Churchill's Spy Files

by Nigel West

  3. SPECIAL AGENTS.

  TATE and ROVER have continued to supply misleading information about the fall of V-2 and it is now possible to conclude with some certainty that the shift to the north-east of London of the mean point of impact of V-2 is due to reports from Special Agents. The renewed use of V-1 was foreshadowed by a message sent to TATE a week before the event.

  Most Secret Sources show that the Germans, who had promised to pay £2,000 to BRUTUS, have entrusted this arrangement to an agent in Spain who has for long represented that he has sub-agents in this country, though in fact they almost certainly do not exist. It is hoped that the failure to carry out this transaction may serve to discredit the agent.1

  5th March 1945

  ADDENDUM

  Since the last sentence of para. 1 was written, sentence on Styles has been promulgated. He has been awarded 7 years’ imprisonment.

  * * *

  Compared to Petrie’s other monthly report, this example is quite brief, and for the first time raises the unpalatable issue of British renegades, of whom there were mercifully few.

  In March 1945 the first renegade, Gerald Percy Sandys Hewitt, was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment. Although British, he had lived in France since 1931, had contributed articles to the British Union of Fascists’ journal Action, and had been associated with the Action Française movement. His crime had been broadcasting between 1942 and 1944 for Dr Goebbels’ ministry of propaganda from Paris and Berlin. He was arrested in France in September 1944 after he had been deported from Switzerland, where he had attempted to take refuge as the Reich collapsed.

  By January 1946 MI5 had obtained convictions against twenty-two suspects, with Liddell reporting that ‘large numbers of other cases have been submitted by the Judge Advocate-General and a considerable number are under investigation’.

  Petrie’s other topic, the V-1 and V-2 attacks, had far more potential for political controversy, and directly involved MI5, which was proposed as the instrument by which Sir Findlater Stewart’s Security Executive in July 1944 would recommend adoption of a policy to use double-agents to mislead the enemy about where the rockets were landing. The objective was to save an estimated four thousand lives, but the situation was complicated by OSTRO’s uncontrolled bogus reporting that London had been flattened. His messages dated 17 and 18 June claimed:

  Whitehall, College Street nr Parliament (Big Ben) completely destroyed. Heavy devastation with very high numbers of dead between Limehouse and West India Docks. Also devastation in East India Docks. Extensive destruction at Bromley gasworks by River Lea. Gigantic blaze here. Serious damage to houses at Greenwich, Clapham, Earls Court. Large goods depot and hall burnt out. Direct hit on East Croydon Station. Eye-witnesses report many dead.

  Specifically GARBO, TATE and ROVER were tasked by their handlers to supply further details and thereby presented MI5 with an opportunity to suggest that the rockets were overshooting their target area, thereby encouraging the Germans who, because of Allied air superiority, had no means of substantiating the reports, to reduce their range. Stewart was also conscious that GARBO in particular had a key role in the FORTITUDE D-Day deception campaign, and it was vital not to undermine his credibility. But the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, a former leader of the London County Council, was outraged at the prospect of his constituents in Lambeth being sacrificed for the benefit of more wealthy residents north of the Thames, and persuaded the War Cabinet, in Churchill’s absence, to ban the scheme, which had initiated the discussion with a paper circulated on 24 July that acknowledged Morrison’s Ministry of Home Security:

  … does not accept these arguments. They are not satisfied that any substantial saving of life would be effected, even if the deception was completely successful, and they express themselves as very doubtful about the possibility of achieving success.

  Or, as Dr Reg Jones recalled, ‘the attempt to keep the aiming-point short was an effort by government officials and others in Westminster, Belgravia and Mayfair to keep the bombs off themselves at the expense of the proletariat in South London’. When informed of the position taken by the Home Secretary by MI5’s Charles Cholmondeley, acting as a liaison with the Air Ministry, Jones had been appalled.

  The Cabinet debated the issue on 27 July and the minutes noted that ‘the general sense of the War Cabinet was that it would be a serious matter to assume any direct degree of responsibility for action which would affect the areas against which flying bombs were aimed’. Accordingly the Chiefs of Staff were directed to ‘create confusion in his mind and present him with an inaccurate picture’ but not to authorise Stewart’s scheme, declaring that ‘the draft of any instructions to be issued on this matter should be submitted to the Prime Minister for approval before issue’. This response, regarded as unsatisfactory by the CROSSBOW Committee chairman Duncan Sandys and Churchill’s scientific adviser, Lord Cherwell, advocated that ‘instead of attempting vaguely to confuse the enemy a positive deception plan should be adopted’. Two days later, on 4 August, Morrison reacted:

  I hope you will not decide in favour of it without reference to the War Cabinet as a whole. Apart altogether from the gravity of the responsibility, if what was being done should ever come out, there might be most serious political consequences.

  In the light of Morrison’s continued opposition, the issue came before the Cabinet on 15 August, when Attlee chaired the meeting while Churchill was in Naples for a two-day conference with Marshal Tito at Villa Rivalta. However, the conclusion of the deliberations on what was termed the CROSSBOW deception plan, as conveyed to Sir Findlater, was curiously ambiguous:

  It was agreed that your object should be to ensure that there is no deterioration in the position and that the enemy does not shift the pattern of bombs towards the north-west. With this in view you should continue to convey to the enemy information which will confirm his belief that he has no need to lengthen his range. You are also at liberty, within limits, to take such steps as you may judge safe to intensify this belief.

  Stewart seems not to have declared any reversal of policy, for his deputy John Drew told the XX Committee on 17 August that he had been instructed ‘to prevent the enemy from moving his aim towards the north-west and, to a slight extent, to attempt to induce him to move it towards the south-east’. Meanwhile, of course, the advancing Allies were occupying the V-1 launch sites, making the salvo fired on 30/31 August the last from northern France.2

  In any event, the whole matter became somewhat academic six months later, on 27 March, when the last two V-2s to reach England detonated in Stepney and then Orpington, Kent, killing 145 civilians. Two days later the final V-1 exploded harmlessly in a field near Letchworth, Hertfordshire. Earlier in the month, the 444 Training and Experimental Battery and the 485 Mobile Artillery Detachment had stepped up the offensive to launch an average of thirteen V-2s a day, but then they were forced to withdraw across the Rhine, placing all targets in England out of range.

  Since 8 September, when the second phase of the missile attack had commenced, exactly as ARTIST had warned TRICYCLE, 517 V-2s had hit London, out of a total of 1,054 launched. Unlike the fixed V-1 doodlebug ramps constructed by Flak Regiment 155(W) in western Holland at Delft, Ypenburg and Vlaardingen, which provided the RAF with relatively easy targets after they had been identified by aerial reconnaissance, the V-2s were fired from mobile launch vehicles located first in Wassenaar and then in The Hague’s densely populated city centre. The three catapults only fired 274 flying bombs, and of that number thirty-four penetrated the British defences, and just fifteen reached the capital.

  Whereas the V-1 deception campaign, though controversial, had been quite simple to convey to the enemy, MI5 being confident that the enemy had no method of double-checking their agent reports, it was clear that the V-2 ballistic missile was much easier to link to specific points of impact. This meant great care had to be taken to switch the timing of specific incidents, but this was achieved with sufficient success for the Ge
rmans to shorten the V-2s’ range by a rate of 2 miles a week between 20 January and 17 February 1945, terminating in Kent, although the enemy was aiming for Trafalgar Square.3

  The whole question of V-weapon deception had raised uncomfortable issues for government scientists, agent case officers, politicians and strategists to ponder, and, although emerging relatively late in the war, was passed by the Chiefs of Staff and the War Cabinet to the Prime Minister. Hitherto, Churchill had been informed about espionage investigations, double-agent operations, subversion and MI5’s counter-intelligence activities, but had not been called upon to express an opinion or stand in judgement on a particular dilemma, but the CROSSBOW proposal had put him in a difficult position, requiring him to balance the competing interests of protecting valued double-agents against the protests of the Home Secretary, whose views were supported by the Minister for Production, Oliver Lyttleton, the Tory MP for Aldershot. If the challenge was daunting, we will probably never know as no record survives of how Churchill dealt with it. Presumably he made his views known, which emboldened MI5 to ignore Morrison, save the lives of thousands of Londoners and enhance the standing of the vulnerable double-agents in whom so much had been invested.

  25

  MARCH AND APRIL 1945, UNDATED

  A week after Hitler’s death, and on the very day General Jodl signed the instrument of Germany’s unconditional surrender, MI5’s Director-General completed a rather short summary covering events over the previous two months, concentrating on two individuals, an Icelandic spy, Gudbrandur Hlidar, and Hermann Rainer, who was thought to be knowledgeable about any SD-sponsored post-occupation resistance. The other topic covered was the threat posed to military discipline by the anarchists who published War Commentary, among them John Olday.

  MARCH AND APRIL 1945

  During the past two months a number of enemy agents have been sent for examination at our special interrogation centre. They include one of purely academic interest, and one of current importance. The former, an Icelandic subject, Gudbrandur Hlidar, was passing through this country on his way to Ireland but, owing to the difficulties which the German Secret Service had found in sending him here and their incompetence in organisation, the mission which he had to fulfil was already twelve months out of date. The more serious character is Untersturmführer Hermann Rainer who was apprehended and sent to us by 21st Army Group on the basis of previous information that he was a member of an important German resistance organisation. Rainer has been persuaded to talk not without some difficulty and has revealed much of interest of German plans and organisation for partisan resistance and sabotage behind the Allied lines. His most interesting item of information, however, is his identification of a group of spies who have not yet been captured, and who, according to his statements, were to be dropped by parachute in the Aachen area with the assignment of murdering the mayor of that town. At the time that Rainer gave this information we believe that he had no means of knowing that the mayor of Aachen had actually been murdered. Full details of Rainer’s identification of the alleged culprits were at once cabled to the field.

  An officer of the German Intelligence Service who was captured last month revealed under interrogation that a Frenchman named Lagall was a German spy who had been sent to this country. Lagall had in fact arrived here over two years ago and had been detained by the Security Service since his arrival, although there was no conclusive evidence that he was a German spy. The story which he told, however, of his escape from France was so unconvincing that even without more tangible evidence we felt justified in keeping him under restraint for the duration of the war. The new evidence which has now reached us shows that our suspicions were amply justified. Lagall has recently been deported to France where he is being dealt with by the French authorities.

  The Security Service has had under observation for some considerable time past the activities of the ‘Freedom From Anarchists’, a group of people with headquarters in London and a branch in Bristol. They are the publishers of the fortnightly paper War Commentary and have been carrying on their activities at an office and bookshop in Belsize Road, Swiss Cottage, a studio in Camden Town, and premises in Whitechapel occupied by a firm known as Express Printers, who print the paper.

  The persons most actively engaged in the management of the Freedom Press were a Vernon Richards and his wife, both of Italian extraction with anarchist family connections; Dr John Hamilton, a qualified medical practitioner, who has served a sentence of imprisonment for refusing to be medically examined for military service; and John Olday (or Oldag) the illegitimate son of a German woman, who is technically a British/German dual national, but who was educated and has lived mostly in Germany. This man produced chiefly scurrilous anti-war cartoons with subversive captions.

  The members of the group, while condemning out-and-out almost all the forms and appearances of any system of government, are bitterly opposed to warfare in general and the present war in particular and to the existence of Armed Forces and the discipline necessary to maintain them. Broadly speaking, the line of policy in War Commentary was to write up and to dilate on military and naval mutinies such as those in the Russian and German navies in the last war; and this whole teaching was calculated, and indeed designed to undermine the determination, loyalty, morale and discipline of readers in the forces. During 1944, however, there were clear indications of a more positive policy and on increased boldness in asserting it, accompanied by a greater following in the Forces. A most important development was the issue by the Freedom Press of a circular letter dated 28 October 1944 to members of the Forces drawing their attention to a forthcoming series of articles in War Commentary on ‘Soldiers’ and Workers’ Councils’. Three of these, with the usual flavouring of revelations and mutinies, advocated the formation of such councils in the British Forces, who are also advised to ‘Hold on to your arms’.

  Search of the Freedom Press and the results of a number of snap kit inspections confirmed the impression that a sustained attack was being made on the loyalty of the Forces and it was achieving some degree of success. Richards and his wife, Dr Hewetson and one Philip Sansom were accordingly prosecuted under the Defence Regulation 29A (seducing persons from duty and causing disaffection), and last week the three men were sentenced by Mr Justice Birkett at the Old Bailey to be imprisoned for nine calendar months, the woman being acquitted.

  The sentences perhaps do not adequately indicate the pernicious and even dangerous nature of the propaganda so sedulously conducted by these people, for an over-all study of it leaves no shadow of doubt that what they were aiming at was to incite the Armed Forces to violence and mutiny. On this point it is pertinent to record that Olday, who was not put on trial as he is already in prison, has been sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment for using false identity papers. Though the Freedom Press Anarchists are not a large body, they are obviously one whose teachings under certain circumstances might be productive of the gravest consequences.

  7 May 1945 Director-General

  * * *

  Hermann Rainer provided a mass of information to MI5, and named a French refugee, Lagall, as one of his agents. This individual in fact had been interned since his arrival in England in August 1943, having been exfiltrated across the Channel by a resistance organisation in Carantec headed by Ernest Sibiril, using his boat, the Pourquoi Pas. Under examination at the London Reception Centre, Lagall had raised suspicions, but when ISOS later revealed that the Breton route had been penetrated by the Germans, Herbert Hart had argued that the compromise had occurred long after Lagall, and a few hundred other escapees, had benefited from the route, which suggested perhaps that he had not been responsible for the leak. However, Stamp and Milmo had disagreed, and Lagall had been detained until his true loyalties could be ascertained. Ernest, Louise and Leon Sibiril finally reached England in October 1943 on another boat, the Shark, which had been built in eleven days for the purpose.

  * * *

  Gudbrandur Hlidar was a 30-yea
r-old veterinary student, the son of an Icelandic member of parliament, who had been studying in Copenhagen since 1935. He had been mentioned as an Abwehr recruiter by Einar Sigvaldason and Larus Thorsteinsson, and he had also been incriminated by the German spy, Ernst Fresenius. Accordingly, when he applied in Stockholm for a transit visa to return to Iceland via Scotland in October 1944, it was granted. After various delays he finally reached Prestwick on 12 February 1945 and was transferred initially to the London Reception Centre at the Oratory School so as to give him the opportunity to offer an innocent explanation for the accumulated evidence against him. He failed to do so and accordingly was moved to Camp 020 on 2 March.

  Having initially failed to mention his Abwehr connections, Hlidar was challenged about his contacts with Dr Hellmuth Lotz, and then confessed to his espionage mission, claiming that Lotz had pressured him on the grounds that his father had been Germany’s vice consul in Akureyri. He admitted visiting Lotz’s country home at Klein Kiesow and discussing issues of the repatriation of Icelandic students from occupied Denmark. He also acknowledged that upon his return to Copenhagen he had received training in secret writing, and had been given a cover address of an Otto Kaiser in Gothenburg. Of course, MI5’s interrogators had the benefit of checking Hlidar’s version with several other Icelandic detainees, which led to further admissions, including the nature of the military information he had been instructed to collect, and the fact that he was to provide money and assistance to other Abwehr agents who approached him for support once he was established in Iceland. Specifically, he was to pay 1,000 kronen to Ib Riis. He also conceded that he had introduced five other compatriots to Lotz, who had sworn him to secrecy. All on the list were known to MI5, including Pall Sigurdsson, who had been an inmate of Camp 020 before he was sent to the Isle of Man. The payment to COBWEB was also potentially significant, as it suggested the Abwehr’s continuing confidence in their source.