ZGram - 12/27/2004 - "UK Telegraph: Diary Solves The Mystery Of Rudolf Hess"

Mon Dec 27 18:11:59 EST 2004

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

December 27, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

With mixed feelings, I am sending you the story that is making 
headlines everywhere.  I don't know enough about the Rudolf Hess 
controversy to judge if this is valuable or not, but many people I 
respect who have sent it to me think so.

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Mrs Foley's Diary Solves The Mystery Of Rudolf Hess

By Michael Smith
The Telegraph - UK
12-27-4

A brief entry in the diary of the wife of a British
spy has led to the discovery of the true story behind
one of the greatest mysteries of the Second World War
- the bizarre 1941 flight to Britain of Hitler's
deputy Rudolf Hess.

No single incident in Britain's wartime history has
given birth to so many conspiracy theories, all of
them centred on an alleged plot by the intelligence
services to lure Hess to Britain.

They range from suggestions that the man imprisoned by
the Allies after the war was not the real Hess, who
allegedly died in the 1942 air crash that killed the
Duke of Kent, to claims that British psychological
warfare experts conned him into coming to Britain so
they could use him in an anti-Nazi propaganda
campaign.

The response from academics has always been
disparaging. They regard the conspiracy theories as
patent nonsense and, perhaps in response, invariably
dismiss any claim of major MI6 involvement in the
affair.

But the diary has revealed that MI6 was not only
heavily involved in the run-up to Hess's flight but
even planned "a sting operation" aimed at luring Hess
or another prominent German into bogus peace talks
with Britain.

The diary belonged to the wife of Frank Foley, the
former MI6 head of station in Berlin, who was to
become more famous for his work in getting "tens of
thousands" of Jews out of Germany.

It was Foley, as the leading German expert in MI6, who
was in charge of the year-long debriefing of the
deputy f¸hrer. This much is known from Foreign Office
files released to the National Archives some years
ago.

Hess flew to Britain in a Messerschmitt-110 on May 10,
1941, intent on making contact with the Duke of
Hamilton, who he believed would help him mediate a
peace deal whereby Britain would join Nazi Germany in
a war against the Soviet Union. It was a hopeless
mission based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the
British establishment.

Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime prime minister,
was convinced that it had produced an intelligence
windfall for Britain.

But Churchill was wrong. The debriefing was a wasted
effort. Hess knew astonishingly little and, to make
matters worse, Foley swiftly realised he was mad.

That is where the role of both MI6 and Foley in the
Hess affair begins and ends, according to the files
released to the National Archives.

But the emergence of Kay Foley's diary, which she had
given to one of her nieces, changed all that, sparking
off an investigation that has uncovered the truth
about Rudolf Hess.

Mrs Foley kept the diary for seven years, from January
1936 to December 1942. Not unnaturally for a journal
covering such a long period, the entries were all
frustratingly brief. Foley was only ever referred to
as F (for Frank) and although records of his official
activity appeared in the diary, they were vague.

For the most part, the diary provided nothing new
about Foley and what he did.

A few entries added a minor piece of new information.
One gave a precise date for a wartime change of job,
another details of when and where Foley landed in
Britain after the fall of France, adding interesting
detail of what he did before returning home.

But the most puzzling entries by far concerned a visit
to Lisbon that Foley made in early 1941. He flew out
of Whitchurch aerodrome near Bristol on Friday, Jan
17, 1941, spending two weeks in Lisbon and arriving
back in England on Saturday Feb 1, 1941, when the
diary records that Kay received a telegram from F
reassuring her that he had arrived safely back in
England.

The dates were intriguing. Seven months before Hess
flew to Britain, in September 1940, one of his close
advisers, Albrecht Haushofer, the leading expert on
Great Britain in the German Foreign Office, had
written to the Duke of Hamilton at Hess's request,
attempting to set up a meeting in Lisbon.

The letter, sent via an intermediary, an old family
friend of the Haushofers, was intercepted and passed
to MI5, who initially suspected Hamilton and the
intermediary might be German spies and began an
investigation.

By November 1940 they had realised this was not the
case and spent some months considering whether or not
to send Hamilton, a serving RAF officer, to Lisbon to
meet Haushofer.

The plan was eventually discarded as too dangerous but
the letter's very existence has always fuelled the
allegation at the heart of the conspiracy theories ñ
that British intelligence lured Hess to Britain.

Conspiracy theories are easily dismissed but if MI6
was aware that someone so close to power had put out
feelers to the British establishment, it would be
bound to consider meeting them.

If the approach was from opposition forces, they would
be useful allies. If it came from someone with
Hitler's backing, it would have provided invaluable
intelligence.

The dates for Foley's visit to Lisbon were midway
between the letter's interception and Hess's arrival
in Britain. They looked right.

Only MI6 could say for sure what Foley was doing in
Lisbon. The service still refuses to release any of
its own files, but it does retain a number of "old
boys" as historians to look after them.

Their immediate response was that Foley must have gone
to Lisbon to look at a potential double-cross
operation, a reference to the highly successful system
whereby the vast majority of Nazi spies sent to
Britain were "turned" by British intelligence to
provide false information to the Germans.

Although Foley did eventually take over as head of the
MI6 Double-Cross section, this did not happen until 15
months later (the diary fixes the date as April 16,
1942).

Told this, the MI6 historian went back and checked the
files. What he found was the answer to the mystery
that has puzzled historians for more than half a
century.

Much of the MI6 archive on Hess has been destroyed.
But in the files there was a single, more recent
reference that spoke of MI6 plans for "a sting
operation" in response to the Haushofer letter.

The MI6 historian also has access to oral histories
from former officers and, where they are still alive,
the officers themselves. By delving into this "folk
memory", he discovered that Foley had flown to Lisbon
to see whether it was possible to use a meeting with
Haushofer to set up a sting operation.

Foley was accompanied by his secretary, Margaret Reid,
who was presumably there not just to take notes but
also to provide cover ñ a middle-aged gentleman and
his "niece" spending two weeks away from the austerity
of wartime Britain.

There is, frustratingly, no information on what Foley
and Reid actually did in Lisbon. But the only
effective way of checking out the viability of a sting
operation would have been to respond to the letter and
to arrange to meet either Haushofer or another
intermediary in the Portuguese capital.

In an account written for Hitler after Hess flew to
Britain, Haushofer said: "I did not learn whether the
letter reached the addressee. The possibilities of it
having being lost en route from Lisbon to England are
not small after all."

But he could scarcely have admitted having had
contacts with the British secret service. After Hess
flew to Britain, Haushofer was treated with a great
deal of suspicion by the Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi
party's security service. It interrogated him and
placed his flat and office under surveillance. At any
event, whatever Foley and Reid did in Lisbon, it took
a full two weeks. They arrived back in England with
bad news.

Foley had decided that the sting was too risky and,
understandably, Sir Stewart Menzies, the chief of MI6,
took the advice of his top expert on Germany,
frustrating Hess in his attempts to put out peace
feelers to the British aristocracy.

As with most of the events that become the subject of
conspiracy theories, the truth about Hess has turned
out to be much more mundane. Haushofer had always
warned Hess that the attempt to go through Hamilton
was likely to fail and that it might be necessary to
send "a neutral intermediary" to Britain.

When it did fail, the deputy f¸hrer clearly decided
that he could not afford to leave such an important
task to someone else and simply came himself.

Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews by Michael
Smith (Politico's) is available for £8.99. To order
(plus £2.25 p&p) call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870
155 7222.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=HG5JMYVBBHBVXQFIQMGCM54AVCBQUJVC?xml=/news/2004/12/27/whess27.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/12/27/ixworld.html

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