Germany exploit the newly acquired areas of eastern Europe was postponed the same day
because of the strength of public feeling against Germany. As soon as this had died
down, secret efforts were made through R. S. Hudson, secretary to the Department of
Overseas Trade, to negotiate with Helmuth Wholthat, Reich Commissioner for the Four
Year Plan, who was in London to negotiate an international whaling agreement. Although
Wholthat had no powers, he listened to Hudson and later to Sir Horace Wilson, but
refused to discuss the matter with Chamberlain. Wilson offered: (1) a nonaggression pact
with Germany; (2) a delimitation of spheres among the Great Powers; (3) colonial
concessions in Africa along the lines previously mentioned; (4) an economic agreement.
These conversations, reported to Berlin by Ambassador Dirksen in a dispatch of 21 July
1939, would have involved giving Germany a free hand in eastern Europe and bringing
her into collision with Russia. One sentence of Dirksen's says: "Sir Horace Wilson
definitely told Herr Wohlthat that the conclusion of a non-aggression pact would enable
Britain to rid herself of her commitments vis-a-vis Poland." In another report, three days
later, Dirksen said: "Public opinion is so inflamed, and the warmongers and intriguers are
so much in the ascendancy, that if these plans of negotiations with Germany were to
become public they would immediately be torpedoed by Churchill and other incendiaries
with the cry 'No second Munich!'"
The truth of this statement was seen when news of the Hudson-Wohlthat
conversations did leak out and resulted in a violent controversy in the House of
Commons, in which the Speaker of the House repeatedly broke off the debate to protect
the government. According to Press Adviser Hesse in the German Embassy in London,
the leak was made by the French Embassy to force a break in the negotiations. The
negotiations, however, were already bogging down because of the refusal of the Germans
to become very interested in them. Hitler and Ribbentrop by this time despised the British
so thoroughly that they paid no attention to them at all, and the German Ambassador in
London found it impossible to reach Ribbentrop, his official superior, either by dispatch
or personally. Chamberlain, however, in his eagerness to make economic concessions to
Germany, gave to Hitler £6 million in Czechoslovak gold in the Bank of England, and
kept Lord Runciman busy training to be chief economic negotiator in the great agreement
which he envisaged. On 29 July 1939, Kordt, the German charge d'affaires in London,
had a long talk with Charles Roden Buxton, brother of the Labour Peer Lord Noel-
Buxton, about the terms of this agreement, which was to be patterned on the agreement of
1907 between Britain and Russia. Buxton insisted that his visit was quite unofficial, but
Kordt was inclined to believe that his visit was a feeler from the Chamberlain group. In
view of the close parallel between Buxton's views and Chamberlain's, this seems very
likely. This was corroborated when Sir Horace Wilson repeated these views in a highly
secret conversation with Dirksen at Wilson's home from 4 to 6 p.m. on 3 August 1939.
Dirksen's minute of the same day shows that Wilson's aims had not changed. He wanted a
four-power pact, a free hand for Germany in eastern Europe, a colonial agreement, an
economic agreement, etc. The memorandum reads, in part: "After recapitulating his
conversation with Wohlthat, Sir Horace Wilson expatiated at length on the great risk
Chamberlain would incur by starting confidential negotiations with the German
Government. If anything about them were to leak out there would be a grand scandal, and
Chamberlain would probably be forced to resign." Dirksen did not see how any binding
agreement could be reached under conditions such as this; "for example, owing to
Hudson's indiscretion, another visit of Herr Wohlthat to London was out of the question."
To this, Wilson suggested that"the two emissaries could meet in Switzerland or
elsewhere." The political portions of this conversation were largely repeated in an
interview that Dirksen had with Lord Halifax on 9 August 1939.(18)
It was not possible to conceal these activities completely from the public, and, indeed,
government spokesmen referred to them occasionally in trial balloons. On 3 May,
Chamberlain suggested an Anglo-German nonaggression pact, although only five days
earlier Hitler had denounced the Anglo-German naval agreement of 1935 and the Polish-
German nonaggression pact of 1934. As late as 28 August, Sir Nevile Henderson offered
Germany a British alliance if she were successful in direct negotiations with the
Poles.(19) This, however, was a personal statement and probably went further than
Halifax would have been willing to go by 1939. Halifax apparently had little faith in
Chamberlain's ability to obtain any settlement with the Germans. If, by means of another
Munich, he could have obtained a German-Polish settlement that would satisfy Germany