A few years ago, I stumbled my way through Nikolaus Ritter’s memoir: Deckname Dr. Rantzau – Die Aufzeichnungen des Nikolaus Ritter, Offizier under Canaris im Geheimen Nachrichtendiesnt. [Cover Name Dr. Rantzau – The Notes of Nikolaus Ritter, Officer under Canaris in the Secret Intelligence Service]. I say stumbled, because my schoolgirl German found the espionage […]
The Book Agent TATE: The Wartime Story of Harry Williamson. Tommy Jonason and Simon Olsson. Amberley Publishing. 2012. Summary The story of double agent TATE (LEONHARDT to the Germans) is one of the classic tales of the British double cross system from the Second World War. One can read key snippets of his story in
Two years ago, I wrote a blog post about the German Abwehr’s activities in Hamburg. Many of the agents sent to England from the Continent in 1940 and 1941 were run by spymaster Nikolaus Ritter from the Abwehr’s Ast Hamburg (Referat I Luft) offices. Early in my research into Josef Jakobs I discovered that he
German Abwehr Activities in The Hague Read More »
N.B. I have written a follow-up post about Bruin which can be accessed here. During research for a few recent blog posts, I’ve been reviewing Guy Liddell’s diaries, the original documents from The National Archives at Kew. In that process, I’ve come across a few interesting tidbits that warranted further investigation, if only to satisfy
Dutchman Harm Knol Bruins – German Spy and Civil Engineer Read More »
The Book Deckname Dr. Rantzau – Die Aufzeichnungen des Nikolaus Ritter, Offizier under Canaris im Geheimen Nachrichtendiesnt. [Cover Name Dr. Rantzau – The Notes of Nikolaus Ritter, Officer under Canaris in the Secret Intelligence Service.] Nikolaus Ritter. Hoffman and Campe. 1972. Summary I bought this book several years ago but never got around to reading
Book Review – Deckname Dr. Rantzau (Cover Name Dr. Rantzau) – Nikolaus Ritter (1972) Read More »
The Book Hitler’s Spies and Saboteurs. Charles Wighton and Gunter Peis. Charter Books. 1958. Summary I may have read this book years ago but given Bernard O’Connor’s reliance on it (see the previous post which reviews O’Connor’s book – Operation Lena – Hitler’s Plans to Blow up Britain), I thought I would read it again
Book Review – Hitler’s Spies & Saboteurs – Charles Wighton & Gunter Peis (1958) Read More »
It seems that there are a slew of books coming out in recent years about wartime espionage and the characters involved. One of the newest, hot off the press books is entitled Double Agent CELERY – MI5s Crooked Hero by Carolinda Witt. It turns out that CELERY, whose real name was Walter Dicketts was quite
A New Book – Double Agent CELERY by Carolinda Witt Read More »
Digging up information on the activities of World War II secret services is challenging because… well… a lot of the documents were/are secret! The British MI5 files have been slowly released to the public domain over the last 15 years, which has been extremely helpful in researching the German spies, including Josef Jakobs. But what
The Lost Files of Abwehr Ast X Read More »
Hamburg has proved to be a stubborn nut to crack. Very stubborn. During the last few years of writing this blog, I’ve been tackling various locales, people and objects, trying to deepen my own understanding of the role they played in the story of German spy, Josef Jakobs. Most of my blogs have focused on
Abwehr Locales in Hamburg Read More »
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog about German spymaster Nikolaus Ritter and his American wife, Mary Aurora Evans. I based the blog on information I had dug up on Ritter as well as several book reviews on Aurora’s biography (written by her daughter, Katharine (Ritter) Wallace). The biography sounded quite fascinating and
The German Spymaster and his American Wife Read More »