The Hitler–Hess Deception

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 could trust to give him what he wanted. This group included Albrecht Haushofer. In 1936 Haushofer and a diplomat named Graf Trauttmansdorf were sent to Czechoslovakia on Hitler’s secret orders for private talks about the Sudetenland. However, ‘they were forbidden to have any contact with the German diplomatic mission in Czechoslovakia, and the then German Foreign Minister, von Neurath’.37

The end of the 1930s saw the pressure-cooker of European politico-diplomatic tensions rise inexorably towards bursting point as the Nazis strained to expand Germany beyond her frontiers, to absorb every part of Europe containing ethnic Germans, as outlined by Karl Haushofer in the 1920s (see maps, pp. 16, 23). This objective closely followed Professor Haushofer’s theories, and like his son he was very active throughout the 1930s, contacting Ukrainian nationalists and working extensively with the Ukrainian Hetman Organisation, which supported the freeing of the Ukraine from Soviet domination. All of this would come together in June 1941, for Hitler would not attack the Soviet Union merely out of political ideology, but because western Russia played a critical role in the Nazis’ plans for their future Reich. The Nazis intended that the Ukraine would become the Reich’s breadbasket, while the Caucasus became her source of oil. Karl Haushofer was very important to this plan, and within his theories, his extensive range of contacts and his knowledge of the region lay the key, the Nazis hoped, to the Reich’s future success.

When Rudolf and Ilse Hess’s son, Wolf Rüdiger, was born in 1938, one of the child’s godfathers was Adolf Hitler; the other was Albrecht Haushofer. It may seem extraordinary that the co-signer of the infamous Nuremberg Laws (which removed German Jews’ political and social rights) chose the part-Jewish Albrecht Haushofer as his child’s godfather, despite the fact that he, Hitler, and all the top Nazis knew full well the Haushofer family’s Jewish connections. Indeed, at the christening party held at Hess’s Munich home in the affluent suburb of Harlaching, guest of honour Adolf Hitler mingled freely and happily with his and Hess’s friends, chatting gaily to his long-time acquaintance Martha Haushofer, who was half-Jewish.

1938 was a time of great change. The zenith of Nazi foreign policy successes was passing, and the Hess christening party was marred towards the end by a disagreement between Karl Haushofer and Hitler. The by-now elderly Professor Haushofer, who had become used to being regarded as the Nazis’ geopolitical guru, sought out for his wise counsel, now sensed that he too was passing his zenith. Hitler, like some Frankenstein’s monster of his own creation, was showing increasing signs that he intended to pursue Nazi foreign policy in an aggressive manner that the old Professor felt increasingly at odds with, and which he felt might well lead to war. Needless to say, when he voiced his opinion to Hitler, it was not well received.

Hitler should have listened to his old friend, for there would soon be signs that Germany’s European neighbours would no longer stand back and turn a blind eye to the Nazis’ expansionist agenda.

Following the autumn 1938 Munich Conference to settle the Sudeten Question, which was to strip Czechoslovakia of her western territories and leave her open to German conquest a mere six months later, certain high-ranking British civil servants and politicians regretfully concluded that Poland was likely to be next on Hitler’s agenda. He would demand the return of Danzig and the Corridor – the last remaining major strip of territory taken from Germany in 1919. However, what Hitler did next shocked everyone. Rather than sticking to Karl Haushofer’s plan for expanding Germany to encompass all ethnic Germans (which the British Foreign Office was well aware of), the German Führer swallowed up the rest of Czechoslovakia as well, in direct contravention of the agreement he had signed with Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Munich the previous year.

Czechoslovakia proper had never been part of Germany, and there were few, if any, ethnic Germans living there. Yet Hitler had simply marched in and taken a foreign nation over. This raised the frightening prospect that no one was safe, if not from direct invasion, then from belligerent German aggression to protect their interests – and who could say where the Nazis might judge those to be?

British MP Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon summed up these feelings succinctly on the day Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, writing in his diary: ‘Hitler has entered Prague, and Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist. No balder, bolder departure from the written bond has ever been committed in history. The manner of it surpasses comprehension and his callous desertion of the Prime Minister is stupefying … The country is stirred to its depths, and rage against Germany is rising.’38

It was not only the democrats of western Europe who were concerned by Hitler’s ill-judged departure from Karl Haushofer’s geopolitical game plan, which although blatantly nationalistic, at least made it appear that the Führer’s territorial ambitions were limited. No one could feel safe if Hitler could so easily tear up a treaty. Italy’s Fascist Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, immediately perceived the dangers of the situation: ‘The thing is serious, especially since Hitler had assured everyone that he did not want to annex one single Czech. This German action does not destroy the Czechoslovakia of Versailles, but the one that was constructed at Munich and Vienna. What weight can be given in the future to those declarations and promises which concern us more directly?’39

Hitler’s move against Czechoslovakia also took Albrecht Haushofer by surprise. Despite his position close to the centre of Nazi geopolitical planning, he had remained largely unaware of Hitler’s true strategy for attaining his Greater Germany. Haushofer thought in terms of discussion, negotiation and plebiscite. Hitler, on the other hand, was running to a different timetable. He was aware that Germany would not be able to sustain her military superiority for very long before Britain and France attained parity.

Back in November 1937, Hitler had held a secret conference at the Chancellery to discuss this very situation, with War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, commander-in-chief of the army General Werner von Fritsch, commander-in-chief of the navy Admiral Erich Raeder, Reich Minister for Air and commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe as well as President of the Reichstag Hermann Göring, Foreign Minister von Neurath, and a certain Colonel Hossbach, who took the minutes. Hitler had begun by ‘stating that the subject of the present conference was of such importance that its discussions would, in other countries, certainly be a matter for a full Cabinet meeting, but he – the Führer – had rejected the idea of making it a subject of discussion before the wider circle of the Reich Cabinet just because of the importance of the matter’.

After much debate on the subject of a Greater Germany, and how the nation was to attain Lebensraum for its people, Hitler declared: ‘Germany’s problem could only be solved by means of force and this was never without attendant risks … If one accepts as the basis of the following exposition the resort to force with its attendant risks, then there remain still to be answered the questions of “when” and “how” …’40 The ‘when’ and ‘how’ were then divided into three criteria.

Firstly, Hitler judged that after 1943–45 Germany’s military position would become increasingly unfavourable, as ‘our relative strength would decrease in relation to the rearmament which would by then have been carried out by the rest of the world’.

Secondly, he declared it was hoped that ‘internal strife’ would occur in France (indeed, the Nazis began covertly financing the right-wing Cagoulards, who were gearing up to attempt a coup d’état41), precipitating a crisis that would absorb the French army completely and ‘render it incapable of use in a war against Germany’.

Thirdly, it was hoped that France might become ‘so embroiled by a war with another state that she cannot proceed against Germany’.

The implication was clear to the men seated around the conference table at the Reich Chancellery: Hitler was gearing up the German economy, as well as her politico-military bodies, for war.

Finally, Hitler revealed that he intended to absorb the Czech state into the Reich. Thus, what in the spring of 1939 appeared to be a belligerent Hitler whim was in fact part of his overall long-term strategy, for as he explained in November 1937:

the annexation of Czechoslovakia and Austria would mean 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 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.