Hess, Hitler and Churchill

by Peter Padfield

  Why Hitler did not call in Goebbels before sanctioning the crass announcement broadcast that Monday evening is a mystery. Goebbels was phoned later, and recorded:

  I was called from the Berghof. The Führer is completely shattered. What an insight for the world: a spiritually deranged second man after the Führer. Horrible and unimaginable … At present I know no way out … I was stormed with telephone calls from all sides, Gauleiter, Reichsleiter etc. None will believe this idiocy … I must come to Obersalzberg. There I will learn details … It is a frightful evening …53

  William Joyce, the Nazi propagandist known to the British public as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, included an announcement of Hess’s death in his 22.30 broadcast in English from Breslau that night.54

  IVONE KIRKPATRICK

  Hamilton and Kirkpatrick learned of the German broadcast announcing Hess’s disappearance when they landed at Turnhouse; it had been picked up by the BBC monitoring service and reported on the nine o’clock news. Receiving telephone instructions to proceed without delay to identify the prisoner, they drove to Glasgow and northwards through blacked-out streets to the military hospital in Buchanan Castle, Drymen, where they arrived shortly after midnight. Hess was asleep. When woken, he failed to recognise Kirkpatrick, but the former First Secretary at the British Embassy in Berlin drew him out on incidents they had witnessed together, and it soon became clear this was indeed the Deputy Führer sitting up in bed before them.55

  After the preliminaries Hess began reading from a long statement he had apparently been preparing since arriving at the hospital. The first part was a historical polemic charging England with responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War by allying with France, moving on to the iniquities of the Versailles Treaty and Britain’s subsequent failure to make concessions to the democratic German government, leading to the rise of Hitler and National Socialism; Hitler had then been compelled to occupy Austria and Czechoslovakia and when the British encouraged the Poles to resist his proposals, to invade Poland. England was thus responsible for the present war, and when after the Polish collapse Hitler had made a peace offer, England had rejected it with scorn; and had done so again when Hitler repeated the offer after the collapse of France. There was nothing further Hitler could do but pursue the struggle. Hamilton, who evidently had enough German to understand some of this, described it as ‘one long eulogy of Hitler’.56

  At about 1.00 a.m., with Hess still in full flood, Kirkpatrick and Hamilton were called away to the telephone. It was Anthony Eden from the Cabinet War Room with Churchill wanting to know whether it had been established that the prisoner was Hess, and if so what he was saying. Kirkpatrick replied that his identity was not in doubt, but he had only got halfway through his speech – presumably the sheaf of notes he was reading – and so far there was no explanation of why he had come. They returned and Hess continued reading. Hamilton soon nodded off, exhausted.

  The second part of Hess’s discourse was designed to prove that Germany would inevitably win the war. German aircraft production was far larger than that of Great Britain and America combined, and as for the Battle of the Atlantic, U-boat parts were being constructed in large numbers all over Germany and occupied Europe for transport by waterway to the coast for assembly. Crews were being trained on a huge scale. England must shortly expect to see vastly increased numbers of U-boats working in co-operation with aircraft against shipping. Moreover, there was not the slightest hope of bringing about a revolution in Germany. Hitler possessed the blindest confidence of the German masses.

  Finally Hess moved on to his reasons for coming to Britain and his proposals for peace. He said he had been horrified by the prospect of the continuation of the struggle and had come without Hitler’s knowledge in order to convince responsible persons that ‘since England could not win the war, the wisest course was to make peace now’57 – as Kirkpatrick summarised it. After warning them that the United States had designs on the British Empire and would certainly incorporate Canada, Hess then made the well-worn proposal that Great Britain should give Germany a free hand in Europe and Germany would give Britain a completely free hand in the Empire – apart from former German colonies, which should be returned as they were needed as sources for raw materials.

  Kirkpatrick asked whether he included Russia in Europe. ‘In Asia,’ he replied, at which Kirkpatrick said that under the terms he had proposed, Germany would not be at liberty to attack her.

  Herr Hess reacted quickly by remarking that Germany had certain demands to make of Russia which would have to be satisfied either by negotiation or as the result of a war. He added, however, that there was no foundation for the rumours now being spread that Hitler was contemplating an early attack on Russia.58

  By this time the interview had lasted some two and a quarter hours. Kirkpatrick had scarcely interrupted the flow. He had occasionally attempted to draw Hess on particular points, but had otherwise allowed even his most outrageous remarks to pass, realising that argument would be, as he put it, ‘quite fruitless’. He rose after Hess reached the end of his speech and roused Hamilton. As they were leaving Hess said he had forgotten to emphasise that his proposal could only be considered on the understanding that it was negotiated with an English government other than the present one, and added that Mr Churchill and his colleagues who had planned the war since 1936 were not persons with whom the Führer could negotiate.59

  Hamilton and Kirkpatrick were given breakfast at the hospital, then drove back to Hamilton’s house off base and turned in. Kirkpatrick rose after a few hours and phoned Cadogan at the Foreign Office just before 11.00. He summarised Hess’s statement, but said his impression was that Hess would not open up very far to anyone speaking for the government. On the other hand, ‘if he could be put in touch with perhaps some member of the Conservative Party who would give him the impression that he was tempted by the idea of getting rid of the present administration, it might be that Hess would open up freely.’60 Cadogan told Kirkpatrick to remain at Turnhouse.

  Hamilton, returning to the base, had ACW Pearl Hyatt bring her typewriter into his office so that he could dictate a report in private; it was his second report. Mrs Pyne, formerly ACW Iris Palmer, remembers Pearl saying, ‘Oh. I’ve got to take this darned thing in to the Old Man’s office!’61 Pearl Hyatt also typed Kirkpatrick’s report of his interview with Hess, and subsequent reports of interviews over the following days.

  Kirkpatrick’s suggestion to Cadogan that someone who could give the impression of wanting to oust Churchill might be able to draw Hess out may have been followed up that day. Nothing in the open files even hints at it, but a retired squadron leader, Frank Day, has provided compelling testimony that Hess was visited by a senior RAF officer and a civilian that Tuesday, 13 May.62

  Day was then a pilot officer training on Spitfires at Grangemouth, near Turnhouse. On 12 May he made his first solo flight in a Spitfire, recording it proudly in his flying log. The next day, thus the 13th, he and five other young pilots on the course were instructed to report to Turnhouse. On arrival they were told they were to stand guard duty, and were driven a short distance – no more than 20 minutes – to a large Victorian house. Inside, a curving flight of stairs led to a first floor landing with about three doors. Day and another young pilot officer found themselves stationed beside one of these. Presently a tall German officer in uniform with a leather flying jacket came up the stairs escorted by two soldiers. They approached the door Day was guarding and the German and one of the soldiers went through. Day had a glimpse of an anteroom leading into a large living room furnished with easy chairs and a sofa. The other soldier remained outside holding a paper bag, which, Day discovered, contained ‘pills’ the German had brought with him.

  Five minutes or so afterwards a ranking RAF officer with gold-braided cap and an array of medals63 arrived with a civilian. Both entered the room. Day learned from a manservant that the RAF officer was ‘the Duke’; he as
sumed the Duke of Hamilton. If his recollection was correct it could not have been Hamilton who, as a wing commander, had no gold braid on his cap, nor many medal ribbons on his tunic. The description does, however, fit the King’s younger brother, Prince George, Duke of Kent, a group captain in the RAF Training Command with the honorary rank of Air Commodore.

  There is nothing in the open files to suggest Hess was moved from his room in the Drymen Military Hospital on this Tuesday 13th, and Kirkpatrick did not report seeing him, which is odd since his interview in the early hours of that morning had left so many unanswered questions. On the other hand the detail in the late Squadron Leader Day’s story is compelling, especially Hess’s escort carrying his pills. When Day’s son – not he himself – alerted The Times to this incident, Day had no idea that Hess had homeopathic medicines with him when he parachuted into Scotland. Nor did he know of a rumour attached to Craigiehall House, some five and a half miles from central Edinburgh, that Hess had been brought there in 1941 after landing in Scotland.64 Craigiehall, built in the 17th century, had been extended in the Victorian era and converted into a hotel and country club in the 1930s. Requisitioned for use as Army Headquarters, Scotland, at the beginning of the war, it was exactly the kind of venue needed for a top-secret meeting between Hess and a royal Duke. Had Kent visited the military hospital at Drymen he might have been recognised – if it was indeed Kent – by staff or some of the hundred soldiers guarding Hess.

  The Duke of Kent was a younger brother of King George VI. He had been close to the King’s elder brother, David, briefly King Edward VIII, now Duke of Windsor, and, like him, openly in favour of a pro-German policy. He and his wife, Marina, had seen much of von Ribbentrop when he had been German Ambassador in London, virtually serving as channels of communication between the German Foreign Ministry and the heir to the British throne.65 The Kents had also cultivated their mutual cousin in Germany, Prince Philipp of Hesse,66 Hitler’s one-time liaison with Mussolini – in whose aeroplane, it will be recalled, Lonsdale Bryans had proposed flying to Berlin.67 In July 1939 the Duke and Prince Philipp of Hesse had met and discussed ways of averting the coming war.

  When war came, the Kents had given up their London home and bought Pitliver House in Scotland, between Dunfermline and Rosyth on the opposite bank of the river Forth from Edinburgh. Whether the Duke was at home during the weekend of Hess’s arrival and the subsequent few days cannot be established. His papers remain closed. A recent book on the Hess affair, Double Standards, claims that on the evening of 10 May he was waiting with others – including Poles – in a small house known as The Kennels adjacent to the Duke of Hamilton’s airstrip at Dungavel. This is based on the testimony of an elderly lady who had been stationed at Dungavel with one of the women’s services during the war, who wished to remain anonymous.68 Moreover, she and a former colleague, who also wished to remain anonymous, told the Double Standards authors that the landing strip lights had been turned on and off again as or just before they heard a plane fly low overhead.69 This implies electric lights. There is some doubt about this, but the small Dungavel airstrip was rated as an emergency landing ground for RAF planes and may well have been equipped with electric lights.70

  Another claim in Double Standards, based this time on the recollection of one Nicholas Sheetz, who had attended a dinner party given by the Dowager Duchess of Hamilton, was that the Duchess had reminisced about Hess visiting their house off base at Turnhouse.71 From this it is surmised that Hess was brought to Hamilton’s house on the 13th on the way to his meeting with the high-ranking RAF officer, probably the Duke of Kent, at nearby Craigiehall House. This appears highly likely. However, there is no contemporary evidence for the Duke of Kent’s whereabouts that day, nor of Hess’s temporary removal from the military hospital.

  One firm fact about the weekend of Hess’s arrival is that General Wladislaw Sikorski, Polish Prime Minister in exile, flew in to RAF Prestwick from North America on the morning of Sunday 11 May,72 thus hours after Hess parachuted down at Eaglesham nearby. The Kents took a great interest in Poland. The Duke had actually been offered the Polish crown; and Sikorski had been a guest at Pitliver House on several occasions since moving to England after the fall of France.73 Poland, the trigger and ostensible cause of the war, was of course an interested party in any negotiations to bring peace. Can it be coincidence that Sikorski arrived in Scotland at almost the same time as Hess on his peace mission, with, if one accepts the inference of Squadron Leader Day’s recollections, the Duke of Kent also on hand?

  * * *

  On Wednesday 14 May, the day following what appears to have been an unrecorded meeting between Kent and Hess at Craigiehall House, Hamilton and Kirkpatrick again drove over to Drymen Military Hospital to see him. They opened the conversation, according to Kirkpatrick’s subsequent report, by asking Hess how he was and listening to a number of his requests: for the loan of specific books, the return of his medicines and camera and for a piece of his aeroplane as a souvenir. Hamilton promised to attend to these things,74 after which Hess described in detail his flight and, as Hamilton put it in a later report, ‘his extreme difficulty in getting out of his aircraft when he discovered that he could not make the landing ground at Dungavel’.75 Towards the end of the interview he apologised for omitting two points from his peace proposals: that Germany could not leave Iraq in the lurch, and that British and German citizens should be indemnified for property expropriated as a result of the war. Finally, he again stressed that Germany would inevitably win the war by U-boat and aircraft blockade.

  Both Hamilton and Kirkpatrick recorded this interview as little more than a friendly chat, taken up to a large extent with Hess’s description of his flight and his escape from the aircraft. It seems entirely disconnected from their previous interview with him in the early hours of the 13th. There was no attempt to elucidate questions raised by the outline peace terms he had proposed; nor was he probed about his reasons for coming at this time. Perhaps these issues had been addressed at Craigiehall House. At all events, it is evident that Hess still saw himself as a peace envoy and was being treated as such. Kirkpatrick recorded him saying as they parted that ‘if conversations were initiated as he hoped, he trusted that a qualified interpreter would be provided and that the conversations would not be attended by a large number of persons …’76

  The books he had requested were Sea Power by Grenfell, Dynamic Defence by Liddell Hart and Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome.77 The first two advocated British disengagement from Continental affairs, precisely in line with his and all former peace proposals; Sea Power concluded by quoting a former Continental enemy:

  ‘England’, said Napoleon at St. Helena, ‘can never be a continental power, and in the attempt she must be ruined. Let her stick to the sovereignty of the seas, and she may send her ambassadors to the courts of Europe and demand what she pleases.’78

  The book had been published in September 1940 under the pseudonym ‘T-124’; that Hess knew the author was the serving naval officer, Commander Russell Grenfell, is testimony to his intimate up-to-date knowledge of British strategic dissent.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Conflicting statements

  GOEBBELS DROVE TO the Berghof in the morning of Tuesday 13 May. He knew by then that Hess was in Scotland: Churchill had released the bare facts of his arrival late the previous night and the BBC had broadcast the news in the early hours before Goebbels set off. It was a world sensation. Hitler’s only public reaction had been to announce that the office of the Deputy Führer would from now on be termed the Party Chancellery and come under his own personal jurisdiction; it would be headed as before [under Hess] by Martin Bormann.1 Otherwise German broadcasting stations remained silent.

  On arrival Goebbels found Hitler waiting for him with the letter Hess had left behind. He recorded his shock on reading it:

  … a muddled confusion, prime dilettantism, he wanted to go to England to make clear their
hopeless position through Lord Hamilton in Scotland to topple Churchill’s government and then make peace which would save London’s face. That Churchill would have him arrested, he unfortunately overlooked. It is too idiotic. So, a buffoon was next man to the Führer. It is scarcely conceivable. His letter bristles with undigested occultism. Professor Haushofer and his wife … have been the evil spirits. They have worked their ‘Grossen’ [‘big one’] up to this role. He has also had visions, had his horoscope drawn up and all bunkum … One wants his wife, his adjutants and his doctors beaten to pulp … The Führer is finished with him. He is completely shattered … He pronounces on him [Hess] in the harshest terms, granting him idealism, however …2

  Taken at face value this diary entry shows either that Hitler had no prior knowledge of Hess’s mission, or that whatever he had known, the Minister for Propaganda and Enlightenment had been left out of the loop. It would have been odd if this were so. Goebbels was privy to Hitler’s big secrets: the coming eastern campaign, the fate awaiting the Jews; why not Hess’s peace negotiation?

  Goebbels’ interest in truth was relative. His whole life was an exercise in propaganda, whether to serve the present or the future Germany. Besides presenting the Führer and the regime to the German people as sent by Providence to save the nation and the blood, he saw himself as witness to this heroic Germanic age for future generations. This was to become very obvious in the final days of the Reich. It seems likely that his entry on Hess’s flight was in the same vein, to distance Hitler from what now seemed a failed attempt; the vehemence of his contempt for his former colleague suggests it.