Secret Alliances Read online

  *** This is a reference to PERFORMANCE, an operation to transport a consignment of ball bearings from Sweden to Britain after a previous attempt, RUBBLE, had been very successful.

  ††† A reference to a successful SOE sabotage operation, GRANARD.

  ‡‡‡ Underlined in the original. Lark was an operation in Trondheim where two SOE agents were arrested. One managed to escape shortly afterwards, but the radio operator remained in prison and died of pneumonia after prolonged and harsh interrogation.

  §§§ The Home Front was a term sometimes used to describe the resistance organisation.

  ¶¶¶ The historian who later became Lord Dacre.

  CHAPTER 5

  GERMAN SUCCESS, NEAR MISSES AND FAILURES

  ABWEHR ESPIONAGE: AGENTS, DOUBLE AGENTS AND DOUBLE-CROSS

  The prominent SOE historian M. R. D. Foot wrote that ‘every single agent the Germans sent to wartime England bar one, was captured … the one exception committed suicide before he started work’.1 This is not strictly accurate. There were another two, rather more significant, Norwegian exceptions. Ingvald Johansen, one of the Abwehr’s Norwegian agents, was sent over on the Olav with two other Norwegian agents in March 1941. All three passed without incident through screening at the London Reception Centre, also known as the Royal Victoria Patriotic School (RVPS) and, on Nagell’s recommendation, Johansen was recruited by Martin Linge and sent to Shetland to join the North Sea transport. He worked as skipper of the Vita and made five trips to Norway (on one of which he landed near Trondheim to collect his girlfriend, whom he brought back to Shetland and subsequently married) before he was captured by the Germans in September 1941. He and his crew spent the rest of the war in captivity, ending up at Natzweiler concentration camp. After the Security Service finally learned of his Abwehr links through ISOS* in November 1941, they eventually concluded that he had changed sides. This remarkable case will be explored in more detail later in the chapter, as well as another episode where Norwegians working for the Abwehr visited Shetland in November 1940 and succeeded in luring three SOE agents back to Norway, where they were caught and executed.

  The Abwehr, and later Himmler’s SD which took it over in 1944, mounted a series of operations attempting to send Norwegians to Britain. The first group was sent in October 1940, the last arrived in January 1945. Most came over by fishing boat, some were transported by flying boat and landed in rubber dinghies, some dropped by parachute or came by boat from Spain and one arrived from the United States. The early groups were all quickly detected because of poor preparations such as defective identification papers, suspicious aspects in their behaviour, dress or language – and sometimes simply an unsuitable choice of agent. This changed when ISOS gradually came on stream towards the end of 1940 – which was fortunate because the Abwehr was becoming more skilful in their selection and training of agents, and the means by which they tried to disguise them among other travellers. Thereafter ISOS was generally the source of intelligence which led to their identification, detention and (usually) internment, but there were a couple of cases where SIS provided the crucial tip-off and another where it provided significant background reporting on an agent prior to his arrival.

  An assessment of Abwehr activities up to March 1942, compiled by B division of the Security Service, and Section V of SIS, provides a remarkable degree of detail about both the extent of operations from their Norwegian bases, and also about those responsible for carrying them out.2 Their headquarters was at Klingenberggate 5–7 in Oslo, and there were four further sub-stations covering the rest of the country in Bergen, Trondheim, Tromsø and Kirkenes. All of them apart from Kirkenes sent agents to Britain. The main recruiting centre in Oslo used as a cover the firm Andersen and Andersen, Tordenskjolds Plass 3, which claimed to be shipbrokers. The most active recruiter there was Fritz Angermeyer, who used the alias Karl Andersen. After the First World War, Angermeyer had been associated with Norwegian seamen who smuggled spirits into Norway. Following the invasion he got in touch with some of them, whom he recruited as agents. Most were provided with money or fishing boats either for going to Britain as agents or acting as spies or counter-espionage agents along the coast of Norway.

  The report assessed that apart from the Russian front, there were four Abwehr bases of outstanding importance and of special concern, as they were directed against British interests. These were in Norway, the Balkans, Spain and the United States. It calculated that up to that point, Abwehr activity could be divided into six phases, which started in May 1940. Before then, no Abwehr agents were known to have arrived in Britain. The first phase, between May and July 1940, saw the despatch of agents from Eire. During the second phase from August 1940 to February 1941, which partly coincided with preparations for a possible German invasion, there were at least two attempts to send agents from Norway. During the third phase, between March 1941 and the end of September 1941, the focus was almost entirely on Norway as the Abwehr concentrated on missions involving Norwegian agents. There were seven different attempts, most of which involved the use of fishing boats with Abwehr agents concealing themselves among parties of refugees, a threat of greater concern as they could be much less easy to detect. Attempts continued to be made to send Norwegian agents throughout the rest of the war, either from Norway or elsewhere, but not on the same scale. Although occasionally the Security Service knew which Abwehr department had sent them, it was not always possible for them to work out what their mission was. Sometimes it was to gather naval intelligence, sometimes counter-espionage, and sometimes sabotage.

  The report was dismissive of the calibre of Norwegians who had been selected as agents:

  The Norwegians whom the Germans have recruited as spies have on the whole been a miserable collection of thieves, drunkards and blackguards of the last order. In no case, with one possible exception, has any Norwegian come to this country as a German spy because of his Nazi sympathies. The motive has invariably been monetary gain or fear – usually the former. The technique adopted has followed very clear cut lines. The victim is first of all employed as an informer against loyal Norwegians in Norway and at a later stage sent to Britain. If the stories which have been told by the spies whom we have captured are to be believed, which is problematical, although they were all employed as counter-espionage spies in the first place in their own country they never gave the Germans any information of the slightest value to them. Agents of this character who are mere mercenary scoundrels are wholly unreliable, and there is good reason to think that having got the German money in their pockets and got out of physical control of their paymasters, they are unlikely to carry out the missions for which they have been assigned.

  Although the Security Service would have felt justified in describing any Abwehr agent as a blackguard and a traitor, by no means all of the Norwegians fitted this generalised description, which reflected an unwarranted degree of complacency. There were certainly a few hard-drinking and unreliable fishermen among their number – but some were quite highly educated and well motivated to work for the Germans, and one later case was judged sufficiently serious for the agent to be charged with treason, although in the event the prosecution was dropped on procedural grounds.

  An Abwehr coup

  The Germans did have one success in their operations from Norway, though the details of what happened are not entirely clear. We know that Urd II arrived in Lerwick in mid-November 1940. Two of the crew were Harry Hagemann and George Furre, who were both working for the Abwehr. They brought with them a party of refugees one of whom, Marius Eriksen, had good references in London, including an adjutant to King Haakon.3 Perhaps because of this, and also because the reception process for foreign arrivals was not yet properly established, the crew of Urd II was not detained or questioned in any detail. They made clear that they wanted to go home. SOE had a group of three agents whom they wished to return to Norway, and it was agreed that they would travel with Urd II, which had not stayed long enough that it was likely to have
been missed. The agents, Melankton Rasmussen, Alf Konrad Lindeberg and Frithjof Kviljo Pedersen, were arrested by the Germans after their return to the Bergen area, and were executed in August 1941. They were the first members of the resistance to receive a death sentence who were not pardoned. The archival files do not provide any insights into what happened when news of the arrests reached SOE headquarters, or how the Security Service reacted. ISOS reporting was at that time still in its early stages, so was unable to provide any insights.

  Announcement of the executions of three SOE agents who were lured back to Norway from Shetland by Abwehr agents in November 1940. © NHM

  Alf Konrad Lindeberg, one of the three SOE agents executed after being lured back to Norway. © NHM

  The German agent who avoided capture by the British

  Ingvald Johansen, Thorleif Solem and Sigurd Edvard Alseth, all Abwehr agents, arrived in Buckie on the Olav on 17 March 1941. Johansen’s background appears to have been similar to that of Solem, who was originally recruited in June 1940 for counter-espionage work. In January 1941 he was handed over to Angermeyer, who organised the passage to Britain.4 (Alseth, a man of very limited intelligence, was brought in to make up the numbers for the crew. He was the brother of Hildur, whom Johansen subsequently married.) Solem worked as an unskilled labourer on Lade aerodrome, near Trondheim, for which he was well paid. During interrogation he admitted that his first betrayal had been of an arms dump housed by Olav Bokvold at Glåmos south-east of Trondheim. He was an effective German agent, penetrating other resistance groups, and betraying at least a further five Norwegians. He was paid 400 Norwegian kroner (NOK) a month for this work.† Johansen was selected to be the skipper of the Olav and Angermeyer planned that they should explain to British authorities that they had come over to buy spirits which they could then sell in Trondheim. Angermeyer’s purpose was to establish a regular traffic which could be used for espionage purposes and for the introduction of further agents into Britain. Johansen was given nearly 1,700 Swedish kroner (SEK),‡ which he divided with Solem, for the purpose of buying whisky, and was issued with a radio receiver for listening to Swedish weather forecasts and a recognition signal which they could show to prevent attack by marauding German aircraft. They were each to be paid NOK 500 for the first month, thereafter NOK 400 a month, NOK 1,000 on completion of first trip whether or not it was successful, and NOK 10,000§ insurance, all to be paid to next of kin – Solem’s wife, Johansen’s girlfriend, Hildur, and Alseth’s sister. All three signed contracts to this effect. It is not clear how the Germans would disguise to the recipients (unaware of their espionage mission) the source of these payments. Angermeyer also arranged for two innocent Norwegian refugees, Frithjof Cleve and Olaf Tandberg, to travel with them.

  After the Olav arrived in Buckie, the Security Control Officer in Aberdeen recommended in his report to the RVPS that special attention should be paid to Johansen and Solem as they were each in possession of SEK 840¶ and did not have any adequate reason for bringing it to Britain. Moreover, there were found on board three cameras, seven exposed and undeveloped films and four unexposed films. However, these recommendations were ignored, and it is not known what happened to either the cameras or the films. Their interrogation at the RVPS was cursory, and they were released after only two days there, on 25 March. When the Security Service later investigated this, they discovered that there was no record at all of the interrogations of Cleve, Tandberg and Alseth and only fragmentary records for Johansen and Solem – a failing which B1, the section responsible for counter-espionage, described as ‘melancholy’, adding that comment was ‘superfluous’.

  Shortly after Johansen was released from the RVPS, at Nagell’s recommendation he was recruited as a member of the Shetland crews by Martin Linge and sent north. Since at the age of forty he was significantly older and more experienced than other crew members, he was appointed skipper of the Vita. He made his first trip, the delivery of a group of SOE agents to Snilfjord, west of Trondheim, in mid-April. Not long afterwards, Solem, having spent a fortnight serving with the Norwegian Army from which he was discharged as being medically unfit, was also recruited by Linge. SOE later maintained that this was because Johansen had asked for him to join them and that, therefore, despite their reservations about his shiftiness and dependability, they permitted him to do so. He sailed with Johansen on his next trip to pick up a party of SOE agents at Sørhunden, near Namsos, in mid-May. The agents were not at the rendezvous, but on the way back the Vita rescued the crew and passengers of another vessel in difficulties. Soon afterwards, Solem was sacked by the base commander Leslie Mitchell because he was unsuitable, inquisitive, often drunk and viewed with distrust by companions. It was later reported by other crew members that they had once had to stop him trying to telephone his wife when he was over in Norway. Johansen also stated that he did not like him and would rather he left – quite possibly because he would have seen an indiscreet Solem as a threat to his own security. Back in London Solem approached Nagell and was paid £15|| for the one trip he had made.

  The crew of Vita. Ingvald Johansen (left) was the Abwehr agent who passed security checks and was recruited to work at the Shetland base. He changed sides, and was later captured by the Germans. © Scalloway Museum

  At the end of May, Johansen went over again to collect a party of agents who were going to attend a training course in Scotland, and an SIS agent as well as eight refugees including his girlfriend, Hildur, and his brother. It transpired that he had previously sent her a letter telling her when and where to meet him on his next trip, and asking her to marry him. This was a clear and self-evidently dangerous breach of regulations, but the authorities in Lerwick did not take action against him beyond giving him a ticking off. It may have been easier for Johansen to avoid disciplinary trouble since he was very popular with the other crews. Because of his age he was affectionately known as ‘Old Joe’.** After their marriage Hildur was employed as a housekeeper to look after the crews. Following the summer break, he made two further trips to collect SOE agents and to deliver two more on behalf of SIS. He was captured by the Germans in what appears to have been an ambush on his next trip in late September, probably the consequence of some arrests made by the Germans on 22 September not far from Rekøy, where Johansen was bound. SOE eventually established that after a spell in the Kristiansten Festning prison in Trondheim, he and his crew were moved via a camp in Falstad to Grini prison camp outside Oslo. They went later sent to Germany, first to Oranienburg, and later to Natzweiler concentration camp in France. They all survived the war. Before leaving Norway, Johansen was able to pass a message back that their interrogation had gone well, that they had been forced to admit they had done five trips to Norway, but that they had revealed nothing about their contacts. We do not know when the Abwehr caught up with him and how Johansen dealt with his interrogation by Angermeyer, but it is difficult to believe that it could have gone ‘well’. Hildur Johansen remained in her position as housekeeper for a while after Johansen’s capture, and slightly longer on Shetland, but then left. The file contains no further information about either of them and concentrates on the equally remarkable story of Solem.

  Solem first came to the attention of the Security Service in early June, only a fortnight after he had left Shetland, when he and a Norwegian deserter were found in a prohibited area in Dover and detained. His companion said that Solem wanted to steal a boat and sail to France. During questioning, Solem said that he had been a secret service agent for the Norwegian government and had been paid by Nagell. The Security Service officer who interviewed them concluded that they were both wastrels and liars. They were sentenced to two days’ imprisonment each by magistrates for being in a prohibited area, and then released. Solem was transferred to the Norwegian authorities and sent to Bristol on 25 June to report to the Norwegian shipping and trade mission. Later in June, Captain Kristian Gleditsch, responsible to Nagell for security, reported to the Security Service that Sverre Gisvold, a recent
ly arrived refugee from Trondheim, had stated that he had been arrested there by the Germans and that it was Solem who had given him away. Gleditsch said that they were going to bring Solem to London to confront him with Gisvold. There is no direct record of what then happened because the report by Gleditsch has been retained. However, a later Security Service summary recorded that after investigating both Solem and Gisvold, the Norwegians had concluded that ‘Solem was only a bit of a rogue who has been indiscreet when drunk, whereas Gisvold was also just a fool, who had no improper connection with the enemy’. Gleditsch also considered that ‘since Solem had been in special service with the Norwegian Navy, the matter for the moment may be left there’. He was released to go back to Bristol to work on the tanker Sandanger.††

  At the end of November 1941, ISOS provided information showing that the crew of the Olav were Abwehr agents, and Solem and Alseth (serving in the Norwegian Army in Dumfries) were arrested and brought to Camp 020.‡‡ This report also made it plain that the Germans had imprisoned Johansen and his companions, and were proposing to court-martial him.5 Solem readily admitted his association with the Germans, and gradually revealed the extent of his activities on their behalf. For example, he admitted that he had been briefed on the way to Shetland to observe the mine barrier at Lerwick; the position of any naval units seen on route; the recognition signals used by aircraft; and that it was hoped that they would be permitted to make regular trips between Norway and Scotland. Alseth was of less concern: it was judged that he was of such low mentality as to be almost half-witted, and that he had been recruited more as a crew member than for any specific intelligence purpose.