Read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Online
Authors: William L. Shirer
The next day, July 31, the ambassador was again wiring Ribbentrop “most urgent and top secret,” telling him that according to the Spanish emissary, who had just returned from seeing the Windsors in Lisbon, the Duke and Duchess, while “strongly impressed by reports of English intrigues against them and the danger of their personal safety,” apparently were planning to sail on August 1, though Windsor was trying “to conceal the true date.” The Spanish Minister of the Interior, the ambassador added, was going to make “a last effort to prevent the Duke and Duchess from leaving.”
The news that the Windsors might be leaving so soon alarmed Ribbentrop and from his special train at Fuschl he got off a “most urgent, top secret” telegram to the German minister in Lisbon late on the afternoon of the same day, July 31. He asked that the Duke be informed through his Portuguese banker host of the following:
Basically Germany wants peace with the English people. The
Churchill
clique stands in the way of this peace. Following the rejection of the Fuehrer’s last appeal to reason, Germany is now determined to force England to make peace by every means in her power. It would be a good thing if the Duke were to keep himself prepared for further developments. In such case Germany would be willing to co-operate most closely with the Duke and to clear the way for any desire expressed by the Duke and Duchess … Should the Duke and Duchess have other intentions, but be ready to collaborate in the establishment of a good relationship between Germany and England, Germany is likewise prepared to co-operate with the Duke and to arrange the future of the Ducal couple in accordance with their wishes. The Portuguese confidant, with whom the Duke is living, should make the most earnest effort to prevent his departure tomorrow, since reliable reports are in our possession to the effect that Churchill intends to get the Duke into his power in the Bahamas in order to keep him there permanently, and also because the establishment of contact at an appropriate moment with the Duke on the Bahama Islands would present the greatest difficulty for us …
The German Foreign Minister’s urgent message reached the legation in Lisbon shortly before midnight. The German minister saw Senhor Espirito Santo Silva during the course of the night and urged him to pass the word on to his distinguished guest. This the banker did on the morning of August 1 and according to a dispatch of the legation the Duke was deeply impressed.
The Duke paid tribute to the Fuehrer’s desire for peace, which was in complete agreement with his own point of view. He was firmly convinced that if he had been King it would never have come to war. To the appeal made to him to co-operate at a suitable time in the establishment of peace he agreed gladly. However, at the present time he must follow the official orders of his
Government. Disobedience would disclose his intentions prematurely, bring about a scandal, and deprive him of his prestige in England. He was also convinced that the present moment was too early for him to come forward, since there was as yet no inclination in England for an approach to Germany. However, as soon as this frame of mind changed he would be ready to return immediately … Either England would yet call upon him, which he considered to be entirely possible, or Germany would express the desire to negotiate with him. In both cases he was prepared for any personal sacrifice and would make himself available without the slightest personal ambition.
He would remain in continuing communication with his previous host and had agreed with him upon a code word, upon receiving which he would immediately come back over.
To the consternation of the Germans, the Duke and Duchess sailed on the evening of August 1 on the American liner
Excalibur
. In a final report on the failure of his mission made in a long telegram “to the Foreign Minister [Ribbentrop] personally” on the following day, Schellenberg declared that he had done everything possible right up to the last moment to prevent the departure. A brother of Franco, who was the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon, was prevailed upon to make a last-minute appeal to the Windsors not to go. The automobile carrying the ducal baggage was “sabotaged,” Schellenberg claimed, so that the luggage arrived at the ship late. The Germans spread rumors that a time bomb had been planted aboard the ship. Portuguese officials delayed the sailing time until they had searched the liner from top to bottom.
Nevertheless, the Windsors departed that evening. The Nazi plot had failed. Schellenberg, in his final report to Ribbentrop, blamed it on the influence of Monckton, on the collapse of “the Spanish plan” and on “the Duke’s mentality.”
There is one last paper on the plot in the captured files of the German Foreign Minister. On August 15 the German minister in Lisbon wired Berlin: “The confidant has just received a telegram from the Duke from Bermuda, asking him to send a communication as soon as action was advisable. Should any answer be made?”
No answer has been found in the Wilhelmstrasse papers. By the middle of August, Hitler had decided to conquer Great Britain by armed force. There was no need to find a new King for England. The island, like all the other conquered territory, would be ruled from Berlin. Or so Hitler thought.
So much for this curious tale, as told by the secret German documents and added to by Schellenberg, who was the least reliable of men—though it is difficult to believe that he invented his own role, which he admits was a ridiculous one, out of whole cloth.
In a statement made through his London solicitors on August 1, 1957, after the German documents were released for publication, the Duke branded the communications between Ribbentrop and the German ambassadors
in Spain and
Portugal
as “complete fabrications and, in part, gross distortions of the truth.” Windsor explained that while in Lisbon in 1940, waiting to sail for the Bahamas, “certain people,” whom he discovered to be pro-Nazi sympathizers, made definite efforts to persuade him to return to Spain and not assume his post as governor.
“It was even suggested to me that there would be a personal risk to the Duchess and myself if we were to proceed to the Bahamas,” he said. “At no time did I ever entertain any thought of complying with such a suggestion, which I treated with the contempt it deserved.”
The British Foreign Office issued a formal statement declaring that the Duke never wavered in his loyalty to Great Britain during the war.
42
* And to gaze down at the tomb of Napoleon at the Invalides. “That,” he told his faithful photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, “was the greatest and finest moment of my life.”
† The emphasis is Jodl’s.
‡ Jodl also suggested the possibility of “extending the war to the periphery”—that is, attacking the British Empire with the help not only of Italy but of Japan, Spain and Russia.
* Even so astute a military critic as Liddell Hart neglected always to do so, and this neglect mars his book
The German Generals Talk.
Talk they did, but not always with very good memories or even very truthfully.
* German intelligence overestimated British strength on the ground throughout July, August and September by about eight divisions. Early in July the German General Staff estimated British strength at from fifteen to twenty divisions “of fighting value.” Actually there were twenty-nine divisions in England at this time but not more than half a dozen of much “fighting value,” as they had practically no armor or artillery. But contrary to widespread belief at the time, which has lingered to this day, the British Army by the middle of September would have been a match for the German divisions then allocated for the first wave of invasion. By that time it had ready to meet an attack on the south coast a force of sixteen well-trained divisions, of which three were armored, with four divisions plus an armored brigade covering the east coast from the Thames to the Wash. This represented a remarkable recovery after the debacle at Dunkirk, which had left Britain virtually defenseless on land in June.
British intelligence of the German plans was extremely faulty and for the first three months of the invasion threat almost completely wrong. Throughout the summer, Churchill and his military advisers remained convinced that the Germans would make their main landing attempt on the east coast and it was here that the bulk of the British land forces were concentrated until September.
* In his diary entry that evening Halder did not quote himself as above. He declared, however, that “the talk led only to the confirmation of an unbridgeable gap.” The Navy, he said, was “afraid of the British High Seas Fleet and maintained that a defense against this danger by the Luftwaffe was impossible.” Obviously by this time the German Navy, if not the Army, had few illusions about the striking power of Goering’s Air Force.
* Churchill says that neither he nor the chiefs of staff were “aware” that the decisive code word Cromwell had been given. It was sent out by Headquarters of the Home Forces. (
Their Finest Hour
, p. 312.) But four days later, on September 11, the Prime Minister did broadcast a warning that if the invasion were going to take place it could not “be long delayed. Therefore,” he said, “we must regard the next week or so as a very important period in our history. It ranks with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel, and Drake was finishing his game of bowls; or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon’s Grand Army at Boulogne.”
† The Germans were greatly impressed by reports from the embassy in Washington, which relayed information received there from London and embroidered on it. The American General Staff was said to believe that Britain couldn’t hold out much longer. According to Lieutenant Colonel von Lossberg (
Im Wehrmacht Fuehrungsstab
, p. 91) Hitler seriously expected a revolution to break out in Britain. Lossberg was an Army representative on OKW.
* On September 16, according to a German authority, R.A.F. bombers surprised a large invasion training exercise and inflicted heavy losses in men and landing vessels. This gave rise to many reports in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent that the Germans had actually attempted a landing and been repulsed by the British. (Georg W. Feuchter,
Geschichte des Luftkriegs
, p. 176.) I heard such a “report” on the night of September 16 in Geneva, Switzerland, where I was taking a few days off. On September 18 and again on the next day I saw two long ambulance trains unloading wounded soldiers in the suburbs of Berlin. From the bandages, I concluded the wounds were mostly burns. There had been no fighting anywhere for three months on land.
On September 21, confidential German Navy papers recorded that 21 transports and 214 barges—some 12 per cent of the total assembled for the invasion—had been lost or damaged. (
Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs
, p. 102.)
* The Luftwaffe claimed 134 British craft against a loss of 34. From that date on both sides grossly overestimated the damage they did the other.
* In London that evening an official communiqué reported 182 German planes shot down and 43 more probably destroyed. This gave a great fillip to British morale in general and to that of the hard-pressed fighter pilots in particular.
† At this time night defenses had not yet been perfected and the German losses were negligible.
* R.S.H.A., the initials of the Reich Central Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt), which, as has been noted, took over control in 1939 of the Gestapo, the Criminal Police and the Security Service, or S.D.
* Dr. Six was sentenced in 1948 at Nuremberg as a war criminal to twenty years in prison, but was released in 1952.
* The famous psychoanalyst had died in London in 1939.
† A number of Americans are on the arrest list, including Bernard Baruch, John Gunther, Paul Robeson, Louis Fischer, Daniel de Luce (the A.P. correspondent, who is listed under the D’s as “Daniel, de Luce—U.S.A. correspondent”) and M. W. Fodor, the Chicago
Daily News
correspondent, who was well known for his anti-Nazi writings.
* Fifty million Swiss francs, deposited in Switzerland, Ribbentrop told Schellenberg, adding that “the Fuehrer is quite ready to go to a higher figure.”
W
HILE HITLER WAS BUSY
that summer of 1940 directing the conquest of the West, Stalin was taking advantage of the Fuehrer’s preoccupations by moving into the
Baltic States
and reaching down into the Balkans.
On the surface all was friendly between the two great dictatorships. Molotov, acting for Stalin, lost no opportunity to praise and flatter the Germans on every occasion of a new act of aggression or a fresh conquest. When Germany invaded Norway and Denmark on April 9, 1940, the Soviet Foreign Commissar hastened to tell Ambassador von der Schulenburg in Moscow that very morning that “the Soviet Government understood the measures which were forced on Germany.” “We wish Germany,” said Molotov, “complete success in her defensive measures.”
1
A month later, when the German ambassador called on Molotov to inform him officially of the Wehrmacht’s attack in the West, which Ribbentrop had instructed his envoy to explain “was forced upon Germany by the impending Anglo–French push on the
Ruhr
by way of Belgium and Holland,” the Soviet statesman again expressed his pleasure. “Molotov received the communication in an understanding spirit,” Schulenburg wired Berlin, “and added that he realized that Germany must protect herself against Anglo–French attack. He had no doubt of our success.”
2
On June 17, the day France asked for an armistice, Molotov summoned Schulenburg to his office “and expressed the warmest congratulations of the Soviet Government on the splendid success of the German Wehrmacht.”
The Foreign Commissar had something else to say, and this did not sound quite so pleasant in German ears. He informed the German envoy, as the latter wired Berlin “most urgent,” of “the Soviet action against the Baltic States,” adding—and one can almost see the gleam in Molotov’s eyes—“that it had become necessary to put an end to all the intrigues by which England and France had tried to sow discord and mistrust between Germany and the Soviet Union in the Baltic States.”
3
To put an end to such “discord” the Soviet government, Molotov added, had dispatched
“special emissaries” to the three Baltic countries. They were, in fact, three of Stalin’s best hatchetmen: Dekanozov, who was sent to
Lithuania
; Vishinsky, to
Latvia
; Zhdanov, to Estonia.