Читать книгу Nein!: Standing up to Hitler 1935–1944 - Paddy Ashdown, Paddy Ashdown - Страница 19

Suddenly they came upon a clearing bathed in sunshine. They stopped at the edge, astounded by the light. It seemed to them a symbol of hope, in contrast to the close-hemmed gloom of the trees and the heaviness of their spirits.

The day, 6 August 1938, was stiflingly hot and humid, even by the standards of a Baltic summer. It was evening now, and an offshore breeze blew softly through the stands of silver birch, causing their leaves to shiver and dance in the failing light.

The three men – two Germans and an Englishman – had been walking for nearly two hours. Their conversation had been earnest and conducted in confidential tones, despite their being out in the open and away from prying eyes and ears.

A few days earlier, Carl Goerdeler had sent a message to a mutual contact in Britain asking for an urgent meeting. Sir Robert Vansittart – now, after Anthony Eden’s resignation over appeasement, chief adviser to the new British foreign secretary Lord Halifax – decided that the man to go and see him should be A.P. Young, the host of Goerdeler’s dinner at the National Liberal Club almost a year earlier.

That afternoon, after a brief stay in Berlin, Young arrived at the station of the Baltic seaside resort of Rauschen-Düne. Stepping out onto the platform in a swirl of steam, sand and dust, he spotted the imposing, heavily-built figure of Goerdeler standing discreetly in the shade of the station awning. The two men walked the short distance to Goerdeler’s summer holiday house, a substantial, steep-roofed chalet-style building with shuttered windows set amongst trees and rhododendron bushes. A family supper with Goerdeler’s much-loved brother Fritz, his wife Anneliese and the couple’s two teenage sons followed. Afterwards, at Goerdeler’s suggestion, the three men set off for an evening walk through the woods, beyond the reach of possible Gestapo eavesdroppers.

Goerdeler’s message was sombre. Hitler was determined on war, and would march on Czechoslovakia within weeks. The German dictator had concluded that Britain and France were weak, and bluffing. They would, he was certain, not react if he occupied the German-speaking Czech Sudetenland. He would get away with it, just as he had done over his recent annexation of Austria.

Goerdeler had good news, too. The German public did not want war. Hitler’s closest advisers, from Himmler to Göring, were also against it, and with the economy in dire straits and army reservists only recently called up, Germany was not yet ready for conflict. The generals too were opposed. The message Goerdeler asked Young to transmit to London was that it was Hitler who was bluffing. If Britain stood up to him, then a powerful group, led by Goerdeler himself and including many of Germany’s top industrialists, a significant number of its Foreign Office officials and all of its most senior generals, would remove the dictator in a putsch, and replace him with a government which was ready to move away from the path to war. ‘A revolution is no place for children,’ Goerdeler added darkly, making it clear that the planned coup would be a violent one, if that was what was needed. This was the turning point, Goerdeler insisted. The German opposition to Hitler was ready to act, if Britain and France would do so too.

On his way back to London on 9 August, Young wrote an extensive report on his conversations for Vansittart, who passed it on to both prime minister Chamberlain and foreign secretary Halifax.

Six days after Young’s return to London, at 7.15 a.m. on 17 August, a large black saloon carrying the insignia of German Army Supreme Headquarters cruised past the imposing monumental façade of Berlin’s newly-constructed Tempelhof Airport. It swung into a side entrance which was already open and waiting for its arrival. It did not stop for checks of papers or personnel, but swept on, bypassing customs and immigration, to the steps of the Hansa Airlines 0800 flight from Berlin, via Amsterdam, to London. The Junkers 52 was parked under the airport’s huge semi-circular cantilevered roof, waiting for its passengers to arrive. Two men got out of the limousine, one in the full uniform and regalia of a Wehrmacht general, the other a middle-aged civilian with a cadaverous frame, a receding hairline, and an ascetic face with hard, gimlet-grey eyes which matched his suit. A close observer might have noted from their body language that there was an unusual closeness between the two, for they were in fact uncle and nephew. The general accompanied his charge to the aircraft steps. The captain, in uniform and cap, welcomed the older man with a salute, led him up the steps and settled him into his seat before the other passengers boarded. His task over, the general returned to his car, which swung round and sped away.

Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin

The subject of all this preferential treatment was a Prussian landowner called Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin, and he too was a secret envoy. A long-time and vocal opponent of the Nazis, who had narrowly escaped being murdered on the Night of the Long Knives and was closely watched by the Gestapo, Kleist-Schmenzin was not travelling under his own name, but under a false identity provided for him, complete with documents and sterling currency, by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.

Von Kleist-Schmenzin’s mission to London had been well prepared. His task, like that of Goerdeler, was to warn the highest echelons of the British government of Hitler’s imminent plans to invade the Sudetenland, and to inform them on behalf of Hitler’s most senior generals of the putsch they were preparing to launch if Britain would commit to defending Czechoslovakia. Kleist-Schmenzin had received his instructions a few days before his departure from Ludwig Beck: ‘Bring me certain proof that England will fight if Czechoslovakia is attacked and I will make an end of this regime.’

The Gestapo may not have been aware of Kleist-Schmenzin’s travel plans. But London was.

On the day before his departure, the appeasement-supporting British ambassador to Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, sent a coded telegram to Whitehall reporting that Kleist-Schmenzin would be travelling to the British capital claiming to represent the ‘moderates of the German Staff’. Henderson advised: ‘It would be unwise for [him] to be seen in official quarters.’

What the ambassador did not know was that he was already too late to block the secret visitor’s access to senior officials in London.

Two days before his departure Kleist-Schmenzin had asked for a meeting with the Central European correspondent of London’s News Chronicle, the well-informed and well-connected Ian Colvin. It was not their first encounter. Three months previously the two men had met in Berlin’s fashionable Casino Club. Colvin would write of that meeting: ‘For the first time, I heard spoken in a whisper the name of the man who was protecting them [the resistance] and furthering their efforts: the name of Canaris.’ During their earlier discussion Kleist-Schmenzin had asked Colvin’s advice about how to reach senior British politicians, explaining that Canaris was looking for a means to make direct high-level contact with them, but did not want to go through the normal intelligence channels. ‘I must warn you against the British Secret Service for several reasons,’ Canaris had said. ‘Should you work for them it will most probably be brought to my notice, as I think I have penetrated here and there. They will want to send messages about you in cipher and from time to time we can break a cipher. Your names would appear in files and registers. That is bad too. It would be difficult to overlook such activities in the long run. It has also been my experience that the British Secret Service will reward you badly – if it is a matter of money, let me tell you, they do not reward services well, and if they have the least suspicion, they will not hesitate to betray you to me or to my colleagues of [Himmler’s] Reich Security Service.’

This time, Colvin’s meeting with von Kleist-Schmenzin took place not in a well-known Berlin club, but in a dimly-lit backstreet bar in Bendlerstrasse, close to army headquarters. The German had something important to say ‘in a few short sentences, any one of which would have been enough to send him to instant execution’. Kleist-Schmenzin informed Colvin of the purpose of his forthcoming visit to the British capital: ‘The Admiral [Canaris] wants someone to go to London … We have an offer to make to the British and a warning to give them.’ That night Colvin wrote from the Adlon Hotel to his fellow journalist and friend, Winston Churchill’s son Randolph: ‘A friend of mine will be staying at the Park Lane Hotel from the 18th to the 23rd. I think it essential he should meet your father. Please put nothing about him in your column or mention him to any of your colleagues. The visitor will have information of great interest to your father.’

On his arrival at Croydon Aerodrome, Kleist-Schmenzin was observed to board a coach for London, where he booked into the Park Lane Hotel. The following afternoon the German visitor, describing himself as ‘a conservative, a Prussian and a Christian’, met Sir Robert Vansittart for tea – ‘[But not] I need hardly add … at the Foreign Office,’ Vansittart was careful to explain in his subsequent report.

The Foreign Office mandarin was impressed with Kleist-Schmenzin: ‘He spoke with the utmost frankness and sincerity … [He] has come out of Germany with a rope around his neck, staking his last chance of life on preventing [the war],’ he reported, adding: ‘Of all the Germans I saw, Kleist had the stuff in him for a revolution against Hitler.’

Over tea, Kleist-Schmenzin told Vansittart that war was now ‘a complete certainty’ unless Britain acted. ‘Hitler has made up his mind … the mine is to be exploded [after 27 September] … All [the generals] … without exception … are dead against the war. But they will not have the power to stop it unless they get encouragement from outside. We are no longer in danger of war, but in the presence of the certainty of it … [But if Britain acted to defend Czechoslovakia] it would be the prelude to the end of the [Hitler] regime. [His army friends were unanimous] … they had taken the risk and he had taken the risk of coming out of Germany at this crucial moment … but they alone could do nothing [if Britain did nothing].’

The following day, 19 August, Kleist-Schmenzin was driven south through the ripening fields and orchards of Kent to Chartwell House, where Winston Churchill, out of government, was struggling to catch up on a missed deadline for his magnum opus, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. The two met that afternoon in the room Churchill had set aside for important visitors. It was a space that would have been very familiar to a Prussian with an ancient lineage, with its heavy dark-oak carved furniture and Gothic-style beamed ceiling hung with a banner bearing the Churchill coat of arms. In one corner, where the sunlight streamed through a south-facing latticed window, was a table cluttered with family photographs. Close by, two comfortable chairs were drawn up in front of an Elizabethan fireplace. Churchill’s son Randolph sat to one side on an upright chair, taking notes in shorthand.

‘Kleist started by saying that he thought an attack on Czechoslovakia was imminent and was most likely to occur … [before] the end of September,’ Randolph scribbled. ‘The generals are for peace … and … if only they could receive a little encouragement they might refuse to march … Particularly was it necessary to do all that was possible to encourage the generals who alone had the power to stop war … In the event of the generals deciding to insist on peace, there would be a new system of government within forty-eight hours … [which would] end the fear of war.’

Winston Churchill understood very well what Kleist-Schmenzin was telling him. He would later write: ‘There can be no doubt of the existence of a plot … and of serious measures taken to make it effective.’

Kleist-Schmenzin seems to have asked Churchill for a personal assurance he could take to Ludwig Beck in Berlin that Britain would act militarily if Hitler attacked Czechoslovakia, for at one point Churchill broke off the conversation to ring Halifax. The foreign secretary agreed the outlines of a letter which Churchill could secretly send to Kleist-Schmenzin in the near future, to ‘re-assure his friends’ that Britain would defend the Czechs.

Travelling back to London through the failing light of an English summer’s evening, with Churchill’s promise ringing in his ears, Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin must have felt that his dangerous trip had been worth it – he had what Beck and his friends in Germany had asked him to get: a clear commitment that London would act if Hitler moved against Czechoslovakia. Now they could get on with planning the coup to remove the dictator and prevent the coming war.

The next day, Churchill sent the record of his meeting to prime minister Chamberlain, foreign secretary Halifax, Halifax’s predecessor Anthony Eden, and shortly afterwards to the French prime minister, Édouard Daladier.

Chamberlain was again dismissive. In a note to Halifax he wrote that Kleist-Schmenzin and his friends ‘remind me of the Jacobites at the Court of France in King William’s time and I think we must discount a good deal of what he says’. But a double negative in the last sentence of the prime minister’s minute seems to betray some uncertainty: ‘Nevertheless I confess to some feeling of uneasiness and I don’t feel sure that we ought not to do something … Inform [Sir Nevile] Henderson … and tell him … to make some warning gesture.’

A few days later a diplomat at the British embassy in Berlin discreetly slipped an unaddressed envelope to Ian Colvin, who passed it on to Kleist-Schmenzin in the backstreet bar in Bendlerstrasse where the two men had met before the German emissary’s departure for London.

Inside the envelope a letter from Churchill read:

My Dear Sir,

I have welcomed you here as one who is ready to run risks to preserve the peace of Europe … I am sure that the crossing of the frontier of Czecho-slovakia … will bring about a renewal of the world war. I am as certain as I was at the end of July 1914 that England will march with France and … the United States … the spectacle of an armed attack by Germany upon a small neighbour … will rouse the whole British Empire and compel the gravest decisions.

Do not, I pray be misled upon this point. Such a war, once started, would be fought out like the last, to the bitter end …

As I feel you should have some definite message to take back to your friends in Germany … I believe that a peaceful solution of the Czecho-slovak problem would pave the way for the true reunion of our countries on the basis of the greatness and the freedom of both.

In time to come, Churchill’s brief note would fall into the wrong hands, and become a death warrant for Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin and many of his colleagues.

Three weeks after Kleist-Schmenzin’s visit to London, on Monday, 5 September, a young woman also checked in at Tempelhof ostensibly on a short visit to the British capital. Her luggage was light, but her mind bore a very important message. This was not the first text too secret to be written down which Susanne Simonis, the European correspondent for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, had memorised for her cousin Erich Kordt, the head of foreign minister Ribbentrop’s personal office – but it was the most important. For this was a piece of secret information to be passed to the very top of the British government by Kordt’s brother Theo, a senior diplomat at the German embassy in London – and it had the potential to avoid a world war. The message was that a high-level ‘conspiracy against Hitler exists in Germany and that a firm and unmistakable attitude by Britain and France would give the conspirators their opportunity [to remove the Führer] on the day that the German mobilization [for the invasion of Czechoslovakia] is announced’.

The day after Simonis’s arrival in London, Theo Kordt was smuggled into 10 Downing Street by the ‘secret’ door which leads from Horse Guards Parade into the prime minister’s garden. From there he was led up to the office of Chamberlain’s personal emissary to Hitler, Sir Horace Wilson. Wilson, who was also a convinced appeaser, listened attentively to Kordt’s message, and his assurance that if Britain and France stood up to Hitler on Czechoslovakia, the Wehrmacht would depose him at the instant he ordered the invasion. Wilson, who had met Kordt previously and trusted him, was impressed, and asked the German diplomat to return the following day to meet the foreign secretary, Halifax.

After listening to Kordt’s message the following evening, Halifax said he would do his best to ensure that the prime minister was informed – and perhaps some other cabinet colleagues too. Kordt was experienced enough to know that this was the kind of politeness the English use to cover lack of enthusiasm. He was shown back to the Downing Street garden door, and walked out onto Horse Guards Parade and into the London night puzzled and worried by Halifax’s muted response. And well he might have been. For Halifax could not tell his visitor that his master, Neville Chamberlain, had already decided not to resist Hitler’s demands for the Sudetenland, but to yield to them. ‘We could not be as candid with you as you were with us,’ Halifax was later to tell Kordt – long after the damage was done.

On Sunday, 11 September, four days after Kordt’s second backdoor visit to Downing Street, Vansittart’s secret emissary A.P. Young flew to Switzerland for another meeting with Carl Goerdeler in Zürich, once again at the German’s urgent request. The two met in the St Gotthard Hotel and strolled to Zürich’s Belvoir Park, where they spent two hours walking in the autumn sunshine among the flowerbeds and carefully manicured lawns, discussing the coming war and how it could now be stopped only by a combination of strong British and French action, backed by a coup to remove Hitler. At Zürich station that evening, as the world teetered towards the brink of war, Goerdeler waved goodbye to Young with the words, ‘Remember always that we shall win the last battle.’