CHAPTER 2
The secret battlefield
Intelligence and counter-intelligence in Scandinavia during the First World War
‘War is not an intellectual activity,’ writes the British military historian John Keegan. ‘War is about doing, about the application of brute force.’1 The First World War, however, was the first war where the systematic gathering of intelligence by professional agencies influenced military decisions. In fact the very concept of a ‘spy’ was not codified until the Brussels Declaration of 1874, and while the collective European intelligence agencies before 1914 employed but a handful of people, the number had grown to several thousand when the war ended.2 This development reflected that a steep process of professionalization and the use of new technology such as wireless radio and the telegraph had given greater credence to information gathered through covert intelligence.3 The outbreak of war on 28 July 1914 also led to a sharp increase in intelligence activities in the neutral countries of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Thus, while devoid of trenches, gas clouds, or pitched battles, even Scandinavia became a battlefield in the Great War.
Scandinavia’s importance for the warring parties derived from its natural resources and its geographical position. Scandinavia produced goods that were valuable for the warring parties—fish, agricultural products, and minerals used in the manufacturing of ammunition—while in a Europe split in two there was but a limited number of routes available for the transportation of people, goods, and information. Scandinavia offered fast and open lines of communication between the warring parties as well as from the eastern to the western theatre of war. As the alternative routes ran either through the Iberian Peninsula, North America, or the Netherlands, Scandinavia rose in importance, and its ports became information and transportation hubs, providing conduits to enemy territory.
This chapter explores three main questions regarding intelligence activities in Scandinavia during the First World War, with special emphasis on Norway. Firstly, what were the aims of the various intelligence agencies and Norwegian counter-intelligence? Secondly, how did they organize and conduct their work? And thirdly, how successful were the various agencies in achieving their desired outcome?
German intelligence
German intelligence operations against enemy states and neutral countries were organized and run by two different organizations: the Nachrichten-Abteilung N of the Admiralty Staff and Abteilung IIIb of the General Staff. The senior agency was IIIb, established back in 1889 to collect non-battlefield information of strategic interest for the army, but until 1914 it was still rather small and staffed by gentleman amateurs rather than professional agents.4
However, in the run-up to the war, and especially after the appointment of Major Walther Nicolai as head of IIIb in 1912, this was rapidly changing. The N-Abteilung, meanwhile, was modelled on IIIb, and had been set up as late as 1901 to gather information on the navies of foreign powers, chiefly the British Royal Navy. Accordingly, it was responsible for all espionage in Great Britain. Unlike IIIb, N-Abteilung was an integrated part of the German navy and all its staff members were naval officers. Its field agents, on the other hand, were a mix of reserve officers and foreigners. While there was some competition between the two agencies, a broad division of labour existed from early on. N-Abteilung also established close links with the German Foreign Office, with the latter practicing a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of leaving it up to individual diplomats to decide their level of involvement in covert activities, although stressing the need for plausible deniability should such involvement be discovered.
Before 1914, German intelligence activities in Scandinavia had been few and far between, reflecting the region’s status as peaceful and neutral, posing little threat to Germany. The only known operations were a limited number of mapping tours by German naval officers along the coastlines of Norway and Denmark, more or less in disguise. In addition, the German General Staff had contingency plans for an occupation of Denmark. These plans of course rested on specific information about that country, collected by various means.5
British intelligence
Compared to Germany, Great Britain was late in establishing a professional intelligence organization. In fact, the creation of the Secret Service Bureau (SSB) was prompted by the spy mania whipped up by the publication of several works of popular fiction depicting an aggressive Germany secretly plotting to attack Great Britain.6 The agency was established in 1909 to gather intelligence on German activities. From the outset, its activities were divided between two separate divisions: MI5, responsible for domestic counter-intelligence, and MI6, in charge of espionage. Similar to the development within the German intelligence agencies, the outbreak of war vastly increased the pressure on MI6 to provide information on enemy activities. With the recruitment of agents in and around Germany, as well as collecting information on the German arms industry, fortifications, and military installations, MI6 was to create an early warning system for a future German attack.
The threat of imperial Germany also led to cooperation with Britain’s old enemies, the French, who suggested that the British should ‘use people from third countries—Norwegians, Swiss and so on’.7 MI6’s initial focus in Scandinavia was on naval intelligence. Pre-war efforts to follow German warship movements were renewed, and with the imposition of the wartime blockade on the enemy MI6 was also deployed to monitor this and help plug gaps which the Germans might exploit.8
Norwegian counter-intelligence
In the period immediately preceding the outbreak of war, for the first time since the country gained its independence in 1905, foreign espionage became a challenge for Norwegian authorities. A related problem was the large influx of foreigners to Norway, and especially its capital Kristiania, as the warring countries expelled thousand of aliens from their territories and thousands more chose to leave on their own account to seek refuge in neutral countries. By 1917 more than 25,000 aliens had settled in Norway, most of them in Kristiania. At the same time, Norway’s ports were a transit area for everyone from deserters, wounded soldiers, and escaped prisoners of war to diplomats, journalists, and businessmen. Just the sheer number of immigrants and people in transit alone became a cause for unrest among the general public. In 1914 Norway was still a small and homogenous country on Europe’s periphery, its experience of such large-scale immigration limited. Xenophobia was widespread, and in particular the perceived increase in the number of Jews and other migrants from Germany and Eastern Europe was given much attention.9
As a consequence, the Norwegian Storting in August 1914 passed the Lov om forsvarshemmeligheter (Act on Defence Secrets) or—as it was widely known—the ‘Spy Act’, which throughout the war provided the main authorization for the police in matters of espionage. For the first time, all espionage activity on behalf of a foreign power on Norwegian soil was criminalized, regardless of the origins of the perpetrator or whether the target was Norwegian interests or not. The act also made all military areas off limits, and forbade the drawing of sketches and maps as well as photographing in military areas. In many ways, this was an attempt to stop Norway from becoming a battlefield in the war, as the activities of spies from foreign powers were not merely a source of embarrassment for the Norwegian government—they could also lead to severe difficulties in relations with Germany and Great Britain, thus potentially endangering Norway’s status as a neutral country.10 In June 1915, the Storting passed amendments to the law on the control of aliens, which made it easier for the police to expel foreigners and to investigate their mail and telegram correspondence. Later followed regulations making it compulsory for all foreign citizens to register, authorizing the police to ban foreigners from residing in certain municipalities, and making passports mandatory.
Like their foreign counterparts, and perhaps even more so, the Norwegian agencies charged with carrying out these new policies were yet in their infancy. Information about perceived external and internal threats were collected by Generalstabens etterettningskontor, the General Staff’s Intelligence Office, manned by only two officers. And while this office collected and analysed information received from the police or from open sources, it had no independent means with which to carry out investigations. Counter-intelligence and surveillance were the responsibility of the police, but no centralized direction or coordination existed before the war. Responsibility for counteracting the activities of foreign intelligence agencies fell to Opdagelsespolitiet, the detective departments of the local police forces. By far the largest and most important was the department in Kristiania, headed by the energetic Opdagelseschef (Chief of Detectives) Joh. Søhr. His assistant in cases pertaining to espionage and aliens was the veteran Detective Inspector Redvald Larssen.11
The early years (1914–16)
After the outbreak of war, both N-Abteilung and IIIb set in motion pre-planned operations known as the Kriegsnachrichtenwesen. This entailed establishing a number of posts along the borders of the Reich, with those belonging to the army termed Kriegsnachrichtenstellen (war intelligence posts, or KNSt) and those operated by the navy termed Zweigstellen der Admiralstab (Admiralty auxiliary posts), charged with establishing spy networks in enemy states, as well as collecting information from open sources.12 Army operations were directed against Russia, and Scandinavia played only a minor role for IIIb. Swedish and Norwegian territories were used mainly as bases for these operations, and all of Sweden and Norway were left to a single desk staffed by only two officers at the Berlin KNSt.13
However, one of the first German agents caught in Norway was Friederich W. Katsch from the Berlin KNSt in the spring of 1915. The former businessman had travelled extensively throughout Norway, recruiting locals as observers and setting up listening posts from the autumn of 1914 onwards. His mission was first and foremost to collect information about Norway, and only secondly to receive and transmit information sent from spies inside Great Britain. In so far as he was able to continue his work until his arrest and deportation in March 1915, the mission was a limited success.
Most of German intelligence activity in Scandinavia, however, was directed by N-Abteilung’s Zweigstelle in Gothenburg, established in July 1915 with substations in Kristiania, Bergen, Copenhagen, Malmö, and Stockholm. The Zweigstelle operated under the guise of the firm Handelsaktiebolaget Emptio AB, and was under the command of Lieutenant Captain Edwin Nordmann. Before the war Nordmann had been in the merchant navy, as had several others on his staff. The steadily growing number of incoming intelligence reports—from 740 in 1915 to 1,410 in 1916, and 2,066 in 1917—is testament to a high level of activity.14
From these substations a large number of agents were sent into Great Britain over the next couple of years. But the poor quality of the intelligence they gathered as well as the high discovery rate soon led to a change in policy. In fact, open sources such as newspapers had yielded as much, if not more, valuable information, and as early as 1915 a decision was made to put less emphasis on the placing of agents inside Great Britain. Instead, resources were reallocated to the gathering of intelligence from open sources and establishing a greater presence in neutral countries, especially the Netherlands and Scandinavia.
A contributing factor was the submarine war launched in February 1915, defining the waters surrounding the British Isles as a war zone, rendering all ships found inside this zone, regardless of their flag and cargo, liable to be attacked by German U-boats. One of the main shipping lanes ran from western Norway across the North Sea to Great Britain, and during 1915 the N-Abteilung set up a ship-watching service (Schiffbefragungsdienst) in the harbour cities of the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark in order to collect such intelligence. The most important of these networks of agents and informants were found in Rotterdam, Esbjerg, and Bergen. Local agents, mostly disguised as businessmen or journalists, were charged with setting up a system of ship-watchers in harbour towns from Trelleborg to Narvik. While the agents running the substations were mostly German nationals, the ship-watchers were generally Norwegian and paid per report submitted. The substations in Copenhagen and Kristiania were also given additional tasks, the most important being the surveillance of British intelligence, checks on expatriate Germans, the collection of information about the national governments, investigations of companies trading with the enemy, and the recruitment of spies who could be sent over the North Sea.15
The German operatives were divided into three groups: ‘Agenten’—German intelligence operatives and locally recruited spies who, undercover, collected information inside enemy territory; ‘Ausfrager’—people who provided information and reports, but who did not work undercover and, for the most part, operated in neutral territory; and ‘Helfer’—people who assisted N-Abteilung by providing cover addresses, safe houses, information, and equipment. While many of the Helfer and Ausfrager were Scandinavian citizens, German expatriates were also extensively recruited by appealing either to their patriotic duty or by offering them trade licenses, exemption from military service, or simply money.16
From January 1916 on, German intelligence began to provide individual operatives with a number identifying his or her status. Numbers 1–299 were given to Agenten, 300–599 to Ausfrager, and 600 upwards to Helfer. By 1918 the Zweigstelle in Gothenburg had given out 242 numbers to Agenten and Ausfrager and 341 Helfer numbers. However, not all of these operatives ever produced any reports as many, especially among the Danes, turned out to be swindlers, some had changed their minds after being recruited, while others were unable to obtain passports to enter Great Britain, or had been arrested or fallen sick. According to a report from February 1918 there were also more than 50 spies that N was unable to re-establish contact with.17
Shortly after Katsch’s arrest in March 1915, the Norwegian police also uncovered their first naval operative, a German language school principal in Bergen by the name of Heinz Clarenz Bauermeister. His main task was to pass messages between Great Britain and Berlin, and among the operatives he had received letters from was Carl Lody, who in November 1914 had been the first German spy to be executed in Great Britain. Bauermeister was put under surveillance by the Norwegian police after having received a suspiciously large number of letters, and they soon noticed that he often visited British ships in Bergen’s harbour. However, because the case became public knowledge when a police request for his expulsion was rejected by the government, Bauermeister lost value as a spy and chose to leave Norway.18
After Zweigstelle Gothenburg became fully operational in the summer of 1915, the navy took over control of Scandinavian operations. At this point Abteilung-N’s agents set up the ship-watching base ‘Organisation Bergen’, which monitored shipping and obtained information by engaging travellers in conversation. Its leaders were frequently changed so as not to expose them to Norwegian and British counter-intelligence, and a number of Norwegians and expatriate German were recruited to do the legwork.19
The second base, ‘Organisation Kristiania’, also functioned as a logistical support centre for German activity in Norway as a whole, collecting information on Norwegian politics and military affairs, companies trading with the British, Germans expatriates, and British agents, while also providing a base for recruiting and dispatching spies to Great Britain. This organization was broken up by the Norwegian police in 1916 and the German agents expelled from Norway. A new base was soon established, and only six months later the Norwegian police yet again had to arrest the leaders of the Kristiania organization, after noticing a newspaper advertisement seeking young men or seamen willing to travel to England. In police custody the highest-ranking officer confessed that his mission had been to obtain military and commercial information concerning Germany’s enemies.20 The operation had already succeeded in recruiting several destitute young sailors, who were supplied with money, a list of questions, secret ink hidden in handkerchiefs, and a cover address. At least nine Scandinavians were sent to Great Britain, two of them women. After confessing, all the Germans were allowed to leave Norway quietly.21
Given that N-Abteilung was able to establish several bases and networks on Norwegian territory, the German activities there can be counted moderately successful. Also, as long as the consequences of being discovered were relatively mild—expulsion for non-Norwegians and a warning for Norwegians—recruiting agents and establishing new bases was a relatively easy task. However, the information gathered was by and large of mediocre quality, mostly stemming from open sources and second-rate agents. Moreover, the deficiencies of German intelligence become even more obvious when compared to its opposite number.
MI6’s operations in Scandinavia in the first couple of years of the war were led by Frank Stagg, a former Navy officer, and his assistant Richard Carlyle Holme, a British artillery captain who lived in Kristiania. From the very start MI6 had a double mission: monitor Norwegian trade in order to compose a ‘black list’ of Norwegian companies and businessmen trading with Germany, and run a ship-watching network monitoring German and neutral ships in Norwegian waters. Similar organizations also existed in Sweden (nine agents) and Denmark (twelve agents). Like their German counterparts, MI6 numbered its agents, giving each a national prefix—N, D, or S—followed by a number. Come the spring of 1915 as many as twenty Norwegians, spread along the coast, worked for Holme. By that time his activities had come to the attention of the Norwegian police, and he was subsequently arrested, whereupon he immediately confessed to being an agent and explained that his job was to monitor enemy activity in Norway. As in the German cases, it all ended with Holme and the other Britons being expelled and their Norwegian agents being given warnings.22
Holme was then relocated to Copenhagen, freeing up Stagg to travel more widely. However, late in 1915, after the Germans had registered serious complaints against him with the Danish government, Stagg was pulled out of Denmark altogether and brought back to London. Over the following years he spent more and more of his time in Norway, travelling on an American passport, and there he developed a productive liaison with the Norwegians, particularly the police and the navy. A major coup for MI6 came when Stagg travelled to northern Norway in the autumn of 1916 to survey and monitor the transport of goods from Finland and became acquainted with Redvald Larssen of the Kristiania police. According to Stagg, Larssen agreed that ‘he would always help in any way he could without letting down his superiors if we passed word to him.’23 Stagg and Larssen became close friends, and this was the starting point of a close collaboration between MI6 and the Norwegian police.24 Stagg also gained access to reports from the Norwegian navy’s own costal observation stations and radio listening posts. The British Admiralty went so far as to send technicians to a Norwegian naval base to improve its listening technology. The liaisons between British and Norwegian officials were unofficial and based on personal ties. It is not possible to determine from available sources whether they were sanctioned by the Norwegian government, though it is probable that an acceptance of sorts had been obtained.
MI6’s success rate in monitoring and banning companies that traded with Germany seems to have been considerable, especially measured against the delicate balancing act of maintaining accord with governments in the neutral countries where these activities took place. Also, taking into account that MI6 had to start from scratch and immediately became locked in a turf war with other government agencies, its construction of an intelligence network in Scandinavia might more aptly be described as an outright success. That said, this was due in large measure to its more limited aims when compared to the Germans.25
The increasing number of spy cases uncovered in 1914 and 1915 led to demands for the centralization of Norwegian counter-intelligence, and in the summer of 1915 the Ministry of Justice decided that counter-intelligence efforts should be coordinated under the leadership of the Kristiania Detective Department. Joh. Søhr now became the head of Norwegian counter-intelligence in addition to his duties as Chief of Detectives in Kristiania, and the staff at the Kristiania immigration office was tripled from two to six officers. However, due to the lack of manpower and resources, most of the activity was still confined to the cities of Kristiania, Bergen, and Trondheim. As head of the counter-intelligence, the conservative, anti-Semitic, and anglophile Søhr kept a high public profile, constantly calling for more resources and men, while complaining that the existing laws were too lax and failed to provide the police with the necessary tools.26
An investigation of the spy cases uncovered by Norwegian counter-intelligence in the first two years of the war leads to the following conclusions. Firstly, Norway, and indeed all the Scandinavian countries, were of limited importance to the warring states, as most of their activities were directed towards one another. They mostly used the Scandinavian countries as a launch pad for moving spies and information back and forth across the front lines, or using the coast and harbours to observe the movement of people, goods, and ships.
Secondly, the efforts of the German and British intelligence services in Norway were in retrospect rather amateurish. The informants and spies were recruited in a hurry, and were a mix of expatriates already living in Norway and former officers, mariners, and businessmen, none with any intelligence experience. This was especially evident in the way the agents tended to draw unwanted attention by receiving large amounts of mail or being overly inquisitive or lax in their security measures. But, having said that, both MI6 and N-Abteilung rapidly became more professional.
Thirdly and finally, there was the question of Norway’s response to foreign intelligence activity on its soil. The Norwegian police’s counter-intelligence grew in size, capability, and effectiveness in 1915 and 1916, as the implementation of the 1914 Spy Act provided them with the necessary tools to prosecute spies operating in Norway. To the frustration of the police, the prosecutors tended to release spies who were caught with nothing more than a slap on the wrist; foreigners were expelled and Norwegians let off with a warning. Furthermore, such cases were kept under wraps by the government, and did not as a rule become public knowledge.27 As a result, MI6 and N-Abteilung could operate more or less unrestricted.
This, however, was beginning to change. The last German spy to merely be extradited was a Swedish citizen in German service, baron Otto von Rosen, who was arrested in northern Norway in January 1917. The Norwegian police were acting on a tip received from MI6 that von Rosen and two assistants were travelling northbound in the direction of Russian-controlled Finland through the Swedish and Norwegian wilderness. In his possession the police found Norwegian, Finnish, and Russian currency, a box of sugar lumps, a pistol, a map of Northern Finland, explosives, fuses and percussion caps, and several bottles of the poison curare. As was customary, von Rosen was soon released and expelled, and it was only later that the police discovered that the sugar lumps contained anthrax germs.28 These were most likely to be used to sabotage the transport of British weapons to the Russians in Finland. Unlike previous cases the discovery became public knowledge, and the police’s decision to do no more than expel von Rosen came under heavy criticism.29 Furthermore, it added to the building British pressure on Norwegian authorities to put an end to such activities on its soil.
Hollow neutrality (1917–18)
More than any other year of the First World War, 1917 was characterized by ‘spy mania’, when real and imagined plots of sabotage and espionage dominated the public discourse. There were three reasons for this. German submarine warfare provoked anti-German sentiment, as Norwegian ships were targets for the German navy. Similarly, the image of the German spy threat was enhanced by a number of high-profile public court cases against German agents and their Norwegian confederates. And third, but not least, the Russian Revolution in November caused a widespread fear that the Russian Bolsheviks would try to spread their revolution to the rest of the world.
The British, on the other hand, kept a low profile. In an MI6 report, only ten British agents were listed as active in Norway in 1917—rather on the low side compared to its German counterpart, and reflecting the different working environments of the two agencies. In fact, after the break-up of the Holmes spy ring in 1916, no British agent or Norwegian citizen in British service was ever prosecuted. In some cases British agents were asked to keep a lower profile, but the mutual cooperation and understanding that had developed between the Norwegian police and British intelligence, especially after Stagg and Larssen’s meeting in late 1916, meant that the Norwegians mostly turned a blind eye.30
On 1 February 1917, just weeks after the expulsion of baron von Rosen, the Germans resumed and intensified the submarine warfare in the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea that had been suspended since the autumn of 1915 so as to not provoke neutral countries, in particular the Americans. The change in strategy was a response to a stalemate in the trenches, where the German military campaign in France had once more been bogged down. The German navy’s strategy was to sink merchant ships so that Great Britain would run out of food and be forced to sue for peace. Initially the campaign was a success, as Britain’s food supplies shrank to only six weeks’ worth in April 1917, but it also led to the US joining the Allies. And towards the end of 1917, the Entente Powers’ losses were significantly reduced through the introduction of convoys and submarine hunting by British and American warships, causing Germany to lose more submarines than it could replace.31
Few nations felt the consequences of the submarine war as hard as Norway. Between July 1914 and February 1917 it had lost 336 ships, the majority sunk by German submarines, and nearly 400 sailors had lost their lives. Now the number grew at an alarming rate. In the first six months of 1917 alone the Germans sank 300 ships and killed close to 450 sailors. That was bad enough, but several ship captains reported that the Germans had been lying in wait and seemed to know their course. While the majority of the Norwegian public had been more or less supportive of the Entente throughout the war, public opinion now definitely turned against Germany. Local Germans were actively shunned and became objects of suspicion, as the anti-Semitic image of a German equals a Jew equals a spy was cultivated even in the mainstream press, in a number of high-profile cases of espionage. Several prominent Norwegians returned honours and medals previously bestowed upon them by Germany and openly condemned the Kaiser. Until this point, all foreign agents had been treated equally, regardless of their country of origin, but now German submarine warfare and its dire consequences for Norway paved the way for more severe punishment for German agents, as news of ship losses and deaths came on a daily basis. When the Norwegian police discovered a new spy ring in early 1917, it was no longer possible to keep such news under wraps.32
The spy ring in question was N-Abteilung’s ‘Organisation Bergen’, and the case, soon dubbed the ‘Major Bergen Spy Case’ by the media, created a public outcry. The Norwegian Detective Department became aware of German activities in Bergen in late 1916, and in the spring of 1917 fourteen Norwegians were arrested. While the German instigators had managed to escape before the arrests took place, it only served to increase the disgust of the public that among the Norwegians there were several seamen. According to the local Bergen paper Bergens Tidende, ‘there is hardly any difference between treason and commercial espionage leading to Norwegian ships being torpedoed’.33 The conservative newspaper Aftenposten led the attack on the government and demanded action: ‘We can see that spies have surrounded us on all sides and worked in our midst. … A change to the system is necessary! Spies have been arrested, extensive spying affairs investigated. The public has been kept totally unaware, all doors closed in this respect too.’34 The sentences were handed down in early June: ten of the accused were imprisoned for up to nine months, while four were acquitted.35
A year earlier, N-Abteilung had established a new department, NIV, to run sabotage operations against the Allies. A sub-office named ‘Organisation S’ (for sabotage) was set up in Stockholm and disguised as a medical supplies business, and seems to have been kept separate from the Zweigstelle in Gothenburg. The targets were ships carrying food to Britain and Russian industry in Finland, and most of the personnel were Finnish exiles. In 1917 Finnish agents controlled from Stockholm built up a large cache of explosives in Kristiania. As in the von Rosen case, it is not entirely clear what their actual purpose was; whether the explosives were intended for blowing up British and possibly Norwegian ships, or Finnish factories. That several bombs were disguised as lumps of coal may point to the former. NIV used a Finn, Walther von Gerich, to transport the explosives to Kristiania. He travelled as a diplomatic courier under a false identity as baron Walther von Rautenfels, and the explosives were transported in sealed diplomatic bags. The operation was discovered by MI6 in Stockholm, who in turn tipped off the Kristiania Detective Department. Soon after von Gerich arrived in Kristiania in June 1917, they apprehended him and his associates, and they also located a cache of nearly 1,000 kilos of explosives and fire bombs, or ‘infernal machines’ as the press soon labelled them. Because of von Gerich’s diplomatic immunity the Norwegian government had to release him, albeit along with a sharply worded protest, but a number of his accomplices were tried in a large public trial later in 1917 and given severe sentences. This effectively shut down NIV in Norway, and there are no confirmed reports of sabotage against Norwegian ships after this date. The Rautenfels case also alerted Norwegian and Swedish police as well as the press to the Germans’ operations in Stockholm, and the NIV office was soon forced to shut down as its staff had to return to Germany.36
N-Abteilung continued to run its ship-watcher network as before, and a new organization was soon set up in Kristiania under the leadership of Erich Lawendel. He was also supposed to reestablish the ship-watching organization in Bergen, and in the spring of 1917 he dispatched a butcher’s apprentice, Karl Schwartz, to Bergen. Schwartz was rewarded with money and exemption from German military service. In April 1917, after he had boasted to other Germans about being a spy, the Bergen police duly arrested Schwarz. In custody, he soon confessed, and named not only Lawendel but also Alfred Hagn, a Norwegian painter recruited by Lawendel and sent to Great Britain disguised as a journalist. Søhr, or possibly Larssen with the implicit acceptance of his superior, then tipped of MI6 about the Norwegian agent currently working in London. For Søhr this was probably a quid pro quo for the information leading to the von Rosen and Rautenfels arrests, but he also expected the British to extradite Hagn back to Norway. This was a miscalculation, and after Hagn was arrested by British police on 24 May he was swiftly sentenced to death, only escaping execution after the intercession of Norwegian officials and because the British government wanted to appease Norway in matters of trade policy. Lawendel and Schwartz were tried in late 1917, in what was labelled the ‘Minor Bergen Spy Case’. They were the first foreign citizens prosecuted for espionage in Norway, and were sentenced to five and four years in prison respectively after a trial that was widely reported in the press.37
Soon afterwards several more German agents were apprehended. Perhaps the most important was Hugo Gramatski, an engineer who had previously completed two missions to Great Britain, earning him an Iron Cross. Gramatski was working for a recent addition to the N-Abteilung stable: Department G. This had been set up in 1916 to conduct Abwehrspionage or Gegenspionage—counter-intelligence and surveillance of local Germans—and at the time of his arrest several G-stellen had been established across Europe, including Gothenburg and Malmö. Gramatski’s mission was to set one up in Kristiania, and before coming to Norway he had carried out similar work in Denmark and Sweden. In November 1917 he was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment.38
Throughout the war, but increasingly towards the end of 1917 and onwards, the losses of German personnel in Norway were significant, although not totally crippling. In late 1917 agents 665 and 114 were reported as being active in Kristiania, the latter being the new spy leader there. He was never identified by the Norwegians, and sent valuable reports to Gothenburg throughout 1918. Operational changes took place in this cell too. The front company, Emptio AB, was struck from the register of companies in 1916, as the tax authorities were unable to determine its actual business. Nordmann was then given a new cover as the local vice-consul, while other agents posed as businessmen or clerks at the consulate. While the local police were well aware of what was going on, they turned a blind eye as long as it did not harm Swedish interests. This was an interesting parallel to MI6’s activities in Norway. However, as the increasing number of disclosures in Norway became public knowledge, it eventually forced the hand of the Swedish police, especially as the connections to Sweden were evident, most noticeably in the Rautenfels case. As we have seen, the NIV office in Stockholm was forced to shut down, and in June 1917 the Gothenburg police arrested and expelled several other German agents.
Nordmann was still protected by his diplomatic immunity, and he now voiced his growing annoyance with the Norwegian policies to his superiors in Berlin. Not only were the sentences given to his agents overly harsh, especially in the case of Lawendel, they also bore witness to a great hatred of Germany. He pointed out that no British agent had ever been punished, even though several had been caught and many were still active. The Admiralty certainly agreed that the Norwegian police was working in the British interest in a brutal and ruthless manner, and to counter this, the G-stelle in Gothenburg started to collect evidence of British espionage in Norway in order to provoke the arrest of MI6 agents. The project failed, as no MI6 agents were arrested or even had their work impeded in any serious way.39
The Norwegian police continued to receive reports of imaginary spies from all corners of Norway, as everyone who looked even remotely German was treated with deep mistrust. German intelligence, however, for the time being preferred to keep a low profile, and large operations such as sabotage were avoided. Instead, they concentrated on running the more mundane, day-to-day espionage. The Schiffbefragungsdienst was still operative, with bases in Kristiania and Bergen, but the recruitment and dispatch of agents to Great Britain was mostly dropped. If one takes into account the lowered ambitions, these operations went quite well. Large amounts of information were sent back to Germany, although in the event there was little of any significant value.
Towards the end of the war the feverish work of Opdagelspolitiet, MI6, and Nachrichten-Abteilung in Norway, indeed across Scandinavia, waned. The Detective Department in Kristiania, which had grown so much in the war years, was dissolved, and its staff returned to their pre-war assignments. Many of them were put to work investigating the new danger of Communism.
This development was also reflected in the reorganization of other intelligence agencies. Nordmann eventually dismantled the Zweigstelle in Gothenburg and returned to Germany. And while the N-Abteilung continued to send in junior agents to Norway, and a number of them were caught and tried, the court cases no longer produced a media storm. Moreover, the main interest was no longer British activities, but rather the growing fear of a communist revolution spreading from Bolshevik Russia. One instance was the arrest of a Norwegian-Dutch businessman sent by Zweigstelle Gothenburg to Bergen in April 1918, equipped with a detailed questionnaire in order to chart communist activities.40 MI6 also kept up a discreet presence in Scandinavia, and in 1918 agents with numbers as high as D.62, N.20, and S.76 were working in the field. And like its German counterpart, and in addition to its previous activities against imperial Germany, MI6 now increasingly sought information about the Bolsheviks, and Scandinavia was seen as a good base for working inside Russia.41
Thus, as German and British intelligence operations in Norway ceased, the triangle of the German–Jew–Spy was gradually erased and replaced, both in the minds of the public and the Norwegian police, with a new triangle of a Bolshevik equals a Jew equals a Spy, as the threat of communist Russia was to dominate intelligence activities in Norway and elsewhere in Western Europe for the next seven decades.42
A neutral ally?
From the earliest times, military leaders have sought information about the enemy—his strengths, his weaknesses, his intentions, and his dispositions. Unlike previous wars, the First World War was the first major conflict where the belligerents were able to transmit such information over vast distances in real time. However, the intelligence agencies’ effectiveness in fulfilling their purpose, especially when measured against the resources poured into such agencies, has been questioned in recent years by historians.43 Scandinavia in the First World War seems to be a case in point.
In hindsight, the intelligence war in Scandinavia as a whole, and certainly in Norway, had no real victors, as it never went beyond a war of attrition. Germany had few gains of any real value, the British merely succeeded in hindering the Germans, and the Norwegians were generally unsuccessful in preventing both sides from operating on its territory. In fact, as we have seen, the major triumphs of the Norwegian police—the von Rosen and Rautenfels cases—were results of information from MI6. If anything, the greatest success of Norwegian counter-intelligence was its close cooperation with MI6. For Norway, the increased attention paid to its territory by the warring powers meant it had to strike a delicate balance with its counter-measures. On the one hand, it was dependent upon exporting and importing goods to both the Entente and the Central Powers. On the other hand there was an inherent danger that a failure to heed to the demands of either side could threaten Norway’s status as a neutral country. Cooperation with MI6 provided a back channel which was used to promote understanding for Norway’s official foreign policy in British government circles. While the Norway of this dual approach has been described by the historian Olav Riste as ‘the neutral ally’, Riste was referring to the praxis of the state remaining neutral while the private sector functioned as an allied partner of the British.44 Here, however, we have a case of a government agency undermining public policy and—as in the case of Hagn—actually endangering a Norwegian citizen.
When judging the success, or rather lack of success, of the various agencies, it must be measured against their aims. In this respect, Germany lost. Norway was supposed to be a bridgehead both towards Russia to the east and Great Britain to the west, and while several agents were sent into Great Britain from Norway, the available evidence does not indicate that information of any real value was gained. And even if the ship-watching operation had some successes, the British soon learned to take appropriate counter-measures. Similarly, German sabotage efforts came to nothing. On balance, German intelligence operations in Norway were rather counter-productive, especially as they worked to turn public opinion decisively against Germany.
While there was no clear victor in the intelligence war, if anything the win by default would go to the British. With its rather limited and mainly reactive war aims, MI6 was able to hinder the Germans from using Norwegian territory with any real effectiveness, all while keeping the Norwegians on the straight and narrow.
Notes
1 John Keegan, Intelligence in War. Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda (London: Pimlico 2003), 369.
2 Dietrich Schindler & Jiří Toman, The Laws of Armed Conflicts: a collection of conventions, resolutions, and other documents (Dordrecht: Martinus Nihjoff, 1988), 30; cf. Hugo Kerchnawe, ‘Werdegang der Spionage’, in Paul Lettow-Vorbeck et al. (eds.), Die Weltkriegsspionage (Munich: Justin Moser, 1931), 15.
3 Fritz Karl Roegels, ‘Die Technick im Diensten des Agenten’, in Lettow-Vorbeck et al. 1931, 125–39.
4 Rudolf von Borries, ‘Spionage im Welten vor dem Kriege’, in Lettow-Vorbeck et al. 1931, 77–84.
5 Thomas Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser. German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 6–20 & 80–8; Tim Greve, Spionjakt i Norge. Norsk overvåkningstjeneste i tiden før 1940 (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1982), 31–33 & 80–88; Jürgen W. Schmidt, Gegen Russland und Frankreich. Der deutsche militärische Geheimdienst 1890–1914 (Ludwigsfelde bei Berlin: Ludwigsfelder Verlagshaus, 2006); Michael H. Clemmesen, Den lange vej mod 9. april. Historien om de fyrre år før den tyske operation mod Norge og Danmark i 1940 (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2010), 8–59.
6 The best-known works of these anti-German invasion fantasies are William Le Queux’s two novels The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and The Invasion of 1910 (1906) as well as Robert Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands (1903) and Saki’s When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns (1913).
7 Michael Smith, Six. A History of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, i: 1909–1939 (London: Dialogue, 2010), 20; Alan Judd, The Quest for C. Mansfield Cumming and the founding of the Secret Service (London: HarperCollins, 2000), 150, 229 & 255.
8 Judd 2000, 25–26, 70–72, 89–111, 150, 203, 229 & 255; Keith Jeffery, MI6. The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), 87; Smith 2010, 35–36.
9 Knut Kjeldstadli, Jan Eivind Myhre & Einar Niemi, I nasjonalstatens tid 1814–1940 (vol. ii of Knut Kjeldstadli (ed.), Norsk innvandringshistorie) (Oslo: Pax 2003), 376–82; Hans Fredrik Dahl, ‘Antisemittismen i norsk historie’, in Bernt Hagtvet (ed.), Folkemordenes svarte bok (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2008), 444 ff.
10 Roald Berg, Norsk utenrikspolitisk historie, ii: Norge på egen hånd 1905– 1920 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget 1995), 182–215; Knut Einar Eriksen & Trond Bergh, Den hemmelige krigen. Overvåking i Norge 1914–1997, ii: Overvåkingssystemet bygges opp, 1914–1955 (Oslo: Cappelen akademisk forlag, 1998).
11 Nik. Brandal, Eirik Brazier & Ola Teige, Den mislykkede spionen. Fortellingen om kunstneren, journalisten og landssvikeren Alfred Hagn (Oslo: Humanist forlag, 2010), 112–14.
12 August Urbanski von Ostrymiecz, ‘Aufmarschpläne’, in Lettow-Vorbeck et al. 1931, 85–8.
13 Markus Pöhlmann, ‘German Intelligence at War 1914–1918’, Journal of Intelligence History, 5/2 (2005), 35–37; Schmidt 2006; Boghardt 2004, 159.
14 Greve 1982, 34–35; Bundesarchiv Abteilung Militärarchiv (BAM), Freiburg, RM/5 3680.
15 Boghardt 2004, 12–20 & 80–94; Pöhlmann 2005, 23–38 & 47–54; Greve 1982, 31–49 & 69; Joh. Søhr, Spioner og bomber. Fra opdagelsespolitiets arbeide under verdenskrigen (Oslo: Tanum, 1938), 47–62, 99–107 & 126; BAM, RM 5/2700, 3650, 3680, 3708, 4663 & 4677; National Archives (TNA), London, KV 1/42, KV 1/43–44.
16 BAM, RM 5/2700, 3680 & 4677.
17 BAM, RM 5/2700, 3680; Riksarkivet (Norwegian National Achives – NRA), Oslo, Generalstaben, 1814–1940, IV avdeling, pk. 216 Yngve Nielsen; Statsarkivet i Bergen (Bergen Regional Archives), Bergen (SAB), Bergen politidistrikt, O.a Diverse, Henlagte spionsaker 1915–20, pk. 2 1916.
18 NRA, Generalstaben, 1814–1940, IV avdeling, pk. 65 register over mistenkelige personer 1914–1916 and pk. 193 Spionsaker 1915; SAB, Bergen politidistrikt, O.a Diverse, Henlagte spionsaker 1915–20, pk. 1 1914–15.
19 Greve 1982, 31–49; Søhr 1938, 47–62 & 99–126; NRA, Generalstaben, 1814–1940, IV avdeling, pk. 192 Spionsaker 1915, Rush and Emden, pk. 194 Spionsaker 1916, pk. 208–209 Tyske spioner 1917–18, pk. 211 Dokumenter om mistenkelige personer, pk. 214 Holzhüter and Borgen, and pk. 216 Yngve Nilsen; SAB, Bergen politidistrikt, O.a Diverse, Henlagte spionsaker 1915–20, pk. 1 1914–15 and pk. 2 1916; BAM, RM 5/3650 and 3680.
20 NRA, Generalstaben, 1814–1940, IV avdeling, Pk. 214 Holzhüter and Borgen.
21 Greve 1982, 31–49; Søhr 1938, 47–62 & 99–107; NRA, Generalstaben, 1814–1940, IV avdeling, pk. 191 Spionsaker 1915, pk. 193 Spionsaker 1915 and pk. 196 Spionsaker 1916; BAM, RM 5/3680, 4664 and 4673.
22 Smith 2010, 123; Jeffery 2010, 87–9; NRA, Generalstaben, 1814–1940, IV avdeling, pk. 212 Kaptein R. C. Holme 1914–15; SAB, Bergen politidistrikt, O.a Diverse, Henlagte spionsaker 1915–20, pk. 1 1914–15.
23 Quoted in Smith 2010, 129.
24 Judd 2000, 264, 282, 301, 318–22 & 350; Smith 2010, 129; Redvald Larssen, Fra vekterstuen til Møllergaten 19 (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1946), 96–7.
25 Smith 2010, 35, 123–8; Jeffery 2010, 87–9 & 94–7; Judd 2000, 264, 282, 301, 318–22 & 350.
26 Brandal, Brazier & Teige 2010, 13, 96–105 & 136–137; Søhr 1938, 24–34, 115–16 & 148–151; Kjeldstadli et al. 2003, 376–382; Greve 1982, 27–31, 57–59 & 72–76.
27 NRA, Generalstaben, 1814–1940, IV avdeling, pk. 214 Holzhüter and Borgen; Aftenposten, 19–21 April 1917.
28 K.-G. Olin, Tärningkast på liv och död (Jakobstad: Olimex, 2009), 202–32.
29 Greve 1982, 35–46; Søhr 1938, 46.
30 Judd 2000, 264; NRA, Generalstaben 1814–1940, IV avdeling, pk. 198 Spionsaker 1917; TNA, FO 272/1289.
31 Paul G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (London: Routledge, 1995), 329–441.
32 Berg 1995, 182–215; Riste, Olav, The neutral ally. Norway’s relations with belligerent powers in the First World War (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1965), 126–191.
33 Bergens Tidende, 28 June 1917, ‘Ti nogen væsensforskjel paa landsforræderi og handelsspionage med torpedering av norsk skib som følge kan der neppe siges at være.’
34 Aftenposten, 15 May 1917, ‘Vi ser, at spioner har omgivet os paa alle kanter og drevet sit arbeide midt blant os. … I dette system maa der nu ske en forandring! Spioner har været arresteret, vidløftige spionaffærer behandlet. Almenheden har været sat heldt udenfor, alle døre lukket ogsaa der.’
35 Greve 1982, 44–57; Søhr 1938, 32–46, 66–71 & 108–142.
36 Boghardt 2004, 15–16, 120–140, 158 & 170; BAM, RM 5/2582, 3708– 3709, 3650, 3680, 4663, 5024 & 5126; TNA KV 1/42; NRA, Riksadvokaten, Diverse saker, D saksarkiv 1886–1956, pk. 4 and 5 Bombesaken 1917.
37 Søhr 1938, 90 & 110–114; Greve 1982, 57; NRA, Riksadvokaten, Diverse saker, D saksarkiv 1886–1956,6 Straffesak mot Karl Schwartz m.fl. 1917–25; NRA, Utenriksdepartementet, eske 5819, P25–K 02/17 Alfred Hagn; NRA, Utenriksstasjonene, Legasjonen/Ambassaden i London, Rettssaker, A 1 Alfred Hagen (pk. 481).
38 Boghardt 2004, 153–155; Greve 42–43 & 74; Statsarkivet i Oslo (Oslo Regional Archives), Oslo, Oslo politikammer, Straffefullbyrdelse, pk. 940, sak.9/1918 and Domsjournaler, 26 1917–1918, 4.1 1918; NRA, Generalstaben, 1814–1940, IV avdeling, Pk. 194 Spionsaker 197; BAM, RM 5/3708–3709; RM 5/3650; RM 5/3680; RM 5/4663; TNA, NA KV 1/42.
39 Søhr 1938, 51; Greve 1982, 31–49 & 69; SAB, Bergen politidistrikt, O.a Diverse, Henlagte spionsaker 1915–20, pk. 2 1916; BAM, RM 5/3680, 3705, 4604, 4662–5 and 4677; Politisches archiv des Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, R 8412 Spionageprozesse in Norwegen, bd. 2, L24576, L253931, L253933 and L253937–8.
40 Søhr 1938, 130–131; SAB, Bergen politidistrikt, O.a Diverse, Henlagte spionsaker 1915–20, pk. 5 1918; NRA, Generalstaben, 1814–1940, IV avdeling, pk 205, Spionsaker 1918.
41 Jeffery 2010, 87–109, 134–138, 172–178 & 193.
42 Per Ole Johansen, Oss selv nærmest. Norge og jødene 1914–1943 (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1984), 9–26.
43 See Keegan 2003; and Ronen Bergman, The Secret War with Iran. The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power (New York: Free Press, 2008).
44 Riste 1965.