Churchill's Spy Files

by Nigel West

  Sweerts’ truly encyclopedic knowledge of the SD proved to be of exceptional value and he supplied details about dozens of SD agents and personnel. Where it was possible to corroborate his story the information turned out to be genuine but the decision was taken not to accept his offer to return across the lines as a double-agent. Instead he was kept in England, where he was the source of some embarrassment as the Belgian authorities indicated their intention in January 1945 to prosecute him if he was released. Although he insisted that his motive for joining the SS had been noble, there were only three people who could confirm his story, and two were dead, while the third had been arrested by the Gestapo. The expedient solution was to release him from custody in February 1945 to fly to Belgium from Northolt to join a counter-intelligence unit, SCI 106 in the Netherlands, where he also worked as an interrogator. However, in November 1946 he was sentenced to death in absentia, and in March 1947 he was arrested by the Dutch police in Haarlem on a charge of smuggling contraband and possession of forged papers. On that occasion he was released, but in May 1951 he was arrested in Brussels and allowed to appeal his death sentence.

  The information supplied by Sweerts proved extraordinarily valuable and extended far beyond his own direct experience in Europe, In particular, he shed new light on the SD’s machinations in the Middle East and filled in many of the gaps in British knowledge of the enemy’s plans that, hitherto, had depended on ISOS and double-agents, among them BLACKGUARD, an Iranian in Istanbul, formerly employed as a broadcaster by Radio Berlin.

  At the end of October 1944 the DSO in Tehran, Alan Roger, expressed his views on Sweerts’ contribution:

  We find the information given by Sweerts extremely interesting, not only from the point of view of German intelligence activities, but also as giving us further light on Soviet agents and methods.

  First, about the NORMA expedition. This connects up with the interrogation reports of the Mayr troupe reported in our Counter-Intelligence Summaries and also with the recent interrogation of Pierre de Letay and Hamadi Ben Slata in Syria. The school in Wannsee at which Sweerts trained was obviously the Havel Institute, full details of which are given in Appendix C to our Counter-Intelligence Summary No 24 of 11th May 1944. (Sweerts spells many of the German names he gives in the French way e.g. Afel for Havel).

  According to Hamadi Ben Slata, Wannsee was the administrative centre of the other SD schools and was in W/T communication with the Lehnitz school at which Slata, Letay and Sweerts all trained. Skorzeny, who was in charge of the administration of the NORMA expedition, had, according to Kurt PiwnkaI of the ANTON expedition, been OC of the special company at Oranienburg described in Appendix A to our Counter-Intelligence Summary No 26 of 7th June 1944. The technical personnel of the NORMA expedition also seem to have been drawn from old members of the Oranienburg company, for the wireless expert, Rabbe, is obviously the promoted SS Rottenftlhrer Raabe who appears as personality No 54 in the above quoted Appendix on Oranienburg, while it is very probable that the first and second unknown W/T operators also appear in the same list. Possibly they are identical with SS Rottenftlhrer Arkuszewski, SS Rottenftlhrer Müller or SS Unterscharftlhrer Stadler, who all went to Wannsee with Raabe. For further information about Skorzeny’s connection with Schellenberg and the ANTON expedition see paras 84–88 of the interrogation report on Homayun Fahzad given in Appendix B to our Counter-Intelligence Summary No 25 of 28th May 1944. SS Unterscharftthrer Groking is obviously the Groening, who, along with Otto Schwerdt, was offered to Mayr by the SD as a saboteur. (see message No 76 on page 3 of Appendix P to our Counter-Intelligence Summary No 11 of 20th September 1943).

  As regards SS Untersturmführer Steich, this is obviously Theodor Staisch, who accompanied Gamotha on his journey through Persia. Staisch was born on 29th March 1911 in Cologne, the son of Franz and Rosalia Staisch. He came to Persia via Russia in 1931 travelling on German Passport No 8198 issued in Cologne on 31st July 1931 and while here worked for Siemens. He is almost certainly identical with a small unfriendly-looking civilian described by Letay in connection with Gamotha’s proposed expedition.

  We have had several reports that Gamotha intended returning to Mazandaran and have therefore kept a close eye on some of his old acquaintances here for any sign of his reappearance. So far there is no indication that the expedition has been sent, though we are at present investigating a report of four Germans who are supposed to have been at large in the Veramin area thirty miles south-east of Tehran and may have been connected with a plane reported in that vicinity. So far, however, we have found out nothing concrete and certainly nothing to connect these reported Germans with Gamotha. We are very much inclined to agree with Sweerts that Roman Gamotha may be a Russian agent. The following are our reasons for thinking so:

  (a) Gamotha, according to Mayr and others, attempted to win over Dashnaks and other groups hostile to the USSR during the period between his arrival in Persia and the entry of Allied troops. Among others, he saw the Dashnak leader, Varos Babayan, who disappeared at the end of 1941 and was almost certainly taken by the Russians. Gamotha’s name figured prominently as the leader of German agents in Persia given in the pamphlet dropped by Russian planes when Red Army troops entered the country. It is thus fairly obvious that he was one of the people they were most interested in getting hold of in August 1941.

  (b) Gamotha escaped from the German Summer Legation with two other Germans in a car driven by Mahmoud Khosrovi in the direction of Semnan. Khosrovi also helped Mohammed Hussein Hissam-Vaziri to escape, when we asked for Vaziri’s arrest in 1942, and we had several reports that the latter was hiding in Semnan in the winter of 1942–3. We were able to discover in June of last year that Mahmoud Khosrovi was engaged with Lt Col Hissam-Vaziri, Mohammed Hussein’s father, in a deal over the very car in which Gamotha escaped the day before the event took place. This was reported in section 2 of our Counter-Intelligence Summary No. 3 of 14th June 1943.

  The car was left abandoned on the Semnan road and brought back to the Tehran Prefecture of Police, where it was robbed of its parts. It was decided to auction the remains in June 1943 and the Chief of the Political Police, Colonel Sharif, asked for the dossier on the case before giving the necessary orders. This was not to be found. After an energetic search through the files of the Prefecture and Ministry of the Interior it was eventually located and the part played by Lt Col Vaziri, then head of the Police Personnel Department, came to light. The Soviet Security Officer has since admitted that both father and son Vaziri are and were Soviet agents. Finally, a source who was in touch with Mahmoud Khosrovi in 1942 reported the latter as saying that Gamotha had been seen in Semnan in the uniform of a Soviet officer.

  We always thought it curious that, while we were able to keep track of the movements of Franz Mayr through some of his Tehran contacts, we never really knew where Gamotha was, though we had several reports that he was in Mazandaran. It later transpired that Mayr was also unable to get in touch with him, although he thought that an intermediary of Gamotha once contacted Ahmed Namdar, who did not realise the significance of the password previously arranged between Gamotha and Mayr and therefore failed to bring about a meeting between the two. It now seems as if the Soviet security authorities deliberately tried to put us off the track of both Gamotha and Staisch. In March 1943 they told us they had reason to believe that Nikolaus Ausberg, Peter Josef Pogatschnig and Ludwig or Alois Staisch, all interned in Australia, had been German agents in North Persia and asked for them to be interrogated. The reference to Ausberg may have been to put us off Theodor Staisch. Again, In May 1943 they asked us if we had any information about a French officer called Gamotha who travelled to Turkey on a French passport with a Turkish visa issued by the Turkish embassy in Tehran. The stupid nature of this request is obvious in view of the fact that the Soviets and ourselves had been searching for Gamotha since 1941. Finally, when the question of the control of the northern frontier was discussed in the summer of this year, Maximov, the Russian ambass
ador, counterattacked about our control of the western frontier alleging that we had allowed Gamotha to escape that way. Gamotha himself broadcast from Berlin only a very vague account of his journey through North Persia and it would seem that both he and the Russians did what they could to deceive us as to what really happened. These rumours about Germans in the Veramin area may well be another part of this deception plan, for one report of a strange aircraft has been brought by Captain Salari, a one-time collaborator of Mayr and now a known Russian agent.

  BLACKGUARD reported that on August 1st last Gamotha was to leave Vienna by air for Istanbul under a false name in order to contact Vaziri there. BLACKGUARD gathered that the latter was a member of the SD and closely connected with Gamotha. It will be remembered that Vaziri left Istanbul on 27th February 1944 ostensibly for Switzerland and returned on 5th May from Vienna. It would seem very probable that he went to Vienna in the first place to contact Gamotha there.

  When the above points are considered in the light of Sweerts’ statements that Gamotha believed Germany would lose the war and that Gamotha told him to mention his case should he, Sweerts, ever come into contact with the Allies, then it seems fairly certain that Sweerts’ belief that Gamotha is a Soviet agent is justified.

  What seems to have happened was something like this: Lt Col Nissam-Vaziri was like the Cavam-es-Sultansh and other German Fifth Columnists in that during the period of the war prior to the German attack on Russia he worked for both the Russians and Germans (he was an agent of Schulze). After the entry of Allied troops into Persia he continued his connection with the Russians, although his son, while German arms seemed to be successful, concentrated more on the German connection. Lt Col Vaziri, through his influence with the police, probably arranged for Gamotha, Staisch and one other German to escape from the German Summer Legation, got Mahmoud Khosrovi to tell them half-way to Semnan that they were in danger and that the car must be abandoned, and agreed previously with the Russians as to the spot where this would take place so that the party could be kidnapped. They were then probably taken to a Russian camp in North Persia, interrogated, broken down and recruited as Soviet agents. The attempt to contact Mayr might have been made by the Russians, using Gamotha’s code. The Russians were out, however, for bigger game than the German Fifth Column in Persia and decided to use Gamotha as a superior BLACKGUARD to penetrate the highest circles of the Third Reich. Staisch and Gamotha were sent to Turkey, but the third German of the party for some reason or other did not accompany them. This was probably the German who Gamotha said was killed trying to escape.

  Having launched off Gamotha and Staisch on their career of duplicity, the Russians then turned to Vaziri. They could get into touch with him both through his father and also through contacts revealed by Gamotha under interrogation. With the changed war situation Vaziri was probably willing to take up his old Russian connections through his father again. Major Mohamed Alai probably cooperated with Vaziri in making the change over and possibly also Hussein Keyhari, for Vaziri seems to have had a violent quarrel with Mayr and then been taken by Alai and Keyhari to the North, whether this was all pre-arranged with the Russians or Vaziri was let out of Alai’s house by the latter later is not known. However, Vaziri was sent by the Russians to Turkey and later to Vienna (probably with the Khalilnias) with instructions to get in touch with Gamotha and work jointly with him for the Soviets.

  The Vaziri–Gamotha case shows that the Russians have been bold, ambitious and to a certain extent ingenious. Their great mistake has been to try and keep it all secret from us, for they are now getting into difficulties with controlling the numerous agents whom they had to employ, six of whom are to be brought to trial in connection with the Vaziri passport forgery case. It is interesting to speculate on which Russians in Persia have been running the cases. There is evidence to show that the ambassador, Maximov, may be at the head of the Soviet organisation. HM Ambassador remarked the other day on the way Maximov seemed able to give instructions to the local Red Army commander and added that he would not be surprised if Maximov were a high-ranking member of the Party. Maximov’s references to Gamotha’s escape show that at least he was in the know over something, while the Swedish counsellor yesterday expressed his surprise that he had been told by his Soviet opposite number that he would have to discuss questions relating to the repatriation of Bulgars with the Soviet ambassador himself and not, as would be more normal, with Maximov who is usually the one to deal with such matters and is generally regarded as the Soviet SIS representative in Tehran. We shall go through our records and see if there are any other signs of Maximov playing a part in Soviet Intelligence Service activities. If Sweerts is correct about Gamotha being intimate with Schellenberg and Himmler, not to mention the interviews with Hitler and Kaltenbrunner, then of course he could be an extremely valuable agent for the Russians. But the question immediately arises as to whether he is playing straight with the Russians and whether, even if he is doing so now, he will continue to do so after the war, should the Russians demand his freedom. He would obviously be invaluable to the Nazis for the penetration of the Soviet Intelligence Service either now or later, should the party go underground. By checking on Gamotha’s other contacts in Berlin it may be possible to find Germans he has recruited for the Russians and who are in the same position as himself.

  One thing of local importance is that almost all the loose ends of the German Fifth Column in Persia have now been tied up; those which we thought were still loose are now known to be tied to the Russians.

  Clearly Ramon Gamotha and Franz Mayr were key figures in the Nazi plans for Iran, and Mayr would be mentioned in MI5’s sixth report prepared for the Prime Minister. Evidently Sweerts came to know Gamotha quite well, and formed a high opinion of his capabilities:

  The head of Amp VIc and the organiser of the NORMA enterprise. He was educated at the Marie Therese College in Vienna, then at the University which he left with a degree in Political Science and Journalism. Stayed in Austria on behalf of the Nazi party.

  He was a member of the Waffen SS before the war, was recalled from France in 1940 and sent to Russia, from where he travelled to Teheran on a joumalistic (SD) mission, was interned in a Russian concentration camp in 1941, escaped in company with Staisch and a third person who was killed in the attempt. After many adventures, he reached the Turkish frontier. They were interned in Turkey, finally released and returned to Germany. He reported his adventures to Schellenberg, Kaltenbrunner, Himmler and Hitler. On Hitler’s order he was promoted to Hauptsturmführer and received the Iron Cross, 1st Class.

  Gamotha told Sweerts this story, but he also heard it from various members of Amt VI and the account of his adventures appeared in several Viennese newspapers. After Sweerts had gained his confidence, he told him that the NORMA expedition was merely bluff and that he had no intention of going to Persia, because German prestige was so low owing to the failure of the Russian campaign. All the same, he succeeded in obtaining vast quantities of money from the SD for equipment, etc. which he later sold in Vienna. He proposed to Sweerts one day that he would give him 100,000 Reichmarks if he could smuggle Jews into Switzerland. Sweerts states that he had plenty of money and also many sources of money in Austria, including a printing works. Gamotha always told Sweerts that if he came into contact with the Allies, he was to mention Gamotha’s name. About the beginning of 1944 he married the wife of one of his friends, an old fiancee of his own. In confidence, he told Sweerts that he believed Germany would lose the war and gave Sweerts to understand that he was putting money aside for such a contingency. Sweerts thinks it quite possible that Gamotha is a Russian agent, as he could not have escaped from Russia so easily otherwise.

  The friendship between Gamotha and Staisch could be explained in the same way. To sum up, Gamotha is very intelligent, very fond of money and power, and on very good terms with Schellenberg and Himmler.

  The significance of Alan Rogers’ observations lies in part in his belief that the Soviets h
ad succeeded in recruiting Gamotha while he was their prisoner, and this places a very different complexion on events in Iran. Reportedly Gamotha was arrested by the Soviets in Vienna in April 1945 and later the following month was working for the NKVD with a former SD Amt VI (Ausland) officer, Dr Wilhelm Hoettl.

  This extraordinary story was mentioned in the report alongside that of Arthur Garitte, code-named MEADOW, a Flemish nationalist operated by the Belgian Sûreté as a double-agent against the Abwehr from 1939. A writer by profession, MEADOW revealed himself in 1944 to have been part of a German stay-behind network in Brussels and was interrogated at Camp 020, having been denounced as an SD agent by Sweerts. While he was detained Garitte was also identified by two other former SD agents, René Delhaye and André de Smidt, as having been on the Nazi payroll over a much longer period than he had initially admitted. All three were held until the end of the war and then handed over to the Belgian authorities.

  * * *

  The issue of anarchist subversion in the armed forces, as manifested by War Commentary’s preparations for the introduction of soldiers’ councils and other such innovations, intended to undermine military discipline. War Commentary had begun as a fortnightly publication, Stalin and the World, during the Spanish Civil War, which was retitled Revolt! in 1938. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War there was a further tranformation, under the editorial leadership of an Italian, Vero Recchioni, who changed his name to Vernon Richards.1