IN HIS CELEBRATED RECORD OF the Twenty Committee’s work, The Double-Cross System, Masterman famously boasted that ‘we actively ran and controlled the German espionage system in this country.’1 Sure enough, in total, by the end of the European war in May 1945, some 100 cases had passed through the hands of B1a. To the best of our knowledge, from 1940 onwards there were only four German spies who avoided capture, interrogation and the choice between working for MI5 or execution.
The first of these was an unfortunate fellow who avoided capture by landing in the middle of the Manchester Ship Canal near the Mersey estuary on the night of 7 September 1940 and was drowned.2 The second was Dutchman Engelbertus Fukken, alias Willem ter Braak. This spy successfully landed by parachute dangerously close to Bletchley Park on or around 4 November 1940. He put his radio set into the cloakroom at Cambridge railway station and found lodgings in the area, living for some time without arousing suspicion. The fact that he had been living less than 50 yards from the local RSLO office in Cambridge without detection and that his landlady had not reported the Dutchman to the police was worrying to say the least. From what the investigators could work out, the spy had run out of money and, with the details of his ration book at last queried, had gone off and shot himself to avoid being exposed. His body was discovered in an air raid shelter 36 hours later.
The next two agents were perhaps more successful and their existence has only recently been revealed by document releases. Albert Meems successfully moved in and out of Britain without being detected. A Dutch-born German livestock trader of apparent toad-like appearance, Meems first arrived in the United Kingdom on 31 October 1939, a few weeks after the outbreak of war, and stayed for a week at the Grafton Hotel on Tottenham Court Road, central London. He entered Kent in 1940, where a fellow livestock trader reported him after becoming suspicious, since the livestock trade with Holland had ceased. The agent only came to MI5’s attention in 1944 when his existence was betrayed by a captured Abwehr agent named Emil Genue.3
The other was Wilhelm Moerz. Reputed to work for the Gestapo, Moerz was reported being seen getting into a taxi in London’s Regent Street on 25 May 1940. Moerz was known to the authorities from earlier espionage assignments in Czechoslovakia and was a feared operative. For a time MI5 feared that Moerz had come to Britain to take control of German espionage in the United Kingdom, but this proved unfounded. After this incident, additional sightings cropped up all over the country but none led to an arrest, or even a positive identification.
These examples go to show that MI5 was not infallible, and that in the early days at least, there were holes in the net. For the first three years of the war, the whole double cross operation was still touch and go. In fact the organization was very lucky to survive the course of 1941, as it was swiftly hit by a number of major setbacks and the unexpected closing down of a number of the most prominent cases.
The first of these crises came in January, with what was in hindsight a comical escape bid by Summer. It will be remembered that Summer arrived in Britain as a committed Nazi. Sometime over the Christmas period he appears to have become depressed and suffered pangs of guilt about the duplicitous course his career he had taken. About 2.30pm on Monday 13 January, Summer crept up on his minder who was playing a game of double solitaire to pass the time. The double agent pulled a piece of rope across the minder’s neck and tried to garrotte him. A struggle ensued in which Summer proved himself the stronger man. The minder, a man named Paulton, blacked out momentarily, allowing the Swede to put ropes around his arms and ankles.
The spy apologized to Paulton for his rough treatment of him and said that although he knew he would swing for doing it, he could not go on with his double life any more and was making a bid for freedom. He searched Paulton’s pockets and took some money, cigarettes and his identity card. He also picked up his own identity card and the seaman’s papers that MI5 had sorted out for him. Going into the kitchen he took some tinned food, including sardines, pilchards, pears, pineapples and a lump of cold beef.
After a short time, Paulton managed to cut himself free of the ropes as Summer had carelessly left a penknife on a nearby table. He crept into the study and telephoned MI5 HQ for help. While waiting for the call to be connected, Paulton saw Summer go past the window pushing a motorcycle. The spy seemed to be having trouble carrying a canvas canoe he had picked up. At first Summer tried to sling the canoe across his back, but then managed somehow to tie it to the side of the motorcycle before tentatively driving off at a slow speed in the direction of the Wash. Paulton made a note of the motorcycle’s registration number (CXP 654) and reported it to Robertson’s deputy, John Marriott, who answered his call.4
With the police armed with the registration number and alerted to be on the look-out for a man riding a motorcycle with a canoe attached to the side of it, Summer’s escape bid was doomed to fail. In fact, the police did not have even to catch the spy – he gave himself up after repeatedly crashing the motorcycle because of the canoe. It was a very lucky break for MI5.
From the Germans’ point of view, Summer’s sudden disappearance from the airwaves was explained in the following terms. The Germans knew that Summer had Biscuit’s address for use in an emergency. Therefore Biscuit reported to Snow that Summer had written to him saying that he believed he was under surveillance by the police and had used his seaman’s papers to make a run for it. Snow contacted the Germans, saying that Summer had made a bid to get back to Europe. He also reported that his wireless set had been left in the cloakroom at Cambridge railway station. The Germans appeared to swallow the story and later ordered Biscuit to go and pick the transmitter up – which is exactly what MI5 had hoped they would request and thus allowed them to give the radio to another double cross agent.
In reality Summer was bundled off to the safety of Camp 020 for interrogation. After his second round of questioning, Summer slit his wrists with a razor blade in his cell. His guard found him in a pool of blood and summoned a doctor. His life saved, Summer revealed some hitherto unknown information. He had not been recently recruited by the Nazis as he had first made out. In fact, during his stay in Britain before the war he had been in contact with the Abwehr since October 1938 and had passed on many secrets.
In light of his escape bid, his fragile state of mind and the revelation that he had withheld information from his first interrogation, Summer could never be trusted again and his case was ended. The winding up of the Summer case had been a sobering lesson to all concerned. As well as the flow of traffic, Robertson and his team would have to keep an eye on the psychology of the agents. In future a single case officer would be assigned to each agent, in order to watch their every move, constantly monitoring their state of mind. As one MI5 employee later commented, life for an ordinary agent in wartime is strenuous enough; for a double agent, the unremitting duplicity meant there was a real chance the agent would fall into a schizophrenic state.5
XX
The next major case to fall was the founding agent of the XX system – Snow. Although much attention had been showered on the new arrival Tate, the Snow network remained the most important double cross outfit at the beginning of 1941. After attempts to tempt Snow’s controller Nikolaus Ritter (alias Dr Rantzau) to visit the spy in Northern Ireland, in January 1941 Snow at last agreed to a meeting with Ritter in Lisbon, Portugal. On this new venture Snow decided to take along a ‘side-kick’ he had discovered, someone he described as being an ex-RAF technician.
The man in question was an ex-con named Walter Dicketts. A former air intelligence officer from World War I, Dicketts had been cashiered for dishonesty and had since served several jail sentences for financial fraud. Dicketts met the ‘little man’ – as he referred to Snow – in a south London pub called the Marlborough on 16 March 1940. Snow was going by the name of Thomas Wilson. He and Dicketts got into a conversation about foreign travel, with Snow telling him he ‘looked like a man who had travelled’. After an evening of plying Dicketts with drink, Snow invited him back to his flat for a game of darts. Dicketts agreed and stayed at Snow’s apartment until the early hours of the morning.6
Snow asked Dicketts what he did for a living, to which he admitted doing very little indeed. Snow confided in Dicketts that he had a lot of spare cash as he was in the diamond game and was making a killing. Sensing an opportunity, Dicketts asked Snow if he would be interested in financing a scheme he had thought up. He said he had come up with an idea to make squeezable mustard containers that were similar to toothpaste tubes. Dicketts had clearly not done his market research, as the market leader in mustard – Coleman’s – already had such a product on the shelves. Unaware of this, Snow told him that he and his financial backers might consider financing the idea and asked to meet Dicketts again at the Marlborough.
Of course, Snow had no intention of financing mustard containers; he was simply grooming Dicketts as a potential spy. For his part Dicketts was also playing a game of his own. He was quite sure the little Welshman was a German agent and saw an opportunity to get his old job in the Air Ministry back by exposing him as a spy. Over the next few weeks he met Snow again, and secretly followed him to one of his regular meetings with Tommy Robertson. Noticing the clandestine nature of this rendezvous, Dicketts also began trailing Robertson, believing that he too was a German spy. Armed with this belief, Dicketts went to his former employers and expected to get his old job back with the evidence he had accrued. Instead he was put in touch with MI5 and was properly introduced to Robertson who recruited him to ‘the family’.
Robertson gave Dicketts the codename Celery and bailed him out with £3 to pay his rent.7 In return for an income, Celery begged Robertson for security-related work. From Robertson’s point of view the best use for Celery was for checking what Snow was really up to. The ‘little man’ was still very much a loose cannon in Robertson’s eyes and the MI5 officer was very disturbed to hear that Snow had indiscreetly told Celery how he was the top man in the British and German secret services. This statement earned the Welshman a dressing-down from Robertson.8
With this nonsense behind them, Robertson planned Snow’s Lisbon trip and invited Celery to go with him. The former RAF man was naturally concerned and before agreeing to go sought reassurances from Robertson that his family would be looked after if he were killed. In preparation, Celery was briefed about the sort of information he should be expected to know as an RAF mechanic and was sent on several undercover ‘espionage’ missions to British factories to see what he could find out for himself. Robertson confided in Celery that he would travel to Lisbon by ship via Gibraltar on board the Cressado, while Snow would fly ahead, arriving a few days before. Once in the Portuguese capital Celery’s mission was twofold: to check on the loyalty of Snow and to penetrate the Abwehr as far as possible and get into Germany.
Nothing was heard from either agent until the end of March. Both agents arrived back in Britain on 27 March and were immediately taken in for debriefing by MI5. As with the previous trawler incident, the accounts of the mission varied wildly. Snow was carrying a large sum of money and explosives concealed in shaving soap, a flashlight, a fountain pen and a pencil. According to Snow, he had arrived in Lisbon and was met by a man called Duarte outside a hotel. He followed him to a car, got in and was driven to an apartment where he met Ritter. In Snow’s story, the German immediately confronted him and told the Welshman he knew he was in touch with British intelligence. Snow matter-of-factly admitted this, replying: ‘That’s perfectly true. I’ve been trying for two and a half months to get over to see you about it.’
Robertson could not believe it. Why had the Welshman admitted everything to the Germans without trying to bluff his way out? Snow told Robertson that he believed the Doctor was always well informed and that if he had hesitated before answering the accusation, it would have blown the game completely. Realizing that Robertson was having trouble believing him, Snow asked if he thought he was trying to double cross him. Robertson hurt Snow’s feelings when he replied ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’
What Robertson could not understand was if Snow had told the Germans he was working for the British, why on earth had Ritter given him £10,000 and the explosives? More to the point, why hadn’t the German arrested Snow and confronted Celery as also being in the pay of the British secret service? Over and over again, Robertson and, afterwards, John Marriott, went over the story. Snow said he told Ritter that the British secret service had walked in on him the previous December. If that was the case, Robertson found it incredible that Ritter did not go all out to try to get descriptions of his opposite numbers, interrogation techniques and so on.
Every time it appeared that a fact had been established, Snow would frustratingly contradict himself. Throughout the interviews Snow would blame others for his predicament. At one point he even accused Celery of being a dope fiend who had taken the barbiturate Veronal before the flight home because he was scared of flying. Such was the confusion surrounding Snow’s version of events that Marriott admitted on 3 April, ‘I am more than ever convinced that Snow’s is a case not for the Security Service but for a brain specialist.’ He concluded that Snow was lying and had probably not told Ritter anything like what he was claiming.
Meanwhile Celery came up with a very different take on things. During his initial debriefing on 28 March, Celery appeared very nervous and was astonished when told that Snow had been carrying explosives with him. According to Celery he had arrived a few days after Snow. He first met Ritter, or Dr Jantzen as he was called in Lisbon, in a bar with Snow, who had been drinking heavily. Ritter poured half a tumbler of whisky for the British agent and their introduction began. Celery had been led to believe that the German was a hard drinker who enjoyed hearing dirty stories. In fact he described Ritter as ‘a high pressure salesman of the American type – a clever man and an extremely lucid and convincing talker.’
Ritter suggested that Celery ought to go to Germany where he could be questioned in more detail about his information on the RAF. At the sound of this Snow’s eyes lit up and he asked if he could go too. Ritter told the Welshman it was hard to get tickets, so for now only Celery would be able to go. At this news Snow became somewhat dejected and became privately very envious of the attention being shown to his sub-agent by the Germans. He then proceeded to drink himself silly and was in no fit state for anything. Celery described Snow as almost paralytic from booze every time he saw him.
What started to puzzle Celery’s British interrogators hearing this story was the absence of any mention that Snow had been blown as working for the British. Nothing was said to Celery, who said that Snow gave him no particular instructions about going to Germany, except that he did once ask if he wanted to back out of going at the last minute. Although he had offered this way out, he did not give any special reasons why Celery might want to take it.
Celery went on to describe how he travelled to Stuttgart, Berlin, Hamburg, back to Berlin and then finally to Madrid before returning to Lisbon. He was gone for 31⁄2 weeks and most of that time was spent in Hamburg, where he was very closely and sometimes aggressively interrogated. Although Celery had visited a lot of factories and installations prior to the mission, his German interrogators were not really impressed with the quality of information he provided. Celery mitigated these shortcomings by telling the Germans that Snow had not actually given him any instructions on what sort of things to look out for. They seemed quite satisfied with this explanation and showered hospitality on him, allowing Celery to walk round Hamburg quite freely.
From his time there Celery told his British interrogators that the bomb damage was minimal, that there was plenty of food in German restaurants – he had even kept some menus – and that civilian morale was good. In his time in Berlin Celery stayed at Hotel Adlon with his Abwehr minder, Georg Sessler, to whom he became quite close and whom he suspected might want to defect. Celery was taken to Berlin’s train stations to see the lack of bomb damage on them. He was also taken to meet someone described as the assistant of the Information Minister, Dr Goebbels. There he was given some books and gramophone records – parodies of popular British songs – to take back to the United Kingdom and circulate.
When Celery eventually returned to Lisbon, Snow was beside himself with joy. As far as Celery could make out, in his absence Snow had spent his whole time getting drunk and was in an awful state. The Welshman had been ill and was being nursed by a Portuguese girl at whom he literally threw money, although Celery did not believe there was anything untoward in their relationship. Snow had also got himself entangled in a complicated domestic affair, acting as a mediator between a man called Patrick Nolan and his wife, who was contemplating running away with a Frenchman named Olivier Regnault. When Celery met the Frenchman, Regnault told him Snow had gone out of his mind with drink. Apparently he had worried himself senseless in Celery’s absence and his friends thought he was having a nervous breakdown. Regnault called it ‘Lisbon fever’.
Lisbon during World War II was described by one visitor as being like Cannes or Monte Carlo during the thirties.9 With so much suffering going on in the world, the bright lights of Lisbon and the Estoril Casino harked back to happier times. In their last days in the Portuguese capital, Celery and Snow went to a nightclub and stayed up until 6am with some German girls, one named Sophie and the other Ruth Hutte – a recent arrival from Tangiers where she had been doing a speciality act at Casino Cabaret. Another girl called Lotti Schade turned up at the club, and gave Celery her address in Berlin and a photo, telling him to look her up some time.10 Of course Celery and Snow knew the girls were German agents – honey traps sent to keep watch on them.
In his time abroad, Celery had picked up quite a lot of information on the German secret service. He described how they worked very long hours and that about 50 per cent of them were regular drug users. Apparently they would take cocaine in the morning as a pick-me-up to get through the stresses of the day and then Veronal at night to knock them out and ensure a heavy sleep. When Celery asked about the health effects of doing this, he heard the old story given by addicts that it was they who controlled the drug – not the other way round.
Over dinners and conversations, Celery gained huge amounts of anecdotal evidence about German invasion preparations, plans and their confidence that it would go ahead at a time of Hitler’s choosing. The people he spoke to were convinced that the Royal Navy would be neutralized by mine-laying U-boats and fast patrol boats, and that the RAF bombers could not hit a barn door if they tried. They were totally taken in by Nazi propaganda and unwilling to listen to any argument that conflicted with their innate sense of superiority.
Celery also fulfilled the other part of his mission, by checking up on Snow’s standing with the Germans. Celery reported that the ‘Doctor’ was genuinely fond of Snow and was planning to use him as a contact point when the Germans finally got round to invading the British Isles. Celery reported Ritter as saying: ‘[Snow] is a fool in many ways. He drinks too much and he lives on his nerves but I am prepared to go on trusting him because I have known him for more than four years and he has never, to my knowledge, let me down.’
When Celery had probed Ritter, asking if the information Snow had provided had been very good, the German replied: said: ‘No, [Snow] has not given me very much but I think he is going to be very useful to us in other ways.’ Celery asked what these other ways might be. ‘Don’t ask too many questions,’ cautioned Ritter, ‘but [Snow] is a very clever chemist. In fact in some ways he is brilliant ... I am very fond of [him] but he is a goddam lazy son of a bitch and he won’t get going unless someone gives him a good kick in the pants ... [Snow] spends a hell of a lot of money but we don’t mind. We have plenty of it here.’ Celery’s own opinion of Snow was less charitable: ‘I think he is a maniac and lives in an atmosphere of mystery.’
On 1 April Robertson decided that Celery should be told that Snow had given the game away to Ritter before his arrival in Lisbon. Masterman told Celery that Snow claimed to have betrayed them to the Germans and explained that this piece of information had been withheld from Celery by MI5 for obvious reasons. Celery took the news calmly and, after some reflection, said that he thought Snow was lying and did not believe he had told Ritter anything of the kind. Celery explained that Snow had not mentioned a word about this to him and that he would on no account have gone to Germany if he had known. Masterman told Celery that they believed Snow had told Ritter, and Snow had not warned him on Ritter’s say so. Pressing home the point, Masterman told Celery he believed that Snow had allowed him to travel to Germany knowing full well it would result in a death sentence. Taking in the full enormity of the revelation, Celery said he would like to confront Snow about this face to face.
The following day, 2 April, there was a lengthy interview between both men. In the exchange of words between them, almost nothing could be agreed upon. Witness this exchange relating to Snow telling Celery about the £10,000 he brought home:
Snow: I told you that the first time I met you.
Celery: You never mentioned the thing.
Snow: By God, I’m certain of that.
Celery: It was when I came back [from Germany] that you mentioned the second £5,000.
Snow: I’m not selling – to Christ you’re a liar – to cover yourself as much as you ...
Celery: I’ve nothing to cover myself on at all.
Snow: You’re a bloody liar.
Celery: Why do you bluff?
Snow: I’m not bluffing. You know bloody well I’m not bluffing.
Celery: I know perfectly well that you are bluffing.
Snow: You know I’m not.
Celery: Or else giving you the benefit of your mentality, your memory is very short.
Snow: So you think I’m crazy like you tell me these people think I’m mental?
Celery: You said to me that you were very simple . . .
And on and on it went.
With Snow and Celery contradicting one another, the matter was referred to a meeting of the W Committee on the morning of 5 April at which Robertson and Masterman were also present. Masterman set out what he believed the various facts might be.
The first was that Snow had not betrayed them to the Germans, but had concocted this story to enable him to retire without fatally damaging his standing in either camp. On the other hand his story might have been true, in which case Ritter was keeping him on for some unknown reason. Lastly it might have been the case that Snow was a rogue and that the Germans had known he had links with the British all along, but believed his first loyalty was to Germany.
There was also confusion over Celery. Masterman wondered if he had really been to Germany or not. Some of the information about ships in Hamburg did not bear up to scrutiny when checked by Ewen Montagu and there was some concern over the lack of bomb damage Celery reported seeing in Berlin and Hamburg. With this in mind, Masterman speculated that Celery might now be working for the Germans.
It must be remembered that at this time the likes of Robertson and Masterman were not entirely sure of the extent to which they controlled German espionage in the United Kingdom. Although they suspected they controlled the majority of it, at least all the active agents, their confidence had been shaken on 1 April by the discovery of ter Braak’s corpse in a Cambridge air raid shelter. If one spy had eluded them, how many more were out there?
In an attempt to solve the case, Masterman met Celery on 10 April for an interview. The agent had been allowed a short holiday during which he had come up with a scheme of hiring a boat to get over to the German-occupied Channel Islands. He clearly wanted to continue his double agent mission and gave Masterman the impression that he was loyal and had been visibly upset about the doubts cast on him. In his debrief, Masterman said that although Celery had an excellent memory, the conversations he had with him were of such length and complexity he found it difficult to believe Celery could repeat a story of such length without introducing errors and contradictions unless the story was substantially true. Masterman concluded that although Celery was dangerously impressed by German efficiency he had in the main behaved with loyalty and done his best for the British cause. Robertson generally agreed with Masterman and although he suspected that Celery might have gone some way towards becoming a proper German agent said: ‘whatever faults he may have had in the past, he has done a brave deed by going into Germany in wartime.’ In a little twist, after the war Sessler revealed that Celery had told him he was a British agent.
Later that day, Guy Liddell called a meeting with Dick White, Robertson, Masterman and Marriott and had a long discussion about the case.11 They agreed the only safe option was to assume that Ritter knew as much about the network of controlled agents as Snow or Celery did. On this assumption, Snow was of no further use. Celery would be mothballed until more light could be cast on the subject, perhaps through Tate.
There was one question they wanted answered before closing the file completely. Why had Ritter given Snow £10,000 and the explosives? Snow had claimed that although he told Ritter he was working for the British, he had said that his network in Wales was intact and not under control. Masterman speculated that Ritter might have believed this and was retaining Snow for use as a paymaster or for use in the event of an invasion. He might also study the traffic that Snow was sending over under duress and from that work out what information the British regarded as unimportant or important. Masterman also speculated that the German might have retained Snow even though he was suspicious of him, in order to maintain his own prestige in the Abwehr. Whatever the reason, it was clear Ritter wanted to keep the Snow network running, and for that very reason it had to be closed down.
Robertson and Masterman met Snow and told him the news. All they wanted him to do was to radio Germany and ask for advice on what to do with his equipment. Snow’s response was quite bizarre. He asked the two MI5 officers if there was anything useful he could do for Britain. His patience in the Welshman expended, Robertson turned the question back on Snow and asked him the same. What did he think he could do?
The Welshman seemed at a loss to understand why he could not continue on as normal. It was as if he could not grasp the seriousness of his apparent disclosure to Ritter. Masterman told Snow that he could not carry on because his cover was blown and that he had betrayed Celery, endangering his life by not warning him. As Snow wriggled his way around an answer he contradicted himself after almost every sentence. This is an excerpt from the interview:
Robertson: Well now, I am coming on to a second point now. We have been through your statements, as I said before, very carefully. We have been through Celery’s statements very carefully, and we are unanimous in our opinion that you did not tell Celery that the game was blown before he went into Germany.
Snow: Well, I did tell him before he went into Germany.
Robertson: Well, that is our opinion, and that being the case, you definitely sent a man on a most dangerous mission.
Snow: That’s a lie.
Robertson: You sent him knowingly, I maintain, to put the worst construction on it, to his death probably.
Snow: I did not. I did nothing of the kind ...
Robertson: But I gathered that this exchange of confidences between [Celery] and you took place, according to you, before you went to the meeting?
Snow: What confidences do you mean?
Robertson: Informing him that the game was up.
Snow: I believe I told him in the room. Robertson: In which room?
Snow: But I know I told him in front of the Doctor, definitely. In the room there.
Masterman: Doesn’t it seem to you that it was a very treacherous act, to say the least of it, not to tell him before he got to the Doctor?
Snow: I am positive that I told him before he went to the Doctor.
Masterman: Positive you told him before he went to the Doctor?
Snow: Yes … [etc]
The day after this meeting Snow was informed that a radio signal was to be sent to Hamburg saying that his nerves had collapsed and that he was giving up secret service work. In the message he would ask what to do with his transmitter and explosives. The reason given for the Committee closing down the case was that they believed Celery’s story and that Snow was guilty of treachery by not warning Celery. Despite the best attempts by his son to have him released, Snow was interned for the rest of the war, first at Stafford Jail from where he tried to escape with a Dutch fascist called Dirk Boon, then at Dartmoor Prison and finally on the Isle of Man.12
XX
It is worth pausing for a moment at this point and lingering longer on the Lisbon meeting. What if Snow had told the truth and Ritter now suspected he was working for the British? There is a very different ‘German’ perspective on the events that shows how lucky MI5 really was. In 1958 a book was published called They Spied on England by Scottish writer Charles Wighton, in collaboration with the investigative journalist Günter Peis. It was advertised as being based on the war diaries of General Lahousen, head of Abwehr Section II (Sabotage). It drew on a number of interviews with Abwehr officers that were conducted mostly by Peis, and was apparently vetted by MI5 before release. What is most important about this version is that it claims to be the real story that Lahousen and others withheld from MI5 when interrogated at the end of the war. Lahousen told his fellow Austrian, Peis, that the contents of his war diary were to be withheld until Austria and Germany were restored as sovereign states at the end of Allied occupation. This occurred in May 1955, by which time Lahousen was dead and beyond cross-examination.
This version of the story concerning agent Johnny correctly names him as Arthur Owens, a Welsh Nationalist. It says that before the war there were several attempts made to contact members of the Welsh Nationalist Party and other extremists. One of these missions was undertaken by Hans Heinrich Kuenemann, who posed as the managing director of a German engineering firm with a branch in Cardiff. Other missions were carried out by Professor Friedrich Schoberth, a visiting lecturer at Cardiff University; Franz Richter, the manager of a factory in Barry; and the German consul in Liverpool, Dr Walter Reinhard. In their book Wighton and Peis assumed that one or more of them had got to Owens before they successfully left the United Kingdom in the weeks and days before war broke out in 1939.13
They then explain how Owens began frequenting the German club in Bayswater and how he managed to make contact with the Abwehr in Brussels during the spring of 1937, all of which fits with the account given by MI5. Where their account starts to differ is with the arrival of Owens in Lisbon in June 1940 around the time of the Dunkirk evacuation. Even here the story more or less holds up if one assumes that Wighton and Peis confused Owens with his sub-agent Sam Macarthy (Biscuit) who did go to Lisbon around that time, after the trawler rendezvous.
Where the account gets interesting is with the arrival of ‘Doctor Randzau’ [sic] on the scene. Wighton and Peis explain how the Doctor had been in charge of Owens for some time, how the Welshman had taken his girlfriend Lily to meet him and how they had been treated as personal friends by the Doctor and his wife in Hamburg – all of which fits with previous accounts. However, what is new is how the Doctor travelled to Lisbon posing as a diplomatic courier, flying from Stuttgart to Barcelona, and from then on travelling overland to Portugal.
On this voyage the Doctor began to harbour doubts about his favourite Welshman. How on earth was a seemingly insignificant travelling salesman able to get clearance for a trip abroad to Portugal? The more he thought about it, the more concerned he became. Back before the war had started, the Doctor had apparently given Owens a little piece of advice. He had told the Welshman that if he ever got into trouble for his illegal activities he ought to go to MI5 and come clean. By doing so there was at least a chance he would save his own neck. Had the little Welshman gone to MI5 as he had suggested? Was the Doctor being double crossed? Ritter was determined to find out in the Portuguese capital.14
Reaching Lisbon the Doctor made contact with one of his agents, a Spaniard known as the ‘Don’. In early 1940 neutral Lisbon was a hive of refugees and spies. Every major espionage agency in the world had its tentacles in the Portuguese capital, and for this reason Ritter had to be very careful by whom and with whom he was seen. With his growing suspicion over the Welshman an additional factor, ‘Randzau’ did not want to meet him in public – which is where the Don came in.
Before setting out for Lisbon, Owens had been told to watch out for a man with a sharp nose drinking on the terrace of a prominent café. Owens was told to carry a copy of The Times under his arm and to introduce himself with the words: ‘Jack told me to say he was asking for you.’ With these formalities completed, the Don took Snow to meet his Abwehr controller. Although the chronology is out of sequence, with the account giving this conversation as having occurred in June 1940, it bears such striking similarities to the secret interviews conducted with Snow and Celery that it cannot be discounted as evidence, albeit anecdotal.
The day after Owens’ arrival in Lisbon, ‘Randzau’ confronted him and asked him to explain how on earth he had got permission to travel and, more importantly, whether he had taken the advice about working for the British if caught. Owens replied to this second query ‘not directly’. He told the Doctor that he had applied for an export permit to sell electrical equipment to Portugal. He then described how he was interviewed by a captain he believed was with the ‘Field Security Police’. The captain appeared sceptical about the story and asked about his previous business links on the Continent, in particular in Germany. Owens claimed to have told the captain that he had done business with a German export-import firm in Hamburg. According to Owens’ story, the following day a colonel put him through an intense interrogation, which he had survived. The British had then agreed to his export permit because they were desperate to maintain as much trade with neutral countries as possible. This account appeared to placate ‘Randzau’ and the two men got down to business.
If this is the German version of events, possibly given by Ritter to Peis in an interview in the 1950s, it is interesting to note that there was a confrontation and an accusation, but that Owens did not reveal he worked for the British, only that he had been interrogated by them quite hard. That version of events would fit in with MI5’s belief that Owens was probably lying when he claimed to have told Ritter everything.
The Wighton/Peis account goes on to explain how Owens told the Doctor he had recruited a technician from the RAF called Jack Brown (Celery). Owens said he could bring Brown to Lisbon at a later date, in perhaps two to three months. Again there is a discrepancy with the chronology, with the subsequent meeting supposedly happening in October 1940. Taking into account lapses in memory after almost 15 years from the events to the time Wighton and Peis were making their enquiries, and the non-disclosure of the MI5 files which would have given them a firm underpinning to the chronology of the Snow case, the mix-up is perhaps understandable. What is certain is that there are too many similarities with the British records for the account to be a complete fabrication.
As with the MI5 interrogation accounts, the Wighton/Peis version has Owens arrive 48 hours before ‘Brown’ (Celery). Brown then arrived by boat, as was the case. In this new Lisbon account, Ritter quickly came to the conclusion that Owens was in a state of near-hysteria and concluded that the pressure of being a spy was getting to him. He privately decided that it would soon be time to dispose of Owens.
In the meantime Owens told him that his brother-in-law was a foreman in a munitions factory and asked the Doctor for some explosives to pass on to him. Ritter passed Owens on to Dr Rudolfs who worked in Lahousen’s sabotage section in Lisbon. It was Rudolfs who gave Owens the fuses disguised as fountain pens – photographs of which exist in the Snow files in Britain’s National Archive.
Brown arrived in Lisbon and was introduced to the Doctor, who wondered if the new arrival’s limp handshake indicated a weak personality or a distaste for dealing with Germans. The Abwehr man in fact noticed that Brown’s eyes were very hard and penetrating, which immediately gave Ritter the impression that he was dealing with a far more complex character than Owens. Brown explained that he had been flung out of the RAF and was desperately short of money. He required £250 a month and for the sum of £2,000 was willing to undergo a thorough examination at the hands of German technical experts to prove how much he knew. Ritter replied that he was not really qualified to interrogate Brown on technical matters and asked if he was prepared to go to Germany. To bring technical experts to Portugal would, he explained, draw too much attention to their activities. If Brown agreed to go, Ritter gave him his word of honour that he would be allowed to return to Lisbon whenever he wished.
At this point in the conversation, Owens butted in and told his compatriot ‘That’s wonderful. Accept the Doctor’s word. Let’s go, Jack.’ Owens naturally assumed he would be able to tag along, but the Abwehr officer would not allow it. Ritter was worried that the little Welshman was too keen to go to Germany and that, once there, he might not ever agree to go back to England again.
There is now another important component that is missing from the story told to MI5. In this account, after Brown agreed to go to Germany, Ritter flew off ahead of him, telling Brown that he would send an escort to pick him up in a few days. Within a week Brown was picked up and taken to Hamburg by the Abwehr’s Dr Sessler. The British interrogation reports give the impression that Ritter remained in Portugal during Celery’s visit to Germany. On the contrary, in this account, Ritter entertained Jack Brown during his stay.
While he was in Hamburg Brown was treated well, although his movements were constantly monitored by the Gestapo. Brown gave no indication that he was a double agent. In fact he did nothing at all, went nowhere, did not try to contact anyone and did not probe his contacts for any sensitive information. The only thing that really made Ritter suspicious was a signet ring Brown wore, which Frau Ritter pointed out during a dinner with the ex-RAF man. Brown opened the ring and it contained a picture of a beautiful woman. Frau Ritter asked Brown if the woman was his wife? Brown laughingly replied ‘Not yet.’
Ritter went off and made a telephone call to Abwehr headquarters. A short while later a man arrived and joined the party. At this point, at a discreet signal from her husband, Frau Ritter made her apologies and left. When the next round of drinks arrived, a sleeping pill was dropped into Brown’s whisky. Brown knocked back the drink and quickly passed out under the effects of the drug. In the meantime Ritter sent his ring off to be photographed. Within two hours, the ring was back on Brown’s finger, as he woke up in the bar feeling groggy, apologizing to his companions for having fallen asleep. Ritter laughed it off and told him the Scotch in Germany must be stronger than in London.
Next morning Ritter had the photographs of the ring examined. The German scientists did see some numbers and letters, which they said might be the address in a neutral capital used as a post box by the Russian secret service, which made them suspect he was a Soviet agent trying to get out of England. At this point Abwehr chief Admiral Canaris began to take a personal interest in the case and quizzed Ritter about the trustworthiness of the new agent. Canaris wondered if Brown should be kept in Germany as a precaution, but Ritter told his chief that he had chivalrously given a promise he could return to Portugal and did not want to break his word. Canaris was not about to make Ritter do this, and so Brown was allowed back to Portugal. Ritter was adamant that Celery was a communist spy who went AWOL on the way back to Portugal in Madrid and contacted the Spanish underground before travelling to Russia.15 As for Owens waiting in Lisbon, he had broken down completely under the watchful eye of the Don. He pleaded to be allowed to go to Germany, but the Don had been told under no circumstances to allow this to happen. He was sent back to Britain and was classed as having outlived his usefulness and denied future help.
The Wighton and Peis account was expanded by the Pulitzer prizewinning author Ladislas Farago in his 1971 book The Game of the Foxes. When writing his account of the Snow case, Farago had the earlier work of Wighton and Peis and literally thousands of captured microfilms from the Abwehr’s wartime archives he had discovered in the United States. Most importantly, he met Ritter and discussed the war years with him and was shown a draft of the memoirs Ritter was writing.
This story agrees that there was a confrontation between Ritter and Owens after the German became suspicious of how the Welshman got clearance to travel to Lisbon. Owens told Ritter he had found it almost impossible to find a way to Portugal, so he had gone to the secret service and volunteered his services to them, simply in order to make the trip to Lisbon. He also told Ritter that the British were suspicious at first, but that he tried to allay their fears by saying he wanted to do something for the war effort but was too old to be a soldier. A secret service captain interviewed him and said he knew he had been working for the Nazis, but if Owens told him everything he would be prepared to help. Owens said he told the captain about everything, including his relationship with Ritter. The captain was then alleged to have asked him if he would be able to arrange a meeting with Ritter in Casablanca. Owens told the captain that he could arrange a meeting in Lisbon or Madrid, which is how he had managed to get the permission to travel. The Welshman then proceeded to show Ritter some material that he described as rubbish – what the British secret service had planted on him – before revealing some bona fide material, including a sample of a new alloy being used in the manufacture of shells. In the Farago account, Ritter reacted to this revelation with the words: ‘A fine story’ and gave ‘a sardonic grin’. Owens pleaded with the German, asking if he had ever let him down in the past.
What appears most likely is that Owens told Ritter he was working for the British secret service, but lied by saying he was still a loyal German agent. Ritter appears to have accepted this and thus believed that Celery was genuinely recruited by Owens. However, because of the revelation that the British secret service were on to Owens, and believing him burnt out by the strains of secret service work, Ritter decided that Johnny’s days were numbered.
This version of events is certainly endorsed by Ritter’s memoirs. At the end of the war he was picked up by the United States Air Force. They passed him over to the British, but not before telling him ‘Don’t tell the Limeys what you’ve told us’. He was passed on to MI5 for interrogation. The trouble was that the British to a certain extent tiptoed around the interrogation because they did not want to reveal to Ritter that they had controlled his agents. For his part, Ritter did not volunteer as much information as he could have because he genuinely feared being tried for war crimes.
As for Owens’ admission that he was working for the British secret service, Ritter took the news with a pinch of salt. Johnny had worked for him for two years and had always been truthful, and Ritter admitted that he liked the little fellow. In his memoirs he described hearing the news and what his reaction was: 16
But now everything suddenly had an unpleasant taste. If I put myself into the position of my English opponents, then I could not quite actually imagine them letting Johnny travel alone to Lisbon. Nevertheless, it would soon show up whether the little one was betraying me or my British colleagues. I smiled somewhat ironically and said: ‘That’s a great story!’
Ritter has a point here. If the British were suspicious of Owens, they could have had him travel with Celery acting as a minder. The fact that Celery travelled separately was an indication that Celery was not a British secret service minder, but a genuine spy whom Owens had recruited. In any case, Ritter decided to trust the Welshman for the time being.
Fortunately for the British, Ritter was not around long enough to discover Owens’ duplicity. Even before Snow and Celery left Portugal, Ritter was summoned by Admiral Canaris from Lisbon and met him on 20 March. Ritter was informed he was to be reassigned for special duties in Africa under General Rommel. All of his cases were passed over to Jules Boeckel.17
At the end of this mission in September 1941, Ritter was travelling back to Lisbon via Rome. As he was preparing to take a military flight to Portugal, he received a telephone call from Berlin. It was from the chief of Abwehr I, Hans Piekenbrock, who read him the headline of the New York Times dated 20 September 1941: 18
‘GERMAN SPY RING BROKEN’
In addition to his work against Britain, Ritter had looked after business in the United States. A major German spy ring headed by South African-born Frederick Duquesne was betrayed by William Sebold, who was a double agent working for the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). Sebold had been recruited by Ritter, whose name was printed in the New York Times article, along with his alias in the United States – Dr Rankin. This disclosure was the end of Ritter’s secret war and he was reassigned to active service.
When, years later, Ritter was told that his little Johnny was a double agent named Snow, he didn’t believe it. When the Snow story first came out it was still years, decades in fact, before the MI5 records were released. Because of this there were some inaccuracies, and these were seized upon by Ritter, who ended his memoirs declaring that Johnny had remained loyal to him and that it was the British who had been deceived. He went as far as to call him ‘a master spy’.19 Although Ritter wrote that he had lost contact with Johnny, he drew great satisfaction from news that the Welshman was living in Ireland with Lily and their children.