Source: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v03/v03p291_Anon.html
On May 10, 1941, Rudolf Hess
made his daring flight from Germany to Britain in a vain bid to stop the tragic
conflict between two nations he admired and loved. When Hitler’s Deputy
parachuted to earth from a Messerschmitt fighter over south Scotland, Germany
and Britain had already been at war with each other for twenty months.
It is well known that Hess
made this unprecedented move to impress on Britain’s war leaders just how
earnestly Germany desired peace. But even after the passage of forty years,
much about the famous episode remains shrouded in mystery. The biggest question
is whether Hitler knew in advance about the flight. Did he even order Hess on
this mission of peace, as some insist? We cannot be sure if Hess would reveal
the truth if he could. His ardent loyalty to Hitler might keep him from telling
the whole story even if he were able. The truth may not be known until the
secret British government documents on the matter are one day finally removed
from the closed archives and made available to the world in uncensored form.
Still, there is strong
evidence that Hess risked his life for peace under orders from Adolf Hitler
himself. In its issue of May 1943, the American Mercury published „The Inside
Story of the Hess Flight,“ a remarkable article which self-assuredly reported
that the flight was personally directed by Hitler and completely expected by
the British.
In 1943 the American Mercury
was a popular, highly successful and very „establishment“ monthly. It was quite
different from the iconoclastic journal that H. L. Mencken had founded and
edited many years before.
Although the article on the
Hess flight appeared anonymously, the magazine’s editors vouched for its
accuracy: „The writer, a highly reputable observer, is known to us and we
publish this article with full faith in its sources.“ The Reader’s Digest
published a condensed version of the piece in its July 1943 issue and likewise
declared it accurate: „According to Allan A. Michie, The Reader’s Digest’s
London correspondent, this account of the Hess flight corresponds to the
version accepted by well-informed journalists in Britain.“
Written in the midst of war,
the author’s bellicose joy at the failure of the Hess peace venture may appear
regrettable and even contemptible today. Still, the information it contains (if
correct) puts both Germany and Britain in a very different light than the one
originally intended by the author. Because of its unquestionable historical
importance, this article deserves serious consideration today.
-- Mark Weber
I
Why Rudolf Hess took the sky
road to Scotland has never been revealed officially, principally because two
leaders of Allied strategy, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
believed at the time that no useful purpose could be served by the telling.
Hess was consigned to the limbo of hush-hush and all attempts to probe the
craziest episode of the war were resolutely suppressed.
Today, two years after, many
Englishmen and a few Americans know exactly why Hess came to England, and most
of those in possession of the true story feel that it should now be told. For
one thing, it would place before critics of Anglo-American policy towards
Soviet Russia the vital and silencing fact that at a difficult moment, when he
might have withdrawn his country from the war at Russia’s expense, Churchill
pledged Britain to continue fighting as a full ally of the newest victim of
Nazi duplicity. There would have been some semblance of poetic justice to such
a withdrawal-was it not Stalin who set the war in motion by signing a
friendship pact with Hitler in 1939? But the British Prime Minister never even
considered such action.
A few details are still
unclear-only British Intelligence and several top-flight officials, know them;
a few facts must still be kept dark for reasons of policy. But the essential
story can be safely, and usefully, told. It makes one of the most fascinating
tales of superintrigue in the annals of international relations. It adds up to
a supreme British coup that must have shattered the pride of the Nazis in their
diplomacy and their Secret Service. In that domain, it is fair to say, the Hess
incident is a defeat equivalent to Stalingrad in the military domain.
Rudolf Hess did not „escape“
from Germany. He came as a winged messenger of peace, and no Parsifal in
shining armor was ever more rigorously and loyally consecrated to his mission.
He came not only with Adolf Hitler’s blessing, but upon Hitler’s explicit orders.
Far from being a surprise, the arrival of Hess was expected by a limited number
of Britishers, the outlines of his mission were known in advance, and the Nazi
leader actually had an RAF escort in the final stage of his air journey.
On the basis of reliable
information since obtained from German sources and from indications given by
Hess himself, it is possible to reconstruct the situation in Berlin that led to
the mad Hess undertaking.
By the beginning of 1941
Hitler, in disregard of the advice of some of his generals, had decided that he
could no longer put off his „holy war“ against Russia. The attempt to knock out
the Western democracies before turning to the East had failed. The alternative
was an understanding with Great Britain which would leave Germany free to
concentrate everything against Russia-a return, in some measure, to the basis
of co-operation set up in Munich. Whatever Chamberlain and Daladier may have
thought, the Germans had interpreted the Munich deal as a carte blanche for
Nazi domination of Eastern Europe. The Allied guarantees to Poland and Rumania
thereafter and their declaration of war, were indignantly denounced in Berlin
as a democratic double-cross.
Hitler put out a tentative
feeler in January 1941 in the form of an inquiry regarding the British attitude
towards possible direct negotiations. It was not directed to the British
Government but to a group of influential Britishers, among them the Duke of
Hamilton, who belonged to the since discredited Anglo-German Fellowship Association.
An internationally known diplomat served as courier. In the course of time a
reply arrived in Berlin expressing limited interest and asking for more
information. Tediously, cautiously, without either side quite revealing its
hand, a plan was developed. When the German proposal of negotiations on neutral
soil was rejected, Berlin countered with an offer to send a delegate to
England. After all, had not Chamberlain flown to Germany?
A delegate was selected-Ernst
Wilhelm Bohle, Gauleiter of all Germans abroad. Handsome, South African-born,
Cambridge educated Willi Bohle was actually a British subject, though his
passport was considerably out of date, and he seemed ideally suited for the
mission. Several important foreign journalists in Berlin were let in on the
secret that Bohle was being groomed for a very big and mysterious job abroad,
and the story was planted in Turkish and South American papers to test British
reaction. When weeks passed and the British press did not pick up the story,
thus indicating an indifference to Bohle, Berlin became worried.
It was then that the Führer
came through with one of his „geniale“ ideas. Bohle was not the right man, he
said. He did not have the national stature to impress the British. A really big
Nazi would have to go, one whose name was inseparably linked with Hitler
himself and whose presence could not possibly fail to command attention. He
must be one, said Hitler, who would represent the „goodness“ of the German
race, one whose sincerity was unquestionable. What is more, he must be able to
speak officially for the German Government and to give binding commitments on
the behalf of the Führer. Providence, Hitler pointed out, had given Germany
just the man-Walter Richard Rudolf Hess, Nazi Number Three, who in addition to
fulfilling the other qualifications had grown up in the English quarter of
Alexandria, spoke fluent English and „understood the British mind.“
After Hitler transmitted his
supreme and final offer-to send his own Deputy and closest friend directly to
England-there was a long delay in replying. Possibly the imperturbable British
required some time to recover from their astonishment. But finally Adolf’s
intuition was justified -- an acceptance of the proposal came through, details
were arranged, and on May 10 Hess flew into the twilight.
Four months of intricate
negotiations had preceded the flight. The Germans had pushed their proposal in
the name of peace and Nordic friendship. Their British „friends“ were
co-operative without being too eager or too optimistic -- there was no use
overlooking the difficulties. As was only natural, progress was made slowly;
there were ups and downs in the fortunes of the enterprise.
II
The one thing the Germans did
not know was that they were negotiating with agents of the British Secret
Service using the names -- and the handwriting -- of the Duke of Hamilton and
other gentry of the Anglo-German Fellowship Association! The fact is that the
initial communication, in January, brought personally by an eminent diplomat,
never reached its destination, having been intercepted by the Secret Service.
From then on the correspondence was handled entirely by astute British agents.
Replies designed to whet the German appetite, replies encouraging the
supposition that Britain was seeking a way out of its military difficulties,
were sent to Berlin. The hook was carefully baited that caught the third
largest fish in the Nazi lake.
It was perhaps his perverted
love of Wagnerian contrast that led Hitler to choose the night of his Deputy’s
fateful flight for unloading five hundred tons of noisy death on London.
That night the subterranean
plotting room of the RAF Fighter Command was static with !activity. The
heaviest Nazi bomber force ever sent to Britain was pounding the capital, and
new waves of planes were crossing the coast every fifteen minutes. When a
report from an outlying radiolocation station on the Scottish coast announced
the approach of an unidentified plane, the receiving operator at Fighter
Command checked it off as „one of ours“ and promptly forgot it. On the tail of
the first report came a second: the plane had failed to identify itself
properly and its speed indicated that it was a fighter. Methodically, as one
immune to surprises, the operator sent his flash to the plotting room and a
hostile plane was pinpointed far up on the eastern coast of Scotland with an
arrow to indicate that it was moving west.
By now inland stations were
also picking up the mystery plane, obviously a fighter from its speed, although
Scotland was far beyond the normal cruising range of any fighter. Consulted,
the commanding officer at Fighter Command reacted in a manner that Fighter
Command personnel still discuss with varying degrees of puzzlement. „For God’s
sake,“ he is reported to have shouted, „Tell them not to shoot him down!“
In a matter of seconds a fighter station in Scotland received a flash and two
Hurricanes took off to trail the mystery plane with orders to force it down but
under no conditions to shoot at it. While the small red arrows on the
plotting table crept across Scotland, high officers at Fighter Command watched
with absorbed interest. Near the tiny village of Paisley, almost on the west
coast, they stopped. „Made it,“ the commanding officer is reported to have
grunted. „Thank God, he’s down!“
In Lanarkshire, Scotland,
David McLean, a farmer, watched a figure parachute into his field, and by the
time the man had disentangled himself from the shrouds of his parachute, Farmer
McLean was standing over him with a pitchfork. „Are ye a Nazi enemy, or are ye
one o’ ours?“ he asked. „Not Nazi enemy; British friend,“ the man replied with
some difficulty because he had wrenched his ankle and was in extreme pain.
Helped into the farmer’s kitchen, he announced that his name was Alfred Horn
and that he had come to see the Duke of Hamilton, laird of the great Dungavel
estate ten miles away. The man talked freely, and to local Home Guardsmen Jack
Paterson and Robert Gibson, who had arrived in the meantime, he admitted that
he had come from Germany and was hunting the private aerodrome on Hamilton’s
estate when his fuel gave out and he had to bail out. „My name is Alfred Horn,“
he repeated frequently as though seeking recognition. „Please tell the Duke of
Hamilton I have arrived.“
With their instinctive
distrust of aristocracy, the canny Scots became suspicious of the whole
situation, and the parachutist was bundled off to the local Home Guard
headquarters, where an excited, argumentative crowd soon gathered. Meanwhile, a
kind of official reception committee composed of Military Intelligence officers
and Secret Service agents was waiting at the private aerodrome on the Hamilton
estate. The forced landing ten miles from the prearranged rendezvous was the
only hitch in the plan. It was the hitch, presumably, which broke to the whole
world sensational news which otherwise might have been kept on ice for a while
if not for the duration.
When the „reception committee“
heard of the accident and finally found their visitor, he was being guarded by
over a dozen defiant Home Guardsmen who were determined not to relinquish him.
It took lengthy assurances that the man would remain safe in their custody,
plus the arrival of Army reinforcements under instructions to co-operate with
the „committee,“ to persuade the Guardsmen to give up their prisoner.
Still declaring that his name
was Alfred Horn, Hess was placed in a military motorcar and driven to Maryhill
Barracks near Glasgow. There he changed his story. „I have come to save
humanity,“ he said. „I am Rudolf Hess.“ And he indicated that his visit was
being expected by influential Englishmen -- a statement that was truer than he
as yet suspected. His identity checked, Hess was taken to a military hospital
to have his ankle treated, and with a Scots Guardsman on duty outside his door,
spent his first night in the British Isles.
In the village of Paisley and
many other parts of the Highlands, Scotsmen divided into factions-Scots
nationalists and British loyalists, royalists and socialists-and throughout that
night and for several days broke heads and knuckles over the issue of the
German who came to Scotland. The loyalists and socialists suspected that either
the Scots nationalists or royalists had been guilty of some treasonable
skullduggery.
Hess passed a good night, and
when his nurse brought breakfast on a tray the next morning at 8 a.m. he
reminded her that on the continent one breakfasted later. She left the tray and
departed, while he went back to sleep. When she returned at nine for the tray,
the breakfast had not been touched, so she removed it, with the result that
Hess spent his first morning in Britain without breakfast. Thereafter he
breakfasted at eight.
Hitler’s friend and deputy had
come prepared for an indirect approach to the British Government through the
Anglo-German Fellowship Association, to which a surprising number of prominent
Britons adhered before the war. The actual approach, as planned by Winston
Churchill, was exceedingly direct. Ivone Kirkpatrick, an astute super-spy in
World War I and Councillor at the Berlin Embassy during the intervening years,
flew to Scotland to receive the Hess plan for direct transmission to the
British Government. Even Hitler could have asked no greater co-operation.
Despite the absence of the Duke of Hamilton, Hess at this stage was still
convinced that he was dealing with the Fellowship intermediaries.
It was to Kirkpatrick that the
Nazi first poured out the details of Hitler’s armistice and peace proposals. He
was enthusiastic and voluble -- the stenographic report filled many notebooks.
And he was most optimistic, since he was fully convinced that Britain was
licked, knew it, and must therefore welcome the Führer’s generous offer of
amity. His tone throughout was that of a munificent enemy offering a reprieve
to a foe whose doom was otherwise sealed.
III
The terms of Hitler’s peace
proposal have been discussed up and down England not only in well-informed
political circles but in pubs, bomb shelters and Pall Mall clubs. It was too
elaborate a secret to be kept. Cabinet members presumably told their friends in
Parliament and the MP’s told their club colleagues and the news percolated
down. The filter of time, plus such cross-checking as is possible on a subject
that is officially taboo, enables the writer to give the general outline,
withholding details.
Hitler offered total cessation
of the war in the West. Germany would evacuate all of France except Alsace and
Lorraine, which would remain German. It would evacuate Holland and Belgium,
retaining Luxembourg. It would evacuate Norway and Denmark. In short, Hitler
offered to withdraw from Western Europe, except for the two French provinces
and Luxembourg [Luxembourg was never a French province, but an independent
state of ethnically German origin], in return for which Great Britain would
agree to assume an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards Germany as it
unfolded its plans in Eastern Europe. In addition, the Führer was ready to
withdraw from Yugoslavia and Greece. German troops would be evacuated from the
Mediterranean generally and Hitler would use his good offices to arrange a
settlement of the Mediterranean conflict between Britain and Italy. No
belligerent or neutral country would be entitled to demand reparations from any
other country, he specified.
The proposal contained many
other points, including plans for plebiscites and population exchanges where
these might be necessitated by shifts in population that has resulted from the
military action in Western Europe and the Balkans. But the versions circulating
in authoritative circles all agree on the basic points outlined above.
In a prepared preamble, Hess
explained the importance of Hitler’s Eastern mission „to save humanity,“ and
indicated how perfectly the whole arrangement would work out for Britain and
France, not only from the ideological and security angles but also
commercially. Germany, he pointed out, would take the full production of the
Allied war industries until they could be converted to a peacetime basis, thus
preventing economic depression. As Hess and his Führer saw it, England and
France would become, in effect, the arsenals of free capitalism against Asiatic
communism. The actual slaying of the Bolshevik dragon Hitler reserved for
Germany alone, so that by this act he could convince a doubting world of his
benevolent intentions. Hess gave no information on the military plans for
Eastern Europe and would not be drawn out on that point, since it was a problem
for Germany alone.
For two days Hitler’s emissary
unfolded his proposals and Churchill’s amanuensis made notes. Hess was certain
his plan would be accepted; it is characteristic of German thinking that it
never foresees the possibility of another point of view. He emphasized that his
Leader would not quibble over details -- Britain could practically write its
own peace terms. Hitler was only eager, as a humanitarian, to stop the „senseless
war“ with a brother nation and thus incidentally guarantee supplies and
safeguard his rear while fighting in the East.
With the prepared plan and the
emissary’s annotations in his notebooks, Kirkpatrick went to 10 Downing Street.
The plan was communicated to Washington for an opinion, and the President, of
course, confirmed the Prime Minister’s decision. The answer would be a flat „No,“
but the two statesmen are reported to have agreed that open discussion of such
a sensational offer would be undesirable at that time. They decided that the
insanity explanation fed to the German people would also suffice for the rest
of the world. Unlike the Germans and some Americans, no single Britisher
believed a word of that story. Both London and Washington made repeated efforts
to warn Russia of the coming German blows. The Russian leaders would not
believe it-or pretended not to believe it-and certain Soviet diplomats insisted
that the warnings were democratic „tricks“. until the actual invasion took
place.
Hess was not told of Churchill’s
decision and was permitted to assume that his proposals were under ardent
discussion. At the hospital he rested easily and talked freely with his doctor,
nurses and guards. He was tolerant and friendly until his doctor one morning
made a typical British comment on Adolf Hitler, Hess thereupon staged a scene
and remained surly and sulking for a week. When he was able to walk, he was
flown to London, where he talked to Lord Beaverbrook, Alfred Duff Cooper and
other government leaders. But Churchill refused his repeated requests for a
meeting.
Only after he had talked
himself out and could provide no further useful information, was Hess informed
that his plan had been entirely rejected and that Britain was already Russia’s
ally. By that time he was aware, too, that the negotiations which preceded his
flight had short-circuited the Fellowship crowd -- neither Hamiliton nor any of
the others had known anything about the Hess visit until all of England knew
it. Hess’s shock and dismay resulted in a minor nervous breakdown, so that for
a while the Nazi lie about his insanity came near being true. The news of the
sinking of the Bismarck shook Hess so that he wept for an entire day.
Hess demanded that he be sent
back to Germany, because, having come as an emissary, he was entitled to safe
return. The British Government reasoned differently -- after all, he came as an
emissary to private individuals, not to the Government directly -- and he
became a special prisoner of war. He spends his existence in the manor house of
a large English estate, with considerable freedom of movement on the well
guarded grounds. His appetite is reported to be good. He spends most of his
time reading German classics and perfecting his English. A book-dealer in
London recently wrote to several of his customers who had purchased German
books from him, inquiring whether they would care to resell them to another
client: the client’s name was given as Walter R. R. Hess.
This
was not the first time England reduced a German stronghold by audacious Secret
Service work. It was reported unofficially in Berlin that the Graf Spee was
scuttled on orders sent over Admiral Raeder’s signature by the cloak-and-dagger
experts in the British Secret Service. Whether there is any truth to that or
not, there is no doubt that when the whole story can be told the achievements
of that Secret Service will astound the world. And the Hess episode is certain
to stand out with a glory all its own among them.
