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- Herausgeber: Uniform
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
The latest book from John Harris and Richard Wilbourn continues to build on their longstanding research into the Hess mystery over 25 years. Slowly, the fog that has descended over the Hess case is beginning to clear and Harris and Wilbourn expand here on the implications of their recent findings. There is now little doubt that MI6 were heavily involved in the Hess affair and this involvement is clearly described and explained. What is not so clear is whether MI6 was acting alone, outside of the incumbent Churchill government, in an attempt to be able to offer a viable peace between Nazi Germany and factions within Great Britain. These factions would much rather have preferred a negotiated settlement to a bloody invasion attempt in the summer of 1941. In order to enter into such negotiations MI6 recruited a Finnish Art historian, Tancred Borenius and sent him to Switzerland in January 1941. Additionally the role of the Polish government in exile is closely examined and in particular the role of Josef Retinger, the arch federalist. The evidence would now suggest that a separate peace was being negotiated, outside of governmental channels. That is why Hess flew to Scotland.
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We have been doing this for a long time and have always been pleased to acknowledge the much needed help we have received in each of our preceding books. In part the present book draws on each of those works, so the earlier recorded thanks remain relevant and no less sincere.
For new information, we would thank in particular: Andrew Rosthorn and Spike Hodhod for sharing their work on the crash landing and the Northern Ireland-based Czech pilots • Aurelia Borenius for correcting some misinformation in connection with Tancred Borenius • Paulus Thomson, Hon. Secretary of the Anglo-Finnish Society, for allowing us to speak at the March 2017 Anglo-Finnish lecture on Tancred Borenius • Joan Schenkar for giving an insight into Tancred Borenius from the viewpoint of Dolly Wilde’s biographer • Tony Stott and Peter Padfield for encouragement and their ready challenge • Margaret Morrell for helping us to eliminate RAF Turnberry as a potential Hess landing strip • Bill Adams for his help in trying to ascertain the identity of J. W. Hadley • Cathrin Hermann for her translation of the Alfred Leitgen interviews in 1950s Munich • Archie Difante at Maxwell AFB for information on the ‘Sikorski Liberator – AM916’ • Martin Zeileis for sharing details of Hess’s electrotherapy treatment at Gallspach • Thomas Dunskus for facilitating our meeting with General Bernd Schwipper in Mecklenburg at Christmas 2017, and Edgar Dahl for his diligent translation of the result.
We would also again thank Misses Annie and Helen Cara for their diagrams and file management.
And lastly, once again we would thank our wives, Ann and Anne, for their continued attempts at humour at our expense, wearisome toleration, and diminishing patience.
John Harris and Richard Wilbourn
INTRODUCTION
THE BASIC PROBLEM
Spring 1941 – Munich, Germany
Nazi Germany has managed to provoke an unwanted war with Britain and now Britain will not make peace with Nazi Germany. Damn Ribbentrop. Despite the almost nightly bombings throughout the long cold winter of 1940–41 the stubborn British are still speaking of ‘fighting on the beaches’ and even saying ‘give us the tools and we will finish the job’. Tratschtante!
If only Goering had done as he had promised last summer there would not be this problem. Trantüte!
This wretched little fat man Churchill is now either bluffen, hoping for a better peace deal, or just a Dummkopf simply waiting and hoping for America or Russia to come to deliver his salvation and rob him of his Empire in the process. Does he really not yet understand the latent might of Russia? Clearly, he will not make peace. Getäuscht! But the Reich no longer has time to waste with this drunk bluffer: there are other far more important enemies and goals. Time is fast running out, yet it appears that the more bombs the Luftwaffe drop over Britain, the greater their show of defiance. Unglaublich!
So is there perhaps another way? A way that can bypass or circumvent the incumbent Churchillian clique? Kreigshetzer!
If Churchill and his gang will not come to the negotiating table, then yes, Rudolf Hess must approach those who do want to and have the power to effect change. Apparently there are a number of candidates, some of whom have already made themselves known. Verdammt Zeitverschwender!
But there again. Rudolf, dafür sorgen, what if the approaches prove illusory? They will want to waste as much time as possible. The British are well known for being clever and devious in equal measure. We learned that twenty-five years ago. Hinterhältige Bastardes.
Yes. Be careful as to who you trust, but above all be careful. Be very careful. Achtung … Achtung.
THE GERMAN SOLUTION
10 May 1941, 5.15pm – London, England
The 60,000 crowd streaming from London’s Empire stadium had no idea as to what was to come later that night. They had just witnessed the ‘FA Cup final that never was’ – a 1–1 draw between Preston North End and Arsenal, with the sports star Dennis Compton scoring the equaliser for Arsenal. The earlier, wartime 50-mile travel limit had been lifted and both sides had fielded their first teams, subject only to the constraints of conscription. The sporting event attendance limit of 8,000 had also been lifted in recognition of the morale-boosting effects of football on the population, and Wembley had been well over half full.
Those choosing to return north straightaway in the chilly yet still sunny early evening were to be the lucky ones.
10 May 1941, 6.35pm – Gander, Newfoundland
Three men walked quickly across the vast tarmac expanse towards the waiting aircraft, already crouching into the bitter wind. General Wladyslaw Sikorski, leader of the Polish government in exile in Britain, his aide Joseph Retinger, and J. W. Hadley were not looking forward to the flight. They had already flown from Floyd Bennett Airfield in New York in the newly built Consolidated Liberator AM916, and so knew the flight to Scotland would be cold, noisy, uncomfortable, and without doubt long and tedious. They hoped and prayed that with a following wind and God’s grace the plane would reach Prestwick, Ayrshire, in Scotland in around eleven hours.
10 May 1941, 6.35pm – Giessen, Central Germany
The Bf110 came to a shuddering halt next to the refuelling station and the twin DB601 engines were turned off. Flugplatz Giessen was regularly used as an aeronautical filling station, and this plane was no different from the many others, save perhaps for the fact that its radio sign VJ+OQ indicated that it had yet to be assigned a Geschwader or squadron. Moreover, the pilot was unusually flying solo in the large aircraft, and his dress indicated a Hauptmann, or Flight Lieutenant. He had remained in the cockpit, diligently looking down at his charts and checking the instruments, while the ground crew swarmed over the plane, filling up both the internal wing tanks and the massive 900-litre external drop tanks. In particular they had also been instructed to top up the engine oil tanks just behind the twin engines.
After around 15 minutes the job was done. Some 3,000 litres of C100 aviation fuel, and twin oil tanks each with 35 litres of engine-lubricating oil, would ensure the plane could safely fly for about five hours. At a cruising speed of 410kph, that would mean the somewhat aloof pilot could theoretically fly for about 1,200 miles or 2,000km. The attendant ground crew might well have been excused for wondering where on earth the plane might be going with that extreme fuel loading, and moreover, why was the Hauptmann flying on his own?
10 May 1941, Evening – Guipavas, France
Night was beginning to fall over the airfield just outside Brest in far western France, and the persistent ringing and jangling of the telephone was unwelcome. Adolf Galland, the charismatic Gruppenkommandeur of 111/Jagdgeschwader 26, had not been expecting or wanting any further action that evening. He reluctantly picked up the receiver and was astonished and no little shocked to hear Hermann Goering, the Reich Minister for Aviation, shouting down the line, ordering him immediately to launch the entire Jagdgeschwader (fighter squadron) and shoot down the Bf110 that Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer, had stolen and was flying to the enemy. However, in the tirade some necessary details were not forthcoming, and after he had put the receiver down Galland began to think. No target identification code had been given, and it was perhaps not a good idea to be party to a plan to shoot down Hitler’s most trusted servant, whatever he might or might not be doing. Furthermore, Galland’s Bf109s could barely reach the German seaboard from Guipavas and return without inconveniently having to refuel. Galland also recalled that Goering had exclaimed that Hess was already flying up the North Sea, so how on earth was he going to get close enough to do anything? It was over 600 kilometres away! Hess was long gone, and whatever might be going on Adolf Galland was not going to get himself implicated. He was not that daft. As a preventative measure he duly ordered two Bf109s to perform a cursory patrol over nowhere in particular and then went to bed. Clearly all was not well within the higher echelons. Not well at all.
10 May 1941, 11.05pm – Eaglesham, Renfrewshire, Scotland
Twelve-year-old Dorothy was fast asleep in bed. It wasn’t a school day tomorrow, but she had gone to bed at her usual time. She was suddenly awakened by what she recognised to be the roar of aircraft engines, which seemed to be very close to the lodge of the Picketlaw reservoir just outside Eaglesham where she lived with her mother and father. She leapt out of bed, ran to the window and drew back the curtains to see in the bright moonlight a twin-engined plane flying so low and so close that she could clearly see the cockpit and the pilot in his white leather flying helmet. Quickly she realised that the plane was a German Messerschmitt – exactly the same as on the identification poster recently pinned to her classroom wall. She identified it as a 110, and noted that it seemed to be going around the reservoir, circling, as if looking for something, though God knew what.
She ran downstairs to tell her father, who worked as the resident engineer at the reservoir. He too, of course, had heard the sound of the engines, but immediately discounted his daughter’s identification, knowing that a Bf110 would not have sufficient fuel to return to Germany (he would not be the only adult making that mistake). He told his daughter that he thought it most likely a Dornier. Dorothy returned to bed. The plane had gone, but she still couldn’t get back to sleep. She was cross. She knew jolly well that it was a 110.
After a few minutes of tossing and turning, she thought she had heard a dull but loud thump coming from across the moor towards Glasgow, but she could well have been dreaming. Anyway, she would find out in the morning.
10 May 1941, 11.30pm – Northampton and London, England
The Preston North End team had left Wembley by coach and reached Northampton, where they were booked in to the Grand Hotel. They would complete their return home north by rail on Sunday. The hotel bar and the delights of Northampton awaited them.
By comparison, 75 miles down the A5 a fiery chaos was about to be unleashed. The largest single bombing raid on London during the entire war. It had all started with eleven Heinkel He 111s of Kampfgruppe 100 taking off from Vannes airfield in Brittany just after 10pm. Loaded with incendiaries, they started to drop their ‘breadbaskets’ over London from 15,000 feet around 11.50pm. All eleven returned safely to their airfield, leaving London ablaze and in pandemonium. The fireraisers had set much of central London alight, from Southwark to Bloomsbury, where the British Museum was already ablaze.
Next came 22 Junkers 88 from KG54, then a further 30 from KG1 and 29 from KG57. The procession of carnage continued – 59 Junkers from KG54, 42 Heinkels from KG55, and 28 of the same marque from KG27. An hour later the next wave came. The best estimate is around 505 German aircraft in total. Each bomber was carrying between 1,500 and 3,000kg of high explosives, and it is estimated that by the time the all clear was sounded, just before 6am, some 65,000kg of high explosives had fallen on London, and 1,436 people lay dead or dying.
This was not a strategic raid. Yes, some strategic targets had been hit, but these appeared almost incidental. This was an attack on central London. Churches, stations, the Houses of Parliament, theatres, all were fair game. Essentially a political terror attack, remarkable first for its quantity and secondly for its lack of discretion.
Of course civilians had been killed before, but for the past eight months the Luftwaffe had at least targeted cities with the excuse that they had a specific war role – Glasgow, Hull, Bristol, Coventry, Southampton, Liverpool. But this one appeared to be different. This was just killing and destruction for the sake of it. What message was being sent and why?
10 May 1941, c. 11.30pm – Floors Farm cottage, Eaglesham, Renfrewshire, Scotland
That bloody German airman had already been in the cottage for nearly twenty minutes. He shouldn’t be in there at all, it wasn’t his bloody cottage. Davy McLean had just come into his home after hiding various crumpled and smashed aircraft parts in the hedges and ditches next to the Humbie road. What they all were could wait till later.
The Floors Farm ploughman, who shared the cottage with his sister and mother Annie, calmly walked across to the airman and without a word tore the map from under the protective cover that had fixed it to his left leg. That was his now, thank you very much, whatever it was. He stuffed it into his pocket for later examination, once the military cleared off.
At the same time, sensing the mood in the room had perhaps changed, Daniel McBride, one of the first soldiers from nearby Eaglesham House to arrive at the cottage, snatched at the pilot’s Iron Cross attached to his left breast pocket. Murdering German bastard. He won’t be needing that again. (He was right. He didn’t.) Shortly afterwards, the Home Guard from Busby turned up and took him away. The inhabitants of Floors Farm cottage were left with the feeling that there was perhaps more to this evening than met the eye. German bastard, whoever he was.
Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer of Nazi Germany, had just flown from Germany, from Augsburg in Bavaria, landing en route at Giessen in Hesse. His plane, a MeBf110, Werk Nummer (works no.) 3869, had just crashed outside Eaglesham in Scotland at 11.07pm on 10 May 1941. Incredible. Unglaublich!
CHAPTER 1
A NOTE FROM THE HUNTERS
It all started in a pub. Richard Wilbourn and I, John Harris, met back in the late 1980s. Hess was still alive and well in Spandau Prison, and the Berlin Wall very much a reality. In the 1970s I had been to what was then Western Germany on an early courting mission and had seen at first hand the barbed-wire fences that crossed the North German Plain, ominously demarcating political West from East. Fascinating, of course, but no more than a somewhat sinister teenage memory. We had known nothing different. The lasting consequences of the Second World War had made sure of that.
In the UK our day-to-day efforts, being in our late twenties, were concentrated on farming, accountancy, careers and families. The few serious discussions that we had typically centered on crop production techniques, weather patterns, and pertinent nominal ledger codes.
But then Rudolf Hess died in Spandau in August 1987. Quite unexpectedly, much newspaper space was given over to his long life and his most odd 1941 flight. Wilbourn and I, who by that time would usually reflect upon the day’s events in the local pub, the Countryman at Staverton in Northamptonshire, were quick to spot the unlikely nature of the explanation given as to why Hess had flown to Scotland in the middle of the war, some forty-six years earlier. The accepted knowledge seemed to be that Hess had gone mad, stolen a fighter plane, and parachuted from that plane over Lowland Scotland.
Based largely on no more historical knowledge than ‘surely Germans are not like that’ (we had both met Germans in our professional lives, so we were already self-proclaimed character experts) we started to garner what little was actually known about Rudolf Hess and his extraordinary 1941 flight.
There was very little easily available. The internet was still some years away, and we relied on the few published books and public records to obtain a basic understanding of what had happened. We felt we were slowly learning in part what had happened, but certainly not why it had happened. There were few books at that time on the subject. James Douglas-Hamilton had published Motive for a Mission in 1971; there he seemed to infer that Albrecht Haushofer was a key player in the affair, without explaining how and why that might be. James Leasor, some ten years earlier, had been commissioned by Lord Beaverbrook to write The Uninvited Envoy; it was full of interesting facts and detail, but certainly did not provide sufficient evidence to justify the apparent premise of its title.
However, the Leasor book remains very relevant, because when it was written in the early 1960s some of the key players were still alive, and some facts that Leasor gleaned at the time have gained in relevance as we have discovered and sought to interpret flight documentation produced and relied on in 1941.
Naturally, Hess’s strange death in 1987 (see pp. 27–31) prompted a host of explanatory books promising a full solution and explanation. James Douglas-Hamilton was quick off the blocks with The Truth about Rudolf Hess, essentially an updated Motive for a Mission. However, the title did not stand scrutiny in our humble but by that time ever increasingly obsessive opinions.
Also not helping was the fact that the nascent ‘Hess industry’ had already begun to churn out a variety of alternative theories, some more bizarre than others. Before Hess had even died/been murdered it had been alleged that the man in Spandau was a doppelganger. This theory got as far as the House of Commons. But if true, why would anyone take the trouble to murder a poor, presumably very bemused or delusional doppelganger, if that is really what he was? At the same time, Martin and Peter Allen were busily quoting documents to prove their theories (after their insertion in the Public Record Office).
Since those early days there have been theories including the Hess plane being shot down en route, two planes being flown, the occult being responsible, Hess dying in 1942 with the Duke of Kent, Ian Fleming dreaming up the idea of a ruse, and an explanation based on Hess’s supposedly proven linkage to the Antarctic. It should perhaps be noted that Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Eagle has Landed had been released a few years before the feeding frenzy started. Surely not a coincidence.
However, by way of contrast, a notable exception had been published in 1984: My Father – Rudolf Hess. Written in part no doubt to influence a possible release, the prisoner’s son Wolf Hess made the very plausible case that in some way British Intelligence had played a part in the affair, though at the time he was not sure how. Sadly, Wolf Hess died in 2001, still ignorant of the details and full extent of the MI6 involvement and his father’s entrapment. We doubt that he even heard of the name Tancred Borenius before he died.
The basic fact was obvious. There were (and still are) insufficient records in the public domain to establish what precisely had happened and why. Consequently, the event had spawned many outlandish theories, as is still the case today. If the truth is being deliberately withheld, people will of course speculate as to what happened. (In the Hess case it has been admitted that it is being withheld.) That is not proof of any conspiracy theory, just inquisitive human nature. There are still a number of key documents and pieces of evidence that are being withheld/suppressed/lost/destroyed. Among them currently are the following:
– The Duke of Kent’s location, 10 May 1941
– Hess’s explanatory letter to Hitler as forwarded by Pintsch, 11 May 1941
– Hitler’s explanatory letter to Stalin, 13 May 1941
– The RAF report into the affair
– Any pictures of the Bf110 cockpit
– The RAE Farnborough report into the Hess plane
– Ministry of Information files dealing with the Hess affair
– Giessen airport operational record book (ORB)
– Hess’s original pilot’s notes, that ended up with A. W. B. Simpson
– ROC station observation reports, in particular those of Irvine, West Kilbride and Eaglesham
– The Hess-Bohle peace proposals, found in ‘the wee byrne’ at Floors Farm the morning after the crash
– British Intelligence files on Tancred Borenius, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, Józef Retinger, et al.
– Documents revealing the true fate of William Spelman Pilcher
– The full Haushofer-Roberts correspondence
– MI6 files on Tancred Borenius
– MI5 files on Edward Semmelbauer and Kurt Maas
– Polish government in exile intelligence files
– Prestwick aircraft movement file, May 1941
– The Polish 309 squadron Operational Record Book (ORB), May 1941
– Albrecht Haushofer’s ‘Hess file’, November 1940–May 1941
– UK Cabinet reports detailing any MI6 and SOE involvement
– MI6, SO1 and W Board files
All relevant, all documented to exist (or to have existed), and all currently unavailable. An absolute disgrace.
By the early 1990s we had also entered the fray. The only advantages we would ever claim are that we had absolutely no preconceptions, prior knowledge, political (or family) allegiances, or academic credentials to lose. Moreover, it takes no particular skill to be persistent. If nothing else we have certainly been tediously persistent.
In 1994 we published Rudolf Hess: The British Conspiracy, based on our newfound knowledge that Mrs Mary Violet Roberts, who had acted as a conduit between Albrecht Haushofer (Hess’s British expert) and the Duke of Hamilton in Scotland, was the aunt of a leading member of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). (This was further expanded in 1999 in Hess: The British Conspiracy.) The basic premise was that Hess had been lured/invited by the British (which of course he had), and we guessed/concluded at the time that it was the devious rascals of SO1 (the propaganda part of SOE), then based in the stables at Woburn Abbey – Messrs Delmer, Ingrams and Howe – ‘wot had dunnit’.
All good stuff, à la John Buchan, and in terms of the newly published detail wholly true and valid, but very naïve, and definitely not the complete story. Communication between the parties wasn’t considered, or flight analysed, or motive really understood. Still, the book was surprisingly well received (for our first ever ‘proper’ book), and we were slowly getting into our stride and slowly learning more, though we still had a very incomplete knowledge of almost everything.
Desperately looking for a wise guru, John Harris met John Costello, the then controversial military historian, just before his untimely and somewhat bizarre death on a flight from London to Miami in 1995. He was very kind and encouraging and instilled in us the vital dictum of ‘don’t believe what you are told, go and see for yourself’. We certainly took this principle to heart, and over the following twenty plus years we have used the Hess affair as an excuse to go all over Europe to inspect some important documents and artefacts and to meet some very interesting people – Wolf Hess, Wolf Hess Jr, Thomas Dunskus, General Bernd Schwipper, Andrea Schröder Haushofer and Rupert West, to namedrop and thank but a few. It should also be confessed that the hunt has also provided a very good excuse for a beer in a lot of bars throughout Europe. Our research has always been good fun and at times genuinely exciting, particularly given that it has never really been our ‘day job’. We have been variously called the ‘Hillbilly Historians’ by Richard Wilbourn’s daughter Elizabeth and accused of ‘building on sand’ by the famous SOE historian M. R. D. Foot. Others, more recently, have thankfully been more generous.
In the meantime there have been a few releases of public papers. In the UK, the National Archives release in 1994 was significant (though some papers were still retained on the grounds of national security). Russian researchers have come across some papers ‘apparently’ written by Karl-Heinz Pintsch, Hess’s adjutant, while imprisoned in Moscow after the war (though given that he had every finger in his hands broken then, we wonder how authentic these revelations are). Some selected MI5 personnel files (KV series) have been released, e.g. some relating to Albrecht Haushofer. Professor Keith Jeffrey’s monumental history of MI6 was released in 2010. We were quick to question him concerning some conclusions there that we knew were wrong. He did not consider the Hess affair to be an MI6 operation, despite some clear evidence to the contrary that we had by that time discovered. Keith was always most courteous and patient when corresponding with us, but he died in 2016.
At the time of writing it is fair to say that a reading of all the available official files, while voluminous and fascinating, still would not provide the reader with an understanding of what was actually happening in 1941. We had decided very early on that we must try to think laterally in order to work out what was going on in May 1941, or we might come to the same unlikely conclusions as everyone else. We thought there must surely be enough practical details available for us to work around the problem, rather than stage a straight on attack on an issue that was clearly deemed to be still too sensitive for full disclosure. The Hess affair requires an understanding of politics, geography, history, strategy, wartime communication, aviation, and avionics. There was certainly a lot to try to learn.
Picknett, Prince and Prior’s Double Standards: the Rudolf Hess Cover-Up came along in 2001, and made the case that Hess was being lured by royalty. While there was some good original research, the conclusion that Hess was killed along with the Duke of Kent in 1942 unfortunately made the work very questionable in our minds, though it certainly was a step forward in the principal debate that we were interested in. Stephen Prior, who we had met over suppers, unfortunately died soon after its publication. Much of part one of Double Standards is very good indeed. While we never believed its premise in toto, had the part concerning the Hess flight been true it certainly would have explained, though not necessarily justified, the need for the subsequent secrecy.
By this time we had moved our attention to Scotland, and we made a number of trips to Ayrshire and Renfrewshire to try to explain the flight itself. An obvious early question was Why target Scotland? We guessed that if we understood the details and character of the flight we would learn what was and what wasn’t possible in terms of 1941 military aviation. This research has probably been the most rewarding and fun, particularly for two now fast-aging men raised on films such as Reach for the Sky, Battle of Britain and The Dam Busters. This midlife crisis/passion/obsession came to a climax in 2012 when we commissioned a flight from Carlisle to recreate the essential elements of Hess’s flight (less parachute exit). Squeezing two big farmer boys and John Harris’s wife into a small Cessna was possibly very dangerous, but as they say, all for one’s art.
This period of our research culminated in 2014 with Rudolf Hess: A New Technical Analysis of the Hess Flight. The book related our startling discovery that the Hess plane must have landed in Northern Germany before taking off again for Scotland, thus inferring Luftwaffe (hence German) connivance and involvement. This important discovery, which we think most now accept, was largely made by Wilbourn rolling around under the Hess Bf110 fuselage with a camera, while it was on display in the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. At the time we were surprisingly prudent in stating that we were unsure where in Germany Hess had landed (we suggested Göttingen or Lippstadt). We now know the precise location, and will reveal it later in the present tome.
At the same time we were working on another major lead which is also dealt with in this book, this time political. By working backwards yet again we had discovered that a Finnish art historian had travelled to Geneva in 1941, ostensibly to talk about an Anglo-German peace. His name, which meant nothing to us at the time, was Tancred Borenius. We later discovered that he had died in 1948. It is by researching the life and times of this extraordinary man that we have come to many of the conclusions here. Borenius is, we are sure, the missing link in the Hess affair, and he has largely and mysteriously been airbrushed from history. While Albrecht Haushofer may have been a British agent, it was Borenius who provided the Hess affair with what it desperately required – a potentially viable means of secure communication between the protagonists. This discovery was detailed in our 2016 Rudolf Hess: Treachery and Deception.
We are sure that Tancred Borenius will one day be famous as more than an art historian, and we very much hope it will be by reason of the present book. Józef Retinger, by contrast, is already a famous man, and we suspect that this book will merely add to his legend and mystery. It has again been great fun to learn about a man who has been described as a ‘monkey man’, a ‘genius’ and an ‘éminence grise’, often in the same sentence. Oddly Retinger is buried in East Sheen, London, so visiting his grave was relatively easy. Little did we think back in 1987 that we would be able to provide a plausible link between the Bilderberg Group (see p. 222), the formation of the EEC, and the flight of Rudolf Hess.
So, have we finally discovered, stumbled, even bumbled across the truth behind the affair? We believe we may have done, but, as already stated, in the absence of further documentary evidence that we know exists it may not yet be possible to provide a fully forensic, legally satisfactory proof.
For the sake of clarity we have not cluttered our pages with endless citations and references. But please do not confuse this with lack of effort: every statement and fact in this book can be independently verified from our work of the past thirty years or so. If you require any further verification or clarification please contact the authors.
In the meantime we would invite the reader to make his or her own mind up. The real problem with this subject is that it is all so very important. History should be trusted with the truth, not just given a post-event governmentally sanitised version, easy to digest (but impossible to believe), based tenuously on what we know eventually happened anyway. It should not be left to two ignorant but persistent individuals to try to ascertain what was actually happening. As we often remind ourselves, we now know in great detail what happened and why, but we still do not perhaps fully understand what was intended to happen.
World history from 1940 onwards could have been so very different. Those were the massive stakes that Hess and others knew and fully appreciated they were playing for in the spring of 1941.
CHAPTER 2
BASIC TIMELINE FOR REFERENCE
Following our work over the past decades we have determined that the sequence of key events leading up to the flight to Scotland is as follows. Further relevant and new information supporting this timeline is discussed in detail throughout the book.
10 MAY 1940 Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Britain on the basis that he has the popular mandate of the nation to stand up to and oppose Nazi Germany. The Labour party are no longer willing to support Neville Chamberlain. But a considerable portion of the ruling elite loathe Churchill and see him as endangering their possessions and future. For many Bolshevism is the real enemy, not Germany.
4 JUNE 1940 The Dunkirk evacuation recovers 338,000 soldiers from Northern France.
6 JUNE 1940 Adolf Hitler signs an armistice with France. He now controls the European coastline from northern Norway to the Pyrenees.
JUNE–SEPTEMBER 1940 Hitler embarks on the battle to gain air supremacy over Britain, a necessity before any seaborne invasion can be attempted, if the favoured political solution cannot be achieved. The remnants of the defeated European armed forces begin to descend on Britain.
19 JULY 1940 Hitler’s public offer of peace with Britain is firmly rebuffed. Peace is apparently not an option with Churchill in place.
27 AUGUST 1940 Schmundt and Todt fly to East Prussia to seek a suitable site for Hitler’s Operation Otto/Barbarossa command post. Detailed planning for the next German campaign, against Russia, has begun.
31 AUGUST 1940 Hess meets with Karl Haushofer, his old university professor, near the Haushofer family home, just south of Munich. Clearly concerned about the faltering progress of the German attempt to gain air supremacy over Britain, he asks Haushofer whether there are still people in Britain who could be contacted with a view to an Anglo-German peace settlement, prior to any attack on Soviet Russia. Karl in turn speaks to his son Albrecht, an Anglo-German expert. Hess is also concerned at the prospect of a two-front war should Hitler decide to go eastwards.
MID-SEPTEMBER 1940 Hess goes to Gallspach in Austria for electrotherapy at the Zeileis Institute.
23 SEPTEMBER 1940 At Hess’s suggestion, Albrecht Haushofer writes to Mrs Mary Violet Roberts in Cambridge, enclosing a letter that he asks be forwarded to the Duke of Hamilton. A non-governmental initiative.
6 NOVEMBER 1940 The letter, intercepted by the UK censor, is forwarded to MI5, MI6 and SOE.
15 NOVEMBER 1940 German-Russian talks go badly in Berlin, making Operation Barbarossa a near certainty, despite the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement. Russian military production is rapidly expanding, and a German invasion may not be a viable option indefinitely. The weather and the need to grab the 1941 Ukrainian harvest also put severe time pressure on the military planning.
NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 1940 MI5 considers whether to enter into a false correspondence. Eventually it decides not to.
2 JANUARY 1941 First meeting of the British XX Committee, a group specifically concerned with captured German agents, turning them against their former masters.
8 JANUARY 1941 First meeting of the British W Board, a group concerned with the coordination of cross-discipline intelligence operations.
EARLY–MID-JANUARY 1941 Claude Dansey of MI6 briefs Tancred Borenius, a well-connected Finnish art historian, prior to his meeting with Carl Burckhardt of the International Red Cross in Geneva. Borenius travels to Switzerland via Portugal, to impart details of possible peace negotiations, but with the removal of Hitler as a precondition. He travels as a representative of an English grouping.
A second channel is established in Madrid, by Albrecht Haushofer’s young protégé Herbert Stahmer.
The British presumably take the view that to suggest peace is a better option than to face a bloody invasion, or lose Spanish neutrality. It is a hard winter, so military solutions are likely only when the weather breaks. Ultra (signals intelligence) and human intelligence are indicating that a well-disguised movement of German troops and munitions to the east is steadily taking place, but jaw-jaw, even covertly (and prohibited by Churchill), is still better than war-war. A negotiated peace is seemingly still a possibility for Britain.
An attractive prospect indeed for Hess and his master Hitler, as they would be safe to continue the crusade they started in the early 1920s.
Ernst Bohle, head of the Auslands-Organisation (the Nazi organisation of Germans abroad), finishes drafting the peace treaty that Hess has been working on with him since before Christmas 1940. The document is apparently written in English.
MID-MARCH 1941 Borenius returns from Switzerland and meets with General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the leader of the Polish government in exile, on at least two occasions.
In American the Lend-Lease policy is ratified on 11 March 1941. The country is finally stirring as to the dangers of Nazi Germany.
SPRING 1941 Albrecht Haushofer, whose own motives remain partially unclear, travels throughout mainland Europe, supposedly attempting to establish the conditions, nature and credibility of the peace on offer.
In Bavaria Hess meticulously plans and trains for his flight, learning to use the Bf110 plane and its state of the art navigational equipment. But are the various peace overtures real, or illusory? How can their true nature be determined? Can he even trust Haushofer? The awful weather starts to break, and with his knowledge of the impending Operation Barbarossa the whole issue starts to become very time critical.
Churchill, though Ultra intelligence, learns of the German build-up of forces on the eastern borders of the Reich. He must now hold out and wait for Barbarossa to relieve the political pressure on him. But will Hitler really invade Russia, or is the eastern build-up just a clever diversion?
SPRING 1941 Sikorski travels to the United States from Britain, ostensibly on a recruitment campaign, after having met Borenius twice and learned in detail of his travels to Geneva and his meeting with Burckhardt. Sikorski is accompanied by his well-connected British liaison officer Victor Cazalet and various advisers.
LATE APRIL 1941 Hess goes to Gallspach for a second treatment of electrotherapy.
Haushofer travels to Geneva to meet with Burckhardt. On his return he travels to Arosa in Switzerland, ostensibly to meet with Ilse von Hassell, before meeting Hess on his return to Bavaria.
3 MAY 1941 Arthur Donaldson, the Scottish National Party leader, who lives on a farm at Lugton in Ayrshire, is arrested and interned for six weeks on account of ‘subversive activities’.
4 MAY 1941 Hess meets with Hitler for the last time following a Reichstag session.
5 MAY 1941 Hess is briefed by Haushofer in Augsburg, Bavaria.
6 MAY 1941 Helmut Kaden, of Messerschmitt, completes his flight trials and modifications to Hess’s Bf110. The plane is ready to go.
7 MAY 1941 Churchill easily wins a self-imposed parliamentary vote of confidence on his handling of the war, but is shaken by the experience. He is fast realising that fine words alone will not win the war.
Semmelbauer and Maass, two former German consular officials, are moved from Huyton internment camp to Knapdale camp in Scotland.
10 MAY 1941 Hess meets with Alfred Rosenberg and Gauleiter Meyer for lunch at his Munich villa.
Still wholly unsure of the outcome, he flies to Scotland, but late and unable to find his target, crash-lands his plane. He eventually falls into British army hands and is imprisoned and effectively silenced for the rest of his life. The flight is an abject failure.
11 MAY 1941 Sikorski and his adviser Retinger arrive at Prestwick in the early morning; they are driven in haste across Glasgow to the Polish Consul and then fly to Findo Gask in Perthshire.
13 MAY 1941 Hitler writes to Stalin explaining his current position, given that he has just authorised statements to the German people accusing Hess of being delusional.
14 MAY 1941 The American President Franklin D. Roosevelt cables Churchill, requesting to be kept informed as to what Hess might be saying.
17 MAY 1941 Churchill telephones Roosevelt to seemingly explain the affair.
22 JUNE 1941 The failure of the Hess flight makes it perfectly clear that Britain will not immediately sue for peace, but Hitler still decides to launch Operation Barbarossa. Another massive leap into the unknown, one that ultimately will cost Germany everything and Hitler his life.
The British have avoided a bloody invasion attempt and the loss of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean. Their two major ideological rivals, Russia and Germany, are engaged in the bloodiest and most brutal war in history. A very good outcome indeed for the British… At least for the time being.
This timeline, we believe, sets out the most important elements and events immediately surrounding Hess’s extraordinary flight. We will now provide further new evidence.
CHAPTER 3
WHAT WE KNOW (AND STILL DON’T KNOW) ABOUT HESS; DISPELLING MYTHS
There is little point in repeating biographical and other details that have been in the public arena for a long time. That has never been our style. We now list point by point the new information that we have learned/discovered/been party to over the past thirty or so years.
1. IDENTITY
The Rudolf Hess who was imprisoned in Spandau and died in Spandau was the same Rudolf Hess who flew to Scotland in 1941. John Harris and his wife flew to Munich in 2015 to meet Wolf Hess Jr, Rudolf’s grandson. Over lunch in the Löwenbraükeller, Wolf advised that when his grandfather’s body was exhumed in 2010 at Wunsiedel in Bavaria, where he had been buried, a DNA test was carried out, which proved that the family DNA was indeed present. This came as no great surprise, since a number of facial comparison and vocal comparison tests carried out in the late 1980s had concluded that Spandau’s prisoner No. 7 was statistically most likely to be Rudolf Hess.
The DNA finding effectively ended the theory of the doppelganger, as previously peddled by both Hugh Thomas and the Double Standards team. It also clearly proved that Hess did not die with the Duke of Kent in 1942, as alleged in Double Standards. No real surprises, but reassuring nonetheless.
This revelation was confirmed in January 2019 when further details of the DNA testing were released. Professor Jan Cemper-Kiesslich of the University of Salzburg had carried out the research. What he had established was already well known to the family and (somewhat surprisingly, perhaps) to ourselves.
However, this important resolution raises other questions. Most notably, why was the real Rudolf Hess incarcerated for forty-six years, from the day of his flight to the date of his death? From 10 May 1941 to 17 August 1987 Hess was totally controlled and was not allowed to speak publicly, with the single exception of the Nuremberg trials, where it is likely that he was drugged.
After the war it was deemed necessary to make sure that Hess was not given a platform, any platform, particularly as he remained so unrepentant and spent a lot of time in the late 1940s busily planning a Fourth Reich (!). But why was he singled out in this manner? After the releases of other prisoners in 1966 Hess was the only occupant in the huge Spandau Prison in Berlin. By way of direct comparison, Walther Funk had also been given a life sentence at Nuremberg, but he was released in 1957, three years before he died. Why was Hess treated so differently, and in this day and age some might say so inhumanely?
There have been various explanations. The Russians wanted to keep a foothold in Berlin and had the excuse of tending to Hess, albeit on a rotational basis. At Nuremberg they had wanted Hess to be executed; when he wasn’t, the life sentence had to mean life. By 1946/47 Hess was the most senior surviving Nazi in terms of rank. And the supporters of the doppelganger theory required the lifetime incarceration of their doppelganger (whoever he was) to preserve their improbable secret and theory.
The truth is, we are sure, far more simple. Hess was effectively silenced forever. He was never in a position to explain why he chose to fly to Scotland in 1941. If he was a mere peace messenger, then why not at least mention the role in his defence at Nuremberg? Instead he gave a rambling monologue in praise of Hitler and then referred to the Soviet show trials of the late 1930s. That was his last chance to explain, or indeed to launch an appeal for redemption, as Albert Speer had tactically chosen to do. The defence had not gone well. Throughout the trial Hess appeared uninterested as to his fate; he had to change lawyers in mid-trial; and he had confessed to feigning amnesia halfway through the trial. But what he and Seidl, his new attorney, had brilliantly achieved was to give the convincing portrayal of a man slightly unhinged. Would the Allies really choose to execute such a specimen? If they did, was there not a risk that they would be seen to be as bad as the Nazis?
So Hess escaped with his life, while many others, far less exalted, were not so fortunate.
Not surprisingly, various ‘release Hess’ groups were formed around the world in the period from 1966 to his death in 1987. Wolf Hess, his son, lobbied tirelessly and recruited some powerful allies, including Airey Neave and Sir Hartley Shawcross in the UK, and in Germany the Minister of State Alois Mertes and the former Chancellor, Willy Brandt. In Germany the ‘Hilfsgemeinschaft Freiheit für Rudolf Hess’ (Campaign for the Freedom of Rudolf Hess) had been formed in 1966.
They were never going to succeed. Rudolf Hess clearly knew too much. There was something later described as being in the British ‘national interest’ – to keep silent knowledge that at the least would challenge the accepted and comfortable victor’s history of the Second World War. Millions had died as a result of the Nazis. Those deaths could not be seen to have been in vain.
Hess was never going to be released – alive, at least.
2. SUICIDE OR MURDER?
We had never really concerned ourselves with the issue of Hess’s death, because to our simple minds the outcome was the same whichever method was employed. Hess was permanently silenced.
Moreover, thirty-two years after Hess’s death in Spandau on 17 August 1987 there is still no definitive, conclusive answer to the question. Either way.
The evidence currently appears to be as follows.
Suicide
The principal case for suicide was made by Tony Le Tissier, the last British Governor of Spandau. He wasn’t at Spandau at the time, but he later described how Hess was found slumped against the wall in his ‘summer house’, with a loop of electric cable around his neck; he had apparently slid down the wall, fatally tightening the loop around his neck. Despite efforts to resuscitate, he was declared dead just after 4pm. A note on a scrap of paper was found in one of his pockets, signed with his family nickname, ‘Big Chap’. It read:
Would the Governors please send this home. Written a few minutes before my death. I thank you all my loved ones for all that you have done for me. Tell Freiburg that I was infinitely sorry that I had to behave ever since the Nuremberg trials as if I did not know her. There remained nothing else for me, otherwise all attempts to free me would have been vain. I had looked forward to seeing her again. I have received photographs of her as well as of all of you.
Euer Grosser
The family had never believed that this was written at the time of Hess’s death. It seemed to refer back to an incident in 1969 when he had suffered a burst ulcer and it was feared that he might die. The reference to Freiburg was in respect of Hildegard Fath, his last Munich-based secretary, who he had denied knowing as part of his charade at Nuremberg in 1946. But the officials had assured the family that it was written with the same pen as was found on his body (which not surprisingly had been destroyed after his death).
When Harris met Hess’s grandson in Munich in 2015, Wolf Hess Jr told him that calligraphy tests had been carried out, and they indicated that the note was not written at the time of Hess’s death. The reader must decide why this might be so, and who placed the note. The calligraphy test is surely significant. Why would anyone wish to fake a suicide note? That must surely tell us something?
Murder
By contrast there is quite a lot of evidence of foul play, largely detailed by Abdallah Melaouhi, Hess’s Tunisian male nurse, who had been with him since 1982. The evidence was given in part on national TV, and later in written form. According to Melaouhi, when he found Hess there were two men in US army uniforms and an American warder, Jordan, who had a long record of disliking Hess. The electric cable was still plugged into the socket and had not been used for the alleged purpose.
There are other issues to consider. Was Hess capable of such an act of suicide? At ninety-three he was riddled with arthritis, so could he even tie the cable? Was the cable fixed high enough to effect such an outcome? Was Hess of a mind to take his life?
The key medical debate revolves around the horizontal bruising on Hess’s neck that featured in the second autopsy. There were two autopsies. The first was an official British one, carried out by Professor J. Malcolm Cameron. The second, commissioned by the Hess family, was carried out by Dr Wolfgang Spann of Munich University. Both men were eminent in their field, though Cameron’s reputation had been tarnished by his involvement in the infamous Australian ‘dingo baby’ affair (he had made the case for foul play). Professor Cameron concluded that the cause of death was:
Asphyxia (due to, or as a consequence of)Compression of the neck (due to, or as a consequence of)SuspensionThe death was therefore not due to natural causes.
Dr Spann performed his tests a day later. By that time further bruising had emerged, which is apparently usual in the circumstance. Dr Spann concluded that the cause of death was strangulation by the forceful closure of two carotid arteries. He concluded that the horizontal marks on the neck were evidence of such an action. Had hanging been employed, the marks would taper towards the point of suspension, as in the example below.
The Hess family autopsy makes particular mention of the horizontal bruising.
The reader will have to make his or her own mind up. We doubt that the truth will ever be known. Somewhat macabre YouTube videos show that it is quite possible for hanging to produce a horizontal line if the body is initially suspended and then leans forward at 45 degrees away from a wall. But one must ask why Hess would attempt the deed anyway? After forty-six years of captivity?
On the basis of the second autopsy, Hess’s son not surprisingly challenged the original death certificate issued by the British government. Somewhat bizarrely, the reaction was just to withdraw the certificate, so technically Rudolf Hess is not yet dead (among his many other accomplishments). The legal challenge then fizzled out, as sadly Wolf Hess died in October 2001.
This bureaucratic issue had been debated in the House of Commons in 1997, when Nicholas Soames, Minister of State for the Armed Forces (and perhaps ironically Winston Churchill’s grandson), explained to Rhodri Morgan that the certificate had been wrongly issued under the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages (Special Provisions) Act 1957. Rhodri Morgan (who has also since died, in 2017) was asking awkward questions, being brave enough to challenge the official report into Hess’s death.
So the whole issue is now a mix of contradiction, misunderstandings, and the removal of evidence. On 3 September 1987 bulldozers started to dismantle Spandau Prison, less than two weeks after Hess’s death. It is no wonder that the issue is still unresolved. To discount as mere conspiracy theorists those who challenge the suicide verdict is just too easy and lazy. There is clear evidence that Hess was murdered. If so a public enquiry should be held, but more than thirty years on this is extremely unlikely. The BBC Newsnight programme conducted a televised inquiry under Olenka Friedel in 1989.
If murder, we find it interesting to consider who might have committed the act, and why? In the summer of 1987 the first cracks were starting to appear in the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev, since 1985 the General Secretary of the Communist Party, had soon realised that he was in trouble, and he was very much into damage limitation and decline management. Consequently, new words from Russia soon came into the Western vocabulary and consciousness, glasnost and perestroika: they were effectively Russian for ‘we are running out of money so please help us’. In March 1987 Margaret Thatcher had travelled to Moscow, and there remains the debate as to who was actually stopping Hess’s release. His death five months later obviously rendered that debate irrelevant.
What is sure, however, is that the Russians were not on duty the day Hess died. There appears to be a mixture of American and British involvement. The suspicion must sadly remain that the British could no longer rely on the Russian veto of release and so took matters into their own hands. Colonel Eugene Bird, the last US Commandant of Spandau in Hess’s time, stated: ‘Hess was murdered. I am convinced of it. The man was ninety-three years old. He could not even rise from a bench alone, he had to be helped up … If that man was murdered it had to be a decision taken at the highest level. I will say no more than that.’
3. HESS WAS MAD, OR IN OTHER WAYS DERANGED?
This somewhat perverse assertion was first made by the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP – the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – in an official communiqué informing the German people of Hess’s supposed death. The statement, made at 9.40pm on 12 May 1941, said that Hess had suffered from a ‘mental derangement’. While the German population at large may have wondered how someone suffering from ‘mental derangement’ had become Hitler’s No. 2, the rumour does seem to have stuck. Later, Hess’s last public appearance, at Nuremberg, did little to dispel the notion, as he acted particularly strangely throughout, before admitting to feigning amnesia.
However, the communiqué was issued prior to the confirmation that Hess had landed in Scotland (that came on 13 May): Hitler did not know what to say, but he had to say something in advance of the British ‘spin’. By the time of Nuremberg Hess had been plied with drugs (as clearly stated in 1947 in J. R. Rees’s The Case of Rudolf Hess), so the reality is perhaps the more difficult to ascertain.
