by Nigel West
Niebuhr’s group of subordinates included several who ran their own spy rings, and among them was Rudolf Hepe of the Antonio Delfino Company, which was a subsidiary of the Hamburg-South America Line. Not surprisingly, it was Hepe, working under Niebuhr’s instructions, who had supplied the lighter and tugs that had carried the Graf Spee’s crew to Argentina even before the Argentine government had agreed to accept them. When they arrived in Buenos Aires the officers and petty officers were accommodated in the Naval Arsenal, with 800 ratings sent to dormitories in the functional, three-storey Immigrants’ Hotel nearby.
Mammen and Müller liaised with the internment camps, and passed the evaders on to a local travel agent, Wilhelm von Siedlitz, who arranged for them to be escorted over the Andes and delivered to Friedrich von Schulz-Hausmann, a reichsdeutschen who had been the Norddeutscher-Lloyd line’s agent in Valparaiso and had been enrolled into the Abwehr during a visit to Hamburg in the summer of 1938. Code-named CASERO, he supervised the travel of about fifty Graf Spee crewmen on ships bound for Vladivostock, who completed their long journey home on the Trans-Siberian Express. The groups of Graf Spee survivors who slipped away were known, somewhat euphemistically, as the stowaways, and the task of preventing further escapes was considered an intelligence priority in London.
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Although the detention of Pacheco is well documented, there is little trace of the Vichy agents mentioned, or of the French commando Sibart. Pacheco was detained with his wife, Viviana Diaz, in Trinidad in March 1943 and brought to Camp 020 for interrogation. Pacheco, who had been employed as a dancer at the Piccadilly Hotel before the war, confessed to having been recruited by the Abwehr in Belgium and then sent on a mission to Havana. They were both detained until the end of hostilities and then deported to Cuba.
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In December 1942 Jean Huysmans appeared in the ISOS traffic as an Abwehr agent recruited in The Hague who had reached Barcelona on a mission to Lisbon where he intended to apply for a visa to travel to England. Two months earlier an ISOS decrypt on a Lisbon channel had shown the Abstellen seeking a cover address for him in Portugal, which had been supplied: Francisco Lopez da Fonseca, rua São Mamede 50 esq 1, Lisbon. Altogether, some forty-six separate messages referring to HALMA or A-1409 provided a very comprehensive picture of Huysmans’ activities before he set off for Spain.
When this news reached the Belgians the Sureté in Belgrave Square responded that Huysmans and his wife, Marie, had already applied in Barcelona for a visa to go to the Congo. Although Huysmans did not actually appear in Lisbon until May 1943, ISOS revealed that the 42-year-old university-educated businessman formerly employed by Texaco in Brussels, who was fluent in five languages, was controlled by a Dr Schumann and a series of payments had followed, with a promise of $2,500 and 6,000 escudos when his passage had been purchased.
When Huysmans applied for his visa in Lisbon he was told that he would have to travel to the Congo through England, and soon afterwards he was arrested by the Portuguese police, detained at the rua Augusta Rosa prison, informed that he had over-stayed his residency permit, and bundled onto an aircraft that flew him to Whitchurch, near Bristol.
Huysmans reached Camp 020 on 20 May 1943 where he was considered by the commandant, Colonel Robin Stephens, as ‘one of the most fascinating espionage cases of the war’. Initially Huysmans claimed to be the victim of mistaken identity, but when it was suggested he had been blackmailed and his wife was under threat, he began to break. The final incentive was Stephens’ shrewd offer to bring his wife to the safety of London, knowing that in fact she was already in Holloway prison. Convinced of the omniscience of the British Secret Service, Huysmans offered a full confession and his complete cooperation, acting as a stool pigeon at Ham for the remainder of the conflict. In his statements Huysmans identified three other Abwehr agents whom he had encountered while being trained in secret writing and encipherment, and gave detailed descriptions of the Abwehr staff.
According to his version of events, Huysmans had been recruited by an Abwehr officer named Schumann in April 1942 after he had been arrested by the Gestapo on a charge of hiding foreign currency. MI5 suspected that ‘Schumann’ was actually an officer from The Hague previously identified as Schneider, operating from 248 rue Royale in Brussels. Thereafter he had undergone a lengthy course in secret writing and wireless transmission at an office in Ostend but, he claimed, he had participated under duress, following a threat by Schumann to his wife and elderly mother. On this basis, MI5 ruled out Huysmans as a potential double-cross agent. On the other hand, he could not be prosecuted under the Treachery Act as he had not come to England voluntarily. A third alternative was considered by T.A. Robertson, which was to run Huysmans deliberately badly as a double-agent, allowing him to indicate that he was under enemy control. This prearranged signal, by signing himself ‘H’, had been disclosed by Huysmans, but this option was rejected.
During the six months Huysmans underwent training he met numerous instructors and agents, including an Irishman later identified as Joseph Lenihan. The Abwehr wanted Huysmans to collect intelligence in England, the United States, or Brazil, and prepared him for missions to all those countries, determined that he should not end up in the Congo, and had supplied him with a questionnaire:
(1) ENGLAND.
Economic.
Shipbuilding.
Maritime and fluvial traffic.
Valuation of food and clothing stocks.
Arrivals and sailings of ships and port movements.
Railway traffic.
Female employment in factories.
Reduction of petrol consumption.
Number of agricultural workers.
Coal production.
Conditions of travel in England (for instance, is travel free or restricted?)
What are the reserves of aluminium, copper, paper, etc.
Percentage of ships in repair.
Military.
Location of troops and units.
Strength of the Home Army.
Models of weapons, tanks in use.
Description of new planes, motors and tanks.
Warship and submarine bases, and their strength.
Whether factories and stevedores cease work during air-raid warnings.
Location of munitions depots and new aerodromes.
Strength of USA troops and their armaments arriving in the U.K.
Location of aeroplane factories and submarine shipyards.
Coastal defence, fortifications, guns, troops, aerodromes.
Details of new motors, planes, tanks, munitions, armament.
(2) USA
Degree of mobilisation of Army and instruction of recruits.
Degree of civil mobilisation for war purposes.
Importance of convoys of troops and strength of war material leaving for the front, and their destination.
Food and clothing stocks, and stocks of essential war products.
Quantities of planes, motors, tanks, guns, ammunition, cars, trucks and war materials generally, produced in 1942.
Construction of aircraft carriers and warships, and cargo ships.
Percentage of ships undergoing repair.
Production of synthetic material for war purposes.
Particulars of newly-designed motors or apparatus for war purposes.
Details of the arrivals and destinations of troop-carrying convoys, the amount of armament carried, and the percentage of ships getting through.
(3) BRAZIL and MEXICO
State of mobilisation of the Army and Navy.
To what extent the country has been put on a war footing.
What troop-carrying convoys leave Mexican and Brazilian harbours.
What quantities of food and other goods are being sent to the USA.
What numbers of industrial and agricultural workers are on war-work.
What stocks of raw materials are on hand.
The strength of the Fleet and Air Forces.
Wha
t native troops are being sent to the fronts, and what is their armament.
Any information on the production of ships, guns, ammunition, rubber, clothing, etc.
While Huysmans was languishing at Camp 020, his wife was transferred in August 1943 from Holloway to Port Erin on the Isle of Man. Both were released in August 1945 and deported by air from Croydon to Belgium, where they were taken into custody and prosecuted, the military tribunal having been urged to seek a nominal sentence in acknowledgement of Huysmans’ alleged assistance to British Intelligence.
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Joaquin Baticon was a 34-year-old former member of the Blue Division that had fought on the Russian front, and steward on the Ybarra liner Cabo de Buenos Epseranza that called into Trinidad on 6 February 1943. He was described by MI5’s Herbert Hart as ‘an important German agent likely to be in possession of a mass of information which may have a direct bearing on the war at sea’. Accordingly, he was arrested and on 30 March sent to Gourock on the SS Maaskerk via New York, where he was questioned for five days by the FBI.
Upon his arrival at Camp 020, under threat of immediate prosecution and execution, he disclosed a wealth of information that formed the foundation of MI5’s understanding of the Axis networks across the western hemisphere, and was the basis of a concerted Allied counter-attack.
In his statement Baticon acknowledged that he had been recruited as a spy by two Germans, the air attaché, Heinz Junge, and his replacement, Peter Wolfmann, in Buenos Aires in March 1942. He also claimed that their principal Spanish contact was Manuel Perez, who exercised control over Spanish seamen travelling to Argentina, and who had the power to place those who were disobedient ‘in a concentration camp at will’. Baticon’s role was that of a courier, carrying money, documents, micro-photographs and coded letters between Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Havana, Lisbon, Vigo and Cádiz for two familiar characters, Otto Mesner and Otto Heinrich, both in Bilbao. Although he had no precise knowledge of the content of his deliveries, he possessed an encyclopedic memory of his contacts and their addresses, and incriminated dozens of Axis agents. In his lengthy statements Baticon explained that he had been invalided out of the Blue Division because of a gastric ulcer, and had undergone surgery in Nuremberg before being discharged. He had then sailed in August 1941 on the Cabo de Bueno Esperanza to Buenos Aires, where he had received further hospital treatment. After his recruitment by the Abwehr he had sailed on the Cabo de Hornos in June 1942 carrying secret documents to Lisbon and Bilbao. In January 1943 he accepted his second mission, to sail from Barcelona to Lisbon on the Cabo de Buena Esperanza via Trinidad, with instructions to report to the German embassy in Buenos Aires for a new assignment.
Although Baticon was essentially ‘small fry’, as Milmo described him, he served to corroborate the accuracy of FBI reports from South America and, of course, ISOS. Furthermore, it was Baticon’s testimony about the roles of Manuel Perez, Joaquin Ruiz and José Pujana that led to their arrest soon afterwards. Baticon was kept in custody until August 1945, when he was deported to Gibraltar on HMS Glasgow, along with Perez, Ruiz, Urzaiz, Luis Calvo and seven other Spanish detainees.
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In November 1942 a 48-year-old Mexican, Fernando Lipkau Balleta, was taken off the SS Marques de Comillas in Trinidad, based on seven ISOS decrypts that suggested that he was a German spy:
20.8.42. Madrid–B’ona Employment proposal of 17th, Please radio by tomorrow how transfers of money are regulated. HERMANDO. SOMMER.
24.8.42. Madrid–Berlin. To ERUBE. We request permission by FS for estimate of 3,000 USA dollars for journey (out of country) on 28/8 to USA via Mexico of the V-Mann FERNANDO LOPKIU (or LIPKAU) who was placed at disposal of IH by Nevenstelle Barcelona without preliminary report. Employment at Ford or Chrysler works. HERNANDO. KCGP.
21.8.42. B’ona–Madrid. For HERNANDO. Your above message. We are awaiting instructions as whether money can he transferred from South American accounts at your end which are not blocked and are not exposed to suspicion, to V-Mann’s American business friend-bank address to follow. Otherwise we should have to purchase money for payment in Mexico here or in Lisbon on the open market. Payable in pesetas or escudos. PORTAL.
21.8.42, B’ona–Madrid. For HERNANDO. ^Ref. both above messages. PASTILO’s departure postponed (? on next) steamship, with official permission owing to typhus in the family. Passages remain valid. PORTAL.
22.8.42 Berlin–Madrid. For SOMMER. For HERNANDO. Payment of 3,000 dollars is declined, as we have no evidence here upon which the personality of L and the prospects of success of the undertaking (Rinataz) planned can be judged. KRRF.
3.10.42 B’ona–Madrid. To PORTAL. Proposal for employment V 701 STEP rejected by Berlin; Proposed for employment V-Mann PASTILLA on the other hand approved. HERNANDO SOMOZA.
1.11.42 Lisbon–Madrid via Nauen. To PAGO. Ref proposal for employment of V-Mann PASTILLA. Instructions not possible till a week at the earliest from reason of security. LUDOVICO.
Thus the intercepts appeared to suggest that an Abwehr agent code-named PASTILLA with connections at Ford and Chrysler was being paid to embark on a mission to the United States via Mexico, but had been forced to delay the voyage because of illness. All the details fitted Lipkau, whose daughter had caught typhoid in August 1942, thus postponing the family’s departure.
Lipkau had sailed from Vigo on a mission to South America for the Abwehr, destined apparently for an assignment involving him finding work at a factory in the United States. His wife and three children were allowed to continue their journey to Cuba, but meanwhile, when questioned at the St James Internment Camp in Port of Spain, Lipkau identified the matters on which he was to report in secret writing and microphotography to cover addresses in Spain:
1To collect and read specialist periodicals, such as the Army and Navy Journal for war news.
2Shipping intelligence; coverage of vessels. Names of captains, whether armed, convoy posts, whence sailing and destinations.
3Number of US Army conscripts, training camps in California, Alaska and Canada, especially those for parachutists, names of officers commanding; officers’ insignia, their private lives, potential staff officer, regimental numbers, markings on any army vehicles, etc.
4Type, location, calibre and rate of fire of guns.
5Location of US munition plants and war activities of different commercial firms.
6Location of aircraft factories, origin of components, methods of assembly and caliber of aircraft.
7Morale of civilians.
In March 1943 Lipkau, who had been born in Poland, was sent to New York, on the SS Maaskerk, accommodated briefly in the Ellis Island hospital, and then transferred to the SS Ramitata for Liverpool. When he was interrogated at Camp 020, he made a detailed confession, admitting that he had been expelled from Spain because of a conviction for his black market currency dealing. He had decided to sail for Cuba, but ten days before his planned departure, in August 1942, he had been approached in Barcelona by an acquaintance to spy for the Germans. When shown photographs of German espionage suspects, Lipkau identified one of his contacts as Edmund C. Heine, a former Ford Motor Company executive implicated in the pre-war Duquesne case1 in New York. Another had played a minor, talent-spotting role in the case of Juan Lecube, a German spy arrested in Trinidad in 1942.2
Lipkau was kept in custody, first at Ham, then at the Beltane School in Wimbledon and finally at a Ministry of Health hostel in Retford, Nottinghamshire, until June 1946 when he was deported from London on the SS Port Huon to New York.
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JOSEF was a Russian seaman on the SS Baron Forbes, active between August 1942 and December 1944 against the Japanese in Lisbon, and on 13 May 1943 Liddell recorded in his diary:
Richmond Stopford’s agent JOSEF who has just returned from Lisbon, was approached there by the Japanese and asked to act as an agent in this country. They suggested various sabotage schemes to him, one to function in Glasgow in September. He was given a cover address
in Lisbon, a seal specially made for him with his monogram on it to seal the letters he would send back by courier, and a promise of a wireless set which would be sent in separate parts by degrees through the courier who would bring his letters.
Among MI5’s double-agents, JOSEF is unique because he was actually a fully trained Soviet spy and committed Communist who willingly acted for the Security Service. A case summary drafted in February 1944 set out the background:
JOSEF is a Russian of whose early history we know very little. He is a little over 30 years old, probably was born in Kiev and lived in Russia until 1919 when he moved to Yugoslavia. At a later date he was trained as an agent by the Russians and since 1934 he has been a seaman for the greater part of that time, with intervals when he was in Spain during the Civil War, in a capacity which is far from clear. He is a communist, fairly well educated, knows a number of languages, and is undoubtedly very clever and astute.
He first came to notice in 1941 when a number of mysterious attempts at sabotage occurred on the Dutch SS Parklaan, in which he was then serving. In each case, JOSEF was either the first to discover or report the incident, but in no case was it established who was the perpetrator. JOSEF came to this country at the end of July 1941 and was detained at the Oratory from August 1941 to 28 March 1942. There he became friendly with Matsumoto, the ex-honorary Press Attaché to the Japanese Embassy, about whom and others he supplied reports to the officer-in-charge. Before his release, Matsumoto asked him to make various contacts on his behalf, and JOSEF was shipped to Lisbon at the end of May 1942. On our instructions, he called at the Japanese Legation, introducing himself as a friend of Matsumoto. On subsequent occasions he was interviewed by a number of Japanese, including the Military and Naval Attachés, who paid him various sums of money and asked him to work for them in this country.
