by Martin Allen
With this political situation taken into consideration, alongside Hitler’s attempts to negotiate a peace and disentangle Germany’s forces from a war with the British he did not want, it is now possible to reappraise the events of the summer of 1940, and to gain a clearer perspective on what was really taking place.
The Battle of Britain was primarily Germany’s attempt to destroy Britain’s air cover. To accomplish this the Luftwaffe began by concentrating its efforts upon establishing complete ‘local air superiority over the straits of Dover’, before quickly moving on to the next phase of the operation, attacking ‘Fighter Command’s airfields … with the intention of crippling it on the ground, or provoking it into a major battle in which it would be destroyed in the air’.1 However, just at the moment when this strategy seemed about to work, the carefully laid plans for the German air campaign against Britain were suddenly abandoned. Much to Fighter Command’s relief, and British Intelligence’s puzzlement, the Luftwaffe suddenly switched to attacking civilian targets such as London and other major cities.
One factor behind this change in German tactics, which kept Fighter Command operational, was almost certainly Hitler’s response to Britain’s night bombing of German cities, including Berlin.2 However, that was not the entire story. It is no coincidence that the German change of strategy occurred at the very moment when Dr Ludwig Weissauer’s secret attempt to negotiate peace with the British government began to flounder.
The Luftwaffe’s bombing of Britain’s ports, airports, RAF airfields and rail and road links was a strategic military campaign aimed at establishing complete air superiority and obliterating the enemy’s infrastructure. The switch to bombing London and Britain’s other major cities, however, can only have been intended to create terror, for it served little strategic purpose, save murder, mayhem and the destruction of civilian morale. The objective of such a strategy was to make the price of continuing the war exceedingly high for Britain’s coalition government. A price, it was hoped, that it might think twice before paying. Hitler, therefore, changed the objectives of the Luftwaffe’s campaign in an attempt to force the British government to the negotiating table. He wished to focus British political minds on his latest peace initiative, as proposed in Sweden by his own private emissary, Dr Ludwig Weissauer.
However, Hitler’s hopes that such a terror campaign would aid his cause were sorely disappointed, for he completely failed to realise that Britain’s top politicians were not in talking mood. Winston Churchill, with a keen sense of history and the moment, correctly discerned that if the fight against Nazism and the German ‘Reich idea’3 was to be won, it had to be fought here and now. Cutting a deal with Hitler, however tempting the offer, would almost certainly only postpone an eventual European conflict for a few years, by which time Germany would have become a continental superpower that Britain and the other democracies of western Europe would stand little chance of resisting. Thus, however hazardous the road of continued war against Nazi Germany was in the summer of 1940, there was no option. Churchill knew that if European democracy was ever to flourish again, the war must continue, whatever the immediate collateral damage or the danger of defeat.
The British government was therefore not at all receptive to Hitler’s latest covert appeals for peace. Instead of forcing the British government to the negotiating table, the Luftwaffe’s campaign of creating civilian terror only served to press home the dangers of appeasing German militarism.
Hitler had his own problems too, which by the summer of 1940 he was becoming increasingly mindful of.
In early June, Stalin took the opportunity of Germany’s west European commitments to pour Russian troops into the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. This caused Hitler immediate concerns about Germany’s eastern defences, where a mere ten German divisions were outnumbered ten to one by the Russians. Then, at the end of June, Stalin had moved again. This time he demanded that Romania restore Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, which had been Russian territory prior to 1918, to Soviet ownership. The Romanian government, given just twenty-four hours to answer, yielded, and Stalin’s forces immediately swarmed into northern Romania to take possession of the two regions. This placed the Russians ominously close to the Baku oilfields, on which Hitler had been counting for his own supply.4 Extremely concerned by this latest development, Hitler asked his Chief of General Staff, General Alfred Jodl, what would happen if a Russo–German conflict ensued over the oilfields. Jodl’s answer resulted in an order to immediately dispatch two full armoured divisions and another ten infantry divisions to the east, more than doubling the German forces in the region.
By the beginning of September 1940 Germany had been committed to war for almost exactly a year. German forces had successfully overcome all the west European democratic nations with the exception of Britain, and presently occupied all of western Europe from the Arctic Circle to the Pyrenees, with the exception of Vichy France. But now an eastern war of conquest beckoned. Hitler did not want his objective of German expansion eastward to be jeopardised by a Russian offensive that would throw all his carefully worked-out plans into disarray. He was therefore highly motivated to find a politico-diplomatic solution that would bring an end to Germany’s war with Britain.
It was at this point that a unique situation began to manifest itself, weaving an intricate web about the German Führer.
It is a golden rule of diplomacy never to allow your opponent to become aware of your true plans, or to know what you fear most, for it can become a very effective weapon to hold over you. But Adolf Hitler was not an expert diplomat, and his independent style of leadership had led him into several grave blunders in his dealings with Britain.
Firstly, he had openly revealed that Germany intended to expand eastward, even telling the head of Britain’s Air Intelligence, Group Captain Freddy Winterbotham, during a frank discussion in 1934, that Germany intended one day to ‘take Russia and together [with Britain] … decide the policy for China and the Far East’. He had also declared: ‘All we ask is that Britain should be content to look after her empire and not interfere with Germany’s plans for expansion.’5 Thus Britain was aware of the Führer’s plans even before he made his first expansionist moves in Europe.
Hitler’s second mistake lay within his peaceable attempts. During his latest appeal he had confided many of his innermost thoughts to Ludwig Weissauer, believing that the British would regard this as a sign of sincerity, and would therefore be more inclined to see reason and negotiate a truce. But it only served to make British Intelligence more aware of the Führer’s personality, and his aims, hopes and fears. Worse yet, he had told Weissauer that only two men in Germany knew of this latest appeal, as he wanted to keep it completely secret. This told the British a great deal. They now knew that the Führer of Germany, with the vast panoply of experts and advisers at his disposal, in addition to his circle of Nazi associates and Ministers, and able to call upon a vast range of specialists on international law, economics and diplomacy, had – through fear of losing face if he were rebuffed – reduced himself to a lone and far from expert individual pitted against another nation’s most sophisticated politico-diplomatic minds.
Thus Adolf Hitler was alone and vulnerable, perhaps able to call on the advice only of one or two very close and trusted friends, such as Rudolf Hess and Albrecht Haushofer. The situation was, as Rex Leeper termed it, ‘ripe for exploitation’.6
On the last day of August 1940, Rudolf Hess visited his old mentor, Professor Karl Haushofer. That Hess was aware of Hitler’s desire to negotiate Britain out of the war as a prelude to a German campaign of eastern expansion is not in doubt. Indeed, the Deputy-Führer had helped formulate many of those plans, and he had certainly been party to the high-echelon discussions that had determined Germany’s overall war strategy. In addition to this, Hess knew of Hitler’s top-secret efforts to negotiate an end of the war with Britain. Indeed, Whitehall had been intrigued to learn from Victor Mallet not only that ‘Weiss
auer was acting at the instigation of Hitler in person’, but that ‘only two men in Germany knew of his mission’.7
Given Hitler’s obsessive fear of losing face, he is unlikely to have spoken to Ribbentrop, Göring or Himmler about this matter. He would, however, have had few qualms about taking his old friend ‘Rudi’ Hess into his confidence. Hess had been a trusted colleague for twenty years, he was educated in foreign affairs, and he understood the intricacies of politico-diplomatic negotiations. He was also extremely knowledgeable about the many hurdles that lay in the path of placating Britain. However, perhaps Hess’s most important virtues from Hitler’s point of view lay in the facts that he was almost the only top Nazi who was trusted by Professor Karl Haushofer, and that he would give realistic advice without fear of reprisal for stating the truth, however unpalatable that truth might be.
As it became clear that the Weissauer initiative was not going to succeed, a decision seems to have been taken between Hitler and Hess that a fresh approach now had to be taken. They had spent a year floundering between one failed peaceable attempt and the next. What they needed was to proceed with care under the expert guidance of Karl and Albrecht Haushofer.
Following his meeting with Hess over the weekend of 31 August and 1 September 1940, the excited Professor Haushofer immediately sat down to write to his son, who was in Vienna. After some brief family chit-chat, the elderly Haushofer immediately got down to business and told Albrecht about his recent most interesting discussion: ‘… with Tomo [Haushofer’s code name for Hess] from 5:00 o’clock in the afternoon until 2:00 o’clock in the morning, which included a 3-hour walk in the Grunwalder Forest, at which we conversed a good deal about serious matters. I have really got to tell you about part of it now.’8 Haushofer then hinted that a subtle but important shift had taken place in Hitler’s approach to seeking peace with the British:
As you know, everything is so prepared for a very hard and severe attack on the island in question [Britain] that the highest ranking person [Hitler] only has to push a button to set it off. But before this decision … the thought once more occurs as to whether there is really no way of stopping something which would have such infinitely momentous consequences. There is a line of reasoning in connection with this which I must absolutely pass on to you because it was obviously communicated to me with this intention.
Haushofer went on reveal that Hess had asked him: ‘Do you … see no way in which such possibilities [for peace] could be discussed at a third place [neutral territory] with a middle man, possibly the old Ian Hamilton or the other Hamilton?’ He replied that ‘there would perhaps have been an excellent opportunity for this in Lisbon at the Centennial [celebrations on 2 June 1940], if, instead of harmless figureheads, it had been possible to send well-disguised political persons there’.9
Haushofer’s comments are very revealing. The first possible contact, General Sir Ian Hamilton, had not only been a very close friend of Churchill’s since the 1900s, but had invited Hess to stay with him in Britain in the summer of 1939, just prior to the outbreak of war. ‘The other Hamilton’ was Albrecht’s close friend Lord Clydesdale, now the Duke of Hamilton, who was politically and socially acquainted with many of Britain’s leading men, from Lord Halifax and Winston Churchill to King George VI.
Haushofer went on to expand upon what Hess had told him, before telling Albrecht: ‘that the larger stage [has] suddenly called for you again does not astonish me. Indeed Tomo, too, on Saturday and Sunday expressed a wish to the same effect.’ The elder Haushofer now became very discreet, almost resorting to code:
As little as you did I desire to bear the responsibilities for decisions which are historically very important. But the time is certainly not wasted if it brought you a wonderful flight over the Salzkammergut directly over the Traunstein, close to the Schafberg, and an unexpected reunion with the ‘Butzelware’.
As the author of three Roman plays, the political subject matter of this conference must have moved you very strongly from the human angle – I do not mean like 2 years ago; but, like a year ago, you would have been interested in the strange show, the curious behaviour [Gebahren] – which, being an old-fashioned person, I spell with an ‘h’, and, in your place, even this year, I would have gone to Halls somewhat oftener.10
To understand what Haushofer was carefully attempting to impart to his son is not easy. The Haushofers had long realised that it was necessary to be extremely discreet in Nazi Germany, for an unguarded comment picked up by the postal censors or the Gestapo could be very dangerous indeed, perhaps fatally so. They had therefore invented a code for themselves to protect their correspondence from unwanted attention.
At its most basic level, the Haushofers gave all the leading Nazis Japanese code-names: Hitler became ‘O’Daijin’, meaning Master Great Spirit; Hess became ‘Tomodachi’, shortened to ‘Tomo’, meaning ‘friend’; and Ribbentrop became ‘Fukon’, which translates literally as ‘I will not deviate’ – a private Haushofer joke at the expense of the Foreign Minister’s ineffectual posturing on the world stage. Beyond this level, the code became considerably more complicated, and knowledge about the two men’s backgrounds is often required to fathom out what was being communicated.
To take, for example, Karl’s comment that Albrecht would soon be taking a journey ‘over the Salzkammergut directly over the Traunstein, close to the Schafberg, and an unexpected reunion with the “Butzelware”’. If their co-ordinates are plotted on a map, Traunstein, the Salzkammergut, and the mountain known as Schafberg all triangulate in a small fifty-square-mile region in the vicinity of Salzburg – just to the north of Berchtesgaden.
‘Butzelware’ is a little more difficult to fathom out, but if we take note of Karl’s comment that he is an old-fashioned sort of person who spells with an ‘h’, something rather interesting occurs. Pronounced phonetically, and with the inclusion of an ‘h’, ‘Butzelware becomes ‘Botselwahr’. In an old German dictionary published in Stuttgart in 1893, ‘Bote’ means messenger, and ‘wahr’ means ‘faithful’ or ‘genuine’. Thus Albrecht was being discreetly told to return for a meeting near Berchtesgaden, for an ‘unexpected reunion’ with the genuine/faithful messenger – someone who could be trusted to deliver a truthful message. Karl Haushofer was in effect telling his son that the Führer finally wanted a genuine peace with the British, and that he should go to a meeting near Berchtesgaden with Hess to give his assistance.
The last paragraph of Haushofer’s letter, taken in the light of the foregoing, becomes of paramount interest, referring as it does to Albrecht’s authorship of ‘three Roman plays’. In the 1930s Albrecht had written a rather complicated trilogy of five-act plays on themes from Roman history: Scipio, Sulla and Augustus. All three of the subjects were Roman politicians who were skilled negotiators and manipulators of foreign policy. It is known that Albrecht saw himself as being very much in the mould of Scipio (c.243-183 BC), the patrician Roman who became Consul and ended the Second Punic War. Hitler himself also made comparisons between Nazi Germany and ancient Rome. National Socialism, he claimed, was heralding in a new age, an end to old nations created by the Dark Ages and medieval conflict. A new world of empire, with the Reich taking the predominant place in Europe, emulating the power and majesty of Rome. Thus in Albrecht’s eyes he would be representing an empire, burdened with the heavy responsibility of negotiating with enemy powers to end a second major war.
Finally, there is Karl’s statement that ‘the political subject matter of this conference must have moved you very strongly from the human angle – I do not mean like 2 years ago; but, like a year ago’. This is intended to make Albrecht understand that the matter Karl had discussed with Hess was not that of two years before – when Albrecht had been part of the German negotiating team at Munich intent on tearing the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia – but rather ‘like a year ago’. He was thus drawing his son’s attention to the previous summer, of 1939, when Albrecht had tried so hard to avert war with Britain by sending h
is letter to Lord Clydesdale, who had since become the Duke of Hamilton.
Therefore, Albrecht was being told in the plainest possible language, given the circumstances, that his father’s meeting with Hess had been concerned with negotiating a peace with Britain, that Albrecht was required for a meeting with the Reich’s high and mighty, and that he would be required to fulfil a key role, in the vein of Scipio. He would become the Führer’s quasi-diplomatic emissary for peace.
Within a few days of receiving his father’s letter, Albrecht Haushofer was back in southern Germany for a confidential meeting with Hess. Albrecht talked frankly to the Deputy-Führer about the problems that now faced any German negotiator who wished to persuade the British to enter peace negotiations. Albrecht’s notes of this discussion, which took place on Sunday, 8 September 1940, are titled ‘Are there still Possibilities of a German-English Peace?’
Albrecht didn’t pull any punches, and bluntly told Hess that if a solution to the conflict was to be found, ‘it was necessary to realise that not only Jews and Freemasons, but practically all Englishmen who mattered, regarded a treaty signed by the Führer as a worthless scrap of paper’.
That Albrecht felt emboldened to talk so frankly – and, more importantly, that Hess was receptive to such plain speaking – is a clear sign of the seriousness Hess attributed to attaining peace, to finding some way of disengaging Germany from its unwanted conflict with Britain. The timing of this meeting was also extremely important, coming as it did within days of Weissauer’s peaceable attempt in Sweden being firmly rebuffed. It is thus a clear indication that Hitler, having spent a year in ineffectual secret peace manoeuvres, finally recognised that if he were to succeed in attaining peace, his leading expert on England and the English was needed, together with a strategy considerably more subtle than the crude attempts that had been made hitherto.
