Haushofer acted as a contact-man for Hess with Karl Burckhardt, President of the International Red Cross in Switzerland, who was a friend of the Hassells. In May, just before the flight, Burckhardt told Frau von Hassell that in April he had had a visit from ‘an agent of Himmler’ who, during a visit to Zurich, had asked Burckhardt’s opinion as to whether the British would be willing to discuss possible terms for peace with Himmler instead of Hitler. This agent was undoubtedly Langbehn, who was to make the acquaintance of the Hassells later that year, in August, and become one of their valued friends.
This circuitous series of relationships may well seem to imply that Himmler, and possibly even Hitler, knew in advance of Hess’s mission to Britain. In any event Haushofer, whose part in Hess’s flight was known to the Gestapo, was released on Hitler’s order after only a brief detention, and he was to enjoy Himmler’s protection until the end of the war. However that may be, Langbehn became a source of rumour surrounding Himmler during the darker days of the Russian campaign; from 1941 to his arrest by the Gestapo in September 1943, he had at least the temporary protection of Himmler and a calculated measure of his confidence, while at the same time, through Popitz and von Hassell, he also enjoyed direct contact with one of the principal arteries of the resistance movement. Even as early as 1938, Langbehn’s influence on Himmler was sufficient to secure the release from a concentration camp of Fritz Pringsheim, the Jewish professor who had taught him law. Pringsheim was released and even allowed to leave the country.
After the initial reference to Langbehn’s activities on behalf of Himmler given by Hassell in May 1941, any occasional signs of disaffection in the S.S. are noted down with wishful determination during the long period of frustration that followed the invasion of Russia. After receiving certain evidence from a discontented junior officer in the S.S., Hassell wrote in September 1941: ‘it was apparent that in Himmler’s outfit they were seriously worried and looking for a way out’. In December, Langbehn told Hassell he ‘had been busy trying to get people out of Himmler’s concentration camps’, and that this often meant arranging the payment of large sums of money. He spoke also of ‘the fluid state of mind existing within the S.S.’, which he felt was a strange combination of the ‘barbaric Party soul’ and a ‘misunderstood, aristocratic soul’. S.S. leaders often made wild remarks critical of the Party, the outcome of the war, and of Hitler himself. In March 1942, Langbehn according to Hassell ‘still suspects all sorts of things are being planned around Himmler’, and these were no doubt the rumours that reached Ciano’s lengthy ears in Rome the following month, when he noted in his diary that Himmler ‘who was an extremist in the past but who now feels the real pulse of the country, wants a compromise peace’. In May Ciano added that the rumour was being spread from Prince Otto von Bismarck at the German Embassy in Rome that ‘Himmler is playing his own game by inciting people to grumble.’
Various glimpses we get of Langbehn’s contacts and relationships with Himmler reveal little more of Himmler’s intentions. The woman Gestapo agent responsible for investigating Haushofer’s connections with Britain became his friend and retailed some gossip to him just prior to Heydrich’s assassination in May 1942, to the effect that Heydrich hoped to supplant Himmler. Haushofer thought this information might be useful in gaining Himmler’s confidence, and Langbehn passed it on to the Reichsführer, who thanked him formally and then had the woman agent arrested for spreading false rumours. Also early in 1943, Himmler warned Langbehn to keep clear of taking any legal part in a spy trial in which he might find himself supporting the interests of Ribbentrop against those of the Reichsführer S.S.
By the middle of 1942, Schellenberg felt he had risen sufficiently in Himmler’s confidence to risk discussion of the possibilities of achieving some form of negotiated peace. With Goring ‘more or less in disgrace’, Himmler in Schellenberg’s estimation ‘was, and remained to the very end, the most powerful man in the regime’. He considered a total victory was now no longer possible, and in August 1942 he had a preliminary conversation at Zhitomir with Kersten (who, on Himmler’s recommendation, was treating him for nervous strain), about the best way to broach the matter with Himmler. He discovered that he had an ally in Kersten, and the following day he asked Himmler for a special appointment to discuss ‘a matter that involves a most important and difficult decision’. Sometime after lunch, at which Himmler ‘changed from being the cool executive to being an amusing and pleasant host’, Schellenberg secured his interview. He made an elliptical approach to the difficult subject in order to prepare the ground; he began by quoting precedents for the wisdom of considering alternative solutions to every kind of problem, and then asked Himmler directly if he had in mind any alternative solutions for bringing the war to an end. After a full minute’s silence, Himmler gave way to surprise and indignation, but after a while he began to listen to Schellenberg’s argument that the rulers of Germany would be better advised to strike a good bargain from the vantage-ground of their present strength than wait until Germany had become so weakened by war on all fronts that her present advantages were lost. Then he joined in the argument himself:
‘In my present position I might have some chance of influencing Hitler. I might even get him to drop Ribbentrop if I could be sure of Bormann’s support. But we could never let Bormann know about our plans. He’d wreck the whole scheme, or else he’d twist it round into a compromise with Stalin. And we must never let that happen.
‘He spoke almost as if to himself, at one moment nibbling his thumbnail, then twisting his snake ring round and round — sure signs that he was really concentrating. He looked at me questioningly, and said, “Would you be able to start the whole thing moving right away — without our enemies interpreting it as a sign of weakness on our part?”
‘I assured him that I could.
‘“Very well. But how do you know that the whole business won’t act as a boomerang? What if it should strengthen the Western Powers’ determination to achieve unity with the East?”
‘“On the contrary, Reichsführer”, I said. “If the negotiations are started in the right way, it will prevent just that contingency.”
‘“All right,” said Himmler, “then exactly how would you proceed?”’
Schellenberg explained that very tentative negotiations should be conducted ‘through the political sector of the Secret Service’. Himmler, he said, must appoint an agent who had real authority behind him, and meanwhile himself work on Hitler to remove Ribbentrop and appoint a more tractable Foreign Minister. Then they looked at a map of Europe and agreed that, with certain exceptions, Germany might well have to relinquish the greater part of the territory she had occupied since September 1939 in order to retain full rights within all those areas that could be rightfully regarded as German. According to Schellenberg, when they parted in the small hours of the morning, ‘Himmler had given me full authority to act… and had given me his word of honour that by Christmas Ribbentrop would no longer be at his post.’
Schellenberg’s calculations, however, were made without sufficient regard for Himmler’s extraordinary caution. He played as little part as possible in the machinations of the other leaders, and quietly resisted the open intrigues of such men as Goebbels. He preferred, as always, the secret road to power, the back way up. He was, however, according to Schellenberg, ‘very discreetly striving to create a new leadership for the Reich, naturally with Hitler’s approval. This policy was to ensure that all those who held leading posts in the Reich ministries, in industry, commerce and trade, in science and culture… should be members of the S.S.’ Meanwhile he sank himself in work, absorbed himself in details, the clerk in high office hidden behind a pyramid of files. The result was that at the end of the year he refused to take advantage of the notorious memorandum on the mental instability of Ribbentrop compiled by Martin Luther, an under-secretary at the Foreign Office, who had formerly been Ribbentrop’s confidant, but partly through the intrigues of Schellenberg had turned violently against him.