Codeword Overlord

by Nigel West

  As well as having to contend with the Axis, SIS was also confronted by the Seguridad secret police and by Franco’s own Falange. In April 1943, SIS’s Madrid station reported to London:

  SPAIN

  Contre-Espionage.

  [XXXX] has reported that the Falange claim to have captured one of our codes. It is said to be of from 3 to 6 figures and is stated to start with ‘avant l’occupation’ and later the key phrase changes to ‘après occupation’.

  We are hoping that more information will be forthcoming concerning this.

  SPAIN

  Contre-Espionage.

  Attempts by the Falange at

  Locating W/T sets

  [XXXX] reports that 4 W/T receiving apparatuses were ordered on 28.4.43 by the Falange, which will be adaptable to all currents with a special vibrator to enable it to be carried in a car and also a ‘radiogiometre’.

  These apparatuses are apparently to localize and record any transmitting that may be done by the alleged British I.S. According to the Falange, they have localized 2 transmitting stations, one in Madrid, and the other in Navarre.

  These machines are supposed to be ready in six days and will be handed over to Puentes Garcia who has apparently appointed several agents of his own, and source has promised to supply us with their names in the near future.

  Fuentes Garcia is said to have stated that the code which is alleged to have been discovered […] and that it would be quite easy to decipher, whatever is transmitted by us. Incidentally, we have not yet been able to discover who might be employing this key-phrase, mentioned in our No. [XX]‘A’.

  Whereas the British intelligence model was strictly linear, with a clear chain of command to London, the German structure was infinitely more complex, with individual Abwehr agents and their handlers operating semi-independently from as far away as Biarritz, Paris and even Brussels. From early in 1940 the Abwehr in Madrid had been headed by Hans Krüger, but he would be transferred to Tangier in 1941 and replaced by Major Friedrich Baumeister,1 alias Rudolph, who was succeeded in early 1942 by a well-known Brandenburg Regiment combat swimmer, Friedrich Hummel, who pre-war had served as a deck officer for the Hamburg-Amerika Line. In August 1944 Hummel was recalled to Berlin for a promotion.2

  Most, if not all, the KO’s staff enjoyed close links to their host country, had forged personal friendships while serving in Spain during the Civil War, or had spent many years there on business, and certainly spoke the language fluently. Naturally, SIS drew heavily on Section V to understand the Abwehr’s intricacies and occasionally gained some insight from defectors and informants, but the overall picture remained quite opaque until after the war.

  Among the first of the KO personnel to be interviewed by the Allied intelligence authorities after the cessation of hostilities was the KO’s chief accountant, Karl Zimmer, who readily co-operated with his US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) interrogators and helped recreate a complete order of battle for the entire German network directed from the KO’s administrative offices at Calle Miguel Angel 24. Zimmer had kept the KO’s financial records since October 1941 and was repatriated in March 1946, but in his interviews he insisted he had never been allowed to learn the true identities of individual agents. Nevertheless, he proved to be an invaluable guide in reconstructing the organisation’s wiring diagram and offering personality profiles of the main protagonists.

  The head of the KO from May 1944 was a Luftwaffe officer, General Ernst Kleyenstüber, who had flown with the Kondor Legion from Pollensa in Majorca during the Spanish Civil War.3 Code-named TORRE, he held the post of assistant air attaché and in July 1944 had succeeded Kapitän Wilhelm Leissner, alias Gustav Lenz. Leissner had served in the Kaisermarine during the First World War, and afterwards had emigrated to Nicaragua. At the personal request of the Abwehr chief Admiral Canaris, he had been restored to his former naval rank and posted to Madrid, initially under a commercial cover. His principal task was to supervise the collection of intelligence against Great Britain, either by recruiting local sources, some for dispatch to England, or to facilitate the travel of agents sponsored by other Abwehrstellen. The KO’s other Abteilung dealt with sabotage, aimed mainly against Allied shipping, and counter-espionage, seeking to penetrate enemy organisations in Madrid, and deter defectors.

  Kleyenstüber was arrested by the Spanish in January 1946 and repatriated to Germany, where he was detained in May 1946 by the US Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) and then interrogated at CSDIC. In his first interview, he described the circumstances of his appointment and poor state of relations between the KO and the embassy in May 1944:

  In the course of the reorganisation of Section 1 of the Abwehr Department carried out in the spring of 1944 the hitherto existing division of groups was dropped. In April or May Chief I, who was then simultaneously Abwehr departmental head, told me of his intention to entrust me with the conduct of the KO in Spain. The command was to be limited to approximately 6 months. After that my Abwehr service would be concluded, my services in the Abwehr department then having reached two years. I was then to be re-transferred to the Luftwaffe – I had repeatedly requested combat duty in the Luftwaffe as the ministerial desk work at the Department did not suit my tastes.

  Through Colonel Hansen the predominance of the military sectors of work in the Abwehr Department over the economic and technical sectors had greatly increased. Furthermore, the influence of the ICs of the Wehrmacht branches (army, navy and Luftwaffe) on the work of the Abwehr department was strengthened [IC – reconnaissance of the enemy’s situation – Feindlagebeartarbeitung] by Colonel Hansen himself as well as his newly appointed group chiefs, and some of their collaborators came from IC positions. As I had IC experience in the Mediterranean theater of war he evidently considered me the right man to personally influence the KO in Spain in the direction of utilising their intelligence material in accordance with his wishes and reflections.

  The immediate reason was the depreciation of the relations between the German embassy and the KO in Madrld. The main questions of controversy were the numerical size of the KO and the site of its offices. Shortly before he was removed from his office, Admiral Canaris had a meeting with members of the Madrid embassy at which he had to agree to wholly withdraw his service out of the embassy, thus giving up diplomatic protection. In this Colonel Hansen thought the admiral had gone too far. As I was a former group chief and a General Staff officer, he expected me to take a firmer hand toward the embassy and to safeguard the vital prerequisites of the military intelligence service.4

  Kleyenstüber then explained the internal challenges that preoccupied him:

  The KO did not have a very strong position. It can be assumed that the reason for this was primarily the fact that the Abwehr Department and its superior office, the OKW, had but little power to exert themselves in the Berlin inter-departmental strife against ministries, the SD, etc. Furthermore, the atmosphere in the embassy was somewhat hostile to the military. The KO was the object of criticism which was not always justified.

  The military service was treated with materially less consideration than the secretly feared SD. I attempted to strengthen our position as far as possible and in the course of time to remove any tension existing in our relations to other offices, at the same time upholding connections that were running smoothly. On the other hand I endeavored to avoid a one-sided obligation that might result from too close collaboration with any particular office. It was most probably on account of this course that the KO retained an independent factor up to Germany’s collapse, although several quarters were working on a proposition to combine the KO with the SD or to subordinate both services to a high SD functionary who would have been sent to Madrid.

  Having set out the difficult environment in which the KO was obliged to operate, at a time when the fortunes of war had turned against the Axis, Kleyenstüber gave an account of the KO’s operations that he inherited from his predecessor, clearly referring to BRUTUS5 and GARBO:6

  It
was not possible to vet Spanish V-Men employed by the Germans with the Spanish authorities. Eventually it became increasingly difficult to employ Spanish V-Men, and it was known that there was an order prohibiting this with the Falange.

  Main task of T/H was reporting on troop movements in France. A Spanish V-Man was employed for this purpose, who was supposed to have a good network in France; it was later found that many of these messages were false.

  England also came under the jurisdiction of T/H. Prior to the war, KO Spain had not worked against England, therefore considerable difficulty was experienced in overcoming England’s insular position. As far as Leissner recollects the England/Referent of l/H managed to send a Pole, who was in transit, as V-Man, who sent a few reports about troop positions in England.

  After further efforts a Spaniard was sent to England, who according to his reports had a small network in southern England – reported on troop movements. He employed a ‘Red’ Spanish W/T operator, who thought he was reporting to a ‘Red’ station in Spain. These reports were viewed with some doubt in Berlin. Up to the time of the end of Leissner’s appointment as Leiter, this W/T communication with England was taking place.

  Apart from these contacts, there were no other communications with England, Ireland or the Empire.

  The plans and installations of Gibraltar were known in Berlin, and any changes were obtained by long-distance photography from Algeciras.

  Berlin was mainly interested in reports from America. Leissner states that before commencement of war against the USA it was strictly forbidden to work against this country. As in the case of England, it was impossible to overcome all the difficulties, owing to the lack of preparation. Navicerts and shipping facilities were unobtainable, therefore no V-Men could be sent from Spain.

  There was no wireless contact with the USA.

  Subordinate to Kleyenstüber was the head of Abteilung I, Eberhard Keickebusch, who presided over the KO’s large intelligence collection apparatus. This was staffed by sections representing the Eins Heer (Otto Kurrer), Eins Marine (Kapitän Balzer, then Ivo Obermüller) and Eins Luft (Colonel Hermann von Wenkstern). Keickebusch, who had been born in Guesen in February 1896, never underwent interviews conducted by Allied personnel as he remained in Spain after the war, but one of his staff, Herman Amende, agreed to co-operate with the US Counter-Intelligence Corps. He gave his interrogator, Peter M. Stern, a detailed account of Referat I’s activities between October 1939, when he joined the Abwehr while working as an exporter in Barcelona, at the invitation of George Lang, and September 1941 when he was dismissed for refusing a mission to Mexico.

  A Spanish/German dual national born in Heilbronn in February 1901, Lang was a key figure in Abt. I and liaised closely with the two principal Spanish intelligence agencies, the Dirección General de Seguridad (DGS), headed by General Francisco Rodriguez, and the Servicio de Información Militar (SIM), led by General Carlos Martinez de Campos. Lang’s access was facilitated by his father-in-law, Samuel Crespo Martin, a senior DGS officer who owned Lang’s apartment on the second floor of Infantas 22 where he lived with his wife and three sons. Reportedly, Lang and his father-in-law had undertaken an Abwehr mission together in France in 1940. Crespo then introduced Lang to José Finat, formerly Ramón Serrano Suñer’s private secretary, later mayor of Madrid and eventually chief of the DGS.

  Lang also spent time in Bilbao, where he had an office on the third floor of Alamedo Mazarredo 10, supposedly equipped with a powerful transmitter, and a private residence on the fifth floor of Alameda San Memes 6 until March 1942, when he moved to the fourth floor of Calle Aguirre 1. Lang’s principal role was as an agent recruiter and handler, and it was in this capacity that several of his sources made his activities known to the British. Among those who provided descriptions of the recruiter with the trimmed moustache who operated under at least seven aliases, were his former Madrid KO colleagues Herman Amende and Joachim Walter. There were also plenty of his agents who shared their recollections, including José María Montal Artigas, who was detained in Trinidad as a suspected German spy; GARBO, who was recruited by Lang in Madrid and then handed on to Federico Knappe-Ratey; and Gregorio Ortiz García, recruited in Bilbao in 1942 by Lang, who had adopted the alias of Emilio Helmut Laiy Groke. Ortiz was trained in secret writing by Lang before he was despatched on his mission to the United States via South America in April 1943. There was also José Antonio Del Campo y Palaez, a Cuban seaman who was arrested in Trinidad on a transatlantic voyage and interned at Camp 020 in March 1943; and in July 1941 a Croatian refugee, Maria Marek, code-named THE SNARK, who was recruited by him in April 1941 in Madrid. All these individuals, when questioned, described Lang’s skills as a case officer of the classic mould, exercising the usual tradecraft of a true professional.

  According to his MI5 file, Lang had worked in Spain for many years before the war, either for AEG or a typewriter company. British analysts monitoring his movements in the ISOS traffic noted that when he was called up for military service in March 1943, he was assigned to the Brandenburg Regiment, which promptly posted him to the Abwehr, and he thereby returned swiftly to Spain. Among Lang’s influential contacts was Colonel Cavallero of the DGS, and the local German consul Captain Genserowski, who also employed an Abwehr officer. In September 1944 Lang was one of those denounced by the British as a senior spy and, as the tide of war had demonstrably changed in the Allies’ favour, he was expelled to Germany and settled in Kiel.

  Lang, who habitually posed as a banker and was fluent in German, Spanish, French and English, also handled many agents until he moved to Bilbao in late 1941 to run a special office, known as the Bureau Felipe, for another Abteilung I personality, Karl-Erich Kuhlenthal, who was his immediate superior. A personal friend of the Abwehr chief Admiral Canaris, Kuhlenthal had served during the Civil War as an aide to the Kondor Legion’s intelligence chief, Joachim Rohleder, and was therefore very well-connected with the Franco regime. His father, Colonel Erich Kuhlenthal, was a career intelligence officer who had served as military attaché in Rome.

  The prestigious Bureau Felipe specialised in the recruitment and management of agents abroad, and by 1943 had assembled an impressive collection of assets, including several agents in London, associated with the Spanish embassy in Belgrave Square. Among them were the press attaché Angel Alcazar de Velasco, and a diplomat, José Brugada Wood, both well-established in the embassy, and the ABC newspaper correspondent, Luis Calvo. Also operating for the Abwehr under journalistic cover was Mendez Dominguez, while another agent was the Catalan nationalist, Jaime Ribas. Thus the Spanish embassy provided a very useful base in the heart of the capital, from which the Abwehr’s surrogates could act with relative impunity, thereby earning the Bureau Felipe an exalted reputation in Berlin, even if the Falangist Dominguez changed his mind and abandoned his mission once he had reached London.

  The Madrid KO’s investment in the Spanish embassy dated back to 1940 when Miguel Piernavieja del Pozo was sent to London under journalistic cover to establish a link with Gwilym Williams of the Welsh Nationalist Party. That scheme had been doomed because Williams was an MI5 double agent and, code-named G.W., neatly entrapped del Pozo, code-named POGO.7 When Piernavieja returned to Spain in February 1941, the management of G.W. was passed to Calvo, thereby compromising a hitherto undetected German spy.

  Abteilung I’s operations extended to South America, and to facilitate communications there were also agents aboard two Ybarra Line transatlantic ships, Timoteo Brenlla and Joaquin Baticon on the Cabo de Buena Esperanza and Joaquin Ruiz and José María Martínez Carretero on the Cabo de Hornos. Both Baticon and Ruiz were valued couriers but would be arrested in Trinidad by British Contraband Control in 1943. Other Ybarra personnel run by Felipe included Oscar Leihr; a steward, Miguel Moreno, and a deck officer, José Pujana.

  The Bureau Felipe’s star source was Juan Pujol, code-named ALARIC, who controlled a large network in England designated ARABEL that consisted of two dozen individual agents,
some with access to important military information. Pujol had been recruited in Madrid in January 1941 when he had volunteered to help the embassy, presenting himself as an ardent admirer of the Nazis. After his recruitment by George Lang and Fritz Knappe-Ratey, he had travelled to Lisbon at the end of April, and reported his arrival in England in July. In reality, Pujol was a fabricator who would not reach London until the end of March 1942, when he was smuggled into Gibraltar by SIS and flown to Poole. Thereafter he was enrolled by MI5 as a double agent with the code name GARBO and, with enthusiastic support from the Germans, acquired a part-time post with the Ministry of Information.