by John Bryden
15. General des Nachrichtentruppe Albert Praun, “German Radio Intelligence,” (U.S. trans., 1950), 200–04, NARA, Foreign Militart Studies, P-038. See also, DHH, SCR II, 324. The wholesale capture of SOE agents is well documented in a number of published accounts.
16. Curry, Security Service, 180, 287–88.
17. Denniston (GC&CS) to Gill (RSS), 19 Apr. 1940; Robertson to Cowgill, 20 Apr. 1940: PRO, KV2/448. Gill’s reaction to the French information is unknown. See also, Liddell Diary, 21 Apr. 1940.
18. Gill was copied on the French report but Robertson was under no obligation to consult him. The RSS was responsible only for interception; action on the results was exclusively up to MI5.
19. B3, Report to File, 8 Apr. 1940, PRO. KV2/448. B3 was Major Robertson.
20. For the foregoing: Ritter, Deckname, 150–51.
21. “ROBERTSON, Lt.-Col Thomas Argyll (1909–1994),” Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London. Robertson’s connection with section B3 is established by a reference to him in Liddell Diary, 6 Sep. 1939. For B3’s responsibilities, see Curry, Security Service, 161, 177, 287. He mentions that B3 was “under Lt.-Colonel Simpson,” but also that he was attached to MI5 in an advisory capacity.
22. Farrago, Game of Foxes, 40–48 (He interviewed Ritter); and Benjamin Fischer, “A.k.a. ‘Dr. Rantzau: The Enigma of Major Nikolaus Ritter,” Centre for the Study of Intelligence Bulletin 11 (Summer 2000).
23. “Little is known of SNOW’s early career but it is understood that he served in the Royal Flying Corps during the last war. At some date about 1920 SNOW emigrated to Canada where he set up business as an electrical engineer. In 1933 he returned to this country and found employment as an engineer for the Expanded Metal Co.”: Gwyer to B1, 10 Aug. 1943, PRO, KV2/454.
24. Robertson, Note to File, 29 Jan. 1940, PRO, KV2/447 Doc. 590a.
25. Liddell Diary, 23 Feb. 1940. PRO. Also mentioned by Curry, Security Service, 247. Buss, who had been D of I (Air) from December 1938, was demoted to deputy director of repair and servicing and then retired. He was reinstated as director of intelligence (security) in 1943.
26. PRO, KV2/454, Docs. 66a-b.
27. Robertson, Note re meetings with SNOW, 15 Nov. 1939 and 24 Jan. 1940, PRO, KV2/447, Docs. 438a, 576a.
28. Espionage memoirs of the First World War published in the 1930s make many mentions of the need to keep the identities of spies secret from each other. See: Landau, All’s Fair, 142; and Richard Rowan, The Story of the Secret Service (New York: Doubleday, 1937), 560, 567. It has been a well-established principle for centuries and was the reason each Abwehr office — Ast Hamburg, Ast Kiel, Ast Wilhelmshaven, et cetera — recruited and dispatched its own spies, coordination being effected at Abwehr headquarters in Berlin.
29. Robertson, Note to File, 16 Nov. 1939, PRO, KV2/447, Doc. 438a.
30. Robertson, Note to file, 24 Jan. 1940; PRO, KV2/447, Doc. 576a.
31. A 3504 meldet 4.4.40 bei einen Treff in Antwerpen: “Hauptquartier der 10 und 51 Bomber Squadron in Dishforth. 51 erst seit kurzer Zeit dort. Ausrustung Whitney und Vickers Wellington.” NARA, RG242, T77, 1540. This was exactly correct. So he did learn something on his visit to Dishforth. For a cover address for secret letters the British were unaware of: Ritter, Deckname, 150. B3 to file, 4 April, 1940; PRO, KV2/477, 722a. Also, Gwyer 10.8.43; KV/451, Doc. 1624(a).
1. Richard Basset, Hitler’s Spy Chief: The Wilhelm Canaris Mystery (London: Cassell, 2005), 174–5; and Anthony Masters, The Man Who Was M: The Life of Maxwell Knight (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 76–106.
2. Farago, Game of Foxes, 513; and CSDIC interrogation of Major Sandel, 16 Sep. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 130. For Kuhlenthal as a protegé of Canaris, see HARLEQUIN interrogation, PRO, KV2/275.
3. Traugott Andreas Richard Protze, PRO, KV2/1740-1; Colvin, Chief of Intelligence, passim; and Interrogation Report, Oberst Alexander Waag, 22 Aug. 1945, NARA, RG319, Box 242, 68006380. After the fall of France and declaration of war by Italy, Switzerland diminished in importance, for it was landlocked by the Axis and spies could no longer easily come and go.
4. For Busch, the “Nazi” at Eins Luft E, see Lahousen, PRO, KV2/173, Doc. 5a. Busch said he took over as Eins Luft E in Jun. 1940 and remained responsible for receiving espionage reports from England and America until Mar. 1943: Report to Director on Friedrich Busch, 10 Aug. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 130, 65-37193-307.
5. Ritter, Deckname, 19–20; and Farago, Game of Foxes, 40–41.
6. Order of Battle, GIS Hamburg, 1946, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 133, 65-37193-EBF352.
7. Interrogation of Georges Delfanne, 8 Mar. 1947, U.S. Army G-2, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 189, 65-57115-5.
8. Bryden, Best-Kept Secret, 26, 46, citing documents released by Canada’s Communications Security Establishment and in LAC.
9. The Group X (Sebold) messages are found in PRO, HW19/1-6. The files show Strachey began decrypting them in May. See also, Liddell Diary, 13 Sep. 1940 and 9. Jan. 1941. Group 10 in the text is Group X.
10. For the Oslo report, see Hinsley, BISWW, I, 99–100, 508–12; and R.V. Jones, Reflections on Intelligence (London: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1989), 265–77, 324–77. Both books reproduce the text of the report, so readers can judge for themselves whether Sebold’s information was more revealing.
11. Ducase (Sebold, Stein, et cetera), NARA, RG65, WWII, FBI HQ Files, Box 11, “Espionage in World War II,” 224.
12. R.V. Jones, Most Secret War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), 126, 135–37, 145–50.
13. Bryden, Deadly Allies, passim; British chemical and biological research was mainly done in Canada. For the Tizard mission and proximity fuse: ibid., 51.
14. A 3504 meldet 5.4.40 bei einen Treff in Antwerpen, NARA, T-77, 1540. Robertson describes asking Boyle to answer a German request for the “exact location and contents” of RAF maintenance facilities, including those of St Athan’s: B3, Note to File, 2 Feb. 1940 and 4 Apr. 1940, PRO, KV2/447, Docs. 643a, 644a, 722a.
15. NARA, T-77, 1540. Nr. 1252/39 is a reference to A-3504’s first report on radar.
16. Liddell Diary, 19 May 1940.
1. General Alfred Jodl, Nuremberg testimony, 5 Jun. 1946.
2. Reynolds, Treason, 187–90. Beck was undoubtedly getting much of this from Canaris, who was responsible to the army for gathering intelligence on the United States, and who had come to this same conclusion.
3. Deutsch, Conspiracy, 115–18. Other authors place Müller’s overtures to the Vatican as beginning later, but Deutsch tackles the issue with convincing evidence for September–October.
4. “Summary of Events,” from 1939 Foreign Office dossier on the Venlo kidnappings, PRO, FO/371/23107. Marked not to be released until 2015. These are the most authentic of the contemporary documents on the Venlo affair, and the first and only to mention von Rundstedt’s direct involvement, contradicting General Halder’s claim to the contrary after the war. “Widerscheim” in this file is a misspelling. Note that Canaris is reported to have visited Von Rundstedt to solicit his support for the plot: Abshagen, Canaris, 154.
Note also that the Liddell Diary entry of 11 Oct. 1939 is out of synch by date and content with the Foreign Office dossier. The entry, indeed, is suspect because it is highly unlikely that Stevens of MI6 would share news of the conspirators’ approach with MI5. Klop, moreover, was the surname of the Dutch intelligence agent who was shot during the kidnapping, so it looks like Liddell confused him with “Klop” Ustinov of MI5. The actions involving the BBC appears to be a muddied version of what Best wrote after the war.
5. Erwin Lahousen, Nuremberg testimony, 17 Apr. 1947, PRO, WO 208/4347. Lahousen learned of the order 12 Sep. 1939, during a meeting aboard Hitler’s train. See also Abshagen, Canaris, 145–46.
6. Summary, PRO, FO/371/23107. According to Best in his memoir, The Venlo Incident (London: Hutchinson, 1949), 10, the Germans he met on 21 Oct. were “Captain von Seydlitz and Lieutenant Grosch.” The first could be Walther von Seydlitz who took part in anti-Naz
i broadcasts after his capture at Stalingrad. The second might be the Abwehr officer mentioned in PRO, KV2/1333.
7. Deutsch, Conspiracy, 227–34; and Reynolds, Treason, 194–96. Halder invited Camaris to have Hitler assassinated. He angrily declined: Höhne, Canaris, 393. For Hitler’s tantrums, see Thomas Fuchs, A Concise Biography of Adolf Hitler (New York: Berkley Books, 2000), 41. Charlie Chaplin does a hilarious take-off on these tantrums in The Great Dictator (1940).
8. Helmuth Greiner, “Direction of German Operations from 1939–1941” (typescript translation), USFET special report 01-SR/43, 17 May 1947, APO 757, U.S. Army, LAC, RG24, 20518, 981SOM(D105-6).
9. On his first trip across the Channel, 15–20 Sep. 1939, Owens told the Germans it was “no secret” in England that British troops were massing along the Belgian frontier: NARA, RG242, T-77, 1540. For spies in France, see NARA, T-77, 1549, 1569.
10. Greiner, “Direction of German Operations from 1939–1941.” Greiner does not specifically mention Canaris but the Abwehr chief was personally responsible for Hitler’s briefings. They also normally talked daily, at least by telephone. Note Jodl’s mention of the “endless number of reports from Canaris”; Jodl, Nuremberg testimony, 5 Jun. 1946.
11. Mungo Melvin, Manstein: Hitler’s Greatest General (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 146–47.
12. B.H. Liddell Hart, The Defence of Britain (London: Faber and Faber, 1939), 217–19. That Liddell Hart’s book influenced the generals is my deduction, but that conclusion really is inescapable, I believe. See also Len Deighton, Blitzkrieg (London: Triad/Panther Books, 1985), 173; and Reynolds, Treason, 104–06.
13. For the names and brief descriptions of Abwehr spies in the Low Countries and France operated by Nest Bremen in this period see NARA, T-77, 1568-9. Typical of the other Abwehr centres, many of whose records were lost, there will have been many more.
14. See Chapter 2.
15. Henrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl, eds., The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from the Interrogation of Hitler’s Personal Aides (New York: PublicAffairs (Perseus Books), 2005), 49–50. Quotation and previous paragraph translations by Giles MacDonogh.
16. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 Nov. 1939, reproduced online by Peter Koblank (2009). This writer is indebted to Koblank for pointing the way to FO371/23107. See www.venlo-zwischenfall.de.
17. Summary, PRO, FO/371/23107. Best and Stevens spent the rest of the war in captivity.
18. Walter Schellenberg, the Nazi foreign intelligence chief, told Allied interrogators he believed the SD was behind the Burgerbraukeller bombing in order to enhance its prestige: Information obtained from Schellenberg on the “Venlo” Incident, ca. 1945, PRO, KV2/98. There are also many problems with how Elser was supposed to have carved a hole for a clockwork bomb in a solid wooden post, stage-centre, without being spotted by beer hall customers or Nazi security guards.
19. For the available espionage talent, see the Abwehr card files in NARA, T77, 1549, 1568-9. The most creative was that of a trapeze artist who travelled with a circus touring the front. For the British Army then being devoid of meaningful W/T security, see Curry, Security Service, 295–96.
20. U.S. 15th Army, TIC Case No. 865, Final Interrogation Report, Andreas Folmer, 28 Jun. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 210, 65-56014.
21. “On Jan. 8th Halifax told the Belgian Minister that we had certain information from Italian and other secret sources that the project for the invasion of Holland and Belgium had not been abandoned and might take place in Feb. The Belgians apparently had similar …”: Liddell Diary, 13 Jan. 1940, PRO. Two days later, Liddell recorded that the pilot of a downed German aircraft had papers on him indicating that Belgium and Holland were targeted. F.H. Hinsley, et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War, Vol. I, Its Influence on Strategy and Operations (London: HMSO, 1979), 128, assert that losing these plans was what decided Hitler to go with the Ardennes as the “main thrust.”
22. Major Gill, Interception Work of R.S.S., 19 Nov. 1940, PRO, WO208/5097. Major Gill asserted that intercepts from Wiesbaden indicated the line of the “main attack,” but he must have meant that these intercepts indicated that the attack would be through Belgium/Holland/Luxembourg rather than the Ardennes, for there is no evidence either the British or the French received intercepted wireless intelligence pointing to the Ardennes.
23. Deutsch, Conspiracy, 92–98, 326–41; Abshagen, Canaris, 169–78; Liddell Diary, 5 Apr. 1940; Hinsley, BISWW, I, 114–15; J.G. de Beus, Tomorrow at Dawn (W.W. Norton & Company, 1980), passim. Oster was head of Zentrale at Abwehr headquarters, which was not an operations department. Normal internal security should have kept the change of plan from him. Alternatively, Canaris could have ordered him to keep warning Sas. Beck would not have known about the Ardennes because he was no longer in office.
24. Reynolds, Treason, 206.
25. De Beus, Tomorrow, 140. For the last-minute warnings reaching the British, see Liddell Diary, 4–5 Apr., 10 May 1940.
26. This is more plausible than the contention (Höhne, Canaris, 415–22) that the internal Abwehr investigation and the one by the Nazi security service simply stalled, for no particular reason, even though they had collected much damning evidence against Oster. In a later partial memoir, Sas wrote: “Canaris himself saw to it that I was informed.” According to Deutsch, getting directly involved himself would have been an effective way for Canaris to demonstrate that Oster had been acting on his orders: Conspiracy, 326.
27. Curwain, “Almost Top Secret,” passim. See also, Jeffery, MI6, 314–16, 378–85; and Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB’s Archives (HarperCollins, 1998), 302–03.
28. Jeffery, MI6, 311. There are further allusions to this in Curwain and Crown Jewels. See also, John Whitwell, British Agent (London: William Kimber, 1966).
29. Whitwell, British Agent, 165. The author was without doubt Kenneth Benton, who in 1941 became the MI6(V) officer in Madrid. Kenneth Benton, “The ISOS Years Madrid 1941–3,” Journal of Contemporary History 30, No. 3 (July 1995): 359–410.
30. Louis de Wohl, The Stars of War and Peace (London: Rider and Company, 1952). See also, PRO, KV2/2821. The book is fairly rare and far more interesting than de Wohl’s MI5 file.
31. De Wohl, War and Peace, 27.
32. What he did do, however, was send one of his junior officers around to other astrologers to see how their visions of the heavens compared. Six were checked and six were different: Montagu, Top Secret U, 29.
33. Stephen Dorril, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations (London: Fourth Estate, 2000), 3–4, 189.
34. Winston Churchill, foreword to I Was A Spy! by Marthe McKenna (New York: Robert McBride, 1933), 5.
35. Curry, Security Service, 128.
36. For MI5’s “score” of no spies between Sep. 1939 and the following May, see MI5 monograph, ”The German Secret Service,” Aug. 1942, Curry, Security Service, 430. For the pre-war resident handful, see PRO, KV4/170. Tyler Kent, the American embassy clerk, would not have been included in the calculation. His was a case of a breach in security by an ally rather than espionage.
37. Evidence that Churchill read Nicolai’s book can be found in Churchill’s 1946 use of the “iron curtain” metaphor to describe how the Soviet Union was shutting itself off from the rest of the world. The metaphor is famous, and its origin has been the subject of much fruitless searching. The term itself refers to a fire-proof drop curtain that was fitted to theatre stages in the days when illumination was by open-flame lamps. The metaphor was known in other languages, but Colonel Nicolai is the only one known to have used it in English before the Second World War. Nicolai wrote: “… the clearer it became that the ring of foes would, in the case of war, shut Germany off from the rest of the world as by an iron curtain”; Nicolai, German Secret Service, 59. It was published in German the following year as Geheime Mächte (1925). See also: Curry, Security Service, 77–78. It would appear from this that MI5 only read
Nicolai’s first book, Nachrichtendienst, Presse, und Volkstimmung in Weltkrieg (1921).
38. Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2009), 227.
39. This writer has not been able to discover the circumstance of his death.
40. Curry, Security Service, 168–74; and David Petrie, “Report on the Security Service,” Feb. 1941, PRO, KV4/88.
41. Reynolds, Treason, 207.
1. Ritter, Deckname, 167.
2. Ritter, Deckname, 199; Robertson, Note to File, 4 Apr. 1940, PRO, KV2/447; and NARA, RG272, T-77, 1540.
3. He was obtained from B2, Maxwell Knight’s section, where his code name was FRANK. See “Frank,” third to last line, B3x, 20 May 1940, PRO, KV2/448, Doc. 853c. See also, reference to Mr. Knight in Doc. 855x in next note.
4. For most of the foregoing, see Robertson,“Note to File, 23 May 1940, PRO, KV2/448, Doc. 855x. This note is some 4,300 words long, but with Rolph’s name blanked out. The blanks can be filled in, however, from the mention of “W. N. Rolph” in PRO, KV2/451 Doc. 1803a. Doc. 1803a cannot be entirely trusted, however, because it is at variance with Doc. 855x in several important details, including its suggestion that Owens thought all along that McCarthy was with MI5. In Doc. 855x the whited-out name overwritten in longhand as BISCUIT actually letter-counts as FRANK. See also, Liddell Diary, 22 Apr. 1940.
5. Carl Williams, “The Policing of Political Beliefs in Great Britain, 1914–1918,” www.lse.ac.uk/collections, citing especially a 1917 letter from J.F. Moylan of the Home Office to William Rolph of MMLI/PMS2 (PRO, HO45/01809/3 425/18). See also, Nicholas Hiley, “Counter-Espionage and Security in Great Britain during the First World War,” English Historical Review 101, No. 400 (July 1986); Curry, Security Service, 72.
6. Robertson. Note to File, 22 May 1940, PRO, KV2/448, Doc. 853x. The connection with PMS2 is definitely established by Robertson mentioning that Rolph was a member.
7. For a discussion of Rolph “gassing himself,” Nigel West, MI5: The True Story of the Most Secret Counterespionage Organization in the World (New York: Stein &Day, 1982), 4–5. No source is given but the alleged suicide at least is confirmed by Farago, Game of Foxes, 218. He does not give his source either. It is odd that Rolph would want to take his own life, since he could be sure MI5 would not want him to stand trial. More likely he was murdered.