MI6 incensed at Dad'

MI6 incensed at Dad's Army quizzing Hess

By John Crossland and Michael Smith
The Daily Telegraph, Wednesday 27 January 1999

THE interrogation of Rudolph Hess, Hitler's deputy, by the Home Guard an hour after he had parachuted into Scotland on his "peace mission" on May 10, 1941, so incensed MI6 that it called for an official inquiry. Frank Foley, its chief interrogator of Hess, was dismayed to find that he had been beaten to his man by a Polish assistant consul from Glasgow called by the Home Guard. His report to Sir Stewart Menzies, head of M16, was passed to Sir Robert Vansittart, permanent bead of the Foreign Office. Menzies minuted to M15: "This matter seems to have been badly handled and I think a report is called for," - a suggestion that Vansittart backed.

Roman Battaglia, the consul who interpreted for the Home Guard, was debriefed by Lt John Mair of Ml5. Mair said that Battaglia told him that he bad been distressed by the affair, particularly when it turned out to be so important. "If the procedure adopted in this case was typical of what usually happens when a prisoner is captured, valuable information was probably being lost through initial mishandling of the interrogation." MI5 was keen to obtain a record of the interrogation, "since Hess may have rather let himself go". However, as Battaglia disclosed, Hess, facing a barrage of questions, remained calm and self-controlled, "and not at all in a state to blurt out through physical strain any information whatsoever which he didn't wish to disclose".

Some questions had been so offensive that he refused to put them to Hess. Battaglia said that no accurate report was made of the interrogation and people wandered around inspecting Hess and his belongings. Battaglia, described by M15 as "extremely shrewd", asked Hess why he had come. He replied: "I have a message for the Duke of Hamilton." Asked if he knew the duke, he replied: "I saw him at the Olympic Games in Berlin and we have a friend in common." The consul gave a personal opinion that the friend - now known to have been Albrecht Haushofer, a young Munich intellectual - might have been acting as an intermediary. He had invited the duke in 1941 to meet Hess in Lisbon. The telegram was intercepted, embarrassing the duke, who had been air controller of the sector into which Hess parachuted. Churchill's suspicions were aroused but Hamilton later defended his honour successfully in a libel action. The Haushofer "plot" is believed to have been the German response to a double-cross plot to lure a leading German to Britain. When the security men met Hess, the mask of insanity, feigned or not, which survived until the Nuremberg Trials was in place.

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