WHEN EPPLER AND SANDSTETTE WERE hauled off to the interrogation centre at Maadi neither tried to commit suicide with the standard-issue cyanide capsules, which the Abwehr no doubt had supplied as part of their spy kit. Firstly they were interrogated for three days, 29–31 July.1 Hassan Gaafar, Father Demetriou, Fatma Amer, Abdel Salama, Hassan Ezzet, Anwar El Sadat and El Masri were all also picked up. They were identified by Eppler, Sandstette and Abdel Rahim, the servant on the houseboat.2
Viktor Hauer is often thought to have escaped, however G.J. Jenkins decided to have him kidnapped on 21 July; this was done as he exited a cinema.
No one saw it and within an hour he was safely hidden in a cell in the newly established interrogation centre at Maadi.
His name was changed to Muller and as far as I am concerned he is an escaped POW picked up on the streets of Cairo and now interned in Palestine. He was thoroughly frightened at his first interrogation and made to understand that his reprieve from shooting was dependent upon his forgetting he was ever called Hauer.
He was thoroughly interrogated and has, I think, told 90% of what he knows.
Both my own police and the Egyptians are still hunting for Hauer whose disappearance was reported by the Swedish Legation.3
It is fairly certain that much of the intelligence leading to the arrest of Eppler and Sandstette came from Hauer, rather than from the more colourful Natalie/Yvette/Edith, as related in other accounts. Jenkins may have been overcautious in not bringing Sansom into his confidence, but he was well aware that secrets seldom remained secret for long in Cairo.
Once the two agents were in custody, at least according to Mosley, Monkaster – as he calls Sandstette – botched an attempt at suicide by trying to cut his throat.4 By the first day the interrogators had their code names of Max and Moritz; this was also confirmed by Hassan Gaafar.
Eppler claims a type of ‘good cop, bad cop’ system was used on him. A ‘burly sergeant’ was the ‘bad cop’, who broke his nose one day, and they also tried drugs on him. Two officers, Major E. Dunston and Captain M.J. Shergold, plied him with cigarettes and cups of tea, claiming they were not the ‘Gestapo’. In the end they got something out of him but very little.5
However, Eppler’s account is contradicted by the Egyptian Military Court of Enquiry into the conduct of El Sadat and Ezzet, which began on 12 August. Ezzet was the first before the court, and the investigating officer opened with the following question:
‘In your oath of loyalty to H.M. The King you swore that you would be a friend to his friends and an enemy to his enemies. Great Britain is the ally of Egypt. Do you realise, therefore, that you have broken this oath?’
Ezzet replied, ‘I took the oath when I left the Military University and I do not consider that I have broken it.’6
He was then asked about all those involved in Kondor and his part in it, but denied any knowledge. El Sadat was next up and went through the same process and also denied everything.
On 13 August, Major Dunstan and Sansom sat in on the court proceedings, to which Eppler was brought. He quickly identified Ezzet and Sadat as two of his fellow conspirators. Later Sandstette and Hassan Gaafar were brought in; they both identified Ezzet and El Sadat, who continued to deny any knowledge of events. By this time Eppler and Sandstette may well have done a deal with the British to save their own skins.
A cipher telegram to London identified British concerns:
Eppler and Sandstette originally claimed by us as prisoners of war to get them definitely into our hands and away from Egyptians. They are considered spies, addressed as spies, and themselves admit to being spies.7
The whole story of Kondor was relayed to the court by various witnesses. On 15 August El Sadat stated that he believed Eppler and Sandstette were lying and trying ‘to save their lives’. But little by little El Sadat and Ezzet began to crumble under the weight of evidence, finally admitting knowledge of Kondor.
The next day Abdel Salama came before the court. Eppler admitted meeting him at Frau Amer’s house, and that he had been interested in creating ‘a Gestapo organisation in Egypt’, but denied meeting him again claiming he had had no interest in Salama as he could not further his aims.
On 20 August El Masri appeared in court; he too denied ever knowing Eppler, again claiming that the two spies were accusing him to gain favour with the British. The Court of Inquiry closed on that day.
Eppler and Sandstette were kept as political prisoners for the rest of the war, thus avoiding the usual fate of spies. After the war ended they were flown to Germany where they were promptly arrested again as war criminals. MI6 intervened in their case and they were released. Eppler remained in Germany while Sandstette returned to East Africa where he had lived before.
Ezzet and Sadat also avoided execution; they were cashiered from the armed forces and spent two years in prison. El Masri was interned but released before the end of the war on grounds of ill health. Frau Amer, Abdel Salama and Hassan Gaafar were interned for the duration of the conflict. Father Pere Demetriou was deported to Palestine. Hekmat Fahmy was released after a year, while Mohamed Ahmad – the spies’ driver – and Albert Wahbo were let off with a warning.
Albert Sansom continued to serve with Field Security and was responsible for security during Winston Churchill’s visit in August 1942, who insisted on visiting the front to take a look. As the war progressed west away from Egypt his duties increased in the area of ‘protection’ for VIPs, Cairo becoming a favourite place for conferences.
The assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State in the Middle East, in November 1944, shook Sansom. He had warned Lord Moyne that he was a likely target: ‘He only laughed. But I still blame myself for having let it happen.’8 Sansom was first told of the plot by the Zionist Stern Gang by Natalie (Yvette) who he had first met during the Kondor case. She sought him out in a night club and told him a political assassination was likely.
Lord Moyne proved stubborn and unwilling to accept protection, not wanting his private life to be invaded by security men. He was gunned down on 6 November while arriving at his house where he had dismissed the guard that morning. His driver, Corporal Fuller, tried to come to his aid and was also murdered by two youths with sub-machine guns, who had been waiting in the portico of the house at Sharia ibn Zanki, near the Gezira sporting club.
Sansom was furious that the report by the guards of their dismissal that morning had not been passed on to him; two hours had passed between their leaving and the assassination. The fact that within minutes the security forces caught the assassins crossing the Boulac Bridge was a hollow victory.
The trial was very correct and quite short. The accused freely admitted they had killed Lord Moyne. Constable Amin Abdullah gave evidence of their capture.
For security reasons I was not called as a witness. They were found guilty and condemned to death. Neither showed the slightest emotion.9
Sansom was selected to be present at the execution in March 1945; ‘an unpleasant job if ever there was one.’ He found hanging to be ‘a filthy business’. He was however impressed by the way the two terrorists met their end.
As they were positioned on the scaffold they both sang the Hatikvah, the Jewish national anthem. Neither finished it. One moment their voices filled the execution chamber, the next, there was absolute silence.10
By February 1947 Sansom had swapped his army peak cap for a civilian bowler hat, when he was transferred to the Foreign Office, becoming security officer at the British Embassy in Cairo.
Almásy left North Africa in August 1942 for Athens to get treatment for the amoebic dysentery he had picked up on Operation Salam. Before he left, Rommel had turned down his offer to create a German version of the LRDG. Also at this time his friend and possibly lover Entholt returned to the Afrika Korps to serve on Rommel’s staff. He must have felt despondent, at the very least.
After treatment in Athens, Almásy decided to go home to Hungary, via Italy and Germany. In Italy he looked up his old friend Pat Clayton, who was a guest of the Italian state in the POW camp at Sulmona in the Abruzzi region. They had a good talk about old times in Egypt before the war, the camp commandant allowing Almásy to take Clayton out of the camp to a bar. There he told Clayton how he had outwitted the LRDG during Operation Salam, showing him photographs of the Ford V8 he had used and its modifications.
Some accounts say Pat Clayton ‘gritted his teeth’ at this. However, according to a biography of Clayton by his son Peter, Pat had a rather different reason for this.
The remarks about Pat gritting his teeth were more likely to have been due to Almásy’s remembered habit, Pat said later, of leaving someone else (Clayton on this occasion!) to pay the bill for the refreshments ordered.
Almásy was nevertheless able to block Pat’s transfer to the notorious Campo Cinque, the Italian high security POW camp equivalent of Colditz, and arrange instead for him to go to Campo 29 Veano in Northern Italy … This was appreciated and very much worth the price of a couple of drinks.11
Pat Clayton wrote home to his wife Ellie and sister-in-law Nora May, using a code arranged by MI9 for POWs. One letter to his son Peter contained a reference to Peter’s little sister ‘Dora’. Peter had no sister, and the family sent the letters to the War Office. It was a coded reference to the Abwehr Operation Dora, a Brandenburg Regiment scheme to disrupt Allied supply lines in Africa, led by Lieutenant Von Leipzig. The operation was a dismal failure; but Almásy must have mentioned it to Clayton.
In September 1943 Clayton escaped from his POW camp in the confusion as Italy changed sides. He hid in the mountains for many months, but was recaptured in January 1944 and sent to a German POW camp at Marisch-Truban in Czechoslovakia. As the Russians advanced he was moved to Brunswick in Germany, and was liberated there by American troops in April 1945. After the war he continued to serve in the British Army in Palestine and Egypt.
From Abruzzi, Almásy went on to Germany and reported to his Abwehr commander Major Seubert. He requested to be put on the reserve due to his ill health. In Hungary he wrote his memoirs – With Rommel’s Army in Libya – published in 1943. The book became a bestseller. It was vetted by the Abwehr and ‘doctored’ by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, so that there was no direct mention of Operation Salam or Kondor. However, in chapter eight, ‘Desert Patrol’, dated May 1942, he describes episodes straight out of Salam.12
During this time Almásy received the news that Entholt had been killed in action during the retreat from El Alamein, the victim of a land mine. He was desolate, and ‘Since then everything has seemed banal, empty and sad.’13
Almásy was still on the Abwehr books and in the winter of 1943/1944 he was sent to Turkey, arriving in Istanbul on 5 November; his arrival reported by SIME (Security Intelligence Middle East) later that month.14 It is likely that he was sent to the city – then a hot bed of intrigue and spies – to work with the pro-German Egyptians there. Abwehr agents there had run Father Demetriou in Cairo and installed the W/T set concealed by the priest in his church for use during Operation El Masri. Prince Shahab, of the old Egyptian Khedival family, was one of the main Abwehr agents in Istanbul. Even after the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, Operation Husky, the Germans were still concerned with the possible Allied invasion of the Balkans. Thus they were still interested in getting spies into Egypt, the likely starting place for an invasion, and Almásy’s expertise was considered of possible use.
About this time Almásy got further involved with Operation Dora and the top-secret Luftwaffe unit KG 200 Kampfgeschunder. It was set up to carry out special missions under Otto Skorzeny and Walter Schellenberg, the former an Austrian colonel who had led the SS glider team that had rescued Benito Mussolini after he was imprisoned by his own government in 1943.
KG 200 was to set up secret bases in the North African desert to enable aircraft to refuel on long flights behind Allied lines to drop agents. A captured B-17 bomber was used to fly in equipment and technicians to the base. One of the agents was arrested in Freetown and gave the game away. The British and Free French managed to locate the base, although the KG 200 personnel got away. Bletchley Park had also intercepted two messages from Athens mentioning ‘Teddy’ – one of Almásy’s known codenames –indicating the operational area as the Sirte Desert between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania.15
By this time the Abwehr was losing its independence, coming more under the control of the unwieldy SS. Almásy more than likely was dismayed by the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944. The Germans had learnt that Admiral Miklos Horthy, the Hungarian dictator, had been making secret peace overtures to the Russians as the Red Army neared the borders of Hungary.
At this stage of the war Hungary had become a refuge for Jews; 750,000 Jews had arrived, many of whom had fled Poland. As the Wehrmacht poured over the border they were followed by the SS, who got to work rounding up the Jews and deporting them to concentration camps. To his credit Almásy saved the lives of several Jewish families, using his rank and reputation as a war hero to bluff his way through awkward situations, and sheltering them at great risk to himself.
In early 1945 Budapest fell to the Red Army in an orgy of rape and looting; thousands of Hungarians were sent to labour camps in Siberia. Almásy was arrested and imprisoned by the NKVD as ‘an enemy of the people’. His book With Rommel’s Army in Libya came back to haunt him, as a demonstration of his complicity with Nazi propaganda. He was subjected to a long, brutal interrogation at notorious 60 Androssy Boulevard in Budapest, the same building that had been used by the Hungarian Fascist Police.
He was questioned for eight months and then put on trial. Many people spoke on his behalf and the charges against him were dropped by the People’s Court and he was released. However, in January 1947 he was arrested again, this time by the Hungarian Secret Police, and questioned about his links with western intelligence. It is fairly certain that Alaeddin Moukhton, a cousin of King Farouk, paid a substantial bribe to Almásy’s jailers to obtain his release. This was done with the help of MI6, who it appears Almásy was in touch with during the Soviet invasion, sending the British details of Red Army movements.
Travelling under fake papers as Josef Grossman, Almásy moved via the British zone of Austria on to Trieste. There the British consulate supplied him with documents for the onward journey to Rome and then to Cairo.
Almásy just managed to reach the aircraft that would take him to Egypt ahead of the NKVD assassination team who chased his car through the streets of Rome. They had turned up at the front door of his hotel as he slipped out the back door; they were easy to identify in their long overcoats even in the heat of a Roman August. Almásy must have been a British agent at some point and of some importance – even a double agent while still apparently serving the Germans – for MI6 to have gone to such lengths to save his life.16
Alaeddin Moukhton and men from British intelligence picked him up at Cairo airport. He was in a bad physical condition, thinner than usual and walking with a stoop. He was set up in a flat in the fashionable Zamalek district of Cairo and paid a small allowance, thankful to be back in his beloved Egypt.17
See here for a list of abbreviations used in the below notes
1 KV/2/1467 ref 40
2 ibid.
3 ibid, Jenkins to Sir David Petrie MI5 1/8/1942
4 Mosley, p.141
5 ibid, p.142
6 KV/2/1467 16A
7 ibid, Telegram No 532 Cairo-London
8 ibid, 20/8/1942 p.2
9 Sansom, p.166
10 ibid, p.181
11 ibid, p.181–182
12 Clayton, P., Desert Explorer p.156
13 Almásy, p.96
14 Bierman, J., The Secret Life of László Almásy p.201
15 WO 208/1562 SIME No157 22/11/1942
16 GCCS 19/66 No 7568 Athens-Berlin 13/2/1944
17 Kelly, p.251