The Schneider Papers E-Book

David M Thomas

• Herausgeber: novum premium Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 722

Beschreibung

1936: Harald Mason, a German-born naturalised British airman, is sent by a concerned Foreign Office to Berlin to unearth Luftwaffe expansion plans and investigate the sustainability of high-octane aviation fuel supply in time of war. Werner Scribner, a technical draftsman at the new Luftwaffe Air Ministry in Berlin, is determined to bring down the Anti-Christ Hitler. A narrative of disparate characters, from the leonine intelligence chief Major Alastair Cartwright MC in London to the clever and elegant Elisabeth Schneider, economist and Soviet spy, this is a story of American business funding Nazi Germany and the rebuilding of Soviet Russia, as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programme.

Leseprobe

Contents

Imprint 5

Summary 6

Chapter 1: 1931 – the Industrial Resource Section 7

Chapter 2: 1932 Moscow: Ambassador Maisky 18

Chapter 3: 1936 – Joint Intelligence Committee 24

Chapter 4: IG Farbenindustrie AG, Frankfurt and Ludwigshaven 32

Chapter 5: Wednesday, 9th September 1936 49

Chapter 6: Monday, 14th September 1936 57

Chapter 7: Monday, 21st September 1936 73

Chapter 8: Tuesday, September 22nd 1936 87

Chapter 9: New York: Tuesday, September 22nd 1936 103

Chapter 10: Berlin: September 22nd 1936 – evening 109

Chapter 11: Joachim von Ribbentrop 118

Chapter 12: Berlin: Wednesday, 23rd September 1936. 122

Chapter 13: Werner Scribner – to 1930 134

Chapter 14: Werner Scribner 1930–1933 150

Chapter 15: Berlin: Wednesday, 23rd September 1936: an afternoon with Werner Scribner 160

Chapter 16: Berlin: Thursday, 24th September 1936: lunch with Lefoy in the Tiergarten 171

Chapter 17: Berlin: Thursday, 24th September 1936: an evening at the Red Finger 178

Chapter 18: Berlin: Thursday, 24th September 1936: the Keppler Circle 192

Chapter 19: Elisabeth Schlyer goes to university 199

Chapter 20: 1925: Elisabeth Schlyer joins the Party 207

Chapter 21: 1925: Elisabeth Schlyer goes to America 212

Chapter 22: 1930: Elizabeth Schneider née Schyler 218

Chapter 23: New York: Standard Oil and IG Farben 222

Chapter 24: Elisabeth Schneider in Zurich, December 1933 232

Chapter 25: Moscow: Feb – March 1936: Yagoda 240

Chapter 26: Berlin: Wednesday, 23rd September 1936: dinner with the Schneiders’ 247

Chapter 27: 1914–1921: Klaus Scribner, father of Werner Scribner 259

Chapter 28: May 1921: Klaus Scribner in Munich 274

Chapter 29: Berlin: Friday, 25th September 1936: the Haus Vaterland 287

Chapter 30: Berlin: Saturday, 26th September 1936: Aviation Museum 298

Chapter 31: Berlin: Sunday, 27th September 1936: Klemper family 307

Chapter 32: Berlin: Monday, 28th September 1936: Mason learns about synthetic oil 321

Chapter 33: Leipzig: Tuesday, 29th September 1936 335

Summary 359

Chapter 34: Leuna: Wednesday, 30th September 1936 362

Chapter 35: Berlin: Klaus Scribner at home 371

Chapter 36: Moscow: October 1st 1936: Savostin interrogated 381

Chapter 37: Berlin: Thursday, October 1st 1936: Wener Scribner 393

Chapter 38: Berlin: Tuesday, October 6th, 1936: Werner Scribner 399

Chapter 39: Berlin: Wednesday, October 7th 1936: Werner Scribner goes home 403

Chapter 40: Thursday, 8th October 1936: train journey 408

Chapter 41: Ostend: Thursday 8th October: celebratory dinner 442

Addendum 454

Principal Characters 456

Imprint

All rights of distribution, also through movies, radio and television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic medium and reprinting in excerpts are reserved.

© 2022 novum publishing

ISBN print edition:978-3-99130-077-9

ISBN e-book: 978-3-99130-078-6

Editor:Ashleigh Brassfield, DipEdit

Cover images:Navarone, Bowie15, Ruslan Huzau, Liligraphie | Dreamstime.com

Cover design, layout & typesetting:novum publishing

www.novum-publishing.co.uk

Summary

1936: Squadron Leader Harald Mason, a German-born naturalised British airman, is sent by a concerned Foreign Office to Berlin to unearth Luftwaffe expansion plans and investigate the sustainability of high-octane aviation fuel supply in times of war. A narrative of disparate characters, from the leonine intelligence chief Major Alastair Cartwright MC in London, to the clever and elegant Elisabeth Schneider, economist, and a Soviet spy embedded in IG Farben AG, the most powerful chemical combine in Europe. Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador to the Court of St James’, s needs something to turn national rancor away from the Soviet Union and towards Germany. It was Elisabeth who enlightened the Soviet NKVD to the extent of American banking and industry funding of the nascent pre-1933 Hitler regime, and subsequent Wall Street and business relationships with IG Farben. Mason befriends Werner Scribner, a technical draftsman, a Catholic and a Bavarian monarchist at the new Luftwaffe Air Ministry in Berlin – determined to bring down the Anti-Christ Hitler – juxtaposed with his father Klaus Scribner, who was spiritually re-born in the chaos that was Weimar Germany. It’s the conflict and accord of characters in a discorded and dangerous European world.

This is a story of American business funding Nazi Germany, and the rebuilding of Soviet Russia, as part of President FR Roosevelt’s New Deal programme to get ‘America working again.’

Chapter 1: 1931 – the Industrial Resource Section

Major Alastair Cartwright MC convinced his superiors that although military intelligence was obviously crucial, industrial capacity, skilled manpower, and access to strategic commodities were equally if not more important in assessing a country’s ability to fight a war.

He impressed upon his audience one spring morning in 1931 the story of the totally brilliant and simple Schlieffen Plan of 1914, based on the successful German invasion of France in 1870 under Count Alfred von Schlieffen, late Chief of the Imperial General Staff. It was totally brilliant because it was simple and it worked, and there were no new impediments to stop it working again. While a small force would contain Russia in the east, the bulk of the German army would brush aside poor old neutral Belgium, smash into France and bring about its collapse before anyone knew about it. Simplicity itself.

Cartwright continued his story. As a blueprint for war it was bold, clear, but seriously flawed. Germany’s military leaders in 1914 had convinced themselves that France’s army would be no more able to withstand the destructive power of sophisticated weaponry than it had been a generation earlier and would consequently surrender in a few weeks.

Cartwright rose from his chair, and began walking around the wide eighteenth century walnut table with the five listening heads turning to follow his circumnavigation. He talked as he slowly walked, looking at no one in particular, deeply immersed in his oral dissertation.

‘Brussels fell, they marched into northern France. Favourite Parisian restaurants already earmarked for patronage, and remembered old masters hanging in art galleries ticked for new homes east of the Ardennes. Then it happened. At the battle of the Marne in September 1914, the French, supported by a small British Expeditionary force, launched a desperate counterattack that stopped the Germans in their tracks.’ He stopped, turned and glared defiantly at his audience. ‘Then, by jove,’ clenching his right fist, ‘the same thing happened at Ypres a few weeks later.’

‘Where are you going with all this, Cartwright?’ questioned a now impatient clock-watching Maurice deVilliers, head of Foreign Office Administration, index finger tapping his writing pad.

Cartwright ignored the interruption. ‘The quick and decisive German invasion was stuck in the mud of Flanders. The Russians had now woken up and they were pressing from the east. Consequence?’ He stopped and looked at his audience. No response. He had the floor. His show. His reply to his question was expected. Hypophora was a well known Cartwright device for engaging his audience; ask a question and then answer it. Quite effective, and they were used to it. They all knew Cartwright.

‘Germany had prepared meticulously for the war – but for a short war, with no contingency plans for a more protracted conflict. The Fatherland had a serious natural resources problem. Nitrates, oil and rubber, all vital to sustain a long war, were only available from abroad. But we had our Royal Navy controlling the sea routes and implemented a strategy we used against Napoleon; that is to say, gentlemen, a maritime blockade.’

He turned and stopped at a spot near the fireplace where he could look at their faces. He stared into each one in turn, just for a second or so. He was speaking directly to the individual.

‘Now, and this is important, the Germans imported most if not all of its nitrates for the use of explosives from Chile. The German Chiefs of Staff were warned about this potential blockade headache, but ignored it because of absolute confidence in the Schlieffen Plan. Then as 1914 drew to a close and the opposing armies entrenched in northern France, with the now obvious start of a war of attrition, virtual panic set in amongst the Imperial General Staff. They were, gentlemen, running out of explosives.

‘Panic! What to do? What did they do?’ Cartwright raised his hands in mock consternation. And again once the curiosity of his audience was assured, he answered his own question. ‘The solution was to make nitrates artificially, so to speak. Germany was and is, and I stress this fact, blessed with a strong chemical industry and world class industrial chemists. This alchemy was achieved. All that was required, and I say this as a non-scientist, was the mixing of nitrogen and air and innovative high pressure engineering chemistry. Explosives shortage solved. What brought the war to an end in 1918 was not a shortage of explosives.’ He said this with finger pointing emphasis.

‘Now gentlemen, let’s move forward to today, 1931. We should concentrate our surveillance efforts on countries we feel need watching.’ He held up his hands and brought them together as if in prayer. ‘Geopolitics and economics in the context of intelligence gathering need to merge. It is therefore my submission that we need to dedicate a department to this important issue. Political intelligence and resource intelligence working together.’ He paused, then repeated slowly and with emphasis, ‘Working together.’ Another pause. ‘I present you gentlemen a proposal.’

He bent down by his chair and from a large and scruffy dark brown Gladstone bag took out and distributed the requisite number of copies to his audience. He spent another ten minutes or so, seated this time, to explain his scheme. His project.

The new Industrial Resource Section or IRS proposal found itself on the agenda of two ad hoc gatherings including the all-important internal budget allocation sub-committee. Usual grumblings from the holders of the purse, fought off by an invited and sometimes exasperated, but always determined Cartwright. Then the day finally arrived; the sprinkling of holy water over the project by the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office gave it life.

Cartwright, on hearing the news, celebrated with a bottle of Chateau Lafon at his club. He sat by the window, armchair turned so he looked out at the activity on Pall Mall, and for privacy. He drank alone, deep in thought.

And so the Industrial Resource Section was born, its subject remit decided by high ranking Foreign Office civil servants and Bolshevik-wary politicians: the Soviet Union should be its primary concern. It came first, especially with the Russian eye permanently cast towards the Middle East and India. Other countries were left to Cartwright’s discretion and direction from the Chiefs of Staff Intelligence Committee.

The Industrial Resource Section, the IRS was to assess industrial capacity and natural resources in the Soviet Union. Bolshevism was the bête noire of Western Europe and America. ‘Best keep a close eye on those Bolshie chaps,’ was the standing order. As time and world events moved on, so did the department. It grew and spread to tabulate salt imports into Japan, rubber into Italy, and iron ore, copper and manganese into Germany. Scissors in hands, IRS people would organise press cuttings, albums, and various trade almanacs, collected and cross indexed on shelves dedicated to countries, commodities and products.

Its world was different from that of the soldier, sailor, and airman.

However, first things first. Cartwright needed a new home, a central command for his data gathering and data analysis enterprise.

***

He was led up to the first floor, and entered what the Superintendent of Buildings and Works had described as a spacious and airy office area, ideal for open plan use. ‘If only walls could talk, Major Cartwright sir,’ Mr Babbage remarked wistfully, clipboard in hand, with a short stubby pencil tucked behind his right ear and dressed in a long brown work coat. They stood with unconscious respect to past occupants in the middle of Room 10. Both took in the silence of the now empty ballroom, with its two plaster medallion ceiling mouldings and bare hooks which once held crystal chandeliers. Mr Babbage swept his arm towards his pièce de résistance selling point at the far wall: an ostentatious man-height white rococo marble fireplace with large scroll bracket corbels and two carved arches, centred with an ornate keystone. ‘Impressive, wouldn’t you say sir,’ admired Babbage. He walked over to it, and lovingly stroked the mantelpiece. Like an estate agent, which one supposes he was, albeit for the Foreign Office branch of HM Government, he then continued over to one of the six long casement windows overlooking St James’ Park, opened the window wide, and looked up at the sun shining above the horse chestnut and plane trees along Birdcage Walk. He inhaled slowly and deeply, and turned to his client and said in his best sales patter, ‘You just can’t get better than this sir. Not on this west side of Whitehall,’ he added quickly, to cover himself. Mr Babbage of Whitehall office management had been in his job a long time, and had learnt from his masters the art of protecting oneself against future accountability.

‘Very well, I’ll take it. Long lease, obviously,’ replied a very satisfied Cartwright.

The new home of the Industrial Resource Section: Queen Anne’s Gate, a short hop, skip and a jump from the Foreign and Colonial Office. Within a few weeks the ballroom had come to life; rows of desks, chairs, telephones, a glass-topped map, and work tables. The wall opposite the windows was jocularly referred to as the library. Here rows of bookshelves reached from floor to ceiling covering the whole wall. It housed the industrial reference collection. There were two doors set in this wall of almanacs, box files and albums, both leading out to the first floor. Over in the corner, as far away from the fireplace as possible, and in a newly-constructed, glass-framed, ceiling-high independent office sat the intangible man. He had the usual office paraphernalia: a wide desk, a blue velvet captain’s chair on castors (his own purchase), two uncomfortable-looking straight-backed visitors chairs, a four drawer steel filing cabinet times three, a row of black bakelite telephones on a stand next to the desk, and a free standing teleprinter machine. Cartwright had an uninterrupted view of his ballroom. This enclosure was later referred to as the greenhouse by one and all. As one Foreign Office wag, who had popped in to see Cartwright on one thing or another, shared the scene with colleagues over a drink in a Foreign Office basement watering hole: ‘… there he was, in the greenhouse, jacket off, hunched over his lever operated desktop calculator adding up figures like a turf accountant totting up the day’s takings …’ One of them guffawed and someone ordered another round of drinks.

He called them his DCs, his Diggers and Compilers – his band of helpers. Sat at their desks or bent over large work desks designed for spreading out papers, maps and reference books, talking together in groups or compilers alone with their matrix thoughts. The whoosh of sliding library ladders moving along the floor to ceiling bookshelves – diggers looking for a particular reference annual or putting one back. Cartwright had begun building his DCs, virtually from scratch, before the move to his new home, his new Industrial Resource Section. He wanted analytical thinkers; look for inconsistencies, put a series of events in proper order, use logic to pick apart a problem and come up with a solution or a reason for inconsistency. Curiosity and lateral thinking ability were prerequisite; age and gender specifications weren’t. He picked only the best that he could get his hands on. In more than one instance an IRS candidate reject landed up in some other building that defined Whitehall. The age group was decidedly mid-twenties to mid-thirties, or as one statistician put it: an age mean of twenty six, a median value of twenty eight, and a mode of twenty nine, Cartwright excluded. Two thirds were university graduates.

He had spent his time slowly and methodically. Linguists with an aptitude for analytical thinking. Non linguists with the ability to solve problems. A good example was young Sarah Stephens. He had spotted her by chance during a lunch break at a Foreign Office canteen he rarely visited. Obviously waiting for a lunch companion, she got out of her handbag a small compendium of cryptic crossword puzzles and became so engrossed in its word play clues that she hardly noticed her lunch companion sit down next to her. Cartwright, sat not too far away, listened in to parts of the conversation. She was employed as a clerk in the personnel section of one department or another, and came across as a shy unassuming person, but with her own views on world events, and how she would tackle them. An intelligent free thinker. She joined Cartwright in the ballroom the following week.

And so it went, the slow but steady building of the team. Ballroom size and budget allocation determined the numbers, but strength and depth was his personal responsibility. He was judicious in his choosing. He was aware of the mindset of some of the analysts he brought in – in essence, not popular in the outside world. They gave the impression of being arrogant, especially because they did not hesitate to speak their minds with their often harsh criticism and self-confidence. He knew that it would take time for the team to gel, but once friendship was made he would have a formidable group of people ready to meet the challenges of the section, its Committee, and upward to its Whitehall masters.

It took him nearly a year to gather and recruit and get the personnel architecture right in his DC section. They constituted the heart and mind of his little known organisation. The soul was himself, Cartwright the arbiter. What should he disclose, what to keep in the back pocket for another day. All dependant on his near term objective and subjective analysis of current government thinking and world events.

The Industrial Resource Section had a supervisory board called the Industrial Intelligence Committee and was itself was made up of a Treasury mandarin, useful for currency and foreign exchange advice and assistance, as well as being a Cartwright mole inside the Treasury; a couple of Ministry of Labour civil servants, general industry statistics and manipulation thereof experience, useful for understanding arguments in statistical inconsistencies – gamekeepers turned poachers, or poachers turned gamekeepers, take your pick. The Committee had the authority to bring in, as required, outside specialists in a particular field of investigation for brain-picking or ‘swabbing down,’ as it was known in the ballroom, chaired by one Major Alastair Cartwright MC.

The IRS was to remind political and military strategists of the resources required to conduct modern warfare. It concerned itself with specific imports, storage facilities, shipyards, railway stock, and chemical refineries as much as Military Intelligence did with tanks, naval destroyers and bombers. It was no more important to know the number of panzer divisions in Germany than to realise that the German industrial complex in the Ruhr was likely to need seven million tons of high grade iron ore in the first year of war and that the bulk of this would come from where? Sweden? Spain? Or both? And through which port? Hamburg? Or somewhere much nearer to the end user in the Ruhr valley, like Rotterdam in nearby Holland perhaps?

His organisation in time reached an information critical mass. He could only do so much with foreign press cuttings, almanacs and intelligence scraps for which he had to virtually beg at tables for. What he now needed, a phase two, as he called it, and to borrow the language of international industry, were in-country representatives. Operatives with the gumption to wheedle out information in real time. Opportunity driven people. They would be residents in certain to-be-decided intelligence required hot-spots, as designated by his Committee; get a feel for the place, the politics, current events and act independently on opportunities, with only a light steer from the captain’s velvet chair.

The hurdle, as always in intelligence gathering, was funding. Cartwright put his other hat on, that of a Secret Intelligence Service grandee, and discussed his expansion plan in an office on Victoria Street. In principle there was agreement. Cartwright’s nemesis, the internal budget allocation sub-committee, was also copied in to the memoranda which passed back and forth between IRS and the SIS. Finally, a balding chap with a nervous eyebrow tick turned up unannounced at the ballroom one rainy morning and informed Cartwright in an unexcited tone that he had received approval, additional budget to be paid by the SIS. However, as with all Whitehall favours, there were certain caveats, as the balding man was quick to stress – onthe insistence of SIS and the Chiefs of Staff Intelligence Committee. IRS was not authorised to do anything subterranean. All above ground. Subterranean activities most definitely not allowed. SIS would get sniffy and muscle in, he warned, and all military type information was to be passed on immediately, underline and repeated, to the relevant service intelligence committees. For this cross my heart and hope to die promise, it was agreed that Cartwright and his IRS could access and, within reason, ‘infiltrate’ (Cartwright’s word) the political and Military Attaché pool at British embassies abroad.

Cartwright got his foot in the door for direct clandestine work. Argue the toss later. He knew what the SIS condition meant, he had agreed the rules of engagement with his SIS colleagues earlier. No spying or espionage per se, just information gathering as one would at a drinks party or dinner conversation for example. God bless HMS Opportunity and all who sail in her, thought Cartwright as he later toasted himself.

By the mid 1930s, IRS had a number of country managers scattered around the globe. Miscellaneous Armed Forces Attachés, Passport Officers, a representative of the British Council empowered to educate less fortunate nationalities to British culture, and even the odd so-called overseas trade promoter, unbeknownst to the Board of Trade which paid his salary.

***

The omens were there when the government signed that naval pact with Germany in June 1935. Cartwright could not believe that a similar Air Force arrangement had been proposed by the War Office. It was beginning to be clear to him that perhaps the Foreign Office was losing ground to the War Office in collusion with the Cabinet Office. Their common goal was appeasement. There was a very strong and dangerous argument that a re-armed Germany would counter the communist Soviet Union. Indeed, in one War Office paper Cartwright read, it positively lauded, albeit hypothetically ‘… German expansion plans to the east … as it would not greatly increase German strength … as annexation of Slav districts would weaken the racial cohesion of the Reich.’ This report, which Cartwright read with disbelief, stated that ‘… sooner or later German expansion would bring her into conflict with the Soviet Union …’ and here was the crux of the thinking, ‘… and a conflict would probably ruin our two potential enemies in Europe … we have little to lose and everything to gain …’ Cartwright just sat and stared out into the ballroom. He felt as he did in 1917 before going climbing out of the trench just outside the village of Arras in northern France.

In early 1936 War Office attitudes towards Germany began to diverge strongly from those held in the Foreign Office. Cartwright had been fighting, a now rear-guard action in committees, hand-to-hand combat, as he described it to a bemused non-partisan colleague. The War Office, egged on by Army Intelligence, became convinced that the Foreign Office and by implication the SIS and IRS were painting too black a picture of Herr Hitler. The War Office began to search for its own alternative foreign policy that would downplay the inevitability, according to the Foreign Office, of Anglo-German conflict.

The various War Office generated reports that came his way were flicked through to the ‘conclusion and recommendation’ section and sometimes thrown onto the floor or against the glass panes of the greenhouse, other times quietly placed down, followed by reflection and then sitting down at his desk, holding his head in his hands. The War Office began to echo some of the schemes already emanating from Downing Street for a policy of appeasement with Germany.

Chapter 2: 1932 Moscow: Ambassador Maisky

She stood at the window of the second floor apartment on Stoleshnikov Street, arms folded, waiting. A black sedan pulled up below the window. ‘It’s here,’ she said, turning her head, and as an afterthought, in a raised voice, ‘wear your brown coat.’ He stood in the foyer of the apartment. She helped him into his overcoat, turned him around to look at her, and helped him button up. She fussily brushed his shoulders with her hands and then the lapels of his coat. An automatic, affectionate maternal action. They kissed, cheek to cheek. Nothing was said. He nodded and smiled in acknowledgement and left.

It was early September 1932, and Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky, late of the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki, had been summoned to a meeting with Maxim Maksimovich Litvinov, his immediate boss and People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs. He was the head of Soviet foreign policy, directly under the great leader himself, Joseph Vassarionovich. This meeting was held in Litvinov’s office, where they discussed, subject of course, to Stalin’s final approval, Maisky’s move to London as Soviet Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s.

The meeting was an important one. It concerned that tricky subject all diplomatic representatives abroad have to plan; how best to directly or indirectly fulfil their country’s hopes and ambitions within the host country.

Maisky was made privy to the apprehension within the Party to the immediate demise of the Weimar Republic and that the rise of Hitler was bound to introduce chaos on the international scene, thus threatening the social and industrial transformation of the Soviet Union. Indeed the motor car that had brought him to the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs building was an American Ford Model ‘A’ sedan built under licence at a new factory at Nizhny Novgorod. Litvinov was aware of the distaste and hostility to Socialism amongst the British bourgeoisie and especially the land-owning aristocracy which governed Great Britain and its overseas colonies. He could not bring himself to describe them by the collective ‘the British Empire.’

Harsh reality dictated, as indeed needs must, a shift from the Soviet Union’s attempt to mobilise socialist solidarity and support for the Revolution among British Labour circles, to now court the class enemy, the Conservative Party – its natural antagonist.

Maisky proposed a plan of dealing with the coalition Government led by a Labour Party Prime Minister, but dominated by Conservative anti-Bolshevik elements. Maisky argued for a new, unconventional diplomatic strategy; particularly a deliberate wooing of the press, and a more personal diplomacy extending wider than the usual narrow circle of politicians and civil servants within Whitehall to include a number of lesser members of Government, prominent politicians, capitalists in the City, poets, writers and artists. A wide net indeed. This was revolutionary in its own right. It entailed the deliberate cultivation of the British Press and a more personable approach to prominent non-political figures. It would be an exercise in realpolitik before anyone else had thought of the term.

Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky was of Jewish Polish descent and had lived in the Golders Green district of north London in the 1910s, where he had first met Maxim Litvinov. Political exiles, just like refugees and immigrants from the same country, have a tendency to live on the same street or just round the corner from each other.

Maisky and his wife Agnya arrived by boat train at Dover in October 1932. He was quite unusual for an Ambassador, especially one from that bête noire that was Soviet Russia. He was 48 years old, short, portly, with a chevron style moustache and receding white speckled brown hair. He possessed an open honest face, was courteous, charming, spoke good English and was what the French would describe as très sympathique in nature. He could be someone’s favourite uncle. Maisky was also a clever man and a servant of Soviet Russia.

The Soviet desk at the Foreign Office wrote a memorandum noting the new Ambassador’s penchant for inviting a multifarious bag of newspaper editors, writers, intellectuals, trade unionists, Parliamentary back-benchers and Opposition Members of Parliament to his residence at Kensington Palace Gardens. This was all against normal diplomatic convention, and not how Ambassadors to the Court of St. James’s were supposed to conduct themselves. Most irregular. Highly irregular!

With the obvious exception of Viscount Rothermere, proprietor of the arch-conservative Daily Mail newspaper, Maisky courted Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the popular Daily Express, who became a friend. His newspaper editorials hailed Stalin as a defender of Soviet national interests, with the emphasis on equality as opposed to promulgator of international socialism. Nothing to worry about was the new media message.

Maisky was a generous man. Christmas presents from the Soviet embassy were particularly welcome. It was said that newspaper editors and lead writers received bottles of the finest vodka and jars of beluga sturgeon caviar. Other examples include Ivor Novello the music composer, actor and all-round thespian, who apparently received a gramophone recording of Leonid Utesov and his jazz band; Bertrand Russell the socialist philosopher was given a book of selected poems by Alexsey Khomyakov; and the General Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen was very pleased with a glossy picture album of Soviet steam locomotives.

Robert Vansittart, the civil servant head of the Foreign Office, and Anthony Eden, a Member of Parliament, and in 1936 the Government head of the Foreign Office, were frequent guests of His Excellency the Ambassador and his wife at Kensington Palace Gardens. Their wives even came along, and after tea and cakes, the men would retire to the garden, weather permitting, and talk politics together, heads down, fingers wagging occasionally, making a point, whilst the ladies sat indoors discussing the latest fashion, weekend parties and restaurants.

Like Maisky, the other side, as it were, was using these seemingly social gatherings as sounding posts for the most crucial diplomatic issue of the decade: Germany. How to deal with her, and how to contain Hitler. Like Maisky, they were interested in a mutual-aid pact that would limit Hitler’s aggressive stance and expansionist ambitions. France had already signed an alliance with the Soviet Union. It wanted to bring Great Britain also into the fold. Problem was, if the British Government was to agree, then it wanted Germany included in the pact. However, at a Berlin cabinet meeting in September 1934 Hitler rejected the whole idea. Pacts and treaties were for the Führer to conceive, ergo decide whom to invite to his pacts and treaties.

So that was that. What also upset the apple cart was the killing of the French Foreign Minister in October 1934 by a Bulgarian communist assassin. It was a mistake. The killer was after King Alexander of Yugoslavia. He succeeded in his deadly task, but poor Monsieur Louis Barthou was also shot in the excitement of the ambush. The newspaper front pages all over western Europe were all about Moscow sponsored political assassinations; ‘and not for the first time in Europe,’ was the common theme. Both France and Great Britain slowly but surely turned away from the Soviet Union, and the British government decided it was best to use tête à tête diplomacy in its dealings with Germany. The era of appeasement had begun.

The Soviet Foreign Ministry fully understood that Great Britain would prefer a war between Germany and the Soviet Union. Two birds killed with one stone, and the liberal western democracies left in peace. ‘Best let the fascists and the Bolsheviks kill each other,’ was indeed the opinion in the clubs of Pall Mall and in the Houses of Parliament.

Ambassador Maisky’s task was to turn British government negative thoughts away from the Soviet Union and towards Germany. The question was: how to do it?

King George V died in January 1936. Maisky persuaded Litvinov to attend the funeral. They had important things to discuss. He arrived by boat train at Dover, and was met by Maisky and a couple of embassy protocol people. In a first-class carriage on the Dover to Victoria train puffing its way through the orchards of Kent, Maisky broached the subject on the placation, the pacification of Great Britain towards the Soviet Union.

‘We have to play to our strengths,’ replied Litvinov. ‘What do we have that we can ease the situation? Grease the wheels, so to speak,’ he smiled at his unintended metaphor, and continued slowly wiping away the condensation on the carriage window as the train pulled out of Tonbridge railway station. After a pause of a few seconds, ‘Difficult, but now impossible,’ said Litvinov quietly to himself. ‘What do we have that no other country has?’ He left it at that.

Maisky, who had known Litvinov for two decades, decided to let that cryptic question rest. This conversation would continue later. Without the presence of embassy staff. Intriguing question though, thought Maisky. He followed Litvinov’s posture; crossed his hands over his stomach, tilted back his head, and closed his eyes.

The funeral was held a few days later in Windsor. MM Litvinov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, met the new King Edward VIII at the palace. Courtesy meetings with Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, and some members of the cabinet inevitably followed. Lunch at Anthony Eden’s London house; an intimate dinner at Scott’s restaurant in Coventry Street with the Vanissarts and one Alastair Cartwright; a brief history walk down Whitehall to Westminster Abbey and Houses of Parliament, led by an excited, arm-pointing medieval history don. This bored Litvinov into a fatigued state as he was led to admire one pointed-out thing after another. The gusty wind and drizzling rain did not help. He told Joseph Vassarionovich later that it was the ice cold pin pricks of driving rain on his face that kept him awake. At the end of the day, as he sat down with a ‘thank God that’s over with’ sigh on a sofa to pull off his rain sodden shoes, he could not help himself saying to Maisky that although he liked the English, they had an over inflated sense of their importance in the new world order. It was the past that fortified them, he concluded. Whitehall and its environs could easily fit inside the walls of the Kremlin, and, as he pulled off a soggy shoe, he went on to say the Kremlin even had a longer, more interesting history. Litvinov seemed to have forgotten that it was London which had offered him shelter and safety once upon a time – or maybe that is why he said what he said.

It was not until the day before his journey back to Dover, that Litvinov told Maisky that he had a solution to his diplomatic difficulties. Litvinov, the secretive Commissar, did not impart his solution to Maisky, only the tidbit that it would be taken care of. ‘Rest easy Ivan Mikhailovich, and continue with your duties,’ were his parting words at the Dover ferry.

Chapter 3: 1936 – Joint Intelligence Committee

On Tuesday 7th July 1936, a few weeks before the spectacular opening of the Berlin Olympics, seven men sat around a large ornate table in a four-storey building just opposite the entrance to Downing Street to discuss the growing military challenge that Germany posed to the British Empire.

Six of the men were officers representing the intelligence staff of the Royal Navy, Army and the Royal Air Force. The seventh was a shadowy civilian whose background was an organisation that had no official existence, the head of the Industry Resources Section (IRS), as well as being a senior representative of the Foreign Office funded Secret Intelligence Service, the SIS. The building in which the meeting was taking place, No. 2 Richmond Terrance, was once the home of Sir Henry Morton Stanley, the explorer of Africa, the greeter of Dr. Livingstone, and sometime Member of Parliament for North Lambeth. Outside the front entrance, the plane trees were the last remnant of the Privy Garden of the Old Palace of Westminster. Now the large ornate rooms, modelled in the French style similar to the interior of a Loire chateau, housed the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) and the Chiefs of Staff (COS) Committee, and it was on their direction that the key figures in British Intelligence were meeting formally for the first time.

As the clock chimed eleven o’clock in the meeting room on the first floor the Chairman, a Brigadier in the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment), opened proceedings. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) had come into being.

The Armed Forces had their own intelligence units and they were quite proud and protective of them, the result of which was that the information was guarded even between themselves. Inter-service rivalry dominated. They had to be brought to heel and cooperate; easier said than done.

The SIS was under Foreign Office supervision, and was responsible for collecting information outside Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The SIS was not solely concerned with military matters, which was a cause of much jealousy and carping from the Armed Forces at various committees and ad hoc intelligence gatherings in Whitehall, and could and did report on political matters. Unfortunately, the SIS was underfunded and, according to knowledgeable Foreign Office insiders, it was encumbered by, to put it delicately, ‘square pegs in round holes.’ It had to be better used, and inept internal circuits replaced or circumvented; easily done if the will prevails.

The third strand of intelligence was the political element within the Foreign Office itself. A mixture of diplomatic reporting and information gathering through embassies and private networks, the Foreign Office had, since the nineteenth century, collected what is called ‘political intelligence’. This had to be incorporated into military intelligence consciousness; easier said than done.

It was because of this confusion and exasperation in a disparate number of organisations dealing with intelligence and a resurgent German threat that the Joint Intelligence Committee or the JIC was created.

The shadowy figure at the first Joint Intelligence Committee meeting was Alastair Cartwright, an artillery major in the Great War, seconded to the Foreign Office in 1919. A young clerk who worked in Cartwright’s department for a number of years had described him in hushed tones to a colleague in the staff canteen as the ‘intangible man’. He had the ability to pass through doors and walls and listen in on meetings, whispers in corridors, and conversations on stairways. She even suggested, and quite wildly, this ability extended to taxi cabs and buses. Cartwright, the information gathering phantom.

***

What turned night into day, as Cartwright described it, was a phone call from a Captain in Army Intelligence inviting him to a spot of luncheon the following day, their place. Unusual, thought Cartwright. Due to his pugilist history with the uniformed branch of intelligence circles, he certainly was not treated as ‘one of us,’ nor had he been ever invited to lunch at ‘their place,’ the lair of his most bitter antagonist.

Lunch was with a face he recognised, and introduced himself as Major Whiteford. Walking stick user, another remnant of the Great War. Whiteford informed him over the indifferent oxtail soup that they had recently discovered, through sources, the alarming and unexpected growth of the German Army, the Wermacht, and its industrial base suppliers, and in their considered opinion it was beyond what the War Office considered as a legitimate and acceptable. Whiteford passed this bombshell in a monotone nasal voice, complementing a bland, impassive poker player face. Ideal committee man or, heavens above, a politician, thought Cartwright. Whiteford could blatantly contradict himself in the same sentence, look one in the eye, and vehemently argue there was no ambiguity in the statement.

Cartwright put down his spoon and stared at his luncheon companion. Did he hear right? Now he knew the reason for the lunch. He could not believe his luck on one hand, and an immediate sense of foreboding on the other. If the principal flag bearer of Nazi Germany had completely done a volte-face, then what exactly did they know? Cartwright did not react. He kept his peace. Let the Major talk.

Whiteford waited for the soup bowls to be cleared, a pregnant pause in this mea culpa moment which lasted for a full half minute. As soon as the corporal steward had delivered the steak pie and retreated through the swing door into the kitchen, Whiteford started to continue, but Cartwright stopped him by filling up both glasses with the equally indifferent house red wine. He felt a sense of power. He was the winner. The victor ludorum. He signalled Whiteford to continue.

‘As you are aware, we have argued that German arms output could not, would not exceed 1933–34 levels. This was based, as you know, on the highly speculative nature of figures, and the uncertainty regarding Germany’s economic future, with the proviso that likely rate for new army divisions would increase … err … slowly, based on what we knew,’ he hastily added.

No, it’s what you wanted to believe, thought Cartwright bitterly.

‘We have also to take into account the recent announcement from Berlin that the period of conscription service in the army would be increased to two years. Then we got unwelcome news that the Werhmacht has expanded beyond peacetime strength of thirty six divisions to thirty nine.’ All this was relayed between mouthfuls of pie and assorted vegetables, and the odd gulp of wine. ‘The Reichswehrministerium made lame excuses to our Army Attaché in Berlin about misunderstandings over whether the three armoured divisions were, or were not, to be included into the total. We have concluded that the Germans deliberately misinformed our attaché. Further expansion is inevitable,’ Major Whiteford carefully laid down his knife and fork, ‘therefore, Alastair, we agree with your recent German rearmament analysis. More wine?’

The game had changed; he now had the backing of all intelligence agencies. He wondered if certain members of the JIC had anything to do with this road to Damascus event. He never found out. Never enquired.

By happenstance, Whiteford and three other Military intelligence officers were re-assigned the following week, and Cartwright was invited to place one of his DCs in the Army Intelligence camp. On the proviso, Cartwright insisted, that it was a loan. That same day, Cartwright signed four authorisation dockets: one for the temporary transfer of Dr. Michael McDougall (armoured steel expert, Vickers-Armstongs Ltd., Sheffield) to the IRS at Queen Anne’s Gate, and a phone tap on the London home telephone of Colonel Geyr von Schweppenburg, the German Military Attaché, as well as his rented weekend cottage in Berkshire, and Luftwaffe Colonel Albert Wenninger, the German Air Attaché’s flat in Curzon Street, Mayfair.

***

The IRS staff were by now confident in their work. It was all about sources, experience and cooperation. All hail the DCs! Particularly in their handling of statistical data. By mid-summer 1936 the IRS was a ship with billowing sails, a full crew, a manifest of deliverables, and Cartwright as its indisputable captain and figurehead. Collecting, sifting and analysing data as it docked, loaded and sailed between six continents.

Time to notch up a gear. Early in August 1936, the usual Monday morning meeting of minds was cancelled. It was decided by Cartwright to have it transferred, until further notice, to Fridays. So said the type written memorandum on the communal noticeboard. Monday had been the usual allocation of tasks and ‘to do’ lists, discussion of conclusions to tasks completed, and proposal of remedies to ‘stuck’ projects, as well as allocation of individuals to groups for another hot-to-trot assignment, and planning for the week ahead. Cartwright decided that a Friday was a better day.

With minds full of Friday meeting discussions and conclusions, a restful weekend away from the ballroom was best to mull over highlighted problems, recognise and appreciate the unseen; to appreciate the unknowns. To solve a problem, the exact cause of the problem has to be identified. He was a great believer in sleep, and its ability to facilitate memory consolidation, waking up to that ‘eureka’ moment.

That Friday, they gathered as they usually did for the meeting in the centre of the ballroom, and around the large rectangular table usually reserved as a work-day dumping ground for files, books and whatever else required a temporary resting place. Chairs were carried or dragged, others preferred to stand or perch on adjacent desks.

Cartwright, with a mug of tea in his hand, opened the proceedings with his usual M’sieurs-dames … introduction – a habit carried from the Great War. He gave a brief operational summary of the situation in Spain now that Germany, Italy and Russia (he still preferred to call it by its Tsarist name) had entered the fray. He then linked it to Hitler and his hot-off-the-press Four Year Plan. Cartwright talked for half an hour. He covered the Spanish strategic mineral export situation; the involvement of the new German-Spanish mineral joint venture; he pointed his mug of tea at Andoni, who now preferred to be called Anthony, Arriola, back row standing, and told him to follow it up. Cartwright continued with the shipments of war matériel into Spain including personnel from both Germany and Italy; and the goings on at the Gaylord hotel in Madrid, where the Russian NKVD advisors to the Nationalist government were billeted. A mildly risqué anecdote he had heard concerning a Russian intelligence officer and a street flower seller got most of the crew giggling and some laughing. ‘Let me finish, please … the upshot was that the flower seller had a husband, they wrangled compensation and are now the proud owners of a florist shop on Calle Segovia.’ Someone at the back did a flamenco staccato clap and shouted ‘Ole!’

After the formation of the Joint Intelligence Committee in June, and the lunch apology from Whiteford, he now had the backing of all concerned to concentrate on the implications of Hitler’s Four Year Plan, which, in his considered opinion, was dedicated to muscling up the country for war, and probably before the four years are up. ‘Crafty devil is Herr Hitler. He just can’t wait.’

‘It is not our main task to find out how many aircraft the Luftwaffe has,’ he said quietly one Friday morning, ‘but it is our job to find out, for example, if the Lufwaffe would have enough fuel to fly, and for a sustainable time under continuous combat situations. Does Germany have enough iron ore to manufacture more of those spanking new panzer tank divisions we’ve just heard about, let alone the Kriegsmarine’s new ship building plans? Even if there was a complete sea blockade?

‘If we could find out what German industry has, in terms of key matériel specific capacity and storage, and we focus on those industries and products in the light of this new Hitler directive, then we can work out when Germany would be confident enough to start and sustain a long war. M’sieurs-dames, we will now turn our full attention, I repeat, full attention, to imported oil and strategic minerals.

‘History repeats itself, remember the Schlieffen Plan and its consequences,’ he reminded his audience. ‘So, the first task is to review origin and import volumes of crude oil, refined products, lubricants and whatever else that makes an engine work, land, sea and air.’ Cartwright gave this project to Wheeler as leader and another six DCs to make up the German Fuel Assignment team. He reminded Arriola the Basque to get cracking on Spanish minerals. ‘Ongoing projects assessment at 15.00hrs.’ Cartwright clapped his hands and motioned dispersal. Someone shouted ‘Ole!’

On the way back to the greenhouse Cartwright called over Wheeler and, still walking, he said, counting fingers, ‘You and your team did the Synthetic Aviation Fuel study last month, lets now concentrate on conventional petroleum; one, import of oil and related products, from where, how much, current stockpile. What if we close off the shipping lanes and therefore introduce sustainability issues? Marry this with what you did last month. That’s it.’

Both knew this new study would produce guesstimates, to put it mildly and politely. But it had to be done. The effort had to be made.

***

Group Captain Thomas Langlois Lefoy RAF (ret’d) was the Assistant Air Attaché in Berlin. He and Cartwright had shared a hospital ward in 1917. Cartwright had fallen with a bullet in his shoulder and one in his leg, and Lefoy had fallen out of the sky in a shot-up Sopwith Camel. They were firm friends, even shared the same convalescent home in East Sussex. After the war, one went into the Foreign Office and the other stayed on in the rebranded Royal Air Force. Lefoy stayed until 1931; he landed up as station commander at RAF Middle Wallop Intermediate Pilot Training School, and thereafter took early retirement. He was transferred to the reserve auxiliary list, and was promptly contacted by his ex-bed-next-door companion, Major Alastair Cartwright MC.

Lefoy, as the IRS infiltrator, worked the embassy reception circuit in and around the Unter den Linden. Most of the embassies of worth were close by and so were the important German Ministries. Many a time he would be taken aside, champagne flute in hand, … I must tell you Herr Lefoy … and, excuse me, in strict confidence … a personal disquiet and reservations on how the Reich was now run. It was very much evident after 1933, and Hitler’s rise to Chancellor, that Germans of a liberal persuasion thought that only England could stop this madness. His job was to report back. This he did. The diplomatic bag was well used, ‘For the immediate and personal attention of Major Alastair Cartwright MC,’ the information gatherer.

Chapter 4: IG Farbenindustrie AG, Frankfurt and Ludwigshaven

Cartwright had been presented with a summary report and a more detailed thesis on IG Farbenindustrie A.G. late yesterday afternoon. He made a point of not taking paperwork home with him. ‘Read in the office, think at night,’ was his motto.

Early morning London was wet with puddles and the air was damp. Most of the rain clouds had by now moved on. Major Alastair Cartwright paced purposefully over Westminster bridge with his folded umbrella marking time to his limping stride. Big Ben chimed six o’clock. The streets were empty except for a solitary policeman walking his Whitehall beat on Bridge Street, and the occasional AEC Regent red and white bus with half-asleep shift workers silhouetted in the steamed up windows, transported on their way south and north of the river Thames.

The ballroom was empty, eerily quiet. He hung his overcoat carefully behind the greenhouse door, and threw his jacket carelessly onto a visitor’s chair. He turned on the lights, sat down and started reading the report, the IRS/G.2 edition.

IG Farbenindustrie A.G.

Summary

July 28th. 1936

…

(ii) Evidence relating to the origin, growth, and financial and administrative construction of I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G.

The designation IG is used as reference to Interessen-Gemwinschaft Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft which is usually abbreviated to I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G., and which may be freely translated as meaning ‘Community of Interests of the Dyestuff Industries, a Stock Corporation’. The corporation is generally referred to as IG.

IG came into being in 1925, when the firm of Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik of Ludwigshafen changed its name to the present designation and merged with five other leading German chemical concerns. From 1904 however some of these firms had been working under community interest agreements, and in 1916 they had formed an association council to exercise a measure of joint control over production, marketing and research and for the pooling of profits.

Cartwright scribbled in the margin: community interest? cartel? clarify!

By 1926 the merger had been effected with a capital structure of 1.1 billion Reichsmarks, which exceeded by three times the aggregate capitalisation of all the other chemical concerns of any consequence in Germany. IG had steadily expanded its production and its economic power.

In 1926 the firm had a staff of 93,742 persons and an annual turnover of 1,209 million Reichsmarks. By 1934 the staff had increased to 150,000 (est.) and a turnover exceeding 1,900 million Reichsmarks (ref. historic currency rate. Annex ‘H’).

IG owns or holds participating interest (as far as we can ascertain) in 400 German firms and in about 500 (est.) in other countries. It also controls some 40,000 valuable patent rights. It can be described as a ‘State within a State’.

IG’s achievements are particularly outstanding in chemical research and in the practical utilisation of its discoveries. Among the many pharmaceutical products which IG developed and sponsored may be mentioned: aspirin and salvarsan (treatment of syphilus). Three of its trademarks, the ‘Bayer-Cross’ and Hoechst AG in the pharmaceutical field and ‘Agfa’ in photography, are well known throughout the world. In the industrial sphere IG was a pioneer in the development of intricate processes by virtue of which dyestuffs, methanol, and plastics, artificial fibres and light metals are commercially produced on a large scale (ref. list of manufacturing plants by product. Annex ‘F’).

IG plays an important role in the discovery and development of the process for making nitrogen from air, and gasoline and lubricants from coal. (ref. Summary Imperial Chemical Industries various Agreements. Annex ‘E’)

Cartwright scribbled in the margin: meet ICI Chairman soonest!

An enterprise of the magnitude and diversified interest of IG requires a comprehensive and intricate plan of corporate management. The controlling and managing bodies are:

The Stockholders. They number approximately half a million. There is an annual general meeting (AGM) usually attended by …The Aufsichtsrat comprised 55 members at the time the merger was effected (1926), but this number, as far as …

And so it went on

Technical Committee (TEA) is composed of the technical members of the Vorsand and the leading scientists and engineers of IG. It deals with questions of research, development of processes, expansion and consolidation of plant facilities, and credit requests for such purposes. Beneath it are 36 sub-committees in chemistry and 5 in engineering (1934). The Technical Committee has a central administrative office in Berlin, called TEA-Buere, and the 5 engineering sub-committees are grouped together as a Technical Commission (TEED).Commercial Committee (KA) which concerns itself primarily with financial, accounting, sales, purchasing and economic political problems. The full committee consists of about 20 members, including, in addition to Vorsand members, the heads of Sales Combines and other administrative agencies.Mixed Committees coordination between the Technical and Commercial Committees was achieved through special groups that drew their personnel from both fields. The more important of these were the Chemical Committee, the Dyestuff Committee, and the Pharmaceutical Main Conference Committee.

The numerous IG plants are operated on the so-called leadership principle. A major unit is usually under the supervision of an individual Vorsand member, though in some instances one member is responsible for more than one unit, while in others a diversion of responsibility prevailed within the plant, according to production.

Unity in policies of management is achieved by grouping the plants geographically and also in accordance with the character of production in the following way:

The Works Combine constitutes the basis for geographical coordination of IG plants. The four original combines are the Upper Rhine, the Main Valley, the Lower Rhine and Central Germany. In 1929 a fifth, called Works Combine Berlin, was added. The Works Combine coordinates such matters as overall administration, transportation, storage, etc., in their respective areas.The Sparton constitutes a means of coordinating IG production facilities on the basis of related products. Thus Sparte I includes nitrogen, synthetic fuels, lubricants and coal. Sparte II embraced dyestuffs and their intermediates, light metals, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Sparte III includes synthetic fibres, cellulose and cellophane, and photographic materials.Sales Combines were established to handle the marketing of the four principal categories of IG products. Each combine is headed by a Vorsand member, with deputies. There are Sales Combine Dyestuff, Sales Combine Chemicals, Sales Combine Pharmaceuticals and Sales Combine Agfa (photographic materials, artificial fibres, etc.)The Central Finance Administration (ZEFI) was established in 1927 in connection with its location on Unter Den Linden, Berlin NW7. It is known internally as ‘NW7’, its postal district code. In 1933 was added the Economic Research Department (WIPO), and a central office for armed forces liaison called Vermittlungsstelle W, – ‘Wehrmacht Switchboard’ We have little information on the full function of NW7.

He stopped reading.

Cartwright, with his hands on its armrests, pushed himself up slowly from the captain’s chair and stood over the open report. He looked out of his glass-paned office; the day had moved on without him. The ballroom was full, his beavering DCs at work.

He ran the fingers on his right hand through his hair. ‘God, this company is a government in action, it’s better organised than the British Army!’ he exclaimed out loud. Cartwright sighed, locked his hands behind his back and paced back and forth, a frustrated beast trapped in a greenhouse cage. He now realised this truly massive industrial combine was now under the control of Hitler, and a serious threat to national security.

He reluctantly returned to his chair, and continued reading; he had to read it all. Cartwright then flicked through the financials: capital and reserves to include; called up share capital, share premium account, profit and loss, shareholders funds, then finance charges to include foreign exchange gains/losses, amortisation of development costs and something called Impairment of intangible fixed assets … but thin, he thought, and virtually all with the asterisk pointing to a common footnote: estimated/best guess … he was not a finance man, but it was obvious that they did not know too much about the flow of money through the body corporate of I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G.

Later, he organised an early evening meeting with Sir Harry McGowan, the Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries. Meanwhile at four o’clock he met with the IRS financial section external authors of the IG report. A three man team, one from the Bank of England, one from HM Treasury, and a Christopher Matthews of Lloyds Bank International.

‘So, let me recap,’ and he looked down at his scribbled notes. ‘I’ve got IG is Germany’s greatest source of foreign exchange through the export of chemical products and revenues from royalty payments and patent sales. Revenue, you said estimated,’ he emphasised the ‘estimated,’ and looked accusingly at the trio, ‘is half a billion Reichsmarks,’ and after a moment, ‘give or take another possible half a billion,’ Cartwright added in his best sarcastic voice.

‘Major Cartwright, we have very little information over the flow of funds between subsidiaries. There is no real group consolidation as we know it,’ replied the indignant Bank of England economist, raising his voice in ending the reply, in his and his department’s defence.

‘Well, there is one, obviously, it’s just we have no access to it,’ said the HM Treasury man, in a quiet, reasoned voice.

‘Right. So we are clear that IG is a very profitable business.’ The three economists nodded their heads in unison. ‘What I am trying to get clear in my head is the ability, the flexibility, to use surplus funds for nefarious activities.’

‘What does that actually mean, Major Cartwright?’ Inquired Matthews. This was the first time Christopher Matthews, the junior of the three, had spoken.

Cartwright looked at Matthews and said slowly, with an exaggerated patient voice: ‘Is IG Farben splashing money about internationally to ensure the supply and import for internal storage of essential raw materials for build-up to war? That’s number one, and two, if there is indeed a policy of internal storage, how much annual import surplus is deemed required and which particular materials are deemed strategically necessary? That’s what I mean and that’s what I am interested in!’