X-report

X-report, written specifically to encourage two German generals, Halder and Brauchitsch, to overthrow Hitler, which it failed to do. It purported to summarize British terms for peace which Dr Josef Müller, a Vatican emissary of German opponents of the Nazi regime, had obtained in February 1940 by using the Pope, Pius XII, whom he never actually met, as an intermediary.

Müller conveyed his notes of the terms to one of the conspirators, Hans von Dohnanyi, who wrote a twelve-page memorandum based on them and called it the X-report as Müller's codename was Mr X. Dohnanyi subsequently deposited the report in a safe which was burgled by the Gestapo in September 1944 and no copy of it has survived. But the relevant British foreign office papers show that the negotiations were taken very seriously by both sides in an effort to bring about a negotiated peace during the phoney war before Hitler could unleash his offensive in the west (see FALL GELB). There was no definite agreement, but there probably was ‘a general understanding or even a “gentleman's agreement” which emerged in the course of the intricate mutual sounding. Thus, with all the caution necessary in view of the delicate documentation, it can be assumed that there was agreement that the territorial integrity of the German Reich as of 1937 was to be respected…and that the Munich Agreement would after all be respected’ ( K. von Klemperer, German Resistance against Hitler, Oxford, 1992, p. 175). Halder saw the report on 4 April 1940; he and another general, Georg Thomas, later recalled that it ‘called for the restitution to Germany in the west of Alsace-Lorraine and in the east of the borders of 1914’ (ibid.). This would never have been acceptable to the UK—France was just kept minimally informed and was not involved—and was probably added by other conspirators who were trying to extract a higher price. Both Halder and Brauchitsch considered it futile to pursue the matter.