Killing Hitler (29 page)

But there may have been an element in Stalin’s relationship with Hitler that went beyond mere criminality and pathological bloodthirstiness. Some have even conjectured that, although the two never met, the relationship had homoerotic undertones.
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Whatever the truth of that suggestion, it is perhaps plausible to conclude that Stalin’s targeting of Hitler was as much the result of fury as of ideology. Stalin had allied himself with Hitler in 1939 and had been betrayed. That betrayal alone was sufficient for Hitler to be slated for assassination. The only surprise, perhaps, is that Stalin had the circumspection to call his assassins off.

CHAPTER 6
The Dirty War: The British and the Special Operations Executive

If I were given a gun and told to take two shots, I would shoot Himmler, then Ribbentrop and brain Hitler with the butt of the rifle.

—
NEVILLE HENDERSON, BRITISH AMBASSADOR IN BERLIN 1937–39
¹

THE TWENTIETH OF APRIL
1939
WAS ADOLF HITLER’S FIFTIETH
birthday. A public holiday and one of the most important dates in the Nazi calendar, it was to be a day of grand celebrations the length and breadth of the German Reich. The streets were festooned with bunting, church bells tolled, and public buildings proudly displayed the swastika. Across the country, local party officials made last-minute preparations for their parades and veterans polished their medals. Thousands of nervous teenagers rehearsed the oath that they were to recite on their formal induction into the Hitler Youth: “I promise to do my duty at all times, in love and loyalty to our
Führer
and our flag.”
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In Munich, meanwhile, a new crop of entrants was ceremonially welcomed into the leadership cadre of the Nazi Party. Elsewhere, a fortunate few were amnestied and released from the concentration camps, after swearing not to breathe a word of their experiences.

In Berlin, the celebrations had begun the previous day. In the afternoon, Hitler had overseen the inauguration of the new East-West Axis, a redesigned and widened boulevard stretching for 7 kilometers west of the Brandenburg Gate, the first phase in his ambitious plans to create a new capital for the Nazi Reich: Germania. In a convoy of limousines, he had traveled the length of the Axis to rapturous applause, before alighting to declare the grand new avenue open to traffic.

That evening, he had repaired to the Reich Chancellery for a celebratory dinner and had watched the now customary torchlight parade thronging the streets beneath his balcony. As midnight struck, Hitler received the congratulations of his closest acolytes, as well as those of a succession of delegates from across the country. A display of gifts was prepared, and he perused the offerings—statues, paintings, and porcelain—with interest and occasional amusement. His most precious gift, however, had been prepared by his architect, Albert Speer. Set up in a side room was a 4-meter-tall model of the huge triumphal arch that would crown his rebuilt capital. Hitler contemplated the model “with visible emotion,” returning to it several times that evening.
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The following day, Hitler spent the morning receiving congratulatory telegrams from around the world, among others from Henry Ford and Pope Pius XII. Despite such benedictions, the international situation was tense. Little over a month previously, Hitler’s troops had occupied the rump of Czechoslovakia, thereby removing entirely from the map the mutilated remnant left by the Munich Agreement of the previous autumn. Soon after that, his next target had been lined up. Poland, it was thought, could be cajoled and threatened into an ominous-sounding “final settlement of the German-Polish relationship.”
⁴
But, unlike Czechoslovakia, Poland had stubbornly refused to be bullied and had stood fast.

The Western powers, too, finally began to show some resolve in their dealings with Hitler. They recognized the true aggressive nature of the Nazi regime and realized that appeasement had failed. They had not succeeded in sating Hitler’s territorial appetite;
rather, it appeared, they had encouraged him to gorge himself. Now, though they possessed few means to counter the German threat, they were determined to stand firm. Barely three weeks before Hitler’s birthday, they had offered a formal guarantee to the Poles, promising to “lend all the support in their power” in the event of any action that “clearly threatened Polish independence.”
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Hitler, it appeared, faced checkmate.

Shortly before 11 a.m. that spring morning, Hitler returned to the stage on the new East-West Axis for the traditional parade. He traveled in an open Mercedes at the head of a convoy of seven vehicles containing bodyguards, police, and SS. The surrounding streets had been cordoned off, and security personnel had manned the nearby vantage points. The crowds were enthusiastic and less than orderly. Trees, windowsills, and scaffolding were all used to get a better view.

At the reviewing stand, Hitler stood on a raised dais, backed by an enormous German eagle and six swastika banners. He was flanked by his bodyguards, chiefs of staff, aides, generals, field marshals, and admirals, while invited guests, foreign ambassadors, and countless other dignitaries were seated in a large overarching grandstand. Lesser notables and privileged members of the public crowded into a second stand on the opposite side of the avenue. Together, they were to witness a spectacular display of German military might. For almost five hours every branch of the armed forces paraded past the podium—column after column of Wehrmacht, cavalry, paratroopers, sailors, airmen, and SS-
Leibstandarte
, all marching in perfect order to the blare of a military band. All the latest machinery was on display: tanks, antiaircraft guns, state-of-the-art artillery, even searchlights. Overhead, swarms of Messerschmitt fighters and Heinkel bombers droned past in formation. For the finale, the regimental colors were massed before the Führer and dipped in solemn salute. Hitler stood impassively throughout, acknowledging each unit with his trademark “German greeting.” He was presiding over the greatest military spectacle ever staged in the Third Reich and was sending an unequivocal message to his enemies and those who sought to curb his ambitions.

One of those present was the British military attaché to Berlin, Colonel Noel Mason-Macfarlane. A career soldier, Mason-Macfarlane had been a cadet at the Royal Military Academy before joining the Royal Artillery in 1909. Service in France and Mesopotamia in World War One had earned him the Croix de Guerre and the prestigious Military Cross. He was soon being tapped for senior staff positions. A poet, eccentric, and first-class cricketer, Mason-Macfarlane was described by a contemporary as “a man who believed in direct action” and one with “an incurable and out-of-date yearning to take a personal hand in righting the affairs of the world.”
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Despite these distinctly undiplomatic traits, he was sent to Vienna as military attaché in 1931, moving to Berlin in the same capacity six years later. In that time, he developed an unrivaled knowledge of the German military machine and drew the conclusion that Hitler was not to be trusted. In consequence, he gained a reputation as a hawk, advocating a belligerent policy toward Germany and suggesting that Britain should not wait to be attacked.
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In the autumn of 1938, as the Czech crisis loomed, word of Mason-Macfarlane’s unorthodox opinions had evidently reached the Gestapo. He was visited that August by a German by the name of von Koerber who, professing revulsion for the Nazis, attempted to enlist the colonel as a fellow conspirator. Unimpressed by what he considered to be an agent provocateur, Mason-Macfarlane responded with the standard diplomatic reply: “Any attempt to interfere with domestic German politics from without,” he said, “would most assuredly lead to exactly what we wish to avoid.”
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Despite such protestations of innocence, Mason-Macfarlane was indeed considering some interference in German politics. In fact, he was beginning to think the unthinkable. In a letter from the British embassy in Berlin to London in March 1939, he was described as being “in very warlike mood” and “anxious that we should declare war on Germany within the next three weeks.”
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Three weeks later, at Hitler’s birthday parade, he was photographed for the official commemorative volume. While a French colleague next to him relaxed with a half-smile of Gallic hauteur,
Mason-Macfarlane wore what can only be described as a scowl of contempt.
¹⁰

A few days before the parade, Mason-Macfarlane had been standing at his drawing-room window, overlooking the new Axis. He was watching the workmen prepare the decorations, hanging swastika banners and erecting the plywood columns that flanked the saluting base. While talking to a colleague his mind wandered to the scene unfolding below. After a short silence, he spoke. “Easy rifle shot,” he said, adding, “I could pick the bastard off from here as easy as winking.” He went on: “There’d be hell to pay, of course, and I’d be finished in every sense of the word. Still…with that lunatic out of the way we might be able to get some sense into things.” When his colleague warily conceded that it was “an idea,” he agreed: “Yes. Bloody awful one…but I’d be prepared to do it.”
¹¹

It was, in fact, an idea that Mason-Macfarlane had been mulling over for some time. A few weeks earlier, in a memorandum to London, he had warned of the dire consequences for Britain if Hitler was not “unexpectedly wafted to Valhalla.”
¹²
He then developed his thoughts further. His residence, he argued, was barely 100 meters from the saluting base used for the large military reviews. During a parade, a marksman with a high-velocity rifle could make an end of Hitler, while the noise of the crowd and the military band would suffice to drown out the rifle shot and afford the assassin a good chance of a getaway.
¹³

Though Mason-Macfarlane had offered to pull the trigger himself, some sources claim that he had a rival for the role of assassin.
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William Stephenson was a Canadian businessman and former Great War pilot who had apparently also suggested assassinating Hitler with a sniper’s rifle at around the same time. Yet Stephenson’s role in the drama, if any, is very difficult for the sober historian to divine. Though he went on to play an important role in promoting wartime intelligence cooperation between the United Kingdom and United States, no contemporary evidence supports his claim to have advocated Hitler’s assassination in 1939. Indeed, to make matters worse, Stephenson later gained an unenviable reputation as somewhat of a fantasist, engaging
numerous biographers to further embellish and exaggerate his already impressive life story.
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In this way, he would unilaterally award himself the Legion d’Honneur, the Croix de Guerre, and two bars to his (genuine) Distinguished Flying Cross. He even claimed to have won the world amateur lightweight boxing championship while serving in the Royal Flying Corps in 1918.
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One has to conclude that Stephenson’s claim to have been a would-be assassin of the Führer most probably belongs in the same category.

Mason-Macfarlane, meanwhile, was deadly serious, and was motivated not by vainglory but by a genuine concern that Hitler was leading Germany once again into war. When Whitehall heard of his plan, however, it was aghast. The foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, commented sternly that “we have not reached that stage…when we have to use assassination as a substitute for diplomacy.”
¹⁷
Mason-Macfarlane was informed, with masterly British understatement, that such an act would be “unsportsmanlike.”
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Two months later, he was transferred back to Alder-shot. He had clearly hit a nerve. But it was not that he was treading on the toes of the intelligence service; rather, he was advocating something close to heresy.

Established just before the First World War, the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) consisted of two branches, responsible for domestic and foreign security and counterespionage. The foreign section (which became known as MI6) operated on a shoestring budget via the network of British embassies and consulates, where the passport control officer usually doubled as the resident intelligence agent.
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Its primary objective, of course, was the gathering of information via a network of agents and informers. Any dabbling in the darker arts of assassination and sabotage was viewed with the utmost distaste. For one thing, MI6 agents were forbidden to operate against their host country.
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For another, MI6 still clung to a quaint nineteenth-century ideal of the “gentleman spy” and had a profound aversion to all such nefarious activities. As MI6’s founder, Mansfield Cumming, wrote, the secret agent should be

a gentleman, and a capable one, absolutely honest with considerable tact and at the same time force of character…experience shows that any amount of brilliance or low cunning will not make up for a lack of scrupulous personal honesty. In the long run it is only the honest man who can defeat the ruffian.
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Indeed, when Britain’s most celebrated spy, Sidney Reilly, arrived in Moscow in 1918, he soon fell foul of the ruling “softly, softly” ethos. After marching to the Kremlin gates, posing as an emissary of Lloyd-George, and demanding to see Lenin (whom he allegedly intended to assassinate), he was given a dressing-down by the MI6 station chief and threatened with expulsion.
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In the opinion of one fellow agent, Reilly was considered “untrustworthy and unsuitable to work.” According to another, he was “very clever [but] entirely unscrupulous.”
²³
Reilly, who would one day serve as the inspiration for James Bond, would clearly never qualify as a gentleman spy.