Читать книгу The Hitler–Hess Deception - Martin Allen - Страница 9

At dawn on 1 September 1939, Hitler’s powerful new armies poured across the Polish frontier in a pre-emptive strike that would see Poland obliterated in under a month, and the Second World War begin. It would, however, be wrong to assume that the German Führer actually wanted an all-encompassing European war that was destined to become a world war, or that he realised that this would be the consequence of his actions. Over the next year, Hitler, increasingly aware of the Pandora’s Box of horrors he had unleashed – that Germany was now pitted in a life-or-death struggle against Britain and her empire – would repeatedly try to open a secret line of communication to the British government in the hope of undoing the disastrous situation he had himself created.

These secret peace moves, of which only a very select handful of top men in Britain and Germany were aware (and which were kept secret from their people for very different reasons), became known by Britain’s Foreign Office and War Cabinet as the ‘peaceable attempts’; petitions made by Hitler and certain other leading Nazis to open negotiations that would culminate in an armistice. As time went by these peaceable attempts would take on an ever-increasing urgency, reflecting Hitler’s mounting concern (despite his belligerent public stance for home consumption) that he was losing control of events.

In the first week of September 1940, whilst the skies above London thundered to the sound of the Battle of Britain, Britain’s Ambassador to Sweden, Victor Mallet, would send a ‘most secret’ encrypted telegram for ‘special distribution’ to the War Cabinet. In his telegram, an astounded Mallet reported that he had been contacted by a Berlin barrister named Dr Ludwig Weissauer, who ‘is understood to be a direct secret emissary of Hitler … [Furthermore, he wishes] me to meet him very secretly in order to … talk on the subject of peace.’

Dr Ludwig Weissauer was in fact not only chief lawyer to the Nazi Party, but also Adolf Hitler’s own private legal adviser. The Ambassador went on to reveal that this most eminent emissary ‘wished conversations, if they took place, to be known to nobody but His Majesty’s Government and Hitler to whom he intimated that he would report direct. Talks could begin at once … [if a Swedish, and therefore neutral,] judge might be present in order to avoid any suggestion of trickery. Weissauer realised that peace might not yet be attainable but nevertheless felt that conversation would be useful.’¹ Mallet concluded his report by asking whether he should go ahead and meet Weissauer, before ending hopefully, ‘of course [I will] say nothing to encourage him but it might be of interest to listen’.

This was an unusual and, until recently, unsuspected situation. That Hitler should make this secret approach to Britain – and it is worth noting that the initiative was kept secret from other top Nazis, as well as the German people – is indicative that something extraordinary was taking place behind the scenes. Hitler’s use of his own lawyer was the culmination of a year’s peace moves by the German Führer that had seen him attempt mediation through many avenues, ranging from neutral citizens and governments, to royalty and the Vatican. All had failed, undone, in Hitler’s eyes, by a political faction in Britain that was determined to continue the war, come what may. This had not prevented him, during the final months of 1939 and the first half of 1940, from pursuing an aggressive military strategy tied to his private attempts to make peace – a carrot and stick policy that he hoped would free him from a war in the west he did not want.

Despite all the evidence that Hitler wanted to flex his military muscles, and was willing to obtain by force what he was unlikely to gain at the diplomatic table, a full-blown war with Britain and France, supported by their substantial empires, was certainly not something he wanted in 1939. His primary objective had been to make the first moves in a politico-military game of chess that would see him expand and consolidate a Greater Germany, thereby placing Germany in the ideal position to expand her territories into an Eastern Empire. A substantial proportion of the responsibility for Hitler’s total miscalculation of the British and French reaction to the formation of a German super-state at the expense of her smaller neighbours, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, has to be laid firmly at the door of his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

In the months prior to the outbreak of war, Ribbentrop forcefully counselled Hitler that Britain would not come to the aid of Poland but would, bar the diplomatic protests and the fist-waving of a frustrated nation led by a weak government, flinch and stand back from outright war.² This view was in direct contrast to what Germany’s other foreign affairs experts, such as Albrecht Haushofer, were advising Hitler. In the late spring of 1939, Hess had commissioned Haushofer to write a report for him on the British reaction to German expansion. Within weeks the Deputy-Führer was alarmed to read Haushofer’s prophetic comments that:

many British politicians … [are] thoroughly friendly towards Germany … [and] would consider discussing border changes to Germany’s advantage … But a violent solution … would be a casus belli for England … In such a war the entire nation would support the government. England would wage the war as a crusade for the liberation of Europe from German nationalism. With the help of the USA (on which London could count) they would win the war against Germany [and] regrettably the actual winner in Europe would be Bolshevism.³

On its way to Hitler, the report was first shown to Ribbentrop, who disdainfully scrawled in the margin: ‘English secret-service propaganda!’⁴ But he was wrong.

On 3 September 1939, an utterly dejected Neville Chamberlain, worn out and disillusioned by his failure to deal with the dictator of Germany, stood before his colleagues in the House of Commons. He had seen his hopes for European peace blown away by the dry, hot wind of war. History is harsh, and Chamberlain’s twenty-five years of honest public service would be forgotten in an instant. His name would forever be linked to the appeasement of Nazism, the pandering to a dictator who was plunging Europe into war even as he addressed the House.

A hush descended amongst the MPs, and Chamberlain began to speak, his sonorous tones echoing around the chamber as he declared:

When I spoke last night to the House I could not but be aware that in some parts of the House there were doubts and some bewilderment as to whether there had been any weakening, hesitation, or vacillation on the part of His Majesty’s Government. In the circumstances, I make no reproach, for if I had been in the same position as hon[ourable] members not sitting on this Bench and not in possession of all the information which we have, I should very likely have felt the same.

After informing the House that the British Ambassador in Berlin had delivered an ultimatum to the German government demanding that German armed forces ‘suspended all aggressive action against Poland and were prepared to withdraw their forces from Polish territory’, Chamberlain went on to disclose that: ‘No such undertaking was received from [the German government] by the time stipulated, and, consequently, this country is at war with Germany.’

Finally, Chamberlain opened up slightly, expressing his own feelings of personal failure: ‘This is a very sad day for all of us, and to none is it sadder than to me. Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins. There is only one thing left for me to do; that is, to devote what strength and powers I have to forwarding the victory of the cause for which we have to sacrifice so much. I cannot tell what part I may be allowed to play myself; I trust I may live to see the day when Hitlerism has been destroyed and a liberated Europe has been re-established …’⁵

Chamberlain’s wish was not to be fulfilled – he would be dead in little over a year.

In Berlin, Britain and France’s determination to stand by Poland and declare war on Germany left Hitler stunned. However, he quickly convinced himself and his intimates at the Chancellery that ‘England and France had obviously declared war merely as a sham, in order not to lose face before the world.’ Having given the Poles an assurance of protection, they could do little else. Hitler asserted that ‘there would be no fighting’,⁶ and ordered Germany’s forces in the west not to provoke the Allies, but to remain strictly on the defensive. ‘Of course we are in a state of war with England and France,’ Hitler would confide to his dinner guests a few days later, ‘but if we on our side avoid all acts of war [against France and Britain], the whole business will evaporate. As soon as we sink a ship and they have sizeable casualties, the war party over there will gain strength.’⁷

However, events in Britain were about to deal a bad hand of cards to Hitler: within a short time of the British declaration of war, he received news that Winston Churchill had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, and joined the War Cabinet. An eyewitness recalled that on hearing the news, Hitler ‘dropped into the nearest chair, and said wearily “Churchill is in the Cabinet. That means that the war is really on. Now we have war with England.”’⁸

Regardless of the British and French declarations of war, and Hitler’s fear of a conflict in the west that he did not want, Germany maintained her relentless attack on the ever-weakening Polish forces. On 17 September Poland’s determination to fight off the German invaders turned to anguish when Soviet Russia attacked her rear, and as the Red Army poured into eastern Poland, Polish resistance began to disintegrate. A mere ten days later, on 27 September, Warsaw fell to the German army, and the following day saw what was left of Poland partitioned between Germany and Russia. Technically, Poland had ceased to exist.

Despite the military posturing that now took place on the Franco–German border, between the British and French armies on the one side and Germany’s forces on the other, a sort of peace did appear to settle uneasily over Europe. This was the time of the ‘phoney war’, described in Germany as the Sitzkrieg, the sitting war.

It was during this period that Hitler developed hopes that some form of accommodation could be found to end the conflict, with Germany retaining her conquests, and the Allies, having made their protests and metaphorically waved their fists at a belligerent Germany, backing down and agreeing to peace.

On 6 October, the fighting in Poland having finished and there being only a minimal level of conflict in the west, Hitler made his first public appeal for peace, giving an unrepentant yet placatory speech to the Reichstag. To many in the west, Hitler’s speech sounded like mere rhetoric. But, unbeknownst to the Reichsleiters and Reichsministers seated before him, the Führer had been making a concerted behind-the-scenes effort to negotiate an accord with Britain.

Ten days prior to Hitler’s appearance at the Reichstag, he had had a confidential meeting in his office at the Chancellery with a man named Birger Dahlerus, a prominent Swedish businessman who was also a close friend of the British Ambassador in Oslo, Sir George Ogilvie Forbes. Dahlerus informed Hitler that Ogilvie Forbes had told him that ‘the British government was looking for peace. The only question was: How could the British save face?’

‘If the British actually want peace,’ Hitler had replied, ‘they can have it within two weeks – without losing face.’⁹ He informed Dahlerus that although Britain would have to be reconciled to the fact that ‘Poland cannot rise again’, he was prepared to guarantee the security of Britain and western Europe – a region he had little interest in, for despite some concerns about German access to the North Sea, German expansion into western Europe was not part of the Karl Haushofer plan for the Greater Germany.

Also present at this confidential meeting with Dahlerus was Hermann Göring, who suggested that British and German representatives should meet secretly in Holland, and that if they made progress, ‘the Queen [of Holland] could invite both countries to armistice talks’. Hitler finally agreed to Dahlerus’s proposal that he ‘go to England the very next day in order to send out feelers in the direction indicated’.

‘The British can have peace if they want it,’ Hitler told Dahlerus as he left, ‘but they will have to hurry.’¹⁰

Now, ten days later, Hitler stood before the Reichstag and proclaimed Germany’s justification for taking back her former territories from Poland. For over an hour he discoursed on the history of the region that had led to the present state of affairs. Then, having taken this belligerent position, so that any placatory utterances he now made would not be seen as weakness, Hitler began to make his overtures for peace. First, he declared:

My chief endeavour has been to rid our relations with France of all trace of ill will and render them tolerable for both nations … Germany has no claims against France … I have refused even to mention the problem of Alsace-Lorraine … I have always expressed to France my desire to bury forever our ancient enmity and bring together these two nations, both of which have such glorious pasts.

He then went on to speak about his greater cause for concern:

I have devoted no less effort to the achievement of Anglo–German understanding, nay, more than that, of an Anglo–German friendship. At no time and in no place have I ever acted contrary to British interests. I believe even today that there can only be real peace in Europe and throughout the world if Germany and England come to an understanding … Why should this war in the west be fought? … The question of re-establishment of the Polish state is a problem which will not be solved by war in the west but exclusively by Russia and Germany.

After touching on a whole range of European problems that would in the end, Hitler felt, have to be resolved at the conference table, not on the battlefield, including the ‘formation of a Polish state’, Germany’s colonies, the revival of international trade, ‘an unconditionally guaranteed peace’, and a settlement of ethnic questions in Europe, Hitler proposed that a conference should be arranged to ‘achieve these great ends’. He concluded:

It is impossible that such a conference, which is to determine the fate of this continent for many years to come, could carry on its deliberations while cannon are thundering or mobilised armies are bringing pressure to bear upon it. If, however, these problems must be solved sooner or later, then it would be more sensible to tackle the solution before millions of men are first uselessly sent to death and billions of riches destroyed.

One fact is certain. In the course of world history there have never been two victors, but very often only losers. May those peoples and their leaders who are of the same opinion now make their reply. And let those who consider war to be the better solution reject my outstretched hand …¹¹

The following morning the Nazi Party mouthpiece, the Völkischer Beobachter newspaper, blared the headlines:

GERMANY’S WILL FOR PEACE.

NO WAR AIMS AGAINST FRANCE AND ENGLAND –

NO MORE REVISION CLAIMS EXCEPT COLONIES –

REDUCTION OF ARMAMENTS – CO–OPERATION WITH

ALL NATIONS OF EUROPE – PROPOSAL FOR A

CONFERENCE.¹²

The olive branch had been proffered. Would it be taken up?

There followed nearly a week’s stony silence from Britain and France, prompting the German Führer to once again officially announce his ‘readiness for peace’ in a brief address at Berlin’s Sportpalast. ‘Germany,’ he declared, ‘has no cause for war against the Western Powers.’¹³

On 12 October 1939, Neville Chamberlain finally responded to Hitler’s offer, terming his proposals ‘Vague and uncertain’, and making the comment that ‘they contain no suggestions for righting the wrongs done to Czechoslovakia and Poland’. No reliance, Chamberlain asserted, could be put on the promises of ‘the present German government’. After the humiliating defeats of Munich and Hitler’s move against Poland, Britain’s Prime Minister now suddenly exhibited a strength few thought him capable of. If Germany wanted peace, ‘acts – not words alone – must be forthcoming’, and he called for ‘convincing proof’ from Hitler that he really wanted an end to the conflict.

The following day, 13 October, Hitler responded by issuing a statement which declared that Chamberlain, in turning down his earnest proposals for peace, had deliberately chosen war. Such was the public face of the events at the time.

Yet what about the private face? What about the travels of Mr Dahlerus, which few people in Britain, including the House of Commons, ever got to hear about?

It was one thing for Chamberlain to turn down some airy peace proposal made by Hitler, presumably aimed at home consumption. In the world of diplomacy, much more credence would have been given to such a proposal if it had been made in writing, or delivered by an official emissary. It is not suggested that peace would have suddenly erupted on the receipt of an official communiqué more clearly outlining Germany’s peace proposal – but it would certainly have been a starting point, from which an accord approaching the Allied demands could have been discussed, even if those negotiations subsequently failed.

Incredibly, such a communiqué is exactly what the British government, in the form of Neville Chamberlain and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, had secretly received as far back as August 1939.

In the spring of 1941, Hjalmar Schacht, the head of Germany’s Reichsbank, approached the then non-combatant American government to ask if they would be prepared to act as intermediaries to help negotiate a peace between Germany and Britain. Soon a positive flurry of urgent memos were flying between Foreign Office mandarins in Whitehall querying what should be done, for they were not at all keen for America to interfere in Britain’s foreign policy decisions. Eventually the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan, sent a ‘most secret’ memorandum to Lord Halifax, who was by then British Ambassador in Washington, that stated:

Many thanks for your letter of 17th June about Schacht’s peace feeler.

We recently prepared for our own use a memorandum summarising the various peace feelers which have reached us since the beginning of the war. The Germans are obviously now attempting to interest certain circles in the USA in the possibility of an early peace … It therefore occurred to us that you might like to see a copy of this memorandum and to communicate it very confidentially to the President for his own personal and secret information. In suggesting that you should do this we do not mean to suggest for a moment that the President is in any need of advice as to how to handle any such German approaches, but he may find details of our own experiences useful in helping him to handle the ‘weaker brethren’ in the USA … ¹⁴

The memorandum then went on to disclose details of sixteen peace attempts that had been made by the Germans since the outbreak of war. These included the Dahlerus peace initiative, about which it was revealed: ‘[Dahlerus] was convinced that Göring genuinely regretted the outbreak of the war and short of actual disloyalty to Hitler would like to see a truce negotiated. The unwillingness of the Polish government to treat in earnest about Danzig and The Corridor, coupled, perhaps, with deliberate malice on the part of Ribbentrop, had unleashed the conflict.’¹⁵ The memorandum went on to explain that on 18 September 1939 a confidential meeting had taken place in London between high-ranking officials of the Foreign Office, including Cadogan, and Dahlerus, who ‘reported that the German army were now approaching a position in Poland beyond which they would not go and that the German government were seeking an early opportunity to make an offer of peace.’¹⁶

At this meeting Dahlerus was informed that the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax ‘could conceive of no peace offer likely to come from the German government that could even be considered … and that the British government could not … define their attitude to an offer of which they did not know the nature’.

On 12 October 1939, the report went on, Dahlerus had transmitted the final details of Germany’s very comprehensive peace offer. These included the information that Hitler was prepared to discuss the Polish situation, non-aggression pacts, disarmament, colonies, economic questions and frontiers. Indeed, Dahlerus even communicated that ‘Hitler had taxed the patience of the German people over the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland, and that if Göring, as the chief negotiator, secured peace, Hitler could not risk acting counter to these national undertakings.’¹⁷

This comprehensive peace initiative was kept secret in both Germany and Britain. However, even while admitting these details for ‘President Roosevelt’s Eyes Only’ in 1941, the British government was still sensitive enough about the subject to conceal certain details about what had taken place. To the uninitiated, Dahlerus’s efforts at peace in 1939 appeared a damp squib that had fizzled out. Yet there had been much more to them than the British government was prepared to admit to the American President.

During 1938, Neville Chamberlain had, with much effort, negotiated comprehensive deals with Hitler. Hitler, however, had shown a dangerous penchant for negotiating agreements and then reneging on them as soon as it suited his purposes. He wasn’t, as one diplomat later remarked, a gentleman. Chamberlain had therefore, not unnaturally, developed a marked sensitivity about being seen to negotiate again with the Nazis, whilst at the same time exhorting the British people to prepare themselves to make great sacrifices. Thus the report to Roosevelt, at a time when America was still neutral and Britain could not afford even to hint at the possibility of negotiating with the Nazis, for fear of losing American support, concealed the fact that Dahlerus had been involved in Hitler’s attempts to prevent war before the conflict had started. As consummate politician and diarist, close friend of Britain’s high and mighty, Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon commented two days before Germany’s invasion of Poland, on 28 August 1939: ‘Mr D[ahlerus] and a Mr Spencer have it appears been negotiating secretly here … I doubt the validity of the Walrus’s [Dahlerus’s] credentials, but he is taken seriously by Halifax, and a secret plane transported the two emissaries here, with special facilities at the airport.’¹⁸

Exactly one month later, on 28 September, Channon recorded that Dahlerus, having been to Berlin to consult with Hitler, was back in London for another secret meeting – a meeting that would not be mentioned in the information released to Roosevelt: ‘Very Secret. “The Walrus” is in London. He arrived today by plane and this time his visit is known to Hitler. Halifax and others are seeing him this afternoon. No-one knows of this. What nefarious message does he bring?’

The following day, Channon noted:

The fabulously mysterious ‘Walrus’ … was interviewed secretly yesterday … This morning he walked about the Foreign Office openly. Also Cadogan had a talk with him and a report of their conversation was given to Lord Halifax, who read it I believe, at the War Cabinet … The French, always realistic, say ‘we had better make peace as we can never restore Poland to its old frontiers, and how indeed should we ever dislodge the Russians from Poland even if we succeeded in ousting the Germans?’¹⁹

However, in the atmosphere of diplomatic and international distrust that had developed by October 1939, British contemplation of negotiating peace with Hitler quickly began to evaporate. Dahlerus’s initiative failed, and the war continued unabated.

This, however, did not mean that Hitler gave up on the idea, and he continued secretly trying to find a negotiated end to the simmering conflict in the west before it came to the boil, ruining his timetable for eastern conquest. In truth he had no choice. He had found himself fighting the wrong war.

This situation led, between the summers of 1939 and 1941, to the British government receiving a great many German peaceable approaches. A substantial number of these can be discounted, for they included such low-level attempts as the German Chargé d’Affaires in Washington contacting the British Ambassador to inform him that ‘if desired he could obtain from Berlin Germany’s present peace terms’.²⁰ On another occasion the British Legation to the Holy See reported that the Vatican would be prepared to arbitrate between Britain and Germany ‘through the Apostolic Delegate on the subject of Germany’s peace offer’.²¹

Indeed, reports on the possibilities of peace were submitted back to London from far and wide – even from distant Angora, where Ambassador Sir Hugh Knatchbull-Hugessen reported that the ‘Netherlands Minister has sent me the following information regarding a conversation between Herr von Papen and Herr Hitler during the former’s recent visit to Berlin’. He went on to tell his seniors at the Foreign Office that ‘Herr Hitler discussed [with von Papen his] possible terms of peace’.²²

Each one of these reports required the attention of an Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office and the creation of its own file, and so became counted in the plethora of peaceable attempts made to the British government by German nationals or well-meaning neutrals. There were so many of these little snippets of peaceable intent that the whole matter of peace in 1939, 1940 and 1941 becomes rather a jumble, and to a large extent the important – real – peaceable moves made at this time have become hidden amongst all these lesser ones. However, it is possible to refine the plethora of peaceable initiatives down to just a few nuggets of gold – those that were stamped with the hallmark of Hitler.

There were basically three distinct strata to the peaceable attempts. The vast majority were low-level suggestions made by neutrals, junior German diplomats or the odd German official at loose in a neutral state. The second stratum, which was of some interest to the Foreign Office, emanated from respected neutrals, such as the King of Sweden, and upper-echelon German nationals, such as former War Minister Otto Gessler and even top Nazis such as Goebbels. These pitches for peace were made with an eye to the credit that would accrue to their originators, particularly with Hitler, if they brought Germany peace.

There was however, a third stratum of peaceable attempts, and these were of a different ilk altogether. They were top-grade offers that received the personal attention of the Foreign Secretary, and frequently the Prime Minister as well. Furthermore, there were occasions when these attempts were of such importance that they required the Prime Minister to consult the dominion heads of government in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa before they could be rejected.

The most intriguing fact about these top-grade offers is not only that they clearly emanated from Adolf Hitler himself, transmitted to the British authorities through his own personal emissaries, but that there was a discernible pattern to them. As each attempt failed or began to flounder, a new one was immediately initiated through another avenue to replace it, thereby creating an almost unbroken chain of peaceable attempts from the summer of 1939.

It was a situation that caused much interest and speculation within Britain’s Foreign Office and Intelligence Services. By the summer of 1940 it was realised that these secret Hitler-initiated attempts at peace mediation revealed a psychological flaw deep within the Führer’s character that Britain could, with skill and guile, exploit to Germany’s disadvantage.

Even as it became clear to Hitler that Birger Dahlerus’s attempts at mediation in September-October 1939 would fail, moves began to open another channel to the British government. However, the German Führer was still a relative novice at the art of opening secret lines of communication to Britain’s leadership, and rather than stepping back to assess the situation, calling upon expert advice before dispatching an eminent diplomat or well-respected neutral, he accepted the services of the SS. That was not a good idea.

On 17 October 1939 SS Colonel Walter Schellenberg was summoned to a meeting with the head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), Reinhard Heydrich, at RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt – the Directorate General of Security for the Reich) headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse in Berlin – a building it shared with the Gestapo, which reveals much about the RSHA’s interests. Ushered into the presence of this extremely dangerous man, second only to Himmler in the SD–SS chain of command, Schellenberg was surprised to find Heydrich in congenial mood. ‘For several months,’ Heydrich confided, ‘one of our agents in the Low Countries … has been in contact with the British secret service.’²³ He went on to inform Schellenberg that this agent, a man named Morz, had made several important contacts with British Intelligence, including two agents based in Holland. These were Major Richard Stevens, the Passport Control Officer at the British Embassy in The Hague (all Passport Control Officers were members of Britain’s intelligence service MI6, better known as SIS), and Captain Sigismund Payne-Best, who ran the Z Network in Holland (an intelligence-gathering unit which reported to Passport Control Officers). Schellenberg’s orders were to use these two men to ‘get in touch with the English government’²⁴ in order to initiate Anglo–German peace negotiations.

Within a few days of his meeting with Heydrich, Schellenberg found himself in Holland, under the alias of Captain Schaemmel of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) Transport Service, pretending to Stevens and Payne-Best that he represented a group of leading Wehrmacht officers who wanted peace. This pretence was almost certainly adopted not only to protect Heydrich and Himmler should anything go wrong, but also because the British would have blanched at finding themselves negotiating with the SS. Schellenberg offered the very tempting bait that his faction might even be prepared to accept conditions that limited Hitler’s position within Germany, although he stressed that it was desirable that Hitler remained head of state – which in Nazi terms meant that in public Hitler would have remained the German head of state in a purely ceremonial capacity, while in private he continued in charge. This curious suggestion was not as improbable as it might first appear, for the SS was all-powerful in Nazi Germany, and Himmler secretly harboured great ambitions for it, planning that it would eventually supplant the Nazi Party as the controlling power in Germany.

Within hours of his meeting with Schellenberg, Stevens dispatched a ‘most secret’ telegram to London, putting forward the German peace proposals and relating the remarkable suggestions concerning Hitler’s future status. He soon received a reply that stated:

In the event of the German representatives enquiring whether you have had a reply to the questions which you said … you would refer to H.M.G., you should inform them as follows (not, however, handing them anything in writing):-

Whether Hitler remains in any capacity or not (but of course more particularly if he does remain) this country would have to see proof that German policy had changed direction … Germany [would not only] have to right the wrongs done in Poland and Czechoslovakia, but she would also have to give pledges that there would be no repetition of acts of aggression …²⁵

The message concluded:

It is not for H.M.G. to say how these conditions could be met, but they are bound to say that, in their view, they are essential to the establishment of confidence on which alone peace could be solidly and durably based …

Neither France nor Great Britain, as the Prime Minster said, have any desire to carry on a vindictive war, but they are determined to prevent Germany continuing to make life in Europe unbearable.²⁶

On receiving the bulk of this communication via Stevens, Schellenberg promptly reported to Heydrich: ‘The British officers [have] declared that His Majesty’s Government took great interest in our attempt which would contribute powerfully to prevent the spread of war … They assured us that they were in direct contact with the [British] Foreign Office and Downing Street.’²⁷ He concluded by informing Heydrich that the British had invited him to secret peace negotiations in London, and that Stevens had even given him a transmitter (call sign ON4) with which he could covertly contact the British directly.

Heydrich’s response was most interesting, indicating that there was a great deal more going on behind the scenes than Schellenberg ever knew about. ‘All this seems to me a little too good to be true,’ the head of the SD commented. ‘I find it hard to believe that it’s not a trap. Be very careful going to London. Before making a decision I shall have to talk not only with the Reichsführer [Himmler] but more particularly with the Führer. Wait for my orders before proceeding.’²⁸ Evidently from the German side the negotiations emanated from the pinnacle of Nazi government.

Events, however, were about to take a bizarre and unexpected twist. In distant Munich, on the night of Wednesday, 8 November, there was an attempt on Hitler’s life when a bomb blew up the Bürgerbräukeller just twenty minutes after he had cut short a speech and unexpectedly departed early. Outraged that this assassination attempt might have been prompted by the British, the SD took immediate action.

The very next afternoon, Stevens and Payne-Best, who were waiting to meet Schellenberg at the little Dutch–German frontier post at Venlo, were kidnapped by SD agents who dashed across the border, shot up the Dutch customs post, grabbed the two startled British Intelligence officers and made off with them across the frontier into Germany. Stevens and Payne-Best were intensively interrogated by German Intelligence, and after the German conquest of the west in 1940 the whole of Britain’s secret service network in western Europe would be brought crashing down, leaving it with virtually no intelligence-gathering assets. On the German side, the Venlo Incident, as it became known, ended any possibility of Schellenberg negotiating an end to the war.

As far as the British were concerned, this had been a true peace negotiation. The fact that Britain’s participants in the secret discussions were headed by Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain reveals the seriousness with which they were regarded by the British side, for Chamberlain was still keen to restore European peace. The Prime Minister was motivated by the desire to restore his reputation, but wanted to keep his failure hidden if he did not.

Although Halifax and Chamberlain had thought they could still negotiate an end to the conflict, the manner of the Venlo snatch by the SD finally impressed upon London that the Nazis were beyond the pale. How could Britain engage in meaningful peace negotiations with the Nazis when they reacted to an internal security problem by kidnapping peace negotiators?

When Winston Churchill discovered the truth behind the incident shortly after Stevens and Payne-Best’s kidnapping, his fury knew no bounds. Not only had Halifax and Chamberlain secretly engaged in a dangerous peace initiative, they had done so behind the back of the Cabinet. In Churchill’s eyes the appeasement of Nazism had led to the obliteration of the Czech state, the invasion of Poland, and to Britain and France facing a war just as they had in 1914. Yet Chamberlain had apparently not learned the lessons of appeasement, and had attempted mediation again. This was bad enough, but what Churchill also realised – which had apparently escaped Chamberlain – was that Chamberlain had unwittingly placed the alliance itself in dire peril. If the Germans were to leak details of the negotiations to the French, it would utterly shatter France’s confidence in Britain’s resolve to stand firm, ensuring victory to the Germans.

That German Intelligence did not leak the Venlo details to the French, however, is a clear indication that they too had much to hide, for it was no part of Hitler’s plans for the German Volk to hear that top Nazis were attempting secretly to negotiate peace with Britain until it was a done deal.

The Venlo Incident was not a clear-cut peace negotiation, for much double-dealing occurred behind the scenes, primarily organised by those masters of Machiavellian deceit, Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler. To call it instead an ‘SS peace move’ might be more accurate. But Venlo was important because it involved Britons and Germans at the highest level; it also set in motion a chain of events that would give the first seeds of an idea to British Intelligence that they might conduct a similar ‘sting’ of their own.

It is entirely possible that the Stevens/Payne-Best–Morz operation pre-October 1939 was originally an SD ‘sting’ aimed at crippling British Intelligence’s network in western Europe, but Heydrich’s participation in the operation post-Dahlerus indicates that a change in priorities had taken place. Moreover, Schellenberg’s reports on the affair were passed through Heydrich directly to Himmler.

On the British side, much of the remaining evidence suggests that the subsequent writing-off of Venlo as a ‘sting’ was primarily intended to protect Chamberlain from being caught holding secret peace talks with the Germans at the same time that he was condemning Nazi expansionism – a position he would have found hard to explain not only to Parliament, but to the Poles and the French. Intriguingly, in the Foreign Office’s ‘President Roosevelt’s Eyes Only’ communication of June 1941, Sir Alexander Cadogan would confidentially remark to Britain’s Ambassador in Washington that ‘the only important omission from our memorandum is the story of the Venlo incident in November 1939’.²⁹ Thus, within Whitehall, Venlo was classified as amongst the ‘peaceable attempts’, and not as an intelligence operation that went disastrously wrong.

Given what is known about Hitler’s desperation to end the war with Britain, it is possible that had the SS found a possible route to peace, Himmler would have ordered Heydrich to explore it, for he too was well aware of the extremely dangerous situation Germany was falling into. In 1942 Count Ciano would record that ‘Himmler, who now feels the real pulse of the country, wants a compromise peace’,³⁰ for his ‘plans for expansion into Russia were based on his hopes of coming to an understanding with the West’.³¹ Indeed, when the tide of war had finally turned inexorably against Germany in 1944, Himmler would earnestly engage in his own secret peace negotiations, this time without Hitler’s knowledge, and would attempt to use Albrecht Haushofer to do this. It is therefore likely that Himmler was inclined to attempt to restore peace with Britain in 1939, at a time when it would have secured both the fortunes of the Reich and his own position at the top of the Nazi hierarchy.

The collapse of the Venlo/SS peace attempt unnerved Hitler, for he undoubtedly did believe that the Bürgerbräukeller attempt on his life had been connected in some way to the negotiations taking place in Holland. But unbeknownst to Himmler, Heydrich or anyone else in the SS, Hitler was already pursuing yet another entirely private avenue to peace – his own short-cut to European domination. Hitler was a great believer in auguries, mysticism, and what he liked to call his ‘destiny’. It is therefore little wonder that he took his salvation from the Bürgerbräukeller bombing very seriously indeed, and was sure fate had played a hand in saving him from being blown to bits. The reason Hitler had left the Bürgerbräukeller early was to travel back to Berlin to meet another emissary. Only this emissary wasn’t offering peace mediation, but a victory that would enable him to dictate peace terms to a defeated foe.

The important peaceable attempts (i.e. those that could be directly connected to Hitler’s interests) between 1939 and 1941 fall into a clearly discernible pattern. As soon as one of them began to falter or fail, so keen was Hitler to have peace in the west that another was instantly begun through some other medium – be it by banker, businessman, diplomat or royal – in an attempt to keep the dialogue going.

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 December 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.