Hess, Hitler and Churchill

by Peter Padfield

  I reported my conversations to my Commanding Officer and to Major Foley who sanctioned me to continue along the lines I had chosen.

  Nothing that has passed between Z and myself – either written or spoken – has been or ever will be mentioned to anyone but my Commanding Officer and Major Foley who are in possession of the full facts concerning my conversations with Z.38

  On the 15th, three days after Loftus signed this affirmation, the officer commanding the Grenadier Guards at Windsor, Lieutenant Colonel W.S. Pilcher, was removed from his post, retired and forced into professional and social isolation in Scotland.39 The reason for his abrupt disappearance has never been officially disclosed. His friend, Kenneth de Courcy, before the war secretary and intelligence officer of the Imperial Policy Group of powerful interests opposed to Britain’s intervention on the continent of Europe, believed that he was removed because he had learned of Hess’s peace proposals.

  De Courcy gave no explanation of how Pilcher may have learned details of Hess’s mission, but MI5 documents now reveal that de Courcy himself was briefed on Hess’s proposals, and that the information came from Lieutenant Loftus.40

  KENNETH DE COURCY

  It was not until almost the end of 1942 that MI5 applied to the Director of Public Prosecutions for a charge against de Courcy for receiving information in contravention of the Official Secrets Act.41 By this date Camp Z had been wound up, Hess had been moved to another location and Loftus had long ceased to have contact with him. Nonetheless, it is clear from the public prosecutor’s notes that MI5 attempted to bring de Courcy to trial because of information about Hess he had received from Lieutenant Loftus:

  In a charge against De Courcy of receiving information under Section 2 (2) of the [Official Secrets] Act it would be possible to rely upon the evidence of Loftus to prove his communication to De Courcy of the facts relating to Hess and the very character of the information might be relied upon in proving that De Courcy had reasonable grounds for believing at the time he received it that it was communicated to him in contravention of the Act by reason of the official position occupied by Loftus. I do not altogether like this suggested charge because it involves the necessity of, as it were, admitting that Loftus himself had committed an offence under Section 2 (1) of the Act …42

  From this it seems that Loftus had leaked what he knew of Hess’s mission to de Courcy the previous year while serving at Mytchett Place under Colonel Scott.

  De Courcy received confidential information from many sources, including service personnel, and recorded the details of what he had been told in a private diary dictated to his secretary. The public prosecutor recognised that it would be necessary to raid his office and seize this diary, but foresaw too many difficulties in proving that the entries had been communicated subsequently to other persons or were likely in themselves ‘to prejudice the defence of the realm or the efficient prosecution of the war’ to proceed against him. No action was taken.

  The case is nonetheless significant as it shows that MI5 had reason to believe Loftus had supplied information on Hess to de Courcy. Guy Liddell himself wrote to Menzies at this time, ‘There is no doubt that De Courcy has acquired a considerable knowledge of Hess’s intended mission and of his behaviour since he arrived in this country.’43 This throws an entirely new light on de Courcy’s post-war statements on Hess. Heretofore it has been easy to dismiss them in light of his subsequently blackened reputation: besides being, in the words of The Times, ‘a pro-Nazi friend of the Duke of Windsor … fantasist and appeaser’44 – in other words on the losing side in the war – de Courcy was jailed in the 1960s for alleged inability to return a million pounds put up by investors in a scheme for a garden city in Rhodesia – a charge and sentence against which he protested his innocence for the rest of his life. However that may be, the release of the public prosecutor’s file on MI5’s attempt to prosecute him for receiving information from Loftus elevates his disclosures on Hess’s mission to insider information.

  De Courcy had no doubt about the reason for Colonel Pilcher’s liquidation from his command, his regiment and his friends. Long before the war Pilcher had predicted France’s collapse, and had warned against Britain becoming involved on the Continent. Like his close White’s Club companions Stewart Menzies and the Duke of Buccleuch, like many Tory grandees and members of the Royal family, like the military strategists Liddell Hart, General J.F.C. Fuller and Commander Russell Grenfell, he had believed Russia and the spread of Communism a greater danger for the British Empire than Nazi Germany.45 These views had made him the object of deep suspicion to those supporting Britain’s new alliance with Soviet Russia.

  Chief among these, according to de Courcy, was Victor Rothschild of the banking dynasty. Rothschild was an extraordinarily gifted polymath: while still at Harrow School he had played first-class cricket for Northamptonshire. As an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge he had played for the university, and despite many other enthusiasms and accomplishments, including playing Bach and jazz on the piano to a high standard, he gained a triple first-class degree; subsequently he was awarded a scientific research fellowship at his college.

  Most significantly, during his time at Trinity he was initiated into the Apostles secret society. This small group of privileged young men was possessed by dissatisfaction with British society and enthusiasm for Communism; and Rothschild, a supreme rationalist, was drawn to the ‘scientific’ Marxism they professed.46 He masked his views by committing to the Labour Party, but two of his friends in the Apostles, Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, like Kim Philby, were later recruited as Soviet agents. De Courcy had no doubt that Rothschild was their sponsor:

  He saw these brilliant young men at Cambridge, all of whom had a weakness, and he spotted it and put it to advantage, thinking they would get into higher levels of affairs. He saw the Nazis as the greatest threat to the Jewish race ever and was determined to back the Russians. He encouraged these men, helped them financially, succoured them and stood back.47

  De Courcy himself was a prime target for the ‘Russian group’: a Soviet booklet entitled Russia’s Enemies in Britain devoted 39 of its 70 pages to attacking him.48 Conversely there is no doubt that he was in a position and had the contacts to know his own enemies in Britain. More recently his charges against Rothschild have been confirmed by the Australian author, Roland Perry, who has adduced compelling circumstantial evidence – admittedly no direct proof – to show that Rothschild was himself recruited by the KGB and was actively involved in passing information to the Russians, mainly through his friends, Blunt and Burgess – in short that he was not merely the sponsor, but was the ‘fifth man’ in the Cambridge spy ring of Blunt, Burgess, Philby and Donald Maclean.49

  Perry lays the additional reproach that Rothschild was more loyal to his Jewish heritage than to the country of his birth. Certainly after the Nazis took power in Germany Rothschild advanced a great deal of money to the British Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, to extract Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.

  In the late 1930s, as war approached, he attached himself particularly to the anti-appeasement set around Winston Churchill.50 After the outbreak of war he leased a three-storey West End maisonette he owned at 5 Bentinck Street to two female friends from his time at Cambridge, who in turn sub-let a flat to Burgess and Blunt. They were often joined there by Rothschild.51

  In April 1940 Rothschild joined MI5 at the invitation of Guy Liddell.52 He was to head the counter-sabotage division, where he brought his scientific intellect and a quite exceptional courage to the task of defusing enemy bombs. His position also served as perfect cover for his spying activities, and he was soon instrumental in having Liddell take his great friend and fellow KGB agent Blunt into the service as his (Liddell’s) personal assistant. Liddell recorded a discussion he had with Rothschild shortly before he took him on, observing, ‘He [Rothschild] is quite ruthless where Germans are concerned, and would exterm
inate them by any and every means.’53

  This was the man who, according to de Courcy, was responsible for Colonel Pilcher’s professional exile:

  Pilcher was removed under the influence of Rothschild, Blunt and others of that Russian party, and Churchill disgracefully went along with it.

  Pilcher knew the secret of the Hess mission which was anti-Russian and with which the following sympathised:

  Queen Mary [the Queen Mother], the Duke of Windsor, Aga Khan, Lord Londonderry, the Duke of Westminster, the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Rushcliffe …54

  De Courcy was unwittingly involved in Pilcher’s dismissal: a note Pilcher sent him detailing German military dispositions in Russia was intercepted by Censorship and photocopied before being allowed on its way, following which two Special Branch men visited de Courcy and had him sign a statement that he had received the note.55 This infringement of the Official Secrets Act was the pretext on which Pilcher was ejected from his post. Subsequently, when he failed to appear at White’s or respond to enquiries, de Courcy wrote to Menzies saying that something had gone wrong with Pilcher. He received a reply the next day warning him that any enquiries on this subject would be met with extreme displeasure from the very highest circles56 – from which he concluded that Churchill had sanctioned Pilcher’s exile.

  He assumed the pressure had come from Rothschild, who had the backing of the immensely wealthy American Jewish lobby that Churchill was determined to keep onside. It is probable that Rothschild was also responsible for MI5’s later attempt to prosecute de Courcy himself; Moscow exaggerated de Courcy’s importance and was at this time in late 1942 urging his detention.57

  * * *

  De Courcy never disclosed the fact that Lieutenant Loftus had broken faith with Colonel Scott and Foley by briefing him on Hess. However, in one of his post-war Special Office Brief newsletters circulated some time after Pilcher’s death in 1970 he claimed to have a note of what Pilcher had told him about the mission. The note was dated 28 May 1941,58 thus before Loftus had come to Mytchett Place.

  It suggested that Hess came over with the knowledge of the Abwehr chief, Admiral Canaris, and the real object was to topple Hitler. This runs counter to everything known about Hess’s character and his blind loyalty to the Führer, and contradicts everything that Lieutenants Malone and Loftus reported after their conversations with Hess – of which more later. The note continued:

  Hess had become alarmed about the war and coming Nazi excesses. He believed a total reversal of strategy and policy to be essential. He had heard stories that Queen Mary, the Duke of Windsor, the Dukes of Westminster and Buccleuch, the Marquis of Londonderry, Lords Halifax and Rushcliffe, Basil Liddell Hart and R.A. Butler thought so too.

  His idea was the evacuation of France, Belgium, Holland, Norway and Denmark, peace with England and placement of the Jews to Palestine …

  War with Russia would however be prosecuted.

  The Special Office Brief piece went on:

  It was that factor which aroused the profound anxieties of the pro-Russian Party in Britain which brought vast pressure upon Churchill to stifle the whole project. One man threatened to leak the facts – Colonel W.S. Pilcher … commanding the Grenadier Guards at Windsor. He was dealt with, relieved of his command … and thereafter ordered to Scotland. He lived the rest of his life a virtual recluse until he died in 1970 … His exit from a former social life was remarkable …59

  In a confidential memo headed ‘Colonel W.S. Pilcher’, de Courcy expanded on the aim of toppling Hitler:

  When Hess arrived Pilcher learned something at [sic] his mission which, to a limited extent, fitted into his opinions – at least it was clear that Germany could be turned East, would reduce in the West to a substantial extent and that as Germany became weaker powerful elements within the armed forces and upper classes would turn against Hitler …60

  It is well known that Canaris sheltered anti-Hitler officers at his headquarters; it is also known that throughout the war he provided MI6 with information via several of Menzies’ agents61 – and that he eventually paid a terrible price for his disloyalty. It is probable that he knew of Hess’s mission, but the suggestion that Hess also aimed for Hitler’s removal seems utterly improbable. What is interesting in de Courcy’s account is that the terms Hess proposed included German evacuation of occupied western Europe – as the ‘informant’ later testified62 – and the resettlement of the Jews in Palestine.

  In another Special Office Brief newsletter, de Courcy stated, again like the ‘informant’ later, that Hess ‘carried formal peace proposals for submission to wholly proper official channels …’63

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The ‘final solution’

  THE ‘MADAGASCAR PLAN’ for the resettlement of Europe’s Jews on the French Indian Ocean island had been abandoned by the end of 1940, if not earlier. By 1941 the plan was for the wholesale massacre of European Jewry in the wake of the drive east. Probably Hitler had had this concept from the beginning: it will be recalled that Heydrich’s orders to his commanders at the start of the Polish campaign in 1939 had distinguished between the short-term and the ‘ultimate aim’ for the Jews.1

  It is probably significant that on 20 May 1941, ten days after Hess had taken off on his flight for peace, and still nothing having been heard from the British, the Reich Central Office of Emigration issued instructions on Göring’s authority banning further emigration of Jews from the Reich; the reason given was the ‘doubtless approaching final solution [Endlösung]’.2 Later that same month Heydrich’s head of Counter-espionage, Walter Schellenberg, circulated Security Police Departments with the same message: all Jewish emigration was banned because of the ‘zweifellos kommende Endlösung’3 – the new euphemism for physical destruction.

  If these orders are indeed linked to the apparent failure of Hess’s mission they add credibility to de Courcy’s claim that the peace proposals Hess brought included the resettlement of European Jews in Palestine. In reality the numbers involved virtually ruled this out since the storm such an influx would inevitably raise in the Arab world would threaten the stability of the region and its vital oil supplies. Nonetheless it is interesting, although probably coincidental, that on 19 May, the day before Göring’s ban on Jewish emigration, Churchill raised the prospect with the War Cabinet of negotiating with Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia on the creation of an autonomous Jewish state of ‘Western Palestine’.4

  It is inconceivable that Hess was unaware of the final solution planned for the Jews. It is true that the detailed scheme for industrial extermination camps had not been worked out before he flew to Scotland, but all special Kommando and police units who would liquidate Bolshevik commissars and Jews behind the lines of advance into Russia had been instructed and indoctrinated in their mission, and army commanders themselves had been fully briefed on the coming ideological battle to decide the future of the Reich.5 Hess had been close to Rosenberg, appointed Reichsminister for the occupied east, who certainly knew the general plan for the Jews, and he was frequently with Goebbels, who demonstrably knew: on 20 June, two days before Operation ‘Barbarossa’ was launched, Goebbels made a comment in his diary on a report from Poland: ‘The Jews in Poland gradually decay. A just punishment for inciting the people and engineering the war. The Führer has indeed prophesied that to the Jews.’6 Hess had heard the prophecy as often as Goebbels, yet at Mytchett Place when challenged on Nazi Jewish policy he appears to have given nothing away. During a wide-ranging conversation with Lieutenant Malone in July he said that Hitler had decided to banish all Jews from Europe at the end of the war; their probable destination was Madagascar.7

  When Foley asked Hess about the abuse and murder of Jews, Hess challenged him to produce evidence; and strenuously denied that cruelty or torture was practised in Germany.8 At any mention of concentration camps he liked to quote the figure of 26,000 women and children who he alleged had lost their lives in Br
itish concentration camps during the Boer War.

  On 11 August Colonel Scott recorded that Loftus had picked an argument with Hess over concentration camps and the persecution of Jews. This was four days after he had been handed Hess’s second report questioning British war aims, which Hess hoped he would pass to his MP father and to Hamilton. Apparently Hess merely responded with the alleged 26,000 Boer women and children who had perished in British camps.9

  On the 16th Foley reported to Menzies: ‘We have been asking ourselves whether his [Hess’s] expose [sic] was a pose which he had assumed for our benefit. We are inclined to think it was not and that he had been shocked by what he had seen in Poland and the West.’10 There is no indication of what Hess had exposed. This must have formed the subject of a previous report, no longer in the file. The reference to his shock at what he had seen in Poland and the West suggests it concerned the brutalities of war, possibly even the treatment of Jews. Or it may have been an outburst about the senselessness of the war, since Foley was responding to a report from a journalist formerly resident in Berlin that before flying to Britain Hess had been ‘amazingly open with his friends about the stupidity of this present war’.11 If such was the case why should the actual report of his exposé be missing?

  By this date Churchill had ample evidence of the early wild – defined in German–English dictionaries as ‘wild, savage, fierce …’ – stages of the ‘final solution’. It arrived every morning with Menzies’ orange-buff boxes in the form of Bletchley Park decrypts of messages reporting mass shootings of ‘Jews’, ‘Jewish plunderers’, ‘Jewish Bolshevists’ or ‘Russian soldiers’ by police units behind the German advance into Russia. On 7 August the police commander, central sector, had reported 30,000 executions carried out since the start of the campaign.12 Although the specific aim of liquidating Jewry, as opposed to shooting Jewish partisans and ‘plunderers’ had not yet been identified by British intelligence analysts, it is reasonable to assume that Menzies had briefed Foley on the mass killings for his conversations with Hess, and that Foley had put them to Hess, as he had earlier put allegations of Gestapo torture and cruelty. It is possible, therefore, that Hess’s exposé was about the liquidation of Jews in the east. That is pure speculation.