Hervie Haufler - Spies Who Never Were

Hervie Haufler

Dedicated to the memory of friends William Bowling, Harold Etler, Mel Feinberg, Stanley Hardin, Carl Peterson and Eugene Tinnell, who were killed fighting a war that we believed in, that was civilization saving and that was non-preemptive

CHAPTER ONE

THE MOST DELICIOUS IRONY

As the 1930s unfolded, Nazi Germany's chancellor, Adolf Hitler, discounted any thought of another war between Germany and Great Britain. He saw the British as an Aryan-blooded superior people whose rulers were descendants of German royalty. They should, therefore, be sympathetic to his ethnic policies. As a capitalist country, Britain should also be supportive of his animus toward the Communists of the Soviet Union. Instead of making war against him, the British might at least protect his back while the German war machine, the Wehrmacht, was wiping out the detested, ethnically inferior Bolsheviks.

In these beliefs, Hitler was encouraged by members of the British upper classes who expressed admiration for him, his regime and his ideas. It must have seemed to the German chancellor that much of the British aristocracy was on his side. Among those he could count on for support were the Duke of Westminster, the Duke of Hamilton, the Duke of Wellington, the Marquess of Graham and Baron Redesdale, father of the Mitford sisters, two of whom became such ardent pro-Nazis that the eldest, Diana, married Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists. The marriage took place in Joseph Goebbels' drawing room in Berlin with Hitler as one of six guest witnesses. Topping off this pantheon of Hider enthusiasts was Britain's former king, the Duke of Windsor, who was feted by the Nazis and spoke glowingly of their merits.

Subsequently, the pro-Hitler British coterie so entranced Deputy Fuehrer Rudolf Hess, whose blind, doglike devotion had begun to pall on Hitler, that he tried to regain his master's favor by making his mad solo flight to Scotland, where he hoped to enlist the aid of the Duke of Hamilton in negotiating a separate peace between the "Aryan blood brothers" of Britain and Germany.

With all this to sway him, Hitler was understandably loath to see this promising relationship soured by the possible unmasking of German secret agents operating in Britain. So as not to offend the British, in the summer of 1935 he ordered the Abwehr, the German defense and security intelligence organization, not to establish any spy network in Great Britain. Even when the Germans invaded Poland as a necessary prelude to their war against the Soviets and drove Britain to join with France in declaring war against Germany, Hitler persisted in believing that the British would come to terms and collaborate rather than continue to fight.

Only in mid-1940, when Britain refused to negotiate for peace after the fall of France, did Hitler change his mind. He gave up his hopes for a rapprochement with the stubborn British and accepted the idea that his forces might have to invade and neutralize the threat on his western flank before he could launch his planned attack against the Soviets. It was then that he ordered the Abwehr to carry out Operation Lena, his program for playing catch-up in the spy game.

His secret service was forced to build upon slim prewar beginnings. One reliable agent in their fold was Arthur George Owens, whose anger against the British was fueled by his ardent Welsh nationalist beliefs. Owens was an electrical engineer, chemist and inventor working for a high-technology firm with business interests in Germany. His special abilities in battery technology opened doors for him on the Continent. On his trips during the thirties, he let his German contacts know of his bitter anti-British feelings. Approached by the Abwehr, he agreed to serve the Germans as an informer who could supply useful information about the Royal Navy. To the delight of his controllers in Hamburg, Owens was willing to do more than rely on only his own observations. He began recruiting other dissidents to serve as his subagents reporting from vantage points around the British Isles.

When the war began and the Germans seized and occupied Jersey, one of Britain's Channel Islands, the Abwehr found another willing agent in Eddie Chapman, a professional safecracker whom the British had embittered by capturing him and imprisoning him on the island. His German controllers saw in him and his criminal expertise the makings of an ideal saboteur. They released him from prison, code-named him Fritzchen and brought him to Germany for demolition training before parachuting him back into England.

In one of their own prisons, the Germans held a Polish Army Air Force officer, Roman Garby-Czerniawski. After the Wehrmacht had crushed Poland in 1939, he had escaped to France and, when France was conquered, become the leader of a Polish-French resistance group. He and some sixty of his followers had been captured by the Germans and faced execution. A smart Abwehr officer, however, recognized that Garby-Czerniawski had the intelligence and cool courage to become a first-rate spy. After interviewing the Pole, the officer offered him a deal: Become an agent in Britain for the Abwehr, and instead of executing the members of Garby-Czerniawski s resistance group, the Germans would treat them as prisoners of war. Garby-Czerniawski at first rejected the offer, but when the German armies began to roll up major victories against the Soviets, he reconsidered. He now saw that Russia, not Germany, was Poland's real enemy. By means of a prearranged "escape" to Britain, he became one of the Abwehr's most valued agents.

A Spaniard, Juan Pujol, sought out the Germans and volunteered to become a spy for them. Approaching the German consulate in Madrid, he asserted his willingness to undertake this dangerous duty because of the hatred of Communism he had formed during the Spanish Civil War. In July 1941 the Germans equipped him with a questionnaire, secret ink, money and an address to which he could mail his findings, code-named him Arabel and sent him to England. He began immediately sending back letters filled with acute observations. In addition, like Owens, he began to line up subagents to work with him, reporting from advantageous sites throughout England. His flow of information became so copious and valuable that in time, with his spymaster's approval, he began radio transmissions.

Dusko Popov was the scion of a wealthy Yugoslav family. Through his family's business interests and his own personal charm he moved comfortably in the elevated social circles of many countries. Once he had been chosen to introduce Britain's yacht-minded Duke of York to the Belgrade sailing club during the duke's visit to Yugoslavia. Before the war, Popov had gone to seek his doctorate in law at Germany's Freiberg University-an experience that had made him familiar with the regime of Adolf Hitler. Five months after the war began, and while he was practicing law in Belgrade, he was approached by two members of the Abwehr. Together they laid out a proposition to Popov. The Germans had agents in Britain, they told him, but none who was capable of operating at a high enough social level to secure top-drawer political, economic and military information. The Abwehr wanted Popov to go to England, under the cover of his business interests, and open the doors that would provide him, and the Germans, with information available in no other way. The proposal appealed to Popovs adventurous nature. In addition, he was pleased by the generous financing the Abwehr promised him. Code-named Ivan by his German spymasters, he went to England and made himself an acute observer of British leaders throughout the war.