Hess, Hitler and Churchill

by Peter Padfield

  He survived the night. Over the following days, seduced by the comfort and splendour of his hospital room after the stone walls of his cell, he weakened in his resolve not to see his family in the dishonourable condition of a prisoner, and allowed Bird to talk him into a Christmas visit from Ilse and his son. They arrived on 24 December, Ilse now grey-haired, Wolf Rüdiger a grown man of 32. As they entered the room where he waited tensely, he shot up like a spring from his chair and brought his hand up to his forehead in salute.

  ‘I kiss your hand, Ilse!’

  The two stared almost unbelievingly at one another before Ilse replied, ‘I kiss your hand, father!’29

  Her impulse to rush to him with outstretched arms was restrained by Wolf Rüdiger; physical contact was not permitted. They sat at opposite sides of a table set between partitions dividing the room. Hess put on a cheerful, confident performance, asking about their flight, talking about his illness, assuring them he was receiving ‘absolutely overwhelming treatment’, listening to their news of relations. After the allotted 30 minutes, stretched to 34, he returned to bed smiling contentedly.

  ‘I’m so happy I’ve seen them,’ he told Bird, ‘I’m just sorry I waited so long …’

  One thing that occupied him during that first visit was the distress he had caused his former secretary, Hildegard Fath, known in his close circle as ‘Freiburg’ – her home town – when at Nuremberg he had pretended not to know her. He had been unable to explain or make his apologies as Nuremberg was one of the topics the prisoners were not permitted to write about; and almost the first thing he said to Ilse was to ask her to convey his greetings to Freiburg and say he was very sorry he had treated her very badly for over twenty years. Like his premonition of death the previous month, these words would acquire significance for the provenance of his later ‘suicide note’. That he said them is not in doubt as they were published in a book Wolf Rüdiger wrote about his father in 1984, three years before his alleged suicide.30

  That first visit broke Hess’s resistance to seeing his family in prison. After he had recovered and been returned to Spandau Ilse, Wolf Rüdiger or other members of his family visited him every month.

  Bird continued probing him about his mission to Britain. On 10 May 1971, the 30th anniversary of his flight, he brought a tape recording of a BBC documentary on the subject which he hoped might prick Hess’s memory. They sat on a bench in the garden under the shade of a tall poplar Dönitz had planted years ago. As Bird fitted the cassette into his recorder Hess seemed nervous and told him his mission had been a great one; he was not ashamed of it. It was a mission for humanity. He had wanted to end the war and bring about an understanding with England to stop the bloodshed and end the suffering. He had taken it on himself to go, but it was too late. His mission had been a failure –

  ‘Did you have high hopes of bringing about a settlement with the British?’ Bird asked.

  ‘Of course!’ Hess laughed. ‘Otherwise why would I have gone?’31

  Bird switched on the recorder. He did not, according to the book he published later, ask him what reason he had for his high hopes, nor why he had chosen Hamilton.

  On another occasion Bird showed him microfilm of captured correspondence between Hess and the Haushofers in the late summer and autumn of 1940. Hess agreed that the Haushofers had been working to find a basis for an understanding, but said that they had not known and could not have guessed that he himself would fly to conduct the negotiations.

  We had not heard from the Duke of Hamilton and it was becoming urgent that something had to be done soon or it would be too late. There was the danger that England would make her pact with America before we could get someone over to talk to her on the highest authority. That is why I decided to take it on myself to fly.32

  Bird asked whether he had talked to Hitler about it first. Hess replied that Hitler had not known he planned to fly to England himself; but he himself had known that what he had to say would have the Führer’s approval. Again, Bird apparently failed to ask him why, if he had not heard from Hamilton, he flew to see him. This was especially odd since Hess insisted during this same conversation that he had never met Hamilton; he may have seen him across a room at a Berlin reception, but he had never met him and had not corresponded with him.33

  In spring 1972 their talks came to an abrupt end. Bird was summoned to his commanding officer at US mission headquarters in Berlin and asked if he was responsible for a manuscript on Spandau written with Hess’s co-operation. Bird agreed that he was. It was no secret among his colleagues; several of his fellow officers had read his chapters and made suggestions. Now it appeared that it had suddenly become a matter of grave official concern.

  He was interrogated for several hours and when finally allowed home was placed under house arrest, and a team of officers searched every room and took away documents, letters and photographs. His phone was tapped, and although allowed to travel in Berlin in his car he was followed by three cars, each containing two secret service men. Finally, he was asked to resign his post as US Commandant of Spandau, made to sign a secrets act and told he would have to await official permission before he could publish his book.34

  Undoubtedly Colonel Bird had broken the regulations governing Spandau and talked to Hess on all the forbidden topics. Whether his transgressions merited the extreme measures described seems doubtful. He was, however, given permission to publish, and his book, The Loneliest Man in the World, appeared in 1974, extending knowledge of Hess’s plight internationally and increasing pressure for his release.

  Bird did not reveal whether he had been made to cut out certain passages before he was allowed to publish, but Desmond Zwar, who helped him or even ‘ghosted’ his book, is positive that ‘Bird and I were never “censored”.’35

  * * *

  Five years after Bird was forced to resign, a French priest, Charles Gabel, took over as pastor for the lone prisoner in Spandau. By this time Hess was 83, but it is clear from the book Gabel published later that despite age and physical frailty and the psychic strain of endless years in captivity, he had retained mental acuity and balance.36 When not indulging his extravagant theatre of distress during the early years or descending into spirals of ultimate despair, he had maintained internal discipline and succeeded in keeping mentally active, reading widely in history and philosophy, always making copious notes. The new science of space exploration particularly excited him, and he had studied and thought creatively about its problems. In addition, until prevented by age and stiffness, he had done daily physical exercises.

  He had told Bird that his main source of strength was his strong belief in God – ‘not in the Church, only in God.’ His own philosophy, he had said, was based on Schopenhauer’s concept that ultimately man was guided by fate, ‘but really, isn’t our fate in God’s hands?’37 Gabel had no doubt that he was completely sound in mind. He also discovered in him, little by little, a wry sense of humour he had not expected.

  The visits he made once a week always followed the same pattern: first about twenty minutes listening on an old record player to the classical composers Hess loved, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert in particular; next about quarter of an hour of reading, and afterwards they would walk in the garden whatever the conditions. Here, Gabel recorded, they could broach subjects of the moment, but also talk of personal and family affairs. Sometimes Hess sent messages to his family via Gabel, sometimes the family passed news to him through the pastor.

  Hess was highly amused in May 1979 when Gabel told him of Hugh Thomas’s book, The Murder of Rudolph Hess. Based on his observation that prisoner ‘Number 7’ in Spandau had no scar on his chest from a wound Hess had sustained in the first war, Thomas, a doctor, claimed that he was a double, substituted for the real Hess, who had been murdered. The argument was soon disposed of by two doctors from the British Military Hospital who examined Hess and found the scarcely visible scar.38 It did not prevent t
he book from being an international sensation.

  Some two years later Gabel told Hess that a former chief of British counter-espionage – Sir Maurice Oldfield – had revealed that Hess’s intelligence chief had been a Soviet agent, and helped Hess to make his flight to Scotland. ‘What interest would the Russians have had in sending me to England?’ Hess very reasonably asked.39

  One of the intriguing features of Gabel’s book is the number of times he refers to Hess expressing profound regret for the Nazi programme of exterminating the Jews:40 ‘Hess likes to repeat that he himself bears no responsibility for what the Nazi leaders … savagely baptised the Endlosung. He deeply regrets that which will never be erased from history.’41 Gabel suggested to him that if he could publicly disassociate himself from these Nazi excesses he would render a great service to his country, even to himself. Hess declined on the grounds that prison was not the ideal place from which to make a statement that was ‘truly and totally free’. Gabel understood the argument, but kept returning to the question, and put it to him later that a public declaration of his regret for the war and the sufferings it had brought, particularly to the Jews, would meet Russian objections that he had never expressed repentance, and might facilitate his release. Hess said he saw no need to put it in writing. He had always regretted the violence and excesses of the war. His commitment to peace had been sufficiently demonstrated on 10 May 1941.42

  In Bird’s book there is only one passing reference to Hess’s regret for Nazi Jewish policy. It was after Bird told him that Ilse had referred to him as ‘the conscience of the party’. Hess had chuckled, ‘Yes, in many ways I was very much against treating the Jews the way they were treated.’43 This is hardly the profound regret for the mass slaughter programme he regularly expressed during talks with Gabel. The want of any serious reference to the subject is so remarkable as to suggest that despite the denial of Bird’s co-author Zwar, Bird himself might have been warned off any references to Hess’s attitude to the extermination of the Jews. Yet there is nothing to substantiate that possibility.

  Of his flight to Scotland, Hess maintained an obdurate silence. In June 1986 as Gabel’s time in Spandau was coming to an end, the pastor reported, ‘He has told me nothing [of his flight] and will never tell anything. One must not expect revelations.’44

  Yet Gabel had, unwittingly, recorded one important revelation: two years earlier, on 16 May 1984, Hess had neatly side-stepped the question of whether Hitler had sent him to Britain by referring to documents in London which remained closed to the public. ‘These,’ he told Gabel, ‘are without doubt the peace proposals I took. The English do not want it perceived that one could have stopped the war.’45 Thus, from Hess’s own lips, confirmation that he took peace proposals with him to Britain, proposals which have not surfaced to this day, and on which Kirkpatrick’s, Hamilton’s, Foleys, Simon’s and Beaverbrook’s reports are silent.

  Hess made another reference to these documents in early 1987. His medical attendant, Abdallah Melaouhi, told him he had heard from one of the Soviet guards that the Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, was prepared to release him on the next Soviet tour of duty at Spandau. Hess showed no reaction. Surprised, Melaouhi asked if he was not pleased by the news. Hess replied that if the Russians released him it would mean his death. ‘He would only be pleased if the British published his documents internationally.’46 If they did so it would mean he could be freed; but Hess cautioned Melaouhi to say nothing about this. Melaouhi claimed that it was not until after Hess’s death that he understood what he had meant: that the British would never allow his release.

  When Gabel heard the rumours that Gorbachev intended to propose Hess’s release he wondered if it was, perhaps, disinformation designed to put pressure on the Allies.47 He had kept in touch with his successor at Spandau, who informed him of a serious decline in Hess’s health that summer; he did not expect him to survive the winter.

  In August came the shocking news of Hess’s suicide.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Final audit

  FIRSTLY, WHY HAMILTON? According to Eden’s statement to the House of Commons Hess flew over to see the Duke because his friend, Haushofer, had told him that ‘the wing commander was an Englishman who would understand his point of view’.1 The explanation Hess gave Eugene Bird was scarcely more credible: he had not heard from the Duke, but took it upon himself to fly over to Scotland to see him because of the danger that England would make a pact with America before they (the Nazi government) could get someone over to talk to her on the highest authority.2

  Bird, it will be recalled, asked Hess if he had had high hopes of success.

  ‘Of course. Otherwise, why would I have gone!’

  The statements appear contradictory. How could Hess have expected success if he had not heard from his would-be negotiating partner? Others must have told him then. He never revealed who – of which more later.

  According to Hamilton’s report of his first meeting with Hess alone in Maryhill Barracks Hospital soon after he landed, Hess requested two things: that Hamilton get together the leading members of his party to talk over peace proposals, and that he ask the King to give him parole as he had come unarmed and of his own free will.3 At Mytchett Place Hess told Dr Gibson Graham that he could only gain access to the King through Hamilton;4 later he asked Lieutenant Malone to request Hamilton to arrange an audience for him with the King;5 and he told Lord Simon, ‘I appealed to the gallantry of the King of England … I thought the King and the Duke of Hamilton would take me under their protection.’6 He said the same to Major Foley and to Lieutenant Loftus.7

  This probably answers the question ‘why Hamilton?’ As Lord Steward in the Royal Household Hamilton had direct access to the King. Hess seems to have believed that an appeal to the King would allow him to circumvent the British diplomatic channels answerable to Churchill. It will be recalled that on the morning of 10 May, prior to taking off for Scotland, he had called a legal officer on Martin Bormann’s staff to ask the position of the King of England.8 He appears to have believed the King had the power to install a new administration in place of Churchill’s.

  Yet there was a serious flaw in Hess’s plan: he regarded himself as a Parlementär9 under a flag of truce, yet he could not say he came on behalf of the Führer, for that would indicate a weakening in Hitler’s position of continental mastery; consequently he lacked the authority of a legitimate Parlementär, and Churchill could and did confine him as a prisoner of war, or as he termed it a prisoner of State.

  * * *

  What of Hamilton’s own role? In the four months following the interception of Albrecht Haushofer’s letter to him in November 1940 he took three unexplained periods of ten days’ leave. The first, from 12 to 21 November may have been connected with the MI5 investigation into his ‘bona fides’. The second, from 26 January to 4 February 1941, followed two meetings he had with the Duke of Kent on 20 and 23 January,10 and coincided with an escalation of peace feelers from both sides – Dr Weissauer’s Finnish emissary, Dr Henrik Ramsay, in London from 18 to 26 January, Claude Dansey’s Finnish emissary, Tancred Borenius, in Geneva with Carl Burckhardt. In addition Albrecht Haushofer was in Sweden during this period from 2 to 5 February, probably for Hess in connection with King Gustav’s peace mediation offer, which was the subject of Sir Stewart Menzies’ note to Hopkinson of 19 February with the bottom half torn off.11 That is speculation. Hamilton’s third period of leave from 8 to 17 March was connected with the Air Intelligence scheme to send him to Lisbon to meet Albrecht Haushofer.

  These three mostly unexplained periods of leave might seem to implicate Hamilton in the peace approaches of this period, yet ‘Tar’ Robertson’s report after interviewing him on 25 April states that while still a member of the community willing to make peace with Germany, Hamilton ‘now considers that the only thing that this country can do is to fight the war to the finish’.12 Hamilton was an uncomplicated aviator.
Robertson was a shrewd judge of men. It is, therefore, difficult to ascribe these three periods of leave to Hamilton’s membership of a group plotting a negotiated peace.

  Hamilton’s activities, or lack of activity, on 10 May as Hess flew in to his command sector and bailed out do need explanation. His own account is quite inadequate. It must be assumed that whatever he was doing during the hours he failed to account for he was acting on the instructions of his superior officer at Fighter Command. Otherwise Churchill would not subsequently have made it known – as he did – that Hamilton had acted in all respects honourably. If a record was made of Hamilton’s communications with Group or Fighter Command during this period it has not been released. Finally he was told to report in person to Sir Alexander Cadogan at the Foreign Office, but Churchill intervened.

  * * *

  Lord Simon concluded from his interview with Hess that he had come under the impression his chances of success were much greater than he now realised they were. ‘He imagined there was a strong peace party and that he would have the opportunity of getting into touch with leading politicians who wanted the war to end now.’13 Hess later told Lieutenant Loftus he was quite certain that if only he had been able to contact influential persons in Britain they could have stopped the war between them.14

  It is apparent that there were numbers of hugely influential persons wanting a compromise peace, many in the House of Lords, several with grand houses and vast estates; yet there is no evidence of any coherent ‘peace party’ such as Hess apparently expected. It is clear from Guy Liddell’s diary and the investigations launched by MI5 after the event that the internal Security Service had not anticipated Hess’s arrival and had no intelligence of a ‘peace party’ gathering to greet him. They were either remarkably lax – for the Duke of Hamilton himself had been investigated in connection with the letter from Albrecht Haushofer – or there was no organised peace party waiting for Hess. Alternatively, it is possible that there was such a group led by someone so elevated he was not under surveillance, perhaps the King’s younger brother, the Duke of Kent.