by Nigel West
Referat III (counterespionage) KO Spain was established in Madrid in January 1940. Its personnel was as follows: Leiter from 1940 to 1941, Colonel Hein; from 1942 to 1945. Colonel Rohrscheidt; assistant to Rohrscheidt, Hermann Grobien; secretaries, Hete von Rudorff, Rosemarie Renz, Irene Lezius, (Miss) Elwardt, Hildegarde Prohl, (Mrs) Erika Rudolph; Sonderdführer from January 1945 to April 1945, Alexander Petersen. (Hein was active in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Rohrscheidt was appointed in January 1942 and given cover status as a first secretary of the German Embassy in Madrid.)
A branch office of Referat III KO Spain was opened in San Sebastian in November 1940. Its chief was Sonderdführer Gensorowsky, whose only assistant was his wife. Gensorowsky possessed excellent connections in Spanish society, had lived in Spain for about twenty years, and had been a German intelligence officer during the Spanish Civil War.
Another branch was established in Barcelona in March 1942. Its personnel was as follows: Leiter from 1942 to 1943 Kolding; Leiter from 1943 to 1944, Sonderdführer Kellermann; Leiter from 1944 to 1945, Rittmeister Goeritz; secretaries, (Miss) MacLean and (Mrs) Mueller-Scherz; attached from January 1945 to April 1945, Sonderdführer Hans Albrecht Carganico. (Kolding suffered an automobile accident in 1943, replaced by Kellermann. Rittmeister Goeritz was formerly active in Tangiers.)
Efforts to Penetrate Allied Intelligence Services
Rohrscheidt’s task as chief of Referat III KO Spain was to determine the extent of Allied intelligence activity in Spain. He tried to penetrate all foreign intelligence agencies in Spain, but failed in the case of the British and American Intelligence Services.
Penetration of the Free French Intelligence Service
In 1944 Rohrscheidt turned his attention to Free French intelligence organizations which were trying to channel French soldiers, French technicians, and nationals of Allied countries through Spain to West Africa. He discovered that Monseigneur Boyer-Maas, a French priest in Madrid, was acting as go-between, receiving Frenchmen from the north and sending them over to North Africa. To stop the flow, Rohrscheidt recruited and paid members of the Spanish police to search the quarters of these French refugees in Madrid, in the knowledge that their papers would not be in order. Many of the Frenchmen were unable to produce genuine identification papers and were arrested by the Spanish police.
Rohrscheidt learned from Juste, an officer of the Spanish General Staff, that Colonel Malaise of the French Air Force was the head of the Free French Intelligence Service in Spain. He also learned that Malaise’s assistant was a certain Pepelin, who was collaborating closely with the American Intelligence Service and with General Giraud, who was then in Spain. The task of the Free French Intelligence Service was to strengthen the resistance movement in France and to observe German troop movements there.
Rohrscheidt’s efforts to obtain information about the activities of the Free French Intelligence Service were hampered by a French agent named Jim Dionne Watts, a member of the French Resistance, who had come to Spain and was extremely active there. Rohrscheidt denounced him to the Spanish police, Watts was forced to leave Spain, and his net of agents was broken up by the Spanish police.
By having the French Embassy in Madrid watched, Rohrscheidt learned that even as late as 1942 French agents were using the Embassy as a meeting place, entering it from an adjoining hotel building.
In San Sebastian, Gensorowsky learned that the Free French Intelligence there was trying to obtain intelligence from France, and that it was working in cooperation with Goodman, the British Consul. Gensorowsky obtained evidence that the Free French Intelligence Service was also working against the Spanish regime. He revealed this to the Spanish police, who arrested the French captain in charge of the French net in San Sebastian, and smashed the French network.
The Belgian Courier System Through Spain
Rohrscheidt discovered that a Belgian courier system was operating from Belgium through Spain to Portugal and funneling important intelligence and documents through to the Allies. One such courier line crossed the Pyrenees in the east, ran along the northern Spanish border, and ended at the estate of a Belgian consul, near Valencia de Alcantara, not far from the Portuguese border. Rohrscheidt turned the Belgian courier, whose name he fails to recall, and made photostatic copies of all documents and papers before the courier passed them on for delivery to the Allies. After two successful interceptions by Rohrscheidt, the Belgians became suspicious and dismissed the courier.
A second Belgian courier route crossed the Pyrenees through Catalonia and ended at the British Consulate in Barcelona. In the Summer of 1943 a Spanish police inspector in the border town of La J[o]nquera recognized a former Spanish Republican known as Gaston. Seizure and search of Gaston uncovered secret documents. The police inspector informed Rohrscheidt of the matter. Rohrscheidt was able to turn Gaston. After that, every one or two weeks, Gaston delivered his sealed package of secret documents to Grobien, Rohrscheidt’s assistant. The documents were flown to Madrid, carefully opened, photostated, resealed, and flown back to Gaston in Barcelona, who then turned them over to the British Consul there. This procedure was followed from 1943 to 1944, at which time Gaston was killed in Barcelona by an unidentified person.
The photostated copies were always dispatched without delay to Colonel Rohleder, Abwehr III OKW Berlin, who evaluated them. The documents contained descriptions of the West Wall and the locations of German troop units, supply dumps, and launching sites for V-1 bombs.
The names of Belgian Intelligence Service agents were contained in the reports, and Rohrscheidt states that on the basis of this information the Germans were able to arrest over three hundred Belgian agents.
The Russian Intelligence Service in Spain
The work of the Russian Intelligence Service in Spain was primarily of a political nature, as the Russians were more interested in carrying out seditious activities within the Spanish Armed Forces than in establishing a military intelligence service. However, there was evidence that the Russians were carrying on counterespionage, specializing mostly in planting deception material.
Rohrscheidt suspected that the work was directed by Conde d’Adix, alias Samuolsohn, who resided in Estoril, Portugal, where he was prominent in society and lived in grand style. Rohrscheidt also suspected Yale, a Latvian Jew living in Madrid, of being an agent of d’Adix. Yale had been an agent for many years for Abwehr I OKW Berlin, where he was said to have done excellent work against Communists.
During the Spanish Civil War, Abwehr I OKW Berlin sent him to Spain to gather intelligence from various Russian sources, and in 1943 he was ordered to obtain information about the Seydlitz and Paulus complex. During this period, Grobien established contact with Yale to ask him about the activities of d’Adix. Yale at first claimed not to know d’Adix, but later admitted otherwise.
Rohrscheidt is almost certain that Yale was turned by the Russian Intelligence Service to divulge information about Germany and to play back material to the Germans. Rohrscheidt established conclusively that agents from Portugal, apparently sent by d’Adix, met Yale in Valencia. Several times, the Spanish police arrested Russian agents who were suspected of contact with Yale, but they could not obtain evidence that Yale was in contact with these agents. Rohrscheidt later heard that the Spanish were keeping Yale under surveillance in San Rafael as late as the summer of 1945.
The British Intelligence Service in Spain
Rohrscheidt says that he was unable to penetrate the British or the American Intelligence Services because it was not possible to win over British or American nationals in these services or a chief agent of some other nationality who might be working for Allies. The Spanish could not help Rohrscheidt, because they were not admitted to the headquarters of either the British or American Intelligence Services.
In 1942 Rohrscheidt says the headquarters of the British Intelligence Service was still in Lisbon. From other sources who had no real insight into the organization of the British Intelligence Service, Rohrsch
eidt learned that a certain Maclaurin, formerly the owner of a cannery at Vigo, was in Madrid, making influential Spaniards shareholders of British film companies and doing intelligence work through film offices. Rohrscheidt also recalls that Maclaurin established a net of wireless stations in the area of Barcelona, along the coast, and in Madrid. Maclaurin later continued his activities from Lisbon. Rohrscheidt also learned that a certain Wallace was engaged in counterespionage.
Rohrscheidt says that the British were supporting the Royalist movement to replace Franco with a monarchy under Don Juan, and that the British had won over the Spanish nobility, but that the political influence of these nobles was relatively weak in Spain. In the Spanish Army, most high-ranking officers rejected British overtures.
In the northern provinces, Hamilton-Stokes, the British diplomat, attempted to rally the Requetes for the purpose of using them for political action in Spain if necessary, and also as a defensive auxiliary corps in the event of a German invasion of Spain. Military preparations to help British airborne troops land in Spain in such an event had already been made by Hamilton-Stokes.
Rohrscheidt says that a certain Sleator, whose cover occupation was that of Rolls-Royce representative in Spain, operated together with a Madame Bach in sending British agents into France. The names of these two later appeared openly on the diplomatic list.
According to Rohrscheidt, the counter-intelligence work done by the British Embassy was very effective. He assumes that Scotland Yard protected the British Embassy, sometimes made contacts with agents, and also hired agents.
Rohrscheidt says that the policy later applied by the British, of not letting Spaniards enter the Embassy, and of negotiating with other agents almost exclusively through Spanish intermediaries, was very effective.
To conceal the fact that she was employed by the GIS, Rohrscheidt never saw Mathilde Montfort in public, held conversations with her in a closed automobile or a taxi, and made appointments by placing coded notices in the Lost Items column of the Spanish newspapers. Rohrscheidt believes that because of these precautions, Montfort was never suspected by the Allied intelligence services.
Montfort made use of the Spanish banker Pedro Cadaris to obtain information about prominent members of Spanish society.
Cadaris never suspected that she was working for Rohrscheidt. Montfort met high-ranking Spaniards and possessed acquaintances in anti-German circles. Her first contact was with Colonel Malaise and his assistant, Popelin. During a conversation with these two men, Montfort established the fact that they and General Giraud were working with the American Intelligence Service.
From a conversation with Earl, an American who was a member of the American Petroleum Control Commission, Montfort learned that Earl and six other members of the company had been asked by the American Intelligence Service to locate possible landing places on the Spanish coast for use by American troops.
Montfort obtained a complete list of the personnel, including agents, of the French Embassy in Madrid. She also obtained information about the political background of each person. She ascertained the political attitude of each member of the Vichy group.
Montfort was acquainted with the wife of Maclaurin, and she found out that Mrs Maclaurin was helping her husband obtain intelligence. In 1942, Montfort discovered that as a means of promoting the showing of British films and influencing the Spanish people favorably towards the Allied cause, Maclaurin had sold to the Archbishop of Madrid shares in British film enterprises.
Montfort also succeeded in clearing a certain Lolita of suspicion. Lolita was an acquaintance of Colonel Ebright, and Rohrscheidt had suspected her of being an agent of Ebright.
Monique
Monique was a member of the French aristocracy. She left France in 1941 and went to Madrid, where she was used by Rohrscheidt to clarify the status of suspected persons and to contact people from whom information was to be obtained.
Monique was assigned by Rohrscheidt to watch a one-armed Belgian of whom Rohrscheidt had become suspicious. With his nurse, this Belgian had been sent by Ast I Brussels to Spain to go from there to England, and he had received from KO Spain instruction in secret writing and operating a wireless. Monique became friendly with the Belgian and discovered that he and the nurse were double agents, probably in the employ of the British Intelligence Service; they were identifying agents employed by the Germans. The Belgian discovered that his activities were known, and he disappeared from Madrid.
Monique was ordered to obtain information about the Polish Intelligence Service. She contacted Makof, the head of the Polish Intelligence, and Kosolowsky, his assistant. These two used Poles and Republican Spaniards as agents and informants.
In connection with Monique’s work and through Hoffmann, a member of the German Embassy who was followed by people he later identified as agents of a surveillance organization, Rohrscheidt learned of the existence of a Polish organization. In 1943 Rohrscheidt received from the OKW in Berlin a radio message informing him of the exact meeting places with dates and the passwords of a Polish agent net which was operating in the vicinity [of] Pamplona. Berlin had obtained this information by intercepting and breaking coded W/T messages of the Polish Intelligence Service. Gensorowsky, the head of III-F San Sebastian, was ordered to watch this net. Gensorowsky located the agents, who were mostly Republican Spaniards, and denounced them to the Spanish police as Communists. The police arrested the agents and broke up the net.
Abraunza @ Tobias
Abraunza, a former Spanish jefa de policia who had been dismissed for working against Franco, was employed in 1943 by Grobien. Abraunza’s assignment was to pass on misleading information about German troop movements in France to a chauffeur of the office of the American Military Attache. Grobien later learned that Abraunza was working as a double agent, He denounced Abraunza as a Republican Spaniard, and Abraunza was subsequently exiled by the Spanish Government.
@ Anacieto
Anacieto worked for Rohrscheidt early in 1943 obtaining names of agents of the British Embassy. Anacieto’s connection was a Scotland Yard man of the Embassy. Through an informant, Rohrscheidt discovered that Anacieto also worked for the British, identifying Rohrscheidt’s agents.
Don Juan (@ ?)
Toward the end of 1943, Don Juan, an agent employed by Rohrscheidt, learned from a Spaniard who was a chief agent of the British, that a Madrid import and export firm which dealt in drugs and toilet articles was looking for a stenographer. Rohrscheidt suspected that through this firm the British were sending secret messages and propaganda to Lisbon.
@ Fernanda
Fernanda, the daughter of a Spanish Republican professor and an agent of Rohrscheidt, obtained employment as a stenographer and switchboard operator with a Spanish firm in Madrid (name not recalled). She gave Rohrscheidt the telephone numbers she connected with Lisbon, but was unable to obtain the text of the telephone conversations and other information. After six weeks, she was suspected by the British and lost her job.
In 1943, Fernanda was instructed to let Wallace, a member of the British Embassy in Madrid, know that she would like to work for the British Intelligence. According to Rohrscheidt, Fernanda was accepted. She started to work for Wallace, thus identifying him as a member of the British Intelligence Service and establishing the fact that he employed agents. Rohrscheidt then instructed Fernanda to break off relations with Wallace because persons working in the office of either the British or the German Intelligence Service could be seen from the other office, and he felt that she might have been seen in his offices and thus compromised.
Poreyra, Carlos
In 1942 a Spaniard named Carlos Poreyra approached Kolding, the head of III-F Barcelona, and told Kolding that he had received instructions from a member of the British Consulate in Barcelona to go to Berlin to obtain information about industrial inventions.
With the approval of Rohrscheidt, Kolding sent Poreyra to Abteilung III OKW Berlin, where he was given deception material and returned to the B
ritish Consulate in Barcelona, Spain. Rohrscheidt says that he knows nothing else and that he never again heard anything about Poreyra.
Rivas, Fernando Sebastian @ Angel
Rivas, a Spanish police official in Madrid, had access to the secret files of the Spanish police and turned over to Rohrscheidt information obtained from these files. Rohrscheidt recalls one particular item: in 1942 the American Intelligence Service in North Africa sent Frenchmen and Republican Spaniards by motorboat to Southern Spain. The Spanish police uncovered these agents and arrested them as Communists.
Falla, Agustin
Agustin Falla, a Spaniard in the employ of the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Education, and an informant for the Department of Education of the Falange and for the Spanish Air Force, exchanged political information with Rohrscheidt.
Medem, Ruth
Ruth Medem, a baroness of German descent who possessed a passport issued by some country in South America, worked for Rohrscheidt as an agent from May 1944 to October 1944. She obtained information by listening to conversations in public places. However, the information was of little value. After Medem had worked for Rohrscheidt for a few months, he suspected her of being a double agent, but was not able to verify his suspicions. Rohrscheidt then broke off all contact with her.
Gutierrez @ Alberto
Gutierrez, a member of the Madrid police force, worked in 1943 as an agent and informant for Rohrscheidt, and was able to obtain information about the work of Hamilton-Stokes, an Englishman who was organizing the Spanish Royalist group of Requetes in the Northern provinces of Guipuzcoa and Alava in order to have an organization that would be friendly to the Allies if Spain were occupied by German troops.