Camp Z: How British Intelligence Broke Hitler's Deputy by Stephen McGinty

Author:Stephen McGinty
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780857380715
Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc
Published: 2011-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

10

Jagged Thoughts and Treacherous Suspicions

The book at bedtime for Rudolf Hess was the memoir of Sir Neville Henderson, the British Ambassador to Germany from 1937–1939. Henderson had believed more could be achieved with Hitler with a pat than a firm hand and, in February 1939, he cabled the Foreign Office that, ‘If we handle him right, my belief is that he will become gradually more pacific. But if we treat him as a pariah or mad dog we shall turn him finally and irrevocably into one.’ As Hess lay in bed, with his broken leg raised in a steel frame and the windows open to allow what little summer breeze there was to pass through the blackout curtains, he found his spirits raised with each page of Failure of a Mission: Berlin 1937–1939. So certain was he of Germany’s success that he announced to the duty officer watching him read that he had now decided he would rather return to Germany than accept the governorship of any of the victorious Reich’s new colonies.

The next evening, Saturday 13 July, Hess’s ebullient mood ballooned further as he dined from a tray on his lap with Bill Malone, who was smartly dressed in his ‘Blue Patrols’ (for which he received a sartorial compliment). The subject of Unity Mitford began the conversation: Hess told the story of how she chased Hitler around Germany before shooting herself in the ‘English Garden’ at Munich upon the declaration of war. The doctor who operated on her was a personal friend of Hess and had assured him that she would be ‘quite insane for the rest of her life’. From Mitford they moved to music.

Although Foley had previously reported Hess’s lack of interest, Malone was keen to record that Hess was quite the aficionado who regularly attended concerts in Berlin, and was even aware of the bad echo that plagued the Albert Hall in London. (Before his suicide attempt he would press his ear up against the window to hear Beethoven played on a record player in the officers’ anteroom.) Then from music, and with scarcely a missed beat, they moved to the Mass. Although the Roman Catholic faith was on the rise in Germany and Hess admitted to being more religious than most Nazis, he insisted that Germany would soon sweep away Christianity ‘as being only a Jewish fable and replace it by a new German religion’. The pair spoke of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, whom Hess had met, but admitted that he had not seen enough of him to form an opinion.

What had begun with Unity Mitford ended with maquillage. Was it because men like it, enquired Hess, that women in England used so much make-up? It was a feature he had always noted when meeting an English rose in Germany. The female ATS driver who drove him from hospital in Scotland had worn none. Was this, he asked, an army regulation?

Over a few hours the following afternoon, Malone struck

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