Helen Fry
Operation Foxley
Dr Helen Fry - Operation Foxley
- So welcome to today’s lecture. I’m going to be looking at a top-secret British intelligence operation that was code named Operation Foxley. And it was, to quote a top-secret file that’s now been declassified, “The elimination of Hitler and any high-ranking Nazis or members of the Fuhrer’s entourage who may be present at the time.” And we know quite a lot about the various assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler, but did we know that British intelligence actually considered mounting their own assassination attempt? And we’re going to look at what that was conceived to be and why, in the end, it didn’t actually play out. Next slide please. So this fell under a particular section of the British intelligence services, the SOE. SOE was the Special Operations Executive. We’ve looked at some of their operations before, particularly with regard to the women who were dropped behind enemy lines, the men and the women who were dropped into France in particular, they were dropped in under F Section. But I also mentioned in previous lectures that there were other sections for other countries. There was Section X, which covered Germany and Austria. Section X then was the German section of the Special Operations Executive. And we still don’t know about many of the operations that were sent into Germany. A lot of the German Jewish refugees that were in the British Army that had transferred to SOE, some of them were actually part of the German and Austrian section, and some of their top-secret missions we still don’t know about. But within that section of SOE, ‘cause SOE was huge, they had a Belgian section, a Norwegian section, as I said, the French section, there were all these different sections, the Polish section, and these were in charge of various sabotage operations behind enemy lines, but they could also have other kinds of special missions. And we’re going to focus on this particular one, the attempted or the plan to assassinate Hitler, which fell under the Section X, the German and Austrian section.
And if you remember from what I said before, that section was largely planned by three women who’d worked undercover in Vienna in the 1920s and '30s. So fascinating that a lot of this was put together by the women working in this top-secret section of British intelligence. So the idea was to gather, up until 1944, from the vast amount of research I’ve carried out, there’s no obvious attempt to assassinate Hitler prior to 1944, nothing that’s actually been declassified. So between the early part of the war and 1944, the idea of the formation of SOE in 1940, and up until 1944, the idea was to start to gather information on Hitler’s movements, and then we would decide what to do with that information. And this is the premise under which they were going to mount an assassination attempt. Also, we wanted to collect very specific information on Berchtesgaden itself. Its physical layout, its staff, personnel, security, when Hitler’s there, when he’s not. But interestingly, the various branches of British intelligence were divided on whether to kill Hitler or not. And when I was working through this file that has now been declassified, I found it fascinating that the intelligence services should even be divided on whether to kill Adolf Hitler or not. They believed that the German war machine would collapse without him, but it might make him a martyr. You don’t want to make him a martyr. And also importantly, his bungled–
Sorry to interrupt, Helen. Sorry, the sound is really bad. It’s got like wind, it sounds as–
Oh, wind.
Yeah.
Thank you for interrupting. I’ve had to put a fan on because it’s so hot where I am.
Ah, okay.
I’ll turn it off, and should survive.
No worries, sorry, I was wondering. I didn’t know what was wrong. Sorry to interrupt, carry on. Yeah, thank you. So I’m sorry about that, if people are finding it difficult to hear me, I’ve turned my fan off. So there was, as I was saying, within British intelligence circles, it was divided on whether to mount an assassination attempt on Hitler, we’re gathering details of his movements, we’re gathering details on Berchtesgaden. And this division was over, well, they believed that the German war machine would collapse without him, I mean, if he doesn’t survive an assassination attempt, but you don’t want to make him a martyr. But also, he’s not making good military decisions. We certainly know that the German generals, and I’ll talk more about them later, were thoroughly frustrated that he didn’t listen to them, he didn’t take their advice. And so he was bungling all kinds of military operations because of the chain of command. And British intelligence ultimately decided he was much more valuable alive because we had more chances, then, of winning the war than if a new leader came in and made different military decisions. Next slide please. So you can see, I’ve lost one, nevermind. I was going to show you some photographs of Berchtesgaden. Some of you may well have visited actually, incredibly high in the mountains, almost impossible to go up there by regular routes. Nowadays, there’s a lift up there, incredibly remote, incredibly isolated, and some quite incredible views as well. So the plan by British intelligence to potentially assassinate Hitler was code named Operation Foxley. And this was finally put together in 1944. So it’s quite late. And the Allies had already landed in Normandy.
This will be executed after the Allied landings in Normandy. The Soviet army, the Red Army, was progressing on the Eastern Front. And it was believed, potentially, that if in the early planning stages of Operation Foxley, some of the reasoning around killing Hitler was that it would save lives on the battlefields. So you’re going to save military lives, lives at sea, et cetera, civilians, because of the bombings of the cities, and victims in concentration camps, Jewish inmates of concentration camps, it believed that it could halt some of the killing machine. But of course we know that Goring and Himmler would’ve potentially taken over. At this point, Hermann Goring, in 1944, is still Hitler’s designated successor. His undesignated successor by April, 1945, because he’s deemed to have done something treacherous. But there isn’t really any opposition to Hitler mounting after, and I’ll come back to the Claus Stauffenberg plot of the 20th of July, 1944, of which of course, recently over the weekend, would’ve been the anniversary. Next slide please. So Operation Foxley, then, you can see how remote it is at Berchtesgaden, would actually rely on a highly top-secret operation by trained potentially Special Forces. And this would actually occur at Hitler’s mountain retreat, Berghof, or it was contemplated that when his special train is moving to one of his other headquarters, that they could potentially blow up the train.
Now, that wasn’t a new idea, that’d have been contemplated earlier in the wartime, but that British intelligence should even think about attempting to assassinate Hitler in this top mountain retreat that’s so isolated and so heavily guarded, how on earth did they think they could pull it off? Well, I’ll come back to that later. So the first intelligence meetings actually with this plan is convened on the 28th of June, 1944. The Allied landings have already happened. And in actual fact, they’re still discussing it through the autumn of 1944, into early 1945. And a decision, a final decision as to whether to execute this secret operation is not actually made until 1945 because of the controversy of it and the difficulty within British intelligence to come to any agreement. But in actual fact, and of course they wouldn’t have known at this point, in hindsight, we know that the 14th of July, '44, was actually the last time that Hitler ever stayed at his mountain retreat at Berghof. Next slide please. So yeah, you can see some of the isolated region, beautiful views out over there, but completely isolated. Always a lot of personnel on site. As I said, heavily guarded. There are guard dogs, vicious guard dogs. It would be almost, well, to any rational person, would seem impossible to penetrate this. So what was the idea? Come back to that shortly, it refers to the secret listeners that I’ve spoken about at some of the other wartime sites. Next slide please. And inside, of course, we’ve seen images like this before, it was very comfortable. Eva Braun was staying there, certainly towards the last part, she was in and out. And Hitler did though, and this was perhaps part of his weakness and downfall, there were periods in his daily schedule where he liked to be completely alone.
And as you’ll see, the intelligence services would actually use that as a good pointer to actually mount their plan. Next slide please. But of course, Hitler was heavily protected. As early as 1933, his inner elite bodyguards were going to ensure that no assassination attempt would be successful. In fact, by September, 1939, it’s believed, and there may well be more that haven’t come to light, but at least 30 plots or attempts had already been orchestrated on his life. So he’d survived all of the attempted assassination attempts and there other plots bubbling in the background. But he’d placed a sort of quite complex, elite and extensive bodyguard around him. He was also, of course, as we know, very, very apt at stamping out any opposition towards the Nazi regime. I uncovered through part of my research that it’s around 1937, '36, '37, and it’s a concentration camp. We believe it to have been Dachau concentration camp, although it’s not actually named as such. There were 300 SS guards who refused to shoot Jewish inmates. And those 300 SS guards were actually assassinated. They were shot. And so any crack in loyalty to Hitler was stamped out immediately. And that story I was quite surprised about when I came across it, about the SS guards. But I have made inquiries through the research centre at Dachau and it’s believed to have been accurate. And those regular appearances, the large rallies, it would seem almost impossible to protect him completely. So assassination in theory was possible, but in practical terms, nobody could really penetrate that system, or if they did, there are occasions like the 20th of July plot where Hitler just was incredibly lucky.
Next slide please. And I’m just going to highlight two or three of those assassination attempts, those early ones before we get to the British intelligence one, because one of the theories that British intelligence had in the early days of the war was to look back at those other assassination attempts and say, “Well, we’re not going to go to all this trouble to try and assassinate Hitler. Why don’t we just let someone else do it? There are plenty of people who are trying to assassinate him. Let’s just wait for it to happen. Well, of course it doesn’t. And I think it’s interesting that the first serious planning meeting where they discuss around the table Operation Foxley to assassinate Hitler comes after the failed assassination on the 20th of July, 1944. So one of the assassination attempts, Maurice Bavaud, Swiss theology student, you may or may not have come across him or this particular assassination attempt. He had always confessed his loyalty to Hitler. He was allegedly an ardent Nazi supporter. But his dilemma was, where could he assassinate Hitler? He did not support Hitler. And he decided initially that he would try at the Munich ceremony, which in the end became the Munich Putsch, where Hitler himself tried to overturn the Bavarian government in Munich, but he couldn’t get close enough to Hitler. He could not get a clear view and a clear shot. And wherever he sort of followed the entourage, he could never get close enough. And eventually he was arrested, he was quite suspect, for a minor offence initially, for travelling to Augsburg without a train ticket. The Gustapo became quite suspicious of him. Something wasn’t quite right. And under intense interrogation, he confessed. And he was actually beheaded in 1941. Next slide please. And then Georg Elser plot. This is a bit more famous and was in the early part of the Second World War. He was a cabinet maker. And Hitler had a number of big speeches. He had a big speech in September, '39, where he promised this sort of secret weapon that would win the war. And there was a lot of enthusiasm and support that he could win the war.
Now, Georg Elser chose a later speech, 8th of November, 1939. And this was the plan to assassinate Hitler, during a speech in November, '39, in Munich. Munich, of course always being the centre of Nazi government, if you like, the sort of headquarters, it’s where the ideology ultimately, you could say, stemmed from. Hitler seemed to sort of have that, connect anything to do with the Third Reich in Munich itself. So he planted a bomb actually. There’s a pillar in the beer hall. And this was the same beer hall where Hitler had tried to overthrow the government in 1923. It was his annual speech to the Nazis. This seemed like quite a good place. He quite often marked those dates in significant ways. And so Elser actually managed to plant a bomb in one of those pillars, a little niche in the beer hall. And unfortunately for him, it didn’t go off, because Hitler’s short speech in the end was much shorter, he arrived earlier, the bomb was timed to go off at 9:20 in the evening, but Hitler had already gone by seven minutes past nine. And when the bomb exploded, it did cause eight fatalities and wounded six others. He could so very nearly have got Adolf Hitler. Next slide please. But Elser ultimately was arrested. Afterwards, he’s trying to escape into Switzerland, into neutral Switzerland. He didn’t even have a trial. He was sent to Dachau, and there died almost immediately. And after that, Hitler’s already close-circle, elite bodyguards, that intense security around Hitler was tightened even further.
And Hitler even suspected, we know from declassified files, he suspected that British intelligence had something to do with Elser’s plot, that he couldn’t have mounted something like that on his own. I haven’t seen anything in declassified files to suggest that Elser had any backing at all from the British intelligence services. But the Russians, of course the Soviets had their own attempted assassinations on Hitler. Something we don’t often hear about. On one occasion, when Hitler had travelled to the Eastern Front and he was inspecting his troops, it was then that they made a failed assassination attempt. Next slide please. And one of the famous ones was Smolensk airfield. This was March, '43, 7th of March, '43. So I’m just picking out three or four of the pretty serious actually attempts to assassinate Hitler that get pretty close. And in this particular case, it was possible to smuggle a bottle of brandy on Hitler’s aircraft. And this bomb was designed as a bottle of brandy. But unfortunately it didn’t go off. As I’ve put there, it didn’t go off during the flight, the temperature in the hold was too low, and ultimately it didn’t detonate. But Hitler was on board that flight. We don’t know whether he had decoy flights, but he was definitely on this particular flight. And he was originally on his way to headquarters in East Prussia. Next slide please. And then the famous, ultimately successful Operation Anthropoid, which has been made into a film, at least one film. And this was the attempt by the Special Operations Executive to kill Reinhard Heydrich in 1942. And by 1942, the directive had gone out to SOE to all of their sections, and it said this, "All action by way of subversion and sabotage against the enemies overseas actually is permitted.”
So there was this directive that in whatever way you come up with operations for sabotage and subversion, for disrupting the Nazi war machine, for, “Setting Europe ablaze,” as Winston Churchill said himself. But at that point, it didn’t generally include assassination, but the brief by SOE to go for not Hitler actually, but Reinhard Heydrich, marked a change in the approach by SOE because now they were prepared to mount assassination attempts. And it was the 27th of May, 1942, that SOE led this operation with the Czechoslovovak, Czecho, Czechoslovaks, I beg your pardon, in this top-secret Operation Anthropoid, that was only declassified a few years ago. There was speculation on who had actually succeeded in sabotaging the car, and ultimately, which led to Heydrich’s death. So Heydrich, that protector of Bohemia and Moravia, was severely injured, he didn’t die in that attempt, but he did die of septicemia just a week later. Next slide please. And of course Hitler actually mounted huge revenge reprisals, at least 5,000 civilians were deemed to have been killed in retaliation for the killing of his protector in Bavarian Moravia. The assassins themselves were betrayed, there’s quite a lot out about them now. Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik, they were killed in a shootout with the SS in Prague. Very sort of dramatic, I think that appears in the film as well. But there’s new research out now, so if you’re interested in following that up, there’ve been a number of books which have specifically looked at the Czechoslovakian angle and those two assassins that were involved in it. And after that, SOE don’t appear to have any directives to go for any other of the Nazi leadership or the top leaders in government.
They certainly had no plans to assassinate Hitler until 1944. And that, as we’ll come back to, was in Operation Foxley. And Gubbins, Colin Gubbins, the head of SOE, who writes to Sir Hastings Ismay, who was working in the War Cabinet, he often worked in Hitler’s bunker, sorry, in Churchill’s bunker under Whitehall. He wrote to him on the 20th of June, 1944. The project for eliminating Hitler has received approval from all departments, but it isn’t discussed until nearly a week later. Next slide please. So there’s a top-secret memo, this is a photograph that I’ve taken of it myself during research. Top-secret memo, we love those. 8th of July, 1944. The head of MI6, Stewart Stewart Menzies, he was known as C, had given instructions that everything connecting to Hitler, any scrap of information that we’re getting from all sources, whether it’s agents behind enemy lines, whether it’s the secret listening programme on German prisoners of war, whether it’s from interrogations, little snippets of information that are given out during interrogation of German prisoners of war, whether it’s civilians who are coming into this country, into the UK, who were also interrogated. They had to go through a civilian agency or part of military intelligence, a civilian section that would ask them what they’ve seen behind enemy lines and anything, any snippets. And we particularly wanted to gain a picture of Hitler’s daily habits. Did he have a regular routine? All of that would be passed to SOE, although SOE wouldn’t necessarily know the source of where particular bits of information had come from.
And it’s true, whether we’re picking anything up from the encryptions, the decrypted messages from Bletchley Park, and all contact now between the War Office had to be intensified, the material had to be collaborated together, collated, and passed to SOE, for SOE to analyse and to think, “Is there anything in this, is there any moment in Hitler’s schedule when we could mount an assassination?” And the Air Ministry had been asked also to gather intelligence on Hitler’s aircraft, where it’s stored, when he’s travelling, just everything and anything, just to begin to piece together. And my understanding is they did that for the other top-ranking Nazis as well, like Himmler and Goring. Next slide please. So the location, this will be the main sort of, just checking. It’s okay, the slides have come out of synchronisation for some reason. So MI6, then, was not, could you go on to the next slide please? And I’ll talk about, we can go back to the top secret… Just a second, we seem to have a slight… While I get my notes together. I think we’ve just got a technical glitch actually. Okay, okay, if you go back, could reload it for me, that would be… Go back to the top-secret memo. Yeah, and to this one. Okay, lovely. Yeah, thank you. So one of the areas is, we’ll come on to Berghof, the location of one of Hitler’s headquarters at Schloss Klessheim, and that hadn’t actually been established. So the Air Ministry was asked to completely pinpoint, and you’ve got the coordinates there that have come from the top-secret file. And they also wanted any information on Hitler’s movements in France. And you do see this in the declassified files, particularly after interrogation, if they’ve managed to capture one of Hitler’s guards or they’ve captured prisoners who’ve been involved in guarding concentration camps or being part at any point of units that were working alongside his top security, they were asked for names of other guards if they knew them, and we were collecting profiles of these guards. So we’re collecting anything we can, particularly from prisoners of war.
And this is really fascinating because snippets of information from prisoners of war that were being kept at three secret sites, and I’ve looked at those before, if you haven’t heard of them, be a good idea to perhaps maybe go back and watch one of my earlier sessions, at three sites, Trent Park at Cockfosters, Latimer House and Wilton Park, in Buckinghamshire. These three sites, we were holding at Trent Park primarily Hitlers generals. We were also holding lower-ranked prisoners of war in Latimer House and Wilton Park. And the lower-ranked prisoners were given a phoney interrogation. They go back to their cell and they start boasting to their mate what they haven’t told the interrogating officers. And they start to give up snippets of information. So we have prisoner of war interrogations. I’ve put there the CSDIC reports, this is the eavesdropping programme, Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre. And what did those prisoners of war pick up? What do we pick up through the hidden microphones? Well, really interestingly, there is a moment they were starting to talk, particularly after failed attempt on his life on the 20th of July, '44, Operation Valkyrie, they were starting to discuss why it failed and how the anti-Nazis were really disappointed that it failed, they were no longer supporting Hitler. The pro-Nazis thought Stauffenberg was a traitor and it was outrageous. And he and his family, well, actually was shot in the end.
And so they also start talking about, “Well, I’m not surprised there’s been another assassination attempt. His security isn’t very good.” Ah, ears are pricking up through the microphones. The German Jewish secret listers are starting to record really quite detailed information. “What do you mean his security’s not very good?” “Well, when he stays at Berchtesgaden, and I was there once,” that kind of thing, “he insists for 10 minutes every morning that he’s staying there to walk from one end of the terrace to the other so that he can just gather his thoughts. And there were lots of objections raised by his security staff. He wouldn’t have any security guards, no dogs. Eva Braun wasn’t allowed to walk with him.” So before breakfast every morning, early in the morning, he’d walk just for 10 minutes. So you had this regular routine, and that of course that we picked up, from those secret listeners, picked up from the bugged conversations of German prisoners of war and from Hitler’s generals, that’s the moment we could potentially, British intelligence said, mount an assassination attempt on Hitler, in those 10 minutes where he’s got no security whatsoever. And those German generals in particular were beside themselves saying, “Why wouldn’t he have security? It’s a huge risk.” But just in those 10 minutes, that’s when we were going to try an assassination attempt potentially. This is what Operation Foxley was. And there are all kinds of discussions on whether they would be Special Forces parachutists sort of drop down onto the side, or whether they would come up, they would scale the mountain side. In the end, that kind of didn’t matter.
They were going to decide towards the end if it was executed. But absolutely fascinating that none of this had come out before until that top-secret file had been declassified. And also we were looking back at the intelligence sites where we kept aerial photography. So we begin to get details of where Hitler’s movements are, “He’s been visiting here. Okay, so he’s gone there,” and going back over any photographic, old aerial photography we might have of those places to look for any possibility of anywhere, this is in the planning stage of Operation Foxley, anywhere where an assassination attempt could be mounted. Next slide please. So in this plan, it’s really clear that the collection of information must just be relentless. Whenever you can pick up snippets of information right across the various aspects of the intelligence departments. And these were sources that had previously been untapped, and quite genius really. And within Operation Foxley, it’s clear that there were a group, they’re not all named, only Captain Bennett is named actually, but there were a group in this team, but there were a group of potential assassins that had been identified. And there’s a discussion about the possible use, and I thought it was very interesting for our audience, possible use of German Jewish refugees serving in the British Army, starting out of course in the Pioneer Corps, digging for victory.
And this mysterious figure, Captain Hartmann, would go around the different locations where the different companies of the Pioneer Corps were stationed and actually ascertained the motivation of some of these men. Would they be up to being dropped behind enemy, in uniform, in civilian clothing? And some of them actually, some of them I interviewed said, no, they wouldn’t be dropped back in civilian clothing, but they would go back in uniform. So all kinds of things were being hatched in the background. And in particular with regard to Operation Foxley was, we’d identified a group of possible German Jewish refugees, we don’t know their names, whether they’ll ever be declassified, who actually were up for an assassination attempt on Hitler. Unbelievable. So one of the key officers ultimately in line for it, Captain E Bennett, quote, “Was being considered,” this is from the report itself, “Was being considered for a high-priority assassination task, which would require lying low in Germany for a considerable period, collecting necessary intelligence to enable him to do the job. Next slide please. So MI6 itself wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about this. There is this tension between, or ongoing in the Second World War, this tension between the secret intelligence service, MI6, Stewart Menzies, C, head of MI6, initially not very keen on this. There is tension between MI6 and SOE, even though there are points at which there is some cooperation.
If you think about it, MI6 has got its agents quietly operating deep undercover, well, assume they’re deep undercover, behind enemy lines, and they don’t want agents of SOE blowing things up noisily around them and causing mayhem, which causes Gestapo security raids on houses, potentially houses that are being used as safe houses. And so there was always an attempt to separate the two, to kind of keep SOE lines, if possible, away from anything that MI6 was doing. Not that they always communicated with each other. But on the 11th of July, '44, Stewart Menzies did agree not to actually be involved with the SOE operation to kill Hitler, but would provide details of all of Hitler’s movements in recent weeks that he’d got from sources, i.e. Bletchley Park, and also the eavesdropping sites of Trent Park, Latimer House and Wilton Park. Of course SOE didn’t know the ultimate source of this, but MI6 decided to share its intelligence, "These are the movements of Hitler. This is where he’s expected to go.” And as we know, 20th of July, '44, it was the Germans themselves, Claus von Stauffenberg, a sort of Prussian Aristocrat who made an attempt on Hitler’s life in the conference room in East Prussia. It did kill four of them. He left the suitcase, as you know, under the table. It didn’t go off. Hitler survived with minor burns. And Stauffenberg he could’ve actually succeeded. And all those ringleaders were executed. There were further show trials. It was deemed to be over 200 executions in total. And there were reports too that their families had been rounded up and killed, their wives, children. And from the bugged conversations of Hitler’s generals, the generals, the pro-Nazi generals deemed it was perfectly legitimate not just to kill the leaders, but to actually go for their families as well. And it caused some pretty intense arguments between the pro-Nazis and the anti-Nazis in captivity. Next slide please.
So there’s a photograph at the bottom there of the wreckage after. I mean, it is surprising that he did manage to survive this. Next slide please. And of course, well, I’ve put, “British intelligence,” there, but kind of reflecting MI6, sort of really saying, “Well,” and this again comes from the top-secret file, “the failed German assassination is a vindication of our policy not to be involved with German resistance.” Whilst not to say we weren’t involved with German resistance, but certainly there was caution over becoming involved or supporting German assassination attempts on Hitler. There’s been some interesting new research since I haven’t kept up to speed on it. With regard to Operation Valkyrie with the 20th of July plot, around Stauffenberg. Clare Mulley’s written a very good book on “The Women Who Flew for Hitler.” There’s some links there with Stauffenberg’s wife. So all kinds of things in the background if you want to follow up on some kind of stories which link to this. 2nd of August, 1944, Gubbins wrote, he’s, as I said earlier, the head of SOE, “Germany must now be the first priority target for SOE, and all our energies and resources must be concentrated on penetrating the Third Reich or the Reich itself.” So Gubbins seems to have sort of had a shift. Now, the Section X files of SOE, some of them have now been released. I haven’t seen anything about the assassination attempts, but certainly there is a move, and there has been the first, I’m sure there’s more still being withheld on some of the information because for over 20, 25 years of my career, there was that sort of blank. We knew the agents were sent into Germany.
I don’t know that any of them were dropped into Germany, but they were sort of smuggled in. Some of them via Denmark. And those missions are only just starting to come to light. So we will begin to have a deeper understanding, particularly of those missions into Germany. And we do definitely know that German Jewish refugees were sent into Germany and some of them lost their lives in those secret missions. So I’m hoping that more will come out in due course. Next slide please. So one of the Foreign Office officials, John Wheeler-Bennett, wrote to Anthony Eden, who was the foreign secretary at the time. He said, “It may now be said with some definiteness that we are better off with things as they are today than if the July 20th plot had succeeded and Hitler been assassinated.” And you start to get a more definite shift towards the idea that Hitler, well, ought to stay alive because he’s making military catastrophic decisions that if he, sort of listening to his generals, had a more rational approach, if he didn’t have that autocratic chain of command, which we could argue we see in some countries today, if he’d sort of listened to his commanders strategically, well, for the Allies, it would’ve been much, much harder to bring the war to its conclusion or even necessarily to win the war. So it was now believed, a movement towards the view that actually if Hitler had been assassinated in that July plot, it would’ve been a negotiated surrender, it was believed, with the new leader of the regime, of the Third Reich, rather than unconditional demands. And you begin to see this shift, and certainly as we’re going into 1944, '45, sorry, and as we get more towards the total collapse of Nazi Germany and the surrender on the 7th of May, '45, the day the 8th of May, that the Allies belief, and you see this woven through a lot of different documents in our archives, that this has to be, there are going to be no demands by Nazi Germany in the surrender, it has to be unconditional.
But it was believed that around July, '44, if Hitler had died in that attack, in that assassination plot, that a new leader, it almost certainly, it was believed, would sue for peace and it would be some kind of negotiation and not necessarily totally on Allies’ demands. Next slide please. Churchill says something very interesting on the 2nd of August, 1944, in the House of Commons, he said, “Decisive as they,” meaning attempts on Hitler’s life, “may be one of these days, it is not in them that we should put our trust, but in our own strong arms and the justice of our cause.” So Winston Churchill himself in the end was saying, “Look, we can’t rely on,” he says in the House of Commons, “We’ve got to be strong, we’ve got to rely on our strong alliance, the Allied alliance, the fighting forces,” which of course are almost not quite two months in, yeah, almost two months since D-Day. And this kind of moral compass that this is a just cause, “We have to root it in that, that’s our belief, that the war will come to an end. We can’t rely on attempts on Hitler’s life, the war will collapse and there’ll be peace in Europe. We have to go ‘til the end.” Next slide please. So those three attempts, there were three attempts potentially for SOE to mount this assassination of Hitler that was still ongoing. It’s not clear actually at what point Winston Churchill, if he ever knew about Operation Foxley, they didn’t keep him in on everything. But there was beginning to be more and more concern over Operation Foxley, even within the higher levels of the SOE.
So these are some of the things that I pulled out of the original files. “If this assassination is attempted,” very interesting, “it must be made to look as if the German army was responsible.” Cover your tracks. The difficulties of this operation are obvious, and with the best will in the world, I do not think it can be achieved without being traceable to allied sources. So that was another view within the high command. You’ve got this debate emerging. In view of the above, it would not be in the interest of the Allied cause for SOE to attempt an assassination on Hitler. Next slide please. 'Cause I suppose our logical thought is that we would want, you’d logically think, “Well, yes, assassinate him, get him out the way, and everything will be fine.” Next slide please, I think that’s a repeat of something earlier. There’s definitely been a gremlin in the PowerPoint tonight, which might’ve come from my end 'cause I’ve had some tech issues during today, although this was sent a while ago. Anyway, so could they do something like ambush Hitler’s motorcar as it left Berghof, snipers in German uniform, parachute drop of the SAS? All kinds of things were undertaken, were considered, the one that sticks out in my mind when I was reading the files, I think, in the end, they figured that in those 10 minutes when he had no guards before breakfast, that the Special Forces could come up the mountainside and kind of do it then. Next slide please. Yeah, so a few more images just to give us an impression of just how challenging this would’ve been. If it wasn’t for that 10-minute slot in an early morning, I mean, I reckon they probably could’ve pulled that off. I don’t know what you think, but I think they could’ve pulled that off if there was no security around him and no one watching him in those 10 minutes. Other than that, I think it would’ve been nigh on impossible to have pulled off an assassination attempt at Berchtesgaden. Next slide please.
They gathered intelligence on Hitler’s train. There were other plans, would they sabotage his train? But in the end, and this, I suppose, as I’ve put there, it is quite surprising, 'cause surely the expertise of SOE is blowing up stuff. We’ve all got those images, seen the films, where they’re laying booby traps on the railway lines. They’re highly trained, they’re skilled at this stuff. I mean, I do find it surprising as well that they didn’t actually find a way to bomb his train. Could they have a sniper to fire at him as he was just about to embark on the train? Again, that’s kind of a bit more tricky. There was even another suggestion, “Well, could we poison his water supply?” And the SOE report on this said, “Interference with the drinking and cooking water is the only clandestine means which offers itself.” That was one particular view within SOE, but ultimately of course that wasn’t carried out. Next slide please. I mean, it is surprising, given all those things he could’ve done, he could’ve blown up the train potentially, perhaps could’ve poisoned the water supply, that they should even think, in the end, Operation Foxley would actually be executed potentially at one of the most difficult points, when Hitler’s at Berchtesgaden, I mean, it seemed crazy, it seemed almost unbelievable to me when I was first working through the declassified files. But there was an Operation Foxley II that was planned, and this was the idea. So they had a plan potentially to assassinate Hitler at Berchtesgaden, “Well, let’s not just keep it to Hitler.”
And this is from the files of Operation Foxley II, “It has been suggested that it’s advisable to couple Himmler with Hitler in the contemplated operation.” So now they’re contemplating actually doing a dual assassination of Himmler and Hitler together. “Indeed, the abolition of Himmler would in many respects be more advantageous for reasons which I need not going into,” says this particular intelligence officer, “And preparation and necessary intelligence regarding the pair,” these two, Himmler and Hitler, “will be no more difficult than for individual treatment.” So you can imagine the workload involved from all of our secret sources, the suggestion is, “Well, this is going to be far too much work. We’ve got detailed information on Hitler, but if you could start widening it to the other high-ranking Nazis,” but in fact British intelligence were already doing that, and hence that comment, “It’s going to be no extra work, it’s going to be no more difficult,” because we were already collecting whatever information we could. There’s tonnes of stuff just in the declassified eavesdropping files on prisoners of war, we’re picking up everything about any of those top leaders is recorded. Goring, Himmler, Hess of course is another one of those in captivity at this point. Any of them, Albert Speer, whatever the generals are saying, whatever the prisoners are saying about these characters, we are actually bringing it together and amassing a sort of archive. Next slide please. So there’s an inclusion now to have Himmler as part of assassination plans, “An operation which will have everyone’s backing,” said the report, “and which should be very carefully studied.” So those around the table, “Study this carefully.
This should have everyone’s backing, we’ll include Himmler.” Next slide please. Other targets in the file, Josef Goebbels, Otto Skorzeny, General Major Otto Remer. But in the end, SOE decided they had not been given sufficient information, sufficient intelligence, to mount an assassination on anyone else other than Goebbels, or Hitler obviously, we’ve already discussed that. But in the end, they felt they just didn’t have enough information to potentially execute a successful assassination on any of the other characters. I don’t know, I think they could’ve possibly succeeded in a dual assassination with Himmler and Hitler. Next slide please. So on the 22nd of February, 1945, and this is Captain James Joll. Yes, the same James Joll that went on to shelter Anthony Blunt after he admitted or went into hiding just before he admitted to actually being one of the traitors of the Cold War, Captain James Joll. It seems unlikely at the present state of the war that we should obtain sufficient, up-to-date, and that’s the important thing, up-to-date intelligence to plan a specific Foxley operation against Himmler, or any other party leader, or prominent official. You see, I guess with the intelligence on Hitler and his 10 minutes before breakfast, that was a regular routine. What they failed to do was to gather enough information on any of the regular routines or some of those other Nazi leaders didn’t have such a rigorous routine that they could have that sort of gap to mount an assassination attempt. And the brief had changed. SOE, when they’re operating behind enemy lines, their brief by April, 1945, was to capture German intelligence officers, to capture those top Nazis, not to kill them. Next slide please.
And now of course there is a very definite reason to sort of bring them to trial. So as I sort of bring this to a summary, conclusions there, Operation Foxley was ultimately flawed because audacious, as it was, and it probably could’ve succeeded, but there was one big problem and a problem they couldn’t foresee. The last time Hitler, as I said at the very beginning, ever stayed at Berghof, at Berchtesgaden, was the 14th of July, 1944. And it wasn’t possible for SOE teams individually, those teams behind enemy lies, to track Hitler movements. And any bombings that might take place if they’re going to track Hitler and they’re going to mount sabotage and bombings, that would also put agents’ lives at risk if they’re deep undercover and maybe in some of those buildings where Hitler or his top Nazis are. It’s a very interesting hint, isn’t it, in the files? Maybe they did get closer than has been declassified. Next slide please. Coming to our last few. And of course, towards the end, Hitler is holed up in his bunker in Berlin. We’ve got diagrams in the archives identifying some of the leaders in the parade of Hitler there. But in the bottom, we have that complex in the bunker. Of course, once during March, April, 1945, he’s holed up in his bunker before he attempts, he successfully commits suicide. And this complex bunker, there is no way we’re going to be able to mount an assassination attempt. Next slide please. So, and we finish our thoughts here. Historian Mark Seaman, who’s still writing, he writes some great stuff if you manage to read any of his stuff, he says, “Operation Foxley appears or offers an unusual insight into British attitudes towards the Nazi regime in the closing years of the war, with one exception, no one in Whitehall seems to have ever begun to question the ethics of assassination. The sole considerations appear to have been whether the operation was feasible or not.
So fascinating, utterly fascinating that ultimately Hitler does die by his own hand. But for me, I find it fascinating that we had even conceived of a plan to assassinate Hitler, Operation Foxley I and Operation Foxley II. But ultimately, very, very clever understanding of the situation that actually would’ve caused more problems. It would not have led to the liberation of the camps, t the loss of lives. We had to bring the war to an end. And you see this quite a lot through the intelligence files, this drive and some of the difficult decisions, like the Bombing of Dresden in that spring of ‘45. I’m not justifying it, I’m not saying either way, but you see this whole focus that we have to bring the war to an end and there are difficult moral decisions to be made because if we don’t make those difficult decisions, then the war could last longer. And at one point, without some of the advances discovered by British intelligence, and many of you know, I’ve spoken about this a lot, without the intelligence we discovered, particularly on German technology, on the V-weapons, on the atomic bomb programme, we wiped out the V-weapon programme at different stages, we delayed it, we could still have lost the war. And so interestingly, that whole psychology’s tied up as well with a possible-or-not attempted assassination on Hitler, it kind of makes sense in the context that all focus, the way in the end to ultimately save lives is to bring the war to an end, and that would save lives militarily, civilian, and those survivors in the concentration camps as well.
And very difficult moral dilemmas and decisions being made at that time. And so it makes sense within that, that view that ultimately if you got rid of Hitler in that summer of 1944 in Operation Foxley, we could’ve had a very different outcome in the war. You could’ve had Himmler could’ve taken over, more arguably diehard, horrific atrocities and the architect of the Final Solution, he may have taken different military decisions, we could’ve lost the war. So I think against that background, we can understand. But I guess we’re always fascinated by the new history which continues to emerge from the National Archives, and now also historians beginning to work in archives abroad, and I think we’ll have new understandings of the Second World War, which I find fascinating, really fascinating. So we’ll keep searching for those files to bring a new understanding to history. And hopefully there’ll be more on new discoveries on intelligence operations very soon. Thank you.