This is widespread in every government at every level. The following anecdote, illustrative of the point (especially as it involves a dictator's psychology), comes from Peter Fleming, brother of the more famous Ian. He had it from the principal actor, Kapitän zur See B.
"The winter of 1939-40 was an exceptionally hard one. The Nazi attack on France and the Low Countries, originally timed for November 1939, was postponed again and again. On January 10, 1940, a German aircraft landed by mistake at Mechelen in Belgium. In it were two staff officers who had disobeyed orders that they were on no account to make this particular journey by air; and those orders had been given because the officers carried with them the latest set of orders for
Fall Gelb (Operation Yellow), as the Western offensive was code-named.
Admiral Canaris was away when the news reached the
Abwehr in Berlin. Even if he had not been away, the immediate responsibility lay upon Kapitän zur See B's branch of the
Abwehr, and he worked throughout the night. Clearly the most important thing to do was to discover whether
Fall Gelb had been compromised--whether, that is to say, the orders for the violation of their frontiers were in the hands of the Belgian General Staff. It was not yet certain that this was the case. If it was not, there were (anyhow on paper) various hopeful possibilities......much was expected of the
Abwehr.B, in Berlin did his best. No results, no news. When dawn came, the only safe assumption was that plans which were intended to change the history of Europe had become known in detail to Hitler's prospective victims. B, very sensibly, shaved.
The lather was hardly off his chin when a message came saying that Hitler wished to see Canaris immediately. B was not only departmentally responsible for attempts to destroy or recover the plans for
Fall Gelb; he was also, in Canaris' absence, the senior officer serving with the
Abwehr. He got into a car and went off to answer for his chief.
He did not have to wait when he arrived at the Chancellery. Puttkammer, Hitler's naval aide-de-camp, was in the ante room. Puttkammer had time to utter only one word of advice or warning before he ushered B into the presence. "Answer!" he whispered.
It was not, B discovered, at all easy to do so. He was a man of character and was not intimidated by mere contact with the
gros légumes. He knew, besides more than anyone else did about the matter in hand.
But Hitler was in a fury. "I felt," said B, " as if I had bben hypnotised. My brain would not work, my will-power had ceased to exist. I was a jelly." The Führer ranted on, dwelling on the gravity of the situation, execrating the culprits, rehearsing the far-fetched remedial measures open to the
Abwehr. B stood rather shakily to attention. At last, Hitler, having perhaps let off enough steam, got down to brass tacks. "How long would it take the two officers to get out of the aircraft?" he asked.
B had in fact no very clear idea; but he remembered Puttkammer's injunction. " Three minutes, my Führer," he replied as crisply as he could.
"And how bulky were the orders for
Fall Gelb?"
B did not know so he compromised.
"They were of approximately this size, my Führer," he said, indicating with his hands the dimensions of a fair-sized packet.
"And how long, then, would they take to burn?"
B gulped, then plunged. "Six minutes," he said firmly.
Hitler summoned Puttkammer, collected from his desk the requisite volume of foolscap, took it out on to the balcony and, with Puttkammer's help, set fire to it. All three men looked at their watches, none more intently than B.
The little bonfire, poked when occasion demanded by the tyrant's toe, burned itself out in five and a half minutes. When Hitler came back into the room, his whole appearance had changed. He looked gentle, almost happy.
"You are a remarkably efficient officer," he told B, and went on, flatteringly, to question him about the details of his past service.
The incident appeals to me as a study in the anodyne power of illusion. It was a complete illusion to suppose, as Hitler did, that B knew what he was talking about. Even if B's data had been accurate, and not pure guesswork, it was an illusion to imagine that the time it takes to burn a bundle of foolscap on a balcony is a reliable guide to the time it takes to burn a comparable bundle on a wind-swept airfield, fumbling under flying kit for the matches and anxiously watching as hostile figures close in on you across the snow. And the biggest illusion of all was Hitler's illusion that, by personally carrying out this test, he had somehow reasserted his control over a critical situation."
Ah, yes, that last one's the clincher: personal control supposedly exercised by supreme leaders who are nothing of the kind and have no right to any sort of control. Roll on the day when we see all of their heads on pikes.
