but it was : .. by the time it reached Munich, and it took
two more hours to drive on to the Berghof. There he saw Mar-
tin Bormann, Hess’s chief of staff, hovering around grinning
unpleasantly, and a white-faced Joachim von Ribbentrop. Wal-
ther Hewel, Ribbentrop’s ambassador on the Führer’s staff,
wrote in his diary: “Göring gets here after supper at nine ..
From what Bodenschatz told me he’s also very agitated. Long
discussion downstairs in the hall between F., foreign minister,
Göring, Bormann. Very heated, a lot of speculation.”
Hitler thrust several pages of paper into Göring’s hands.
“Reichsminister Hess has flown to England!” he burst out. “He
left this letter.” In the document Hess declared himself willing to
risk his life to make peace with Britain and end the bloodshed.
Göring was contemptuous. He dismissed Hess as insane. (“Do
you think,” he would ask rhetorically in October , “Hitler
would really have sent the third man in the Reich on such a lone
mission to Britain without the slightest preparation?... If he
really wanted to deal with the British, there were reliable
semidiplomatic channels through neutral countries. My own
connections with Britain were such that I could have arranged it
within forty-eight hours.”)
The next day, Monday, May , Göring returned with
General Udet to discuss with Hitler the vital question whether
Hess could have handled the difficult Messerschmitt aircraft
alone and landed in Scotland. Might he not have disappeared
silently into the North Sea? Ribbentrop, however, was terrified
that Britain might announce Hess’s arrival at any moment
and that might blow the already strained Axis alliance wide
open. All that afternoon Hitler and Göring debated this di-
lemma.
“A very disturbed day,” wrote Hewel. “Investigations into
Hess’s flight... Neither Göring nor Udet believes Hess capable