Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

their chairs and gathered round him in a semicircle. No one spoke a word.²¹¹ Then Goring provided an effusive statement of the devotion of all present. The intense anger was reserved only for He?.²¹² The ‘core’ following had once more rallied around their Leader, as in the ‘time of struggle’, at a moment of crisis. The regime had suffered a massive jolt; but the Party leadership, its backbone, was still holding together.

At least one of those present, Gauleiter Ernst Wilhelm Bohle of the Auslandsorganisation (Foreign Countries’ Organization), thought — or so he asserted after the war — that He? had acted with Hitler’s full knowledge and encouragement.²¹³ Some other contemporaries, notably General Karl Heinrich Bodenschatz, Goring’s adjutant, who was present at the Berghof when the news was broken to Hitler, also remained convinced of his involvement. Their voices have sometimes carried weight down the ages. However, there is not a shred of compelling and sustainable evidence to support the case.²¹⁴

All who saw Hitler in the days after the news of He?’s defection broke registered his profound shock, dismay, and anger at what he saw as betrayal. This has sometimes been interpreted, as it was also by a number of contemporaries, as clever acting on Hitler’s part, concealing a plot which only he and He? knew about.²¹⁵ Hitler was indeed capable, as we have noted on more than one occasion, of putting on a theatrical performance. But if this was acting, it was of Hollywood-Oscar calibre.

That the Deputy Fuhrer had been captured in Britain was something that shook the regime to its foundations. As Goebbels sarcastically pointed out, it never appears to have occurred to He? that this could be the outcome of his ‘mission’. It is hard to imagine that it would not have crossed Hitler’s mind, had he been engaged in a plot. But it would have been entirely out of character for Hitler to have involved himself in such a hare-brained scheme. His own acute sensitivity towards any potential threat to his own prestige, towards being made to look foolish in the eyes of his people and the outside world, would itself have been sufficient to have ruled out the notion of sending He? on a one-man peace-mission to Britain. But, in any case, there was every reason, from his own point of view, not to have become involved and to have most categorically prohibited what He? had in mind.

Certainly, Hitler was a gambler. But he invariably weighed the odds and took what seemed to him calculable risks. He was always highly nervous, even hesitant, before any attempted coup. In this instance, his behaviour was unremarkable in the days building up to the He? drama. The chances of the He? flight succeeding — even if, for which there is no evidence, there had been enticement from the British Secret Service — were so remote that Hitler would not conceivably have entertained the prospect.²¹⁶ And had he done so, it is hard to believe that he would have settled on He? as his emissary. He? had not been party to the planning of ‘Barbarossa’. He had been little in Hitler’s presence over the previous months. His competence was confined strictly to Party matters. He had no experience in foreign affairs. And he had never been entrusted previously with any delicate diplomatic negotiations.²¹⁷

In any case, Hitler’s motive for contemplating a secret mission such as He? attempted to carry out would be difficult to grasp. For months Hitler had been single-mindedly preparing to attack and destroy the Soviet Union precisely in order to force Britain out of the war. He and his generals were confident that the Soviet Union would be comprehensively defeated by the autumn. The timetable for the attack left no room for manoeuvre. The last thing Hitler wanted was any hold-up through diplomatic complications arising from the intercession by He? a few weeks before the invasion was to be launched. Had ‘Barbarossa’ not taken place before the end of June, it would have had to be postponed to the following year. For Hitler, this would have been unthinkable. He was well aware that there were those in the British establishment who would still prefer to sue for peace. He expected them to do so after, not before, ‘Barbarossa’.

Rudolf He? at no time, whether during his interrogations after landing in Scotland, in discussions with his fellow-captives while awaiting trial in Nuremberg, or during his long internment in Spandau, implicated Hitler. His story never wavered from the one he gave to Ivone Kirkpatrick at his first interrogation on 13 May 1941. ‘He had come here,’ so Kirkpatrick summed up in his report, ‘without the knowledge of Hitler in order to convince responsible persons that since England could not win the war, the wisest course was to make peace now. From a long and intimate knowledge of the Fuhrer, which had begun eighteen years ago in the fortress of Landsberg, he could give his word of honour that the Fuhrer had never entertained any designs against the British Empire. Nor had he ever aspired to world domination. He believed that Germany’s sphere of interest was in Europe and that any dissipation of Germany’s strength beyond Europe’s frontiers would be a weakness and would carry with it the seeds of Germany’s destruction.’ He admitted, when pressed by Kirkpatrick on whether Russia was to be seen as part of Europe or Asia, that Germany had some demands on Russia, but denied that Hitler was planning to attack the Soviet Union.²¹⁸

He?’s British interlocutors rapidly reached the conclusion that he had nothing to offer which went beyond Hitler’s public statements, notably his ‘peace appeal’ before the Reichstag on 19 July 1940. Kirkpatrick concluded his report: ‘He? does not seem… to be in the near counsels of the German government as regards operations; and he is not likely to possess more secret information than he could glean in the course of conversations with Hitler and others.’²¹⁹ If, in the light of this, He? was following out orders from Hitler himself, he would have had to be as supreme an actor — and to have continued to be so for the next four decades — as was, reputedly, the Leader he so revered. But, then, to what end? He said nothing that Hitler had not publicly on a number of occasions stated himself.²²⁰ He brought no new negotiating position. It was as if he presumed that the mere fact of the Deputy Fuhrer voluntarily — through an act involving personal courage — putting himself in the hands of the enemy was enough to have made the British government see the good will of the Fuhrer, the earnest intentions behind his aim of cooperation with Britain against Bolshevism, and the need to overthrow the Churchill ‘war-faction’ and settle amicably.²²¹ The naivety of such thinking points heavily in the direction of an attempt inspired by no one but the idealistic, other-worldly, and muddle-headed He?.

His own motives were not more mysterious or profound than they appeared. He? had seen over a number of years, but especially since the war had begun, his access to Hitler strongly reduced. His nominal subordinate, Martin Bormann, had in effect been usurping his position, always in the Fuhrer’s company, always able to put in a word here or there, always able to translate his wishes into action. A spectacular action to accomplish what the Fuhrer had been striving for over many years would transform his status overnight, turning ‘Fraulein Anna’, as he was disparagingly dubbed by some in the Party, into a national hero.²²²

He? had remained highly influenced by Karl Haushofer — his former teacher and the leading exponent of geopolitical theories which had influenced the formation of Hitler’s ideas of Lebensraum — and his son Albrecht (who later became closely involved with resistance groups). Their views had reinforced his belief that everything must be done to prevent the undermining of the ‘mission’ that Hitler had laid out almost two decades earlier: the attack on Bolshevism together with, not in opposition to, Great Britain. Albrecht Haushofer had made several attempts to contact the Duke of Hamilton — whom he had met in Berlin in 1936 — before the He? escapade, but had received no replies to his letters. Hamilton himself strenuously denied, with justification it seems, receiving the letters, and also denied He?’s claim to have met him at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.²²³

By August 1940, when he began to plan his own intervention, He? was deeply disappointed in the British response to the ‘peace-terms’ that Hitler had offered. He was aware, too, that Hitler was by this time thinking of attacking the Soviet Union even before Britain was willing to ‘see sense’ and agree to terms. The original strategy lay thus in tatters. He? saw his role as that of the Fuhrer’s most faithful paladin, now destined to restore through his personal intervention the opportunity to save Europe from Bolshevism — a unique chance wantonly cast away by Churchill’s ‘warmongering’ clique which had taken over the British government. He? acted without Hitler’s knowledge, but in deep (if confused) belief that he was carrying out his wishes.

He? now became an unwitting pawn in the moves by British intelligence to bluff Stalin. Churchill was reluctantly dissuaded by Anthony Eden and Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, from his initial instinct to make maximum propaganda capital out of He?’s capture — something Hitler and Goebbels both expected and feared.²²⁴ Prompted by a report from Sir Stafford Cripps, the British Ambassador to Moscow, that He?’s flight to Scotland had newly inflamed the old paranoia in the Soviet leadership of a peace arranged between Britain and Germany at Russia’s cost, Eden and Cadogan devised a more subtle ploy, aimed at strengthening Soviet resistance to Hitler. The absence of anything more than the most terse public statement about He?’s capture was part of the idea.²²⁵

By the beginning of June, thanks to the code-breaker ‘Ultra’, which since mid-1940 had enabled the