by Nigel West
NINTH REPORT
A SPIES ARRESTED
The three most interesting spies captured this month, and under examination at our special interrogation centre, are of Argentine or Spanish nationality.
The Argentinian is one Ernesto Hoppe, who though of Argentinian nationality is of German birth, and who was arrested on his way from Germany to the Argentine. He was known to have been given a mission by the German Secret Service, but for a considerable time after his capture, he strenuously denied all connection with the Germans. While he was undergoing treatment at the hospital, he managed to escape for a short period, and the somewhat unexpected result of his speedy re-capture was that he then confessed. It appears that the Germans had been preparing a scheme to take certain material to the Argentine by submarine and to land it at a lonely point on the coast south of Buenos Aires. Hoppe had not seen this material, but from conversations with his spymaster he understood it to be of three kinds. The first consisted of securities and cash which was being sent abroad by high Nazi officials to be invested in real estate in the Argentine. The second was a wireless transmitter and other technical equipment, and the third important documents. The scheme put forward in the first instance was for Hoppe and a wireless operator to travel as passengers in the U-boat, but Hoppe refused to do this on account of his wife’s health. As modified, the plan was that he should travel in advance by passenger boat and make the arrangements for the reception of the material and its disposal. The provisional date for the arrival of the U-boat was mid-February, but as the Germans know of Hoppe’s capture it is thought that the plan will be dropped or substantially altered.1
The other two interesting arrests are those of two Spaniards, José Olivera and Diego Beltrán-Leiro, who were two wireless operators on Spanish ships plying between Spain and the Americas. These two men had been acting as couriers for the Germans for a considerable period. Olivera was reported to be carrying platinum as well as mail, but the platinum turned out to be lead discs of no value. The mail was a package of documents consisting for the most part of economic reports, but it also included certain material in code. The capture of Beltrán-Leiro produced even more interesting results. In addition to similar economic and political reports, he had two documents of particular value. One contains the names and particulars in cypher of a large number of German agents in the Argentine. The other was a private letter from the Head of Himmler’s Secret Service in Buenos Aires to his opposite number in Madrid. In this letter the writer expresses his views freely on his relations with German Embassy officials in Buenos Aires and other personalities. It also appears from this letter that Beltrán-Leiro was regarded as the second best courier in the service of the Germans. It is hoped that an opportunity will shortly arise to capture the best man. A photograph is attached of some of the documents showing a page of the private letter, an example of the technical information, a graph showing wireless frequencies for secret communication with the Argentine, and the first page of the coded list of agencies, which code we can now read.
Another arrival at our special interrogation camp is Basil Batos, a Greek journalist, who has been known for a considerable tine as the Head of the organisation for collecting shipping reports for the German Consulate in Lourenço Marques. Batos was expelled from Portuguese East Africa and detained by us in Kenya, and has now been brought to this country, where he is under interrogation.
A young Belgian, aged 20, called Guy Wijckaert, has arrived here; he had been recruited by the German Secret Service, and trained to perform sabotage in this country. He was passed through France in the company of genuine escapers on a route which the Germans have penetrated, and was assisted by a German agent posing as an Allied helper. On arrival in Spain Wijckaert gave certain information to the authorities and his case is now being investigated with a view to extracting the fullest intelligence information from him, and to determine whether his story that he accepted the German proposals in order to escape to this country is likely to be true.
B DOUBLE-CROSS AGENTS
Our double-agent, LIPSTICK, returned to this country in the beginning of December, after a short visit to the Peninsula.
He brought with him a long questionnaire from his Secret Service masters containing nine micro-photographs in duplicate, which were in the form of spots gummed on to both ends of a silk spotted tie. This questionnaire dealt chiefly with technical matters relating to Radar and various forms of rocket propulsion. His trip appears to have been successful and he has built himself up in the eyes of the Germans. He also provided a certain amount of useful counter-espionage material.
An interesting exchange of messages dealing with CROSSBOW activities has been going on during the past month between GARBO and his German masters. GARBO has been instructed to make arrangements to move out of London. There is no indication, however, in the messages that they require him to take action immediately. This is borne out by the fact that, when GARBO suggested that he should remove his transmitter now so that it should not be destroyed, the Germans replied that they attached more importance to continuous contact with him for the present. In saying this they pointed out that in the next few months events of great importance would occur. It is probable from the context that this refers to the invasion of the Continent by the Allies.
A new agent, FREAK, has arrived in this country. He was a naval officer in Yugoslavia, and was brought over here under the instigation of double-agent TRICYCLE, and will, among other things, perform the duty of TRICYCLE’s wireless operator in the United Kingdom. He came to this country from Yugoslavia, through the Peninsula, the journey being arranged by the German Secret Service. The cover story which he was supposed to tell us on arrival was a good one, and would have been difficult to break him. His main mission, it appears, was to contact Englishmen in high places and to impress upon them very strongly the view that Germany is open to approaches from this country with a view to stemming the flow of Communism across the Continent of Europe, and for this purpose they required the assistance of the British. He was not, of course, to make it appear that he was acting on behalf of the Germans, but was to report by wireless and secret writing the progress he was making in his task of influencing people in high places with this doctrine, to give the names of people who he found to be receptive of these ideas. The core of his instructions was that Germany was not to be forced to capitulate, but should be granted terms by this country to enable her to maintain a barrier in Eastern Europe against the Communist peril. It was emphasised that Germany was willing, in order to obtain these terms, to get rid of Hitler, to introduce a Democratic form of Government acceptable to the British and Americans, to withdraw from all Occupied Territory, and to accept Allied conditions about frontiers – provided Germany herself was not seriously touched. Apart from this mission, he was to obtain details about troop movements and concentrations and details about factory production. He was also required to try and find out details through his naval contacts about ship-building activities, convoy routes, and to attempt to obtain details of the Allied U-boat location apparatus. The officer who gave him these instructions was candid enough to explain that the object in asking for details about what ships arrived is in part out of a concern and what ships were sunk was because they were unable to rely on unconfirmed reports of U-boat Commanders.
Arrangements were made by the Germans to drop another consignment of sabotage equipment in Scotland to MUTT and JEFF. Owing to unsatisfactory weather conditions, the Germans postponed the operation.
1st January 1944
* * *
Of all the German agents accommodated at Camp 020, the 52-year-old Argentine Ernesto Hoppe may have been the most extraordinary, entrusted with one of the most remarkable espionage assignments ever.
Hoppe was betrayed by ISOS in September 1943 and SIS requested his arrest when he applied to the British consulate in Bilbao for a visa for him and his pregnant wife Ella to travel to Buenos Aires via Trinidad, so when his ship, the SS Monte Albertia, doc
ked at Gibraltar, he was detained. According to six ISOS texts, Hoppe was code-named HEROLD and was on an unknown mission to his adopted country, where SIS had received other reports about his role as a senior figure in the local SS. According to the US Office of Naval Intelligence, Hoppe, who described himself as the proprietor of a thriving driving school business in Buenos Aires, had been recruited by the Abwehr in 1936 and had been a full-time agent ever since, travelling pre-war to Austria and Czechoslovakia, and in Holland just before the German invasion.
After a fortnight of interrogation on Gibraltar, Hoppe was flown by the RAF to Lyneham via Portreath on 28 October and escorted to Camp 020. In his initial statement Hoppe confirmed that he had been born in Brandenburg, near Berlin, and had emigrated to Argentina in 1908 when he was 16, but denied any connection with Nazi espionage. However, after a month at Latchmere House he changed his story and made a detailed confession. His conversion had been prompted by his brief escape, while staying at a hospital in Woolwich, for medical treatment. He was at liberty for just two and a half hours, when he was able to post several letters, one of which was addressed to the Argentine ambassador in London. When it became apparent that the embassy would not assist Hoppe, he underwent a change of heart and described how he had been recruited by a Luftwaffe officer, Colonel Rosenstretter, and instructed to prepare a landing place at a remote site on the Argentine coast for a U-boat to land contraband.
Hoppe’s account of Colonel Rosenstretter’s plan to use a U-boat for the transport of certain cases to the Argentine, and the part Hoppe was expected to take in its execution, is as follows:
It was intended to ship various cases to the Argentine by U-boat and land them secretly on the coast during the Carnival period (Shrove Monday and Tuesday, 21st/22nd February 1944). This time was chosen because there would be much traffic on the coast roads during this festival and transport connected with the landing would be less likely to arouse suspicion.
The cases were already lying at the Censor’s Office in Bordeaux. They would be marked ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’. Those marked ‘A’ were to be handed over to a bank (probably the Banco Aleman, Buenos Aires.) Those marked ‘B’ would also bear the word ‘Vorsicht’ (‘With Care’) and were to be delivered to the Villa Balestero, some 8 kilometres outside Buenos Aires, owned by the Brothers Schmidt. Those marked ‘C’ were to be delivered to Herr Baumgarten, at an address in the Florida District of Buenos Aires. The number of cases was not specified, but Hoppe thinks there would probably be about forty. The contents of the cases marked ‘C’, Rosenstretter said, were politically the most dangerous and would be of corresponding value to the British. Hoppe assumes that important Party documents were referred to whereas the other cases might contain bonds, gold, jewellery and foreign exchange. In addition, there would be a wireless transmitter in a suitcase and a microphotographic apparatus. These were to be handled especially carefully.
The U-Boat was to land its cargo at a point off the Argentine coast, possibly off El Rancho, some 180 kilometres south-west of Buenos Aires. At the point of landing the cases would be loaded on to a three ton lorry, the wireless and photographic apparatus being transported in a private car. Hoppe would travel in advance by boat. His job would be to give advice and assistance in the arrangements for the transport of the cargo from the beach. This would need to be done by a man well acquainted with the coast, able to provide labour and mechanised transport discreetly, after a previous study of the sea depths and the state of tides and moon at the place and time of landing.
On arrival in the Argentine, Hoppe would be contacted by a man, presumably the individual to whom he was to deliver the package entrusted to him by Rosenstretter. This man would use a password ‘vengo para tomar leccion, dene la hora’ (I have come for a lesson, give me the time) and, although in charge of the operation at that end, would have to keep in the background. It was essential, therefore, that Hoppe should be well versed in their needs, in case he had to work on his own.
From the fact that Rosenstreter several times hinted that a Herr Imhof of the German embassy in Buenos Aires was a man whom Hoppe could always trust, Hoppe presumed that Filip Imhof would be the man in question. From various remarks let fall, Hoppe knew the wireless operator at the German embassy and that he signed his wireless messages PATIO. The suitcase containing the wireless transmitter, which Hoppe was to handle with care and deliver either to Baumgarten or to the brothers Schmidt, would be for Imhof to collect.
As a safeguard against the discovery of Hoppe’s identity, the cover name HEROLD would be used by the Germans in all their communications concerning him to the Argentine.
The U-boat would take two passengers. Since Hoppe had turned down the proposal to travel in it, some other unspecified agent was to take his place.
The man who was to have been Hoppe’s companion on board, and who was to go in any case, was one of Germany’s most expert W/T operators. Hoppe understood that this man had also received training in microphotography and the making of full-stops, and that the microphotographic apparatus to be part of the U-boat’s cargo was for his use.
Hoppe cannot recall this man’s name, if he ever heard it, although he was told many facts about him. Apparently he was of an adventurous type who had already returned to Germany from a mission in one of the South American republics, where ‘he had blown up a radio mast’. He had fought in the Spanish War with the Condor Air Legion.
From his South American mission he was supposed to have returned to Germany via Japan and Russia and held then a good position at the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin. Part of Hoppe’s job was to procure identity papers and a safe lodging for this man on arrival. This, Hoppe said, would have been a comparatively easy matter, for – at a price – anyone could obtain false identity papers in the provincial towns in the Argentine. At the time Hoppe left Germany, this agent was still in Berlin, Hoppe says he was told nothing about the second passenger and it may have been that this man had not been decided on at the time of Hoppe’s departure. Further duties expected of Hoppe concerned the reward to the U-boat crew. He was to prepare some fifty attaché cases for the fifty members of the crew – first packing them with tea, coffee and cigarettes – to the value of 50 Pesos each. He was to advance the money, Pesos 2,500, and present a bill for this, plus his other outlay, and would receive, he presumes through the German Embassy, the full amount plus a substantial ‘present’ for himself. A further inducement was held out to him at this time by Rosenstreter when discussing plans. It was intimated to him that there would be large purchases of land undertaken in the Argentine, that Hoppe’s services would be needed, whereby he would earn large sums in commission.
Hoppe was naturally never told the exact value of the U-boat’s cargo which he was to handle, but he thinks it could not have been less than 10,000,000 Marks. While discussing this subject, Hoppe volunteered the information that there were no jewels or jewellery left today in Germany or any of the occupied countries of Europe. Rosenstreter’s suggestion that Hoppe should go to Bordeaux and stay there, at the Germans’ expense, until it was time for him to go on to Bilbao, was refused by Hoppe.
Hoppe makes it clear that the plan to send a U-boat was still in its infancy when he left Germany and he can only presume that if it materialises the boat will carry the two unnamed agents mentioned above.
Possibility: At El Rancho there is no village but merely a restaurant and a cluster of out-buildings, built in Indian style. It lies about half a mile from the coastal road and between the restaurant and the sea proper. For a distance of some 600 yards, there is swampy land with grass and bushes, dangerous to traverse save on the footpaths.
For what it is worth, Hoppe’s opinion is that a landing at El Rancho would not be possible because the transport of forty cases would be extremely difficult across the marshy ground adjoining the shore.
Plenty of other places would be more suitable, Hoppe says, and there are numerous estates belonging to Germans and pro-Axis Argentines scattered alo
ng the coast. The owner of El Rancho, Emil Fuchs, an Austrian born in the Argentine, is known to Hoppe, who recalls excursions to this picnic resort in 1935, 1937 and 1938. He describes Fuchs as a dark, Spanish-looking type, active as a smuggler and owner of small boats which met ships lying off-shore.
It came out in conversation with Rosenstreter that an earlier U-boat trip had been made, but the date of this voyage was not mentioned. On this occasion a wireless transmitter had been put ashore at El Rancho; it had fallen into the water in transit and had subsequently not functioned well. The set to be taken on Hoppe’s U-boat was intended to replace this damaged apparatus. This first U-boat had used a landing point approximately opposite El Rancho and, in view of its rather doubtful suitability, a final decision on the second U-boat’s objective was to depend on Hoppe’s information, after he had personally investigated and made soundings along the coast. That information would probably be sent by wireless to Germany.
The foregoing outline of Rosenstreter’s U-boat scheme covers the information obtained from Hoppe and mention should here be made of the reasons Rosenstreter gave for choosing him for an important part in it. According to Hoppe, Rosenstreter told him that his information from Buenos Aires on Hoppe was that he was a lukewarm Nazi, but a sound and independent man of business. When it was pointed out to Hoppe that this was scarcely sufficient reason for the Germans to trust him with such an important and secret mission, Hoppe said that his importance in the scheme was being over-estimated; he was merely to be the intermediary and his particular job was actually little more than that of a better-class chauffeur.
