Last September, I wrote a blog post about an email from Bengt Caroli, the grand-nephew of Gösta Caroli—one of the lucky few LENA spies who survived the war. Bengt asked if I’d ever been in touch with his father, Ulf Caroli.
Ulf, son of Gunnar Caroli (Gösta’s brother), passed away in 2016, but he had a deep and lifelong interest in family history. Among his projects was a self-published book titled Mina fantastiska farbröder (“My Fantastic Uncles”), devoted to Gösta and his youngest brother, Tryggve. Bengt thought I might enjoy reading it. He was right.
I’ve spent years researching the lives of the LENA spies and their failed missions to England during the Second World War. Gösta Caroli has been one of the more intriguing ones, not least because he spent several years in my home province of British Columbia in the 1920s and ’30s—farming silver foxes, of all things. Along the way, I’ve drawn heavily on Gösta’s Swedish biography by Simon Olsson and Tommy Jonason, as well as declassified MI5 files.
For readers who’d like to explore my earlier posts on Gösta’s life:
Gösta Caroli – Double Agent and Fox Farmer (2018) – based on genealogical research
The Avant Espionage Career of Gösta Caroli (2020) – based on Olsson and Jonason book
The Great Escape (Attempt) of Gösta Caroli (2018) – based on MI5 files – how he tried to escape his career as a double agent
The Après Espionage Career of Gösta Caroli (2020) – based on Olsson and Jonason book
Curious about Ulf’s book, I tracked down a copy through a Swedish bookseller. Once the booklet arrived, I used ChatGPT and Gemini to transcribe the text and translate it from Swedish to English.
What emerged was a stilted, disjointed memoir—shifting abruptly between Ulf’s own childhood memories and secondhand stories about Gösta and Tryggve. In the sections below, I’ve summarized each part of the booklet and added commentary to help untangle the timeline and separate fact from family legend.
Foreword
Ulf opens by recalling how, as a child, he would listen attentively as his father, Gunnar, told stories about the thrilling and restless lives of his two brothers—Gösta and Tryggve. Those tales left a deep impression on the young Ulf. Decades later, at the age of 70, Ulf decided to write them down, just as he remembered them.
Ulf is upfront about the limits of his account: he admits that his memory might be faulty and that the chronology is uncertain. He also concedes that Gösta may have “edited” some of his own adventures—embellishing details to soothe a very upset Gunnar.
Before we step into the main narrative, it’s worth noting that Ulf was born in January 1940. That small detail becomes a useful chronological anchor in the pages ahead. I’ve also added some background research of my own to help smooth the more abrupt transitions and clear up points of confusion.
Introduction
Right from the start, it’s clear that Ulf worshipped his uncles. When Ulf was growing up, Gösta was a frequent visitor at their home, the rectory where Gunnar was pastor. It seems likely that family dynamics and birth order dictated how the family viewed the three brothers. Gunnar, the second child and eldest son, was born in 1898 to Claes and Anna Caroli. Gösta and Tryggve were the two youngest sons (born 1902 and 1905 respectively). Their father, Claes, was an upstanding pastor, a pillar of the community. Gunnar followed in his father’s footsteps while the two younger sons had more of an adventurous spirit—and often less conventional lives. It was perhaps this restless streak that drew young Ulf. He had very fond memories of Uncle Gösta, who told stories with enthusiasm, love, and humour—patiently answering all of the boy’s questions.
One of the pivotal moments for Ulf—one that lingered in his memory for years–was the day Gösta returned home after the war. Ulf was about 5 years old when there was a knock at the rectory door. Gunnar opened the door and found Gösta standing before him. With an oath, Gunnar spoke furiously to his younger brother and then slammed the door in his face. Ulf was confused and scared, but also curious. What could have triggered such an uncharacteristic outburst from his father?
We don’t get a lot of context in this section. We are given no explanation as to why the mild-mannered pastor slammed the door in Gösta’s face. It’s possible that Ulf is building suspense, but it also leaves the reader confused. The confusion is compounded by abrupt and unexpected chronological leaps. Ulf begins the section by telling us how he listened to Gösta’s stories with rapt attention, and yet Ulf was born in early 1940 and probably had no memories of his uncle before Gösta was sent to England. Ulf’s first memory of his uncle was likely that moment when Gösta showed up at the door in 1945 and was sent away. These chronological leaps, which often lack any sort of anchor, make it difficult to establish when events actually occurred.
Surprises
Despite leaving us hanging in the last section, with Gunnar slamming the door in Gösta’s face, Ulf does not pick up the thread, but rather shares some childhood memories.
We learn that Ulf was speed-mad and borrowed his first moped from Aunt Ingrid (the eldest Caroli sibling) when he was 13 years old. Ingrid Caroli, born in 1896, had married Axel Edvard Larsson Abring (another parish priest) in 1922. The couple had at least two sons, Lars (1923) and Bengt (1927). According to Ulf, Bengt had trained to become a pilot in the Swedish Air Force, perhaps during the fading years of the war. Bengt had flown bombers and fighters. One of the planes that Ulf remembered his cousin flying was the Saab B18 bomber, in Ulf’s mind, similar to the Heinkel He 111, the plane from which Gösta had jumped during his mission to England. Ulf was fascinated by airplanes (most likely, loving their speed) and would beg his cousin to fly over their town if he was in the area. Ulf would hear the distinctive sound of the B18 and run outside to see his cousin flying low over the house. Unfortunately, Bengt’s eyesight deteriorated to the point that he could no longer fly. He left the Swedish Air Force and joined the armoured corps. One day (13 November 1951), during a tank exercise, Bengt Abring tripped in front of a tank and was crushed by the tracks. He was only 24 years old.
Bengt’s tragic end did nothing to dampen Ulf’s addiction to speed. One day, perhaps when Ulf was in his mid-teens, Uncle Gösta decided to sell his light motorbike, as he no longer felt capable of riding it. We know from other sources that Gösta suffered from balance issues after his jarring landing in England, and that these deficits only got worse with age. If Ulf was in his mid-teens, then Gösta would have been in his mid-50s, and it would make sense that he no longer felt confident riding a motorbike. In deciding to sell his motorbike, Gösta first approached his brother, Gunnar… would he consider buying it? He would indeed, and Ulf was soon cruising the local roads with the wind in his hair. Riding his uncle’s old motorbike caused Ulf to reflect more about his uncle, and the role he played during the war.
As noted earlier, Ulf does have a tendency to jump around. We now leap back in time, to the years immediately after the war when Ulf’s Aunt Gerda and her three sons came to stay with Gunnar’s family. Gerda (born 1900) was the third of the five Caroli siblings and had married Rudolf Hoffmann, a German pastor. The couple had moved to Germany prior to the Second World War and spent the years of the war in Nazi Germany. Gerda worked as a high school principal (Gymnasiumdirektor). It is unknown what prompted Gerda’s return to her homeland with her children—perhaps the upheaval of postwar Germany, or a desire to be closer to her family—but Ulf was happy to have cousins close to his own age. Björn was two years older than Ulf and became like a brother to the young lad. The two boys would often play with toy airplanes—Ulf wanted to be a Spitfire pilot while Björn wanted to be a Stuka pilot. Björn simply said he was German, so of course he would fly for Germany. Ulf admits that children tend to see things in black and white; later in life, he would wonder why his beloved uncle Gösta had joined the Abwehr.
The Banished Brother
We now jump forward in time, leaping over any mention of a reconciliation between Gunnar and Gösta (if one ever took place), and learn more about the youngest Caroli sibling, Claes Tryggve. During one of Gösta’s first visits to the Gunnar household after the war (likely after the door slamming incident), Gösta told the family about a pivotal event in the Caroli family, one that centred around Tryggve.
Around 1921, while the family was living in Åstorp, the 17-year-old Tryggve found a bottle of strong spirits in the rectory’s wine cellar. He drank most of the bottle, and then staggered around the streets of Åstorp shouting gibberish and making a drunken spectacle of himself. Word quickly reached the pastor (Tryggve’s father) but by then, the entire town was aware of Tryggve’s adventure. Ingrid, the oldest of the Caroli siblings, came home from work and tearfully complained that she was “disgraced for life” by Tryggve’s “idiotic” behaviour. This seems a rather dramatic response from an older sibling but perhaps Ingrid played the role of The Eldest with gusto. Tryggve’s parents (and Ingrid) decided that the only solution was to send Tryggve as far away as possible—to America.
The Fabulous Uncle Gösta
Tryggve was devastated by his parents’ decision, but his older brothers, Gösta and Gunnar, reassured him that they still loved him. They agreed that the punishment was extremely harsh. Even Gerda, the middle child, was on Tryggve’s side and argued that the family should forgive the remorseful Tryggve. Their parents (and Ingrid) stood firm—Tryggve was going to America. One gets the sense that Ingrid was a bit of an outsider amongst the siblings, and perhaps a bit of a scapegoat for their disappointment. She certainly comes across as rather bossy, perhaps a side-effect of being the eldest.
Tryggve was, however, a resilient young man and began to view the trip to America as a grand adventure, rather than as a banishment. After a conversation with his father, he vowed to use the journey to learn and to mature. According to Ulf, Claes accompanied Tryggve on the train to Gothenburg, and from there the teenager boarded a steamer to Liverpool before embarking on the M/S Mauretania for New York. While this may be how Ulf remembered it, the truth is Tryggve arrived in New York on 1 November 1921, aboard the S/S Olympic which had sailed from Southampton on 26 October. According to the passenger manifest, the 16-year-old Tryggve was a student who planned to spend two years in the United States. His ultimate destination was Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he knew a Mr. Johannes Dilot, a fellow Swede living in the US.
What follows, Ulf tells us, came from Gösta’s retelling of his younger brother’s adventures in America—a version that may have been embellished in the years between the events and the telling. The reader might wonder why Ulf never mentions hearing any stories from Tryggve directly. Why are they always funneled through Gösta? We don’t know. We only have a second-hand (perhaps third-hand) account of Tryggve’s adventures in America.
Tryggve disembarked late one evening into the awe-inspiring streets of New York. With little money and no place to stay, Tryggve took refuge in a nearby cinema. A number of American soldiers entered the cinema to watch the show and one sat down next to him, introducing himself as Al Douglas. The newsreel before the feature film was about the First World War and focused on military tanks. Tryggve told Al that he would love to learn how to drive one of the beasts. Al told Tryggve that it was his lucky day as he served in a tank company! Al gave him a business card with an address, and told Tryggve to come around to the base the next morning. Tryggve spent the night sleeping in the cinema. The next day he caught a taxi to the army base and was welcomed with open arms. His dream was about to come true… he would learn how to drive a tank.
According to Ulf (or Gösta), after several months of military training, Tryggve was qualified to drive in a tank column. They were approaching a railway crossing but didn’t notice an approaching train. Some of the tanks were struck by the train and Tryggve’s friend, Al Douglas, was killed. Tryggve was heartbroken and left the tank regiment.
After leaving the base, Tryggve found his way to a small airfield nearby, where he had seen an airplane performing acrobatics. He asked the pilot if he needed any help, but the pilot said he already had a mechanic. He was, however, looking for an assistant for the acrobatic act, someone who would stand on the wing above the cockpit and hold onto a rope while the plane went through its loops. Tryggve thought it sounded dangerous but was willing to give it a try. It was terrifying but it paid good money.
After leaving the aerial acrobatics job, Tryggve became a singer in a jazz band. Ulf later said that he had seen a picture of Tryggve’s jazz orchestra, and him wearing a straw hat.
These three anecdotes leave us with many questions and very few answers. Did Tryggve actually join the United States Army, as a foreign national? Would he even have been allowed on the base, let alone begin to learn how to drive a tank with no Basic Training? The tank story sounds outlandish and improbable. Perhaps there is a grain of truth somewhere. Maybe Tryggve did become friends with Al Douglas, who gave him a ride in a tank. And perhaps Al died e in a tragic tank/train collision. That seems more plausible than the story passed down through Gösta
The aerial acrobatics adventure also sounds far-fetched, as well as extremely dangerous. It’s possible that Tryggve watched such stunts and imagined himself on the wing. The jazz story seems to have a core of truth, in part because Ulf actually saw Tryggve in a photograph of a jazz orchestra. Although, even there, searches of the newspaper archives have turned up no mention of a Claes Tryggve Caroli (or any variation of his name) in the US newspapers.
We can, however, shed some light on Johannes Dilot, the man that Tryggve was ultimately going to visit upon arrival in the United States. Dilot was a Swede, born in 1895, who had emigrated to the USA in 1919/1920. He was a civil engineer and did indeed live in Milwaukee. Tryggve had given his occupation as “student” on the passenger list. The documented link to Dilot suggests that study, not stunt work, was the primary purpose of Tryggve’s trip to the USA. In this context, the jazz band does make some sense as a way to earn some money.
And then—without warning—Ulf drops Tryggve’s trail entirely and turns to Gösta, who apparently longed to travel and see the world. This urge to explore would be one of the reasons that Gösta ended up in Canada. He worked there for four years on a cattle ranch near Vancouver and in his spare time devoted himself to motorcycles.
Gunnar, remembering his brother in earlier years, told a different kind of story. Gösta had been unable to finish his studies at the Cathedral School in Lund due to rheumatic pain. The prescription was hard physical labour, so Gösta spent a lot of time digging ditches in the local area. The labour prescription worked and the pain went away.
Ulf then skips ahead again.
In Search of Work
This chapter is very disjointed. We learn that Gösta went to Malmo to find work but was unsuccessful and returned home. We then get some background on how the patriarch, Claes, was appointed pastor of Norra Vram in the early 1900s.
Silver Foxes
As with much of Ulf’s writing, the images are vivid but the logistics fall apart. Likely he’d heard variations of this tale many times, or perhaps Gösta himself merged adventures into one..
While working on a ranch in Canada, Gösta made good money tending cows—but what he really dreamed of was motorcycles. Before long, he had enough to buy a brand-new Harley Davidson. Around that time, he heard about silver fox farming in British Columbia and decided he could start his own farm back in Sweden.
He set out across the “Rocky Mountains” (his geography is shaky here) on his Harley, passing through the small village of Lytton. On one steep curve he realized he wouldn’t make the turn and hurled himself off the bike. Gösta was unhurt, but the motorcycle tumbled far down the slope. He spent a week hauling it back up, living on strawberries and stream water. Later he claimed he was the first person in the world to cross the Rockies on a motorcycle.
We know from historical records that Gösta did work at a silver fox farm in the interior of BC, near Merritt and Quilchena. It’s possible Gösta rode across the Rockies, though Europeans often mistook BC’s Coast Mountains for the Rockies, making his itinerary impossible to verify. On top of that, Ulf has told us that Gösta was headed to BC to find a silver fox farm, and yet, in the next paragraph, we will find Gösta in the Prairies, traveling through Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in search of foxes, money and work.
On the far side of the Rocky Mountains (eastern side), Gösta rode to Calgary and asked after silver fox farms. People pointed him toward Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, about 800 km from Calgary. Spotting a barn marked “Silver Foxes,” he pulled in and met Vernon Brown, a farmer who offered him two male and two female foxes in a transport box for $100, with food and drink for the trip included. Gösta agreed, then realized he needed more cash for the journey home. Vernon suggested forestry work near Prince Albert or Winnipegosis (about 600 km from Prince Albert).
Gösta strapped the box of foxes to his Harley and found work through a man named Tony Gordon. He quickly settled into a lumberjack cabin with twelve men, keeping the foxes in a shed beside it. The work was hard but familiar; he and his brothers had cut timber back home in Norra Vram. The pay was steady, the food plentiful, and weekends brought heavy drinking.
One Saturday, after too much alcohol, Gösta claimed to have a vision of his sister Ingrid, warning him he was wasting his mind and money. Whatever the cause, the vision—or the hangover—was enough. He left the camp, foxes in tow, and retraced his way west, eventually sailing home.
In Sweden, the foxes had survived the journey, and Gösta started his own farm. But the business took too long to turn a profit, and the money he’d saved in Canada ran out before the first skins could be sold. He was forced to shut it down.
Ulf’s account is strong on imagery and shakey on details and structure. The distances he has Gösta travelling, in what sounds like a relatively short period of time are mind-boggling. Other records suggest Gösta bought $20,000 worth of foxes, not just a starter pair. Breeding a farm from a single couple seems implausible—an adventurer’s flourish rather than a business plan. Gösta also comes across as an adventurer and passionate dreamer—always chasing the next bold idea, rarely able to see it through.
The Journey East
The failed silver fox farm drove Gösta to leave the country once again. Uncertain about his future, he turned to Germany. His parents admired how the new German leader had “brought the country back to its feet” after the catastrophic Versailles Treaty. His mother’s German ancestry and deep-seated fear of the Russians added to the pull, as did the belief that Germany was mounting a strong defense against future Russian aggression.
There was also a family connection. Gösta’s sister Gerda had married a German priest, and at their wedding Gösta had fallen a little in love with Friedel, Rudolf’s sister. With that spark in mind, Gösta traveled to Germany and became engaged to her.
But Gösta was a restless soul. Before long, he announced that he needed to travel to Russia to “explore the Russian soul.” Friedel was devastated, and the engagement collapsed. Homeless once again, Gösta drifted to Berlin, where he found work as a park laborer, raking leaves.
Still, the call of Russia was strong. One day he made his way to the railway station and tried to stow away by clinging to the undercarriage of a train. At one stop he disembarked and struck up a conversation with a couple who spoke a little German. The ordinary Russians were friendly, but the security police were not. Gösta was arrested and thrown into a railway freight car with other foreigners and Russians. The group was transported under brutal conditions, eventually ending up en route to Afghanistan.
The prisoners finally forced their way out at a station stop, hammering on the doors until workers opened them. The stench was overwhelming—filth and excrement covered them. From there, they were marched toward Afghanistan with barely any food or water. Ever the hero of his own story, Gösta claimed to have saved the group by recalling the trickling streams and berries of the Rocky Mountains. Sure enough, he said, they found a stream and berries to sustain them. This is vintage Gösta: he portrays a scene of vivid misery and then recasts himself as the rescuer, drawing on some frontier survivalist fantasy. There’s no way to corroborate this story, but it sounds like pure fantasy.
Their ordeal was far from over. A band of robbers attacked the group, and Gösta fought back until a rifle butt smashed into his face—the beginning, he later said, of lifelong dental problems. Separated from the others, he wandered alone until he came upon a palatial estate. A man there greeted him with the words that he had been “expected”, making an allusion to the vision Gösta had had of Ingrid at the logging camp.
The man at the estate, identified as a Lama or wise figure, took Gösta in. He offered food, lodging, and wages in exchange for service. Gösta claimed to have spent a long period in philosophical discussions with him. Eventually, the Lama advised Gösta to return to Friedel and even provided him with a return train ticket to Germany.
As always, the tale resolves neatly, with Gösta rewarded rather than ruined by his recklessness. All of his experiences have a deeper message for him. The motorcycle accident near Lytton introduced him to berries and streams, an experience that would later help rescue him and his fellow prisoners in the wilds of Russia (or Afghanistan). Someone always steps in to guide our hero as well, be it Vernon Brown or a mysterious Lama. His misadventures are reframed as quests, each one yielding a lesson or rescue. It is a neat way to sidestep the failures that are a direct result of his inability to embrace his responsibilities in life.
A Job Offer
After returning to Germany, Gösta attended some Nazi gatherings. He claimed later that he had been carried along by the optimism of the moment, and soon enough, he was welcomed into the Abwehr office Königsberg. His entry ticket was his skill with languages—he spoke fluent English and German, and his son Claes would later claim that Gösta could speak seventeen tongues in all. Whether or not the number was exaggerated, the Abwehr clearly valued his skills.
True to form, Gösta drifts into opportunity and frames it as adventure. There is little forethought though as to the consequences of his actions. There is, however a large gap in the narrative. Prior to the start of the Second World War, Gösta had spent several months (or even longer) working as a journalist in the Birmingham area. Perhaps this information did not stick in Ulf’s memory, or perhaps Gösta never shared it. How could journalistic adventures compare with Russian prisoner trains?
Training for a Secret Mission
In the summer of 1940, as Hitler prepared the invasion of England, Gösta found himself billeted at the Hotel Phoenix near Hamburg’s Hauptbahnhof. For six months, he had been undergoing spy training: morse code, invisible ink, ciphers, parachute drills. Gösta knew that parachuting was a vital skill and practised “power jumps” off high diving boards to perfect his landings, earning his instructors’ admiration.
Once training ended, he and a Danish recruit were taken to a Brussels hotel to await deployment. Here, the narrative veers into the predictable: Gösta’s charm and good quickly drew in a young maid, and he embarked on a brief affair.
This detail is both true (confirmed by the Dane in later MI5 interrogations) and also typical of our hero. On the eve of an extremely dangerous mission, Gösta risks both blowing the mission and the wrath of his Nazi masters, for a one-night tryst. He has a chronic inability to keep focus.
To the Airfield and Plane in France
Predictably, the affair did not stay secret. The Dane reported Gösta’s conduct to the Abwehr, who in turn pulled in the Gestapo. The maid was intimidated into silence, and the two agents were reassigned to Rennes. There Gösta boarded a plane flown by Major Gartenfeldt, bound for England.
Their first attempt, aimed at Bristol, was aborted due to foul weather. Days later they tried again. This time the drop zone was set for the Oxford–Buckingham area. Gösta’s primary mission was intelligence gathering, though he was told he might, if opportunity arose, sabotage railway lines.
One would hope that his instructions also explicitly forbade dalliances with foreign maids, but knowing Gösta, such demands would have gone in one ear and out the other. Gösta tells the story with such nonchalance: drop into enemy territory, poke around a bit, maybe wreck some train tracks… all in a day’s work for an adventurer like Gösta. One is almost surprised that his Canadian experiences did not play a supporting role in his spy adventures, as if berries and streams might also guide him through Oxfordshire
The Jump and Capture
We now come to material that can be independently verified from reports and interviews in Caroli’s heavily weeded MI5 file. Most of this information is accurate.
As they flew over England, the jumpmaster, Achtelik from Upper Silesia, carefully inspected Gösta’s parachute harness. Gösta sat on the edge of the open hatch. The engines were cut, the plane began a glide, and suddenly it was time to jump. Gösta floated into the pitch-black night, clutching his radio transmitter tightly. When he landed, the buckle on the strap struck his face and knocked him unconscious.
On the evening of September 4, an Irish farmhand, Paddy Daly, was returning to The Elms Farm after a day of cutting rye. Passing through Twenty Acre Meadow, he saw a pair of yellow shoes sticking out of a hedge. Coming closer, he found a man asleep in the bushes. Daly reported this to Cliff Beechner, the tenant of The Elms and a Home Guard “commander.” Cliff gathered two farm labourers, and with an old shotgun in hand they went back to confront the stranger. They found Gösta dressed in grey flannel trousers and a fine sports jacket. He spoke fluent English, explained that he was a Swedish citizen who had parachuted from Hamburg, and showed them his automatic pistol and a wallet containing £200. The men brought Gösta to the farmhouse, and Cliff contacted Sergeant Smart of the local Home Guard.
Gösta produced a Swedish passport, which he believed to be genuine, and a Birmingham vehicle registration document from 1939, supposedly from earlier Abwehr missions. The next day he was taken to Aylesbury and questioned by Colonel Warren, who then called in Major Ryde, the local Security Liaison Officer. Ryde found Gösta cheerful in his cell. Gösta later claimed that his injuries from the landing were severe: the metal buckle from his broken radio strap had smashed his chin and cheek so badly that he was knocked unconscious. He maintained this had caused lasting injuries that left him wheelchair-bound in his final decade, though his attempts to claim a disability pension from Germany were unsuccessful.
Gösta readily admitted to Major Ryde that he was a German spy. He explained that he had studied English in Birmingham before the war, and was soon transported to Camp 020 for interrogation. He shared information freely but knew nothing of Pons, Meier, Kieboom, and Waldberg—four other captured spies. His mission, he said, was to report on bomb damage in the Oxford, Northampton, and Birmingham areas. He admitted making several trips to Birmingham in the 1930s, posing as a journalist. The mental battle between Gösta, speaker of 17 languages and Lt. Col. Stephens, speaker of 7 languages must have been impressive. Would he cave? Or would he hold steady in the face of increasing pressure?
According to Ulf, the MI5 officers told Gösta about the horrific conditions in Germany’s concentration camps and the mass executions of Jews. He was shaken by this and agreed to work for MI5 as a double agent. He was given the code name SUMMER and reportedly sent back valuable—and deliberately misleading—information to Germany.
This last bit stretches the imagination and the MI5 files tell a different story. In the fall of 1940, the mass deportations and systematic executions of Jews had not yet begun. This version, preserved by Ulf, sounds more like Gösta coming up with a plausible and self-serving reason for his about-face on his loyalty to the Nazi cause. They had fooled him and he was now wholeheartedly in England’s service.
Maybe.
The truth, according to the MI5 files, is that the interrogators managed to extract a crucial nugget of intelligence—Gösta’s fellow spy, the Dane, was due to arrive any day. While Gösta might be ready to forfeit his life, he wasn’t ready to forfeit Wulf Schmidt’s life. In return for his cooperation, the MI5 officers agreed to spare Wulf’s life. For Gösta’s postwar narrative, however, and for Ulf’s family audience, it was far better to imagine that he had been ‘awakened’ to Nazi crimes than to admit that he bartered information to save a fellow spy.
The Escape Attempt
The double life did not sit well with Gösta’s psyche and he was desperately unhappy. He thought often of his mother, who believed that Germany would save Europe and Sweden—and yet had Jewish ancestry. Was she in danger? Gösta decided he needed to go home to his family.
He overpowered and nearly strangled one of his guards at the safe house where he was being held. He then stole a motorcycle and a canoe, and set out for freedom. The motorcycle was old and unreliable; it broke down several times, and he abandoned his escape, turning himself in to the police.
Again, we get a rather twisted version of the truth from Gösta, through Ulf. The homesick son, concerned about his mother, plays far better than a man undone by the consequences of his reckless choices. The MI5 files present a far harsher picture: Gösta was volatile, violent, and untrustworthy. His attack on the guard was not just a bid for homecoming, but an act that nearly killed a man and marked him as too unstable to rely on.
Gösta’s Homecoming
After the war ended, Gösta returned to Sweden. He found work att Weibulls in Landskrona, a plant breeding institute, where he and Stig Blixt developed a new type of strawberry. The cultivar, called Sengana, was large, glossy red, and notably sweet. Gösta proudly brought examples back to Norra Vram.
After initially slamming the door in Gösta’s face, Gunnar eventually softened. Learning of his brother’s double-agent work, and convinced that Gösta had made things easier for the Allies, Gunnar expressed pride in him.
While working at Weibulls, Gösta met Greta, who learned about his past and chose to stand by him. They married soon after.
And Gösta lived happily ever after—at least, that’s the version Ulf gives us. He found a respectable job, reconciled with his brother and entered into a happy marriage. Was the wild, volatile Gösta really tamed at last?
Tryggve Returns Home
Eventually, singing jazz and blues in America wasn’t enough for Tryggve. He grew homesick and decided to return to Sweden to continue his studies. He booked passage on a Swedish-American liner. When he arrived home, his parents noticed a dramatic change: taller, broader, and more mature, he had become a man.
Typical Ulf: the prodigal son, sent away in disgrace, returns home triumphant But we are left wondering, what did Tryggve actually “do” in America? And for how long?
Back in Sweden, Tryggve met Margareta, a pharmacist, and began a placement at her pharmacy. The placement went well, and he was accepted into Chalmers University of Technology. He studied engineering, physics, electronics, and shipbuilding, excelling in nearly every exam. It reads just a little too perfect, too polished — more family legend than history.
During the war, the Security Police asked Chalmers if they had an engineering student who could analyze foreign mail entering Sweden. Tryggve moved to Stockholm for the assignment. At one point, a letter from his sister Gerda in Germany to their brother (Gunnar) crossed his desk. He opened it and read that Gerda and her husband Rudolf had attended a party with high-ranking Nazi officials. where they had heard plans for an invasion of the Nordic countries, beginning with Denmark and Norway. Tryggve wrote back to warn her not to include such information in personal letters.
As with many family stories, one wonders how much this has grown in the retelling. The timeline is also confusing. Tryggve went to America in 1921, but he was studying engineering at Chalmers during the war. Presumably his pharmacy placement came before that. If so, was he really in America from 1921 until the mid-1930s? That seems extreme, and there’s no clear evidence to confirm it.
My Uncles Visiting the Rectory
Here the narrative becomes exceedingly confusing. We have just been hearing about Tryggve, yet suddenly the focus shifts back to Gösta and Gunnar, apparently revisiting their falling out at the rectory door. Gösta explains that he saw the Russians as the true enemy—a view shaped by his parents’ fear of Bolshevism. In that light, Nazi Germany appeared to him as a saviour. His loyalty was also personal: his sister Gerda lived in Germany, and he wished to stand on her side. He even frames his involvement with the Abwehr as a way to make amends to Friedel for their broken engagement (though earlier in Ulf’s account, it sounded like she broke it off).
This section is a clear attempt to rationalize and soften Gösta’s choices. His decisions were rooted in family loyalty or were youthful mistakes rather than ideology. It is highly likely that Gösta smoothed over certain aspects of his stories and adventures, presenting himself in the best light.
We then lurch back to Tryggve. Ulf claims that his uncle became a civil engineer and eventually married Margareta. Ulf remembers Tryggve telling him about the tank accident and the flying acrobatics, while his sister Brita was more interested in his career as a jazz singer. Ulf recalls seeing a photograph of the orchestra.
Overall, Tryggve is a bit of a mystery. His disappearance for years (over a decade?) in America and then his reappearance in Sweden. There’s little sense that Tryggve ever sat and told stories around the kitchen table—that was more Gösta’s role.
Ulf closes the booklet with a personal story from his own teaching career in the 1960s. A colleague told him that his family were Nazis during the war because Gösta was a Nazi spy. Ulf denied it, insisting that Gösta had his reasons for joining the Abwehr and that his later work for MI5 actually helped the Allied cause.
Ultimately, this is at the heart of Ulf’s booklet—his need to “clear” the family name. The emphasis isn’t on accuracy but on reclaiming pride and narrative control. It reveals as much about Ulf himself as it does about his uncles.
In the end, Ulf’s booklet isn’t really about Gösta and Tryggve at all—it’s about how families tell stories to make sense of what can never fully be explained.