The Hitler–Hess Deception

by Martin Allen

  There were, however, two exceptions to this rule.

  The first occurred from mid-November 1939 to July 1940, directly following the failure of Venlo. It was a time when, through a French-American named Charles Bedaux, and later through Baron Oswald von Hoyningen-Huene, Germany’s Ambassador in Lisbon, Adolf Hitler attempted to open a line of communication to the former King Edward VIII, now the Duke of Windsor, whom he mistakenly believed was still an influential personality in British politics.

  The other period of inactivity lasted from the second half of 1940 until mid-1941. At this time Hitler believed that the best opportunity for peace was through the efforts of Albrecht Haushofer and Rudolf Hess, whose high-level negotiations were aimed at permanently removing Britain from the war.

  What this reveals is that Hitler repeatedly engaged in secret and complex efforts to negotiate his way out of a war in the west he did not want, except when he believed he had found an inside track to undermining the Allies’ (i.e. Britain’s) resolve and ability to continue the conflict – a carrot-and-stick approach to persuade or force Britain to the negotiating table. Two attempts to proffer the carrot – Dahlerus and Venlo – had failed, so now Hitler determined to use the stick.

  Hitler’s first attempt to force Britain to the table involved a French-American businessman named Charles Bedaux, a close friend of the Duke of Windsor, who (according to documents in British, German and American archives) offered to act as an intermediary carrying messages between Germany and the former King Edward VIII.32

  Charles Bedaux was no novice in the world of espionage. He had been a spy for Germany in the United States during the First World War,33 and had, in boom-time America of the 1920s, prospered to become a multi-millionaire. By the 1930s he was back in Europe, where his home, the Château de Candi, swiftly became known as a hotbed of Nazi intrigue and plotting.34 During the 1930s Bedaux had played a key role in the reorganisation of German industry which enabled Hitler’s rearmament programme to take place. He thus moved in very high Nazi circles indeed, knew Hitler personally, and even had a villa at Berchtesgaden within sight of the Führer’s Berghof.35

  In 1937 Bedaux had hosted the wedding of the abdicated King Edward VIII to the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, at the Château de Candi. Having firmly insinuated himself into the Windsors’ lives, he swiftly became responsible for their tour of Nazi Germany, which although well received in Germany, was a public-relations disaster in Britain, where Edward had hoped to restore his standing. Thereafter the relationship had cooled, but in October 1939 Bedaux reported exciting news to Hitler concerning the Duke of Windsor, with whom he was back on friendly terms.

  What had occurred was that in late September 1939, Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg, head of the Aussenpolitisches Amt, received a postcard from an old friend, purporting to be in neutral Switzerland and asking for a meeting. The friend, a Balt named Baron ‘Bill’ de Ropp of east Prussian stock, was also an old acquaintance of Group Captain Winterbotham, who was near the top of British Air Intelligence. De Ropp also had close associations with British Intelligence, and had been of considerable assistance to the British secret service during the 1930s.

  After checking with Ribbentrop, Rosenberg travelled to Switzerland at the beginning of October. He was soon rubbing his hands in glee at what de Ropp told him, reporting back to Berlin that: ‘Because of the war psychology prevailing in England and the weak position of Chamberlain it was [currently] beyond to power of the [Air] Ministry [to move] in the desired direction of a termination of hostilities.’ However, he commented that de Ropp had also informed him that certain top men within the Air Ministry felt that Britain would agree to peace if ‘considerable losses on the part of the British Air Force and the related effects on the Empire [occurred]. It is believed then that the views represented by the Air Ministry would have to be taken into account, since the Empire could not permit its air strength to be reduced beyond a certain point.’36

  At a meeting held a week later de Ropp went further. He informed the Germans that the British Air Ministry, whom he was now clearly claiming to represent, was extremely concerned about the possible politico-economic damage Britain and Germany would sustain if the conflict became a protracted war. This, it was claimed, would lead to ‘the decline of the West, of the Aryan race, and the era of the Bolshevization of Europe, including England’. De Ropp’s next statements caused the surprised German official to report back to Berlin that the British Air Ministry did not support its own government’s policy regarding a continuation of the war, and that the Air Ministry was ‘convinced that the war would be decided by the Luftwaffe’. He went on to state that it would ‘therefore depend on the Air Ministry to explain to the British government that, in view of the losses it had sustained, it no longer found itself in a position of being able to continue the war’.37

  What de Ropp had intimated to the Germans was that if Britain suffered a swift military defeat in western Europe, Chamberlain might well loose his nerve and negotiate an end to the hostilities before any further damage to Britain – particularly to her ability to control the Empire – could take place. This idea would germinate in the Führer’s mind, and would become a strategy for the next seven months of conflict.

  It also saved his life, for on the evening of 8 November 1939 Hitler left the Bürgerbräukeller early in order to travel back to Berlin for a meeting with Charles Bedaux at the Reich Chancellery the following morning.38 He was thus mightily impressed both by the providence that had saved his life and by all that Bedaux was about to tell him.

  With the coming of war the Duke of Windsor had been given the honorary rank of Major-General, and attached to the British Military Mission in Paris. His official role was to conduct a morale-boosting tour of the French front. However, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Edmund Ironside, also gave Windsor other secret orders. He was covertly to observe the strategic details of France’s defences, and submit a series of reports to London. The objective of this covert intelligence-gathering operation was to give Britain’s military planners a clearer picture of France’s defensive strengths and weaknesses, which they could use to formulate tactics to counter any potential German offensive in the west. The Duke’s mission was therefore important and very secret. As the head of the British Military Mission in Paris, Major-General Howard Vyse, declared: ‘It will be realised that to give the French any sort of inkling of the source of this information would probably compromise the value of any missions which I may ask HRH [the Duke of Windsor] to undertake subsequently.’39

  Unfortunately, however, Charles Bedaux also gained access to this highly confidential intelligence, apparently with the Duke of Windsor’s connivance. This occurred because Windsor believed that a war between France, Britain and Germany was a disaster that would lead to the Soviet domination of Europe; and the Duke hated and feared Communism very much indeed.

  Throughout the 1930s the Duke of Windsor – or the Prince of Wales, as he had been then – had been a leading proponent of closer Anglo–German relations. Not the least of his reasons for this stance were his close blood ties to Germany’s aristocracy. However, he also saw Fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany as bastions against the Communist menace from the east.

  There were many high-ranking Britons, even within the upper echelons of government, who shared these views. Indeed, up until the latter 1930s the government’s official stance towards the Nazis had been placatory and somewhat accepting of the new political situation in Germany, perceiving National Socialism as a stabilising force in central Europe. It was the evidence of Hitler’s increasingly expansionist ambitions – the Anschluss with Austria, the Sudetenland crisis in 1938 and the taking of Czechoslovakia in early 1939 – that changed the British government’s position.

  Throughout the 1920s and thirties the Duke of Windsor, first as Prince of Wales and then briefly as King, received frequent foreign policy briefings from the government. These ended on the day he abdicated in D
ecember 1936, and he soon became out of touch with the British government’s stance towards the swiftly deteriorating European situation. He could not comprehend why Germany was suddenly considered a threat. If the royal family’s intransigence against him had been relaxed, if he had received an occasional briefing on the government’s position, he may have understood the reasons for British fears more clearly. As it was, by late 1939 the Duke of Windsor was still thinking in the terms of 1936, when Nazism had been regarded as acceptable.

  On Sunday, 3 December 1939, the first hints about the Windsor/ Bedaux relationship began to surface in London when an Intelligence officer named Hopkinson, serving in The Hague, reported on a confidential meeting he had had with a member of Dutch Intelligence called Beck. Hopkinson reported that Beck ‘informed me of an incident that might well be of interest to us concerning an American engineer named Charles Bedaux … On November 9 [the Dutch] M[ilitary] A[ttaché] in Berlin was delivering a note from de With [the Dutch Ambassador] to the Reich Chancellery, when he recognised B[edaux], who he’s met before … but B[edaux] ignored him, got into an official car (a Luftwaffe vehicle) and was driven off.’40

  From November 1939 to April 1940, Britain’s Field Security Police and Military Intelligence watched with mounting concern as Charles Bedaux and the Duke of Windsor resurrected their friendship. Repeatedly throughout this period, as soon as Windsor returned from a tour of the French lines, he would meet Bedaux for dinner, following which Bedaux would take a train to Holland, where he would call on Count Julius Zech-Burkesroda, the German Ambassador in The Hague.41 A spy at the German Embassy who ‘had an opportunity to see the transcribed information that B[edaux] brings verbally’ reported to British Intelligence in Holland that the information was ‘of the best quality – defence material, strengths, weaknesses, and so on’.42 In early April 1940, the agent reported that ‘Z[ech-Burkesroda] accidentally referred to B[edaux]’s source as “Willi”.’43 ‘Willi’ was the German code-name for the Duke of Windsor.

  The information passed on by Bedaux enabled Germany to successfully circumvent France and Britain’s defences, aiming for the weak point at Sedan, and almost certainly caused the Allied rout that culminated in Dunkirk.

  Throughout this period, the seven months from November 1939 to June 1940, there was an unusual cessation in the high-echelon, Hitler-originated peace moves. Because of the information passed on by de Ropp and Bedaux, Hitler had come to believe that if Germany could inflict a sudden crushing defeat on the Allied armies, the British and French governments’ resolve would evaporate, and they would sue for peace. There was only one flaw to this plan, but it was a devastating one. The plan was based on the character of Neville Chamberlain, and the assumption that he would wilt in the face of unrelenting military pressure. Unfortunately for Hitler, in May 1940, dogged by ill-health and the ruination of his credibility as a war leader, Chamberlain resigned, and was replaced as Prime Minister by Winston Churchill.

  It immediately became clear that, despite Dunkirk and the withdrawal of British forces from continental Europe, Britain would fight on. And so Hitler’s ‘top-grade’ peaceable attempts began all over again – only this time he would not use dubious Swedes like Dahlerus, or the SS.

  On 16 June 1940, two days after the German army entered Paris, and a little more than a week after Britain’s Expeditionary Force had managed its miraculous escape from Dunkirk, Hitler met General Juan Vigon, head of the Spanish Supreme Army Defence Council and Minister for Air. Vigon was a man of much influence in Spain’s Fascist government, and would play an increasingly important role in the Anglo–German peace discussions of 1940–41. His introduction to the complicated world of peace mediation began with a simple request from Hitler, who informed him that ‘the Duke of Windsor would shortly be travelling to Spain, and suggested that Germany would have a substantial interest if the Spanish government could use its influence to have the Duke and his wife delayed long enough for contact to be established once more’.44

  During the fall of France, the Duke of Windsor had fled south to his home on the French Riviera. When Italy entered the war in June 1940, and it became clear that even here he and the Duchess might not be safe, the Ducal pair, together with a small retinue of servants in a convoy of vehicles, joined the refugee trail for neutral Spain. Here the Duke went straight to Madrid and the new British Ambassador to Spain, his old friend Sir Samuel Hoare.

  In Hoare, the Duke of Windsor hoped to find a like-minded political ally, attuned to his concept of a European peace in which a strong Germany acted as a bastion against the danger posed by Soviet Russia. However, there was an element to Hoare’s appointment of which, like the vast majority of people, the Duke of Windsor was completely unaware, and which has remained secret until relatively recently.

  For sixty years, the impression has been that after Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940, any prominent dissenter from his belief that the war against Nazism should be fought to the bitter end would be promptly demoted, and often speedily appointed to a posting far from British shores and out of harm’s way. This was apparently what had happened to Sir Samuel Hoare, devisor of the notorious Hoare–Laval Pact* and, one would believe, an arch appeaser who was totally out of step with Churchill. Sure enough, within days of Churchill attaining the premiership, Hoare was ousted from his post at the Air Ministry and dispatched with indecent haste to the ambassadorship in Madrid, the existing Ambassador, Sir Maurice Peterson, being relieved of his post to make way for Hoare.

  On 13 May, ‘Chips’ Channon had attended Churchill’s first appearance at the House of Commons as Prime Minister. After noting that ‘the House today was absurdly dramatic and very Winstonian’, he commented: ‘[I] feel that Winston will not move Rab [Butler], who is “down” and depressed – today. Poor Sam Hoare is out …’45

  The implication was clear: Hoare had been a Churchill opponent during the final catastrophic days of appeasement, and was being banished to Spain, out of Churchill’s sight and mind.

  However, as is so often the case in this curious tale, not everything was quite as it seemed. Channon’s comments demonstrate that there were two strata within the British government: those in the know, and those – politicians, civil servants, even Ministers – who were not. It has only recently been revealed that Sam Hoare was not banished to Spain, but was sent there to conduct a very important and secret mission for Churchill. It was one for which he would never receive any public credit (although before the war’s end Churchill would reward his efforts with a peerage, Hoare becoming Lord Templewood), his name remaining tarnished until his dying day as one of the pre-war appeasers, when in reality he had played an important role in ensuring that Britain survived the Second World War.

  Within days of Churchill coming to power, a secret scheme was hatched to encourage newly Fascist Spain to remain neutral. At a briefing attended by Lord Halifax, it was proposed that: ‘General Franco’s undoubted desire for neutrality should be fortified by a substantial economic bribe … through some triangular arrangement with Portugal … financed by us.’ Hidden behind this economo-strategic façade, it was further suggested that ‘the ostensible purpose of Sir Samuel Hoare’s journey should be to review the working of the commercial and financial agreements recently concluded between the United Kingdom and Spain, [by which] sufficient cover would then be provided for any political work which Sir Samuel Hoare is able to do’.46

  Therefore, while it publicly appeared that Sam Hoare had been banished from British politics to conduct menial commercial work in Spain, in reality he had been placed in extremely sensitive neutral territory to conduct ‘political work’ for the government. Furthermore, Hoare’s new and powerful position was emphasised to Franco’s government by the granting to him of the special title ‘Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary on Special Mission in Spain’. The meaning was obvious. Sir Samuel Hoare was no ordinary Ambassador, but was a direct representative of the British government, with the power to negotiate or take
treaty-based decisions.

  It was to this ‘Ambassador Extraordinary’ that the Duke of Windsor now turned; to his undoubted puzzlement, Hoare was not very forthcoming.

  That Hoare indulged the Duke during his week-long stay in Madrid in June 1940 is without doubt – he even ordered British Intelligence in Madrid to suspend its activities for the duration of the Duke and Duchess’s visit. The Duke spent much of his time busily engaged in private business, contacting Count Zuppo, the Italian Chargé d’Affaires in Madrid, to ensure that his French Riviera villa would be protected by the Italians, and arranging with the German government that his Parisian home would be protected during the occupation. He also made it clear to anyone he thought of importance that the war was a catastrophe of the first degree, and that Germany should not be deflected from her role as a buffer against Soviet Russia.

  Despite hints in the Italian press that some form of peace discussions had taken place while the Duke was in Spain, it is unlikely that any took place at this time, for the Duke was only in Madrid for seven days before he decamped to Lisbon at the beginning of July.

  The Germans’ peaceable attempt in Lisbon would be unsuccessful for several reasons. Firstly, they made the error of believing that the Duke of Windsor was still an influential figure in Britain. Just as the Nazis had pandered to the Duke’s ego during his tour of Germany in 1937, so they were still dazzled by the fact that they could so easily gain access to this formerly important person. The key word here is ‘formerly’. If they had considered the situation, they would have realised that the Duke of Windsor did not have his government’s ear. He may have been Britain’s former King, at loose on a continent aflame with war, yet his very freedom of movement, his ability to make loose-lipped statements to anyone who would listen, was as strong an indication as possible that his importance had gone forever. Members of British royalty are invariably apolitical in their conversation, and the Duke of Windsor’s freedom to make unguarded and insensitive political comments revealed just how out of touch and unimportant he had become.