Hitler

urgency, and that he had to speak personally to the Führer. When Hitler read Heß’s letter, the colour drained from his face. Albert Speer, busying himself with architectural sketches at the time, suddenly heard an ‘almost animal-like scream’. Then Hitler bellowed, ‘Bormann immediately! Where is Bormann?!’
    In his letter, Heß had outlined his motives for flying to meet the Duke of Hamilton, and aspects of a plan for peace between Germany and Britain to be put before ‘Barbarossa’ was launched. He claimed he had made three previous attempts to reach Scotland, but had been forced to abort them because of mechanical problems with the aircraft. His aim was to bring about, through his own person, the realization of Hitler’s long-standing idea of friendship with Britain which the Führer himself, despite all efforts, had not succeeded in achieving. If the Führer were not in agreement, then he could have him declared insane.
    Göring – residing at the time in his castle at Veldenstein near Nuremberg – was telephoned straight away. Hitler was in no mood for small-talk. ‘Göring, get here immediately,’ he barked into the telephone. ‘Something dreadful has happened.’ Ribbentrop was also summoned. Hitler, meanwhile, had ordered Pintsch, the hapless bearer of ill tidings, and Heß’s other adjutant, Alfred Leitgen, arrested, and spent his time marching up and down the hall in a rage. The mood in the Berghof was one of high tension and speculation. Amid the turmoil, Hitler was clear-sighted enough to act quickly to rule out any possible power-vacuum in the party leadership arising from Heß’s defection. Next day, 12 May, he issued a terse edict stipulating that the former Office of the Deputy Leader would now be termed the Party Chancellery, and be subordinated to him personally. It would be led, as before, by Party Comrade Martin Bormann.
    Hitler persuaded himself – taking his lead from what Heß himself in his letter had suggested – that the Deputy Führer was indeed suffering from mental delusion, and insisted on making his ‘madness’ the centre-point of the extremely awkward communiqué which had to be put out to the German people. There was still no word of Heß’s whereabouts when the communiqué was broadcast at 8 p.m. that evening. The communiqué mentioned the letter which had been left behind, showing ‘in its confusion unfortunately the traces of a mental derangement’, giving rise to fears that he had been the ‘victim of hallucinations’. ‘Under these circumstances,’ the communiqué ended, it had to be presumed that ‘Party Comrade Heß had somewhere on his journey crashed, that is, met with an accident.’
    Goebbels, overlooked in the first round of Hitler’s consultations, had by then also been summoned to the Obersalzberg. ‘The Führer is completely crushed,’ the Propaganda Minister noted in his diary. ‘Whata spectacle for the world: a mentally-deranged second man after the Führer.’ Meanwhile, early on 13 May, the BBC in London had brought the official announcement that Heß indeed found himself in British captivity.
    The first German communiqué composed by Hitler the previous day would plainly no longer suffice. The new communiqué of 13 May acknowledged Heß’s flight to Scotland, and capture. It held open the possibility that he had been entrapped by the British Secret Service. Affected by delusions, he had undertaken the action of an idealist without any notion of the consequences. His action, the communiqué ended, would alter nothing in the struggle against Britain.
    The two communiqués, forced ultimately to concede that the Deputy Führer had flown to the enemy, and attributing the action to his mental state, bore all the hallmarks of a hasty and ill-judged attempt to play down the enormity of the scandal. Remarkably, Hitler had not turned to Goebbels for propaganda advice on how to present the débâcle, but had relied instead at first on Otto Dietrich, the press chief. Goebbels was highly critical from the outset about the ‘mental illness’ explanation. A real difficulty had to be faced: how to explain that a man recognized for many years as mentally unbalanced had been left in such an important position in the running of the Reich. ‘It’s rightly asked how such an idiot could be the second man after the Führer,’ Goebbels remarked.
    Goebbels felt the blow to prestige so deeply that he wanted to avoid being seen in public. ‘It’s