The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [229]
Venlo and work in the Low Countries
One consequence of the Z Organisation’s move to Switzerland was that Dansey’s man in the Netherlands, Sigismund Payne Best, was transferred to work under Richard Stevens, the SIS station chief at The Hague. Best brought with him what appeared to be extremely promising contacts with an anti-Nazi network inside the German army. Early in October 1939 Stevens told London that Best was ‘reasonably confident’ that he could arrange for ‘two highly placed 12-landers’ (‘12’ being the code for Germany), Generals von Rundstedt and Dorsheim, to visit Holland ‘in the near future’. They were, he reported, members of an organisation which sought to ‘overthrow the present regime and establish a military dictatorship’. What the Germans wanted, however, was ‘some sort of assurance’ that, if they succeeded, the British government would ‘be prepared to treat with them’. Stevens consulted Sir Nevile Bland, the British minister at The Hague, who gave his support, but because of his diplomatic status was not prepared to take part himself without instructions from London. Further enquiries by Stevens revealed that, as well as Rundstedt, a General Wiedersheim and an Oberst (Colonel) Teichmann were involved in the opposition group.
Within a fortnight direct contact had been established. On 17 October Teichmann, ‘speaking discreetly by telephone’, reported that Wiedersheim had attended an army commanders’ meeting with the Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler at which the generals had ‘refused to undertake any major action of any kind against France or England’ and had ‘insisted that everything be done to obtain peace’. Teichmann further said that conditions were ‘such that only small impetus required to set ball rolling and to get rid of Nazis’. Here was intelligence apparently coming from the very highest German military circles, and with it the seductive possibility of bringing down the Nazi regime. SIS was playing for high stakes indeed, and the potential prize was so glittering that critical faculties both in the Netherlands and in London were dangerously blunted. Years afterwards an SIS contemporary at The Hague remembered ‘the almost overbearing confidence of Stevens, who seemed to be completely in the pocket of Best’, and a diplomat at the British mission recalled that Stevens, ‘who was a man of immense ambition, saw in this a possibility literally of winning the war off his own bat, and this completely clouded his operational judgement’.
But if Stevens and Best were dazzled, so too, apparently, were the Chief in London and even his political masters. While Sinclair was in his last illness (he died on 4 November), and perhaps not fully able to engage with developments, Rex Howard, his chief of staff, and Menzies, his deputy, were kept fully informed, as was the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, and the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who gave his personal approval for SIS to continue discussions with the Germans. Although some officials and politicians were not very optimistic about the possibilities of success, on 1 November the War Cabinet authorised the continuation of negotiations.8 Halifax also circumspectly briefed the French ambassador in London about the covert contacts said ‘to emanate from German military elements . . . anxious to get rid of the Nazi régime’. In the Netherlands, although it was still a neutral country and keenly anxious not to offend Germany, the head of Dutch Military Intelligence, General J. W. van Oorschot, supported SIS and provided an intelligence officer, Lieutenant Dirk Klop, to accompany the SIS men when meeting the German representatives.
There was surely an element of wish fulfilment about the whole affair. It may have seemed too good to be true, and so it was. From the start, alas, it was a brilliantly conceived and executed