The Hitler–Hess Deception. Martin Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ an acquisition of foodstuff for five to six million people … The incorporation of these two states … means, from a politico-military point of view, a substantial advantage because it would mean shorter and better frontiers, the freeing of forces for other purposes, and the possibility of creating new units up to a level of about twelve divisions, that is, one new division per million inhabitants.⁴²

      In a last-ditch effort to preserve the European peace, whilst at the same time pursuing a line that would enable Germany to settle her grievances over her eastern territories lost to Poland in 1919, Albrecht Haushofer wrote to his old friend, the British MP Lord Clydesdale, in July 1939: ‘My Dear Douglo, I have been silent for a very long time …’ After some brief introductory pleasantries, he quickly got down to business, explaining the difficulties faced by Germany after the end of the First World War. He expanded upon the fact that Germany had been unfairly stripped of much territory that she now wanted back, despite the terrible danger of war, and that Germany had a need – both politically and psychologically – to regain her formed territories. He continued:

      I cannot imagine even a short-range settlement without a change in the status of Danzig and … the Corridor … (people in England mostly do not know that there are some 600,000–700,000 Germans scattered through the inner parts of Poland!) – but if there is to be a peaceful solution at all, it can only come from England and it must appear to be fair to the German people as a whole …

      Last September Mr Neville [Chamberlain] had the trust of the majority of Germans. If you want to win a peace without – or even after – war, you need to be regarded as trustees of Justice, not partisans. Therefore – once more – if you can do anything to promote a general British peace and armaments control plan – I am sure you would do something helpful.⁴³

      Clydesdale decided to discreetly show Haushofer’s letter to a few of his top-ranking political acquaintances. But rather than the Foreign Secretary or the Prime Minister, the first person he approached was Winston Churchill. After carefully reading the letter, Churchill handed it back to Clydesdale with the comment: ‘There’s going to be a war very soon.’

      ‘In that case,’ replied Clydesdale, ‘I very much hope that you will be Prime Minister.’

      ‘What a hell of a time to become Prime Minister,’ Churchill responded with a resigned shake of his head.⁴⁴

      Clydesdale next showed the letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, before taking it on to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Yet neither felt compelled to act or reply.

      It is noteworthy that even before war was declared, and indeed ten months before Chamberlain’s resignation, Clydesdale, like many other Britons, already knew who was going to become important in the terrible times to come; and it wasn’t going to be Neville Chamberlain.

      Haushofer’s letter, which did nothing to deflect the progression to war, is important, if for no other reason than that it set the pattern for the line of communication that would begin just over a year later, and that again involved key men who all knew each other well – Albrecht Haushofer, Clydesdale (by then Duke of Hamilton), Winston Churchill and Lord Halifax.

      Back in Germany, Rudolf Hess added his voice to the Nazi assertions of peaceable intent, giving a speech in Berlin in August 1939. Germany had already absorbed Austria, the Sudetenland and, worst of all, Czechoslovakia by intimidation and force of arms. Now Hess tried to legitimise the invasion of Poland, which he knew was just days away. Decrying Polish aggression, he publicly requested Neville Chamberlain to inspect German refugee camps and see with his own eyes the horrors of Poland’s terror campaign. ‘There is bloodshed, Herr Chamberlain!’ he declared. ‘There are dead! Innocent people have died.’ He went on to state that ‘England has point-blank refused all the Führer’s proposals for peace throughout the years.’⁴⁵

      Hess’s pleas, however, fell on deaf ears. In London no one was listening any more. The time of appeasement had passed, and diplomatic deals were busily being done to bolster an Anglo–French partnership to support Poland.

CHAPTER 2

       Peaceable Attempts

      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 СКАЧАТЬ