The weaknesses of the plan to invade the Soviet Union could not be laid at the door of the Italians, for their failure in Greece, or the Yugoslavs, for what Hitler saw as their treachery. The calamity, as it emerged, of ‘Barbarossa’ was located squarely in the nature of German war aims and ambitions. These were by no means solely a product of Hitler’s ideological obsessiveness, megalomania, and indomitable willpower. Certainly, he had provided the driving-force. But he had met no resistance to speak of in the higher echelons of the regime. The army, in particular, had fully supported him in the turn to the East. And if Hitler’s underestimation of Soviet military power was crass, it was an underestimation shared with his military leaders, who had lost none of their confidence that the war in the Soviet Union would be over long before winter.
VI
Meanwhile, Hitler was once more forced by events outside his control, this time close to home, to divert his attention from ‘Barbarossa’.
When he stepped down from the rostrum at the end of his speech to Reichstag deputies on 4 May, he took his place, as usual, next to the Deputy Leader of the Party, his most slavishly subservient follower, Rudolf He?.171 Only a few days later, while Hitler was on the Obersalzberg, the astonishing news came through that his Deputy had taken a Messerschmitt 110 from Augsburg, flown off on his own
On the afternoon of Saturday, 10 May, He? had said goodbye to his wife, Ilse, and young son, Wolf Rudiger, saying he would be back by Monday evening. From Munich he had travelled in his Mercedes to the Messerschmitt works in Augsburg. There, he changed into a fur-lined flying suit and Luftwaffe captain’s jacket. (His alias on his mission was to be Hauptmann Alfred Horn.) Shortly before 6p.m. on a clear, sunlit evening, his Messerschmitt 110 taxied on to the runway and took off. Shortly after 11p.m., after navigating himself through Germany, across the North Sea, and over the Scottish Lowlands, He? wriggled out of the cockpit, abandoning his plane not far from Glasgow, and parachuted — something he had never practised — to the ground, injuring his leg as he left the plane.
Air defence had picked up the flight path, and observers had seen the plane’s occupant bale out before it exploded in flames. A local Scottish farmhand, Donald McLean, was, however, first on the scene. He quickly established that the parachutist, struggling to get out of his harness, was unarmed. Asked whether he was British or German, He? replied that he was German; his name was Hauptmann Alfred Horn, and he had an important message to give to the Duke of Hamilton. Another local man, the elderly William Craig, had by this time arrived on the scene. While Craig went off to summon assistance, the limping He? was escorted back to the cottage where McLean lived with his wife and mother, and offered a cup of tea (which he declined in favour of water). Within a short time, a few members of the local Home Guard, already heading for the farm after seeing a parachutist come down near by, entered the cottage. Smelling of whisky and prodding their prisoner with an old First World War pistol, they bundled him into a car and drove him to Home Guard headquarters — a scout-hut in the next village. Police and more Home Guard officers, curious about the German captive as word spread, soon turned up. They were followed a little later by Major Graham Donald, Assistant Group Officer of the Royal Observer Corps, who had seen the course of He?’s plane charted on his maps before it had disappeared from trace. The prisoner, by now — well after midnight, an hour and a half or more after landing — tired and probably becoming increasingly agitated about the prospects of fulfilling his ‘mission’, impressed upon Donald that he had a vital secret message for the Duke of Hamilton. Donald undertook to contact the Duke. But he was not deceived by ‘Hauptmann Horn’; he said he would tell the Duke of Hamilton that he had Rudolf He? in his custody. The message was, however, not passed on in this form. When Hamilton was informed in the early hours that a captured German pilot was demanding to speak to him, there was no reference to He?, and the name of Hauptmann Alfred Horn meant nothing to the Duke. Puzzled, and very tired, Hamilton made arrangements to interview the mysterious airman next day, and went to bed.175
The Duke, a wing-commander in the RAF, arrived from his base to talk to the German captive by mid- morning on 11 May. ‘Hauptmann Horn’ admitted that his true name was Rudolf He?. The discussion was inconsequential, but convinced Hamilton that he was indeed face to face with He?. By the evening he had flown south, summoned to report to Churchill at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, a palatial eighteenth-century residence in magnificent grounds, frequently used by the British Prime Minister as a weekend headquarters. Churchill was in the midst of a dinner party. A film, the hilarious
By the following day, Monday 12 May, the professionals from the Foreign Office were involved. It was decided to send Ivone Kirkpatrick, from 1933 to 1938 First Secretary at the British Embassy in Berlin and a strong opponent of Appeasement, to interrogate He?. Kirkpatrick and Hamilton left to fly to Scotland in the early evening. It was after midnight by the time they arrived at Buchanan Castle, near Loch Lomond, to confront the prisoner.177
The first Hitler knew of He?’s disappearance was in the late morning of Sunday, 11 May, when Karl-Heinz Pintsch, one of the Deputy Fuhrer’s adjutants, turned up at the Berghof. He was carrying an envelope containing a letter which He? had given him shortly before taking off, entrusting him to deliver it personally to Hitler. With some difficulty, Pintsch managed to make plain to Hitler’s adjutants that it was a matter of the utmost urgency, and that he had to speak personally to the Fuhrer.178 When Hitler read He?s letter, the colour drained from his face.179 Albert Speer, busying himself with architectural sketches at the time, suddenly heard an ‘almost animal-like scream’. Then Hitler bellowed, ‘Bormann immediately! Where is Bormann?!’180
In his letter, He? had outlined his motives for flying to meet the Duke of Hamilton, and aspects of a plan for peace between Germany and Britain to be put before ‘Barbarossa’ was launched. He claimed he had made three previous attempts to reach Scotland, but had been forced to abort them because of mechanical problems with the aircraft.181 His aim was to bring about, through his own person, the realization of Hitler’s long- standing idea of friendship with Britain which the Fuhrer himself, despite all efforts, had not succeeded in achieving. If the Fuhrer were not in agreement, then he could have him declared insane.182
Goring — residing at the time in his castle at Veldenstein near Nuremberg — was telephoned straight away. Hitler was in no mood for small-talk. ‘Going, get here immediately,’ he barked into the telephone. ‘Something dreadful has happened.’ Ribbentrop was also summoned.183 Hitler, meanwhile, had ordered Pintsch, the hapless bearer of ill tidings, and He?’s other adjutant, Alfred Leitgen, arrested, and spent his time marching up and down the hall in a rage.184 The mood in the Berghof was one of high tension and speculation.185 Amid the turmoil, Hitler was clear-sighted enough to act quickly to rule out any possible power-vacuum in the Party leadership arising from He?’s defection. That very day, he issued a terse edict stipulating that the former office of the Deputy Leader would now be termed the Party Chancellery, and be subordinated to him personally. It would be led, as before, by Party Comrade Martin Bormann.186 It was reminiscent of the way Hitler had dealt with the Gregor Strasser crisis of 1932 by — at least nominally — taking the reins into his own hands.187 In practice, making Bormann the chief of the Party’s central office would provide from now on a level of interventionist zeal by the Party, increasingly imposing its ideologically driven activism on the regime’s administration, on a scale which had never been witnessed under
