Can someone list me any German intelligence coup's of WW2?

Looking to dive into the world of intelligence, in WW2. Want to focus on the German side for now, and then the allies.

I was wondering if someone could give me a start on some german intelligence victories in ww2. I'm not even sure that they had some!

Other things I'm interested in, is, Did the Germans have the ability to read the allies radio messages? I know they were able to read the RN messages up to '42. But is there any other example of that aswell?

Any Info would be great

Thanks in advance

 

Look up Admiral Canaris for a starting point.

 

Canaris is rather a faux pas for Nazi intel. since he was an opponent of Hitler and "kinda-sorta" made sure none of the Abwehr ops were successful.

The only true success I can think of, and it was rather counter-productive for later in the war for anti-Nazis was the Velno incedent where the SD managed to capture two British officers and uncover and eliminate all the pro-allied spies in the occupied countries. Those two men ended up being the longest held British prisoners of the war. The name of only one sticks in my mind; Best. For the life of me of the top of my head I cannot recall the other man's name.

If you google up Velno incedent you will find a success, of sorts.

 

Oh, and don't forget Operation Bernhard, the counterfeit money operation. It was so good that the Bank of England had to change the design of the pound notes to root out the fakes.

 

Yes your probably right Clint, but I'd say that was a success for German intelligence..him being head of Abwher and fooling so many for so long...

But one success under his jurisdiction that comes to mind now you talk of Holland is opertion Nordpol. I'll leave that to Canada to find himself though.

 

There ya go, it may have been a "success" depending on the point of view of those involved. I'm sure the Nazis thought he was a "success", much as they thought Juan Pujole was a success. They awarded him an Iron Cross for services rendered. They might also think that Eddie Chapman was a success, they not only award him medals, they made him the head of one of their espionage camps. Hmmmm, Canaris, and Chapman. Perhaps that explains why so few (none) Nazi spies landed in and succeeded in wartime Britain.

After the war was over, I read that there were rumors that the driving force behind the assassination of Heydrich was that not only was he a "rising star" in the Nazi hierarchy, he might have been the only man who was a threat to Canaris.

Oh, BTW for our friend JTF-2, here is a link to Operation Bernhard:

Counterfeit money printed at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Interesting reading.

BTW, after the American SIGABA, telegraph, and SIGSALY, telephone (I think these are the right names without looking them up) encryption devices came online the Nazis were "in the dark", unless it was disinformation broadcast on a broken code system.

The American SIGABA remained the only unbroken encryption device of the war, and remained unbroken until it was taken out of service in 1959. It's patent wasn't released/declassified until the mid-90s. It and the telephone encyrption system (SIGSALY) made by Bell labs were in service after late '41, mid '42 and remained inviolate.

 

It would be easier to list their intelligence failures and disasters. The Germans were not real good at spying and intelligence work.

 

How can you say such a thing....their Enigma codes and associated communicatiions and intelligence orginisation were a thing to behold...no...hang on....

 

We could mention their wonder spy rings in Britain, the US and, Russia...... Oh, sorry... they didn't have any..... No, that's not true. They did have one guy in Britain. Slight problem there: He was a double agent and fed the Germans nothing but BS....

Oh well.....

 

The Germans spent WW2 getting punished by the Allies (including the Soviets) in this area. Repeatedly, and often with dire consequences for them.

 

A great German intelligence coup? Operation Pastorius.

Operation Pastorius - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
uboat.net - U-boat Operations - German saboteur landings in June 1942



Also, in the Mother of All Forums :http://www.ww2f.com/what-if/22809-foresight-planning-sabotage-operation-irritus.html

German Espionage and Sabotage Against the U.S. in World War II

 

Something from the "spies like us" thread


CICERO alias Elyesa Bazna

http://bofhcam.org/co-larters/snoopi...il/author.html

Elyesa Bazna, known primarily in Germany's Sicherheitsdienst or SD by codename Cicero, began his life as a German spy in 1942.

The former Albanian juvenile delinquent, locksmith, and fireman became the valet in 1942 to the British ambassador to Turkey, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Huggessen. He had earlier served as valet to the Yugoslav ambassador to Turkey and later to a German counsellor who incidentally fired him for reading his mail.

He discovered Sir Hughe kept important papers in a locked black dispatch box in his bedroom. On one occasion when the ambassador left the room for a few minutes, Bazna managed to take wax impressions of the key to the dispatch box. A friend of the future agent made keys from the impressions.

Bazna soon began photographing secret British documents using a Leica camera together with a 100-watt light bulb for illumination. He kept the camera stationary by using an arrangement of four rods and a round support ring. The valet became a paid espionage agent in October 1943. Armed with 56 photographs, Bazna approached the German Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, and indicated that he wanted 20,000 pounds sterling for his initial camera work.

His contact at the German Embassy was Ludwig Moyzisch, a Viennese who had been a member of the Nazi party since 1932. Moyzisch had worked in a number of positions for the Nazi Party and had been turned down for membership in the SS because he could not learn the identity of his mother's father and thus prove he was 100 percent Aryan. The German Embassy in Ankara soon handed over the payment requested and did not haggle over the price.( The English money was counterfeit and manufactured in the Sachesenhausen concentration camp. )

After this first contact, Bazna acquired the codename Cicero for the eloquence of his information. He received several more payments and hid the counterfeit notes in the carpet in his living quarters. He generally turned over the photographs to Moyzisch, inside Moyzisch's car parked on an Ankara street. This routine ran smoothly for several weeks until interrupted once by a car chase of the two conspirators through the streets of the Turkish capital.

Franz Von Papen was the first high-ranking German representative in Turkey to see the documents supplied by Cicero. A former military attaché who had been expelled from Washington in World War I for spying was no stranger to espionage and intrigue. He used the Cicero documents to keep Turkey from yielding to allied demands and ending her neutral status.

At one point, the photographs revealed the British wanted to use Turkish airfields as staging points in their attack of Rumanian oilfields. Cicero helped the Germans end this effort.

Walter Schellenberg, who would later become head of Nazi foreign espionage, and Nazi officials tried to use the documents as a basis from which the English code could be broken. In this effort they were unsuccessful.

During the first three months of 1944, Cicero continued to supply the Germans with copies of documents taken from his employer's dispatch box or his safe. The money continued to flow in and dreams of future wealth seemed assured.

Mopyzisch hired a new, shapely secretary named Nele Kapp who defected to America in early 1944. Fearing Miss Kapp would pinpoint his operation; Bazna left Sir Hughe's service.

By April 1944, Nazi forces in the Crimea were in full retreat. Worried they might face advancing Russian forces alone if they did not reach some accommodation with the Allies, the Turks replaced their pro-German army chief with one that was pro-English.

In all, the SD paid Cicero 300,000 pounds in counterfeit notes. The spy's retirement plans collapsed when the forgeries were discovered after the war. He sued the German government but without success and never realized his dream of total financial independence.He ended his working life as a nightwatchman in Munich.
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The German Government paid him £300,000 for his pains, of which, HKH's elegist recounts with some glee, 'all but the first £29,000 was in forged sterling notes' - so he didn't even get his 30 pieces of silver. He was never caught, and died in 1970.

LRB · Thomas Jones: Short Cuts
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Oddly enough Ribbentrop and the German High Command, after studying the documents Bazna provided, decided not to accept the secrets as genuine, concluding that the information was "planted" by the British SIS to hoodwink the Nazis. It was all too good to be true. Everything Bazna had provided was authentic but the suspicious Germans refused to believe it, despite the many support documents from other sources that verified the top-secret reports. In other instances, the credibility of "planted" information went unchallenged. The Germans, for instance, fully accepted the bogus information they obtained through a bizarre Allied scheme which was labeled by British intelligence as The Man Who Never Was.

The flow of Bazna's priceless information suddenly stopped in Spring 1944 when the Allies learned that there was a serious leak in the British Embassy at Ankara. The Allies learned this directly from the German Foreign Ministry itself, or, to be precise, a high-placed Allied spy, one of the few left in Germany at that time. This daring agent was Fritz Kolbe, a patriotic German who had long hated and resisted the Nazis and who worked as one of Ribbentrop's top examiners of documents in Berlin.

Kolbe had established contact with Office of Strategic Services (OSS) chief Allen Dulles in Bern, Switzerland, in 1943 and he had provided Dulles with almost every important document in the German Foreign Office from that point onward. In early 1944, Kolbe intercepted a coded telegram from Papen in Ankara to Ribbentrop in Berlin, talking about top secret information coming from the spy Cicero and clearly stating that this information was being brought out of the British Embassy in Ankara. He immediately passed this on to Dulles who alerted British intelligence.

SIS informed Knatchbull-Hugessen and other British officials at the Ankara Embassy that its security had been penetrated but, try as they might, investigating British agents could not determine the identity of the mysterious Cicero. Then a secretary at the German Embassy in Ankara defected to the British. She had worked directly for Moyzisch and she had learned that the spy was Elyeza Bazna, the Ambassador's valet. Bazna was called before the red-faced Knatchbull-Hugessen and grilled. He admitted to nothing. To all allegations he smirked and remained silent. After sputtering indignities about such disgraceful and disloyal conduct, Knatchbull-Hugessen fired his valet.

http://www.angelfire.com/dc/1spy/Bazna.html
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The secret of success is secrecy! What we don't know about is their greatest success stories. We do know that they broke the American black code which gave Rommel his desert success. We, meaning the Brits, broke some Inigma german codes, and sunk alot of submarines because of it. But what do we not know about German Intelligence. For one, german intelligence is a peace time organization, while military intelligence is war time. We do know that the civilian german intelligence service vacated Berlin before the invasion of Poland. They set up in Spain, in Madrid. Notice that Spain stayed neutral, Germany's closest allie. The civilian german intelligence group are reported to have set up an institute called: German Geopolitical Studies. The EU apparently was their masterplan after the war. Does anyone know anything about this? I heard it, but I am looking for documents and facts.

 

Saying that the breaking of the Black Code gave Rommel his desert success,is going in the direction of the crap published since 1945,about the decisive importance of the cloak and dagger boys.
Whatever,a good source about the intelligence importance in NA,is:
Axis History Forum ebunking "Rommel Debunking" P4.

 

Operation North Pole aka der Englandspiel (England game) - from 1942 through early 1944 the Abwehr thoroughly penetrated the Dutch resistance. Captured radio operators were made to send messages under German control, and the SOE went on dropping agents and equipment to be picked up in their turn. When London finally caught on, the German controller, Hermann Giskes, sent them an ironic message:

To [the SOE section chiefs] Messrs Blunt, Bingham and Succs Ltd., London. In the last time you are trying to make business in Netherlands without our assistance stop we think this rather unfair in view our long and successful co-operation as your sole agents stop but never mind whenever you will come to pay a visit to the Continent you may be assured that you will be received with the same care and result as all those who you sent us before stop so long.
Giskes wrote a book after the war titled London Calling North Pole, which apparently was a resistance code name.

 

I have repeatedly begged and pleaded for Otto to create a dedicated Intelligence Forum here. No luck to date.
But with the next Secrecy Act release scheduled for 2016... wishful thinking continues.

How about the Soviet military purge?
Why did Stalin purge his army before ww2

UK Invasion plans: http://www.devon.gov.uk/localstudies/100343/1.html
and Unternehmen Moewe (Operation Seagull) http://www.stahlbrandt.com/html/history/moewe.html

Admiral Canaris, influence on WW2 http://www.military-quotes.com/forum/admiral-canaris-influence-ww2-t63742.html
http://www.canaris.dk/index.htm

German Espionage and Sabotage Against the United States
German Espionage and Sabotage Against the U.S. in World War II

 

One German intelligence "success" could be the 5th Column phobia in 1940,while there was no 5th Column.

 

Marina Lee (sometimes spelt Lie), a stunning 30-year-old ballerina and Nazi spy infiltrated Britain's military command and obtained top-secret battle plans that ensured a defeat for the Allies in the Norwegian campaign during the second World War.
Blonde, beautiful Nazi spy who helped defeat Allied forces in key WWII battle

The Germans invaded Norway on April 9, 1940. Within days the British launched a counter-attack, aimed at the vital port of Narvik.

By the end of May the German commander at Narvik, Lieutenant-General Eduard Dietl, was isolated, under-supplied and outnumbered by the British under Lieutenant-General Claude Auchinleck.

At that point the German Abwehr, the military intelligence organisation, deployed a secret weapon: Marina Lee (sometimes spelt Lie), a stunning 30-year-old ballerina and spy.

She fled Russia in 1917 after the Bolsheviks murdered her parents. After settling in Norway, she married an engineer named Einer Andreas Lee, and became head of the School of Ballet in Oslo.

British intelligence suspected her of spreading Soviet propaganda, but around 1935 she was recruited by the Abwehr, and became, in the words of MI5, "a highly valued and experienced German agent".

She spoke six languages and used various names. The British also noted her "passion for telling fortunes by cards".

According to an MI5 report, German secret service dispatched Lee to British military headquarters "to obtain Auchinleck's plan of attack".

How she got this information is not known, although MI5 clearly suspected that her feminine charms played a part - "languid behaviour" may be wartime code for seduction.

The last British and French troops were evacuated from Narvik on June 8; two days later, Norway capitulated.

The Abwehr credited Lee with the change in German fortunes, but her intelligence was not the only factor.

The British did not discover Lee's existence until late 1940, when the Royal Navy on an Arctic island captured German spies posing as meteorologists.

One spy, Hans von Finckenstein, revealed her identity, and the key role that German intelligence believed she had played at Narvik.

At least two more captured Germans later confirmed Finckenstein's revelations.

Lee appears to have been rewarded for her intelligence coup. Within a year she had a German passport and was living in a Madrid hotel in neutral Spain. She was paid 5,000 pesetas a month to glean intelligence from Allied officers.

Marina Lee was last spotted by MI5 at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid in 1948, and for some years afterwards British intelligence wondered what had happened to this "very clever and dangerous woman".

The last entry in her MI5 file speculates that she might have transferred her allegiance to Soviet intelligence.

Despite the fate of her parents, the file says, she had been a friend of Stalin and senior figures in Moscow.

See also: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...y-battle-in-wwii/story-e6frg6so-1225910328187

 

So true, the fifth column is still a vivid memory nowadays.

Another lead would be to google using the terms "Propaganda staffel"

 

Good 100 page analysis / read on the Abwehr:

[PDF] Cryptologic Aspects of German Intelligence Activities in South America