The plan submitted to the ‘Will to Resist Committee’ on 20 November had met with opposition from SIS who objected to certain of the methods by which it was hoped to ‘sell’ the operation to the Germans. The original document held in the Public Records Office has many paragraphs struck through in red pencil. Templer was abroad around the New Year and came back to find that no progress had been made with Periwig due, he told Marks, to ‘a political dispute’. It was typical of the ‘need to know’ regime which prevailed in SOE that Marks and Everett never formally met, or even knew of one another’s existence, although they must have passed in the corridor or met in the lift.
When SIS imposed a veto on the Periwig plan (on 13 January), Templer told Everett to drop his ‘failed parachute’ experiments. The reasons for the veto are not spelled out in the files and no mention is made of objections from the War Office. One can assume that SIS’s main objections arose from the fear that Periwig would lead to a tightening up of German security and thus endanger SIS sources and hinder the establishment of new ones. The situation emphasised again the clear incompatibility of the basic philosophies of SOE and SIS.
Templer wrote to Bruce Lockhart on 19 January setting out the particular aspects of the plan to which SIS objected – these were essentially those paragraphs in the original plan which had been scored through in red pencil. He commented that if the veto were sustained then this would seriously affect the implementation of the plan. The features of the plan to which SIS took objection were listed under four headings. The first concerned the use of agents. Two proposals were made. It was suggested in the first that agents should be introduced with a genuine mission and a genuine belief in the existence of a German Resistance Movement (this in case of capture). Such agents would either be parachuted or infiltrated. This presumably meant that the agent was to be so convinced of the reality of the Resistance Movement that he would attempt to convince his captors of its existence. But this would depend on his being captured together with the material he carried. Presumably the agent would not voluntarily give himself up, so this scenario would depend upon his capture. If he were not captured then he would seek to establish contact with dissident groups.
A second, more controversial, plan was to arrange for the discovery of dead agents carrying documents. Such agents would either be ‘shot while attempting to cross the lines or killed by parachute failure’. It was in pursuit of this latter objective that Marks and Everett had become involved. Their briefings had differed only in the details of the documents to be carried by the dead agent. In Marks’ version these would be codes printed on silk, while Everett was told that the agent would be carrying documents involving members of the German High Command in a plot to undermine the Army. Some later documents indicate that a possible target would be von Rundstedt, the German commander in the West who had been sacked by Hitler and replaced by Kesselring when he opposed Hitler’s ruling that the German Army should not retreat across the Rhine. In any case, this plan depended for its success on the certainty that the agent would be killed in the drop.
The second major component of the plan was to simulate extensive air supply activity by dropping containers and packages containing ‘instructions, pamphlets, arms and sabotage materials, etc., with suitable evidence of the organisation and with reference to BBC phrases and briefing’. Separate distributions of pamphlets were envisaged. Further activities designed to mislead would include aircraft ‘in suspicious flying including circling and signals to the ground’. One could hardly have expected this last to be supported by the RAF who in genuine supply drops had strict orders not to remain in the vicinity of the drop for more than ten minutes.
Radio deception was to be enhanced by W/T material consisting of self-operating and self-destroying transmitters: these might be disguised as ‘People’s Radios’. Other W/T material would be dropped which would be discovered and linked up with the supposed subversive organisation. Finally, there was a somewhat vague suggestion that German refugees in the UK and important German prisoners of war should be involved.
It is not difficult to guess why these proposals were vetoed by SIS who, as always, were against any activities likely to endanger their own agents, but their detailed objections do not seem to have been spelled out in hard copy. It is not known whether they raised any ethical objections to the proposed operation which involved the murder of a PoW, albeit a spy who had escaped the hangman’s noose. It is now clear, however, that Templer’s plan did not have unqualified support even within the German Directorate. Many years after the war James Joll confided to David Stafford, the historian, that he had been involved in a plan to drop an agent to his death with a faulty parachute. He had found this ethically repulsive and he had made strenuous efforts for several weeks to ensure that the plan was dropped. He would have welcomed Everett’s conclusion that the ‘faulty parachute plan’ was technically impracticable. One may speculate that, armed with this evidence, Joll may have been able to persuade Templer to drop the idea. In any case, this particular aspect is neither mentioned nor hinted at in any of the later Periwig files.
In his letter to Bruce Lockhart, Templer proposed that he should ‘comeback on SIS and ask them to review their objections in the light of the situation at that time’. The veto also included an embargo on drops within 25 miles of Allied PoW camps to avoid retaliations, and certain other sensitive ground features, with the result that virtually the whole of Germany was sterilised. Furthermore, Bomber Command was reluctant to undertake operations further north than 51 deg. nor further east than 12 deg. After consultation with Bruce Lockhart, Templer agreed to revise the plan to satisfy SIS and to arrange for the revised version to be submitted to SHAEF. According to Templer, this was done on 19 January, but no details of the revision have been traced.
Templer was clearly impatient to get things moving quickly. To this end he proposed to assemble forthwith a Periwig Committee pending the receipt of the reply from SHAEF, so that they could get on straightaway with putting the scheme into operation in its early stages: ‘this could do no possible harm and will get things going’. The new committee, with a permanent committee room in Templer’s office, was to meet twice weekly for three to four hours. It would consist of an SOE chairman (Tommy Davies AD/Z), an SOE member (Sqn Ldr Potter) together with representatives of PWE and SIS. Its first meeting took place at 10 a.m. on Monday, 22 January. At this meeting it was confirmed that Periwig would be run by AD/X. A draft Directive to SOE representatives abroad was considered (to be destroyed after reading!) and SOE representatives were invited to suggest actions relating to ‘the right means and the right victims’. It is not recorded how many responses came from this invitation, but a memorandum was received from HS/F in Barcelona on 23 February. This suggested that as an alternative to air drops, papers should be infiltrated using existing ‘C’ contacts in Lufthansa, Spanish couriers and German subjects kidnapped and sent home to be conscripted. In the event time was too short to make use of these routes. Shortly after, the Spanish Section (H) indicated that it was closing down its Periwig activities.
The Periwig Committee proceeded to discuss ways of implementing the revised project as soon as the embargo was lifted. It was proposed that agents, believing the German Resistance was genuine, should be arrested by police in neutral countries and interrogated to provide appropriate information which could then be passed to German Security. Agents in both Germany and neutral countries should establish contacts with genuine organisations such as the Edelweiss Piraten (the anti-Nazi youth group dating from the 1930s) and link with successful phoney organisations such as the Red Circle Escape Club. They should induce firms in neutral countries and their Military Attachés to believe in a Resistance. By arranging for some of the Periwig operations to fail it should be possible to convince the Germans that the Resistance really did exist. Warnings should be passed to Nazi leaders through neutral channels. This should be backed up by simulation of W/T traffic from within Germany to genuine W/T operators i
n neutral and occupied territories.
At their fifth meeting on 12 February the Periwig Committee resolved that SOE should take up with Bomber Command the question of the dropping techniques to be employed in getting false information to the enemy. Consequently a joint SOE/PWE meeting was called on 14 February. Everett, as Head of the Air Supply Research Section, attended. Also present was Sqn Ldr Potter and representatives of the Air Liaison Section (AL) and of PWE. No formal minutes of this meeting were issued but Everett took notes which are still extant. The agenda followed broadly the previously proposed format. No mention was made of the use of agents. High on the agenda was the question of the feasibility of dropping briefcases. It seems that Bomber Command were unhappy with dropping from the jump hole since the briefcase might be caught in the slipstream and strike the tail of the aircraft. Would it be better to release it from the bomb bay? These matters were to be taken up by the Air Supply Research Section with Bomber Command, BDU via AL, and AD/G. The equipment needed for the dropping of dummy stores was discussed. The possibility of dropping from Mosquito bombers was proposed. Smaller containers, both 12 in and 16 in in diameter, could be dropped from the bomb rack, while the use of wing containers replacing the long-range fuel tanks had been under development. It was estimated that up to 100 containers and 50 packages would be needed. Other items to be dropped included empty parachutes, empty containers, empty packages, small arms simulators, booby-trapped food tins, all intended to suggest that these were being despatched to resistance groups. It was also proposed that transmitters disguised as People’s Radios should be designed and a specification was drawn up. They were to be battery-operated, crystal-controlled and arranged to be switched on by static line. After an arming time of thirty minutes they would transmit for three 7-minute periods each day for seven to ten days, after which they would self-destruct. They would be fitted with an anti-disturbance switch. Thirty sets would be required and Radio Section was, optimistically, asked to produce a prototype within a fortnight! Finally, the meeting reviewed the use of pigeons both for genuine communication and to act as decoys. In particular, it was concerned about the performance of self-opening pigeon boxes for air dropping. Progress was to be reviewed at a meeting at Station IX on 16 March.
The following day, 15 February, the SIS ban was lifted and SOE was allowed ‘qualified operational freedom’. This seemed to imply that SOE was now free to pursue its original plans, although the meaning of ‘qualified’ was never spelt out. In fact the previous embargo had had little effect since from the end of November to 21 February the bad weather had meant that the RAF had suspended all operations. On 26 February it was reported that the various tests had been carried out successfully by the ASR Section, although there seems to have been no further news of the self-destroying transmitter.
It was now possible for SOE to start its dropping programme and several operations were carried out during the next few weeks. All the drops were ‘blind’ drops. Since the resistance movement was in reality fictitious, the agent could not be encouraged to think he would be met by a reception committee. The first was ‘Pathino’ on 21 February which dropped near Marburg a container which carried a complete set of German uniform (of a sergeant) with documents, maps and 1 lb (0.45 kg) of food; a second drop, ‘Pathino 2’, on the same sortie was made at a different DZ (drop zone). The same night ‘Postbox 1’ dropped a package of W/T parts with spares, messages and operating instructions near Giessen. ‘Postbox 2’ carried a similar load the same night but to a different DZ. ‘Pettifog’ was a drop of carrier pigeons with instructions in German for using them. The objective was to lead the Germans to believe that pigeons were being used to send messages back to England. This was done by including ‘duds’, i.e. birds which would not home back to England. The pigeons were dropped in special containers and were fitted with leg message containers and message forms. It was hoped that they would home to German lofts and be reported to the authorities. During April some 330 birds which had been kept in lofts at Tempsford for several weeks were dropped. Of these nine homed in the UK and two in France. Five had messages written in German, but provided no information of value. One is reputed to have thanked the senders as the returning bird’s brother had been very tasty, and asked for more to be sent!
‘Preference 1’ and ‘2’ were drops of black propaganda, forged ration cards and an S-phone. Operation Opinion on 24 February delivered four containers of ammunition, four containers of incendiaries, two containers of explosives and one container of food. This was by far the largest consignment of material sent under Periwig. A few days later, the committee at its meeting on 8 March expressed the view that unless the number of operations could be increased substantially the aim of overtaxing the German Security Services could not be achieved. Fourteen stores containers were packed and ready to go during the March/April moon period. They contained a wide variety of stores and devices. Among those listed were booby traps, firearms simulators, explosive coal, explosive logs and rats, empty containers, empty parachutes both open and folded, pin tail bombs, tins of German food, explosive ration tins, women’s clothing, and German cigarettes. A further operation ‘Impinge’ was attempted on 9 March but failed and was repeated successfully on 13 March when a container of incendiaries was dropped. One other operation, denoted as ‘1.2’ in the minutes of the committee, but possibly called ‘Aktentasche’ took place in March. In this a German briefcase was dropped on a railway station during a low-level air attack. The date is not recorded in the report but was later found to be on the night of 12/13 March, on the last opportunity before the SHAEF ban. The briefcase contained some normal business documents but also an incriminating paper suggesting clandestine operations in a large industrial concern. Other Periwig operations recorded in the committee minutes but not otherwise identified included W6, a Periwig plant; 1.5 described as a ‘successful Periwig plant’ (possibly via Sweden); W.3 and P.3.
At this stage (12 March) Davies wrote to Templer ‘the original concept of Periwig could not now be realised as a result of new limitations’ and the need was now to confine itself to ‘small nuisance operations through neutral countries’ which were unlikely to produce any appreciable feeling of apprehension among either the German Security or the people. Weekly meetings of the committee were not now felt necessary and they were abandoned. Two further operations, ‘Princess’ and ‘Phonotype’, had been planned to deliver black radio and W/T simulators but were abandoned.
On 13 March SHAEF banned all further supply drops. Templer left SOE a few days later.
The original SOE plan included the use of agents either infiltrated through the lines or found dead following parachute failure. Although this was vetoed on 13 January, it was reinstated on 15 February. There is no further reference to such operations in the minutes of the Periwig Committee, although the minutes of the third meeting are missing. However, agents were infiltrated from SPU22, which was a holding camp originally for Poles but also used by other nationals waiting infiltration. It soon became, in effect, the advanced Headquarters of SOE. In January 1945, following a liaison visit from Lt Col Wills from Station XV, a small camouflage workshop was set up at SPU22 to service SPU47 and other units. Consideration was given to the use of German nationals (Bonzos) for short-term intelligence work. On 8 March four Bonzos arrived from London and were accommodated at a house in Revogne. Four were infiltrated on 14 April to Koblenz and another to Bremen on 21 April. All returned safely. It seems likely that the ‘dozen agents’ referred to by Wilkinson as having been infiltrated (and survived) were in fact SPU22 operations mainly for intelligence purposes and not specifically Periwig operations.
The most fully documented SOE operations involving the dropping of agents by parachute into Germany were those carried out in April 1945. Presumably the SHAEF ban applied only to stores drops and not to agent drops. As far as is known no agents were parachuted in earlier than this. On 2 April Gerhardt Bienecke (alias Breuer, alias ‘Preacher’) and Leonhardt Kick (alia
s Kauffmann, alias ‘Plaintiff’) were flown on operation ‘Polacca/Polder’ from Earl’s Colne in a Halifax and dropped near Wildeshausen in the Bremen area. Kick had been through a shortened paramilitary course at STS19, followed by six days at Group B together with two parachute jumps from STS51. He was given both military and civilian cover and addresses to contact in the Bremen region. It is interesting to find that Kick was instructed to use a ‘squirt’ transmitter. According to the ‘History of the Radio Communications Division’ in the Public Record Office work on squirt transmitters did not progress far and the devices never went into the field. One can speculate whether Kick was told to use a squirt transmitter (SOE knowing they did not have the means of picking up the signals in England) so that if he was captured the Germans would realise why they had not been able to detect his transmission and therefore be further persuaded of the genuineness of his mission. But his Type B MkII W/T set was lost in the drop. He gave himself up to the Allies in August. Bienecke was dropped with a leg-bag and took codes (camouflaged in a tin of toffees), crystals and a signals plan. He was dropped in German uniform and planned to link up with an important agent in the Berlin area. The final destination of his material was a certain Dr Eggan. He was recovered from the Russian Zone in August 1945. On 18 April (operation ‘Periscope’) a Hudson flown from Tempsford dropped two agents to the west of Chiemsee. They were Otto Heinrich (alias Hoffman, alias ‘Hawker’) and Franz Lengnik (alias Lange, alias ‘Lawyer’). Because of the shortness of time they had only a brief course at STS19. The courses at Beaulieu and STS51 were omitted. They were to contact an organisation and to instruct them in the preparation of landing grounds. They attempted to carry out their mission but failed and gave themselves up to the Allies in May 1945. A fifth agent, Kurt Tietiz (alias Fatkow, alias ‘Tinker’), started training on 21 April but in view of the progress of the war was returned to the PoW cage on 4 May.19 The original plan was for at least a dozen agents a month to be dropped, but partly because of lack of time and also the small number of volunteers among PoWs only four were dropped.
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