Hitler's Spy

by James Hayward

  Lord Swinton, in charge of the Security Executive, waxed incandescent, and fired off a furious letter to David Petrie, the new Director-General of MI5. Mercifully unaware of Dicketts and his sealed packages from Hjalmar Schacht, Swinton expressed ‘outrage’ at having been kept in the dark about the Haushofer-Hamilton letter. His ire mattered little, since the Hess initiative was deemed of ‘no particular point’ by MI5, and his flight conceivably a reverse Venlo encouraged by ingenious rivals at MI6. However, within weeks Churchill’s sidelined security overlord would threaten to bring down the entire XX system just as surely as renegade Agent Snow, while at the same time triggering one of the most ignoble episodes in British penal history.

  Forty-eight hours after Hess landed in Scotland, Karel Richter was dropped over Hertfordshire by Hauptmann Gartenfeld, landing in a field near London Colney. Just five miles separated Roboter’s drop zone from Round Bush House near Radlett, where Wulf Schmidt (aka Tate) still lived with the Robertson family, along with a wireless operator named Russell Lee. This close proximity was entirely deliberate, yet Richter struggled to cover even this short distance. The young Sudetenlander spoke imperfect English, mixing his Vs and Ws, and carried flawed papers based on serials provided by Snow. After hiding in woodland for an entire day, Richter set out on foot along the A405, where a passing lorry driver asked for directions and grew suspicious on receiving an incoherent reply. Prompt intervention by a War Reserve constable ensured that the dubious foreigner carrying £551 and $1400 in cash was soon in custody at Camp 020.

  ‘Richter arrived in reasonably good health and an unreasonable frame of mind,’ recorded Tin-Eye Stephens. ‘He showed no anxiety to make a confession. But when Josef Jakobs, carefully groomed for his reluctant role, was brought into the room for confrontation, Richter slipped and began gradually to break.’

  Ritter’s master pearl was worthless paste, his Iron Cross tin plate. On 14 May Richter returned to London Colney under guard and retrieved his equipment from a hedge. The expedition was recorded in a remarkable sequence of photographs, later released to the Imperial War Museum, the informality of which belied the gravity of Roboter’s predicament. Back behind bars at Latchmere House, Richter admitted that his ‘principal purpose’ in coming to England was to deliver £400 and a wireless crystal to Leonhardt. Although he obstinately refused to be turned as an XX agent, Roboter also confirmed that he was to ‘discover whether Schmidt was under control and whether the messages he was sending were authentic.’

  Richter declined to cooperate fully with B1A, but let slip that he meant to meet Schmidt outside a barber shop at the Regent Palace Hotel, with the Tate Gallery (where else?) in reserve. ‘What is delaying the man with the money you promised?’ Leonhardt buzzed Wohldorf angrily when Roboter failed to show. ‘I am beginning to think that you are full of shit.’

  Soon after, Schmidt received £200 in a complicated drop involving a Number 16 bus and an Oriental gentleman holding a copy of The Times, subsequently identified as an assistant naval attaché at the Japanese embassy. ‘The incident was unimportant,’ remarked Masterman, ‘but the difficulties of securing these early payments were not without value. A real agent would have grave difficulties to overcome, and these tiresome hitches and obstacles can only have served to confirm the Germans in their belief in the case.’

  Interrogated by Allied intelligence officers five years later, Ritter appeared to have been driven stark raving mad by the heat and dust of the North African desert. ‘About the middle of May I was informed that Roboter had landed safely, but that so far no message had come from him.’ This Ritter took to be an encouraging sign. ‘Were the British in control of Leonhardt’s set, it is incredible that they should have taken the risk of making no move with Roboter in view of his instructions to report on Leonhardt. I therefore felt tolerably certain that Schmidt was safe.’

  Lucid or not, such skewed logic could hardly have been predicted by the Twenty Committee, yet it suited their purpose perfectly well. Three months later Ritter’s irrational faith in Leonhardt was confirmed by the Yugoslav playboy Duško Popov, alias double agent Tricycle, whose lucrative Plan Midas netted £20,000 intended to fund future Abwehr operations in Britain. Every last penny was meant for potty-mouthed Iron Cross winner Wulf Schmidt.

  Humdinger.

  While Roboter remained under lock and key at Camp 020, Agent Snow languished in Stafford Gaol. Hopeful that three weeks in clink might serve to encourage Owens to give a more truthful account of his Lisbon adventure with Dicketts, Robertson and Masterman paid him a visit on 16 May. To their dismay Owens stuck by his previous statement, insisting that Rantzau had blown his cover and that Celery had flipped. ‘Long incarceration,’ rued Masterman, ‘never brought him to change his story.’

  Despite lingering doubts, Walter Dicketts was sent back to Portugal at the end of May. With his peace initiative overshadowed by Hess, Agent Celery now hoped to persuade the former Hitler Youth footballer George Sessler to defect in return for a cash lump sum and free onward passage to America. For Dicketts, there was also the promise of Lotti Schade, the Mata Hari hoofer from the Arcadia cabaret, patiently waiting in her cosy Berlin apartment. And if he failed to penetrate Germany again, there was always poor Marcelle Quenall, the ash-blonde Belgian at the Hotel Franco . . .

  The mission washed out. Through Hans Ruser, the flag-flying diplomatic aide, Dicketts learned that Sessler was in fact a loyal Nazi. Meanwhile Ruser, whose own loyalties were hopelessly confused, was genuinely keen to defect, and would eventually do so in 1943. Seeking to establish his anti-Nazi credentials, Ruser warned Celery that the Abwehr were wise to what was fast becoming a labyrinthine quadruple cross. Discretion being the better part of valour, Dicketts fled from Lisbon without returning to Germany.

  ‘Our manoeuvres in Hamburg were less successful than I hoped,’ Ritter warned his perplexed successor, Doctor Schneider. ‘Dicketts is probably a British agent of high standing, whose loyalty we did not succeed in buying and who probably reported on Owens. In these circumstances it seems more than likely our whole previous view of Johnny’s case has been mistaken.’

  With these few words Doctor Rantzau washed his hands of an ambitious, ambiguous XX sting that had cost the lives of so many luckless Lena agents, then lured the Deputy Führer on a flight of fancy. Small wonder that his memoirs would be characteristically careless with the truth.

  Remarkably, MI6 expressed interest in re-employing Dicketts for further operations abroad, including missions to Brazil and Occupied France. However, a reference drafted by Robertson was decidedly lukewarm. ‘The information which Celery managed to obtain from Germany was not in any sense of the word useful from a military point of view. I would add that it is open to doubt whether he did not go a very long way towards becoming a proper German agent. This possibility cannot be ruled out.’

  Meanwhile Lord Swinton moved to hang more spies. After choosing to deliberately ignore decrees from the Security Executive that all deals offered to enemy agents required prior approval, MI5 had offered unauthorised inducements to Josef Jakobs and Karel Richter. Jakobs lent a hand in breaking Richter, who in turn made certain admissions, thus allowing B1A to salvage the crucial case of Tate. Neither V-man had been able to carry out any useful work for Germany, and in the opinion of most on the Twenty Committee they deserved no worse punishment than detention at Camp 020 or 020R until hostilities ceased.

  There was also the obvious security risk in putting enemy agents on trial, even in camera. Despite informed advice to the contrary, Swinton remained unconvinced, preferring to adhere to the rigid diktat imposed in 1940 that ‘in all suitable cases’ enemy spies should be brought to trial. ‘I have given my undertaking,’ the intransigent peer warned in June, ‘that any spy no longer required for intelligence purposes shall be brought to justice if the case against him will lie. The right man to decide is the Director of Public Prosecutions, and we should certainly have the insurance of his opinion and advice in every case.’

&
nbsp; Like Swinton, the DPP understood little of the exigencies of double-cross work, and the outcome edged uncomfortably close to state murder. Following a military court martial convened at the beginning of August, Josef Jakobs was sentenced to death by firing squad at the Tower of London, the first execution performed there since 1916. Still limping heavily on account of his broken ankle, Jakobs was allowed to face death while seated in a brown Windsor chair, thoughtfully placed at the far end of the miniature rifle range below the Constable Tower.

  Eight Scots Guards aimed their rifles at a small circle of white lint pinned above his heart. According to Tin-Eye Stephens, Jakob’s last words on Earth were a polite request to shoot straight.

  Still able-bodied, Karel Richter proved rather less docile. Tried in camera at the Old Bailey in October, Roboter was convicted under the Treachery Act and sentenced to death. After an appeal was summarily dismissed, Albert Pierrepoint travelled to Wandsworth to assess Richter’s physical build, calmly calculating the drop required as the prisoner walked in the exercise yard. Shortly before eight o’clock on the morning of 10 December the hangman and his assistant stood ready outside the condemned cell, confident of executing the Nazi spy with practised efficiency. On the far side of the door the prisoner would be pinioned with lightning speed, then propelled into the adjoining execution chamber and placed on the trap. There a white linen hood would be placed over his head, followed by the noose around his neck.

  From his initial entry into the condemned cell to the brute pull of the trapdoor lever, Pierrepoint reckoned to take no more than twenty seconds. His personal best was just seven.

  Richter, however, was far from quiescent, as the hangman recalled in his ghosted memoir Executioner Pierrepoint. ‘He was standing at the far side of the table, glowering at the open door, eyes staring, very blue and dangerous. His big fists were clenched. Before I could reach him he heaved away the nearest prison officer and dived like a bullock at the stone wall. His head cracked against the masonry. It may have been his intention to stun himself so that he was hanged unconscious. I do not know. My first impression was quite irrelevant. It was the flurry of robes of the Catholic priest as he tried to get out of the way of the battle which followed.’

  Four warders were required to subdue Richter, whose mortal flailings even split the leather strap used to pinion his hands behind his back. Worse was to follow in the chamber itself. ‘A strap was quickly fastened round his ankles, the cap and noose were adjusted, and still he fought for life. Just as I was crossing to the lever, he jumped with bound feet. The drop opened, he plunged down, and I saw with horror that the noose was slipping. It would have come right up over his head had it not caught roughly at a point halfway up the hood.’

  Untidily, the noose hooked just below Richter’s nose – a truly ghastly end. With the rope still swaying gently, Pierrepoint descended into the pit with the prison medical officer, who pronounced it a clean, instantaneous death. ‘He sounded surprised, and I did not blame him. I was surprised myself, and very relieved.’

  Rather than seven short seconds, the killing of Karel Richter had dragged on for seventeen agonising minutes. Gösta Caroli (aka Summer) and Kurt Goose (aka Gander), whose brief double-cross careers had also come to an end, were truly lucky to escape with their lives.

  So too was Agent Snow.

  14

  Sins of the Father

  Despite having evaded the hangman’s rope, Arthur Owens remained highly strung, and found life behind bars at Stafford barely tolerable. MI5 inquisitors aside, his visitors were strictly limited and correspondence was restricted to two short letters each week. Only his son Bob kept in regular contact, and on a single occasion made the long journey up from Surrey. From Lily Bade there was no word at all. Anxious to smuggle out an uncensored letter to the mother of his child, Owens bribed a crooked warder with a five-pound note.

  Still there came no reply.

  The fact that Germany remained odds-on favourite to win what had now become a Second World War only added to his burden of woe. On 22 June Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, hurling 4,000 tanks and four million troops across the western borders of the Soviet Union, pushing halfway to Moscow by the end of July. Once the scourge of Bolshevism was erased from the map, the British Isles could be invaded at leisure and the warmonger Churchill chased into the sea, at long last making Nazi Germany master of all Europe.

  Humdinger.

  Except that invasion would mean a visit to Stafford by Mr Mills’ Circus. Owens understood the implications of Plan Hegira only too well, and made a point of warning a fellow inmate named Dirk Boon that the military would put a bullet through the head of each and every prisoner. Boon, a Dutch fascist who had served time at Camp 020, initially swallowed Snow’s claims to be ‘the most important German spy in England’ and readily agreed to pool resources in a bid to escape. For £20 the same crooked warder provided a small hacksaw blade, and allowed Owens to take a soap impression of a master key. Boon then fashioned a cardboard positive, from which the warder would arrange to cut a duplicate. Having gained their liberty, the pair planned to make for the German legation in Dublin, after which Owens would make arrangements for a U-boat to take his Dutch sidekick back to the Netherlands.

  ‘The warder had complained of his pay and conditions,’ found a subsequent enquiry. ‘He was in want of money and asked both Owens and Boon to help find him a better job after the war.’

  Boon, however, was less naive, and soon came to realise that ‘Thomas Wilson’ was nothing more than an avaricious traitor. ‘He had gone into the spy business simply to make money, was in no sense an idealist, and alleged he could make about £20,000 in a year.’ Owens also boasted of having a secret American bank account, and let slip that he expected to be shipped to Canada because his continued presence on British soil terrified MI5. Correctly deducing that Wilson was untrustworthy, and likely to desert him on the far side of the prison wall, Boon reported the plot to the governor.

  At the same time, Snow Junior attempted to spring his father from gaol by staging a stunt of his own. Now aged twenty-one, Robert Owens was still employed by the fire service at Chertsey and engaged to Lavinia Cantello, an attractive girl of Italian descent whose family lived nearby. At the beginning of August Bob wrote to offer his services as a secret agent, rashly promising Tar Robertson that he was able to ‘gain entrance and exit into occupied countries’ at will. Almost certainly Snow Junior was acting on instructions handed down by his father, whom he closely resembled in almost every respect. Grilled by Tar and Masterman at the War Office, he claimed to have been inveigled by a stranger in an Italian restaurant on Frith Street and invited to spy for Germany. ‘Snow Junior was most evasive throughout,’ observed Masterman, ‘producing his account of the incident piece by piece and most unconvincingly. He proposed that he should be sent to Lisbon by plane, taking a man who could speak fluent French, and bring back information.’

  Robertson dismissed Bob Owens out of hand, accusing him of lacking scruples or talent. Somewhat piqued, Bob fell to bragging about his sketching excursions to fighter airfields at Biggin Hill and Kenley during the summer of 1939, and posting plans to Hamburg. Suddenly MI5 took him very seriously indeed. ‘We now have to decide whether he should be locked up,’ wrote Guy Liddell with satisfaction. ‘Snow’s son is a frightful little worm.’

  Kein glas bier.

  Two weeks later, the idiot scion was served with an 18B Order as he clocked off the night watch at Chertsey. ‘This does not surprise me,’ he told Inspector Curry, the same detective who had lifted his father in April. ‘I was expecting it.’

  Bob Owens was conveyed to Brixton. After supervising the arrest in person Robertson drove over to Addlestone, where Lily Bade still occupied Homefields and herself remained liable to arrest under Plan Hegira. ‘She was very anxious to know for how long Snow Junior would be detained. I said I was unable to tell her. She did not seem to worry, and offered no comment apart from the fact that she asked what he had
been up to.’

  Still Lily resisted all contact with fallen Agent Snow. Would Lavinia Cantello show greater devotion when it came to Snow Junior?

  This rapid reversal of fortune continued in Stafford. After Dirk Boon betrayed their escape plan in August, Owens received another visit from Robertson and Masterman, followed by a stiff boarding from the governor. The various punishments imposed included seven long months in solitary confinement, and a complete loss of privileges which extended even to basic tonsorial care. ‘I was forbidden a haircut for ten months until my hair was down to my shoulders,’ Owens complained later, following a welcome transfer to Dartmoor. ‘I was made the laughing stock of all the prisoners.’

  Another good kick in the pants.

  Ritter, too, found his career locked in a vertiginous downward spiral. Attempts by his new special unit to insert agents into Cairo met with no more success than Operation Lena, after which Ritter fell out with his chief North African adviser, and broke an arm while ditching a Junkers-88 in the Mediterranean. After a lengthy stay in hospital Ritter landed a cushy posting to Rio de Janeiro, only to see the offer withdrawn following newspaper coverage of the sensational trial of American spy William Sebold in September 1941. ‘Nikolaus Adolf Fritz Ritter is named as a co-conspirator in the indictment,’ trumpeted the New York Times. ‘A Gestapo agent, he is identified by Sebold as the man who persuaded him to become a German spy during a visit in 1939.’

  Three months later the United States entered the war, effectively ending Doctor Rantzau’s inglorious Abwehr career. Determined to retain his rank, and a smart Luftwaffe uniform, Ritter retrained as an anti-aircraft officer, serving in Sicily and Italy with the elite Hermann Göring Division, then returning to Germany to command flak defences in Hamburg and Hanover. Sadly, his astonishing facility for skewed analysis meant that the civilian population of these cities paid a price even higher than that met by the V-men sacrificed in Operation Lena. ‘Ritter was the commanding officer for the anti-aircraft defences at Hanover on the occasion of the last saturation raid,’ a bemused MI5 interrogator noted two years later. ‘That night he studied very carefully the reports received from radar and ground observers, and formed the view that the various small-scale diversionary attacks in progress in other parts of Germany represented our main effort for the night. He therefore gave orders for the defence of Hanover to stand down. Precisely six minutes later some 1,500 bombers arrived over the town with results that are still visible.’