Eighty years ago, Britain offers the Germans (secretly) an immense loan and the Soviets (publicly) a visit by a man with a silly name

Clandestine contacts between a junior British minister, a senior British civil servant and Goering’s economic adviser, Helmut Wohlthat, were leaked in the newspapers. The most eye-catching feature was the supposed offer to Germany of a loan of £1bn, an immense sum for the day, to fund its disarmament. Other inducements were offered to encourage Germany to reach a negotiated settlement of its demands. Fortunately for Neville Chamberlain, the civil servant involved, Sir Horace Wilson his principal adviser on all topics notably foreign policy, could just claim that he was still the government’s Chief Economic Adviser, which sustained the fiction that he was merely discussing economic matters with Wohlthat rather than a political settlement. The Foreign Office had known nothing of the contacts, which were an attempt by Downing Street to pursue the appeasement of Germany by unofficial channels. A delegation of British senior officers under Admiral the Honourable Sir Regi