Whether Karl Haushofer had perhaps confused his son’s twin channels, through Stahmer in Spain and Burckhardt in Switzerland, or whether he was embellishing his testimony at a time his former pupil and friend was on trial for his life for war crimes cannot be known. Terse entries from Martha Haushofer’s diary for the beginning of May tend not to support such a positive outcome from Albrecht’s meeting in Geneva:
3.5 … Afternoon … call from Albrecht from Hödingen [by Lake Constance, where his brother’s parents-in-law lived] on the return from his – not completely abortive – diplomatic mission. If one dares to hope –
5.5 … 4 afternoon K[arl] collected Alb[recht]. His discussion with —— in —— was not completely fruitless, which is more than we had expected …’22
In his report to Hitler Albrecht made no mention of a suggested conference with Hoare in Madrid. It is difficult to see why, if this had been proposed, he should have omitted it, particularly as he could not have known what Hitler had learned from Hess.
THE ASTROLOGERS
Looking back to spring 1941 some years later, Hess acknowledged that he had probably not been quite normal. His life had revolved around test flights, instruments, fuel tanks, auxiliary oil pumps and radio direction beams.23 At night he fixed a map of southern Scotland to the wall of his separate bedroom, the highest peaks circled in red, and memorised his planned route across the border country to Hamilton’s home, Dungavel.
Driven by the imminence of Hitler’s planned assault on Russia, despair at the senselessness of the two related Nordic nations meanwhile tearing themselves apart, and according to Karl Haushofer burdened with guilt at his idol’s murderous course, he was also in thrall to astrology and the occult. In January he had asked Ernst Schulte-Strathaus, a personal friend who headed one of his cultural departments and also served as his ‘astrological adviser’, to predict a favourable day for a journey in the interests of peace. Schulte-Strathaus had come up with 10 May on the basis of an unusual constellation of six planets in the sign of Taurus on that day, together with a full moon.24
In March Hess asked a prominent Munich astrologer, Maria Nagengast, to name a promising day for a foreign journey; she also identified 10 May, afterwards receiving 50 Deutschmarks for her trouble.25 It has been suggested that British intelligence somehow infiltrated Hess’s astrological circle, which included the Swiss, Grete Sutter, who had given him a prediction at Christmas; but there is no firm evidence of this26 and, of course, there was no need. Hess had been planning his flight since the previous year; the evidence suggests he was obsessed by his mission and determined to go.
One omen to which he attached particular importance was a dream Karl Haushofer had recounted on one of their last walks in Munich. Haushofer had got wind of Hess’s intention to fly to Britain and was apparently trying to find out if it were true in order to confront and dissuade him. He invented a dream in which he saw Hess walking through the tapestried halls of English castles bringing peace to two great nations.27 Hess refused to be drawn, but took it as a remarkable portent. Apparently, it was not the only one: a report on Hess after his arrival in Britain stated, ‘Recently the Professor [Haushofer] told Hess that he had seen him in his dreams, on three separate occasions piloting an aeroplane, but he knew not where.’28
The significance Hess accorded these metaphysical intimations is demonstrated in a letter he wrote to his wife from England nine months after his flight. He told her that in the folder he had given his adjutant before flying he had included:
1. A note on the momentous dream of the General [Haushofer]
2. The horoscope drawn up by Schulte-Strathaus
3. The prophecy that Grete Sutter made …
He asked her to copy these and deposit them with a notary, adding, ‘I am interested in the matter from a scientific point of view’,29 by which he meant he wanted to test their reliability in the light of events as they turned out.
THE LAST TALK WITH THE FÜHRER
On 30 April, before Albrecht Haushofer had returned from his interview with Burckhardt in Geneva, Hess received the leader of the Spanish Falange syndicates – Spain’s fascist organisation – at party headquarters, the Brown House, Munich. Afterwards he drove to Messerschmitt’s Augsburg works. His instructions to prepare his personal aircraft and fill the auxiliary fuel tanks had been phoned through earlier. Arriving at the airfield, he changed into flying gear, climbed into the cockpit of the Me 110 and was ready to take off when an adjutant ran across from the management building signalling him to shut off the engines.30 The Führer had phoned: he was unable to give his customary May Day address the following day and wanted Hess to stand in for him.
Hitler had just returned to Berlin from improvised field headquarters in south-east Austria after directing operations to punish Yugoslavia for not complying with his plans for the Balkans. That day, the 30th, he was discussing with the army high command the launch date for the coming Russian offensive31 – fixed finally for 22 June – no doubt the reason he asked Hess to give the speech the following day.
Messerschmitt’s Augsburg works had been selected as the ‘National Socialist Model Enterprise’ that year for its outstanding contribution to armaments, and it was there that Hess returned on 1 May to lead the celebrations and inspire the nation on the Labour Day holiday.32 After his speech, which was broadcast nationally, he bestowed gold medals as Pioneers of Labour on two ministers, then on Professor Willi Messerschmitt, praising him as ‘the designer of the best fighter aircraft in the world … thanks to which the German Luftwaffe enjoys its present undisputed superiority in aerial combat.’33
Finally he awarded the ‘golden flag’ to Messerschmitt’s factory as a model enterprise, and the ceremony ended with a roll of drums and the singing of ‘Brüder in Zechen und Gruben’ – loosely, ‘drinking companions’. Afterwards he took Willi Messerschmitt aside and discussed additional modifications to his personal Me 110, including ‘the second seat’s oxygen bottles [to be] fed into those of the pilot’. He needed them by the following Monday, 5 May.34
Whether or not Hess had originally told Messerschmitt why he wanted an aeroplane, it is scarcely possible the designer was not by this time fully in the know, indeed a collaborator. At the end of the war Göring’s chief executive, Field Marshal Erhard Milch, was adamant that Messerschmitt knew precisely what was going on;35 the plane he gave Hess had been specially equipped for the purpose. It must be assumed that Messerschmitt approved of Hess’s aim. It is equally difficult to believe that Göring was ignorant of Hess’s plan. The majority of German peace feelers had come directly or indirectly from him.
It is almost certain, however, that the flight Hess had had to abort on 30 April was to have been another test run, not the real thing.
On 3 May Hess flew to Berlin, and the following day, at six in the evening, with Göring, Himmler and the Interior Minister, Wilhelm Frick, he accompanied Hitler to the Kroll Opera House, still serving as the Reichstag. Deputies rose and roared approval as the party entered. Hitler stepped to the rostrum. His carefully prepared speech was aimed at an international, especially American audience – hence the late hour – and he focused his attack on Churchill as a warmonger aided by the Jewish financial interests standing behind him. He himself had striven only for peace. He detailed the many times he had publicly extended offers to end the war, but all his efforts for an understanding had come to nothing, wrecked by Churchill and his small clique resolved on war whatever the consequences. After turning to recent German military successes in Greece and the Balkans, he ended by taunting Churchill on a record of defeats which would have cost any other leader his job.36 Stepping down to clamorous applause, he took his usual seat beside Hess.
Afterwards the two conferred on the English question. This is certain, since there are contemporary statements to this effect from both Hitler at the Berghof on 13 May while attempting to explain Hess’s flight to Britain to senior party
members,37 and from Hess on the same day in Scotland when explaining the reasons for his flight to a Foreign Office official, Ivone Kirkpatrick.38
A third testimony to their discussion was allegedly found by the French war correspondent and author, André Guerber, at the end of the war, among documents in the ruins of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.39 It must be treated with great caution since the documents themselves have disappeared. According to Guerber’s report, one of these documents showed that Hess, a month before his flight to Britain, flew to Madrid, where in talks with Franco and British agents he formed the impression that Britain was interested in negotiating peace.
This, according to another of Guerber’s documents, he reported at a conference with Hitler and Göring at Berchtesgaden on 4 May. The problem here is that on 4 May all three were, as noted, in Berlin for Hitler’s speech at the Reichstag, not at Berchtesgaden. Guerber claimed that he read the notes of this discussion written up by Hitler’s secretary, Rolf Inliger. It may be that Inliger did not record the venue or that Guerber mis-stated it.
Later that day, 4 May, according to Guerber, Inliger recorded a further meeting between Hitler and Hess. As noted, such a meeting can be proved to have taken place after Hitler’s Reichstag speech. Inliger had Hess saying, ‘We must show the British we are sincere. If we do that the British people will rise up and compel Churchill to make peace.’
According to Guerber, Hitler then commissioned Hess to carry ‘Plan ABCD Nr S 274K’ to Britain. Guerber found a copy of the plan in the Reich Chancellery archives – ‘ABCD’ apparently referring to its four parts:
a) To demonstrate to the British Government by means of documents that it was useless to continue the war …
b) To promise Britain that if she would withdraw from the war she would preserve her full independence and retain her colonial possessions, but would have to undertake not to ‘meddle in any way’ with internal or external affairs of any European country.
c) An offer to Britain of an alliance of 25 years with the Reich …
d) A demand that Britain should … maintain an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards Germany during the German–Russian war.40
This find in the Chancellery archives seems altogether too convenient, yet when Hess arrived in Britain he did carry out a), b) and d) in precisely that order, apparently omitting only c), the 25-year alliance. Guerber could not have known this in 1945 when he filed his report. According to the British government’s only detailed statement on Hess, published in September 1943, the Deputy Führer had indeed ‘emphasised … the certainty of England’s defeat in two to three years’, and the terms he offered had certainly been based on clause ‘b)’, Britain having a free hand in her empire if she allowed Germany a free hand in Europe;41 but the statement made no mention of ‘benevolent neutrality’ or a ‘German–Russian war’ and stipulated that negotiations could not be held with the present, Churchill, government.
Guerber could have invented the documents he claimed to have found in the ruins of the Berlin Chancellery, for it is certain that Hitler, Hess and Göring were not at the Berghof above Bechtesgaden on 4 May when he alleged Inliger recorded their first conference there; yet why should an experienced and respected war correspondent stoop to such a device?
Hess’s meeting with Hitler after the Reichstag speech was confirmed by one of Hess’s security officers, Josef Portner. Some time after Hess flew to Britain Portner told Ilse Hess of a discussion between Hitler and Hess at the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, that had lasted four hours. Stationed in an anteroom outside the conference chamber, he had heard their voices raised frequently, but not what they said. When at length the two emerged, Hitler put an arm around Hess’s shoulders and they parted ‘almost cheerfully’. Hitler’s last words were, ‘Hess, you are and always were thoroughly pig-headed (ein entsetzlicher Dickkopf)!’42
It will be recalled that the two had had a similar marathon discussion or argument with raised voices over the ‘death list’ of those to be executed after the Röhm purge in 1934.43 Since Portner’s account was almost contemporary and certainly neutral it seems eminently credible. However, he gave the wrong date. He believed the meeting took place on 5 May, but that is not possible since both Hitler and Hess left Berlin by train on the evening of the 4th following their discussion after the Reichstag speech. The meeting he heard must have taken place on the 4th.
Whatever was said between Hitler and Hess on this last occasion they spoke on the evening of 4 May, the object of their frustration, Winston Churchill, was sitting in spring sunshine on the lawn of the Prime Minister’s country house, Chequers, working on Menzies’ special buff-orange boxes and glancing up suspiciously from time to time to make sure that his private secretary, Jock Colville, was not trying to read the secret papers. The rest of the house party was inside, among them Churchill’s friend, Captain Alan Hillgarth, then serving as naval attaché and intelligence officer at Hoare’s Madrid Embassy. Colville’s diary entry for that evening describes Hillgarth as ‘a fervent disciple of Sam Hoare’.44
This is hugely significant. If anyone knew what Hoare had been up to the previous month when the German and Italian Ambassadors in Madrid had reported him suggesting the imminent collapse of Churchill’s government and his own recall to form a new government to liquidate the war, it was the intelligence officer, Hillgarth. And if, as Churchill’s loyal confidant and guest on the weekend before Hess’s flight, Hillgarth was expressing ‘fervent’ devotion to Hoare it surely means that Hoare, far from being a defeatist and potential traitor, had been conducting a deliberate campaign of disinformation. Further, if, as Guerber asserted, Hess had flown to Madrid in April, he had evidently fallen for the ploy.
On 5 May Hess was again at Augsburg checking on the modifications he had ordered for his aircraft. There he summoned Albrecht Haushofer to report on his talk with Burckhardt in Geneva.45 It is not known what Albrecht told him; no doubt it was on the lines of his later report to Hitler, that Burckhardt had said that leading circles in London were still interested in peace negotiations, and had agreed to arrange for a British representative to meet him (Albrecht) if he would return to Geneva. Whether Hess agreed to Albrecht making a second trip to Geneva, as Karl Haushofer asserted after the war, is immaterial since by this time he had evidently made up his mind to launch his own mission on the coming Saturday, 10 May – both a weekend, as favoured by Hitler for surprises, and the date recommended by his astrologers.
The next day, Tuesday 6 May, he went again to the Messerschmitt works at Augsburg and took a final brief test flight with Helmut Kaden at 11.20 a.m.46
CHAPTER TEN
Take off!
IN THE FINAL DAYS before he flew off Hess spent an extraordinary amount of time with his three-and-a-half-year-old son, Wolf Rüdiger, nicknamed ‘Buz’. Ilse hardly knew what to make of it as her husband took Buz for lengthy walks along the river Isar, which flowed past the rear of their garden, or spent hours with him at the zoo nearby or indulged in private games with the boy behind the closed doors of his study.1 It was only afterwards she understood: he had needed the simple companionship of the child to distract his mind and calm his nerves before the venture; and he must always have known he might not return.
In England, meanwhile, opposition to Churchill’s direction of the war increased. The recent defeats for British armed forces, which Hitler had mocked in the Reichstag, led to withering criticism from Lloyd George and others in the House of Commons. Churchill knew things his critics could not. From secret sources and the ‘Boniface’ (‘Ultra’) decrypts in his buff boxes he knew Hitler was about to attack Russia and that the German Army in North Africa was short of supplies and had been instructed not to advance into Egypt. He replied with spirit, as Harold Nicolson described it in his diary: ‘He stands there in his black conventional suit with the huge watch chain. He is very amusing. He is very frank. At moments I have a nasty feeling that he is being a trifle too optimist
ic. He is very strong, for instance, about Egypt.’2 He assured the House that Hitler had his problems too; and looking back on all the perils Britain had already overcome, ‘upon the great mountain waves in which the gallant ship has driven’, he felt sure they need not fear the tempest. ‘Let it roar, and let it rage. We shall come through.’3
He was rewarded in the division that followed by a vote of confidence of 447 to three, and as he left the chamber cheering broke out spontaneously and was taken up outside. Later Jock Colville recorded, ‘He went early to bed elated by his forensic success.’4
To Goebbels this signified nothing. His reports from London indicated a deep mood of pessimism, above all because of the shipping losses to U-boats. ‘If the blow [against Russia] succeeds,’ he noted in his diary, ‘and it will succeed … with what plausible goal will England then continue fighting?’5 It was true that behind the defiance shown in the Commons there were many doubters. Harold Nicolson feared that people would jump at any escape that made cowardice appear respectable. ‘Morale is good,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘but it is rather like the Emperor’s clothes.’6
The next day, 8 May, Hitler returned to Berlin. Goebbels saw him at midday, finding him in brilliant form. He told Goebbels that England had lost the war the previous May. What could she do now? In the end it would be the ruin of the Empire. Roosevelt was only interested in prolonging the war so that he and his people would inherit England’s world position. And assuming imminent triumph in Russia and a consequent struggle with America for global mastery, he told Goebbels that the United States could never produce as much as they could with the whole economic capacity of Europe at their disposal.7 It was a gross miscalculation.
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