two-thirds of the Polish Army was now surrounded. He re-
peated that his Luftwaffe would refrain from bombing Britain
first “In fact,” he volunteered, “Germany will wait for Britain
to act first in everything else too.” Addressing Berlin munitions
workers on the following day, he stated explicitly that Germany
was still willing to make what he called “an honest peace.”
Simultaneously he directed Hertslet who was currently
visiting Berlin to send a message in code to a high-level con-
tact in the United States, William Rhodes Davis. The telegram,
dated September , was addressed to Davis in New York:
, . Three days later a second
coded message followed: -
.
. (The FBI, who decoded these messages, had already iden-
tified “Doctor” as Göring from other items.) On the fifteenth,
Davis was allowed an audience with Roosevelt (as the presiden-
tial diary shows). Three days after that, Göring directed Hertslet
to cable a further coded message to Davis, evidently hinting at a
Göring-controlled Reich government:
... .
In Washington the labor-union boss John L. Lewis, a close
friend of Davis, showed this extraordinary message to President
Roosevelt. Davis reported by code to Berlin the next day, Sep-
tember : .
...
. The upshot was a further
American coded message to Hertslet in Berlin, for Hermann
Göring on the twentieth, announcing that Davis had now left
for Europe. (Ten days later he would actually be in Berlin, ne-
gotiating with the field marshal.) Sadly for history, nothing
came of Göring’s remarkable initiatives.