handlers as agreeable to ‘any conditions’ for peace.54 Popov had been briefed by Stewart Menzies and MI6 officers over the New Year period a fortnight after Andersen’s interrogation. It is likely then that these names were picked from Bryans’ list. In any event, Bryans’ unauthorised activities and loose talk in Rome and Lisbon was fostering just the impression of an influential British peace party that Menzies and the Double-Cross Committee were seeking to promote. Significantly, Bryans’ really big backer was not mentioned in Popov’s report: Walter Buccleuch had long been in Menzies’ close circle of friends.
Initially during his interrogation Andersen had said that the Stahmer he had been asked to approach was the translator for Bryans’ book, The Curve of Fate. Yet he had been given no address, and when pressed as to how he was to find him eventually said he had been told to go to the Foreign Office in Berlin and ask for him.
‘What makes you think that any official in the Foreign Office would know the name of Stahmer?’
Hess, Hitler and Churchill Page 17
