Fighting to Lose

by John Bryden

  21. The W-Board, unsigned photocopied summary, (not dated, but from a reference to Masterman’s Double-Cross System it must have been done after 1972, probably by someone who had served on the committee), PRO, KV4/70. The following quotations and descriptions of the Wireless Board are from this document unless otherwise noted.

  22. Masterman, Double-Cross, 61.

  23. Ibid., 62.

  24. Curry, Security Service, 250.

  25. B.2a, Memorandum on the Double Agent system, 27 Dec. 1940, PRO, KV2/63. Section B2 was Maxwell Knight’s, and it is either he who wrote this or Major Sinclair, who was in charge of double agents up to about this time. Masterman, Double-Cross System, 8–9, plagarizes from this document. Robertson was still B3 at this time: Curry, Security Service, 287.

  26. W-Board, PRO, KV 4/70. See also, Howard, BISWW, V, 7–8. However, Masterman, Double-Cross, 61 states, “At a higher level the W. Board was established in September 1940, and it appears from the minutes of the first meeting (30 Sep. 1940) that …” It is clear, looking at the other sources, that this is wrong and very misleading.

  27. NARA, T77, 1540. The documents on this reel and others in the series were photographed by the U.S. Navy in 1945, when the originals were on loan from the British Army, which had captured them at Bremen. This means the scissoring was done by someone on the British side.

  28. Liddell Diary, 13 Jan. 1941; and Stephens, Camp 020, 138–39.

  29. Hinsley and Simkins, BISWW, IV, 96–97.

  30. Stephens, Camp 020, 155–6.

  1. J.C. Masterman, Conference notes, 10 Apr. 1941, PRO, KV2/86, Doc. 39a. He identifies those present by their initials — Liddell, Robertson, White, Masterman, and Marriott. This document is marked as being copied sometime in Jul. 1944, from an original in the file PF 66315 CELERY, Vol. 3, serial 124a. This file could not be found at PRO. However, Masterman’s Memo to File is reproduced verbatim in Liddell’s diary as though Liddell himself wrote it: Liddell Diary, 10 Apr. 1941.

  2. Michael Howard, BISWW, V, 14, 47.

  3. Chapter 19. See also, Andrew, Authorized History, 255.

  4. PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1803a. This anonymous postwar after-action report was written in 1946; it is reproduced largely verbatim in Masterman’s Double-Cross System.

  5. MI6 officer (name illegible) to Robertson, 21 Mar. 1941, PRO, KV2/449. MI5’s double agents when overseas normally reported to the MI6 officer at the British embassy. See also, Liddell Diary, 22 Mar. 1941.

  6. JHM, Extract of memo, ca. Apr. 1941, PRO, KV2/849, Doc. 218b. The “only one” remaining was DRAGONFLY, an English businessman recruited through Ast Hamburg but reporting to the Abwehr in Paris; he made wireless contact on 1 Mar. 1941. See also: PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1330c.

  7. For this list of blown agents, see Partial memo, ca. 1 Apr. 1941, PRO, KV2/449, Doc. 1075a. For an analysis of Midas and its consequences to the named double agents, plus BALLOON and GELATINE, see J.M. Gwyer, memo. 28 Oct. 1941, PRO, KV2/849. For the timing of Midas, see R.G. Fletcher, Dusan Popov, Brief Synopsis of the Case, 15 Jan. 1944, NARA, RG65, WW II FBI HQ Files, Box 11(17), Dusan Popov.

  8. Marriott and Gwyer, Dr. RANTZAU’s meeting with SNOW and CELERY in Lisbon, 17 Nov. 1941, PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1360b. This is an eleven-page analy-sis. Note the reference to “Major Ritter’s Final Report (Attached).” This is an imagined scenario; it was not based on an actual German report or document.

  9. B3 (Robertson), Note to File, 9 Mar. 1940 and 4 Apr. 1940, PRO, KV2/447; Liddell Diary, 7 Apr. 1940; and W-Board meeting re Dicketts, 5 Apr. 1941: PRO, KV2/70.

  10. PRO, KV2/674 (as of 2008). See also, “CELERY was a nominee of this office with whom, however, SNOW had sometime before struck up an acquaintance”: KV2/451, 1803a. This, and subsequent wording, makes it clear he was originally recruited for his air intelligence experience.

  11. Chronological report dictated by CELERY, 28 Mar. 1941; KV2/86. This is an “extract” taken 26 Jul. 1944, from an original document in CELERY, Vol. III PF 66315, which was not found in the MI5 files released as of 2008. It was extracted for PF 62876 “VON RANTZAU” by “RB,” for an analysis section of B1A/B1B informally operated by Captain Gwyer: Curry, Security Service, 297–99.KV2/86 is the PRO file for Nikolaus Ritter. “Baron X” was Canaris’s closest confidant, according to Lahousen: PRO, KV2/173. Ruser could have known this, but not Dicketts.

  12. PRO, KV2/86, Doc. 37a. This extract has on it the handwritten notation “by Mr. White,” as if to indicate that it was he who did the interrogation. This should be taken cautiously since it might have been added later. Otherwise, none of the extracts in this file indicate who did these interrogations.

  13. Ibid. Note that at about this time MI6 stopped using the MI5 Registry as its exclusive library/archives and opened its own “registry.” Curry, Security Service, 56–57, 202. The extracts were taken 26 Jul. 1944. PRO, KV2/86. This opens the possibility that the original documents were in an MI6 file, and are still withheld.

  14. R.T. Reed, Ruser interrogation, 20 Dec. 1943, PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1660; and Report on Dr. Friedrich Karl Praetorius, 20 Aug. 1945, 39, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 169, 65-56466-5. CELERY reference to SNOW as the “little man” in these documents shows that he learned that the Germans called him, “DER KLEINER.” The Hamburg-Berlin routine weather reports from A-3504 end on 13 Apr., NARA, T-77, 1540. SNOW’s “last message” is not in this collection. There are many gaps in the numerical sequence of messages on Reel 1540, probably because Ritter did not normally copy Berlin on his spymaster-to-spy exchanges.

  15. Liddell Diary, 23, 25, 27, 29 May, 1941, PRO. Ritter remembered the incident slightly differently in his postwar account: “In the newspaper that Hansen (Schmidt) received was a gift of twenty thousand marks in English pound notes, a part of which admittedly was counterfeit — enough to keep Hansen looked after for the rest of the war”: Ritter, Deckname, 241. See also, Masterman, Double-Cross System, 93; Stephens, Camp 020, 164–66; and TATE case summary for B1A, 15 Jun. 1942, PRO, KV2/61, Doc. 306a.

  16. Schacht made clear his opposition to Hitler by the personal representations he made to the British before the war. Fest, Plotting Hitler’s Death, 74. These Menzies would have been aware of. The 16 May entry in Liddell’s diary pertaining to this is suspect. He writes that he urged CELERY be sent back to Lisbon in hopes of persuading Sessler to defect. This is unreasonable. Menzies and the service directors on the Wireless Board would not have seen it worthwhile to risk a top agent like Dicketts for a 23-year-old German army lieutenant whose job with the Abwehr was body guard and errand-runner. The diary entry is apparently corroborated: THE W-BOARD, undated and unattributed, 10. PRO, KV4/70. Internal evidence on p. 8 indicates it was written after the war, probably in the late 1970s. The author may have consulted Liddell’s diary.

  17. R.T. Reed, B1A, Report, 12 Dec. 1943, PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1660a. Letter-counting confirms that blanked-out and overwritten spaces match “Dicketts.” “Mayer” is a misspelling in the document. It was Captain Kurt Meyer-Döhne. The attachés were personally approved by Canaris, so he would have released this information under his instructions. JUNIOR has been changed to Ruser to improve readability.

  18. Peis, Mirror of Deception, 67. For confirmation that Sesslor did accompany Dicketts (CELERY) to Germany, see CSDIC interrogation of Georg Sesslor, ca. 1945, PRO, KV2/528. Since there is proof (Note 14) that Ruser accompanied Dicketts to Germany in February–March, Sessler must be recalling going with him on a subsequent trip.

  19. Ibid., 70. Also, PRO, KV2/528. Major Ritter, in Libya at the time, flew back to Berlin on Jun. 5. Saul Kelly, The Hunt for Zerzura (London: John Murray, 2003), 173 citing HW19/8 No. 6299-6301. MI5 may not have seen this intercept since Cowgill’s clampdown on ISOS was then in force.

  20. For Churchill (Eden) to Stalin on 13 Jun.: David E. Murphy, What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa (New Haven, CT: and Lonon: Yale University Press, 2005), 148–49. For Churchill to Roosevelt: Foreign Office to Washington, No. 3281, 14 Jun. 1941, PREM3/230/1, PRO. Cited
by James Barros and Richard Gregor, Double Deception: Stalin, Hitler and the Invasion of Russia (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995), 196.

  21. Gregor, Double Deception. See also, F. H. Hinsley, BISWW, I, 459–79, especially 472, 476, 479. Hinsley suggests that a decrypt from the Japanese ambassador reporting on Hitler’s intentions may have been the clincher. The Czech intelligence service-in-exile also claimed to have been tipped off by its spy in the Abwehr, A-54. Frantisek Moravec, Master of Spies (London: Bodley Head, 1975), 204–06.

  22. There is no mention of the second trip to Germany in Liddell Diary, while subsequent documents in the MI5 folder on CELERY make it evident MI5 was kept in the dark. The 1943 Camp 020 interrogation of Ruser — (PRO, KV2/451, Doc. 1660a [cited above]) — appears to be MI5’s first indication that Dicketts may have made a second trip to Germany, although Ruser could not say that he actually did go. The matter was still in doubt after the war, for Dr. Praetorius, briefly Abt I chief at Ast Hamburg, was asked if he could recall “whether Dicketts came to a second meeting (in Germany) or whether he failed to come.…” Praetorius said he could not remember: CSDIC report on Dr. Friedrich Karl Praetorius, 20 Aug. 1945, 39, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 169, 65-56466-5.

  23. Kelly, Zerzura, 174, citing PRO, HW19/8, no. 6861. Note that a document in Ritter’s MI5 file has him telling the FBI that 17 Jul. was the date of the crash and that he was returning from Africa, not going. The HW19/8 document is proof that it was 17 Jun. and that he was in fact going to Africa: Re. Major Fritz Adolph Ritter, 2 Sep. 1945, PRO, KV2/87. It would be interesting to see whether the original in FBI files has the same mistakes.

  24. MI5 Symposium, ca. 1943, PRO, KV4/170. See also, Jeffrey, MI6, 359; and Curry, Security Service, 179.

  25. Curry, Security Service, 56, 333. Again, this “registry” is not to be confused with the eight-person registry MI6 started the war with.

  26. Benton, “The ISOS Years,” passim.

  1. Popov, a.k.a. IVAN, collection of intercepts, PRO, KV2/860, Doc. 1040b. The original incoming messages are Nos. 1361, 1422, Group 2, PRO, HW19/2. Group 2 to the end of 1940 covered the Abwehr circuits Oslo, Lisbon, Madrid, and Bordeaux. Distribution of the decrypts was Montagu, Boyle, Denman, Liddell, Robertson, Forster, Vivian, Cowgill, and Gill. That is, for: DNI, DI(Air), MI8, MI5, MI5, MI6, MI6, MI6, and RSS.

  2. Summary of the case (SKOOT [Popov’s initial British code name]), 4 Jan. 1941, PRO, KV2/845.

  3. “Independent reliable evidence shows that, on 18.12.40, the German authorities in Berlin referred to SKOOT as a “Vertrauenmann” then about to leave Lisbon for England. The same source also confirms that SKOOT had wired JEBSEN and had informed the German legation at Lisbon that he was in touch with him and OSSCHLAGER.” Hart, Case Summary, B2, 4 Jan. 1941, PRO, KV2/845, Docs. 13b, 14a. “It should be added that SCOOT left an exceedingly favourable impression on us. His manner was absolutely frank, and we all considered without question he was telling the truth. Marriott to B2A, 21 Dec. 1940, PRO, KV2/845, extract from Doc. 2a. See also next note.

  4. Memo (partial document), ca. Jan. 1941, PRO, KV2/845, Doc. (no. unreadable). See also, PRO, KV2/846, Doc. 69a. Good recipes for invisible inks were extremely hard to come by and were closely guarded. The Germans did not risk good inks on agents who were likely to be captured. Pyramidon in alcohol, code-named PONAL, was the second-to-last most insecure invisible ink on Abw I/G shelves it was used seldom and only for totally expendable agents: Ayer to Director, interrogation of Fritz Künkele, 12 Sep. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 184, 65-56228.

  5. Dusko Popov, Spy/Counterspy (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1974), 22–23, 32. The reference to Munzinger is strong evidence the Jebsen anecdote is true, for his name had not yet made much of an appearance in the literature of the German Resistance. He was one of those murdered in early 1945 by the SS for suspected complicity in the 20 Jul. plot. The postwar interrogation of William Kuebart also links Popov to Munzinger through his supposed brother, Ivo (DREADNOUGHT). Schacht’s involvement in the attempted coups of 1938 and 1939 was well documented when Popov wrote, but not his connection to Canaris.

  6. Popov, Spy/Counterspy, 76.

  7. Colvin, Chief of Intelligence, 59–69; and Peter Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933–45 (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1977), 60–62. He does a valuable analysis of this incident.

  8. The pictures of both men (available on the Internet) in the same profile invite comparison after a little pencil-work. Von Kleist-Schmenzin completed his talks on 19 Aug., so he could have returned soon after rather than the next “Tuesday,” as suggested by Vansittart: Hoffmann, Resistance, 62 n. 54. It is only on the strength of Vansittart’s comment that it has been assumed that he reported to Canaris on 24 Aug.

  9. PRO, KV2/63. From internal evidence, this file appears to have been created in the mid-1970s.

  10. Popov, Spy/Counterspy, 79–80. For proof that he was shown air raid damage, see Minute sheet, Doc. 65a, 14.3.41, PRO, KV2/846. The “board of experts” is presumably the XX Committee.

  11. PRO, KV2/845, Doc. 21c and surrounding docs. The Speke airdrome question in the questionnaire connects it to CHARLIE and therefore to I Luft Ast Hamburg.

  12. Memorandum to S.I.S. re TRICYCLE, 15 Mar. 1941, PRO, KV2/846, 69a.

  13. NARA, T-77, 1540. A-3570 cannot be CELERY/Dicketts because he was in Portugal/Germany at the time. As all other Ast Hamburg 1/Luft spies then in Britain are accounted for, this must be Popov or one that was never discovered. See also below.

  14. The proximity of Churchill’s bunker to the “New Houses of Parliament” makes it certain the message was not XX Committee deception. German bomb-aiming was not sufficiently accurate that the British could dare place a decoy target that close to one that was real, and of vital importance.

  15. During his interrogation at CSDIC after the war, William Kuebart remembered Jebsen being based in Berlin and Popov being attached to Eins Luft: Extracts from Camp 020 Report on Oberstleutnant Wilhelm Kuebart, CSDIC, PRO, KV2/860. Beside the pertinent paragraph someone has written “true.”

  16. NARA, T-77, 1540. Because of the dates on it, this message appears to have been sent by invisible-ink letter or similar means.

  17. For Popov’s lack of fluency in English, see Chapter 13.

  18. Major Walter Brede said Fidrmuc was especially highly regarded for his regular reports on British aircraft production, beginning Mar. 1941. He was said to receive the information by secret letter from an agent in England: Extract of CSDIC(UK) interrogation of Brede, 9 Aug. 1945. PRO, KV2/197.

  19. Unsigned, undated memo, PRO, KV2/846, Doc. 69a; and Wilson, Note to File, 18 Jul. 1942, PRO, KV2/849. For the claim that Popov was from Dubrovnik, see recollection of von Karsthof’s secretary in Peis, Mirror, 116. Yugoslavia was a creation of the victors of the First World War and when Hitler invaded, Croatians took side with the Germans on the promise of independence.

  20. Popov’s language abilities suggest that he had been earmarked for North Africa from the outset. With the exception of Spanish Morocco and Egypt, the territories in North Africa were held as colonies of either France or Italy. Ritter was running several straight spies in Egypt at this time: NARA, T-77, 1549.

  21. Dusan Popov: Brief Synopsis of the Case, 15 Jan. 1944, NARA, RG65, WWII, FBI HQ Files, Box 11 (17). This was based on information supplied by MI5.

  22. The German Foreign Minister, von Ribbentrop, was especially upset: Friedrich Busch interrogation, 5 Sep. 1945, NARA, RG65, IWG, Box 130.

  23. For Ritter being dismissed and IL Hamburg disbanded, see Ast Hamburg, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 133, 65-37193-350-2. For Canaris telling Hitler Sebold was planted, see Farago, Game of Foxes, 461–62. He presumably got this from his interview with Ritter.

  24. But apparently without telling MI5 that Sebold had volunteered himself as a double agent: Hinsley & Simkins, BISWW, IV, 131n.

  25. P.E. Foxworth, “MEMORANDUM FOR THE DIRECTOR,” 7 Jun. 1941, NARA, RG65, FBI HQ File, 65-36994-1.

 
26. Liddell Diary, 6 Aug., 10 Oct. 1941. For Robertson’s reaction: Ibid., 14 Aug. 1941. The reference here is to RAINBOW’s microdot rather than to those carried to the United States by Popov, which Robertson learned about no earlier than 19Aug. See also, Montagu, Top Secret U, 72–73.

  27. Nicolai, German Secret Service, 214. The German version of this memoir says a quarter-millimetre square: Nicolai, Geheime Mächte, 147. The book was also published in French as Forces Secretes (1932).

  28. Dukasic (Sebold, et cetera), NARA, RG65, WWII, FBI HQ Files, Box 11, "Espionage in World War II."

  29. CX/####/Y to Robertson, 12 Aug. 1941, with undated attachment attributed to Popov. PRO, KV2/849. The Popov note is a translation because the wording used is beyond Popov’s English fluency. Notice the inked insertion: “Tricycle left for New York by yesterday’s Clipper” on the covering letter. This information must be discounted because evidently this note and the unreadable signature were added to the document later by someone not the writer. Other inked additions in the same hand occur on nearby documents and here and there elsewhere in the SNOW files. See also, PRO, Minute Sheet for Doc. 196b.

  1. Robert Stinnett, Day of Deceit (New York: Free Press, 2000), 33, citing NYT, 31 Jan. 1941. Indeed, Americans generally did not see much wrong with Germany dominating Europe and Japan replacing the British Empire in the Far East, so long as the United States had no rivals in the Western Hemisphere.

  2. For a good collection of evidence that Churchill wanted to provoke Japan into war in order to get the United States into the fight with Germany, see Richard Lamb, Churchill as War Leader (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1991), 147–162.

  3. However, during the 1930s there were tensions between Japan and the United States, caused by Japan’s aggression in China and also by American racism against Asiatics. See: Henry L. Stimson, The Far Eastern Crisis (New York: Harper & Bros., 1936); and James A.B. Scherer, Japan Defies the World (New York: Bobbs-Merril, 1938).