Hess, Hitler and Churchill

by Peter Padfield

  John Harris has recently discovered that Hamilton’s colleague and lifelong friend, Wing Commander David McIntyre, his co-pilot in the flight over Everest, was taken to meet Hess on his arrival in Scotland.118 McIntyre was chief executive officer at RAF Ayr, and it will be recalled that a wing commander and a squadron leader from Ayr arrived at the Scout hut in Giffnock while Hess was there. Perhaps Hamilton conferred with McIntyre during the missing hours. That is speculation.

  Precisely what Hess told Hamilton when he arrived at Maryhill Barracks hospital with Benson at ten o’clock on the morning of the 11th is also subject to speculation. Hamilton’s report states that after inspecting the prisoner’s effects he entered the prisoner’s room accompanied by the interrogating officer and the military officer on guard: ‘The prisoner, who I had no recollection of ever having seen before, at once requested that I should speak to him alone. I then asked the other officers to withdraw, which they did.’119

  This was hardly the normal response of a senior officer confronting a prisoner of war. The explanation is, surely, that Hamilton was aware already that this was the Deputy Führer. Yet that was not the impression he gave Hess, who in a subsequent letter to Ilse described Hamilton as not believing it could be him until, as they spoke, he gradually realised it must be, and said ‘in complete astonishment, “Are you really Hess?”’.120

  Hamilton’s report goes on to state:

  The German opened by saying that he had seen me in Berlin at the Olympic Games in 1936, and that I had lunched in his house. He said, ‘I do not know if you recognise me but I am Rudolph Hess …’

  From Press photographs and Albrecht Haushofer’s description of Hess, I believed that this prisoner was indeed Hess himself …

  Hess, his report continued, went on to state that he was ‘on a mission of humanity’; the Führer did not wish to defeat England and wished to stop fighting. This was the fourth time he (Hess) had tried to fly to Dungavel; on the previous occasions he had been turned back by bad weather. The report continued:

  The fact that Reichminister, Hess, had come to this country in person would, he stated, show his sincerity and Germany’s willingness for peace. He went on to say that the Führer was convinced that Germany would win the war, possibly soon but certainly in one, two or three years. He wanted to stop the unnecessary slaughter that would otherwise inevitably take place. He asked me to get together leading members of my party to talk over things with a view to making peace proposals. I replied that there was now only one party in this country …

  Hess went on to tell him what the Fuhrer’s peace terms would be, but Hamilton said, according to his report, that if a peace agreement were possible it would have been made before the war started; he could see no hope of a peace agreement now. Hess then requested that he ask the King to give him ‘parole’, as he had come unarmed and of his own free will.

  Hess’s version of this in a letter to Ilse on the ninth anniversary of his imprisonment in Scotland was:

  Then [on the first day of his imprisonment] I believed that it would last seven hours: directly I made myself known to the Duke and stated my mission as a Parlamentär [bearing a flag of truce] – even if on my own authority – I would be treated as a Parlamentär.121

  Hess also asked Hamilton to let his family know he was safe by sending a telegram to Rothacker, Herzog Strasse 17, Zürich.

  In his report Hamilton made no mention of any letter addressed to him either among Hess’s possessions or as a topic during their talk. And if Hess mentioned a document he had brought containing precisely worded peace proposals Hamilton’s report was not only silent on the subject, but actually ruled it out by stating that Hess had asked him to get together the leading members of his party ‘to talk over things with a view to making peace proposals’. Yet it is known that Hess had written him a letter and it is believed – as will appear – that he also brought over a draft peace treaty worded precisely by an official in Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry.

  It should be noted that the report quoted above was not Hamilton’s original, but a revised version he prepared for Churchill.122 The original has been destroyed or suppressed.

  After his interview with Hess, Hamilton, according to ‘additional notes’ he made later, told the officer commanding at Maryhill that he believed the prisoner to be an important person who should be moved out of danger of bombing and placed under close guard;123 later that day Hess was driven to Drymen Military Hospital in Buchanan Castle on the shores of Loch Lomond, and a 100-strong guard was mounted.

  Whether these precautions were taken on the advice of an RAF Wing Commander – even if the premier Duke of Scotland – may be doubted. The presumption must be that higher authorities were in control. In a Commons statement Churchill drafted but never made, he observed that Hamilton had been ordered to go to Maryhill Hospital to receive any statement the ‘unidentified German’ might make.124 And a summary of the case wired to Moscow from the Foreign Office in 1942 states, ‘the Duke was ordered by his superior officer in the Royal Air Force to see Hess, then under confinement in Maryhill Barracks, Glasgow.’125

  * * *

  After leaving Maryhill that morning Hamilton, according to his ‘additional notes’, drove to Eaglesham with Benson to inspect the remains of Hess’s plane, then returned to Turnhouse and reported to his commanding officer at No. 13 Group Headquarters that he had an important matter to communicate to the Foreign Office.126

  Mrs Pyne, at that time ACW Iris Palmer, one of two female clerks in the orderly room at Turnhouse, remembers Hamilton returning that afternoon, ‘shattered, extremely tense’, in marked contrast to his normal relaxed manner.127 She cannot recall the time, but he went straight into his office and his first words were ‘Get me Group!’ She got Group Headquarters on the line for him, but from the orderly room did not hear what he said. Shortly afterwards he called the other ACW, Pearl Hyatt, into his office and dictated a report, which Pearl typed after returning to her desk in the orderly room. Mrs Pyne did not see the report. Both girls were aware without being told that this was a matter of the highest urgency. They had known since reporting for work at 9.00 that morning that Hess had landed with a message for the Duke; the whole station buzzed with the story.

  It is not clear whether Hamilton called in briefly to his house off base before going to his office and putting the call through to Group, but the Duchess’s recollection of the time he did return home suggests he may have done. He came in and straight up to her bedroom – the first time she had seen him since he left in the middle of the night – and showed her a photograph he had taken from the prisoner’s possessions, saying, ‘I think it’s Hess. I must go to London at once. I haven’t told anyone. Don’t say a word about it.’128

  The bedroom windows overlooked the drive leading to the front door, and at that moment she saw Squadron Leader Cyril Longden, whom she had asked to tea, walking up the drive with his two children. In some irritation that they should appear just now, she exclaimed, ‘There’s Cyril!’

  It was to become a family joke: shown a photograph of the Deputy Führer who had flown over to see her husband, all she could say was, ‘There’s Cyril!’

  It serves, however, to pinpoint Hamilton’s arrival home as four o’clock or thereabouts, which suggests that he called in at home briefly before his office, for there is no doubt that he made a call to the Foreign Office long after tea time, and this was presumably, although not necessarily, from his office on the base. If this is correct, it would suggest that he spent a considerable time at the site of the wrecked plane after his 10.00 a.m. meeting with Hess.

  He called the Foreign Office to try to arrange a meeting with Sir Alexander Cadogan that evening at 10 Downing Street. A junior official, John Addis, answered. Hamilton felt he could not tell him over the open line why it was so urgent he see the Permanent Secretary at once; Addis could not summon Cadogan from his country cottage on a Sunday without
good reason. The conversation became heated, when, as Hamilton put it in his ‘additional notes’:

  Suddenly in the midst of this rather acrimonious discussion a strange voice said ‘This is the Prime Minister’s Secretary speaking. The Prime Minister sent me over to the Foreign Office as he is informed that you have some interesting information. I have just arrived and I would like to know what you propose to do.’

  I asked that he should have a car at Northolt [aerodrome] within an hour and a half and I should meet it there.129

  The Prime Minister’s secretary was Jock Colville. This phone conversation can be accurately timed from Cadogan’s diary, which he kept meticulously, as an outlet, it has been said, for a somewhat unfulfilling marriage.130 On Sunday 11 May, after describing a morning walk and listening to the news at one o’clock – ‘Heavy Blitz on London last night, but we got down 33. This is really good’ – he let off steam about his political chief, Anthony Eden, then noted:

  5.30 Addis rang me up with this story: a German pilot landed near Glasgow, asked for the Duke of Hamilton. Latter so impressed that he is flying to London and wants to see me at No. 10 tonight. Said I shouldn’t be in London before 8. Fixed meeting for 9.15. Half hour later, heard P.M. was sending to meet His Grace at airfield & wd. bring him to Chequers – so I needn’t be tr-r-r-oubled!

  Left about 6. Home 7.50. London awfully knocked about last night. And I fear Westminster Hall and Abbey got it. Also Parliament tho’ I didn’t care about that. I wish it had got more of the Members.131

  There is, of course, a minor discrepancy between this contemporary account and Hamilton’s later notes insomuch as Hamilton evidently did succeed in persuading Addis to ring Cadogan and arrange a meeting at No. 10 that night, although this was later countermanded. There can be no doubt about the timing of the call, though. There are far more serious discrepancies in Colville’s description of the incident.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Reactions

  ‘I WALKED OUT INTO Downing Street at 8.0 a.m. on my way to the early service at Westminster Abbey.’ Thus Jock Colville began his diary entry for 11 May.1

  Smoke from numerous fires hung over Westminster after the heaviest night raid yet on the capital. Flames rose from the roof of Westminster Hall. What remained of the House of Commons was burning. Fire engines were pumping water into Westminster Abbey. As he reached the doors Colville was told by a policeman, ‘There will not be any services in the Abbey today, sir.’2

  This entry, on 10 Downing Street headed paper, is pasted on page 157 – numbered by hand – of Colville’s hard-bound diary. Later on there is another entry for 11 May. This is because he spent much of the following weekend indoors with a heavy cold, copying entries from a red pocket diary into the hard-bound volume.3 He reached 11 May again on page 196. This time the entry began: ‘Awoke thinking unaccountably of Peter Fleming’s book “Flying Visit” and day-dreaming of what would happen if we captured Göring during one of his alleged flights over London.’4

  The published edition of his diaries prints this version. It then reverts for the second paragraph to the beginning of his original, page 157 entry, ‘I walked out into Downing Street at 8.0 a.m. …’,5 but this is not in the page 196 account copied from his pocket diary, which has as the second paragraph: ‘Went to Church early, but found Westminster Abbey running with water, part of the roof having collapsed. Westminster Hall on fire and the south bank of the river ablaze. The House of Commons was destroyed.’6

  Although this follows on directly after the opening, ‘day-dreaming’, paragraph in this second version of 11 May it does not appear in the published version. Nor does the next paragraph copied from his pocket diary, which describes going to Church at St Martin-in-the-Fields instead. There then follows a paragraph common to both original and copied entries, which does appear in the published version: ‘After breakfast I rang the P.M. at Ditchley and described what I had seen. He was very grieved that William Rufus’s roof at Westminster Hall should have gone. He told me we had shot down 45 which, out of 380 operating, is a good result.’7

  In the second, or copied entry there is a note that the number of enemy bombers destroyed had been exaggerated – ‘it was finally established that we got 33’ – then a description of lunching at the St James’ Club, after which comes a paragraph which concludes the published account but does not appear in the original, page 157 entry: ‘Great excitement over an E. Phillips Oppenheim story concerning the Duke of Hamilton and a crashed Nazi plane. The Duke flew to London and I had been going to Northolt to meet him; but he was switched straight through to Ditchley.’8

  Colville seems usually to have written his diary late in the day: the entries for the previous week concluded successively with Churchill working until 2.00 a.m.; Colville dancing to a gramophone at an evening party; Churchill going to bed early; the biggest air raid on Germany; Churchill leaving for the weekend for Ditchley Park; and on the 10th the start of one of London’s heaviest air raids as Colville went to bed. It is possible, however, that on Sunday 11 May Colville was so impressed by the sight of London burning he described his impressions that morning on his return from church. This could explain why he omitted any mention of Hess’s arrival, surely one of the most sensational events of the war, from this first entry for the 11th on Downing Street writing paper. He was at Downing Street; the Prime Minister was at Ditchley Park, and Colville may not have heard of Hess’s arrival until later that day.

  It is more difficult to explain a retrospective account Colville added in his published diaries after his 11 May entry, according to which he had walked over to the Foreign Office that morning to chat with Nicolas Lawford, Anthony Eden’s Second Private Secretary, who was on duty over the weekend. Lawford was on the telephone when he came in, but turned when he saw him and, with his hand over the receiver, explained that it was the Duke of Hamilton with a fantastic story, which he refused to reveal in detail, but he wanted the Prime Minister’s secretary to meet him at Northolt aerodrome. Colville took the telephone. Hamilton refused to be specific but told him he could only compare what had happened to an E. Phillips Oppenheim novel, and it concerned a crashed German plane:

  At that moment I vividly remembered my early waking thoughts on Peter Fleming’s book and I felt sure that either Hitler or Goering had arrived. In the event I was only one wrong in the Nazi hierarchy. I telephoned to Ditchley [where Churchill was staying] and the Prime Minister instructed me to have the Duke driven directly there.9

  This is highly unlikely since Hamilton’s call to the Foreign Office was in the afternoon, not the morning as Colville’s account has it. Cadogan’s diary times the call he received from Addis – not Lawford or Colville – about Hamilton at 5.30 in the afternoon.10 And Lawford was not even at the Foreign Office that weekend, but at home on his parents’ Hertfordshire estate breaking in a half-Arab colt.11

  On 14 May, between Colville’s original pasted-in entry on Downing Street writing paper and the weekend when he copied in the second entry for the 11th, a leader had appeared in The Times headed ‘The Flying Visit’. It compared Hess’s arrival to the ‘literary flight of fancy’ published the previous year by ‘a well-known young member of the staff of The Times’ – Peter Fleming – under the title of The Flying Visit. This had described the Führer descending by parachute into a lonely region of the English countryside. The article ended with an allusion to Oscar Wilde’s thesis that ‘nature always tends to imitate art’.12

  This, then, probably supplied Colville with inspiration for his own flight of fancy; but why had he felt it necessary? The answer probably lies in what Colville told Hamilton’s son, Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, in 1969 when Lord James was preparing a book about his father’s unintended involvement in Hess’s mission. When Hamilton had said on the telephone that an extraordinary thing had happened, and compared it to something out of an E. Phillips Oppenheim novel, Colville had asked, ‘Has somebody arrived?’13


  It was a strange question. It must be assumed that, in order to explain the context later to Hamilton or anyone else Hamilton may have told, he had invented his strange dream. And in order for the dream to have been in his mind the phone call had to have taken place in the morning. The question is, why had he resorted to invention? That is probably unanswerable now. His different diary entries and evidently misremembered or deliberately bogus additional explanation merely reinforce the conclusion that much that took place on the night and morning following Hess’s arrival has been withheld from the official record. Perhaps the most likely explanation is that Hess was expected, a high secret which could not be revealed since the implication of prior negotiations might have fatally undermined Churchill’s strategy of drawing the United States into the war.

  DITCHLEY PARK

  On weekends when the moon was full and the Prime Minister’s country retreat, Chequers, made a conspicuous target for German bombers,14 Churchill retired to Ditchley Park, home of Ronald and Nancy Tree, he a wealthy Conservative MP, she a celebrated hostess and interior designer, born a Virginian who was nonetheless chiefly responsible in the 1920s and 1930s for creating what came to be called the ‘English country house look’.15 The interior of Ditchley Park, a large 18th-century Palladian building north of Oxford on the road to Stratford, was one of her masterpieces.

  On Sunday 11 May her guests, besides Churchill and his young confidant, Brendan Bracken, included Roosevelt’s special envoy, Harry Hopkins, and the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair. Churchill surprised his hostess that morning with a request for the Duke of Hamilton to stay the night.16 He gave no explanation. It will be recalled that he had been told of Hess’s expected arrival17 by Bevin the night before; presumably he waited for a positive identification, perhaps Hamilton’s at Maryhill Barracks hospital, before he approached his hostess about the Duke.