Full text · 1969
The Rote Drei: CIA's study of the 'Lucy' radio traffic (c. 1969)
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The Rote Drei: Getting
Behind the 'Lucy' Myth
CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM
RELEASE IN FULL
22 SEPT 93
SECRET
A fresh look at an oft-told story.
Mark A. Tittenhofer
The reasons for re-examining the 25 years old matter of the Rote Drei
and Rudolph Roessler—the "Lucy" of the Soviet espionage operation in
Switzerland during World War 11—are not simple.* To be sure, Studies
reviewers have pointed out that much of the public literature on the
subject is unreliable. Concern for historical rectitude alone, however,
would not justify the expenditure of our time and effort. The profession
of intelligence may owe some duty to Clio, but it cannot be said to be
the general one of cleansing all confusions and deliberate disinformation
from the public record about intelligence matters.
Apart from the possible substantive benefits of clearing up the story of
the Red Three and its members, however, there are certain concrete
circumstances surrounding it that ought to attract our notice. The first is
that it continues to be treated as a matter of some contemporary
concern in certain interesting quarters. The second is that the Soviets
evidently think it is important. With regard to the first point, it is perhaps
sufficient to recall that the 20th of July movement against Hitler—from
which much of the Rote Drei's best information emanated—remains the
object of deeply divided public feelings in both Germanies to this day.
Moreover, for different reasons the Rote Drei is, as we shall see,
regarded with considerable sensitivity elsewhere on the Continent,
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particularly in Switzerland.
Yet it is Moscow's attitude that is most striking. Readers of Studies in
Intelligence will recall Louis Thomas' recent essay on the career of the
Hungarian collector of cartographic intelligence, Alexander Rado,1 in
which we were reminded that Rado was resident director of the Soviet
apparatus in Switzerland while the Rote Drei was operating. Rado has
publicly indicated the intention to publish a personal memoir that will lay
to rest the "stab in the back" theory of the Nazi debacle. Thomas
correctly infers that this curious announcement must have had some
direct relationship to thinking in Moscow. We are therefore surely right to
believe that we are to hear more about the Rote Drei, and that we would
be wise to equip ourselves in advance with the appropriate intellectual
bagage. Whatever Rado places on the record is likely to be elaborately
confusing.
Te Radio Messages Examined
Any useful, accurate account of the Rote Drei must start with the radio
traffic exchanged between the Center in Moscow and the network in
Switzerland. The first question is quantitative: how many messages did
the traffic contain?2 Wilhelm F. Flicke, a German cryptanalyst who
worked on the traffic during the war, estimated the total at some 5,500,
about five a day for three years. This estimate is not unreasonable.
When Edmond and Olga Hamel, two of the Rote Drei operators, were
arrested by the Swiss police on 9 October 1943, a total of 129 messages
was found in their flat. A comparison of these with those in other
holdings has shown that 40 appear elsewhere and 89 are unique. The
40 matching messages were all transmitted between 3 September and 5
October 1943. If it is assumed that the remaining 89 were also sent to
Moscow during the same period, as seems probable, then it can also be
surmised that 129 is the average number of transmissions per month.
There have been a number of claims that the Red Three network was
functioning before the war, and that Lucy, as Rudolf Roessler was called,
gave Moscow advance warning of Hitler's attack. The traffic proves,
however, that Sissy (Rachel Duebendorfer) did not establish a
clandestine association with Taylor (Christian Schneider) and Lucy until
the late summer of 1942. Our best estimate of the life-span of the Rote
Page 3 (page 3 of the original)
Drei operation—that is, the period during which the Swiss net exchanged
W/T communications with Moscow—is 33 months, from August 1941 to
May 1944. If 129 was a typical month's total, the sum of all messages
sent was about 4,250.3 For the reasons given in the footnote below,
5,000 seems an acceptable estimate of the total volume.
From various sources we have pulled together 437 messages that
appear authentic.4 This collection, unfortunately, contains only 8 per
cent of the presumed total. For this reason we are obliged to be
circumspect when drawing from the traffic any quantitative conclusions.
What is more important, the riddles resolved by the 8 per cent are cause
to believe that the remaining mysteries, or most of them, could be solved
with the aid of the missing 92 per cent.
This account of the Rote Drei is drawn chiefly from the radio messages.
Supplementary research in classified files has yielded additional
information. Although there are still gaps in our knowledge, we can at
least present the first account of the Red Three that is not based chiefly
on speculation, fantasy, and falsification.
Our collection of messages contains references to 55 sources. Most of
them, of course, are listed only by a cover name. Of these 55 we can
identify 15 with certainty and make educated guesses about 16 more.
The remaining 24 appear rarely and inconspicuously. We also know the
identities of some persons associated with the Rote Drei who do not
appear in the traffic.
Diging out the facts and telling the story would have been decidedly
easier if so much misinformation about the subject had not been
published in the past. Even the name "The Red Three," a German
appellation based on the number of transmitters or operators serving
the network, is misleading, because at times there were four and even
five.
Vera and the Beginnings of the Red Tree
The story of the Rote Drei begins with Maria Josefovna Poliakova, a
highly intelligent Russian Jewess and a dedicated Communist, born
Page 4 (page 4 of the original)
about 1910. When she was 21, she was a very active member of the
central committee of the Komsomol. She was recruited at that time by
the IVth Department of the Soviet General Staff. Her aliases were
Mildred, Gisela, and Vera. She was fluent in German, French, and
English. Her brother, father, and husband were all executed in
Communist purges; yet her devotion to the cause was unshaken.
In 1936-1937 she headed the Soviet military intelligence network in
Switzerland. She made a quick trip back in 1941, when she ordered
certain changes in the command structure of the Rote Drei. But mostly
she spend the war years in Moscow, where she specialized on the Rote
Drei operation. (She was not the "Director," however. All of the messages
from Moscow to Switzerland were signed "Director," an indicator showing
that they came from the Center. It is probable that Poliakova was the
originator of many of these; her informal, fervent, Marxian style is
distinctive. But this tone is often replaced by that of superiors who are
much more authoritative and brusque.) At the end of 1944, when the
Swiss operation had ended, Poliakova, then a major, became chief of the
GRU's Spanish section. Foote sugests that she was purged less than
two years later. "The Director and Vera were removed from their posts
and replaced in about May 1946. I never saw them again, nor were they
ever mentioned. The Centre has only one penalty for failure."5
Sonia
Foote also recounts that in Switzerland he was first directed by a lady
whom he calls "Sonia." Her true name was Ursula Maria Hamburger, née
Kuczynski. She was born on 15 May 1907 in Berlin, one of four sisters.6
She also had a brother, Professor Juergin Kuczynski, who introduced
Klaus Fuchs to Soviet intelligence officers. Ursula and Rudolf Hamburger
were Red Army espionage agents in Shanghai in 1930-1935. She went to
Switzerland in the latter 1930's, travelling alone because her husband
had been ordered to stay in China. In 1939 her position was jeopardized
by the arrest of Franz Obermanns, a German Communist with false
Finnish documents and a transmitter. On 23 February 1940 she married
Leon Charles Beurton, an Englishman whom Foote called "Bill Philips."
Beurton, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, was recruited for Soviet
espionage by Brigette Lewis, who turned him over to her sister Ursula on
Page 5 (page 5 of the original)
spionag
y Brig
13 February 1939. Ursula Hamburger trained both Beurton and Foote in
W/T. The marriage to Beurton gave Ursula British citizenship, and she
left Switzerland for England in December 1940. Her husband remained
in Switzerland, where he trained Edmond Hamel in operating a W/T set.
In July 1942, provided with a British passport in the name of Miller and
the blessings of the Red Army Staff, Beurton went via Portugal to
England and his Ursula. In 1947 the Beurtons left England hurriedly for
East Berlin.
Sissy and Paul
A third person of importance in the swaddling days of the Red Three
was also a woman, Rachel Duebendorfer. Born on 18 July 1901 in Danzig,
she became an active Soviet agent in 1920. Soon thereafter she married
one Curt Caspari, and on 8 July 1922 she gave birth to a daughter,
Tamara, who eventually married a Frenchman and who helped her
mother with the housework, as did her husband, by serving as a Rote
Drei courier. In the late 1930's Rachel contracted a marriage of
convenience with a Swiss citizen named Duebendorfer.7 She took up
residence in Bern, where she lived as the common-law wife of a German
Communist named Paul Boettcher, alias Paul, alias Hans Saalbach.
Boettcher was born on 2 May 1891 in Leipzig. Before fleeing Germany he
had been a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party,
Minister of Finance in Leipzig, and editor-in-chief of the Arbeiterzeitung in
Leipzig. Escaping to Switzerland from Germany after the Nazis came to
power, he was twice expelled from Swiss territory, in 1941 and 1944, but
managed to survive. Sissy not only took him into her flat but also gave
him the papers of her Swiss husband, whose identity Boettcher
assumed. Boettcher, Duebendorfer, Tamara Vigier (née Caspari),
Roessler, and Christian Schneider were all arrested in May 1944.8 Neither
Sissy nor Paul was present in the courtroom on 22-23 October, 1945,
when a Swiss military court sentenced each to two years. Both had
escaped to France in July of that year. Boettcher went back to Saxony
and in 1947 became editor of the Leipziger Volkszeitung. For a time he was
a professor of Russian in Halle. By 1958 he was again an editor in
Leipzig. Sissy's fate is not known to us.
In our collection of W/T messages Sissy appears 28 times between 8
Page 6 (page 6 of the original)
/
g
y app
October 1942 and 28 November 1943. These are the highlights:
8 October 1942, Director to Dora (Alexander Rado) for Sissy:
"You must learn a code and receive additional instruction. ... Your
new people Marius and Taylor are not bad workers, but one must
always control them and keep them busy."
Two characteristics of this message are interesting. The first is that Sissy
is the only one of Rado's sources to whom the Center directed messages
by name and through Rado. Later, as is noted below, Moscow even
eliminated Rado, the resident director, from the communications
channel for certain messages, which were sent to Sissy in her own code.
The second important element in this message is its reference to Taylor
(Christian Schneider) as a new source. As we shall see, Taylor was first
recruited by Sissy in the summer of 1942. Because Lucy reported only
through Taylor, this fact means that Moscow received no messages from
Lucy and his sub-sources until that time. (Foote claimed that Lucy's
material began going to the Center in early 1941 and that he warned the
Russians of Hitler's impending attack some two weeks in advance.
Others, including Accoce and Quet,9 have copied the claim. But the
traffic proves it false.)
20 November 1942. The Director instructed Dora to have Sissy determine
and report the identities of the sources in the Lucy-Taylor group.
12 January 1943. Before this date Sissy had sent her first message in her
own code, because the Center answered, "We greet your first telegram.
Try to work attentively and to be careful when working. Destroy
immediately all notes and working papers."
The ordinary traffic continued to be channeled through Rado. But on 23
April 1943 Moscow sent its second message in Sissy's code, this one
addressed to her and to Paul.10 It read as follows:
"1. Dear friends, since the summer of 1942 you have worked with
the Taylor-Lucy group, which has provided us with a great deal of
varied material, some of it valuable. But despite the long
cooperation this group remains wholly unclarified for us. ...
Page 7 (page 7 of the original)
"2. Determine and inform us by radio: exact reports on Taylor, Lucy,
Werther, Anna, Olga. Especially important is a personality sketch
of Lucy. Who is he, what is his name, what were his circumstances
earlier and what are they now, for what motives does he work for
others and for us? ...
"3. Answer this telegram in your own code. You do not need to
inform Albert of our telegram or of your answer. He has received
directions, as well as telegrams coming directly from Sissy, without
sending queries back [i.e., to Moscow]. ...
"4. To Sissy only. We send you the title of a new book for your
code; buy it; we shall give you instructions about how to work
according to the book. Albert is not to know about the new book.
It is called `Tempete sur la Maison'. ...
"5. How are you? What is Mara doing? Greetings to her and both of
you from Gisela. "
Although Sissy and Paul had their own code, it appears that they did not
have their own radio operator at this time and had to go through Rado;
hence Moscow's assurances that Rado was not being curious or testy
but rather was accepting this traffic, in a code that he could not read,
without demur. Gisela was one of three code names for Maria Josefovna
Poliakova, the other two being Vera and Mildred. Mara was Sissy's
daughter, Tamara Vigier.11
18 May 1943, Dora to Director:
"Sissy has just reported that Maurice has been arrested by
German authorities. She fears that the Gestapo will thus come
across her trail. Maurice knows Sissy's true name. I have initiated
discrete inquiries and shall report further."
24 May 1943, Director to Dora:
"Sissy is to let us know immediately: how did she learn of
Maurice's arrest and to what extent can his arrest be dangerous
for her?
Page 8 (page 8 of the original)
4 July 1943, Director to Dora:
"We have been able to determine, just in the past few days, that
the courier from France, who was supposed to pick up the money
from Jim, was arrested; and in his place a Gestapo agent came to
Jim and, it appears, followed him to his apartment and in this way
was able to learn his name. At the same time but independently in
this event, Maurice was arrested in France. ... For the time being,
you must break off your connection with Sissy completely. ... She
can be persuaded that it is in Taylor's interest to have a
connection with someone else for a while. ... Try to convince Sissy.
Tell that it will be for only three months. ... Sissy could say it is
because of Paul, who is under observation. ... She should keep her
apartment absolutely clean and, above all else, not say a word too
much. ... It is best that Paul not sleep in the apartment."
It has been sugested that "Maurice" was Maurice Emile Aenis-Haenslin,
born 20 September 1893 in St. Denis, France. Aenis-Haenslin, a Swiss
citizen and an engineer, was a member of the Central Committee of the
Swiss Communist Party and later joined the French CP. He was involved
in courier and funding activity on behalf of Soviet intelligence during
World War II. There are conflicting reports about the date of Maurice's
arrest by the Germans, one account dating it 1943, another 1942. The
latter is both more detailed and less derivative. It is therefore concluded
that the Maurice who knew Sissy and whom the Germans arrested in
France may have been someone other than Aenis-Haenslin, who was
released from a German concentration camp in Brandenburg in
response to a Swiss demand.
At any rate, the traffic continued to mention Maurice and to reveal
conflicting views about his arrest. On 8 July 1943 Poliakova repeated to
Sissy, in the latter's code, some of the instructions radioed to Dora four
days earlier.12 She directed Sissy to leave Bern and go to Tessin (Ticino)
or a spa for two or three months. Taylor and Lucy were to be turned over
to someone else.
Page 9 (page 9 of the original)
Sissy's Fight with Moscow
Sissy's reaction was unambiguous. On 8 July 1943 Dora sent Director the
following:
"Sissy and her man do not believe that the story has anything to
do with Maurice and the Gestapo. They believe that the man who
asked about them came from the Center and just handled himself
clumsily. They assume that the Center wants in this way to take
away the Taylor group, and in such a manner that 1 too shall know
nothing about it."
Presumably there were further exchanges, with Moscow insisting that
Sissy identify Lucy and his sources and that she turn them over to Dora
or someone else and with Sissy adamantly refusing, but these are not in
our collection. On 16 August 1943, however, the Center sent Sissy, via
Dora, a stern message which substituted the formal second person for
the intimate and which appears to have been drawn up not by Poliakova
but by her superiors:
"Dear Sissy,
"We, the Center, which has its people everywhere and can
determine what is happening in other countries and around you,
have told you clearly and explicitly that we have hard evidence
that the Gestapo knows that you work for us and will try to
uncover your connections into Germany. You, however, deny this
possibility and interpret it as an attempt to take the Taylor group
away from you. You must understand, inasmuch as you assume
this position, that you know nothing of the danger which threatens
you and Taylor's people, especially those in Germany. Your
behavior is frivolous and irresponsible. We demand that you
recognize the seriousness of the situation and place full
confidence in our statements. We repeat: the Gestapo knows that
you have or had a connection with us and will attempt all possible
provocations. ..."
But Sissy stayed tough. On 22 September 1943 Dora radioed to Director,
Page 10 (page 10 of the original)
"In answer to your No. 157 and No. 158. Many thanks for your
advice. I am myself convinced that much more could be gotten out
of the Lucy group. However, I have no direct contact with this
group, as you know, and every time that I try to intensify the
group's activity I encounter in Sissy and her man13 a resistance
that I do not understand. I remind you that when I noted the
possibilities of this group a year ago, I had to hold with Sissy
discussions that continued for months before she was prepared to
take it over and use it. ... Sissy and her man ... say that they cannot
transmit criticisms to Taylor and Lucy because both would
consider it an insult and would stop working. In accordance with
your advice, I wrote Lucy a very friendly letter, but Sissy declared
that Taylor could not pass it on because Lucy, beyond doubt, is
already doing everything that he can. Apparently Sissy and her
man view the letter as an attempt by the Center or by me to set up
a direct contact with the Lucy group. ... Your telegram was handed
over to Paul. ... Again he boasted in such a way that I had a hard
time of it controlling myself. lie refuses to come to Geneva for
meetings. ... Again I beg you to release me from further contact
with Paul. ... [who] tried to establish contact for the transmission of
his material through Pierre and Ignatz. ..."
In other words, Sissy and Paul still had no radio operator of their own
but did not want to turn over their encoded messages to Dora for
transmission by Edward (Edmond Hamel) and Maud (Edmond's wife.
Olga), by Rosa (Margarete Bolli), or by Jim (Alexander Foote). One report
identifies Pierre as Roger Vauthey of Lausanne, supposedly a courier or
cut-out between Rado and "Mario" in France. Foote, however, in a private
interview held in 1953, said that Pierre and Vita were Pierre Nicole and
his wife. Our own view is that Pierre was indeed Pierre Nicole but that
Vita was Tamara Vigier. Pierre Nicole, born in 1911, served as a cut-out
between the Rote Drei and the Swiss Labor Party, which was extremely
left-wing though not officially Communist. The head of this party was
Pierre's father, Leon, born in 1897 in Montcherend, Vaud. Leon Nicole had
recruited several members of the Rote Drei on behalf of the GRU. He and
Pierre were in touch with Dora, Sissy, and Jim. The identity of Ignatz is
not known. He could have been Leon Nicole or any one of several other
Swiss Communists.
By 5 November 1943 the danger signs had multiplied, and Moscow
Page 11 (page 11 of the original)
feared that Rado might be arrested, leaving the Center cut off from
Lucy's information. It therefore repeated the proposal that Sissy and Jim
be placed in direct contact, so that if anything happened to Dora, Jim
could still maintain the flow of intelligence. On 10 November Dora replied
that Jim was in serious danger. The reason, although the cited message
does not say so, was that Edmond and Olga Hamel had been arrested
by the Swiss police on or about 8 October 1943, as had another W/T
operator, Margarete Bolli.14
On 28 November 1943 the Director instructed Dora to tell Sissy and
Pakbo to work independently for a time. The most important information
was to go through Jim. What Moscow obviously did not know was that
Jim had been arrested eight days earlier.
Dora
The fourth key personality in the Red Three was Alexander Rado, the
Hungarian cartographer who took over the direction of the net from
Maria Poliakova and who assumed contact with Ursula Hamburger's
sources after she left Switzerland for England at the end of 1940. Rado's
story is well-known and is retold here only in the barest outline. He was
born 1 September 1899 in Upjest, Hungary. It is almost certain that he
was already working for Soviet military intelligence when he left Paris for
Geneva in 1936. Rado and Ursula Hamburger worked independently of
each other until the fall of France in June 1940 because Rado had been
able until then to send his reports to Moscow via microfilm carried by
couriers to Paris. When the Germans occupied France, Moscow ordered
Hamburger to make contact with Rado and place the transmitter of her
new husband, Leon Charles Beurton, at Rado's disposal. Hamburger had
trained both Foote and Beurton in operating a transmitter, and they in
turn trained the Hamels and Margarete Bolli. In 1941 Moscow resolved a
strugle for power by subordinating Duebendorfer to Rado. (One report
has Poliakova going to Switzerland for the purpose.) But Rado's authority
was not absolute, and the fact that the Center gave Duebendorfer a
code of her own and sometimes by-passed Rado when communicating
with Sissy shows that the Soviets did not intend to let Rado consolidatc
his position completely.
Page 12 (page 12 of the original)
Dora, a simple anagram for Rado, is the sender or recipient of almost all
the Rote Drei messages. The only exceptions are those sent or received
directly by Sissy and those sent by Albert or by the Center but
mentioning Albert in the text. There is no doubt that Albert, like Dora, is
Rado; but efforts to find a pattern or significance in Rado's choice of
cover name for a particular message have not been successful. Albert,
like Dora, sends standard OB messages. The shift in names does not
indicate a parallel shift in transmitters, because both "Dora" and "Albert"
messages were found at their flat when the Hamels were arrested. The
possibility that "Dora" is Rado as chief of the Rote Drei and "Albert" is
Rado as an individual disintegrates when checked against the traffic.
Flicke postulated a secretary who as Albert signed messages for Rado
when be was away; but no one else ever heard of such a secretary, and
Dora and Albert messages were sometimes transmitted on the same
day. So the mystery is unsolved.
All concerned should be aware that Foote—who disliked Rado—
minimized his role in the Rote Drei, attacked his personal integrity on
dubious grounds, and erroneously believed him executed in the USSR,
whereas in fact Rado is flourishing as a cartographer in Hungary and
Foote is dead.
By the beginning of 1941, then, Ursula Beurton, née Hamburger, was in
England; the desk chief for the operation, Poliakova, was in Moscow;
Rado was in Geneva as the chief Red Three member in Switzerland; and
Sissy and her friend Paul were in Bem (not Geneva, where Foote15
erroneously places them).
Dora had two other key sources who, like Sissy, provided him with
intelligence from sub-sources. But Sissy was more important than either
o€ them, for one reason only: Lucy anc? his sub-sources.
The cut-out between Lucy and Sissy was Taylor, whose true name was
Christian Schneider.
Lucy and Taylor
The Center thought highly of Taylor, chiefly because Moscow
misunderstood his role. The first reference to him in our holdings is in a
Page 13 (page 13 of the original)
message sent by the Director to Dora on 8 October 1942. The message
terms him a new source, although in fact he was merely a go-between.
On 20 October 1942 the Director told Dora to identify Taylor's sources,
not knowing that the sources "belonged" to Lucy, not Taylor. Another
Moscow to Dora message, sent the same day, refers to "Taylor's
information" about OKW (German High Command) plans. A week later
Moscow again asked for the identities of Taylor's sources. In December
1942 and January 1943 the Center began to speak of Taylor and Lucy
jointly. By February 1943 the Center's follow-up questions were directed
to Lucy, with scant mention of Taylor. That the Soviets continued to
overestimate Taylor's importance is nevertheless evident in a Directorto-Dora message of 6 October 1943 which sugested that the work of
the Lucy-Taylor group might be continued after the war ended and
which promised Taylor an income for life if he agreed. Perhaps Sissy
misrepresented to Moscow the insignificant role that Taylor actually had,
perhaps she merely kept stubbornly silent about such facts, or perhaps
she misunderstood the true situation because she was in touch only
with Taylor and not with Lucy.
In only one sense was Lucy important. If Rudolf Roessler had not been
living in Switzerland during the second world war, his sources in
Germany might have found it troublesome or even impossible to get
their reports into Soviet hands. In fact, they might not have cared much
one way or the other about Soviet reception of their material, as long as
it went to the Western allies. But as was pointed out in the recent review
of Accoce and Quet,16 the widely accepted story that Lucy was a master
spy is nothing but a myth. As we have seen, the Center tried to eliminate
Sissy and put Dora in direct contact with Taylor and Lucy. If this
maneuver had succeeded, it is probable that Dora would have been
instructed to pressure Lucy to divulge his sources, whose identities
Moscow had already requested again and again. And if Lucy had yielded,
then the truth would have been apparent: Lucy's true function was no
different from that of Taylor. Both were mere cut-outs. What made Lucy
and Taylor important and what made Sissy important was a small band
of Germans, Lucy's sources.
Lucy's Sources in World War II
Page 14 (page 14 of the original)
The record clearly shows that Lucy had four important sources:17
Werther, Teddy, Olga, and Anna. Of the 332 messages from Dora to
Director of which there are copies in our holdings, Werther is the source
of 69 (21 percent), Teddy of 31 (10 percent), Olga of 26 (8 percent), and
Anna of 11 (3 1/2 percent). These four were probably not the only sources
reporting to Lucy; Lucy was not the only source reporting to Sissy; and
Sissy was not the only principal agent funneling reports from a network
to Rado. Yet these four persons produced 421/2 percent of the total
traffic from Switzerland to Moscow.18
We do not know the identities of any of them. We can, however, dismiss
the theory of Foote and some later writers that these cover names
merely referred to the source's access rather than his identity, so that
Werther stood for Wehrmacht, Olga for Oberkommando der Luftwaffe,
Anna for the Auswertige Amt (Foreign Office), etc. There is nothing in the
traffic to support this theory, which seems to be based on speculation
only. All Rote Drei code names for which true identities have been
established were designators of individuals per se, not of types of cover
or access.
Despite the printed assertions to the contrary, Rudolf Roessler did
divulge the identity of his sources, or at least of some of them. Three
and a half years before his death he provided identifying information
about four of his chief sources to a trusted friend. They were, said Lucy,
(1) a German major (whom he did not name) who had been the chief of
the Abwehr before Admiral Wilhelm Canaris assumed command; (2)
Hans Bernd Gisevius; (3) Carl Goerdeler; and (4) "General Boelitz,
deceased."
General Hans Oster
Lucy's confidant garbled the first identification and may have done the
same with the fourth. Canaris took charge of the Abwehr on 1 January
1935. His predecessor was not a major but another admiral, Conrad
Patzig. But Hans Oster was a major in the Abwehr at that time, and he
remained in the service, in which he served as the chief of staff and also
as the heart of the 20th of July group which conspired to overthrow and
assassinate Hitler.
Page 15 (page 15 of the original)
Hans Bernd Gisevius19 said that he first met Oster sometime between
August 1933 and April 1934. "At that time he was ... setting up the war
ministry's counter-intelligence organization ... known ... as the Abwehr."
A number of commentators have noted how well-informed Oster was.
His knowledge of state secrets extended even to those held by the
bitterest enemies of the Abwehr, the Gestapo and the Nazi security
service, called the SD (for Sicherheitsdienst).
"Oster was able, generally speaking through his contacts with Graf [Wolf
Heinrich von] Helldorf, the Berlin Prefect of Police, and with [Arthur]
Nebe, the Reichskriminaldirektor ... to learn quickly what was going on in
the entourage of Hitler and Goering and also in the Gestapo
headquarters in the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse."20
The fact that Oster was prepared to provide Germany's enemies with
information which was of crucial importance, even though they lacked
the power to make full use of it, is also well-established. Even Accoce
and Quet,21 despite their denigration of the 20th of July group, concede
that Oster told Colonel J. G. Sas, the Dutch military attaché in Berlin,
that Germany intended to invade Norway. Abshagen 22 reported that
Oster gave Sas this warning on 3 April 1940 for relay to Norway and also
told Sas of the invasion of Holland before the event. In fact, Oster had
begun to send specific, factual warnings to the West as early as 1938.
The man who had become a major in 1929, a lieutenant colonel in 1935,
a colonel in 1939, and a major general in 1942 was unswerving in his
detestation of German fascism and in his conviction that morality
necessitated action. As time passed and Hitler's power grew, Oster
became convinced that the plots to eradicate the Nazis through the
internal intervention of German armed forces would fail because of the
waverings of the German generals. He warned the West because he
recognized that Hitler could not be brought down inside the Reich until
he had been defeated on the battlefields.
Most contemporary German historians bogle at this point. They write in
detail about the 20th of July conspiracy but gloss over the fact that from
1938 until his discharge from the Abwehr on 31 March 1944,23 when he
was placed under house arrest in Schnaditz, near Leipzig, Oster was
furnishing vital information to Germany's foes and was therefore—at
least in Nazi eyes—engaged in high treason.
Page 16 (page 16 of the original)
How did Oster obtain information? Gisevius24 said, "Oster ... had formed
a circle around himself ... he utilized the potentialities of the Albwehr so
cannily that he was able to establish a whole network of confidential
agents. ... Oster seemed to be organizing an intelligence service of his
own, within the counter-intelligence service. ... One of the most
important of his activities was to install his own confidential agents in
the most diverse positions." And Oster was on intimate conspiratorial
terms with such persons as General Ludwig Beck (who, with Oster, sent
Dr. Josef Mueller to the Vatican for peace negotiations with the British,
negotiations at which the Pope presided); General Georg Thomas, head
of the Economics and Armaments Branch of the OKW; Generals Fritz
Thiele and Erich Fellgiebel, respectively chiefs of communications for the
Army and the OKW; and General Friedrich Olbricht, chief of the
Allgemeine Heeresamt and permanent deputy to the commander-inchief of the Home Army. These men, and others like them, were active
members of the conspiracy; most of them were executed by the Nazis.
And they were in a position to have direct access to precisely the kind of
information reported by Lucy's sources.
How did the information reach Lucy? Here too we can only speculate. A
biographic summary of Oster in the International Biographic Archives25
includes the following: "In addition to his military duties Oster was
simultaneously the technical center of the anti-Hitler resistance in the
Army. He spared neither effort nor risk to set up connections between
military and civilian resistance groups."
Gisevius26 adds, "He once described to me in one sentence his own
conception of his function within the Resistance movement. He was
standing at his desk looking down pensively at the four or five
telephones whose secret circuits connected him with the most diverse
authorities. 'This is what I am,' he said. 'I facilitate communications for
everyone everywhere.' "
Oster had the entire communications network of the Abwehr at his
disposal, and he used it to support the anti-Nazi cause. Abshagen27
comments, "The so-called 'A-net' (consisting of independent lines of
communication at the disposal of the Abwehr only) would ensure that
the `conspirators' only would be able to transmit news and orders." He
adds, "The Abwehr organization was the nerve-centre from which lines
led to the General Staff, to General [Erwin] von Witzleben ... to Schacht,
to Goerdeler, to Beck ... to [Baron Ernst von] Weizsaecker [then Under-
Page 17 (page 17 of the original)
Secretary of State and formerly Minister in Bern] and through him to a
group of diplomats abroad. ..."28
As was noted earlier in this study, the timing of Rote Drei messages
would have permitted sending almost all of the traffic through Abwehr
courier channels from Germany to Switzerland. We know that Gisevius
had access at least twice and sometimes three times a week to a
courier pouch from the Foreign Office in Berlin to the German Embassy
in Bern. At least every other day Gisevius was also served by an OKW
courier as the result of a procedure instituted by Oster. And for urgent
messages Oster or a cohort could safely use an Abwehr telephone. How
the Abwehr's lines were shielded against Gestapo and SD monitoring is
not known, at least by this writer; but that they were so shielded is
demonstrated by the conspirators' uninhibited use of telephones and
the survival of the group until 20 July 1944.
In brief, even if Lucy had not listed "Canaris' predecessor," Gisevius, and
Carl Goerdeler, all key figures in the 20th of July group, as having been
among his sources, the characteristics of the Lucy messages and of
their transmission from Germany to Switzerland sugest that Werther
and the others probably had Abwehr communications channels at their
disposal. There seems to be no plausible alternative theory.
Hans Bernd Gisevius
Gisevius has told much of his own story in To the Bitter End, but like
other Germans he stresses the resistance activity of the underground
and says little about espionage. (There are a few exceptions. Speaking of
the 20th of July conspiracy, Gisevius says, "We had our spies everywhere
—in the war ministry, the police headquarters, the ministry of the interior,
and especially in the foreign office. All the various threads came
together in Oster's office."29 But comments in this vein are rare.) Gisevius
entered the Abwehr in 1939 or 1940; and when Paris fell, Canaris and
Oster sent him to Zurich with the cover of a vice-consul.
But even before the war started, Gisevius had started to make trips to
Switzerland to meet with representatives of the Western Allies. He says,
"We had decided to meet in Switzerland after the 'March Madness.' [The
Page 18 (page 18 of the original)
'[
term is a reference to Hitler's seizure, with Western acquiescence, of the
Sudetenland in March 1939.] We wanted to establish closer connections
with the British and French, and it no longer seemed advisable to do
this in Berlin. [Hjalmar] Schacht had business in Basle in any case. I was
glad of the opportunity to complete my notes on the French crisis.
Goerdeler intended to stay around Berlin until the end of the Czech
crisis; then he planned to follow us as soon as possible."30 In Ouchy
Gisevius met Goerdeler and an unidentified companion who is
mentioned only as a person of considerable influence in London and
Paris political circles.
Ex-Chancellor Josef Wirth
Gerhard Ritter31 tells of another, similar meeting which occurred some
months later, in February 1940. He says that the ex-Chancellor of
Germany, Josef Wirth, had emigrated to Switzerland and had offered to
act as an intermediary between the British and the German antiFascists.
"In a document which Dr. [Reinhold] Schairer took to London he called
Chamberlain's attention to the existence of an important Opposition
group. ... In mid-February two Foreign Office representatives, friends of
[Sir Robert] Vansittart, met Wirth at Ouchy and another man well-known
in London who had, since war broke out, lived in Lucerne and from there
had kept up his connections with friends in Britain."
The other man could have been Michel, Freiherr von Godin, or Lucy
himself, or any of several other Germans who, like Wirth, were living in
Lucerne.
Wirth also appears in Rote Drei traffic. On 14 January 1943 the Center
sent the following message to Dora:
"a) Request reply about exact substance of talks between Long32
and Wirth. Especially interested in contents of Wirth's negotiations
with the Anglo-Saxons and his intentions regarding negotiations
with the USSR. What does he plan to do, as a practical matter, to
establish contact?
"b) What opinion does Long now have of Rot's statements? Does
Page 19 (page 19 of the original)
) What opinion do
ong n
he believe that they are true? Long absolutely must report clearly
about the intent of Rot's group to orient itself toward the Soviet
Union. Is it possible that at the present time there exists an
organized opposition of commanding officers against Hitler?
"c) Rot should report the location from which Germany sent 30
divisions to Italy. What is the picture in respect to reserves in
Germany? How does the OKW react to the Russian offensive?
What are the plans and intentions of the OKW for the next few
months?
"d) Repeat, what documents does Rot intend to publish? Because
of their great importance, request a good check on all these
questions and a prompt answer."
Six days later the Director asked some questions about the intentions of
the OKW, the German High Command. Moscow directed that the
requirements be levied upon Lucy's group and added, " ... if feasible,
Long should try to get relevant information from the Wirth group. "
On 20 April 1943 the following message from Dora was transmitted:
"From Rot.
"Through the Director General coming here ... Mayor Goerdeler
from ... Bendlerstrasse [OKW Headquarters]
"a) The first fixed day for the German attack on the East Front is 14
June. Only operations of modest proportions are planned.
"b) The General Staff expects the event by the end of April at the
earliest; it could snowball. The so-called second echelon of
generals [literally, generals in second-best uniforms] who already
wanted to take action against Hitler in January, has now decided
to liquidate Hitler and also his supporters. An earlier attempt failed
because Hitler was warned by Manstein."
On 5 October 1943 the following went from Dora to Director: "On 27
September Salter talked with the former German Chancellor Wirth in
Lucerne. Wirth rejects the German Liberation Committee [the reference
is to the "National Committee of Free Germany," created by the
Russians] in Moscow because it hinders instead of hastening the
Page 20 (page 20 of the original)
disintegration of the Nazi regime. Those who feel partially responsible for
the establishment of that regime will cooperate more closely with the
Nazi leaders. Bourgeois German Democrats are prepared to collaborate
with German Communists but not under Soviet guidance. Therefore they
reject the Moscow Committee. According to Wirth the German Embassy
in Bern is extremely interested m Sokolm.33 Krauel, a former German
consul in Geneva, serves as the intermediary in this matter."
On the basis of these messages and of the scanty information about the
movements and activities of Gisevius in Switzerland, it is sugested that
Gisevius may have been Rot. Gisevius knew Roessler, which may well
explain why Lucy identified him correctly as a source but failed to list
Oster, whom he had never met, by name. Gisevius also knew Wirth,
whose link to the 20th of July group had been sanctioned by Generals
Oster and Beck. He obviously knew Carl Goerdeler, one of the most
important of the conspirators. Gisevius was sympathetic toward the
Soviet cause, a fact which became more apparent after the war than it
was during it. He was thoroughly trained in clandestinity as a result of
his role in the 20th of July group, his three and a half years as an agent
of British intelligence, and his work for OSS in Switzerland. It seems
probable that people like Goerdeler and Beck, who themselves favored
the Western solution—i.e., a post-war Germany oriented toward the US
and the UK—believed that Gisevius felt as they did and that those
members of the 20th of July who favored the Eastern solution, people
like Count Klaus Philip Schenk von Stauffenberg and Adam von Trott zu
Solz, thought that Gisevius shared their views.
There is one difficulty inherent in the theory that Rot was Gisevius. As
was said earlier, Lucy named Gisevius as one of his sources. Rot,
however, seems to have been a source of Long rather than Lucy.34 But
there may be no real contradiction here; Gisevius could have been in
clandestine contact with both Roessler and Blun, just as he was in
clandestine contact with many other people. Because Lucy and Sissy
succeeded in concealing the identities of the Lucy group from the
Russians, the dual role of Gisevius in the Rote Drei, if he did in fact play
such a role, would not have come to light.
Carl Goerdeler
Page 21 (page 21 of the original)
The third man named by Roessler as one of his sources was Carl
Goerdeler, who had been Lord Mayor of Leipzig from 1930 to 1936, when
he resigned and broke with the Nazis. A conservative visionary, a
Protestant monarchist, a headstrong philosopher, Goerdeler remained a
civilian all his life. All of the information provided to Moscow by Lucy
could have been obtained more readily, more securely, in greater detail,
and at a higher level from leading military figures in the resistance than
from Carl Goerdeler. It seems probable that Roessler named him just
because he knew him personally, as he knew Gisevius. Whatever
information Goerdeler provided, he must have obtained it from fellow
conspirators, not from direct access. It is therefore not possible to draw
any logical inferences about which cover name, if any, referred to
Goerdeler.
Te Unknown Boelitz
The fourth source named by Lucy was "General Boelitz (deceased)."
Unfortunately, no record of a general named Boelitz has been
discovered. There was a Dr. Otto Boelitz, born a pastor's son in Wesel in
1876, who became the Prussian Minister of Art, Science, and Education.
In 19,34 he was a Kulturrat (advisor on cultural matters) and a member of
the German Foreign Institute. He was also the first director of the IberoAmerican Institute in Berlin. Sometime during 1934 Dr. Boelitz fell into
the bad graces of the Nazis and was replaced as head of the IberoAmerican Institute by a general named Faupel. Thereafter, one report
sugests, the institute was used by the Nazis in support of espionage
and subversion in Latin America. Dr. Otto Boelitz died in Germany on 29
December 1951.
No record linking him to Roessler on the one hand, or to Oster,
Goerdeler, or any other member of the 20th of July group on the other,
has been found thus far. There remains, however, the possibility of
another garble. A Colonel Friedrich (Fritz) Boetzel was head of the
Germany military intercept office in Munich before 1933. From 1934 to
1939 he headed the ciphers department (Chiffrierstelle ) of the OKW.
Thereafter he was commanding officer of the intelligence evaluation
office of the Southeast Army Group, Athens, where he remained until
1944. He had ties to Canaris and Oster. And a German first lieutenant of
Page 22 (page 22 of the original)
the signal corps, interrogated in April 1945, described Colonel Boetzel as
an anti-Nazi.
To summarize: we have Werther, Teddy, Olga, and Anna as Lucy's
principal sources and as the principal sources in the Rote Drei network.
We have Oster, Gisevius, Goerdeler, and Boelitz, identified by Roessler as
having been among his sources during World War 11. We have no basis
for matching true and cover names, although Oster seems the likeliest
candidate for Werther.
To continue, the contacts of "Sissy"—Rachel Duebendorfer—fell into
three categories. By far the most important group was Luey's quartet of
Werther, Teddy, Olga, and Anna, all in Germany. Sissy resisted
strenuously every effort of Moscow and Rado to determine the identities
of the members of the Taylor-Lucy team, and it is fair to conjecture that
a major reason for her resistance was that had she lost this remarkable
asset, she'd have had little enough left. For the second group was
composed of peripheral people probably turned over to Sissy by Vera
Poliakova before the War. And the third element was made up of Sissy's
own family; the man with whom she was living, Paul Goettcher; her
daughter and the daughter's husband; and a cousin.
Long and Pakbo
Alexander Rado had two other principal agents. One of them, Georges
Blun, code-named Long, was a French journalist whose subsources
could not match the production of Lucy's group in quality or quantity,
but who was nevertheless a valuable asset for the Soviets. The other
was Otto Puenter, or Pakbo.
The sources who had aliases and who are known to have been members
of Long's group were Agnes, Kurz, Grau, Rot, Fanny, and possibly Feld.
With the exception of the last-named, a courier, the members of the
group have a certain homogeneous quality. They were not military
professionals like Werther, Teddy, and the rest. Three of them, including
Long, were professional journalists. Most of them worked for two or more
intelligence services. Their political views and their motivation often
seem ambiguous and devious, if not opportunistic.
Page 23 (page 23 of the original)
The first of Long's sub-sources, Agnes, was a journalist named Ernst
Lemmer. Some information about him is included here not because his
WW II career as a spy was of any particular moment, but because his
work for Lucy spanned a long period, including the second, post-war
phase of Lucy's career in espionage.
Lemmer represented a Zurich newspaper in Berlin and travelled to
Switzerland repeatedly. He was in contact with one Burckhardt, the
Swiss military attaché in Berlin who also had contacts in the 20th of July
group and who served as a communications channel to Switzerland. He
first appears in our holdings in a message of 22 October 1941, Dora to
Director. Long is listed as the source and Lemmer, who is said to have
obtained the information from the Foreign Ministry, as the sub-source.
The information concerned the siege of Moscow. The message ends
with "In the future I shall call him [Lemmer] Agnes." Our files, however,
contain only two more messages citing Agnes. The dates are 13 August
and 18 September 1943, and the messages are merely reports of the lack
of morale at the German home front. Lemmer was born on 28 April 1898
in Remscheidt, Germany (although Dallin, for some unknown reason,
thought that he was born in Odessa and lived in Russia for 17 years). He
attended the Universities of Marburg and Frankfurt am Main. He joined
the German Democratic Party (DDP), became chairman of the Young
Democrats, and was also secretary-general of a trade union. In 1924 he
was elected as a DDP representative to the Reichstag and thus became
the youngest member of that body. He lost these posts when the Nazis
seized power, and he was forbidden to write for any newspaper
published in Germany. He became the Berlin correspondent for the
Pester Lloyd of Budapest and the Neue Zuercher Zeitung as well as a
reporter in Occupied Belgium for the Brussels Soir.
After the war Lemmer was accused in West Germany of having
collaborated with the Nazis. He settled immediately after the war in the
Berlin suburb of Klein-Machnow, in the Soviet sector, where he owned a
house. In October 1945 he became the deputy chairman of the Christian
Democratic Party (CDU) in the Soviet Zone and a member of the board
of the Free German Trade Union Federation, the Communist FDGB. He
was also deputy mayor of Klein-Machnow. He was in close and cordial
contact with leading members of the Soviet military occupation. On 20
December 1947, however, the Soviet authorities removed Lemmer from
the vice-chairmansbip of the CDU, ostensibly because of policy
conflicts. He moved to West Berlin in 1949 and became editor of the
anti-Communist Berlin Kurier. In 1950 he was elected to the five-man
Page 24 (page 24 of the original)
executive of the CDU in West Berlin. In January 1952 he was elected as a
CDU representative to the Bundestag, and in December 1955 be became
Chairman of the West Berlin CDU. In November 1956 he was appointed
Minister of Postal and Telecommunications. In October 1957 be became
Minister for All-German Affairs. (One report of that period stated
innocently, "Lemmer ... is said to be opposed to the work of the Allied
and German intelligence networks in West Berlin.") In 1966 Lemmer was
a special representative of Chancellor Erhard in Berlin. He is currently
listed as a retired Cabinet Minister who last held public office in 1965.
The same source who repeated the identities of the four World War II
sources whom Lucy had named to him also said that Lemmer was a
source for Lucy during the 1947-1953 period when Lucy and Xaver
Schnieper worked for Czech intelligence.
The post-war charges of collaboration with the Nazis, which Lemrner
denied and outrode, seem to have been true. During his interrogation
after the war Walter Schellenberg said that Lemmer had been an agent
of Amt VI.
Pakbo was of less value to Rado and the Soviets than was Long, just as
Long and his group did not measure up to Sissy and her sources. Born 4
April 1900 in Staefa, Switzerland, Otto Puenter was a lawyer and a
journalist who worked for the Socialist press in Bern. Reportedly he was
a secret member of the Swiss Communist Party. He was in contact with
the Swiss military intelligence service, which used him as a channel to
pass to the Soviets selected items of intelhgence.35
Dallin has devoted an entire chapter to Puenter,36 but much of what
appears therein is false. Puenter has, in fact, made many false
statements. He said that information about the German General Staff
which he obtained during World War II came from General Alfred Jodl. He
asserted that he kept in a monastery in Switzerland the entire plan for
the German attack upon Stalingrad in October 1942, which he himself
encoded before passing it to Rado. He alleged that Werther stood for
Wehrmacht and Lucy for Luftfahrtministerium (Ministry of Air). He said
that Lucy was a Czech. He wove a complex and fascinating tale about a
young Austrian radio operator who came from Dombirn, near the AustroSwiss border. He had promised the home folks that he would transmit
his location every night, just so that they would know where he was. He
chanced to be assigned to Hitler's headquarters, with the result that
Pakbo always knew the Fuehrer's whereabouts. The implausibility of this
Page 25 (page 25 of the original)
fable is, however, no greater than that inherent in his explanation of his
cover name. He claimed that he had teams of agents in Pontrezina,
Aarau, Kreuzlingen, Bern, and Orselina—hence, Pakbo. Actually, it is
unlikely that he had teams of agents anywhere, and certainly improbable
that they would be located at the unimportant places named. By his
own account, one of his teams was at Feldkich/Dombirn, but his cover
name contains neither an F nor a D. As a matter of fact, most of his
contacts lived in Bern and Geneva.
Puenter has alleged that early in 1941 a Gaullist reported to him that the
Swiss service had received accurate information about Hitler's plan to
attack the USSR in a month or a month and a half. The Gaullist said he
was looking for a contact with Moscow to pass on the information.
Pakbo went to Rado to deliver the story—i.e., the attack was scheduled
for 15 June 1941. Rado asked who was the source. Pakbo in turn inquired
and was told that the man's name was Roessler. Rado then decided to
get in direct contact with Roessler, and that connection continued
thenceforth.
This is Pakbo's genius for fabrication at its best. In 1941 neither Lucy nor
Pakbo himself had any connection with the Rote Drei. A Dora to Director
message of 15 July 1942 included the following: "At the beginning of April
a new source of information appeared; he has the cover name Pakbo ..."
As was noted earlier, Lucy also joined the net in 1942. Secondly, Puenter
has said in writing that he had never been in contact with Roessler and
did not know his true name. Thirdly, Lucy did not meet Rado through
Puenter for the simple reason that he never met Rado at all, as the
traffic shows.
The question that naturally arises, then, is this: If Pakbo has told lies
about important matters after the war, did he also lie to the Soviets
during the war? Apart from a challenge on 7 October 1942, the Soviets
seem to have accepted Pakbo's reports as valid and to have found them
useful. Perhaps Pakbo, like Jim, merely tried to exagerate the
importance of his role after the war had ended.
Pakbo appears in 22 known messages, but only 6 of these contain any
substantive information. The time span is from 15 July 1942 to 8 January
1944. Apparently he learned something about the Rote Kapelle arrests in
Germany and reported accordingly, because on 5 October 1942 the
Director asked for more information. And he also reported the arrest of
Paul Boettcher, because on 8 January 1944 Moscow said, "As far as we
Page 26 (page 27 of the original)
ng
ppr
business with the USSR, on this basis; and Buebrle contributed 80,000
francs. After the war the Soviets refused to honor the obligations
incurred on behalf of the Rote Drei. Most of the businessmen
complained bitterly, and Pakbo has alleged that he made some effort to
repay the loans that he had personally solicited. Buehrle, however,
merely wrote off the loss.38
Despite published claims to the contrary, there is no reason to believe
that a source called "Lily of the Vatican" ever existed. Pakbo has denied
that he had a line to the Vatican.
Jim
Foote claimed in Handbook for Spies that he and Rado were equals, or
nearly equals, each having his own network, code, and communications
system. The truth, however, is that Foote, like Puenter, grossly
exagerated his wartime importance. The traffic does not bear out
Foote's claim that he had sub-sources of his own. On the contrary,
Moscow clearly regarded him primarily as a W(T operator, although the
most senior member in that category, and secondarily as a support man
expected to give Rado help in problems of funding. Foote, whose cover
name was Jim, appears 20 times in the messages in our possession. The
time span is 31 October 1942 to 14 April 1944. These messages contain
no new information, but they are of value in reducing Jim's self-portrait
to its true, minor dimensions.
Te Structure of the Rote Drei
Now that part of the Rote Drei structure has been partially excavated
and cleansed of distortions, the outline of the whole can be delineated.
Alexander Rado is at the apex of the network, having inherited the
leader's role from Maria Poliakova and Ursula Beurton. Rado had three
principal sources: Rachel Duebendorfer, Georges Blun, and Otto Puenter,
listed in order of decreasing importance. Each of these had a network of
sub-agents. Through Christian Schneider and Rudolf Roessler,
Page 27 (page 28 of the original)
Duebendorfer was in touch with the most important sources in the
entire network: Werther, Teddy, Anna, and Olga. Others of Sissy's known
contacts, by code name, were Paul, Pierre, Vita, and Mario. Probable
additional, though minor, members of her net were Bill, Bircber, Brand,
Diener, Fanny, Fernand, Schwerin and Stefan. Among his sub-sources
Roessler listed, by name or description, General Hans Oster, Hans Bernd
Gisevius, Carl Goerdeler, and an unknown man named Boelitz.
The second principal agent, Georges Blun, alias Long, directed a network
which consisted chiefly of Agnes, Kurz, Grau, Rot, Fanny, and perhaps
Feld.
The third principal agent, Otto Puenter, alias Pakbo, headed a net that
included Salter and Bruder, as well as others whose cover names are not
known.
Alexander Foote, alias Jim, was the most important of the radio
operators. The others were Edmond and Olga Hamel (Eduard and
Maude), Margarete Bolli !later Bolli-Schatz, cover name Rosa), probably
Harry and Roger, and possibly others.
Te Role of Karel Sedlacek
To this point we have viewed the Red Three network chiefly as an
apparatus which produced intelligence for the Soviet military service.
But Lucy's information, some or all of Longs, and probably Pakbo s also
went to the West. The vital product, Lucy's, reached the Allies through a
Czech colonel whose true name was Karel Sedlacek and whose alias
was Uncle Tom. We have his story from General Frantisek Moravec, who
as Sedlacek's superior had sent him to Switzerland in the first place. In
1935 Sedlacek was working in Southern Bohemia as an intelligence
officer whose targets were in Bavaria. His talents and skill caught
Moravec's eye, and Sedlacek was sent to Prague for a year's training in
operating a WJT set, secret writing, and encoding and decoding. He was
already fluent in German. In June 1937, his training completed and his
cover prepared, Sedlacek left Czechoslovakia as Karl Seltzinger, a
correspondent of the Prague newspaper Narodni Listy. For more than a
year he built his cover in Zurich; then, by the fall of 1938, his first reports,
military and political, arrived in Prague. By then the Czech officer was a
Page 28 (page 29 of the original)
ya dp
g
y th
friend of Major Hans Hausamann, the Swiss intelligence officer who
directed the conveniently unofficial `Bureau Ha." In fact, it was
Hausamann who provided Sedlacek's information.
By the spring of 1939 Sedlacek had begun to feel uneasy in Zurich,
which was swarming with German agents. He moved to Lucerne, where
Lucy was living. The two met because both used journalism as cover.
Beginning in September of 1939, Sedlacek was reporting by W/T to the
London Czechs on German OB, movements, weapons, etc. His
information came from Hausamann, who got it from Lucy, who in turn
decided what information would go to which recipients. From 19 May to
6 September 1944 Lucy was under arrest, charged with passing
intelligence to the Soviet and British services. From the date of his
arrest, the flow of Lucy's information from Sedlacek to London stopped
completely and finally. (It is thus established that information from Lucy
to both the East and the West had ceased before the 20th of July 1944
and that therefore Lucy's sources could have been among the
conspirators.) Sedlacek did continue to transmit other information to
London until the war ended, but after Lucy's arrest Sedlacek's reporting
deteriorated rapidly in both quality and quantity. Promoted to lieutenant
colonel after the war, Sedlacek became the Czech military attaché in
Bern, where he remained until recalled to Prague in early 1947. How he
was instrumental in launching Roessler upon the second phase of his
career in espionage is reported below.
Earlier in this account, in a section dealing with Dr. Josef Wirth, a
message of 5 October 1943, Dora to Director, was cited. Included therein
was this statement: "According to Wirth the German Embassy in Bern is
extremely interested in Sokolin." The remark appears in a context chiefly
concerned with the Free Germany Committee, conceived in and directed
from Moscow.
Vladimir Sokolin
Vladimir Sokolin (spelled Sokoline in some accounts) may have been the
alias of one Vladimir Shapiro or Schapiro. Or Shapiro may have been
alias, and Sokolin the true name. We shall call him Sokolin. The records
which concern him are extensive but have not been summarized here
Page 29 (page 30 of the original)
because all available information indicates that he was not a part of the
Rote Drei. Born in Geneva of Jewish parents, the father a White Russian
and the mother Scottish, Sokolin became in 1937 the Under Secretary of
the USSR's Permanent Delegation to the International Labor Office,
League of Nations, Geneva, as well as the Assistant Secretary General of
the League of Nations. There was a seeming break with Moscow after
the USSR was dropped from the League of Nations in December 1939 as
a result of the invasion of Finland. But either the split was unreal,
designed to strengthen cover, or it was patched up and healed, because
the reports of Sokolin's war time activities clearly indicate espionage
conducted on behalf of the USSR. He was in touch with Leon Nicole,
Alexander Abramson, and perhaps others who were associated with the
Rote Drei. It was also reported that through one of these contacts he
asked Rado if he could be of service and that Rado relayed the
sugestion to Moscow, where it was rejected. There are clear indications
that Sokolin was engaged in economic espionage for the USSR after the
war ended. It appears, then, that in this instance as in others, Soviet
intelligence tried not to mix their networks, the security of which
required separation.
Phase II: Lucy's Post-War Operation
Here our account would have ended if Karel Sedlacek had not known
Xaver Franz Josef Schnieper, a Swiss citizen bom on 6 January 1910 in
Emman, Lucerne Canton. He had attended the Universities of
Koenigsberg, Berlin, and Vienna, majoring in drama and intending to
direct plays, an ambition which he had to abandon when the Nazis
seized power. He first met Rudolf Roessler, who was equally interested in
drama, in Berlin in 1933. By the beginning of the following year he had
persuaded Roessler and his wife to move to Lucerne. Schnieper also
went back to Switzerland and found employment in Lucerne as a
librarian. By October 1936 he was a member of a leftist Catholic group
which twice a month published, a news sheet called Entscheidung
(Decision).
Sedlacek knew Schnieper well. He also knew that by the time the war
ended, both Schnieper and Roessler were plagued by financial
problems. Both were strugling to make ends meet as free-lance
Page 30 (page 31 of the original)
journalists. Sometime before his departure for Prague Sedlacek
introduced his successor as Czech military attaché to Schnieper. The
successor, in turn, introduced Schnieper to Captain Rudolf Wolf of
Czech intelligence.
In the summer of 1947 Wolf asked Schnieper to ask Roessler whether he
was willing to resume intelligence work. Lucy agreed. With Schnieper
serving as intermediary, Roessler supplied the Czechs and thus the
Soviets—with information, mostly military, on the forces, dispositions,
weapons, etc., of the US, England, and France in West Germany, as well
as the budding West German military force. They were sentenced by a
Swiss court on 5 November 1953 to a year and nine months respectively;
but the time already spent in detention, nine months for each, was
counted. Released in early 1954, Roessler died in 1958.
This bald account sounds mundane—a trivial, almost irrelevant epilogue
to the glamorous days of World War II. Yet a moment's reflection shows
that such a view is unjustified. Lucy's first phase lasted for only a little
more than two years, his second for six. The second phase lacks the
high drama of the first, but the fact remains that Roessler and
Schnieper delivered valuable classified information to the Soviets, via
the Czechs, in the post-war period as well. And the intriguing question
of sources looms large in both phases.
Moreover, it is not likely that the two periods are unconnected. Lucy
obviously had human sources for his 1947-1953 reporting, even though
his defense heavily stressed the amount of information that he had
gleaned from the newspapers. If we can unearth some of these people,
we can expect to find links to the sources of 1941-1944.
One contact, according to newspaper accounts of the trial, was a Mrs.
Theresa Hildebrand of the staff of a Chicago magazine called Common
Cause. Roessler asked the Czechs if they wanted to add 1,500 francs
monthly to his pay so that he could extend his coverage to the USA
through Mrs. Hildebrand and her contacts. The indictment of Roessler
said, however, that he had merely copied the names of Mrs. Hildebrand
and others from Common Cause and that they were not implicated.
A professional source who examined some of the microfilmed reports
prepared by Roessler and Schnieper for passage to Prague concluded
that part of these had come not only from the Blank office39 but
specifically from the office of Joachim Oster, the son of General Hans
Page 31 (page 32 of the original)
Oster.
Joachim Oster, usually called Achim, was born on 20 February 1914 in
Dresden. He entered the army in 1933 as an officer candidate with the
Second Artillery Regiment. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1938,
to captain in 1941, to major in 1943. He attained general's rank during the
post-war years.
In 1949 he began work as secretary to Dr. Josef Mueller, who was a
friend of his father and a member of the 20th of July group. Oster held
this position for at least six years. During this period Mueller reportedly
headed a group which worked for a neutralist, pro-USSR Germany. Other
members of the group, besides Mueller and Oster, included Otto John
and Georges Blun, whom we have already mentioned as "Long" of the
Rote Drei.
In 1950 Joachim Oster was appointed to the Blank Office. He served as
chief of the security section of Amt Blank (Department IV/A/6) and in
this capacity conducted liaison with the British, Americans, and French,
as well as with other Germans. In January 1956 he was transferred to
other, presumably less sensitive, duties in the Ministry of Defense. About
September of 1958 he was posted to Madrid as the military attaché.
There he reportedly established contact with the old Spanish Loyalist,
Gil Robles.
Te Return of Agnes
The unidentified contact of Roessler who reported in 1955 that
Goerdeler, Gisevius, "General Boelitz," and "the predecessor of Canaris"
were World War II sources of Lucy, also said that as of the reporting date
Roessler was still in contact with one Lemmer, who was either in the
Blank Office or who had a contact therein. Other Phase II sources were
said to be one Thormann and a man named Borchheimer, who was a
professor at the University of Heidelberg.
There can be little doubt that the first of these is the same Ernst
Lemmer who, as "Agnes," was a Rote Drei source during World War II.
Page 32 (page 33 of the original)
Dr. Werner Tormann
Thormann is believed to be Dr. Werner Thormann. He was born in
Germany, acquired Austrian citizenship through naturalization, but until
1933 remained mainly in Germany, where he was chief editor of the
weekly Deutsche Republik and the Rhein-Mainische Volkszeitung. At an
undetermined time he served Dr. Josef Wirth as his secretary, probably
during Wirth's 1921-1922 period. After the Nazis' seizure of power he
moved to Paris, and from September 1939 to May 1940 he was an editor
and speaker on the German Freedom Station there. In July 1940 the US
Government granted him an emergency visa, and he spent the war years
in the US and Switzerland. As of April 1947 he was the editor of Zukunft
(Future). He died sometime before 1958.
Professor Max Horkheimer
"Borchheimer" appears to be a garble for Professor Max Horkheimer,
born 14 February 1895 in Stuttgart. About 1928 he became head of the
Institute for Social Research, founded at the University of Frankfurt to
disseminate Marxist Studies. When Hitler came to power, the Institute
moved to Geneva. In 1934 Horkheimer came to the US and there
established the main offices of the Institute under the sponsorship of
Columbia University. By 1948 he was attempting to reestablish a branch
of the Institute at Frankfurt am Main, and by the following year he was a
member of the faculty of the University of Frankfurt.
There are reports that he is or was a fellow-traveller, once closely
associated with the Lenin Institute of Moscow; that he has or has had
Soviet intelligence ties; and that be had been considered for the position
of psychological advisor to the West German Defense Ministry (Amt
Blank) although he was an opponent of the Bonn government.
There is no proof that Horkheimer provided Lucy with information after
World War II. And if he did so, the system of communication remains
unknown. It is noted, however, that one Emile Siegmund Grunberg was
the son of Karl Grunberg, the first director of the Institute for Social
Page 33 (page 34 of the original)
g
Research. He and his brother Karl were translators for the International
Labor Organization in Geneva. Emile and his wife knew Alexander
Abramson, alias "Isaac"; Rachel Duebendorfer, alias "Sissy"; Paul
Boettcher; and probably other members of the Rote Drei network.
There is, however, a difficulty, a blur in the logic, inherent in the
assumption that Josef Wirth, Joachim Oster, possibly Josef Mueller, Ernst
Lemmer, Werner Thormann, and Max Horkheimer were Lucy's sources, or
among those sources, during the period of 1947-1953. During this period
the Soviets could have established contact with any of them much more
simply and directly than through a procedure whereby they met with
Roessler in Germany or Switzerland, Roessler passed reports to
Schnieper and thus the Czechs, and the Czech service gave the product
to the Soviets. Lemmer, in particular, was far better placed than Roessler
to serve as the central collection point.
The question may be partly resolved by one of Roessler's major
courtroom arguments in his defense. He maintained that almost every
thing that he sold to the Czechs was compiled from overt sources,
chiefly newspapers, and that the information given to him by his German
friends was much less important. The claim may be true, for people who
knew Lucy considered him a truthful man. The remainder of the answer
is that the act of providing Lucy with intelligence would in no way have
precluded the direct provision of the same or other information by the
same sources to Soviet intelligence officers, or to both German services,
East and West, or to practically anyone else. For these men, Lucy
included, were great equivocators, adept, as the German phrase has it,
at carrying water on both shoulders.
Lucy the Mercenary
There can be no doubt that Lucy himself was motivated chiefly, if not
entirely, by mercenary considerations. Here are a few excerpts from the
traffic flowing between Moscow and Rado:
"12.3.1943 . . . . Agree to buy Plan Ostwall for 5,000 francs. Does Lucy
know whether these documents are genuine and reliable?"
"10. and 11.11.1943 . . . . Sissy states that Lucy group no longer works when
Page 34 (page 35 of the original)
ys
yg
up no long
the salary stops."
"14.11.1943 . . . . Please tell Lucy in our name that ... his group will surely
be paid according to his demands. We are ready to reward him richly for
his information."
"9.12.1943 . . . . Inform Lucy not to worry about the money situation."
During the post-war phase Lucy submitted somewhat more than one
hundred reports. He and Scbnieper were paid a total sum of between
33,000 and 48,000 Swiss francs. Lucy kept three-fourths of this sum.
Te Peddlers
During his career Roessler provided intelligence to services of the USSR,
Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, and England, at a minimum.
Malcolm Mugeridge commented in The Observer, 8 January 1967, on
Lucy's cupidity: "I seem to detect a professional touch in the assiduity
with which Roessler, when the Russians at last realized his worth,
screwed out of them 7,000 Swiss francs a month by way of retainer and
a lot of generous supplementary bonuses besides—by Red standards, a
very high rate of remuneration."
And Wirth? His record sugests that he became a Soviet agent of
influence in the early 1920's. A year or two after the signing of the Treaty
of Rapallo he made the first of several trips to the USSR, where he
conducted financial negotiations involving forestry rights and the
construction of a railroad. He was pleased that German men and
officers were being trained on Russian soil, in evasion of the Versailles
Treaty, even though his own regime was called the "government of
fulfillment" because it was supposedly carrying out all of its obligations
under that treaty. The. Rote Drei traffic itself shows that Moscow at
times directed Rado to obtain intelligence from Wirth during World War
II.
Yet he was also in contact with Walter Schellenberg, through Richard
Grossmann and perhaps in other ways as well. Was be, then,
withholding from the SD his relationship with the Soviets, as well as
Page 35 (page 36 of the original)
olding fr
tionship with th
what he knew about the 20th of July conspirators? The answer to the
first part of this question is probably yes, but the same cannot be said
about the second, at least not with much assurance. Himmler was
prepared to listen to proposals that were treasonable from a Nazi point
of view whenever he deemed the circumstances secure. There are clear
indications in the record that he envisaged himself as Hitler's successor.
He once told Canaris that he knew perfectly well the identities of all the
anti-Hitler plotters. In short, if Wirth and others were betraying the
conspiracy to Schellenberg, they were also being double-crossed by
Himmler who hoped that the plan to assassinate the Fuehrer would
succeed.
The Soviets, the SD—anyone else? Wirth's major Rote Drei contact
appears to have been the French journalist, Georges Blun. In 1940 he
made a trip to Paris in order to inform the French government personally
of the military situation in Germany after the invasion of Norway. He
made similar trips after the war. There is a report of contact with the
Deuxieme Bureau.
And there was some contact, on the record unproductive, with the OSS
during the war.
Ernst Lemmer's intelligence contacts were discussed earlier: USSR,
Swiss, and SD as a minimum.
Hans Bernd Gisevius joined the Nazis, worked in the German police and
the Ministry of the Interior, yet joined the 20th of July plotters. He
supplied the British with intelligence for three and a half years before
the war and during its initial phase. He then became a major OSS
contact.
There are only uncertain indications that he was linked to the Rote Drei.
One source reported that Gisevius had contact with Rado. His relations
with the Swiss police were excellent, and he was on good terms with
quite a few Swiss businessmen, one of whom was Emil Georg Buehrle of
the Oerlikon machine and tool works. His ties to the courier Karl
Forstmann have been noted earlier in this account.
We know that Gisevius had intelligence contacts with the Western Allies.
Roessler listed Gisevius as a source. There are indications that he knew
some members of the Rote Drei net and may himself have been alias
"Rot" of that group. But are there also valid indications that despite the
confidence which Hans Oster, Goerdeler, and others in the Loth of July
Page 36 (page 37 of the original)
f July
group seem to have accorded him, he may have been an RSHA agent
too? One report stated that Himmler's secretary had so identified him.
Some post-war interrogations of German intelligence officers include
their comments that Ernst Kaltenbrunner, RSHA chief and
Schellenberg's superior, received reports from Gisevius as late as April
1945. The record contains other references to links between Gisevius
and Heydrich, as well as Gisevius and Schellenberg. Such reports,
however, are likely to be unreliable. All 20th of July participants became
unpopular with most Germans. When Gisevius went to the Nuremberg
War Crimes Trials in 1946 as a witness for Hjalmar Schacht, he became
also a highly effective witness for the prosecution, hence doubly
unpopular in post-war Germany. That some denunciations were inspired
by rancour therefore seems highly probable. At first blush it appears odd
that he was allowed to remain as a German intelligence officer in
Switzerland after the RSHA assimilated the Abwehr, despite the fact
that the Gestapo issued an arrest order for him in August 1944. But it
should be recalled that Goerdeler, sentenced on 8 September 1944, was
not executed until February 1945 because Himmler hoped that the
contacts of such men with the Western Allies might save his own skin
later. On balance, then, it is considered that Gisevius had intelligence
contacts with the Americans, the British, the Swiss, and perhaps the
Soviets, but not with Nazi Germany, except for his major role in the
resistance.
Te Stage and the Actors
This account has said next to nothing about the Swiss role in the drama
of the Rote Drei. Today Switzerland tends to seem just the scenery of
the story: the picture-postcard, snow-frosted backdrop against which
the action was played out. But this aura of passivity, of being uninvolved,
is really illusory. The fact is that certain Swiss officers were very directly
a part of the activity of the Rote Drei. Understandably, this involvement
remains a source of some concern to the Swiss, even today, because it
is at odds with that strict neutrality which Switzerland has proclaimed
for centuries as buckler and breast-plate.
The traffic, however—that obdurate record on which we have tried to
base as much of this account as possible—plainly reveals Swiss
Page 37 (page 38 of the original)
t as p
—plainly r
involvement. When arrests were made, Moscow asked why Rote Drei
members in contact with the Swiss authorities—Lucy, Pakbo, Long—did
not get more information from them.40 The Swiss General Staff was a
sufficiently valuable source to have been given the Rote Drei cover name
of Luise. Lucy's contacts with Swiss military intelligence preceded his
work in the Rote Drei, and the same is very likely true of Pakbo and
certain others.
At least two Swiss officers should be mentioned here. The first is
Brigadier Colonel Roger Masson, now dead, who was the chief of Swiss
wartime intelligence. The second is Major Hans Hausamann. Before
World War lI began, Hausamann had recognized that Switzerland,
already teeming with the spies of other nations, was itself sadly lacking
in military intelligence and in sources to provide it. In Teufen, near St.
Gallen, be established an unofficial intelligence center, funded actually
or nominally by himself and certain friends. When war came, this office,
known as the "Bureau Ha," was linked to the official Swiss Army
intelligence structure. Quite deliberately, however, the Swiss chieftains
did not incorporate the office into the army but left it largely
autonomous. It is reasonable to conjecture that this preservation of
unofficial or only semi-official status resulted chiefly from the significant
fact that a Bureau Ha outside the official framework could be far freer of
the shackles imposed by neutrality than any part of the government
could be.
Dr. Xaver Schnieper worked as a junior officer in the Bureau Ha. He
introduced Lucy to Major Hausamann. Only the Swiss know today
whether the vital information coming from Germany went first to Lucy
and then, via Hausamann, to Masson, or whether the Swiss received the
bulk of the information from their sources in Germany and passed it to
Sedlacek for relay to the British and to Lucy for relay to the Russians.
What we can be sure of is that Switzerland was not just part of the
World War II scenery; it had a piece of the action.
The story of the Rote Drei in essence, is the tale of two firm camps,
between which shuttled ambiguous and uncommitted men. On the one
side stood the anti-Hitler German conspirators. There was an East-West
schism in their ranks, but they were united and unwavering in their
resolve to rid Germany and the world of Hitler. On the other were the
Soviet armed forces and intelligence services, also committed to Hitler's
destruction but only as a step toward the same domination of the earth
that Hitler had longed for. Both groups, the tiny and the vast, were made
Page 38 (page 39 of the original)
d long
th g up
ya
up for the most part of dedicated activists. Between the two forces were
Roessler and certain of his associates: Wirth, Mueller, Lemmer, Gisevius,
Horkheimer, probably Thormann, perhaps Joachim Oster. These are a
different breed from such 20th of July figures as Hans Oster, Goerdeler,
and Beck. During the 19431945 period, at least, Lucy, Lemmer, et al, were
psychologically much more akin to Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, and
Schellenberg than to the heroes of the resistance, the Soviets, or even
such Rote Drei figures as Rachel Duebendorfer.
These were the men who posed as arbiters, as intellectuals who had
preserved their integrity by being above it all. But the truth is that they
did not say, "A plague on both your houses." They dickered. They sought
advantage—private material advantage—from many quarters. Roessler,
Blun, Lemmer, and the rest could have been replaced by any others
willing and able to live well in wartime Switzerland; their roles were
essential, though not very important, but they themselves, as
individuals, were not of consequence.
The true heroes of the tale are those few Germans living in an age of
appalling complexity, and of rottenness at the highest levels of their
government, so that they were forced not only to risk a barbaric death
but to deal unequivocally with the fact that what morality demanded of
them was treason.A few of them were Lt. General Ludwig Beck, suicide;
Lawyer Hans von Dohnanyi, hanged; General Erich Fellgiebel, hanged; Dr.
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, hanged; Reichskriminal-direktor Arthur Nebe,
hanged; General Friedrich 01bricht, hanged; Major General Hans Oster,
hanged; General Fritz Thiele, hanged; Field Marshall Erwin von Wilzleben,
hanged.
Lucy and his Rote Drei associates lived on.
Comment: Only the books and other publications consulted directly
during the preparation of this article have been listed in this
bibliography.
1. Karl Heinz Abshagen, Canaris, English edition, Hutchinson and Co.
Ltd., 1956.
2. Pierre Accoce Books and Pierre Quet, La Guerre a été Gagné en Suisse,
Paris, Perrin, 1966.
Page 39 (page 40 of the original)
(The remaining versions of this book are the following:
Moskau Wusste Alles, translated from the French by R. J. Humm,
Schweizer Verlag A. G., Zurich, 1966.
The Lucy Ring, translated from the French by A. M. Sheridan Smith,
W. H. Allen, London, 1967.
A Man Called Lucy, translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith,
CowardMcCann Inc., New York, 1927.)
3. Margret Boveri, Treason in the Twentieth Century, MacDonald and Co.
Ltd., London, 1961.
4. Gert Buchheit, Der Deutsche Geheimdienst, Geschichte der Militaerischen
Abwehr, List Verlag, Munich, 1966.
5. David J. Dallin, Soviet Espionage, Yale University Press, 1955.
6. Allen Welsh Dulles, Germany's Underground, MacMillan and Co., New
York, 1947.
7. Wilhelm F. Flicke, Agenten Funken Nach Moskau, Verlag Welsermuehl,
Wels-Muenchen, 1957.
8. Alexander Foote, Handbook for Spies, Museum Press Ltd., London,
second edition, 1964.
9. Hans Bernd Gisevius, To The Bitter End, Houghton Mifflin Co., New
York, 1947.
10. Jon Kimche, Spying for Peace, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London,
1961.
11. Rudolf Pechel, Deutscher Widerstand (German Resistance), Eugen
Rentsch Verlag, Erlenback-Zuerich, 1947.
12. Gerhard Ritter, The German Resistance, George Allen and Unwin Ltd.,
London, 1958.
13. Rudolf Roessler, Die Kriegssehauplaetze and die Bedingungen der
Kriegsfuehrung (The Theaters of War and the Conditions for Conducting
It), Vita Nova Verlag, Lucerne, 1941, Printed under the alias R. A. Hermes.
Page 40 (page 41 of the original)
14. Wilhelm Ritter von Schramm, Verrat im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Econ Verlag,
Dusseldorf Vienna, 1967.
15. William F. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Simon and
Schuster, New York, 1960.
1. Anonymous, "Hans Oster:' from International Biographical Archiv
(Munzinger Archiv ), 8 December 1962, p. 1128.
2. Anonymous, "Joachim Oster," from International Biographical Archiv
(Munzinger Archiv), 10 June 1967, Lieferung 23/67.
3. Anonymous, "Rudolf Roessler," from International Biographical Archiv
(Munzinger Archiv), 29 December 1966, Lieferung 51-52/66.
4. Anonymous, "The Second World War Traitors at the Fuehrer's
Headquarters," Der Spiegel, Hamburg, 16 January 1967, pp. 30-44.
5. Anonymous article, Stern, Hamburg, No. 20, 15 May 1966, pp. 7-9.
6. Anonymous text, Tass, International Service in English, 20 February
1968, citing Komsomolskaya Pravda.
7. Malcolm Mugeridge, "The Lucy Mystery," The Observer Review, London,
8 January 1967.
8. Rudolf Strobinger, "The Man Whom No One Knows," Testimony of the
Intelligence Service Worker, Prague, Lidova Demokracie, 24 September
1967.
9. Burke Wilkinson, review in The New York Times of 11 June 1967 of A man
Called Lucy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
* Editor's Note. This article is an abridgement of a longer study of the
Rote Drei. The portions omitted in this version mainly concern
biographical and other details relating to the sources and sub-sources
of the principals in the organization.
Page 41 (page 42 of the original)
1 Studies X11, 3, p. 41.
2 There is some difficulty with the term message, because some
holdings preseni as one unit what others treat as two or more.
3 Our holdings indicate that September 1943 was a busier month than
most for the Rote Drei transmitters; if the traffic had been all one way,
the figure of 4,250 would be high. On the other hand, no messages from
Moscow to Switzerland were found at the Hamels'. An analysis of all
traffic presently available has sugested that about two-fifths originated
in Moscow. If therefore we add 1,700 to our projection (40 per cent of
4,250) the total becomes 5,950.
4 In his Agenten Funken each Moskau, 1957 edition, Neptun Verlag,
Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, Flicke presents 68 messages, of which 57 are
matched in our holdings and 5 more are partial matches (Flicke's
versions being incomplete). It is suspected that the remaining 6
messages are spurious, the creations of Flicke or someone else. These
messages differ from those known to be authentic in certain minor ways
but consistently. All of these messages, if they were genuine, would have
been transmitted before the sending date of the earliest authenticated
message. One of them is the early warning of Hitler's attack, a message
that later commentators accepted as genuine.
5 Alexander Foote, Handbook for Spies, Museum Press, Ltd., London,
second edition, 1964, p. 161.
6 Another of whom was Brigette Lewis (Long).
7 Our notes fail to reflect what happened to Caspari.
8 Foote, op. cit., p. 133. Although Foote says of Boettcher, "I cannot speak
for the British, but be certainly was not connected with our network" (P.
67), he is as wrong here as at many other points. The traffic leaves no
doubt that Moscow regarded Sissy and Paul Boettcher as a team and
often addressed them jointly.
9 A Man Called Lucy, Coward-McCann Inc., New York, 1966.
10 Moscow did not usually use the true first name of an agent as his
radio cover name, but evidence in the traffic itself makes it plain that
"Paul" was Sissy's common-law husband Paul Boettcher.
Page 42 (page 43 of the original)
11 Tamara had her own code name, Vita, and one may wonder at
Poliakova's indiscretion in not using it; but such lapses were not rare. On
6 December 1943 a message from Dora informed Moscow that Foote
had been arrested. He was named openly as Foote instead of being
designated as Jim.
12 In so doing Poliakova referred not to Maurice but to Marius, so that
there is a possibility that the two were identical. It has also been
sugested, however, that Marius was Marius Mouttet, a Frenchman and
former Socialist Minister. Foote (op. cit., p. 92) mentions him but says
nothing of an arrest.
13 This literal interpretation of Mann has been used because Sissy at this
time was still married to Duebendorfer, a Swiss citizen.
14 Sissy, Paul, and Vita were arrested later, in May 1944.
15 op. cit., p. 66.
16 Studies XII 4, p. 104.
17 Others who might have supplied Lucy with information but might also
have been otherwise linked to the Rote Drei were Bill, Bireher, Fanny,
Fernand, Schwerin, and Stefan. None of them appear often in the traffic;
none reported high-level information.
18 Assuming, as we do, that our holdings are large enough so that
projections are mathematically sound.
19 To the Bitter End, Houghton Mifflin Co., New York, 1947, p. 142.
20 Karl Heinz Abshagen, Canaris, English edition, Hutchinson and Co.,
Ltd., London, 1956, p. 122.
21 op. cit., p. 89.
22 op. cit., pp. 176-177.
23 Wilhelm Ritter von Schramm (Verrat irn Zweiten Weltkrieg, Econ Verlag,
Dusseldorf-Vienna, 1967, p. 223) and others have made the same curious
mistake about Oster and have drawn the same conclusion. They state
that lie was suspended from Abwehr duty% on 5 April 1943. But a
number of reliable sources have reported that on this date, when Hans
von Dohnanyi, Josef Mueller, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were arrested,
Page 43 (page 44 of the original)
Oster merely came under initial suspicion. He was transferred to a
reserve status on 19 June 1943 but was not placed under surveillance (or
house arrest) until March of the following year. The last known message
from Dora which cites Werther or any other possible source of Lucy as
the source of the message is dated October 1943. Accordingly, there is
no basis in fact for the argument that Lucy's messages continued to
flow to Moscow after 20 July 1944, as Accoce and Quet have maintained,
or that General Oster could not have been one of Lucy's sources, as von
Schramm has maintained.
24 op. cit., pp. 421-422.
25 Anonymous, Munziger Archives, "ME-O: (Oster) 8.12.1962, 1128, Hans
Oster (former German general)."
26 op. cit., p. 424.
27 op. cit., p. 122.
28 ibid., p. 132.
29 op. cit., p. 324.
30 ibid., pp. 344-345.
31 The German Resistance, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1958, p.
157.
32 Long was Georges Blun, a French journalist and important member of
the Rote Drei.
33 Vladimir Alexandrovich Sokolin is discussed later in this study.
34 There is confirmation of the Blun-Gisevius association.
35 The Swiss G-2 had direct contact with both Pakbo and Long but not
with Sissy. This fact probably explains why she was arrested, whereas
Long and Pakbo were not.
36 op. cit. pp. 207-214.
37 Our friend Flicke, with his usual horse-sense, identified "Salter" as
Erwin John Salter, an English bank clerk.
Page 44 (page 45 of the original)
38 Foote did not believe this story, for which Pakbo was the source.
Foote stated that the Rote Drei never received any money from Pakbo.
39 Federal Ministry of Defense, then headed by Theodore Blank.
40 The arrests were made by the police. It is more than possible that the
Swiss General Staff was well-informed about the Rote Drei but did not
share its insight with the police, for reasons of security.
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Posted: May 08, 2007 08:25 AM