NAZIS FOILED

Opotiki News, Volume X, Issue 1048, 21 November 1947, Page 4

NAZIS FOILED

SPIES IN BRITAIN DIABOLICAL CLEVERNESS COUNTER-AGENTS WORK A German spy, Josef Jakobs, who parachuted into Britain in the middle of the war, wore spats, once an essential for fashionable people, and had a brown bowler hat, which had completely disappeared from Britain years before the war. He also possessed a wireless transmitting set and a despatchcase containing German sausage—an exotic food in -wartime England. When,, thus equipped, and with a half-buried parachute, he was found with a broken 'ankle c-n a country road at dawn, Jakobs’ first words were: “Me flying. Mo bale out.”

Jakobs —who was a meteorological expert and had come to radio daily weather reports to assist. German air raiders—was shot in the Tower cf London within two months. He was accorded the distinction of shooting, whereas 14 other spies were hanged, because he was a soldier.

Key M-bR Caught

The second spy ring, consisting of the real key inch—business men, journalists and supposed refugees—arirved a, few months before the war . with instructions to -make contact with German zonal agents and British people’with Nazi, sympathies.

Despite careful German planning, 35 key men and more than -.00 others were swept up without fuss, on the outbreak of war, but the Germans did not know that the second spy ring had been months. 'V'"’

British Intelligence, in the interval, hoodwinked the Germans, using the arrested men’s code names for send.ng cleverly misleading inlormation. IHBoat Trap Occasionally the sender asked to be picked up by a U-boat on the Welsh cloast. This invariably resulted in the sinking of the U-boat, which was caught unawares in-shore by a prearranged warship patrol and sunk by gunfire..

The British also, for 15 months, utilised the “whispering box”—a marvellous German wireless transmitter almost inaudible even by scientific devices a few yards away lint which could be picked up by powerful stations m Germany.

It was tlie Germans’ belief that this transmitter was still their secret that sent to their death three spies in toil. The British then revealed their knowledge of the sets which were captured with the spies.

The Germans chuckled at the supposed British nuivettc in disclosing this knowledge, but the British aim was to lead the Germans to make the discovery and that the misleading information they had been sending for 15 months was reliable.

Embassy Hotbed The German arch-spy 'undoubtedly was Joachim von Ribbentrop, who ran the espionage organisation when he was Ambassador to Britain. His glittering entertainment of potential Nazi sympathisers in British society was designed' to establish a fifth column. This Scotland Yard also circumvented.

Describing the Embassy as a “thieves’ kitchen” Fjrmin discloses that when Ribbontrop wanted some service fitting in with espionage from guests who demurred,' he blackmailed them by producing cine-pictures taken during the Embassy entertainments by a camera concealed among the decorations.

Ribbentrop, when fareweliing two British detectives responsible for his’ safety, sneeringly remarked: “i will be seeing y.ou again sooner than you think.” He expected to return, after Germany’s triumph, as "Chancellor of England.”

Why the majority of Gorman epics reaching Britain had equally short lives, being arrested before they functioned, is now related for the first time in a fascinating book, “They Came to Spy,” by Stanley Timiin, who was the Daily Telegraph liaison correspondent of Scotland Yard.

Two Agencies Finnin graphically describes the almost diabolical cleverness of the British counter-espionage in shortcircuiting the ingenious German moves.

The Germans, for instance, learned a lesson in 1014, when the spy ring already planted in Britain was rounded up within 43 hours. During the lengthy preparations for the war of 1939 the Germans created two spy rings, one of v hie a was relatively unimportant and was designed for sacrifice in the hope that the other would escape detection.

This organisation was assisted, in 1938, by ail array of German youths who tramped through Britain on holiday ; recording innumerable strategical and industrial details, and by hundreds of domestics—fanatical" Nazis but' well-trained servants —who obtained employment in the families of service officers and other prominent people in the. hope of picking up information.