I am way behind in my book reading! And blogging… and research! But… I am happy to report that earlier this summer, I ordered and read Jan-Willem van den Braak’s book about Nazi spy Jan Willem ter Braak (no relation to the aforementioned author). Hitler’s Spy Against Churchill was first published in Dutch a few years ago and Jan-Willem had it translated into English and accepted by an English-language publisher. This is a good thing because I’ve been so curious to see what Jan-Willem discovered about ter Braak’s background. Let’s dive in!
The Story
The spy, Jan Willem ter Braak, landed in England in early November 1940 and has the dubious distinction of being the only spy to evade capture by the British. Alas for Jan, whose real name was Engelbertus Fukken, he was sent to England with a limited supply of funds and a wireless set that he apparently struggled to operate. Jan ran out of money towards the end of March 1941 and was found deceased in a Cambridge air raid shelter by a local worker.
At first blush, Jan, or Engelbertus, had apparently shot himself in the head with a pistol that lay on the ground near his body. The police were called. MI5 was called. But after much investigation, questions still remained about this hapless spy. Did he manage to send wireless reports to Germany with his transmitter? What was his mission? Who was he? Who was the girl in the photograph found in his pocket?
Shortly after the war, the dots were finally connected after Neeltje van Roon, sought to claim the life insurance policy on Engelbertus. Jan Willem ter Braak was revealed to be Engelbertus Fukken. But there the story ended and the questions remained, and multiplied. Who was Engelbertus? What made him take on a desperate mission to England, flying into the mouth of the English lion with no real hope of escape? The MI5 folder on Fukken/ter Braak, released to the National Archives in the early 2000s is disappointingly thin. Luckily, author Jan-Willem van den Braak managed to track down more information on Fukken in various Dutch archives!
The Book
I have to admit that I found the first half of the book the most fascinating. Jan-Willem has done an amazing job of digging into the background of Engelbertus Fukken – his family, his siblings, his jobs, his relationship to the Nazi party in The Netherlands. Fukken was clearly a man who struggled in life. He got into trouble with the law. He found the rhetoric of the Dutch Nazi party attractive. The one beacon and anchor in his life seems to have been his fiancée, Neeltje, and yet, when he left on his ill-fated mission, he told Neeltje nothing about the true nature of it.
In the second half of the book, Jan-Willem tackles the nubbin of the Fukken problem. Did Fukken actually manage to contact Germany? What was his real mission? Was he sent to assassinate Churchill? And, more tellingly, how could Fukken have evaded discovery in England given that his Food Ration book and Identity Card were so obviously forgeries? Did MI5 know about his mission from the moment he landed in the UK? Did they give him some rope in order to track him surreptitiously? Was his death not suicide, but rather assassination? These are all thorny questions and ultimately, unanswerable. We just don’t know. But Jan-Willem does lead us on a detailed tour of the relevant data and facts.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the book, at least for me, is that we still don’t know which German Abwehr Ast actually recruited and ran Engelbertus Fukken. So many mysteries swirl around this poor man, and the likelihood of us ever learning the truth is very small. Too bad, Fukken didn’t write his last memoir on his little typewriter and shove it into a secret compartment in the wall of one of his rented rooms! What a story that would be. The fact that none of the well-known German Abwehr spy handlers from the various Asts claimed Fukken as their own, leaves one wondering if, perhaps, Fukken was a special spy sent on a special mission. Ultimately unanswerable, but tantalizing nonetheless.
Review
The book itself is quite readable. Jan-Willem has a very conversational style that lends itself to easy reading. There are, however, some stilted sections where the translation seems to falter a bit. Still, on the whole, a great effort. I also caught a few typos but that is par for the course when you publish a book like this.
There are some factual errors as well – for example on page 154, the author notes that the wife of Nazi spy Johannes Marinus Dronkers was Clarabella Dronkers. This is incorrect. Dronkers wife’s name was Elise Antoinette Eleanora Seignette. The Clarabella rumour stems from Donald McCormick’s semi-fictional story about the Bella in the Wych Elm mystery, which I addressed in an earlier blog post. David Tremain has also written a comprehensive book outlining the story of J.M. Dronkers.
I am also left to wonder at some of the claims cited in the book. For example, on page 211, Jan-Willem references a book titled Double Standards: the Rudolf Hess Cover-up (2001 – by Picknett, Prince and Prior). In this book, the authors apparently claim that Karel Richter (another spy who landed May 1941) had served as the adjutant of Konrad Henlein, the leader of the German party in Sudetenland when it was still part of Czechoslovakia (Henlein later served as Gauleiter of that portion of the German empire). Richter? Our Karel Richter?! There is zero evidence for this in Richter’s MI5 file at the National Archives. My question would be, what is the primary source for this stunning assertion? It would totally alter our view of Karel Richter. But there is no citation to support this assertion and one is left to track down the Double Standards book and then hunt and peck for the relevant source. I do know that in KV 2/31, folio 57h, E.J.P. Cussen wrote a memo (11 August 1941) about potential Richter’s in Nazi roles, none of whom are connected with Konrad Henlein.
This leads directly to one of my pet peeves. Jan-Willem does not cite enough sources (particularly primary sources) for my tastes. His references to the National Archives at Kew sometimes have the date of a report but not the folio number, and sometimes not even the date. This makes it extremely difficult for other researchers to track down the document in question. This leads to situations which Jan-Willem himself encountered. On page 215, Jan-Willem notes that “In Beside the Bulldog, Thompson quotes from a letter written by an unnamed MI5 employee to Churchill on 28 February 1951…” In a footnote, Jan notes that he was unable to trace the letter mentioned. Primary sources are key and failing to cite them completely and abundantly makes the work of future researches much more difficult. Sorry… a pet peeve of mine!
Another facet of the book that began to grate on me was Jan-Willem’s attempts to put emotion and motivation into the character of Fukken. These little vignettes, generally written in italics were a bit distracting for me, but I also understand Jan-Willem’s attempt to humanize Fukken, a man who has left no discernible voice in the historical record. Still, it’s hard to know if any of these fictional scenes were rooted in fact.
Jan-Willem needs to be commended for bringing Fukken’s background to light, and for introducing us to the Dutch archives records as they relate to Fukken, both before and after the war. All in all, Fukken strikes me as being a rather pathetic, sad character who lacked a moral compass and died a horribly lonely death. It is also incredibly sad that his unmarked grave near Great Shelford will likely remain unmarked for the foreseeable future.
Review Score
4 out of 5 – Jan-Willem van den Braak has done a great job of researching the Engelbertus Fukken’s life and death.
I recently finished reading this book. To be frank, I became frustrated many times as I struggled with the sometimes risible translation into English. Sometimes it was almost comical, asif it had been done by Google! Oddly, in the last quarter of the book things improved, as if a new translator had taken over. I had the feeling that the earlier part of the book was akin to a writing-up of copious research notes without the skills necessary to weave these into a polished narrative. The hiring of a proper editor would have elevated the book to a professional level, I feel. It was nevertheless an interesting read. Fukken was a lazy dreamer and not the sharpest tool in the box He was exploited by an astoundingly inept Abwehr and sent on a mission so vague it was doomed from the start, as was the case with his numerous fellow-parachutists.
Applying Occam’s Razor, I concluded that the conspiracy theories were just that, groundless theories, and the poor man ended his own life, cold, lonely and depressed.
There does remain the oddity of the handgun that was found next to his body. It was a 9mm automatic pistol, and yet the death certificate clearly states ‘revolver’, an entirely different animal. You’d think whoever filled in the death certificate would have been sufficiently intelligent and educated enough to know the difference. (When an automatic pistol is fired, the sprung action ejects the spent cartridge and simultaneously loads the next round from the magazine in the grip whilst cocking the hammer for the next pull of the trigger, whereas a revolver carries rounds, usually six, in a revolving cylinder and each trigger pull rotates the cylinder to present the next round, all spent cartridges remaining in the gun). Was this evidence of a whiff of conspiracy, or just the common mistake people make even today, using ‘gun’, ‘pistol’, ‘revolver’, ‘automatic’ to mean the same thing?
Hi John!
Thanks for your comments on the book. I have seen the revolver/pistol mix-up in several other espionage files (that of Josef Jakobs as well). I’m going to guess it was a common mix-up back then – gun/pistol/revolver all seem to have been used interchangeably. I don’t think we can read too much into that.