Operation Bolívar

Operation Bolívar was the codename for the German espionage in Latin America during World War II. It was under the operational control of Section D (4) from the Foreign Security Service (''Ausland''-SD), and was primarily concerned with the collection and transmission of clandestine information from Latin America to Europe. Overall, the Germans were successful in establishing a secret radio communications network from their control station in Argentina, as well as a courier system involving the use of Spanish merchant vessels for the shipment of paper-form intelligence.

Argentine authorities arrested most of the German agents operating in their country in mid-1944, ending all effective Bolívar activity. Furthermore, the information collected during the operation is believed to have been more useful to the Allies, who intercepted much of the secret transmissions, than to Germany. It also had the effect of swaying key power brokers of the region out of neutrality and into the American sphere, namely Mexico and Brazil, but also strategically positioned nations producing much needed goods such as Venezuela (oil), Chile (copper), Peru (cotton) and Colombia (platinum).

Operations

Early activity

Johannes Siegfried Becker (codename: ''Sargo'') was the main figure in the operation and the man personally responsible for organizing most of the intelligence gathering in Latin America. Becker was first sent to Buenos Aires in May 1940, originally with orders to commit sabotage, along with his partner, Heinz Lange (''Jansen''), who arrived in the country shortly thereafter. After protests from the German embassy in Argentina in August 1940, the objective of the operation was revised to one of espionage only. Becker and Lange were soon discovered by Argentine authorities, so they moved their operations to Brazil, where they met with Gustav Albrecht Engels (''Alfredo''), another German spy and the owner of the General Electric Company in Krefeld. Engels was originally recruited by the Abwehr, the German military's intelligence agency, in 1939 to collect and transmit economy-related intelligence from the Western Hemisphere to Germany. Engels established a radio station in São Paulo, the CEL, and used a radio transmitter owned by his electric company to relay information acquired by agents in both Brazil and the United States. When Becker arrived in São Paulo, he transformed Engels' operation into an organization that reported on all subjects of interest to German intelligence. This meant that, in addition to collecting economy-related information, the agents collected information about shipping, war production, military movements in the United States, and political and military affairs in Brazil.

Although Bolívar was a Security Service project in origin, many of the agents responsible for collecting information were part of the Abwehr. One of the Abwehr spies in the United States that frequently traveled to Brazil to speak with Engels was Dušan Popov (''Ivan''), who was one of the most successful British double agents during the war. Other important Bolívar spies included the German naval and air attaché in Chile, Ludwig von Bohlen (''Bach''); the naval attaché in Rio de Janeiro, Hermann Bohny (''Uncle Ernest''); the military attaché in Buenos Aires, General Niedefuhr; and the naval attaché in Buenos Aires, Captain Dietrich Niebuhr (''Diego''), who headed the espionage organization in Argentina. In mid-1941, Herbert von Heyer (''Humberto'') joined the organization to provide maritime intelligence.

Argentina

Significant German espionage activity in Brazil ended in March 1942, when Brazilian authorities rounded up all suspected enemy agents. Becker was not in country, having returned to Germany to meet with his superiors. During this time Becker was put in charge of all German espionage activities in South America, which centered around radio communications, and ordered to make Buenos Aires his control station for communicating directly with Berlin, while also opening up smaller stations in other South American countries, which would relay information to the control station. Heinz Lange, who had escaped Brazil to Paraguay before the arrests, was ordered to organize a spy network in Chile, and Johnny Hartmuth (''Guapo''), a Department VID 2 agent who had also escaped Brazil, was sent to organize a network in Paraguay. An agent named Franczok (''Luna''), was put in charge of the radio network that was to be established.

Paraguay

In February 1943, after considerable difficulty, Becker managed to return to Argentina as a stowaway on a ship traveling from Spain to Buenos Aires. Lange, Hartmuth, and Franczok, who airmailed one transmitter to Paraguay before leaving Brazil, established a temporary station at Asunción, and reestablished contact with Berlin. After receiving Becker's orders, Franczok moved to the new control station in Buenos Aires in May 1943, Lange proceeded to Chile, and Hartmuth was left in Paraguay. Becker hoped to establish clandestine radio stations in every South American republic, but was successful only in Paraguay, Chile, and Argentina.

Brazil

Engels's group was not the only one active in Brazil. Three other clandestine radio stations, each serving a different spy net, began operating in the country in 1941. In May, Rio de Janeiro's LIR radio station started communicating with MAX in Germany. The LIRMAX group, as it was called, eventually expanded to operate in Brazil and in Argentina, Uruguay, and Ecuador. It was centered on a commercial information service, the ''Informadora Rapida Limitada'' (RITA), which was managed by Herbert O. J. Muller (''Prinz''). The radio station was run by Friedrich Kemper (''Koenig''). Von Heyer, who also worked with Engels' CELALD group as ''Humberto'', was ''Vesta'' in the LIRMAX group.

There were other overlaps of personnel as well, because both groups cooperated extensively with each other. Von Heyer's cover was his job with the Theodore Wille Company, several of whose employees were involved in another spy net centered on station CIT in Recife. The CIT group began operations in June 1941, but was only active in Brazil. A third smaller group, consisting of two agents, Fritz Noak and Herbert Winterstein, was located between Santos and Rio de Janeiro. It communicated with Germany's LFS station, but was only operational from September 1941 to January 1942. It was also not connected with the CELALD-LIRMAX-CIT groups.

Chile

When Lange went to Chile, there was already an agent organization and radio station in operation, so Lange fitted himself into it as an independent operator with his own sources. The station, using callsign PYL to communicate with REW in Germany, had been established in April or May 1941, apparently by Ludwig von Bohlen and Friedrich von Schulz Hausman (''Casero''). By February 1942, reports were being passed from agents in Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States. The major figures in the organization were von Bohlen in Santiago; Bruno Dittman (''Dinterin''), the actual head of the network, in Valparaíso; Friedrich von Schulz Hausman, in Buenos Aires; and George Nicolaus (''Max''), in Mexico. The PYLREW net's tie with Operation Bolívar was revealed through intercept, particularly in July 1941, when von Bohlen was instructed by radio to contact von Heyer in Rio de Janeiro to obtain a supply of secret inks and developers which von Bohlen had ordered from Germany.

The PYLREW organization was centered on the ''Compañía Transportes Marítimos'' ("COTRAS"), formerly a branch of Norddeutscher Lloyd. Von Schulz Hausman had been the manager of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Shipping Agency in Chile before moving to Argentina, and had been succeeded in that job by Dittman. Other PYLREW personnel who had been associated with Norddeutscher Lloyd were Hans Blume (''Flor''), a radio technician at PYL, and Heinrich Reiners (''Tom''), who had worked for Norddeutscher Lloyd in Panama before opening a maritime freight office in Valparaiso. Reiners' sister was married to Blume, and Reiners' wife was the drop for the agents of the net.

As result of information collected by American counter-intelligence agencies and given to the Chilean government by the State Department, a number of the more active agents of the Chilean ring were arrested in the fall of 1942. Enough escaped to permit von Bohlen to rebuild another network, known as the PQZ group. When von Bohlen went back to Germany late in 1943, his group was sufficiently well organized so that he could leave it, as well as a large sum of money and equipment, in the hands of Bernardo Timmerman, who carried on until his arrest in February 1944. When Timmerman was arrested, the espionage rings in Chile were "smashed," but again some Germans managed to escape to Argentina, where they continued operating.

Mexico

George Nicolaus was the head of the spy ring in Mexico before his arrest in the spring of 1942. A competent individual, he had served with distinction in the German Army during World War I, spent many years in Colombia, and returned to Germany in November 1938. In January 1939, he was re-commissioned in the Heer and assigned to the Abwehr headquarters in Hanover. Late in 1939, before Operation Bolívar began, Nicolaus was sent to Mexico to establish an espionage network there.

Between 1940 and 1942, Nicolaus organized an extensive network which maintained contact with other spy rings in South America and attempted to obtain information from the United States. While technical data from American publications was extracted or photographed and some general information obtained from contacts in the United States, there is no evidence that Nicolaus was successful in obtaining any vital military secrets. He was successful in leaving behind the nucleus of an organization which was able to maintain some activities throughout the war, although it was of little value to the German war-effort, other than its nuisance value in occupying the attention of Allied counter-intelligence agencies.

Cuba

German espionage activity in Cuba was minor, despite the country's importance to the Allied war-effort, and was eliminated by Allied counter-intelligence forces before it could become an effective part of the Bolívar network. To establish a clandestine radio station in Cuba, the Abwehr sent Heinz Lüning to Havana

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