by Phil Mason
The Battle of Monocacy proved sufficient to drain the strength from Early’s attack and, although victorious, and now within 12 miles of the capital, he had had enough, turned south and headed back home.
Had he not waited at Frederick, the path to the nation’s capital would have been undefended, the northern government could well have been forced to flee and…who knows how that might have affected the tide of the war.
As a footnote, the residents of Frederick, who had had to borrow much of the ransom, diligently paid back their debt, eventually clearing it – in 1951, 87 years later.
The young Winston Churchill’s exploits in the Boer War in South Africa made his reputation as a gung-ho celebrity, and helped him win his election to parliament within three months of his return to England at the age of just 25. He might never have made it, however, had it not been for an astonishing stroke of luck after his escape at the end of 1899 from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp in Pretoria.
He was 300 miles from the safety of the border with Portuguese East Africa – all hostile Boer territory. He had no map or compass, and could not speak Afrikaans or any other local language. After an all-night journey hitched on a goods train, he jumped from it as it neared its destination and headed towards some lights that turned out to be a coal mining settlement.
He knocked at the door of the house at the mine head, and having established the resident was English confessed who he was and that he was on the run. The man he had stumbled upon, John Howard, was the mine’s manager. His had been the only British-occupied house for 20 miles around. He hid Churchill down the mine for two days before arranging another train trip across the border.
With a £25 bounty on his head – ‘Dead or Alive’ – any other house that Churchill had approached would more than likely have led to him being turned in by a patriotic Boer and being shot for treason.
The first major action of the First World War in Africa, a British amphibious invasion of German East Africa at Tanga in November 1914, ended in a humiliating defeat for the invaders, largely through the intervention of a swarm of bees.
The 8,000 troops under General Arthur Aitken faced a mere 1,000 Germans. But the defenders were vastly better prepared. And the invaders, all untrained Indian reservists, poorly coordinated – they spoke 12 languages amongst themselves – encountered a more threatening adversary. The gunfire had agitated large numbers of bee colonies containing thousands of aggressive African bees, which attacked the British force in large numbers.
Despite the numerical disadvantage, the German force easily repelled the British who suffered nearly 1,000 casualties, of whom 360 were killed. (Those not killed or wounded were severely stung by bees.) The Germans benefited too from thousands of rifles and machine guns left behind by the fleeing British, along with over half a million rounds of ammunition.
The German commander, Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, established himself that day as a national hero. He would lead the German effort in Africa during the war, and never lost a battle throughout. Yet his first contact with a massively larger force could have been his last had it not been for the bees.
The winner of the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, Francisco Franco, who would rule Spain until his death in 1975, might not have made it as the nation’s strongman if his chief rival had not been so obsessed with dressing up.
General Jose Sanjurjo died in an air crash in Portugal as he was returning to Spain to combine with Franco’s forces at the start of the civil war in July 1936. The reason for the crash was his extraordinary amount of luggage. Against the advice of his pilot, Sanjurjo had crammed the small plane full of his ceremonial military uniforms. The pilot warned him the plane was too heavily loaded, but Sanjurjo, anticipating the role he would play, replied, ‘I need to wear proper clothes as the new Caudillio of Spain.’
Franco was left with a clear run as leader when his other main rival also died in an air crash less than a year later.
Adolf Hitler was about to commit suicide after the first major setback in his political career, but was prevented from doing so by a well-meaning associate.
As a young rabble-rousing agitator in the chaotic post-First World War years in Munich, Hitler led the Nazi coup attempt against the Bavarian government in the so-called Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923. It failed amidst a shootout with the police which left 16 leading Nazis dead and Hitler injured with a dislocated shoulder from diving to the ground for safety. He was ushered away to a safe house owned by his close friend, Ernst Hanfstaengl.
When the police tracked him down two days later, Hitler became hysterical, pulled out his revolver and tried to shoot himself. Frau Hanfstaengl prised the gun from his hand and stopped him. The next time he would attempt it, in 1945, he would succeed – a world war and 55 million deaths later.
One authority estimates that Hitler survived at least 15 assassination attempts between 1938 and 1944, most with uncanny luck.
The first documented attempt, before Hitler became Chancellor, was by a disgruntled SS guard who in 1929 planted a remote-controlled bomb under the podium in the Berlin Sportsplast where Hitler was speaking. The plot failed when the guard felt the urge to go to the toilet during the speech and accidentally got locked in. He was unable to detonate his device.
Hitler was on the point of being overthrown by his army leaders twice during the Czech crisis of September 1938, once when the plotters planned to move when Hitler issued the definitive order for the invasion of Czechoslovakia – only to be thwarted by British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s surprise announcement of his willingness to hold direct talks with Hitler; and second during the Chamberlain missions when Hitler rejected British offers for conciliation – only to be thwarted this time by the pressure put on Hitler from Mussolini, who persuaded Hitler to agree to the four-nation Munich conference which eventually settled the crisis. The army commander-in-chief, General Brauchitsch, was about to issue the order to depose Hitler on 28 September, but refused to do so before he had spoken with him. News of the Munich conference reached him as he was on his way to the Chancellery for the showdown.
The declaration of war in September 1939 alarmed sections of the German army. As plans developed during the autumn for the military attack on the West, so did renewed plotting to overthrow the Führer.
The first attempt was instigated after Hitler had decreed that the invasion of the West would start on 12 November. Four days before that was the annual marking of the 1923 Munich putsch. Hitler would deliver a major speech on the evening of 8 November in the city’s Burgerbraukeller, the beer hall where the coup attempt had started.
A bomb was placed in a pillar at the back of the speakers’ platform, timed to explode around 9.20 in the evening. Hitler was due to start his speech at 8pm, and usually spoke for two hours. The assassination would come at the peak of the address.
The hall was packed (it could hold 3,000) and Hitler did not start speaking until 8.10 because of the rapturous greetings. For no obvious reason, Hitler suddenly brought his speech to a hasty conclusion at 9.07, and, again against normal practice, rushed out of the building instead of conducting his usual prolonged departure shaking hands.
Eight minutes later, the bomb exploded. Seven of the audience near the stage were killed and 63 injured. Had Hitler been on the podium, he too would certainly have been amongst the dead.
(There is controversy over this episode. Some evidence exists – from the carpenter who planted the bomb – that tends to another possible explanation: that the explosion was actually a Hitler-inspired attempt to kill off some of his unreliable army chiefs who were in the audience. Hitler had been angry at their resistance to his war plans against the West. The bomber was caught but never tried. This version would explain Hitler’s uncharacteristic behaviour that night, but he seemed genuinely surprised and shocked when news of the attack was first brought to him.)
In March 1943 – two months after the catastrophic German defeat at Stalingrad and amidst increasing anti-Hitler sent
iment amongst the army leadership – plotters planted a bomb on Hitler’s plane as he flew back to his eastern headquarters from a visit to the Russian front. It was expected to explode in mid-air, but after two hours news came that the plane had landed safely at the Wolf’s Lair.
When the plotters recovered the bomb, they discovered that the acid had started to eat through the wire but before the firing pin had been released the acid had frozen. According to one account, Hitler’s pilot later explained that he had run into turbulence and, to spare the Führer discomfort, he had taken the plane up to a higher altitude, causing the temperature in the luggage compartment, where the bomb was hidden, to fall sharply and rapidly – and eerily at just the right moment to save Hitler’s life again.
A week later, another attempt was made, this time a suicide bomb. Colonel Rudolf von Gerstdorff, an intelligence chief with the army group engaged on the Russian front, was to guide Hitler round an exhibition of war trophies seized during the campaign after the 21 March Heroes’ Memorial Day celebration in Berlin. He agreed to blow himself up.
Gerstdorff had a bomb in both pockets of his overcoat. As the Führer moved to the exhibition hall, Gerstdorff primed his bombs by breaking phials of acid which would take 10 minutes to ignite the explosive. In the rush, the plotters had been unable to get shorter fuses.
An aide had promised that Hitler intended to spend at least half an hour there. Unfortunately, Hitler took no interest in the exhibition and showed no inclination to listen to the explanations Gerstdorff wanted to give. He breezed through and was out in just two minutes. Believing his attempt over, Gerstdorff rushed away too, managed to find the toilets empty and disarmed the devices with seconds to spare.
Unbeknown to him, and with huge irony, on leaving the hall Hitler had spotted a captured Soviet tank and spent some time inspecting and clambering over it. It would have provided Gerstdorff with all the time he needed.
As the war spiralled out of control for Germany, and with the D-Day invasion of continental Europe taking hold, the July 1944 bomb plot was one of the most concerted efforts by army officers to eliminate Hitler and secure a negotiated peace. They planned to strike during a military conference at the Führer’s Wolf’s Lair headquarters in eastern Prussia. Hitler survived in another remarkable turn of fate.
The bomb-laden briefcase brought into the conference room by Count von Stauffenberg was placed under the map table just six feet from Hitler. It rested against the inside of one of the heavy oak supports.
An aide, leaning across to get a better look at the map spread out before the conference, found he was impeded by the briefcase. He casually moved it so it rested on the outside of the massive wooden support. That small act saved Hitler’s life.
When the bomb exploded less than five minutes later, most of the blast was absorbed by the table support. It was also fortunate for Hitler that he was sitting in front of the main door of the room, which led down a long hallway through which most of the force of the blast escaped.
Hitler suffered only superficial scratches, burst eardrums and a sprained shoulder.
Some other attempts which failed for uncannily unexpected reasons include:
After the defeat of France, a plot to shoot Hitler while taking the salute at his victory parade in Paris in June 1940 was thwarted when Hitler made his visit four days earlier instead, and stayed just four hours. The parade never took place.
A suicide effort in November 1943, Operation Overcoat, took advantage of Hitler’s known passion for detail and revolved around planning a demonstration of a new uniform to Hitler. A battalion commander volunteered to stash grenades in the pockets of a new overcoat. He would trigger them as Hitler tried on the coat and grapple with the Führer as the four-second fuses took effect. The day before the planned presentation, an Allied air raid on Berlin destroyed the samples, and with that the opportunity disappeared:
In March 1944 a cavalry captain who agreed to shoot Hitler at a military conference at the Berghof, Hitler’s Bavarian retreat, was prevented from entering the meeting room by an SS sentry on the door because the Führer had suddenly ordered that junior ranks should be excluded. His senior officer, unaware of the assassination attempt, actually protested that he needed his aide, but to no avail.
In early 1939, before the outbreak of war, the British military attaché in Berlin, General Sir Noel Mason-MacFarlane, proposed to London that Hitler could be readily assassinated by a sniper, from an apartment building overlooking the Führer’s Chancellery. Doing so, he reported, ‘could have led to the overthrow of National Socialism and millions of lives could have been saved.’ The Government vetoed the idea on the grounds that it was ‘unsportsmanlike’.
Britain unknowingly had the secret of the famed German Enigma code 15 years before it realised it. Had it in fact known it had the secret, the entire 1930s, when Nazism rose to spark the Second World War, could well have turned out so differently.
British success in breaking the code that was used by Germany for its military movements was one of the central reasons for the Allied success in World War Two. From as early as the Nazi invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940, code breakers at British Intelligence’s secret location at Bletchley Park, were reading the secret signals and knew of every major move the enemy planned.
Britain, however, could have broken the system as early as 1924 had they not assumed that the Germans could not be stupid. Since the German armed forces began using the system from the mid-1920s, that capability in the hands of the British authorities could have given the anti-Nazi governments full details of Germany’s troop deployments during key crises of the 1930s, many of which hinged on Hitler’s brazen bluff. It could have monumentally altered the disastrous appeasement policy that Britain and the Allies followed in response to Hitler’s rise to power.
The opportunity to crack the machine two decades earlier came as the machine was first used commercially in Germany in the early 1920s, and the company which made it filed a full patent registration with the London Patent Office in 1924. This described exactly how the machine worked and if British code breakers had followed the wiring pattern set out there they would have had the solution to the military version. But the code breakers could not believe that the military would be so stupid as to use the simple wiring system of a widely available commercial model for the military version. But, astonishingly, that is exactly what the German military did.
When the intelligence services obtained the first military version of Enigma in 1939, they found that the device was wired alphabetically, A to the first contact, B to the second, C to the third and so on. This was the same pattern described in the original commercial patent diagram. It was so obvious that no one ever thought of trying it.
In 2001, when the story emerged from recently released official files, Peter Twinn, the analyst credited with being the first Briton to break an Enigma cipher, reflected, ‘I know in retrospect it sounds daft. It was such an obvious thing to do, rather a silly thing, that nobody ever thought it worthwhile trying.’
German arrogance was also a trait that kept Enigma in play. The code-breaking operation came perilously close to being uncovered in August 1943, at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. The head of the German U-boat forces, Admiral Doenitz, became suspicious that Enigma had been breached after an increase in the number of sinkings of his submarines in remote parts of the Atlantic.
The Abwehr, German Military Intelligence, then received information from Swiss Intelligence, which had an agent in the US Navy Department, telling them expressly that the British had indeed cracked the codes. Although holding an enquiry, the German navy experts concluded that the code was still secure, despite clear evidence to the contrary. It seems they simply could not bring themselves to believe that the complexity behind Enigma could be broken.
The Allies continued to read the code unharassed until the end of the war.
German intelligence missed another opportunity in the spying war in late 1943 when i
t was presented with a source that provided some of the Allies’ topmost secrets. The information was so startlingly good that German spy chiefs ignored it as they suspected it was a trap laid to mislead them.
The star spy was the butler to the British Ambassador to Turkey, then a neutral state but thinking of coming into the war on the Axis side. Elyesa Bazna, codenamed ‘Cicero’ (after the Roman orator because of his loquaciousness) had access to the careless Ambassador’s secret telegram box. He used the Ambassador’s regular afternoon piano practice to time his espionage. He always knew while he could hear the music playing in the residence that he was safe rifling the Ambassador’s office.
He copied for the Germans papers of astonishing secrecy – records of Churchill’s summits with Roosevelt at Casablanca and the three-power summit with Stalin at Teheran that mapped out the grand strategy for victory, plans for the D-Day invasion, including its codename Overlord, and information about bombing raids and the key to the main British cipher.
His German handlers suspected something was not quite right when he claimed not to speak any English, which they later found out was a lie, and that he claimed to work alone, which they later suspected also to be untrue because his description of how he worked which seemed too much for one person to manage. They later spotted his fingers on one photo, which implied he had someone working with him to hold the camera.
The doubts fed German suspicions that they were being set up in an elaborate disinformation scheme. The story they were being given painted a picture of a confident and determined Allied effort, out to fight to the end. This, too, led Germany to believe Britain was trying to hoax them into believing they were stronger than they actually were.
