It is not certain from the correspondence, but it seems probable that Ribbentrop then sent the report to Führer headquarters,52 for that summer a high-ranking Abwehr agent visited Hess’s elderly aunt, Emma Rothacker, in Zürich saying he was on a commission from the Führer to photocopy all the letters she had received from Rudolf Hess.53
The impression from these Security Service files is that Hess was kept at the centre of a deception campaign undertaken largely by Claude Dansey’s agents in Switzerland with corroborating ‘whispers’ from London – no doubt co-ordinated by the Double-Cross Committee, since both Desmond Morton and Heydrich’s agent had Hess living in high style in a villa in Scotland. The Nazi mindset on race, Jews and the Japanese threat to white supremacy in the East was indulged in order to promote the idea that Hess was in contact with leading Englishmen and in position to open peace negotiations when the time was right – precisely what Stalin feared – and further, that bombing London would not help this cause. It may partly explain why Göring’s massed raids on the capital were not continued after the night of 10/11 May 1941. If so, this must surely rank as an outstanding, hitherto unknown success for British intelligence.
THE NUCLEAR THREAT
Germany had entered the war with an office for the military application of nuclear fission; German scientists had already split the uranium nucleus. Churchill and Roosevelt faced the nightmare possibility that Hitler would develop a nuclear weapon before their own scientists. Frank Foley had been personally involved in the question: he had flown 26 canisters of heavy water – the moderating agent essential to the German line of research – out of Norway during the German invasion of that country, and had done the same from France before the fall of Paris.54 The nuclear question must surely have been one of his priorities when interviewing Hess. Asked about Germany’s ‘secret weapons’ on one occasion in November 1941, Hess had replied he knew there was one but had no idea what it was; and Hitler would only use it as a last resort.55
In reality German nuclear scientists had hardly progressed. On 4 June 1942 Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of Armaments, chaired a conference on the question in Berlin and offered considerable resources for nuclear weapon development. Werner Heisenberg, speaking for the scientists, had to confess they would not know how to use the money. Five days later Foley’s scientific contact in Berlin from before the war, Paul Rosbaud, flew to Oslo and told his MI6 contact there that German nuclear research remained at a preliminary stage; minimal resources had been allotted.56
Later the same month Hess had been moved from Mytchett Place into a ground-floor suite in the wing of Maindiff Court mental hospital, Abergavenny, south Wales. It was entirely coincidental. Foley had given him up as a useful source some months before Rosbaud’s revelation. Hess was continuing to deflect all sensitive questions by saying he knew nothing of military matters, and his mental state had deteriorated alarmingly, or so it appeared. After his splint had been removed in September 1941 he had complained of headaches, eye, stomach, liver and gall bladder pains and the medical orderlies saw him hallucinating, waving his hands and whispering in the direction of blank walls.57 In December he had told the surgeon treating his leg that he was losing his memory.58 Like much of his behaviour, this was assumed as a defence against the constant probing to which he was subject. He freely admitted this later.59
By the end of 1941 at the latest Foley had been forced to admit defeat. He left Mytchett Place in March 1942 to return to normal duties. In May Maindiff Court was approved as a new and quieter home for Hess, and he was moved there on 26 June.
STALIN’S SUSPICIONS
By summer 1942, in Poland, death camps designed for industrial murder were replacing the first, wild phases of Heydrich’s final solution to the Jewish problem. Meanwhile, early that year representatives of the European countries occupied by Germany had met in London and issued what was termed the St James’ Declaration, calling for retributive justice after the war for those responsible for acts of violence against civilian populations. Great Britain was an observer, not a signatory. It will be recalled, however, that the previous year Churchill, when considering how Hess should be detained, had anticipated post-war trials of ‘war criminals’.60
He took the idea to Washington in June 1942, apparently under pressure from the Polish, Czech and other exiled governments in London, and suggested the establishment of a ‘United Nations Commission on Atrocities’. Subsequently Lord Simon was appointed to chair a British Cabinet Committee on the Treatment of War Criminals. This proposed a United Nations Commission to investigate war crimes. Washington supported the principle, and on 7 October Roosevelt joined Simon in a public announcement to that effect.
It touched Stalin on a raw nerve. The Soviet government had not responded to Simon’s soundings on war crimes; and for his two major allies to come to an agreement without his concurrence seems to have stirred all his suspicions about Churchill’s treatment of Hess – probably aggravated by the recent British disinformation campaign which must have been picked up by his agents in Switzerland – and his doubts about British and American willingness to create a ‘second front’ in Europe to ease pressure on the Red Army.
His mistrust was expressed by Pravda in an explosive article on 19 October, repeated by Moscow Radio the same night. This asked whether Hess was being harboured in Britain as Hitler’s plenipotentiary, and accused Churchill’s government of transforming Britain into ‘an asylum and refuge for gangsters’.61
Two days later the Soviet Security Service, NKVD, received a wire from one of its most trusted sources in London, Colonel Frantisek Moravetc, head of military intelligence in the exiled Czech government, to the effect that the current view that Hess had arrived in Britain unexpectedly was not correct:
Long before his flight HESS had discussed his mission with the DUKE OF HAMILTON. The correspondence covered in detail all the questions involved with organisation of this flight. But HAMILTON himself did not participate personally in the correspondence. All HESS’s letters to HAMILTON … were intercepted by the intelligence service where the answers to HESS were also elaborated in the name of HAMILTON …62
In this way, Moravetc stated, Hess was lured to England; he had personally seen the correspondence. The letters from Hess had, he said, concerned the necessity of stopping the war between Britain and Germany and had linked this to the planned German attack on Russia. Therefore, he concluded, the British possessed written proofs of the guilt of Hess and other Nazi leaders in preparing the attack on the Soviet Union.63
The timing of this wire suggests Moravetc must have been prompted by the Pravda outburst, which had been reported in British newspapers. Possibly he sought to reassure the Russians that the British, having proofs of Hess’s complicity in the assault on the Soviet Union, would send him for trial after the war. Possibly he was shown the Hess–Hamilton letters for this purpose by MI6 – assuming they had indeed conducted such a correspondence. His source has never been discovered. But it is strange, if Hess wrote about Hitler’s plans to attack Russia before flying to Scotland, that he said nothing about them after his arrival, even denying they existed – that, at least is the clear impression given by all the open papers on the subject, including memos by Desmond Morton and Henry Hopkinson, both of whom were close to Menzies.
His information on Hess falling into a British intelligence trap is more plausible. The diaries of Eduard Taborsky, personal secretary to Eduard Benesch, President of the Czech government in exile, show that Hess’s arrival in Britain had prompted Benesch to question whether the British government was preparing another ‘Munich’ settlement with Hitler; and on 31 May Taborsky had noted it was clear that ‘the Nazi No. 3 was enticed into an English trap’.64 His source was a top-secret report from a British military department. Which department and how he obtained it is not known, but Robert Bruce Lockhart, SOE’s liaison with the provisional Czech government, has been suggested as the informant; his name o
ften appeared in Taborsky’s diary. Taborsky’s evidence is almost contemporary with Hess’s arrival in Britain, and more persuasive therefore than Moravetc’s account of over a year later; it also conforms with the September 1941 report the NKVD had received from an agent in Vichy France.65 At all events, Moravetc’s despatch convinced NKVD analysts, who used it as the basis for a top-secret report for Stalin and his Foreign Minister dated 24 October.
The British Ambassador in Moscow, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, registered a strong protest over the language used in the Pravda article, and on 25 October sent a series of wires to the Foreign Office expressing his puzzlement at the Russian government attitude and reporting two theories behind their mistrust:
Before he went to Scotland Hess had been in touch with certain influential people in England belonging to a group who still believed it was possible and wise to compound with Hitler, who gave him to understand that, if he came on a special embassy with certain proposals H.M.G. would not only make peace but would join the Germans in a crusade against Bolshevism. The people concerned are so powerful that H.M.G., while rejecting their proposals at the time they were made did not dare to expose their sponsors, preferring to be distrusted by their Ally, Russia, and to leave her in the lurch, for it is these people who are … standing in the way of a second front …
2) That is one theory. Another suggests that H.M.G. are foreseeing the day when it might suit them to compound with Hitler, biding their time against it and keeping Hess up their sleeve for the purpose …66
To the obvious answers against these ideas, he reported, the Russians counter by asking why there was any mystery about Hess and why they had not been told what had happened; ‘Finally they claim that since Hess went to the U.K there have been no serious bombings, and they hold this to be significant.’ To calm them, Clark Kerr suggested the publication of a white paper with a full description of Hess’s arrival and the proposals he had brought, which reiterated the government’s intention to put him on trial when the time came. He went on:
If these [Hess’s] alleged proposals were indeed (as was suggested to me at the time) that in exchange for the evacuation of certain of the occupied countries we should withdraw from the war and leave Germany a free hand in the East, our declared rejection of them should be enough to satisfy the most difficult and suspicious of the Russians outside the Kremlin …67
How had Clark Kerr heard of the proposal that Germany would evacuate certain occupied countries if Britain withdrew from the war and left her a free hand in the east? It does not appear in Kirkpatrick’s or Hamilton’s or Foley’s or any Guards’ officers records of their conversations with Hess, nor in the transcripts of Simon’s or Beaverbrook’s interviews, nor indeed in any papers in the open files.
In the event, this crucial disclosure did not appear in the report on Hess’s mission and proposals that the former Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Stafford Cripps, was asked to prepare from documents made available to him by the British government in response to this suggestion of Clark Kerr’s for appeasing Moscow.68 This report was wired to Clark Kerr in summary on 4 November for communication to Stalin. It stated:
Hess proposed a peace settlement on the following basis:
(1) Germany to have a free hand in Europe and to receive her colonies back;
(2) England to have a free hand in the British Empire;
(3) Russia to be included in Asia, but Germany intended to satisfy certain demands upon Russia either by negotiation or war. Hess denied that Hitler contemplated an early attack on Russia.’69
The first public allusion to Hess proposing German withdrawal from occupied western Europe was to appear in an American journal the following spring, as will appear. More recently, both the anonymous informant who claimed to have been conscripted by Kirkpatrick to translate Hess’s formal proposals70 and Kenneth de Courcy, who received information from Lieutenant Loftus, cited German evacuation of occupied western Europe as fundamental to Hess’s peace plan.71
However, it is evident that with the presence in London of the exiled governments of the German-occupied countries, many possibly suspecting another ‘Munich’, Churchill, if he wished to maintain their support and continue the war, had to conceal Hess’s offer to liberate their homelands. He did so, if the anonymous informant and Kenneth de Courcy are to be believed, by placing the formal, typed proposals Hess brought with him under the strictest secrecy, and speaking only of what he referred to as the ‘conversational aspects’72 of the offer. This must of necessity have involved Hamilton and Kirkpatrick amending their reports; it is known that Hamilton did so, and his original report is missing from the files.73 It is, nonetheless, curious that Hess does not appear to have mentioned his formal peace proposals to any of the people he spoke to subsequently.
The one phrase from Clark Kerr’s despatch from Moscow which appears to lift a corner of the veil of secrecy Churchill placed over the formal proposals is so vital to the elucidation of the mystery still surrounding Hess’s mission it bears repetition:
If these alleged proposals were indeed (as was suggested to me at the time) that in exchange for the evacuation of certain of the occupied countries we should withdraw from the war and leave Germany a free hand in the East …74
This appears to be the only phrase in the official files open to scrutiny which indicates the full scope of Hess’s peace plan.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The real story?
IN MAY 1943 a sensational article in the popular US journal American Mercury purported to tell ‘The Inside Story of the Hess Flight’. The editor vouched for its anonymous author as ‘a highly reputable observer’, and expressed ‘full faith’ in the sources used.1
The article itself claimed to reveal ‘one of the most fascinating tales of superintrigue in the annals of international relations’, resulting in ‘a supreme British coup’, and for the Nazis the equivalent of a shattering military defeat. A few details were still obscure, others had to be suppressed for policy reasons, but on the basis of ‘reliable information from German sources and from indications given by Hess himself’ it could be stated that Hess came to Britain on Hitler’s explicit orders; the outlines of his mission were known in advance by a limited number of Britishers and his arrival was expected – even to the extent of an RAF escort for the final stage of his flight.
In January 1941, the article stated, Hitler, determined on pursuing his ‘holy war’ against Russia, had used ‘an internationally known diplomat’ to extend a feeler towards an influential group in Britain, formerly members of the Anglo-German Fellowship, including the Duke of Hamilton. This initial sounding by the ‘eminent diplomat’ in person was intercepted by the Secret Service. They responded using the names and handwriting of the Duke of Hamilton and others of the group. ‘Replies designed to whet the German appetite, replies encouraging the supposition that Britain was seeking a way out of its military difficulties, were sent to Berlin. The hook was carefully baited.’2 A German proposal of negotiations on neutral soil was rejected. Berlin then offered to send a delegate to England, selecting Ernst Wilhelm Bohle for the purpose and planting stories in Turkish and South American newspapers that he was being groomed for an important and mysterious job abroad. Lack of reaction from the British Press showed the Germans that the British were indifferent to Bohle, upon which Hitler decided to send ‘a really big Nazi’ whose presence could not fail to command attention: his own deputy, Rudolf Hess.
It is worth noting that this account loosely fits Bohle’s own post-war testimony that when translating Hess’s letters to Hamilton he had believed Hess was acting on Hitler’s authority and that he (Bohle) would be flying to a meeting in a neutral country, possibly Switzerland.3 More significantly, perhaps, Bohle’s name was completely unknown in England, and only someone fully briefed in the detail of these top-secret negotiations either from the British or German side could possibly have known he was involved. It is also worth recall
ing the remarkable preparations for receiving Hitler’s Condor aircraft at Lympne aerodrome in Kent, which were called off after Hess’s arrival.4
Professor Karl Haushofer’s post-war testimony also bears a resemblance to this American Mercury account:
At that time Hess initiated peace feelers to be put forward, and the responsible man in dealing with these peace feelers was my murdered son [Albrecht]. He was in Switzerland and talked with Burckhardt and Burckhardt told him to come back again to Switzerland and there he would be flown to Madrid, and would there have a conference with Lord Templewood [as Sir Samuel Hoare became]. When my son returned from Switzerland Hess spoke to him again and it was after that that he flew to England. I don’t know what he spoke to him about at this discussion.5
Carl Burckhardt certainly fits the American Mercury description of an ‘eminent’ and ‘internationally known diplomat’. As to the reason and objective of Hess’s flight, Karl Haushofer’s ‘firm conviction’ was that he had been impelled by ‘his [Hess’s] own sense of honour and his desperation about the murders going on in Germany. It was his firm belief that if he sacrificed himself and went to England he might be able to do something to stop it.’6
A 28-page statement written by Hess’s adjutant, Karl-Heinz Pintsch, while in Soviet captivity after the war has recently been discovered in the Russian State Archives. Hitler knew about Hess’s proposed flight, Pintsch wrote, because Berlin had been negotiating with London for some time: ‘The flight occurred by prior arrangement with the English.’7 The mission Hess undertook, he went on, was to achieve a military alliance with England against Russia, or at least the neutralisation of England. Scholars have doubted the statement on the grounds that Pintsch was telling his Soviet captors what he knew they wanted to hear at the beginning of the Cold War in order to procure his release – namely that the British had been in secret negotiations with Nazi Germany to attack Russia.
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