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Secret Operations in World War Two


The Foxley Report - an assessment of a plan to assassinate Hitler towards the end of World War Two - gives a fascinating picture of covert British operations in the later war years. The intelligence historian Mark Seaman discusses whether the plan had any chance of success.

 

Total war


 

'One should always hunt an animal in its natural habitat; and the natural habitat of man is - in these days - a town. Chimney pots should be the cover, and the method, snapshots at two hundred yards. My plans are far advanced. I shall not get away alive, but I shall not miss; and that is all that matters to me any longer.' - Rogue Male

 

Geoffrey Household's popular thriller Rogue Male, concerning an Englishman's attempt on Hitler's life, was published as early as 1939. As it turned out, World War Two witnessed only a limited number of such political assassinations, which is perhaps surprising considering the immense scale and barbarity of the conflict.

This was a war of nations, but also of personalities, and with states fighting for their very existence, one might have expected a greater incidence of leading political and military figures being targeted for elimination. The British Commando attack on General Rommel's headquarters in North Africa in November 1941, and the US fighter ambush of the aircraft carrying Admiral Yamamoto in April 1943, however, emerge as exceptions to the general rule.

Nevertheless the removal from the war of pivotal figures - such as Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Hitler - frequently feature among the most popular 'What Ifs' of history. And during the war assassination plans were frequently prepared - notable among these was a German scheme to attack the Allied leaders when they attended a conference in Teheran in November 1943.

Killing Hitler?

 

The Allied leaders in general had little experience of being an assassin's target, but Hitler's long background of political violence resulted in his being the subject of some 30 assassination plots before 1939, and there were more than a dozen planned or attempted during the war. These ranged from the attempt of the quintessential lone gunman, Maurice Bavaud, in 1938, to complex conspiracies such as the July Plot of 1944, organised by German military leaders, which came within a hair's breadth of success.

Both before and during World War Two it was Hitler's fellow countrymen who strove hardest to eliminate him. His British, American and Soviet foes seem to have devoted little thought, and even less action, to planning the assassination of their nemesis. Since such a project had not secured support when Hitler was in the ascendant, and when Nazi Germany's fortunes seemed to be boundless, it might have been expected that as his political star waned and the Allies grew closer to winning the war, the Führer's fate would be decided by a war trial, or by his suicide.

This expectation seems to have been confounded, however, in June 1944, when a confused and inaccurate Allied intelligence report made the prospect of a pinpoint bombing raid on Hitler's lair in occupied France seem a possibility. The plan never got off the ground, but it raised the question of an assassination and as a result of this misbegotten (Hitler was never there) project, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which was the secret British organisation that co-ordinated resistance and subversive warfare, was instructed to address two questions: do we want to kill Hitler, and do we have the means to do it?

The first of these questions was never adequately answered, with various conflicting opinions being voiced within SOE. These included a belief that as Hitler's present conduct of the war was so bad, there was the risk that his successor might actually improve Nazi fortunes. On the other hand there was also a discernible inclination amongst some SOE officers to be associated with a spectacular, war-winning coup de main operation.

The plan

 

While indecision, dissent, argument and prevarication prevailed as this question was discussed, a rather more pragmatic attitude was taken when considering the second. An unnamed (perhaps fortuitously) SOE staff officer of the German Section was asked to prepare an operational plan for an assassination of Hitler, and this plan was given the codename Foxley. The original document is amongst the files of SOE, now available in the Public Record Office at Kew.

The product of the officer's deliberations is an impressively bulky file. Copious detail is provided on Hitler's alpine retreat at Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, extensive documentary and photographic evidence is provided concerning his limousines and trains, and there are even colour sketches of the uniforms worn by his bodyguard.

In addition to the background, the author outlines the recommended methods for an assassination attempt in Bavaria - these consisted of a shooting, by one or more snipers, a bazooka attack, and the poisoning of the water supply on the Führer's train. The author contemplates several even more speculative options, such as flinging a suitcase full of explosives under Hitler's train as it passed through a railway station.

The process of identifying and recruiting the would-be perpetrators of what would surely have been the most notorious assassination of modern times is rather glossed over. Various groups are mentioned; perhaps they might be anti-Nazi Germans, perhaps Czechoslovaks, perhaps French forced labour workers and perhaps even a party of SAS.

How the agents/soldiers were to arrive in Bavaria and, just as importantly (at least for the assassins), how they were to make their escape are not discussed. Undismayed by the vagueness of the Foxley plan, SOE went on ambitiously to ponder additional schemes - known as little Foxleys - plans to liquidate other leading members of the Nazi hierarchy.

Whatever the inadequacies of the main Foxley plan - there is no room in a brief article to enumerate them all - there is one flaw that clamours for attention amongst a plethora of redundant data about things like the intricacies of collar insignia, or the design of railway carriages (a decade out of date). The bottom line in any assassination plot is that you cannot kill someone if you do not know the whereabouts of your intended victim.

Rivalry

 

SOE was not an intelligence-gathering organisation, and therefore was reliant upon the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) for information on Hitler's whereabouts. While SIS ran its own networks of human sources throughout Europe, it also controlled the dissemination of signal intelligence derived from intercepted German wireless traffic. A designated SIS officer was promised to the Foxley project to assist in its planning, but there is little evidence of SOE having received any worthwhile intelligence on Hitler's movements.

Thus there were many major gaps in the knowledge of SOE, and closer examination of much of the background information in the Foxley file reveals that it is merely out-of-date 'padding', that seeks to obscure fundamental shortcomings by giving an impression of comprehensive detail.

The beguiling question, however, has to be asked, could Foxley have worked? If one looks purely at the draft plan presented to SOE's hierarchy, the answer must be an emphatic 'no'. On the other hand, if one wishes to embark on an excursion into the world of counter-factual history and speculate about a re-worked Foxley, buttressed by better intelligence, then the answer perhaps becomes a tentative 'yes'.

If Whitehall had shown greater interest in the plan, and if Hitler's location and daily routine had been known, then the prospect of a pinpoint air raid (similar to the initial aborted proposal, in France, that had sparked the whole thing off) would have arisen again.

Chances of success?

 

Such an operation had been attempted before, without success, by the Soviet air force in November 1941 using intelligence supplied by the British. By 1944, however, the RAF had managed to achieve remarkable accuracy with their low-level pinpoint raids against targets in occupied Europe. Similarly, with pre-knowledge of Hitler's itinerary, arrangements might have been made to attack his train through the use of aircraft, sabotage the railway line, or even put poison in the water system of his train. Finally with good information about the victim's whereabouts, assassins might have been recruited, trained, infiltrated and put in place to await the right opportunity.

The attempt on Hitler's life in July 1944 had shown that even close access to the Führer's headquarters did not ensure success. So there was no hope of an outsider bluffing their way into Hitler's entourage to carry out the deed. On the other hand, if Hitler had decided to return to his Bavarian retreat (in fact he left it on 14 July 1944, never to return), a dedicated assassin or team of assassins might well have stood some chance of success.

After this flight of fantasy, one might do well to consider the course of events that resulted in the assassination of the leading Nazi official SS-Obergrüppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. In December 1941 Czechoslovak agents trained by SOE were parachuted into their own homeland on Operation Anthropoid. It was not until six months later, on 27 May 1942, that they were able to mount the attack - with the result that their quarry died of his wounds a week later.

One wonders how closely the Foxley author had studied SOE's Anthropoid files. If he had, the evidence of the Czechoslovak agents' patience, dedication, commitment, training, professionalism and, crucially, local support, might have revealed the immense contribution made by these attributes to the success of the operation. By learning these lessons Foxley might have developed into a sensible operational schema, rather than resembling the first draft of a thriller by Geoffrey Household.

Find out more


Hitler's Personal Security by Peter Hoffman (Macmillan, 1979)

Operation Foxley: The British Plan to Kill Hitler by Mark Seaman and Ian Kershaw (PRO, 1998)

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household (Penguin, 1984)


About the author

Mark Seaman is an intelligence historian and has written extensively on the Special Operations Executive. His Bravest of the Brave is a biography of the celebrated agent Wing Commander FFE Yeo-Thomas GC.

 

Killing Hitler

Duncan Anderson considers what might have happened if Operation Foxley - as the plan was named - had gone ahead, and had succeeded.

Operation Foxley

Adolf Hitler was the centre of the Nazi system. Around him revolved a loose confederation of fiefdoms, whose leaders engaged in a ceaseless struggle to protect and enhance their power. If Operation Foxley, the plan devised by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) to assassinate Hitler, had succeeded, this system would have been thrown into chaos.

Count von Stauffenberg and various fellow conspirators, whose courage was equalled only by their ineptitude, were plotting a similar operation from the German side. There was, however, not the slightest possibility that they could have taken advantage of the chaos.

Rather more likely was the emergence of a coalition of the major fiefdoms, with Hermann Göring as Reichsverweser (literally state caretaker), co-existing uneasily with Heinrich Himmler, Albert Speer, Karl Dönitz and a clutch of popular generals such as Erich von Manstein and Erwin Rommel.

The most plausible date for SOE's assassination of Hitler would have been around 13-14 July 1944. By this time the Russians had reached the old Polish-Soviet frontier. From what is now known about the frame of mind of many prominent generals in Germany around this time, we can guess that the new administration would have sent peace feelers to the western allies, who would have reiterated their demand for unconditional surrender.

For Himmler and the SS even a negotiated peace would have posed serious problems. He would have been worried about how he was going to explain the 'final solution' (the extermination of all Jewish people, and other 'Untermenschen', in Nazi-held territories) to the outside world, and might well have decided to close down the gas chambers, and tried to pass the death factories off as labour camps.

Germany still in control of Europe

At this stage, however, a reversal of policy would have been prudent rather than pressing. Germany still controlled Europe - with the exception of southern Italy and the Normandy beachhead - from the Atlantic to the Vistula, the Carpathians and the lower Danube. There were still cards to play, which, if handled skilfully, might yet have elicited from the Anglo-Americans something more palatable than a demand for unconditional surrender.

Moreover, the propaganda machine run by Göbbels would have both lionized the martyred Führer - the modern Siegfried - and hinted that with the Führer now in Valhalla the war might begin to go better. In the summer of 1944 most of the German people were assailed by doubts about the continuing pursuit of the war, but they were not yet prepared to give up.

How would the death of Hitler have affected the Reich's production of war material? Overall very little, except in one important area. In June, Speer and Goering had pleaded with the Führer to abandon the conversion of the ME262 jet fighter into a bomber, but to no effect. With Hitler gone, the Luftwaffe might have had twice as many ME262s available in the autumn of 1944, not enough to establish air parity with the Allies, but enough to have made the air war in the west less one-sided.

Eastern Front

Hitler's death would have had a much greater effect on the conduct of operations. On the Eastern Front, Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderian and others had already proposed withdrawal from the Baltic states, which Hitler had refused, partly because the navy claimed it needed the coastal waters for training submarine crews. Dönitz would have continued his resistance to the proposal, but without Hitler's support he would have lost the argument and the generals would have had their way.

A new line on the Front would have emerged, running south along the heavily fortified border of East Prussia to the Vistula, and thence along the Carpathians to the lower Danube in Rumania. It would have been shorter than the actual line, and taken advantage of natural defensive features, making it more formidable.

The army already had a contingency plan, Margarethe II, for the occupation of Rumania if the country tried to defect, but Hitler had refused to countenance putting the plan into action, saying that he trusted the Rumanian leader Marshal Ion Antonescu. With Hitler gone, Margarethe II would have swung into action in August, allowing the Germans to block the 200-mile-wide corridor between the Carpathians and the Danube, and thereby halt the Soviet offensive into the Balkans.

Western Front

Operations in the west, too, would have been profoundly affected by the Führer's demise. On 28 June Hitler had rejected a plan, put forward by von Rundstedt and Rommel, which suggested a German withdrawal back to the line of the Seine. With Hitler gone, this plan could have been put into effect. There would have been no Mortain counter-attack and no Falaise pocket, with their attendant losses.

Instead a defence of the Seine would have been followed by a defence of the Somme, and then the Meuse and Moselle, and so on back to the Reischswald and eventually the Rhine. This early withdrawal from France - about three weeks sooner than the one that did occur - would have saved some 250,000 men and much equipment, some of which could have been redeployed to the Eastern Front, particularly in Rumania.

Hitler's demise, then, would have allowed Germany to adopt defensive strategies on both western and eastern fronts, fighting on shorter, more defensible lines. And with Rumania still under German control, the oil crisis of late 1944 would have been less severe. In addition, Germany would still have had access to the strategically important minerals of the Balkans and Anatolia, so that many of the log-jams that delayed jet aircraft production would not have occurred.

 

Moreover, without Hitler there would have been no Ardennes offensive, and consequently no squandering of precious resources. Instead the Germans would have imposed a series of attritional slogging matches on the Anglo-Americans, fought on ground of their own choosing. In the east the fierce resistance offered to the Soviets on the frontiers of East Prussia and the Carpathians would have been stronger yet, while the great tank battles that actually took place on the plains of Hungary at Debrecen, would have been fought to defend the oil fields of far-off Rumania.

The disparity in production and manpower between the Allies and Germany, however, was so great that the Eastern Front would have given at some point, whoever was in charge. On 12 January 1945 the Soviets launched a great offensive in central Poland, which carried them from the Vistula to the Oder - dangerously close to Berlin, in other words - in less than three weeks.

In our alternative world, it is difficult to see how the Vistula - Oder offensive, however vigorously resisted, could have been stopped. Soviet deception had persuaded Hitler to concentrate his forces in Hungary and East Prussia, but there is no reason to suppose that other German generals, even those unhindered by their Führer, would not also have fallen victim to false intelligence.

A radical solution to the Soviet advance

On 23 January, Soviet forces reached the Oder, only 60 miles east of Berlin. Shocked by the speed of the Soviet advance, the German naval high command actually discussed a radical solution - opening Germany's western front and allowing the Anglo-Americans unimpeded access through Belgium and the Rhineland into the heart of the Reich.

They hoped the Allies would thus be drawn in to join with Germany in keeping the Russians to the east of the Oder - but this idea was not discussed outside the Naval high command, as there was little trust between them and the other two services. In the absence of Hitler it is likely that such a scenario, in effect an Anglo-American relief in place of the German army, followed by German demobilisation, would have been widely, and in some quarters favourably, canvassed.

 

Would it have become policy? It is possible, given that the crisis produced by the Vitula-Oder offensive would have fractured the loose coalition running Germany. Göring and Himmler, now weak and discredited, would have gone to the wall, and a new government composed of Army and Waffen SS generals, could have announced that Germany's western borders were now open.

 

The Yalta conference, at which the Anglo-Americans and Soviets were to agree the post-war division of Europe, was only two weeks away. With their forces still west of the Meuse, and bogged down in the Appenines in Italy, the Anglo-Americans were expecting to go to Yalta as supplicants, with the Russians in a strong position.

But if the plan had been followed, suddenly Berlin would have been offering unconditional surrender. The dowry would have been significant - not just control over central Europe but over south-eastern Europe to boot. The price of acceptance for the Allies, however, would have been immense - an irrevocable breach with the Soviets. The British, perfidious as ever, would probably have accepted, but there would have been problems with the Americans, who thought they needed Soviet support for the war against Japan.


If the Germans had taken the initiative, and had begun pulling back from their western defences, it is difficult to see how Anglo-American forces could have avoided being sucked into the resulting vacuum, and pushing on to face the Russian advances, no matter what political decision had been made in London and Washington.

Soviet belligerence

By ending the war three months early, Germany would have escaped the last of the terror raids, particularly the destruction of Dresden. In addition, the bulk of German territory would have been surrendered to a disciplined, civilised enemy, so that the murder, rape and pillage of the Soviet advance would have been confined to areas east of the Oder. There would have been war crimes trials, but possibly not as extensive as those that actually took place.

The long-term political impact of the way the war ended would have been immense if Operation Foxley had succeeded. If it had, and Stalin had been excluded from the Balkans or from Berlin, he would not have accepted the situation. He would probably have launched offensives against the Allies as they advanced into Germany in their attempt to keep Russia out of central Europe. One can imagine Anglo-American and Soviet forces clashing in Carpathian passes, or shelling each other across the Oder.

'In this scenario, the Cold War would have started with a bang the moment the Anglo Americans reached the German side of the Eastern Front. In June 1945 Churchill, worried by increasing Soviet belligerence, actually did propose the re-mobilization of German forces as a way of opposing Stalin, a suggestion that was quickly buried by the chiefs of staff. In the post-Foxley world, he may have got his way.

 

The spring and early summer of 1945 would have been the period of maximum danger, as Russian and Allied troops faced each other. This confrontation would have eased only with the first successful test of the American atomic bomb on 16 July, which would have dictated a policy of prudence to Stalin.

This end to the war would have left a bad taste in many mouths. The political left in the west would have railed about the betrayal of the Soviet Union, and accorded to the Soviet system much greater legitimacy than it actually had. Conversely the right in Germany would have seen the 'Volk' stabbed yet again in the back, not once but twice (by the Allies and by the treachery of their own generals). They would have said that if Hitler had lived, if the borders had not been opened, Germany might yet have avoided the humiliation of an Anglo-American occupation. There would have been soul searching, but not as much as that produced by the reality of total, utter defeat.

The legacy of betrayal could only have served to make the post-war world more dangerous than it actually was. The Soviet Union, faced with a resurgent, psychologically undefeated Germany allied to Britain and America, may have withdrawn ever deeper into paranoia, perhaps not unreasonably. The crises of the early Cold War years would have happened not in Berlin or Budapest, but in Iran or the Norwegian-Finnish frontier.

These crises might have been containable, but it is unlikely that the world would have been as lucky as it actually was, in October 1962, when the Soviets deployed missiles to Cuba. All that was required to tip the balance in favour of war at that time was a slight increase in paranoia, a condition that is highly likely to have been rampant in the world - if Operation Foxley had succeeded.

Find out more

Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler 1933-1945 by Joachim Fest (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996)
Hitler, Göring and the Obersalzberg by Bernhard Frank (Anton Plenk, 1989)
Hitler's Personal Security by Peter Hoffman (MacMillan, 1979)
Operation Foxley: The British Plan to Kill Hitler by Mark Seaman (MacMillan, 1979)
The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer by Dan Van der Vat (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)
Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw (Allen Lane, 2000)
Inside Hitler's Command by Geoffrey Megargee (University Press of Kansas, 2002)
Hitler (Introductions to History) by David Welch (UCL Press, 1998)

About the author

Duncan Anderson joined the War Studies Department at Sandhurst as a senior lecturer in 1987, and has been Head of Department since 1997. He has written several books on World War Two, and worked for the British Army and other NATO forces in Germany, both lecturing and conducting staff tours.