This country is at war with Germany.

We shall go under the end.

I remember the sheets of flame which came up and almost blinded us for my guns.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the World War II podcast, Amings Wallace.

Operation Foxley was the name of the secret plan supported by Winston Churchill to assassinate Hitler in 1944-45.

Different methods of assassination were considered such as a sharpshooter or poisoning through to a more elaborate plan that included hypnotism.

With me to discuss Foxley is Eric Lee. Eric has been with us before in episode 130.

We discuss the Georgian uprising against the Germans on the Dutch Island of Texel at the end of the world.

His new book is Britain's Plot to Kill Hitler, the true story of Operation Foxley and SOE.

Welcome back Eric. It's nice to have the opportunity to chat with you again.

When was an assassination attempt on Hitler first discussed? Do these things seriously come up before the outbreak of war?

I actually know that they did and there's a famous story of a British diplomat in Berlin who sent a message to his superiors in London saying,

if I look at my window at the right time of day, I can see Hitler and you're giving a guy with a sniper rifle. He could be taken out now.

Actually, they talk quite openly about this. So it was a different time.

But obviously that was never approved of it. It was never a serious discussion about killing him until the war began.

I'm not sure now if sort of regime change through assassination is seen as being a necessarily a right thing to do, a legal thing to do.

And I'm not sure if I've just invented that there is some legality to that form of regime change.

Or is it just sort of a British idea of playing cricket?

I actually looked into this because a friend of mine who read my manuscript said to me, but was it legal?

So I looked into this and there's quite a bit of discussion among international law experts about could you kill foreign leaders?

It comes up and there's a co-convoluted argument about you can kill him, but you have to do almost like in a gentlemanly way.

Like you can't pick him. So you can't like put somebody into his entourage who secretly slips his throat during the night.

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