Coffee With Hitler by Charles Spicer

Author:Charles Spicer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2022-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

These brave individuals were sure the British ambassador was wrongly convincing the Cabinet Hitler wanted peace when, in truth, he planned to attack Czechoslovakia towards the end of the month, confident Britain and France would not intervene. Hitler had promised, ‘even babes suckling at their mothers’ breasts must not be spared’, while complaining that the current peace had made the Germans soft, his old Party comrades had become ‘corpulent’, his generals were ‘too bourgeois to be able to take heroic decisions’, and so anyone opposing him would be shot. Only Ribbentrop and Himmler fully supported Hitler’s extreme position, while the other German leaders were ‘aghast’. Even Hermann Göring, as always playing a double game, quietly opposed Hitler’s plans. The German people were ‘disturbed and uneasy’ and would support a peaceful settlement in Czechoslovakia. It was imperative for Nevile Henderson to be replaced by a ‘British special envoy of 1st class ability, of high rank and 1st class renown, with great experience and knowledge of the situation in Germany’.

But Conwell-Evans promised all had not yet been lost; prompt action could ‘save Europe from war, and central Europe from collapse and Bolshevism, and restore and preserve that fine German civilisation’. Christie had also hurried back to London that weekend to brief Vansittart on intelligence supplied by Captain Fritz Wiedemann (Hitler’s adjutant and commanding officer in the Great War), who confirmed that the Führer had outlined his wider ambitions: ‘We must over-run Czechoslovakia as soon as possible… next year is France’s turn… the year after [1940] we have to settle Britain and then my world Empire will be completed.’23

That same Sunday, Lord Brocket painted a quite different picture to Horace Wilson in Downing Street to be shared with the prime minister, whom he had encouraged the Führer to meet. He explained that his tea-party companion had been in good health and spirits and had promised he had ‘no intention whatever of attacking England at any time, or of going to the West or attacking France’, joking he would be as likely to want to conquer China.

Notwithstanding Brocket’s interference, there is no doubt both the Foreign Office and Downing Street were taking Conwell-Evans and Christie’s intelligence seriously. Oliver Harvey, Halifax’s secretary, noted in his diary that Conwell-Evans had brought home ‘passionate pleas from moderate German leaders begging H.M.G. to take some step to stop their mad Chancellor!’24 At the Cabinet meeting on Monday, ahead of Hitler’s crucial speech closing the Parteitag, Halifax told his colleagues that, based on good intelligence, he now believed Hitler was ‘possibly or even probably mad’ and may already have decided to attack Czechoslovakia ‘coûte que coûte’ (no matter the cost). Sceptical as to whether a direct ultimatum would suffice, he cited ‘Professor [sic] Conwell-Evans’ as the source of a report that Hitler had been advised by his ambassador in Paris that France, the United Kingdom and the United States would indeed fight if he attacked Czechoslovakia. After some debate, the Cabinet agreed he was mad, and it would not

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