Book Review – Gösta Caroli – Dubbelagent SUMMER – Simon Olsson and Tommy Jonason (2015)

The Book

Gösta Caroli – Dubbelagent Summer, Simon Olsson and Tommy Jonason, Vulkan, 2015.

Background

Several years ago, I read Olsson and Jonason’s book on double agent TATE (the Dane Wulf Schmidt). It was a well-researched and valuable addition to my espionage library. In 2015, Olsson and Jonason self-published another book, this time on double agent SUMMER, the Swede Gösta Caroli. Schmidt and Caroli had trained together under the Abwehr and become fairly close. It makes sense, then, that the authors would publish a second volume on the pair. Alas, the Caroli book was written in Swedish.

I purchased the Caroli book a few years ago, with the idea that I could transcribe the pertinent chapters by hand, and run them through Google Translate. I wrote about my efforts here and here. But I always wondered: what was in the rest of the book? Had the authors found sources beyond the National Archives at Kew?

This past year, I discovered AI tools—specifically ChatGPT. After many false starts and botched attempts, I finally found a way to get both a Swedish transcript and an English translation. It’s a game-changer—still tedious (a topic for a future blog post), but nowhere near as tedious as typing Swedish into Microsoft Word (looking at you, Å and å).

In the process, I came across some intriguing tidbits that I believe are not well-known.

Summary

Rather than walk through every chapter, I want to highlight the pieces that struck me as less well-known and worth pulling forward. Within their Introduction, the authors note that Gösta’s story has received short shrift in Swedish literature. In English spy history, it has been covered here and there—Nigel West (1981) and Terry Crowdy (2008) both touch on him—but in my view Gösta still deserves a dedicated English-language volume.

The authors were able to access several primary sources that have not been mentioned before. The Swedish Security Police archive at the National Archives in Stockholm has a very thin personal file on Gösta from 1945, after he returned to Sweden. They also tracked down files in the Bundesarchiv in Germany, teased out some details from the Northamptonshire Police archives, and even contacted Gösta’s son for family history material. That last piece—the Caroli family archives and stories—is invaluable. The writers felt that the information they gleaned on Gösta really deserved its own book, and I agree.

Much of the broader background (MI5, the Abwehr, the double cross system) will be familiar to English readers of this blog. I’ve skimmed those parts here so the summary doesn’t bog down in what’s already well-documented.

Early Life & Fox Farm Misadventures (Ch. 1–2)

In the first two chapters, we dive deep into Gösta’s family history, childhood and Canadian adventures. I have always been perplexed by the surname “Caroli” which, if you Google it, is far more common in Italy. Gösta’s grandfather, Carl Johann Carlsson, was a crofter in Fellingsbro. His son Claes Carlsson (Gösta’s father) broke free from farming and studied at university, teaching for a few years, before being appointed a preacher in Uppsala. Normal practice at the time was for the clergyman’s last name to be Latinized and so Carlsson shifted to Caroli, a name the family retained thereafter.

Gösta was born in 1901, a year after Claes took up the position of pastor in Norra Vram. Gösta’s father was able to send his children to good schools and Gösta was a genius at languages, according to childhood friend, Runo Löwenmo, getting a big “A” in English, French and German. He apparently wanted to be a diplomat and, while friends with the son of the local bigwig, encountered many foreign dignitaries at the local castle. The general Germanophilia of the time, rooted in Sweden’s bond with Germany, also shaped him.

In the mid-1920s, Gösta sailed to Canada and farmed silver foxes, a bred variant of the native red fox (Vulpes vulpes). The black shaggy pelts, with silver-tipped guard hairs and white-tipped tail were a high-priced status symbol in the early 20th century (overproduction by the 1940s made them common—even my grandmother had one). But when Gösta first began, it was a lucrative market.

Upon arrival in Canada, Gösta travelled west by train to Lake View Fox Farm near Nicola, British Columbia. He worked there as a seasonal labourer and returned the following year, with plans to set up a fox farm in Sweden. He purchased 20 pairs of silver foxes and shipped them back to Sweden but, due to a variety of factors, his business failed and went bankrupt in 1930.

Disappointed by his business failure, Gösta drifted through life—stowing away on a ship and roaming around Europe picking up odd jobs. At one point he worked as a gardener in Italy. At other times, he worked as a correspondent for various Swedish newspapers. He wrote travel accounts under the pseudonym “Gösta Berling”. Border control stamps in his passport from the 1930s confirm many of his travels. He later claimed that he was arrested by the Russians and accused of espionage but was able to prove that he was a journalist. By the end of the 1930s, Gösta was well-travelled but rootless—his lack of title, higher education, and resources left him unable to turn his adventures into lasting stability.

Nazi Germany & Recruitment (Ch. 3–4)

In the late 1920s, Gösta had attended the marriage of his younger sister, Gerda, to German pastor Rudolf Hoffmann. Gösta was attracted to Rudolf’s sister, Friedel, and the two kept in contact over the years. In 1937, Gösta settled in Hamburg, finding work as a writer at the Hamburger Tagesblatt—a paper closely tied to the Nazi Party. The move to Hamburg had both career and personal importance for Gösta since Gerda and Rudolf, along with Friedel, lived nearby.

Gösta began to move in increasingly elite social circles that consisted almost entirely of Nazi party members. A few years earlier, while studying in Vienna with his childhood friend, Runo Löwenmo, Gösta had started expressing positive opinions of the German regime. Shortly after Kristallnacht in November 1938, Gösta invited Runo to a gathering with Nazis of the “worst kind”, where Runo was shocked to hear Gösta agree with the “abominations” that had taken place. Their friendship ended soon thereafter. Friedel and Gösta had become engaged, but Friedel broke off the engagement suddenly, apparently because her family disapproved of Gösta’s lack of education or title.

Wounded, but eager to prove himself, Gösta threw himself even more deeply into Germany’s cause. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, he was ecstatic; by then he considered Germany his true homeland. That same year, word of the pro-German Swede in Hamburg reached the ears of the Abwehr. He was ideal spy material with his Swedish citizenship, linguistic skills, extensive travel experience (including Great Britain), and pro-German sympathies. Gösta was approached and asked if he would be willing to travel to Great Britain, on behalf of the “German army”, and send back reports on various topics. Gösta agreed, perhaps hoping that his ardent love and loyalty for Germany would change Friedel’s mind.

The authors follow this with a background chapter on the Abwehr and its pre-war agents in Britain (SNOW and Myrna Eriksson)—familiar territory for English readers.

Pre-war Espionage Bumbling (Ch. 5–6)

Much of this section is based on primary sources which have not been accessed, at least not to my knowledge—the Swedish Police dossier and the Northamptonshire Police archives.

Gösta arrived in England in early December 1938 and began sending reports back to Germany, detailing the locations of power plants, gasworks and factories. He was called back to Germany a month later and given more detailed instructions as his reports were too vague.

After returning to Birmingham, Gösta saw an ad for the Institute of Linguists and contacted them. He wished to improve his English so that he could write articles for English newspapers. The 46-year-old linguist Elsie Baylis became his teacher and Gösta earned diplomas in English and German. Elsie saw that Gösta’s English was already strong and suggested that he earn some money by translating Swedish novels into English. Gösta took her up on the suggestion and translated three novels.

Gösta’s side gig of writing newspaper articles and translating novels took up more and more of his time. He stopped sending reports to the Abwehr and they stopped sending him monthly payments. While he received some money from his writing gigs, it wasn’t enough to support him. He borrowed money from Elsie, with whom he had become romantically involved. During this period, Gösta moved from the YMCA to a furnished flat with a garage within which he stored the second-hand Austin he had purchased. Elsie helped him extend his residency permit, due to expire in August 1939, for another full year. He obviously felt relatively secure in England and proposed marriage to Elsie, who joyfully accepted. Nothing would ever come of it.

With the outbreak of war, Gösta cut off contact with the Abwehr, but found it increasingly difficult to support himself. His articles brought in very little and the translation projects dried up with the declaration of war. He borrowed more and more money from Elsie. He eventually lied to Elsie and told her that he had been offered a job in Sweden and headed down to London in November 1939. It was difficult to find passage to Sweden and he ended up signing on as a deckhand aboard the SS Anton from Gothenburg.

Gösta arrived back in Sweden in early January 1940, during the Phoney War. The only fighting was happening in Finland where the Finns were resisting the Soviet invasion. Gösta wrote to the Abwehr and informed them of his intentions to volunteer with Finnish forces, but was urged to travel to Copenhagen to meet one of their representatives. The Abwehr suggested that he become an agent for them in Iceland (likely to do weather reporting) but he had signed an agreement which stated he was not obliged to take assignments in Scandinavian countries.

Gösta returned to Sweden and wrote a letter to Elsie telling her that he wasn’t going to fight for Finland and planned to marry her when he returned. It was the last letter she would ever receive from him. In March 1940, Gösta travelled to Hamburg to meet with the Abwehr, who convinced him to take on another mission to Great Britain. This time, he was to find work at a British port or aboard a merchant ship operating in British waters. Armed only with a bottle of invisible ink, he returned to Sweden, intent on reaching England.

In the spring of 1940, Gösta signed on as saloon steward aboard the SS Mertainen. The Swedish-flagged ship left Narvik on 6 April 1940 with a cargo of iron ore bound for Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire. Reports of British-laid mine-fields along the route through Norwegian waters delayed the ship. On 9 April, as the ship resumed its course, news of the German invasion of Norway forced it to abort its journey. The ship anchored along the shores of Grisvågøya where it remained for a week, awaiting developments.

On Thursday 16 April, German bombers flew over the ship at high altitude, but the last one turned back and circled the ship at low altitude and then attacked it (despite the obvious blue and yellow markings of neutral Sweden). Most of the crew scrambled for the lifeboats, while some donned survival suits. The crew made their way ashore, where the locals warmly welcomed them. The ship slowly began to sink and attempts to tow it closer to shore failed. On 25 April, the crew were moved to Kristiansund where a district court inquiry was soon interrupted by German bombing raids. On 9 May, the crew were transferred to Trondheim where the Swedish consulate helped arrange transport back to Sweden. Gösta made his own way home, possibly via a stolen motorcycle. Gösta’s first wartime mission ended in chaos, but the Abwehr had not finished with him yet.

The Invasion Context (Ch. 7–10)

Before returning to Gösta’s story, the authors pause to set the wider scene—Germany’s invasion plans, the Abwehr’s last-minute Operation LENA, and the realities of everyday life in wartime Britain. The information in this section will be familiar to English readers but the Operation SEA LION chapter concludes with an interesting story. In 1974, several senior German and British officers carried out a war game at the British Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. The war game was based on German plans for Operation SEA LION. Even without air supremacy, German assault troops managed to land—but within days the Royal Navy cut supply lines, and the war game ended with German capitulation. Would it have played out that way in real life? Hard to say.

As part of Operation SEA LION, Hitler demanded that the Abwehr create a network of spies in England to support the invasion plans. The authors cover the usual cast of Abwehr agents familiar from English-language accounts. Josef Jakobs is only mentioned briefly (in relation to the dangers of no practice parachute jumps) and there is no mention of Karel Richter or Jan Willem ter Braak (Engelbertus Fukken). The authors list a handful of poorly documented ‘phantom agents,’ whose existence remains doubtful. Overall the authors conclude that the LENA agents were poorly trained in almost all aspects of their missions. They were misled as to the conditions in Britain, fully expecting to see chaos and shocked at the reality.

While Britain might not have the chaos that the naive would-be spies had been promised, it was nevertheless a country at war. The authors cover everyday life in wartime Britain, everything from the internment of foreign nationals to the evacuation of children from cities and the mobilization of soldiers and home guard volunteers. The blackout and rationing weighed heavily on the population, but the Blitz—and later the V-1 and V-2 rockets—brought far greater devastation. Despite these hardships, Britain was far from beaten—a reality that Gösta would soon confront firsthand.

Training, Landing, and Capture (Ch. 10–11)

After surviving the bombing and sinking of the SS Mertainen, Gösta made his way back to Sweden. The Abwehr soon drew him in again, this time with a clear plan: parachute into Great Britain and send back weather reports. This is where Gösta the drifter disappears and ‘Caroli’ the spy takes over—the name stamped on all the MI5 files that follow. Caroli trained in Hamburg alongside another recruit, Wulf Schmidt, learning radio transmission, Morse code, meteorology, aircraft recognition, and encryption. The two became close—an odd lapse by the Abwehr, since capture of one would almost certainly compromise the other.

After several months of training in Hamburg, the pair moved to Brussels and awaited deployment. It was there that Caroli almost blew their cover by falling in love with a Belgian maid. The maid was given a stern warning by the German authorities and Caroli and Schmidt were sent to Paris to have some “fun”. After returning to Brussels, the plan was set in motion—Caroli would be sent first and, once he had established contact, Schmidt would follow. After an aborted attempt on 31 August, Caroli finally jumped on the night of 5 September from a Heinkel He-111. He had been advised to drop his equipment with a separate parachute, but he feared being separated from his transmitter, so had it strapped to his chest. This decision would prove disastrous.

Caroli’s landing in Britain was bungled from the start. The Abwehr had initially thought to send Caroli by boat (like Waldberg, Kieboom, Meier and Pons) and land him between Brighton and Portsmouth. His cover story was weak—after the sinking of the SS Mertainen, he had befriended soldiers from Britain’s expeditionary force to Norway who had helped him stowaway aboard a ship bound for England. Caroli would attempt to use this cover story during his interrogations at Camp 020. It might have worked had he landed along the coast, but near landlocked Northampton, it was hardly credible.

Given that Caroli was the first spy to parachute into England, it seems the Abwehr hadn’t yet worked out all the details. According to Swedish Police files, he was not issued a flying helmet nor was there any record of a flying overall, though the authors conclude he must have had something against the cold. Dressed in civilian clothes, he carried a transmitter, code disc, £200 in cash, maps, compass, rations, pills, pistol, forged identity card, and his Swedish passport. Accounts of the flight itself vary: Caroli thought the plane a Dornier, others said a Heinkel or Junkers; the jump height is equally disputed. He told his interrogators he had never done a training jump, and when he landed he was knocked unconscious—either by the transmitter striking his chin or by his head hitting the ground.

Caroli had landed on The Elms farm, outside the village of Denton, five kilometres southeast of Northampton. A farmhand saw him and reported him to the farm manager who went to investigate. Caroli was escorted back to the farmhouse where he was served tea and cake while the police were called. The police escorted Caroli back to his landing site to gather his equipment. He was then taken to Northampton where he gave a statement to police. The Northamptonshire Police inventory of his equipment was surprisingly sparse—lacking the detailed record kept of Josef Jakobs’ possessions. Caroli was then bundled up and sent to Cannon Row Police station in London where he gave a statement to MI5’s Lt. Col. W.E. Hinchley-Cooke. He was then transferred to Camp 020 at Ham Common near Richmond.

Back at the farm, word of Caroli’s capture spread throughout the area. The farm manager told his friends, who then told their friends. According to the Northamptonshire Police archives, a “Mr. Hailes, who managed a Woolworth store in Northampton, was later questioned by police after he described the incident in detail to some friends. There was some nervous correspondence about this in the spring of 1941, but it was assumed that the agent’s name had never been revealed.” This is intriguing since Caroli was turned into a double agent. One of the first rules for assessing an agent’s suitability was whether word of his capture was widely known. It was one of the reasons why Josef’s future career as a double agent was cut short. Word of his capture was bandied about the area by several individuals.

The farm manager later tried to claim the £200 under a 1748 rule from the High Court which stated that “a subject was entitled to whatever he could take from the King’s enemy.” One of the individuals involved in the capture of Wälti, Drücke and Eriksen tried to do the same. Neither man was successful in their claim.

Interrogation and Double Agent (Ch. 12–13)

The authors open with a brief history of British intelligence (later MI5 and MI6), from First World War spy cases through to the early days of the Second World War. They then outline the creation of Camp 020 and its key personalities, before touching on its satellite facility at Huntercombe (Camp 020R), the postwar controversy at Bad Nenndorf, and the London Reception Centre and London Cage.

After arriving at Camp 020, Caroli was interrogated by Lt. Col. Robin W.G. Stephens and a panel of officers. He gave information grudgingly, but when told that the lives of any follow-up agents would be spared, he admitted that Hans Reysen (Kurt Karl Goose) and Wulf Schmidt were due to arrive within days. Caroli came across as brave, prepared to face the consequences of his actions, though Stephens was never sure what to believe. At one point, Caroli even claimed to have joined expeditions across Greenland and in the Himalayas—an early sign of his tendency to embellish. Eventually, he agreed to cooperate as a double agent under the codename SUMMER.

Caroli soon realized he had been sent on a hopeless mission. The Abwehr had lied about England’s condition, and working for MI5 meant breaking his oath to Germany. On 11 October 1940, he slashed his wrists with a razor but survived after surgery and a blood transfusion. He spent two weeks in a psychiatric facility before being presented with a stark choice: return to work or remain confined for the duration of the war. He chose to work.

From November to January 1941, Caroli transmitted messages to the Abwehr from the Old Parsonage in Hinxton, under MI5 supervision. On 3 January his mental state collapsed again. He strangled his guard, Paulton, with a rope and escaped on a motorcycle—laden with a 12-foot canvas canoe and a suitcase. He fell several times, eventually abandoning the canoe, before turning himself in to the police in Newmarket. Returned to Camp 020, MI5 reluctantly conceded he was finished as a double agent.

Caroli was sent to the Isle of Man, then Dartmoor Prison, before ending up at Camp 020R (Huntercombe). After the war, he told a fanciful story of a wartime mission to Stockholm to meet the Abwehr before returning to Huntercombe. The authors note he had a tendency to fabricate—an understatement.

The TATE Connection (Ch. 14–15)

Given TATE’s role as one of the most important double cross agents of the Second World War, the authors spend an entire chapter laying out his story. TATE’s success can be partly laid at Caroli’s feet, as he was the one who alerted MI5 to TATE’s imminent arrival. The authors wrote an English language book on TATE and interested readers are directed there for more information.

It is within these chapters, however, that the authors note that allowing agents to form friendships with each other, or to even know of each other, was extremely poor tradecraft on the part of the Abwehr. It was this friendship that caused Caroli to crack and reveal information about Schmidt’s arrival. Schmidt too eventually broke under interrogation and agreed to serve as double agent TATE. He was an assertive agent who had no trouble making demands of the Abwehr. In late 1940, he demanded more money from them and in January 1941, Josef Jakobs was sent but broke his ankle on landing. The authors claim Josef was a ‘staunch Nazi’ and ‘impossible to use,’ but he had, in fact, agreed to serve; his capture was too public and his injuries too severe for MI5 to employ him. Josef did reveal that another spy would follow, Karel Richter. The authors note that Karel arrived in April 1941, but that is not correct, he arrived in early May 1941. His mission was to determine if TATE was trustworthy. From there, the story hits the high points of TATE’s career and his life after the war.

The next chapter broadens out into the wider Double Cross system, but much of this is familiar ground, touching only lightly on Caroli. The authors seem to have relied heavily on J.C. Masterman’s book from 1972 which is out of date. They note that Jan Willem ter Braak (Engelbertus Fukken) arrived on 3 October, 1940, which is not accurate. Fukken arrived in early November 1940.

Aftermath & Decline (Ch. 16)

Chapter 16 returns to Gösta’s story and traces his post-war life. Much of this chapter has been summarized in an earlier blog post. Gösta was sent back to Sweden where he was questioned by the Swedish Police about his wartime escapades. He married, had a son, and found work at a plant breeding facility.

As his health worsened, he began to experience double vision and dizziness, likely the result of an earlier cerebral hemorrhage caused by his parachute landing. He later left the plant breeding institute and started his own horticultural business. As he aged, his balance was also affected by the brain injury, and for his final decade he was wheelchair-bound. His Abwehr spymaster, Nikolaus Ritter, visited him after the war and lamented that Gösta’s memory was gone. Gösta died in 1975, his post-war years marked as much by frailty as by the shadow of his espionage.

Review

Reading this book, I had to keep reminding myself that it was written for a Swedish audience who might not know the background against which Gösta’s story unfolded. So the chapters on MI5, the Abwehr, Operation SEA LION and Operation LENA all make sense, in that context. For an English-language reader, who is familiar with all of this, the book tends to drag. I was interested in Gösta’s story, not in all the background.

On the whole, the book is well-researched and does add valuable information from the Swedish Police files and from the Northamptonshire Police archives, information that has not been previously accessed.

At several points I wished the authors had engaged more directly with the material—for example, by connecting Gösta’s health problems to his behaviour. For example, Gösta experienced cognitive issues later in life—double vision, dizziness, and balance problems—all traced to a cerebral hemorrhage. I found myself wondering if Gösta’s head injury was responsible for much more than those physical symptoms. Depending on the location of the cerebral hemorrhage, such an injury can lead to personality changes, impulsivity, disinhibition, memory issues and a tendency towards confabulation. If we look at Gösta’s time in England, and his later life in Sweden, we might wonder if some, or all, of his behaviour can be explained by a traumatic brain injury sustained during his parachute landing. He tried to commit suicide, he throttled a guard and tried to escape on a motorcycle with a 12-foot canoe strapped to the side. He also had a habit of spinning tall tales, both in England and later in life—classic examples of confabulation, where gaps in memory are patched over with fantastic stories.

Similarly, I found myself wondering if the story about Elsie Baylis, the linguist in Birmingham, was true—Gösta’s flair for invention makes you question everything. A quick search of Ancestry confirms that Elsie Baylis did actually exist. She was born 17 December 1897 to parents Florence Kate (née Johnson) and William Walford Bayliss. The family lived in Redditch, Worcestershire, where William had a needles manufacturing operation. In 1911, 18-year-old Elsie was a governess but still living at home. Ten years later, she was working as a typist at the International Exchange in Birmingham. For the 1939 National Registration, Elsie and her mother were still living at 66 Oakley Road in Redditch. Florence was a 66 year old widow while Elsie was a certified linguist. Elsie Adelaide Baylis passed away in 1985 at the age of 92. She outlived Gösta by 10 years and apparently never married. Perhaps she waited for her love to come back to her. This information was easily attainable and would have added to Gösta’s story, at least confirming that the woman existed and giving us some information about her background and fate.

Overall, the book provides valuable information on Gösta’s pre- and post-espionage career. The authors were able to access Caroli family photographs which add a lot to our knowledge of the man. In connecting with the Northamptonshire Police archives, the authors have also added important information not in the MI5 files at the National Archives (Kew). In particular, I was astonished to discover that the Northamptonshire Police apparently have Gösta’s wireless apparatus in their archives. I had never come across this little tidbit and that’s a nugget of gold. For me, that discovery made the long slog of photos, transcription, translation, and reading worth the effort.

Rating

4 out of 5 – The book provides valuable information on Gösta’s life both before and after his espionage career.