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ambitions, although in October 1938 Woollcombe admitted that the political work on Germany rested on a ‘very narrow basis’, with only two ‘solid’ sources: de Ropp (who by this stage was proving less reliable) and a high-status Baltic German with social connections across Europe, who was run from London by Dick Ellis and whom Woollcombe described as ‘first class’, though with ‘limitations’ as he could not be ‘a permanent agent for German information’. Based in Italy (where he was ‘our best agent’) and Switzerland, in 1938-9 he passed on material gathered from friends and relations in the German army, the Nazi Party and high industrial circles. On 8 November in a circular to European stations arising from his Section I’s ‘Crisis Stocktaking’, Woollcombe urged representatives ‘to find more first class alternatives for 12-land [German] “high policy” information ’. Recognising that ‘sources of this type, having real access to “the goods”, are few and far between’, he nevertheless wrote that it was ‘very desirable that we should be well informed regarding the leadership, strength, resources, methods, aims, real position and prospects, etc., of anti-Nazi movements, for without such information it is very difficult to judge how seriously they are to be taken or whether they contain any appreciable alternative regime potentialities’. He thought especially that (while this ‘must involve a lot of speculation’) ‘we should have lines on the military clique, or cliques, who would like to see a change of régime’.

In a wide-ranging review of ‘tendencies and reactions’ (‘prepared at the request of the Foreign Office’ and circulated in November 1938) SIS asserted that the Munich settlement had left Hitler ‘in a dissatisfied and spiteful frame of mind’, though it remained difficult to predict what he might do: ‘Not even Herr Hitler’s intimates, according to one of them, knew for certain if he would really risk a world war.’ It seemed clear, however, that in the immediate future Nazi attention would ‘to a large extent [be] occupied with the furtherance and consolidation of the Eastward trend’, as well as ‘atomisation’ (‘a process of creating small States on a racial and self-determination basis’), which SIS suggested contained ‘interesting possibilities for countries like Roumania and Poland’. While the Service did not report much anti-war feeling among the population in general, it did identify some opposition to war among the army chiefs, though for the most part only on the grounds of ‘Germany’s unreadiness to engage in a general war of long duration’.

In December Sinclair provided a further paper on ‘Germany: factors, aims, methods, etc’, which stressed Hitler’s ‘incalculability and lightning-like decisions’. ‘Among his characteristics are fanaticism, mysticism, ruthlessness, cunning, vanity, moods of exaltation and depression, fits of bitter and self-righteous resentment, and what can only be termed a streak of madness; but with it all there is great tenacity of purpose.’ The paper realistically played down the influence of internal opposition: ‘Notwithstanding divergencies, internal discontent and widespread unpopularity of the régime below the surface, Herr Hitler’s will is supreme. ’ Germany’s ambitions to dominate east-central Europe were stressed. The ‘general indications’ were ‘that Poland was “for it” sooner or later’. In a ‘summary of information from secret sources’, Gladwyn Jebb drew on this paper with a stern warning to his colleagues that, if ‘any references’ to the remarks of these secret sources leaked out, they would ‘be in grave danger of “liquidation” and what is more important, we shall be deprived of their information’. He included information which now suggested that Hitler might also be contemplating a westward strike. The ‘present air strength of Germany would enable her easily to “cover” London and Paris’, reported Jebb, ‘and no consideration would be paid to considerations of law and humanity. London, in particular, it was said, could be destroyed in a couple of days by unceasing bombing attacks.’25

During the