SNOW FALLS

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 . 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 . 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

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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 . 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