Friesenkurier, printed a vivid report of the scene in its afternoon
edition. Wearing a stylish hat specially selected from his ward-
robe for the occasion and smoking a Havana cigar, Göring
stepped furtively out and climbed into a car with the Swede and
drove off in a slow procession with his security escort through
the dense crowds to the Dahlerus farmhouse nearby. A Swedish
flag fluttered from its flagpole to offer a pretense of neutrality.
Dahlerus introduced the seven Englishmen to Field Mar-
shal Göring Brian Mountain, Sir Robert Renwick, Charles
MacLaren, and T. Mensforth had come over with Holden,
Spencer, and Rawson for this unique meeting. After three hours
(during which he incidentally claimed that Nazi Germany
would be synthesizing million tons of gasoline in ) they all
ate lunch. He proposed a toast to peace, but his visitors still left
the farmhouse mildly uneasy the impression that Spencer
took away was that Göring “expected to take part in very im-
portant conferences with Herr Hitler on about August .” How
Spencer arrived at this (remarkably accurate) prediction his re-
port, now in British Foreign Office files, does not disclose.
He was due to see Hitler on the fourteenth. On August ,
telephoning Dahlerus, he revealed that he had instructed the
Nazi press to go easy on Britain.
The days passed, and there was no response from London.
He planted his bulk on the beach at Kampen and soaked up the
sun, protected from the North Sea winds by a sandcastle and
shielded from the less illustrious tourists by notices warning of
the perils of unauthorized photography. He hoped he had not
gone too far with these illicit feelers.
There was one move in this deadly game of chess that would put
Poland in a hopeless position if Stalin would agree to sign a
pact with Hitler. The Soviets, like the Germans, had several un-