The Hitler–Hess Deception. Martin Allen

east Prussian stock, was also an old acquaintance of Group Captain Winterbotham, who was near the top of British Air Intelligence. De Ropp also had close associations with British Intelligence, and had been of considerable assistance to the British secret service during the 1930s.

      After checking with Ribbentrop, Rosenberg travelled to Switzerland at the beginning of October. He was soon rubbing his hands in glee at what de Ropp told him, reporting back to Berlin that: ‘Because of the war psychology prevailing in England and the weak position of Chamberlain it was [currently] beyond to power of the [Air] Ministry [to move] in the desired direction of a termination of hostilities.’ However, he commented that de Ropp had also informed him that certain top men within the Air Ministry felt that Britain would agree to peace if ‘considerable losses on the part of the British Air Force and the related effects on the Empire [occurred]. It is believed then that the views represented by the Air Ministry would have to be taken into account, since the Empire could not permit its air strength to be reduced beyond a certain point.’³⁶

      At a meeting held a week later de Ropp went further. He informed the Germans that the British Air Ministry, whom he was now clearly claiming to represent, was extremely concerned about the possible politico-economic damage Britain and Germany would sustain if the conflict became a protracted war. This, it was claimed, would lead to ‘the decline of the West, of the Aryan race, and the era of the Bolshevization of Europe, including England’. De Ropp’s next statements caused the surprised German official to report back to Berlin that the British Air Ministry did not support its own government’s policy regarding a continuation of the war, and that the Air Ministry was ‘convinced that the war would be decided by the Luftwaffe’. He went on to state that it would ‘therefore depend on the Air Ministry to explain to the British government that, in view of the losses it had sustained, it no longer found itself in a position of being able to continue the war’.³⁷

      What de Ropp had intimated to the Germans was that if Britain suffered a swift military defeat in western Europe, Chamberlain might well loose his nerve and negotiate an end to the hostilities before any further damage to Britain – particularly to her ability to control the Empire – could take place. This idea would germinate in the Führer’s mind, and would become a strategy for the next seven months of conflict.

      It also saved his life, for on the evening of 8 November 1939 Hitler left the Bürgerbräukeller early in order to travel back to Berlin for a meeting with Charles Bedaux at the Reich Chancellery the following morning.³⁸ He was thus mightily impressed both by the providence that had saved his life and by all that Bedaux was about to tell him.

      With the coming of war the Duke of Windsor had been given the honorary rank of Major-General, and attached to the British Military Mission in Paris. His official role was to conduct a morale-boosting tour of the French front. However, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Edmund Ironside, also gave Windsor other secret orders. He was covertly to observe the strategic details of France’s defences, and submit a series of reports to London. The objective of this covert intelligence-gathering operation was to give Britain’s military planners a clearer picture of France’s defensive strengths and weaknesses, which they could use to formulate tactics to counter any potential German offensive in the west. The Duke’s mission was therefore important and very secret. As the head of the British Military Mission in Paris, Major-General Howard Vyse, declared: ‘It will be realised that to give the French any sort of inkling of the source of this information would probably compromise the value of any missions which I may ask HRH [the Duke of Windsor] to undertake subsequently.’³⁹

      Unfortunately, however, Charles Bedaux also gained access to this highly confidential intelligence, apparently with the Duke of Windsor’s connivance. This occurred because Windsor believed that a war between France, Britain and Germany was a disaster that would lead to the Soviet domination of Europe; and the Duke hated and feared Communism very much indeed.

      Throughout the 1930s the Duke of Windsor – or the Prince of Wales, as he had been then – had been a leading proponent of closer Anglo–German relations. Not the least of his reasons for this stance were his close blood ties to Germany’s aristocracy. However, he also saw Fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany as bastions against the Communist menace from the east.

      There were many high-ranking Britons, even within the upper echelons of government, who shared these views. Indeed, up until the latter 1930s the government’s official stance towards the Nazis had been placatory and somewhat accepting of the new political situation in Germany, perceiving National Socialism as a stabilising force in central Europe. It was the evidence of Hitler’s increasingly expansionist ambitions – the Anschluss with Austria, the Sudetenland crisis in 1938 and the taking of Czechoslovakia in early 1939 – that changed the British government’s position.

      Throughout the 1920s and thirties the Duke of Windsor, first as Prince of Wales and then briefly as King, received frequent foreign policy briefings from the government. These ended on the day he abdicated in December 1936, and he soon became out of touch with the British government’s stance towards the swiftly deteriorating European situation. He could not comprehend why Germany was suddenly considered a threat. If the royal family’s intransigence against him had been relaxed, if he had received an occasional briefing on the government’s position, he may have understood the reasons for British fears more clearly. As it was, by late 1939 the Duke of Windsor was still thinking in the terms of 1936, when Nazism had been regarded as acceptable.

      On Sunday, 3 December 1939, the first hints about the Windsor/ Bedaux relationship began to surface in London when an Intelligence officer named Hopkinson, serving in The Hague, reported on a confidential meeting he had had with a member of Dutch Intelligence called Beck. Hopkinson reported that Beck ‘informed me of an incident that might well be of interest to us concerning an American engineer named Charles Bedaux … On November 9 [the Dutch] M[ilitary] A[ttaché] in Berlin was delivering a note from de With [the Dutch Ambassador] to the Reich Chancellery, when he recognised B[edaux], who he’s met before … but B[edaux] ignored him, got into an official car (a Luftwaffe vehicle) and was driven off.’⁴⁰

      From November 1939 to April 1940, Britain’s Field Security Police and Military Intelligence watched with mounting concern as Charles Bedaux and the Duke of Windsor resurrected their friendship. Repeatedly throughout this period, as soon as Windsor returned from a tour of the French lines, he would meet Bedaux for dinner, following which Bedaux would take a train to Holland, where he would call on Count Julius Zech-Burkesroda, the German Ambassador in The Hague.⁴¹ A spy at the German Embassy who ‘had an opportunity to see the transcribed information that B[edaux] brings verbally’ reported to British Intelligence in Holland that the information was ‘of the best quality – defence material, strengths, weaknesses, and so on’.⁴² In early April 1940, the agent reported that ‘Z[ech-Burkesroda] accidentally referred to B[edaux]’s source as “Willi”.’⁴³ ‘Willi’ was the German code-name for the Duke of Windsor.

      The information passed on by Bedaux enabled Germany to successfully circumvent France and Britain’s defences, aiming for the weak point at Sedan, and almost certainly caused the Allied rout that culminated in Dunkirk.

      Throughout this period, the seven months from November 1939 to June 1940, there was an unusual cessation in the high-echelon, Hitler-originated peace moves. Because of the information passed on by de Ropp and Bedaux, Hitler had come to believe that if Germany could inflict a sudden crushing defeat on the Allied armies, the British and French governments’ resolve would evaporate, and they would sue for peace. There was only one flaw to this plan, but it was a devastating one. The plan was based on the character of Neville Chamberlain, and the assumption that he would wilt in the face of unrelenting military pressure. Unfortunately for Hitler, in May 1940, dogged by ill-health and the ruination of his credibility as a war leader, Chamberlain resigned, and was replaced as Prime Minister by Winston Churchill.