Burn After Reading

by Ladislas Farago

  BURN AFTER READING

  BURN

  AFTER

  READING

  THE ESPIONAGE HISTORY

  OF WORLD WAR II

  By

  Ladislas Farago

  BLUEJACKET BOOKS

  Naval Institute Press

  Annapolis, Maryland

  This book has been brought to publication by the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

  Naval Institute Press

  291 Wood Road

  Annapolis, MD 21402

  © 1961 by Ladislas Farago

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First Bluejacket Books printing, 2003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Farago, Ladislas.

  Burn after reading : the espionage history of World War II / by Ladislas Farago.

  p. cm. — (Bluejacket books)

  Originally published: New York: Walker, 1961.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-61251-180-1 (alk. paper)

  1. World War, 1939–1945—Secret service. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Military intelligence. 3. Spies—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Series.

  D810.S7F3 2003

  940.54’85—dc21

  2003048837

  TO

  JOHN MICHAEL ARTHUR FARAGO

  “… your name burning past you like a pure lamp.”

  G. A. Borgese, from

  Dream of a Decent Death

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter

  1“Operation Canned Meat”

  2The Fox in His Lair

  3Canaris Paves the Way

  4Stagnation in the Allied Camp

  5The Trojan Horses

  6The Great Carillon

  7Straws in the North Wind

  8Behind the Battle of Europe

  9Churchill At the Helm

  10The Bitter Weeds of England

  11Barbarossa

  12Footloose In “Sicily”

  13Rhapsody in Red

  14War in the Wings

  15A Man Called “Ramsey”

  16Target: United States

  17The Magic of the Black Chamber

  18Donovan’s Brain

  19The Misery and Grandeur of the Secret War

  20On the Eve of D-Day

  21The House On Herren Street

  22The Surrender of Japan

  Bibliography

  Index

  Preface

  Espionage has played a conspicuous and often memorable part in every war of history, but it was not until the Second World War that it became a kind of Fourth Estate of war. The nature and scope of this bitter conflict produced special armies that fought clandestinely behind the lines and on their own fronts. The true magnitude of this furtive contest can be seen, for example, from the casualties of Greece. Of the seventy-three thousand Greeks killed in World War II, twenty-three thousand died in conventional warfare—fifty thousand were killed in various surreptitious enterprises. In Norway, where the blunt phase of the war lasted only a few days, the underground war continued for five years, waged by an army of forty-seven thousand stealthy combatants. The Yugoslavs, fighting their hugger-mugger war in the black mountains, suffered greater losses than any of the Allies—one million, seven hundred six thousand men and women killed in hit-and-run actions.

  I trust it is clear that I am using the word “espionage” in a generic sense. While this book is the history of espionage during World War II, it also covers the whole curriculum of clandestine operations, the several forms of intelligence, espionage and sabotage, subversion and counter-espionage, the whole secret contest conducted apart from the formal and conventional operations of modern war.

  Espionage was practiced by both sides, but only on the Allied side was it such a vast enterprise. This is understandable; in the occupied countries of Europe and Asia it was the only opportunity for the oppressed to defy and harm the oppressor. It was this spontaneous rebellion born in the soul of men and borne by their indomitable will to freedom that endowed the dubious business with an aura of decency and that justified its larcenies and homicides.

  It was but a side show of the greater war, yet it was a war itself in all but name. The defunct Duce may not be a proper character witness on any other score, but on the essence of war he was an eloquent authority, refreshingly free of hypocrisy. Mussolini once said that war alone brings human energy up to its highest tension and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to confront it. Nowhere was the war more noble and courageous than in the resistance of millions to tyranny.

  It was largely this redeeming feature of the secret phase of World War II that induced me to write this book. A student of history can play no favorites. To the historian of espionage, a German spy performing his sordid functions for his country and cause is as proper an individual for study as an American agent spying for his country and cause. Yet in World War II there was a difference, and even the most pedantically objective historian is bound to recognize the distinction. I was inspired in this by General Sir Colin McVean Gubbins, chief of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, who wrote: “What resistance entailed through the long years of dreadful night in the occupied territories was a day-to-day battle with the Gestapo, the Quislings and the Japanese secret police, one long continuous struggle, with torture and unbelievable suffering and death waiting round every corner at every moment. Yet there were countless thousands who undertook the task, to whom all that mattered was their own eternal spiritual indestructibility. They dedicated themselves to a cause they knew to be higher than self.”

  Even so I have certain reservations. One who was as closely preoccupied as I was for years with such a romantic and emotionally supercharged activity inevitably develops a point of view, and I confess I did develop a certain bias. For one thing, I came to regard some of the business with a mild contempt, in the spirit of Virgil who warned that vice is nourished by secrecy. Much of the business is rather childish, a relapse of grown men into boyish antics, a nebulous pastime to which no adult who cherishes his full dignity and integrity should devote uncritical attention. For another thing, I could not wholly sanction the inherent deceit of the game. What usually began as temporary skulduggery frequently led to corruption that the ad hoc practitioners of the game carried like an ugly scar for the rest of their lives.

  This is evident today in the Cold War when espionage is rampant and is, indeed, its major implement. The dismal way in which the Cold War is fought, even by great nations of traditional decency, is the direct outgrowth of this wartime experience; it is the acceptance of something designed as a temporary expedient as an enduring instrument of national power.

  I did not try to eradicate completely this bias from the pages of this book. I refused to take the business of espionage too solemnly, as some writers do; they place too much emphasis on the heroics of the game and too little on its theatrics. I trust the reader will bear with me if I became not carried too far by the sheer melodrama of the subject and did not solemnize the exploits of all spies, but rather tried to view them with a sense of proportion.

  In view of the huge scope of this clandestine struggle, any narrative trying to describe it must be incomplete and inadequate. I am sure this narrative is no exception. In order to give a rounded picture, I had to deal with both the topic and the events selectively. I regret that limitations of space prevented me from dealing fully with all the resistance movements and especial
ly the guerrilla war in the Philippines. I deliberately omitted incidents already very well known, such as the mute adventure of “the man who never was” and the case of Tyler Kent. Several well publicized adventures, like the penetration of Scapa Flow by a U-boat allegedly guided to its target by a spy, were omitted because they never really happened. I am sure that students of the subject will find many more omissions and also, inevitably, errors. While I apologize for any errors that may occur, I can only point to the obvious difficulty of getting everything straight in a business that is so crooked.

  This is the proper place to express my gratitude to my friend and colleague, Jay Nelson Tuck, for his invaluable and heroic help in editing what was a formless mass of manuscript into an organized and cohesive book. If ever an acknowledgment of this kind was deserved, this is it. His work on my manuscript went well beyond the usual editorial task. If there is some merit to this book and cohesion in its presentation, it is to a large extent his astonishing achievement.

  While this book deliberately refrains from drawing any conclusions, its facts—projected against the giant screen of current history—may still supply certain pragmatic lessons. The emphasis is on the facts. They are, as Churchill put it, so much better than dreams.

  LADISLAS FARAGO

  New York, 1961

  BURN AFTER READING

  1

  “Operation Canned Meat”

  On the sultry night of August 10, 1939, hardly a passerby disturbed the nocturnal calm of Berlin’s venerable Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse until, shortly before midnight, rapid, heavy-booted steps sent echoes rattling down the famous street. The guard in front of the Air Ministry’s big gray edifice saw a tall man pass him by in great hurry, breathing heavily as he went. Since the stranger was wearing the uniform of an SS officer, the young airman saluted him with outstretched carbine and remained stiffly at attention until the man turned into Prinz Albrecht Strasse where the Gestapo—Reinhard Heydrich’s secret police—had general headquarters.

  In the lobby the man was greeted with a rush of jumping feet, clicking heels and Heil Hitlers. Swinging his right arm loosely in a relaxed version of the Nazi salute, he acknowledged the greetings and climbed the steps, going straight to the big office at the head of the staircase where Heydrich ruled supreme.

  This late disturber of the Wilhelm Strasse’s deceptive quiet was a Gestapo goon, Alfred Helmuth Naujocks by name. A brainless tool in the hands of a master craftsman, this apoplectic bully resembled Somerset Maugham’s “hairless Mexican” even to the point of scenting himself. He was a tall, heavy-set, big-boned, smooth-skinned man with a coarse, florid scarface, blonde hair and big pink freckles on his enormous hands. Naujocks was a star in Heydrich’s fraternity of assassins, whose mere shadow struck terror in the soul of Germany. He belonged to a new caste of secret agents whose activities behind the scenes infused the ancient war of espionage with the spirit of gangsterism.

  It was ten minutes past midnight when Naujocks entered Heydrich’s big, plainly furnished office. Heydrich beckoned him to a chair, got up, circled his subordinate and handed him the mission of his life.

  “I need not remind you,” he began, “that what I’m about to tell you is a top secret matter of state and must, therefore, be handled with the utmost discretion.” Naujocks nodded and Heydrich continued: “The Fuehrer has decided to settle the Danzig question once and for all and smash Poland. Both X-day and Y-hour are set. All is prepared—except a pretext for war.

  “What the Fuehrer needs, we will supply, you and I, my dear Naujocks! We are going to create the cause for this war!

  “We will begin the Polish campaign without a formal declaration of war, with a counterattack, telling the world that it was the Poles who fired the first shot. But telling it isn’t enough. Practical proof is needed, hard clues Goebbels can show to the foreign press.”

  Heydrich paused melodramatically before coming to the point: “We will simulate a series of frontier incidents and make it appear that the attacking forces were Poles.”

  He walked to a map on the wall and pointed to marked spots in Eastern Germany. “The incidents are to take place in this general area,” he said, “around Gleiwitz in Upper Silesia, and here at Pitschen, near Kreuzburg, at Hochlinden near Ratibor, and in Gleiwitz itself. We’ll put a couple of hundred of our men into Polish uniforms and let them shoot up places, burn farmhouses and run amuck for a few hours.”

  His bony index finger came to rest on a particular spot on the map. “Here at Gleiwitz,” he said, “we have a radio station. It will be your job to stage an incident there. Party Comrade Mueller is in personal charge of these operations. He has all the necessary details. You’ll find him either at Gleiwitz or in Oppeln. Report to him when you get there. Good luck!”

  Naujocks opened his mouth for the first time. “Thank you, Herr Obergruppenfuehrer,” he said, “for your confidence. Heil Hitler!” He stood up, clicked his heels and backed out of the room.

  “Mueller” was Heinrich Mueller, chief of the Gestapo under Heydrich. Naujocks found him in Oppeln, stage-managing the impending operations. When Naujocks arrived, Mueller called a conference of his seconds-in-command, and gave each man his instructions. A thug named Mehlhorn was to direct the Pitschen branch of this bloody masquerade party with a hundred Nazis clad in the uniform of Polish regulars. Another, Langhans by name, was to storm the customs house at Hochlinden. To Naujocks, Mueller explained the attack on the Gleiwitz radio station.

  “You will pick six trustworthy SD men and dress them in Polish uniforms. At zero hour, you’ll attack the radio station and seize it. You need not hold it long, five or ten minutes at the most, just long enough to enable a man who’ll accompany you to broadcast an anti-German speech in Polish.”

  He went on: “I have here in Oppeln, in the Gestapo jail, a dozen inmates of concentration camps. We’ll use them to make these incidents look goddam real. We’ll put them in Polish uniforms and leave them dead on the ground as if they had been killed during the attack. They’ll be given lethal injections and we’ll also provide them with gunshot wounds. After the incidents, we’ll show them to members of the foreign press Goebbels is going to bring from Berlin.”

  Mueller told Naujocks he would let him have one of these dead “Poles,” complete with the lethal injection and gunshot wounds.

  “By the way,” he said, “we refer to these fake Pollacks by the code name of ‘Canned Meat.’ “ They laughed. “Operation Canned Meat” was off to a promising start.

  On August 25, Naujocks rehearsed the attack with his men, but without the dead Pole. Then he sat tight. At eleven a.m. on August 31, Naujocks was summoned to the phone. It was Heydrich, calling him from Berlin.

  “Naujocks,” he said, “the die is cast. It will start at five tomorrow morning. Your operation is to take place at 20 o’clock—tonight. You better call Mueller right away and ask him to send you one of his ‘canned meats.’ ”

  At 11:10 a.m. Naujocks phoned Mueller in Oppeln and asked for the fake Pole. At 7:00 p.m. he sent his men to their posts near the radio station and at 7:30, a car arrived with the “Pole.” He had had his injection and the gunshot wounds, and his face was smeared with blood, but the man was still breathing. At 7:50, Naujocks had the human prop carried to the main entrance of the station and arranged him on the ground.

  It was now 8:00 p.m. Naujocks looked at his wrist watch and almost casually gave the order to attack. A moment later, his six “Poles” seized the station and the phony “Polish” agitator stepped up to the live microphone. He shouted that the time had come for war between Germany and Poland and called on all patriotic Poles to kill Germans. The delivery was punctuated by a few staccato shots before the open mike, as Naujocks’ men fired into the air and into the “canned meat” on the ground, providing random sound effects.

  At 8:07 p.m. the show was over. Naujocks and his “Poles” climbed into their cars and disappeared. They had given Hitler his excuse for war. Left behind on the ground was a man, now i
ndubitably dead. He was the first casualty of the Second World War—truly its Unknown Soldier.

  At 5:00 a.m. on September 1, 1939, the Wehrmacht crossed into Poland, all along the frontier, commencing a three-pronged drive. In that same split second, bombers of the Luftwaffe appeared over Gdynia, Cracow and Katowice.

  At 5:11 a.m., Hitler issued a proclamation to the Wehrmacht, justifying the attack. “The series of border violations,” he said, “which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier. In order to put an end to this frantic activity, no other means is left to me now than to meet force with force.”

  At 8:00 a.m., exactly twelve hours after the incident at Gleiwitz, the Wehrmacht was already deep inside Poland. The “Pole” on the steps of the radio station was no longer alone in death. At 9:10 a.m., an army ambulance drove into Gleiwitz, returning the first three German casualties. Two were wounded. The third man was dead on arrival.

  The world was at war again.

  For Poland, the war was to last just twenty-seven days. Never before had a major military power been subdued so rapidly and with such finality. How was it possible, military experts asked, for a nation of thirty-two million people to melt away before the German attack? Nobody in his right mind expected the hapless Poles to succeed single-handed in driving back the Nazis, but some did expect that the Polish resistance would be longer and more costly for the Germans.

  Within twenty-four hours after Hitler launched his Blitzkrieg, seventy-five per cent of the Polish planes were destroyed—most of them in their hangars. The Nazis forestalled aid from Britain and France by destroying every Polish airfield equipped to receive military craft. In the first few days of the campaign the Germans smashed Polish communication lines and railroad bridges behind the Polish lines. Army transports operating on secret schedules were located by the Luftwaffe planes and bombed at their terminals. Mobilization centers and staging stations, presumably known only to the upper echelons of the Polish High Command, were found by German planes and smashed. Munitions dumps and oil stores, to the last isolated gasoline depot, were blasted. Nothing of military significance escaped.