Hitler's Spy Chief (37 page)

Leverkuen, like his opposite numbers in Istanbul, was monitoring events in the Balkans. From there it was becoming increasingly clear that the British and Americans were unlikely to succeed in keeping the Russians out of central Europe. The British transfer of allegiance from the royalist partisans in Yugoslavia to the Communists under Tito was observed in good time. It implied an understanding with Moscow not only with regard to the conduct of the war but to the future arrangements after the war. All these trends injected urgency into the German contacts with the Americans.

It is important to recall that all this was happening a year before the Allied landings in Normandy. The possibility of cooperating with the Germans against the mortal enemy of capitalism held some attraction for
many Americans as well as many Britons. The Americans were placed in a much easier position than the British here, for they had had very little personal grievance against the Germans. America had been neither occupied nor bombed and the conflict in the Atlantic, in North Africa and Italy took the form of ordinary military confrontation. There was not, as yet, any expression on the American side of uncontrollable animosity, though the fate of the Jews rightly disturbed many at every level of American society.

As the talks progressed, von Papen's position became more visible to those on the Allied side. They noted, too, that Hitler kept von Papen in his post, though never allowing all the members of his family to leave Germany at the same time. Both the German opposition and the Nazi leadership were placing hopes on the wily diplomat pulling something off with the Americans. Hitler appears at any rate not to have been displeased with von Papen's efforts. By August the talks were given further impetus by reports in August 1943 from the Turkish foreign minister, who explained to the British ambassador, Sir Hugh Knatchbull-Hugessen, that von Papen had told him that he expected shortly to be summoned to Germany to replace Ribbentrop. Such a development could only have presaged a full-blown diplomatic offensive towards the western Allies to achieve a compromise peace.

Von Papen, according to a later OSS assessment, had told the Turkish foreign minister that: ‘his own role and that of Turkey would become clear. With his help Turkey would be asked to intervene in the hope of securing a negotiated peace.'
22
According to this assessment, Papen was not ruling out the possibility that he might even succeed Hitler. As von Papen had cabled to Ribbentrop when the latter had prevented him from meeting Spellman, ‘If there is no use talking peace, there is no point in maintaining missions abroad.'
23

Canaris, by sending Leverkuen to Istanbul, had indeed seen the trend of where peace-feelers might be renewed, but he was becoming increasingly
diffident, not least in the face of continual British hostility to an agreement.

Hugessen, in response to the Turkish minister, noted that ‘our terms were unconditional surrender', but his telegram draws attention to ‘earlier guidance on the subject in May', an admission that the subject matter of the conversation was not new and that the peace-feelers between the Americans and Germans were gathering some momentum.
24

Indeed, Roberts extensively minutes his thoughts on any modification of the unconditional surrender doctrine under the interesting heading: ‘PEACE APPROACH BY VON PAPEN', a title suggesting that the German ambassador's activities with the Americans were generating quite a lot of traffic.

The impact of these talks was now involving London and Churchill. He appears almost to have had a slight change of heart by the summer. For once, he encouragingly minuted: ‘There is no need for us to discourage this process by continually uttering the slogan ‘Unconditional Surrender'.
25

Although this is the only official reference by Churchill to a weakening of the Casablanca line, the activities of the previous weeks indicate how far the Allies had travelled away from the formal declaration at Casablanca. Unconditional surrender was perhaps not quite unconditional. This would certainly be the case with Italy in a few months.

In Scandinavia meanwhile, the peace-feelers explored earlier in the war were also being reinvigorated. Here, the principal intermediary was Count Wallenberg, a scion of the most influential family of Sweden with excellent personal links to London and Berlin. Once again, the British documents are silent, but by May 1943 these contacts had clearly assumed a regular aspect. That month a memorandum from Carl Goerdeler, a possible choice for an alternative German leader well-known to the British from before the war, was dispatched via Wallenberg to Churchill.

The memorandum requested: ‘Please restrict bombing of cities as this will only make a putsch more difficult by destroying all communications.' The tone, as well as the content, of this fragment suggests that it
is only one of several exchanges between two parties working towards a common aim. As we have seen from Bentinck's comments, a Goerdeler government in Germany was being widely discussed in London.

As well as these contacts, the lines of communication between the Abwehr and the West through the Vatican were also reactivated. Josef Mueller and General Beck met and again discussed with Canaris the chance of treating with London through the Vatican and Osborne.
26
It was agreed the attempt should be made and Mueller came to Rome and met advisers to the Pope but the Gestapo were on Mueller's trail and he was promptly arrested.

The British papers unsurprisingly show (so far) nothing of this. But it is clear from Vatican archives and German documents that the plans were again well advanced. The Pope, via one of his staff, asked Osborne the significant question, in this context, of whether, if Hitler were overthrown by Germans, there would be a chance of agreement, or whether the formula of unconditional surrender ruled out such a possibility? Osborne's reply to this question does not appear to be in the British files but it is suggested by subsequent statements by the Vatican that he did not offer outright rejection of the possibility. Significantly, on 6 March, Osborne received a telegram from Orme Sargent inviting him to return to London. Osborne would return to London for extended briefings and, most important of all for secret negotiations, new ciphers.
27

Vatican documents show that the Pope indicated that after a German coup he would be willing to act as a mediator between the warring parties and send a special envoy to Berlin; an act which would show the world that a new start had come to Germany.
28
So keen was the Pope to assume the historic role of the Vatican as mediator that he was not prepared to compromise it by openly denouncing the horrendous persecution of the Jews.

As Kessel, the German diplomat assisting Weiszäcker in the embassy to the Holy See noted, this fear of burning bridges with the Nazi leadership
and therefore losing the chance to broker a peace caused Pius XII daily anguish over the fate of the Jews. The reproaches of Edith Stein, the Jewish convert who became a Carmelite nun, whose letter imploring him to take up the cause of Jewry remains to this day the most eloquent testimony to the challenges facing the Pope's moral leadership, did not go unread. But the Pope was convinced that his public intervention would not save a single Jewish life and that everything had to be sacrificed, in his view, to the greater cause of ending the war and with it the conditions which made the factory slaughter of the innocents possible. His thinly veiled reference to the plight of the Jews in his Christmas speech of 1942 had incensed both Hitler and Mussolini. ‘The Vicar of God … ought never to open his mouth,' Mussolini threatened.
29
Hitler, as we shall see, considered more severe measures against the Pope.

As one who saw the Pope daily at that time commented, Pius XII struggled ‘day by day, week by week and month by month' to come up with a solution that could help the Jews, while not compromising the chances of peace.
30
This struggle did not prevent the Pope personally intervening to save most of Rome's Jews when the Germans arrived in September 1943 following the Italian armistice.

On the eve of the Germans taking over Rome after the Italians sued for peace in September, Weiszäcker and the Pope worked into the small hours to get Rome's Jewish population into safe houses inside the Vatican or religious houses outside the perimeter which enjoyed extra-territorial status. While the Pope ordered his religious to open their doors, Weiszäcker travelled along the Vatican's perimeter ensuring every German officer he encountered knew that they must ‘as a direct order of the Führer' respect the Vatican's sovereign and neutral status. Thanks to their efforts, 7,000 Roman Jews out of a total population – according to SS figures – of just over 8,000 were saved. The respecting of the Vatican's extra-territorial status also allowed the ‘enemy's' diplomats, including Osborne, to continue to work largely uninterrupted – a privilege his opposite number Weiszäcker would not be afforded
when the Americans arrived under General Clarke a few months later.

The Pope's role was fraught with danger and the risks run are illuminated by General Karl Wolff who, as commander of all SS troops in Italy, was ordered on 15 September to abduct the Pope to Hitler's field headquarters in Rastenberg. Already on 26 July Goebbels had recorded Hitler's desire to seize the Pope.
31

Hewel's minutes of his conversation with Hitler noted the following sinister exchange:

Hewel: ‘Should we say the Vatican and its exits will be occupied?'

Hitler: ‘That doesn't make any difference. Do you think the Vatican embarrasses me? We'll take that over right away. For one thing the entire diplomatic corps are in there. It's all the same to me. That rabble are in there. We'll get that bunch of swine out of there … Later we can make apologies.'
32

Two thousand SS troops surrounded the Vatican and systematically blocked all the roads and several underground tunnels linking the miniature state and the Italian capital.
33
Hitler had shown himself perfectly capable of imprisoning statesmen and holding them as hostages. King Leopold, Marshal Pétain, Schuschnigg and Admiral Horthy were all eloquent testimony to this gruesome pastime of the Führer's.

All that saved the Pope was the belief held by many senior Germans, including Canaris, even Himmler and perhaps eventually Hitler himself, that an unseized Pope could be useful in a negotiated peace. But this protection, as has been pointed out, was ‘flimsy'.
34
Wolff took his time, gradually the idea faded away. The Pope was on probation, but as Chadwick points out at any moment he could have been seized. Indeed, it is not beyond probability that part of Pius XII's sensitive and highly intelligent nature may have wished at times for such a fate to liberate him from the appalling choices he now faced.

But if the Germans hoped the Pope could play a role it seemed more
and more unlikely as 1943 slipped away. After the strange and still puzzling lull before launching Operation Citadel, during which the Germans had tried to come to an understanding with Stalin, they renewed their offensive against the Russians in July. The threat of a separate German–Russian peace was now slipping away with Manstein's offensive. Mirroring its ebb were also the chances of an Anglo–German understanding. If the Soviet Union no longer felt the need to do a deal with Berlin, London need not become too involved in talking to the opposition. Germany was doomed.

The talks in Istanbul failed to progress. Von Papen was not made foreign minister, though he continued to hold talks with representatives of the Americans throughout the rest of the year and well into 1944.

The impetus was gradually but perceptibly lost. London and Moscow had already come to a broad understanding about the future of post-war Europe as early as 1941, and it was to be constructed on the wreck of a destroyed Germany.

Mr Berle of the State Department had asked Mr Stevenson of the Foreign Office whether proposed arrangements for the reconstitution of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia under ‘some kind of federated system but in close relation with Russia did not really mean – to the Russians at least – that they were to dominate that entire area.'

Stevenson gave the candid reply: ‘Speaking frankly, the British government had to give a half-promise to that effect. At all events they had permitted the Russians to believe that the British would be favourable.' Mr Berle drily observed: ‘This would necessarily bring the Russian system considerably west of Vienna.'
35

As Canaris had foreseen,
expiation
was Germany's unavoidable destiny.

*
Another theory links the crash with the fact that high ranking representatives of an organisation trying to rescue Jews from Germany and resettle them in Palestine were also on board. Howard himself had impeccable old Austrian antecedents . See Colvin,
Flight
777

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE END OF THE ABWEHR

It was his particular personal tragedy that Admiral Canaris with all the knowledge that was at his disposal was able perhaps before any one else to recognise the fateful approach of an inexorable doom
.

PAUL LEVERKUEHN
1

While the Abwehr ran with whatever possibilities there were in Istanbul, the Vatican, Scandinavia and Switzerland, it became clear as the autumn of 1943 approached that
pace
Casablanca, whatever obstacles were mounting against an understanding with Germany, conditions were beginning to be negotiated for Italy to cease hostilities.

Inevitably, once again, the Vatican was involved. Osborne, the British minister who had gone on ‘leave' and returned to London on 8 April, was to spend nearly three months in intense activity in King Charles Street. Osborne, like most intelligent diplomats of his vintage, found the doctrine of unconditional surrender inimical to the traditions of European diplomacy. His summons to London occurred as the German contacts with the Americans in Istanbul were beginning to yield some movement and the ill-fated bomb intended to kill Hitler was to be placed in the cognac bottles of Smolensk.
2