Churchill's Spy Files

by Nigel West

  Juliusson, aged 28, was a fisherman who had signed off his ship, the Bruarfoss, in Copenhagen and had shared lodgings with a circus performer whose weight-lifting act included carrying elephants. The three spies were kept in England until August 1945, when they were flown to Iceland from Hendon and returned to American custody in Iceland. Bjornsson and Juliusson were convicted of treason and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. Fresenius was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment and upon his release moved to Chile, where he was appointed director of the agricultural research institute at Osorno. He died in 1956.

  Gudbjornsson, and Matthiasson were also sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. Sigvaldason and Thorsteinsson received eight months, Hlidar five months, and Palsson three months. However, the court ruled that since all had spent longer than those sentences in detention in England, they would not be incarcerated.

  * * *

  BRUTUS was Roman Garby-Czerniawski, a Polish Air Force officer who had been captured by the Abwehr in Paris in 1942 while running the TUDOR network. Betrayed by his lover, Mathilde Carré, Garby-Czerniawski declared his true role to Kenneth Benton at the SIS station in Madrid in October 1942 after the Abwehr had arranged his escape from Fresnes. His supposed cooperation with the Germans was based on a threat to his mother in Poland and his brother, a PoW. His radio operator, code-named CHOPIN, was actually an MI5 technician. After the war Roman Garby-Czerniawski remained in London, was active in the government-in-exile, and wrote an account of his participation in the INTERALLIÉ network in Nazi-occupied France.5

  * * *

  ARTIST was Johannes Jebsen, an Abwehr officer based in Lisbon who had recruited his university friend Dusan Popov, and previously Petrie had referred to the problem he had presented (see Chapter 6). TRICYCLE had exercised considerable discretion in fending him off, but even he now suspected that ARTIST had come to realise that his network of Yugoslavs in London were probably under British control. An additional issue was his friendship in Lisbon with Hans Ruser’s mother, a contact that had been frowned upon by the Gestapo, especially when all the defector’s acquaintances were under scrutiny (see Chapter 8).

  Jebsen was the only Abwehr officer to be an SIS agent and, having been run by SIS’s Graham Maingot, he was abducted by his SD colleagues and returned to Germany in May 1944, accused of having embezzled Abwehr funds. His precise fate remains unknown, but it is thought that he was executed without casting any doubts on Popov, the source known to the Abwehr as IVAN.

  * * *

  MI5’ knowledge of Wladyslaw Wilman began in May 1944 when he arrived in Lisbon and joined a group of fellow Polish refugees anxious to join the Allied forces in England. They were sent to Gibraltar, where Wilman took the opportunity to make a statement to the local Defence Security Officer. According to his version of events, he had been recruited by the Abwehr while worked as a forced labourer in a Hamburg aircraft factory in 1942. Having agreed to accept recruitment he had undergone various courses at training centres in Hamburg and Bremen, and received instructions for a mission to either Canada or Great Britain, where he was to report on preparations for D-Day. Realising his potential as a double-agent, the DSO had Wilman flown to England, and he arrived at Camp 020 on 19 May. However, the length of his interrogation precluded the chance of him fulfilling his espionage assignment, so he was released in June and found a job in an aircraft factory.

  16

  3 JULY 1944

  JUNE 1944

  A. SPECIAL AGENTS.

  The outstanding event of the week has been the return of the agent ZIGZAG, who was dropped by parachute on the night of the 28th/29th June. It will be remembered that ZIGZAG made his first parachute landing in this country under German orders in December 1942, and that he then worked under our control as a sabotage agent. He returned to Lisbon on March 28th, 1943 and reported to his German masters. For his sabotage of the Hatfield works (organised by us) and other services, he appears to have received rather more than 100,000 marks as a bonus from the Germans. Since that date he has been given an extended holiday in Norway, where he has indulged in yachting and other recreations and has successfully withstood various psychological and other tests, all of which have served to fortify German belief in him. He has also paid three short visits to Berlin, the last in March 1944, but has had no opportunity to carry out his own proposal to assassinate Hitler as a paragon. He describes Berlin as ‘a complete shambles resembling the ruins of Pompei’, and the morale of the Germans as noticeably low. On the other hand he stresses the growing French resentment against the British. This view is founded on his observations made during his stay in Paris from March to June of this year. His assignment on his present visit is not sabotage, but straight intelligence, as follows:-

  (1) To procure photographs or plans of our Asdic gear for spotting submarines.

  (2) To ascertain details of the radio location system employed for the detection of German planes, particularly as fitted to night fighters.

  (3) To find out the effect of the P plane, places where they are landing and resultant damage.

  (4) To ascertain the location of American Air Force stations, and corresponding towns in Germany to be attacked by planes leaving these aerodromes in England.

  (5) To find out information about a new wireless frequency.

  Reference 5: The Germans believe that we have discovered a new wireless frequency in which a new type of valve, square-shaped, plays an important part. They believe that this is likely to upset their Weapon No. 2 which, ZIGZAG says, is a radio controlled rocket. He was told that this valve was manufactured by a firm in Hammersmith. The names of the manufacturers would be sent to him by W/T later, and he was then to break into the factory and steal one of the valves.

  2) As an appreciation of his work in the ‘Front Line’, GARBO, who is a Spaniard, has been awarded the Iron Cross (Second Class). As a further example of the Germans’ appreciation of his work, the following are two messages which have been sent to him at the request of Berlin:

  (1) ‘I wish to stress in the clearest terms that your work over the last few weeks has made it possible for our Command to be completely forewarned and prepared and the message of Four would have influenced but little had it arrived three or four hours earlier.’

  (2) ‘Thus I reiterate to you, as responsible chief of the service, and to all your collaborators, our total recognition of your perfect and cherished work and I beg of you to continue with us in the supreme and decisive hours of the struggle for the future of Europe. Saludos.’

  3) Another Special Agent, TATE, has also received an effusive message of encouragement for his work:

  ‘Please, at this moment, make the most use of all connections and concentrate all energy. As the situation is at the moment, your messages about concentrations and movements (some especially signs of troops preparing for action) can be not only fabulously important, but can even decide the outcome of the war.’

  The above messages indicate that our special agents are playing a successful, as well as an important part in passing to the Germans the cover and deception plans of SHAEF.

  4) All our special agents with W/T communications have been asked to report on the effect of CROSSBOW on the morale of the people, the amount of damage it does and the number of people it kills. Two of our best agents have been asked to give details of the exact position where and the time at which the missiles land. It is suggested that this information is required by the operators of this weapon in order to enable them to take the necessary corrections in range and direction, It is known from Most Secret Sources that information on CROSSBOW is required so urgently that special arrangements have been made to pass reports from our agents as rapidly as possible from their Control Station to Arras. Arras is known to be the centre from which counter-measures against this country are directed.

  5) It seems from all indications that the Germans have accepted the stories which we have told them about an intending attack on the Pas de Calais.

  Messages
in conformity with this Deception Plan were put over through our channels at the request of SHAEF. It seems pretty clear that the congratulatory messages, especially to GARBO, to some extent reflect the general military appreciation of the situation of the German High Command. It is known for a fact that the Germans intended at one time to move certain Divisions from the Pas de Calais area to Normandy but, in view of the possibility of a threat to the Pas de Calais area, these troops were, either stopped on their way to Normandy and recalled, or it was decided that they should not be moved at all. It is hoped that this threat may be kept going for as long as required for purposes.

  B. SPIES.

  Special arrangements were made for OVERLORD in order to ensure that any stay-behind spies captured in Normandy should be sent to this country for interrogation as quickly as possible. The Security Service also set up machinery so that any information derived from the agents could be sent back to the field with the utmost despatch in order to assist the Special Counter Intelligence units.

  Two stay-behind agents have already been captured and sent back to this country. They have been intensively interrogated, and comprehensive reports of the cases were in the hands of 21st Army Group within seven days of our receiving the bodies.

  2) The first stay-behind agent captured in Normandy and sent to this country for interrogation was Yves Guilcher @ GUILLAUME. His cover name of GUILLAUME and his German contacts have been well known to us in the past from Most Secret Sources. Guilcher was identified without difficulty as GUILLAUME when he was denounced to the British on their arrival in Bayeux. His mission was to report by wireless on unit and vehicle markings of Allied troops. Under interrogation he has stated that he never intended to carry out his mission, but the sincerity of this statement is extremely doubtful. He was, it is true, wounded in an air raid on the 2nd June, so that he would be unable to use his transmitting set for some time, but he made no effort to give himself up to the Allies on their arrival and after his arrest he at first denied the possession of a W/T set which he had buried. His general conduct is no more creditable since he has confessed that he has betrayed at least two French patriots to the Germans.

  3) The other of these stay-behind agents is a Frenchwoman, Madeleine Bernard, aged 56 who, when the U.S. Forces entered Mestre near Isigny, asked to be put in touch with the Intelligence Authorities. Following a local interrogation she was brought to this country for further questioning, Bernard and her lover, one Poussin by name, have been working as double-agents on behalf of the French in France since 1941, Bernard performing the part of a courier carrying letters for the Germans between Marseilles and Dijon. More recently Bernard has been living with her daughter and grand-children on their farm in Normandy. In April of this year Bernard was asked by Poussin to play a further part, and was put by him in touch with Schneidar, a German Secret Service agent, who has been setting up an organisation of stay-behind agents to pass operational information to the enemy by W/T. Bernard was to find cover employment for such agents. The time was short, however, and this she was unable to do. In the course of her work for Schneidar, Bernard however came across a certain Durand whom she was able to identify to the US Authorities and whose W/T apparatus was found, though he himself had fled, when the US Forces entered Carentan.

  4) The young Pole, Wilman, referred to in the last report, has now been fully interrogated. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity in asserting that he allowed himself to be recruited by the Germans as a means of escaping from occupied territory. [XXX]

  C. SABOTAGE.

  It was known from the interrogation of captured agents and Most Secret Sources that the German Sabotage Service was organising a network of saboteurs to work in the Rome area after its occupation by the Allies. Since the fall of Rome, an important saboteur belonging to Himmler’s Secret Service has given himself up and supplied the names of forty saboteurs, and information on the positions of hidden dumps of sabotage equipment. One of these dumps was said to be in the German Embassy, which was therefore searched with the consent of the Swiss Legation. Arms, sabotage material, and a wireless transmitting set were found. An expert from this office has gone to Rome to examine these dumps and equipment. A study of the Rome organisation may provide information which will have application on the Western Front, where similar stay-behind organisations are known to exist.

  D. TROTSKYISTS.

  The four Trotskyists charged in connection with the Apprentices Strike at Newcastle whose arrest was mentioned in the report for April, were, on June 19th found guilty of aiding and abetting the commission of a strike, while Tearse, Lee and Haston1 were found guilty of acting in furtherance of a strike. Tearse2 and Lee3 were sent to prison for a year, and Haston for six months. Mrs Ann Keen, who had already been imprisoned for thirteen days, was released.4 In sentencing the three men, Mr Justice Cassels said that they were dangerous men and had sought to use the occasion of the boys’ grievances in order to serve their own political ends. An appeal has been lodged on the question whether acts done prior to a strike can be acts in furtherance of a strike.

  3rd July 1944

  * * *

  On 13 August 1944, as American troops of the US Army 4th Armoured Division entered Pré-en-Pail, 30-year-old Martial Durand, formerly a French navy mechanic, and 23-year-old electrician Robert Charrier approached them and offered information about the German Intelligence Service, claiming to be acting as double-agents planted on the enemy by the resistance. A wireless transmitter was quickly recovered from their room in the local Hotel La Croix Blanche and their version of events was largely accepted by the Counter-Intelligence Corps detachment. Nevertheless, both men were transferred by air on 12 September to Hendon for examination at Camp 020.

  Even before the pair had arrived, Durand had been identified as an ISOS personality code-named CHEVALIER and known as MATELOT, a member of Abwehrtruppee 122 of Abwehrkommando 130, a stay-behind organisation based in Angers. He had also been denounced as a German spy by Mathilde Bernard, who had been at Camp 020 since 20 June 1944, and so was already on an Allied arrest list.

  On 13 June Guy Liddell mentioned Bernard in a diary entry:

  We have discussed with Trevor-Wilson the case of a Frenchwoman called Madeleine Bernarde, alias Gabrielle, alias Madeleine, who surrendered to the allied forces on or before 12 June at the bridgehead area. She claimed to be an agent of the French Deuxieme Bureau and mentioned the names of certain contacts in Marseilles. She says that she was recruited for the Germans as a double-cross agent by one [XXX] who was also a French double-cross agent. She claims to have carried letters from Marseilles to Dijon for one Dr Becker. She states that she was asked by one Schneider of St. Lo to set up a German stay-behind agent at Carentan who she believed to be there now. The French say that unless this woman is identical with one Madame Pellegrin of Antibes who was recruited by Poussin in the spring of 1942 in Marseilles they cannot identify her, although they know the names of other people with whom she claims to have been associated. The French have no special plans for this woman and it seems desirable that she should be got over here and thoroughly interrogated. Meanwhile, a stay-behind agent in Bayeux has been arrested on a denouncement by some other French citizen. He is to come here for interrogation.

  Durand confirmed that, having been recruited as an agent in Nantes in December 1943, he had undergone three months’ of wireless training, supervised by three German instructors. On the same course were eight other Frenchmen, whom he identified.

  The problem for MI5 was deciding whether Durand and Charrier were sincere patriots or, more probably, mercenary opportunists who really had been prepared to serve the Nazi cause. However, in the absence of conclusive proof in ISOS, both men were returned to Paris in November 1944, leaving the question of Durand’s complicity unresolved, even if the impression left by Petrie’s brief summary was that Bertrand’s denunciation had been justified.

  As for the German officer named Schneidar, Petrie was probably referring to an Abwehr officer who a
dopted the alias Colonel Schneider to train and manage a stay-behind organisation in France. His address, 59 rue Sabline in Carentan, was raided, as was his office, at 15 rue de Villedieu in Saint-Lô, but he was never caught. Reportedly he had confided to Durand that he had lived in France for twenty years before the war. He was also mentioned by Yves Guilcher, the other stay-behind agent referred to in Petrie’s report.

  The ISOS trail for Schneider showed him living in Paris at 9 rue de Loynes and as having adopted the alias Dr Schuster for a visit to San Sebastien in 1941 to send agents into Spain. In April 1942 he turned up as Haniel Schneider, holding a meeting in Madrid with an agent code-named BALLAFREG, and a month later he was referred to as ‘Dr Schneider of Angers’. Later in the year he was in contact with the Abwehr in Tangiers, and in December he was connected to an agent in Tunis. He then dropped from sight in ISOS until May 1944, when he was linked to a stay-behind agent controlled by Kommando 130, Truppe 122. According to Section V’s analysts, he had been employed by Abwehr II in Paris, based at 43 rue de Courcelles and the Grand Hotel Pavilion, 36 rue de l’Echiquier, and then by Abwehr IH in Angers. He was also mentioned by HARLEQUIN as a colleague from Dortmund who collected musical instruments and specialised in Arab agents, and by other agents, such as Van Eynde, as having been his principal instructor at the Château d’Ardannes, and Mathilde Bernard. Additionally, Section V analysts speculated that he might be the same Schneider who had been described by Frank Steiner in Brussels, and the German officer named Schneider spotted in the Hotel de Normandie, 35 rue de Normandie in Paris. Despite the accumulated evidence of Schneider’s activities in Paris, at the Abwehr’s headquarters at the Hotel Lutetia on the Boulevard Raspail, he was never traced.