The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

We do not begrudge Germany Lebensraum, provided that Lebensraum is not made the grave of other nations. We should be ready to search for and find a colonial settlement, just to all peoples concerned, as soon as there exist effective guarantees that no race will be exposed to being treated as Hitler treated the Jews on 9 November last year [Kristallnacht]. We shall, I trust, live to see the day when such a healing peace is negotiated between honourable men and the bitter memories of twenty-five years of unhappy tension between Germany and the Western democracies are wiped away in their responsible co-operation for building a better Europe.

Hamilton’s letter, which may have been covertly backed by Neville Chamberlain, was not just for British consumption: it was evidently designed to alert Nazi Germany to the fact that there were Britons who would deal with them. Overtures from Nazi Germany duly arrived, via the floating Nazi emissary Albrecht Haushofer — the son of Hess’s friend and mentor Professor Karl Haushofer. The younger Haushofer not only knew Hess but was a friend of Hamilton, hence the familiar tone he uses in his letter to Hamilton of 23 September 1940:

My dear Douglo

… If you remember some of my last communications in July 1939 you and your friends in high places may find some significance in the fact that I am able to ask you whether you could find time to have a talk with me somewhere on the outskirts of Europe, perhaps in Portugal …

On receiving Haushofer’s letter, Hamilton apparently showed it to the Air Minister, Sir Archibald Sinclair, and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, both of whom were well known to be lukewarm for war. The letter was deliberately kept from Churchill the bulldog. According to Double Standards (2001), the account of the Hess mission by Picknett, Prince and Prior, there then followed months of arrangements for Hess’s secret flight to Britain — made with Hitler’s connivance — to deal with an elite pro-peace lobby which had sufficient control of a sector of the RAF to ensure no one shot down Hess’s Me110 as it neared Scotland. Two Czech pilots with the RAF, Vaclav «Felix» Bauman and Leopold Srom, later recounted that they intercepted Hess’s Me110 but, as they moved in for the kill, Bauman was told by his radio controller, «Sorry, Felix, old boy. It is not possible. You must return. Now.»

Although Hamilton would later profess total amazement that Hess was seeking him out, it is more likely that he was expecting the Deputy Fuhrer. According to eyewitnesses, Hamilton was shocked and agitated when he found that «Horn» had been captured by the Home Guard — Hess had bungled the operation by failing to land at Hamilton’s house, Dungavel. After the plane had crashed noisily and «Horn» been publicly captured, any chance of a secret meeting between Hess and the pro-peace group had gone.

The Hess affair massively increased Churchill’s power vis-a-vis the peace wing of the British establishment (which included the Duke of Kent and ex-Prime Minister Lloyd George). Not only had the peacemongers committed an embarrassing faux pas, they had given Churchill a pawn in a disinformation campaign. As Pierre van Passen noted in That Day Alone (1941), Churchill publicly pretended to take Hess’s peace proposal seriously — in return Hitler de-intensified the Blitz and diverted his focus towards the Soviet Union. When the Wehrmacht’s tanks rolled into Russia in July 1941, Britain was no longer alone in the fight against Nazism. Henceforth it was unlikely to lose a war that only weeks before Hess’s flight had seemed unwinnable.

There was, though, the problem of what to do with Hess. Initially, the ex-Deputy Fuhrer was imprisoned in the Tower of London, then at Mytchett Place, Surrey, then at Maindiff Court near Abergavenny in Wales. Confusingly, intelligence reports by Nazi Abwehr spies in Britain placed Hess in Scotland, in the western Highlands, at the same time he was in Wales. How could Hess be in two places at once? Either the Abwehr was mistaken — or, fantastically, there were two Rudolf Hesses.