The Hitler–Hess Deception. Martin Allen

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      Hess was delighted by Albrecht’s success, and sent Albrecht to Czechoslovakia to set up a similar arrangement with ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland, that area of Bohemia adjoining Germany that had been awarded to Czechoslovakia under the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1919. So significant were these first tentative steps by the Nazis’ foreign-political machine that ‘from 1935 onwards Hitler based some of his formulations on Volksdeutsch politics on statements submitted to him by Hess and prepared by Albrecht Haushofer’.²⁸

      The expansion of Germany was not Hitler’s only objective at this time: the Treaty of Versailles had not only stripped valuable German territory away, it had also reduced Germany’s military to a skeletal force fit only for defence and internal security. This did not fit with Hitler’s future plans one bit, and by early 1935 he determined it was time to solve this problem. If Germany was to become a major power once again, she would need appropriate military forces to match her status.

      Consequently, it was announced in March 1935 that Germany would re-introduce conscription to meet her new military needs. Immediately, all Europe sat up and took notice, the press proclaiming dire warnings of future German aggression, causing a Europe-wide level of consternation and panic not seen since the First World War.

      ‘Let them curse,’ Goebbels commented. ‘Meanwhile we rearm and put on a brave face.’²⁹

      Within a few days, Britain’s Foreign Secretary and Lord Privy Seal, Sir John Simon and Anthony Eden, hurriedly flew to Berlin to ascertain exactly what the German Führer intended to do next. Hitler, for his part, was deeply worried by the British reaction, and was indeed ‘putting on a brave face’. He absolutely did not want a conflict with the British, and made no secret of the fact that he considered the English to be Germany’s ‘Aryan cousins’. He therefore desperately wanted to persuade Britain’s politicians to let him do exactly as he wanted, without a war which he knew Germany would lose at that time.

      In a confidential meeting on Saturday, 23 March 1935, held at his Reich Chancellery office, Hitler met with Hess, Philipp Bouhler, the Chancellery head and party business manager, and Albrecht Haushofer, attending as a specialist on English affairs, to decide the course of action. It was concluded that an Anglo–German diplomatic banquet would provide the best low-key opportunity for Hitler to argue his case for Germany’s need to throw off of the shackles of Versailles. To Haushofer fell the task of drawing up the guest list, devising the seating plan³⁰ and advising Hitler during his meeting with Simon and Eden.

      At the banquet the guests were placed so that Eden was seated close to Hitler, separated from him only by Lady Phipps, the British Ambassador’s wife, while Sir John Simon was placed opposite the German Führer. Other British guests included leading Tory politician Viscount Cranborne, the new Ambassador to Berlin Sir Eric Phipps and his predecessor Sir John Seymour, while the top Germans present included Göring, Hess, Goebbels and von Neurath. There were, however, no military men, no SS or Schutzstaffel, and certainly no one whose presence would have hinted at the darker side of Nazism, such as Himmler or Heydrich. This was a diplomatic dinner aimed at defusing a sensitive international situation, not an occasion for military intimidation. However, as Goebbels later noted, Hitler did speak ‘out against Russia, [and] has laid a cuckoo’s egg which is intended to hatch into an Anglo–German entente’.³¹

      The event was a success, and further enhanced Albrecht Haushofer’s standing at the Reich Chancellery. Within a few weeks he began to expand his reputation as an expert on foreign affairs by writing a report for Hess on the problems with ‘Germany’s Foreign-Political Apparatus’. The report concluded that in order to attain Germany’s territorial aims, Hitler would have to take the lead in a two-pronged approach to further Germany’s position in Europe.

      Haushofer posed the question: ‘How do we view this instrument in reality, and proceed in the direction of the Führer’s difficult foreign policy [of territorial expansion]?’³² He then proceeded to explain that there existed a complicated conflict within Germany’s foreign ministry, which was split between the old guard – the stalwarts of the diplomatic service (mainly Weimar Republic appointees), who opposed National Socialist policy – and the new men, all party members who believed in a strong Nazi approach to attain the Führer’s territorial aims. The main problem, Albrecht pointed out, was that these new men were inexperienced, and the older diplomats were the more effective body within the ministry. Foreign governments, politicians and diplomats, he asserted, were exploiting these differences to Germany’s detriment. The problem would not be solved until a reorganisation of the Foreign Ministry took place.³³

      Over the next four years Haushofer’s importance to Hess and Hitler continued to rise. His was often the hidden voice of reason that attempted to put a tone of mollification into Nazi foreign policy, his often the role of modest intermediary between the Führer and certain top Britons.

      1935 was to be the high point of Hitler’s England-Politik, complete with the signing of the Anglo–German Naval Agreement, whereby Germany was permitted to expand its fleet beyond the constraints of the treaty of Versailles. In achieving this, Hitler made the catastrophic error of believing that the British government could be wooed into permitting an expanded Greater Germany, that they would calmly stand back whilst he carved out an enormous new empire for Germany in the east.

      In 1937, two years after Anthony Eden and Sir John Simon’s visit to Berlin, Haushofer’s connections and talent for mediation meant that he was still very much in the fore of German diplomacy, particularly when Lord Halifax visited Germany and it was arranged for him to meet Hitler. The two politicians, eyeing each other warily, discussed the central European situation with regard to the Nazis’ increasing calls for unification of all ethnic German peoples – as defined by Albrecht’s father, Karl Haushofer. The meeting was unreservedly deemed a success, and during his train journey home, Halifax would note: ‘Unless I am wholly deceived, the Germans, speaking generally, from Hitler to the man in the street, do want friendly relations with Great Britain. There are no doubt many who don’t: and the leading men may be deliberately throwing dust in our eyes. But I don’t think so …’³⁴

      In 1940 and 1941 Hitler would think back on his meeting with Lord Halifax, and remember that this eminent British politician, a leading member of the Conservative Party, had spoken earnestly of his desire to see a lasting European peace. Indeed, their discussions had seemed so propitious that Hitler had ‘talked of the possibility of disarmament’, beginning with ‘the possible abolition of bombing aeroplanes’. Halifax had later told the British Cabinet that he believed Germany would continue working towards ethnic unity, and that ‘the basis of an understanding might not be too difficult as regards to Central and Eastern Europe’³⁵ – which would have been music to Hitler’s ears. Following their meeting the German Führer had thought well of Lord Halifax, seeing him as a voice of reason in Britain, particularly after the declaration of war in September 1939. However, his opinion of this eminent man of British politics would later change radically. Feeling deceived and let down by fickle British politicians, he would comment bitterly, ‘I regard Halifax as a hypocrite of the worst type, as a liar.’³⁶

      Albrecht Haushofer’s pre-war influence was perhaps most strongly felt during the Munich Crisis of 1938, when he acted on behalf of the VDA in the Sudetenland advising the German delegation during the negotiations that would see Czechoslovakia stripped of her western territories. One of the keys to explaining Haushofer’s participation in high-level German foreign affairs is that Hitler believed Germany’s Foreign Ministry to be a slow, plodding beast, run by old-fashioned diplomats who took forever to negotiate a deal with any foreign nation. He therefore encouraged the use of alternative diplomatic means in the form of his own Nazi Party foreign-political machinery, the Aussenpolitisches Amt, the VDA and the Dienststelle Ribbentrop, all of which were run by men whose primary loyalty was to the Führer himself, men Hitler knew he СКАЧАТЬ