The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers. Richard Aldrich
blunt Britain’s operational capacity to gather intelligence on military operations against the Czechs, this was a resounding success.36
Vansittart’s greatest asset was his ‘private detective agency’, established by his friend Malcolm Graham Christie. Serving as air attaché in Washington in the 1920s, Christie had come to Vansittart’s attention because of his technical and commercial espionage against the Americans. He developed contacts in journalism, government circles and the aircraft industry, and used ‘grey methods’ alongside borderline illegal techniques. Vansittart knew exactly what to do with Christie, and sent him to Berlin as air attaché. Because Christie had a degree in science from a German university and was an experienced pilot, he immediately made friends high up in government and industrial circles. In January 1930, he left government service and became an international businessman, using his German connections. He deliberately socialised with the German political right, and reported back to London. Like Vansittart, Christie loathed the Nazis, but he was skilled in the collection and interpretation of intelligence. He not only used Nazis as sources, but also courted political rebels, and was close to the dissident Nazi leader Otto Strasser, as well as German Catholic circles. The virtue of the Vansittart–Christie network was therefore its broad base, including both Nazis and different types of opposition. True to the tradition of the best spymasters, Christie’s most useful sources remain anonymous, but they included ‘Agent X’ in the German Air Ministry, ‘Agent Y’ in the Catholic Church, and ‘Agent Fish’ who was close to Hitler himself.37
Vansittart and his ‘private detective agency’ jubilantly rode the waves of the Czechoslovakia crisis. Hitler’s increasing belligerence served to improve their standing. On 10 August 1938, Halifax, the new foreign secretary, met Christie to hear his reports of another imminent crisis over Czechoslovakia. But the constant reports of Nazi plotting still seemed fantastic, and neither Halifax nor Cadogan knew what to believe. Cadogan later recorded, ‘There’s certainly enough in the Secret Reports to make one’s hair stand on end. But I never quite swallow all these things, and I am presented with a selection.’ Like Chamberlain, they still could not imagine the leader of a major European country undertaking the violent course of action that was now predicted.38
Vansittart’s most remarkable achievement occurred on 6 September 1938. A shadowy figure slipped noiselessly through the garden gate of 10 Downing Street to pay a secret visit. This was Theodor Kordt, chargé d’affaires at the German embassy and one of Vansittart’s ‘private detectives’. He met Horace Wilson, head of the civil service and Chamberlain’s most trusted adviser, to warn him that whatever agreements were made on paper, Hitler intended to invade all of Czechoslovakia. Wilson was unimpressed. The next day, Kordt returned to give the same message to Halifax in a private audience. Whether or not Halifax was convinced was immaterial. Chamberlain had increasingly taken personal control of foreign policy together with Wilson. Similar messages from German generals opposed to Hitler had already been dismissed. Instead of listening to Vansittart’s private network, their main alternative source of ‘intelligence’ came from the straight diplomatic reports of the credulous Nevile Henderson.39
Henderson had been appointed as ambassador to Berlin in April 1937 because of his uncanny ability to ‘hit it off with dictators’. In the early 1930s, he had formed a close friendship with King Alexander of Yugoslavia. Ironically, it was Vansittart who had identified him as a rising star and promised him a place in the Foreign Office ‘first eleven’. Before Henderson departed for Berlin, Chamberlain sent for him, and after this meeting Henderson became convinced that he was the prime minister’s personal representative rather than a mere diplomat. His positive reporting of Hitler’s assurances underpinned the Munich Agreement that autumn. Early in the morning of 30 September 1938, Hitler, Chamberlain, Mussolini and French prime minister Édouard Daladier agreed to German acquisition of the Sudetenland and postponed the issue of other areas. The Czechs had no choice but to capitulate. Chamberlain returned to a tumultuous welcome, and spoke of ‘peace for our time’.40
Halifax now stepped away. He had initially agreed with Chamberlain that Hitler merely sought a racially coherent Germany, had no real ambitions beyond areas of German population, and would not aggravate Britain by using military force. But the increasingly angry arguments within Whitehall over the Czechoslovakia crisis changed his mind. The foreign secretary eventually confronted Chamberlain and told him that although Hitler had not won a conflict, the Führer was effectively dictating terms. Chamberlain hated being contradicted. ‘Your complete change of view since I saw you last night,’ he said, ‘is a horrible blow to me.’ Lacking in official and reliable intelligence, the prime minister continued to use his own personal estimation in his attempts to predict Hitler’s intentions. He believed he had established a personal connection with Hitler when the two had met, and so invested strongly in Hitler’s promise that he had no intention of invading all of Czechoslovakia if an arrangement could be made about the Sudeten territories with majority German populations. In September 1938, Chamberlain noted that ‘In spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.’ The prime minister assured his cabinet colleagues that he had secured ‘some degree of personal influence over Herr Hitler’ – but they were increasingly sceptical.41
From Christmas 1938 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Vansittart’s circle were on the rise. Their main weapon was intelligence on Hitler’s future intentions. Although Cadogan found Vansittart’s reports from Germany ‘bloodcurdling’, their growing number forced him to conclude that Britain had to assume that Germany was now aggressive. In January 1939, Vansittart was suddenly invited to join the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Policy. He patiently explained to Horace Wilson and Samuel Hoare, two of Chamberlain’s most trusted allies, that his intelligence now indicated that Hitler planned an invasion of the Netherlands. But although he was winning the intelligence argument about the German threat, his prescription was unpalatable and he was never welcomed back into the fold. He recommended an alliance with Russia, something about which even his friends in MI6 were sceptical. Many argued that such an alliance would simply drive Germany into the arms of Japan.42 Indeed, there was some evidence of this from GC&CS. On 14 September 1938, it distributed one of its last successful Japanese intercepts, which showed that Tojo had received a proposal from Berlin for precisely this kind of full offensive military alliance.43
Throughout the Munich episode, Joseph Ball continued to spy on Chamberlain’s political rivals. Chamberlain even boasted of this in a letter to his sister Ida, gloating that Churchill and the Czech minister in London were ‘totally unaware of my knowledge of … their doings and sayings’.44 Most observers suspect that these telephone taps would have been hard to arrange without some assistance from elements within MI5.45 Yet the senior officers inside MI5 were vigorously anti-appeasement, and busily informed Cadogan and Halifax of Chamberlain’s private diplomacy with Germany.46 Bizarrely, while all of this was going on, Churchill was receiving secret intelligence on rearmament from the former MI6 officer Desmond Morton. Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and then Neville Chamberlain had approved this arrangement in more peaceful times, but Chamberlain had forgotten his own instruction, and was horrified when Morton reminded him that Churchill was on the circulation list for some of the most sensitive intelligence circulating in Downing Street.47
At the centre of all this absurd internal political espionage and counter-espionage was the young Harold Macmillan. Although only a backbench MP, he was the key link between the various anti-appeasement factions, including Eden’s ‘Glamour Boys’ and Churchill’s ‘Old Guard’. Their supposedly secret meetings at Conservative MP Ronnie Tree’s house in St Anne’s