Lucy spy ring
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World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...
, the Lucy spy ring was an anti-Nazi operation that was headquartered in
Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
. It was run by
Rudolf Roessler Rudolf Roessler (German: ''Rößler''; 22 November 1897 – 11 December 1958) was a Protestant Germany, German and dedicated anti-Nazi. During the interwar period, Roessler was a lively cultural journalist, with a focus on theatre. In 1933 while ...
, a
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
refugee and ostensibly the proprietor of a small publishing firm, Vita Nova. Very little is clear about the Lucy ring, about Roessler or about Lucy's sources or motives.


History

Roessler, a German
expatriate An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person who resides outside their native country. In common usage, the term often refers to educated professionals, skilled workers, or artists taking positions outside their home country, either ...
from Bavaria who fled to Geneva when Hitler came to power, was working as a publisher at the outbreak of World War II in Switzerland, producing anti-Fascist literature. He was employed by Brigadier Masson, head of Swiss Military Intelligence, who employed him as an analyst with Bureau Ha, overtly a press cuttings agency but in fact a covert department of Swiss Intelligence. Roessler was approached by two German officers,
Fritz Thiele Fritz Thiele (14 April 1894 – 4 September 1944) was a member of the German resistance who also served as the communications chief of the German Army during World War II. Thiele was born in Berlin and joined the Imperial Army in 1914. Working ...
and Rudolph von Gersdorff, who were part of a conspiracy to overthrow
Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
, and had been known to Roessler in the 1930s through the Herrenklub. Thiele and Gersdorf wished him to act as a conduit for high-level military information, to be available to him to make use of in the fight against Fascism. This they accomplished by the simple expedient of equipping Roessler with a radio and an Enigma machine, and designating him as a German military station (call-signed RAHS). In this way they could openly transmit their information to him through normal channels. They were able to do this as Thiele, and his superior, Erich Fellgiebel (who was also part of the conspiracy) were in charge of the German Defence Ministry's communication centre, the Bendlerblock. This was possible, as those employed to encode the information were unaware of where it was going, while those transmitting the messages had no idea what was in them. At first Roessler passed the information to Swiss military intelligence, via a friend who was serving in Bureau Ha, an intelligence agency used by the Swiss as a
cut-out Cut-out, cutout, or cut out may refer to: * Cutout animation * Cutout (electric power distribution), a combination fuse and knife switch used on power poles * Cutout (espionage), a mechanism used to pass information * Cut-out (philately), an impr ...
. Roger Masson, the head of Swiss MI, also chose to pass some of this information to the British SIS. Later, through another contact who was a part of a Soviet ( GRU) network run by
Alexander Rado Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants li ...
, Roessler was able to pass to the Soviet Union, recognizing the role of the USSR in the fight against Nazism. Roessler was not a Communist, nor even particularly a Communist sympathizer, and wished to remain at arm's length from Rado's network, insisting on complete anonymity and communicating with Rado only through the courier, Christian Schneider. Rado agreed to this, recognizing the value of the information being received. Rado code-named the source "Lucy", simply because all he knew about the source was that it was in
Lucerne Lucerne ( , ; High Alemannic German, High Alemannic: ''Lozärn'') or Luzern ()Other languages: gsw, Lozärn, label=Lucerne German; it, Lucerna ; rm, Lucerna . is a city in central Switzerland, in the Languages of Switzerland, German-speaking po ...
. Roessler's first major contribution to Soviet intelligence came in May 1941 when he was able to deliver details of
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
, Germany's impending invasion of the Soviet Union. Though his warning was initially ignored - as Soviet intelligence had received multiple false alarms about an impending German invasion - Roessler's dates eventually proved accurate. Following the invasion, in June 1941, Lucy was regarded as a VYRDO source, ''i.e.'' of the highest importance, and to be transmitted immediately. Over the next two years "Lucy" was able to supply the Soviets with high grade military intelligence. During the autumn of 1942, "Lucy" provided the Soviets with detailed information about Case Blue, the German operations against
Stalingrad Volgograd ( rus, Волгогра́д, a=ru-Volgograd.ogg, p=vəɫɡɐˈɡrat), geographical renaming, formerly Tsaritsyn (russian: Цари́цын, Tsarítsyn, label=none; ) (1589–1925), and Stalingrad (russian: Сталингра́д, Stal ...
and the
Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...
; during this period decisions taken in Berlin were arriving in Moscow on average within a ten-hour period; on one occasion in just six hours, not much longer than it took to reach German front line units. Roessler, and Rado's network, particularly
Allan Foote Alexander Allan Foote (13 April 1905 – 1 August 1956) was a radio operator for a Soviet espionage ring in Switzerland during World War II. Foote was born in Liverpool, and raised mostly in Yorkshire by his Scottish born father and English mother. ...
, Rado's main radio operator, were prepared to work flat out to maintain the speed and flow of the information. At the peak of its operation, Rado's network was enciphering and sending several hundred messages per month, many of these from "Lucy". Meanwhile, Roessler alone had to do all the receiving, decoding and evaluating of the "Lucy" messages before passing them on; for him during this period it became a full-time operation. In the summer of 1943, the culmination of "Lucy's" success came in transmitting the details of Germany's plans for
Operation Citadel Operation Citadel (german: Unternehmen Zitadelle) was a German offensive operation in July 1943 against Soviet forces in the Kursk salient, proposed by Generalfeldmarschall Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Manstein during the Second World War on ...
, a planned summer offensive against the Kursk salient, which became a strategic defeat for the German army—the
Battle of Kursk The Battle of Kursk was a major World War II Eastern Front engagement between the forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union near Kursk in the southwestern USSR during late summer 1943; it ultimately became the largest tank battle in history. ...
gave the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
the initiative on the eastern front for the remainder of the war. During the winter of 1942, the Germans became aware of the transmissions from the Rado network, and began to take steps against it through their counter-espionage bureau. After several attempts to penetrate the network they succeeded in pressuring the Swiss to close it down; this occurred in October 1943 when its radio transmitters were closed down and a number of key operatives were arrested. Thereafter Roessler's only outlet for the "Lucy" information was through the Bureau Ha and Swiss Military Intelligence. Roessler was unaware this was also going to the
Western Allies The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during the Second World War (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. ...
. The Lucy spy ring came to an end in the summer of 1944 when the German members, who were also involved in other anti-Nazi activities, were arrested in the aftermath of the failed
July plot On 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia, now Kętrzyn, in present-day Poland. The ...
.


Members

The Lucy network in Germany comprised ten persons, all high-ranking military officers or civilians. Seven of these have been identified; the three others remain unknown. *Major General Hans Oster, chief of staff to Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and the chief of the '' Abwehr'' (the German military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi r ...
, the head of
Abwehr The ''Abwehr'' (German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. A ...
(German military intelligence) *General Erich Fellgiebel, head of communications at the German High Command (OKW) *Lt Gen
Fritz Thiele Fritz Thiele (14 April 1894 – 4 September 1944) was a member of the German resistance who also served as the communications chief of the German Army during World War II. Thiele was born in Berlin and joined the Imperial Army in 1914. Working ...
, deputy head of communications at OKW *Colonel
Rudolf von Gersdorff Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff (27 March 1905 – 27 January 1980) was an officer in the German Army. He attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler by suicide bombing on 21 March 1943; the plan failed when Hitler left early, but Gersdorff w ...
, chief of Intelligence,
Army Group Centre Army Group Centre (german: Heeresgruppe Mitte) was the name of two distinct strategic German Army Groups that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II. The first Army Group Centre was created on 22 June 1941, as one of three German Army fo ...
*Colonel Fritz Boetzel, chief of Intelligence Evaluation, Army Group South-East (Athens) * Carl Goerdeler, a politician; ex-mayor of
Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
and head of the conservative opposition *
Hans Bernd Gisevius Hans Bernd Gisevius (14 July 1904 – 23 February 1974) was a German diplomat and intelligence officer during the Second World War. A covert opponent of the Nazi regime, he served as a liaison in Zürich between Allen Dulles, station chief for ...
, German vice-consul in Zurich and an Abwehr officer In Switzerland the Lucy network comprised: *
Rudolf Roessler Rudolf Roessler (German: ''Rößler''; 22 November 1897 – 11 December 1958) was a Protestant Germany, German and dedicated anti-Nazi. During the interwar period, Roessler was a lively cultural journalist, with a focus on theatre. In 1933 while ...
, code-named "Lucy" *
Xaver Schnieper The given name Xavier (, , , , ; es, Javier (name), Javier ; eu, Xabier ) is a masculine name derived from the 16th-century Spanish Navarrese Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Saint Francis Xavier. Etymology Xavier comes from the name of the Jesu ...
, Roessler's Bureau Ha contact *, code-named "Taylor", Roesslers GRU contact * Rachel Dübendorfer, code-named "Sissy", Schneiders handler *
Alexander Rado Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants li ...
, code-named "Dora", head of the espionage group Red Three (german: Rote Drei; part of the ''Red Orchestra''), part of the soviet espionage network in WW II in Switzerland, today GRU. *
Allan Foote Alexander Allan Foote (13 April 1905 – 1 August 1956) was a radio operator for a Soviet espionage ring in Switzerland during World War II. Foote was born in Liverpool, and raised mostly in Yorkshire by his Scottish born father and English mother. ...
, code-named "Jim", the "Dora" network's main radio operator


Controversy

Roessler's story was first published in 1966 by the French journalists Pierre Accoce and Pierre Quet. In 1981, it was alleged by Anthony Read and David Fisher that Lucy was, at its heart, a British
Secret Service A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For ...
operation intended to get
Ultra adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. '' ...
information to the Soviets in a convincing way untraceable to British codebreaking operations against the Germans.
Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
had shown considerable suspicion of any information from the British about German plans to invade Russia in 1941, so an
Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
effort to find a way to get helpful information to the Soviets in a form that would not be dismissed is, at least, not implausible. That the Soviets had, via their own espionage operations, learned of the British break into important German message traffic was not, at the time, known to the British. Various observations have suggested that Allan Foote was more than a mere radio operator: he was in a position to act as a radio interface between SIS and Roessler, and also between Roessler and Moscow; his return to the West in the 1950s was unusual in several ways; and his book was similarly troublesome. They also point out that not one of Roessler's claimed sources in Germany has been identified or has come forward. Hence their suspicion that, even more so than for most espionage operations, the Lucy ring was not what it seemed. However, this is flatly denied by Harry Hinsley, the official historian for the British Secret Services in World War II, who stated that "there is no truth in the much-publicized claim that the British authorities made use of the ‘Lucy’ ring..to forward intelligence to Moscow".
Phillip Knightley Phillip George Knightley (23 January 1929 – 7 December 2016) was an Australian journalist, critic, and non-fiction author. He became a visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln, England, and was a media commentator on the ...
also dismisses the thesis that Ultra was the source of Lucy. He indicates that the information was delivered very promptly (often within 24 hours) to Moscow, too fast if it had come via GCHQ Bletchley Park. Further, Ultra intelligence on the Eastern front was less than complete; many of the German messages were transmitted by landlines and wireless messages were often too garbled for timely decoding. Furthermore, the Enigma systems employed by German forces on the Eastern Front were only broken intermittently. Knightley suggests that the source was Karel Sedlacek, a Czech military intelligence officer. Sedlacek died in London in 1967 and indicated that he received the information from one or more unidentified dissidents within the German High Command. Another, but less likely possibility Knightley suggests is, that the information came from the
Swiss secret service The Swiss intelligence community is a group of agencies with responsibilities to protect the interests and infrastructure of Switzerland. History The first federal military secret service was established in 1937-1939 as Büro Ha by Hans Hau ...
. V. E. Tarrant echoes Knightley's objections, and in addition points out that Read and Fisher's scenario was unnecessary, as Britain was already passing Ultra information to the Soviet Union following the German invasion in June 1941. While not wishing to reveal Britain's penetration of Enigma, Churchill ordered selected Ultra information to be passed via the British Military Mission in Moscow, reported as coming from "a well-placed source in Berlin," or "a reliable source". However, as the Soviets showed little interest in co-operation on intelligence matters, refusing to share Soviet intelligence that would be useful to Britain (such as information on German air forces in the Eastern Front) or agreeing to use the Soviet mission in London as a transmission route, the British cut back the flow of information in the spring of 1942, and by the summer it had dwindled to a trickle. This hypothesis, that Britain lost the motivation to share intelligence with Stalin after this time, is also at variance with Read and Fisher's theory.


See also

* *
Schwarze Kapelle The ''Schwarze Kapelle'' (German for ''Black Orchestra'') was a term used by the Gestapo to refer to a group of conspirators in Nazi Germany, including many senior officers in the Wehrmacht, who plotted to overthrow Adolf Hitler. Unlike the ''Rote ...
*
Ultra adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. '' ...


Notes


References

* * * * * * * *


Further reading

*


External links


Rado’s memoirs ''Pod Psevdonimom "Dora"''
{{in lang, ru World War II espionage Soviet Union intelligence operations Spy rings Germany–Soviet Union relations Soviet Union–United Kingdom relations