So much for this curious tale, as told by the secret German documents and added to by Schellenberg, who was the least reliable of men—though it is difficult to believe that he invented his own role, which he admits was a ridiculous one, out of whole cloth. In a statement made through his London solicitors on August 1, 1957, after the German documents were released for publication, the Duke branded the communications between Ribbentrop and the German ambassadors in Spain and Portugal as “complete fabrications and, in part, gross distortions of the truth.”
