Spies like us...

Krystyna Skarbek - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Krystyna Skarbek, G.M., O.B.E., Croix de guerre (1 May 1908 - 15 June 1952) was a Polish-born World War II British SOE agent also known by the nom de guerre, Christine Granville. She became celebrated especially for her exploits in Nazi-occupied Poland and France.

She was the longest-serving of all SOE's women agents. (She actually became a British agent months before the Special Operations Executive was founded in July 1940.)

Krystyna was chosen to replace SOE agent Cecily Lefort, who had been captured and brutally tortured (and was later executed) by the Gestapo. Krystyna — under the assumed identity of "Pauline Armand" — parachuted into southeastern France on 6 July 1944, and became part of the "Jockey" network directed by a Belgian-British lapsed pacifist, Francis Cammaerts. She assisted Cammaerts by linking Italian partisans and French Maquis for joint operations against the Germans in the Alps, and by inducing non-Germans, especially conscripted Poles, in the German occupation forces to defect to the Allies.

On 13 August 1944, at Digne, two days before the Allied "Operation Dragoon" landings in southern France, Cammaerts, Xan Fielding — another SOE agent, who had previously operated in Crete — and a French officer, Christian Sorensen, were arrested at a roadblock by the Gestapo. Learning that they were soon to be executed, Krystyna arranged to meet with a key Gestapo officer, introduced herself as a niece of British General Bernard Montgomery, and threatened the officer with terrible retribution if harm came to the prisoners. She managed to cow him into releasing them; an act assisted by a large bribe from SOE funds. For this remarkable exploit she was recommended for a George Cross and eventually received, instead, a George Medal and an OBE. Several years after the Digne incident, in London, Krystyna told another Polish World War II veteran that during her negotiations with the Gestapo she had been unaware of danger to herself. Only after she and her comrades had made good their escape, did it hit home: "What have I done! They could have shot me as well." Krystyna Skarbek's contributions to the liberation of France were recognized with a Croix de Guerre.

 

http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-films-tv/15788-princess-spy.html

This thread has a lot on a very interesting S.O.E. wireless operator. She is also mentioned in the book "A Man Called Intrepid" and various other books about the S.O.E.

 

Does anyone else watch NBC's My Name is Earl? Yikes. Nothing like a bit of Karma to bite your b*tt.

I'm thoroughly enjoying this thread. My latest story has a spy in it...and I like reading the accounts. I thought I would need to plot some intricate retrieval plan but, much to my delight, people left information lying around all over the place. Well, perhaps it wasn't that easy...

Boy, it's not easy to convey this kind of horror on paper. This has been an issue in my writing...one I'll have to start a thread on.

My favorite is hearing of the women. And this may be a teensy bit off topic, but since Austin Powers has already been mentioned, I don't mind bringing up another fictional character. One of my favorite authors has several books featuring ww2 veterans. She shows the reader in some type of flashback technique, an accounting of his or her story. My favorite is the story of Rose von Hopff. An american-german "convinced" to spy for the Germans who then becomes a spy for the Allies. Working one side and playing the other. Of course, it has a happy ending... and I really like happy endings! Skarbek reminded be of that story. I think it's amazing, the will to survive and also to help others in such desperate times. Very good. now I may have to pick up the book again.

 

Spy Burgess's spell at the BBC

New light has been shed on the early career of the notorious spy Guy Burgess, with the publication of 24 previously unreleased documents from the BBC Archive.


BBC NEWS | UK | Spy Burgess's spell at the BBC

 

A couple of interesting agents:

Josephine Baker



During World War II, entertainer Josephine Baker helped the French Resistance by smuggling secret information written in invisible ink on her sheet music. Ironically, Baker's fame made it possible for her to complete her missions unnoticed

Passport checkers were so starstruck by Baker that they never suspected she was a spy. As she toured Europe, she and her entourage -- which included other members of the resistance -- were allowed to pass through.

Julia Child



Decades before becoming a famous chef, she worked for the Office of Strategic Services. (The OSS was the predecessor to the CIA.) She was assigned to solve a problem for U.S. naval forces during World War II: Sharks would bump into explosives that were placed underwater, setting them off and warning the German U-boats they were intended to sink.

Julia Child and a few of her male compatriots got together and literally cooked up a shark repellent," that was used to coat the explosives.

Virginia Hall



The story of Special Operations’ Virginia Hall reads like a spy thriller. After spending more than a year working secretly for British intelligence in Vichy France, she joined OSS and volunteered for another mission in German-occupied territory. Hall not only survived but prospered, helping to organize French partisan groups and earning decorations from Britain and the United States.

Virginia Hall grew up in comfortable circumstances in Baltimore. She attended the best schools and colleges, but wanted to finish her studies in Europe. With help from her parents, she traveled the Continent and studied in France, Germany, and Austria, finally landing an appointment as a Consular Service clerk at the American Embassy in Warsaw in 1931. Hall hoped to join the Foreign Service, but suffered a terrible setback two years later when she lost her lower left leg in a hunting accident. The injury foreclosed whatever chance she might have had for a diplomatic career, and she resigned from the Department of State in 1939.

The coming of war that year found Hall in Paris. She joined the Ambulance Service before the fall of France and ended up in Vichy-controlled territory when the fighting stopped in the summer of 1940. Hall made her way to London and volunteered for Britain’s newly formed Special Operations Executive, which sent her back to Vichy in August 1941. She spent the next 15 months there, helping to coordinate the activities of the underground in Vichy and the occupied zone of France. When the Germans suddenly seized all of France in November 1942, Hall barely escaped to Spain. Journeying back to London (after working for SOE for a time in Madrid), she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire by order of King George VI.

Virginia Hall joined OSS’s Special Operations Branch in March 1944 and asked to return to occupied France. She hardly needed training in clandestine work behind enemy lines, and OSS promptly granted her request and landed her from a British PT boat in Brittany (her artificial leg kept her from parachuting in). As “Diane,” she eluded the Gestapo and contacted the Resistance in central France. She mapped drop zones for supplies and commandos from England, found safe houses, and linked up with a Jedburgh team after the Allies landed at Normandy. Hall helped train three battalions of Resistance forces to wage guerrilla warfare against the Germans and kept up a stream of valuable reporting until Allied troops overtook her small band in September.

For her efforts in France, General Donovan in September 1945 personally awarded Virginia Hall a Distinguished Service Cross—the only one awarded to a civilian woman in World War II.

 

To me double agents are the lowest form of life: why there are people who believe its ok to betray your country, for money or any other reason, has always baffled me. Maybe it is because the same traits that make a person a good spy re also a logical "fit" with disloyalty: wiliness, cleverness, deceptiveness, the ability to lie without the slightest qualm etc are all traits a good sociopath is born with, so it shouldnt really be a surprise when your agents turn on the mother country, (whether under duress or not).

But human nature is just like that and so there will always be double agents. Don't forget Richard Sorge, the double agent who worked in the Soviet embassy in Japan and delivered British Ultra decrypts to the Soviets - he met the spy's common fate, discovery and execution. Also Admiral Canaris, chief of the German military intelligence service the Abwehr, was also exposed as a double agent during the last days of the war - and met the same fate as Sorge.

double agents are all too common even now; the latest one was Robert Hansen, an American FBI agent who sold information to the Russian KGB in the 1990's. The information he provided led to the discovery and executions of several US agents in the former Soviet Union. The story was depicted in the 2007 feature film Breach starring Chris Cooper as Hansen. Hansen was eventually uncovered and caught and struck a deal to spill his guts in return for being spared execution.

 

You really don't know much about Richard Sorge here "marc". He wasn't a double agent, he didn't work in the Soviet embassy, and he didn't deliver any Ultra messages to Stalin. And while he was arrested in Japan early on, he wasn't executed until much later as he wasn't representing the Soviet government.

And Canaris refused to be a "double agent" when asked, so don't lump that man in the group either. Only Hansen in your examples is truly a traitor, and BTW not a "double agent" since he was never an "agent" on the American side. That he was in the intel. sector doesn't make him and agent. He is just a traitor, pure and simple.

I'll fill you in if you care to know.

 

It seems the German Fritz Kolbe was behind revealing Cicero:

" The Allies learned of the existence of the spy in Ankara thaks to "George Wood" (Kolbe). The first mention of Cicero in an Allied document followed another visit to Bern by Kolbe, who brought a series of cables from Berlin to the Americans. Among many of those documents the existence of Cicero was mentioned.

The Cicero affair could have been a disaster if the leak had not been discovered in time thanx to Kolbe. Nothing indicates that the Germans got from Cicero the slightest detail about the plan for a landing in Europe, except perhaps the code name of the operation: Overlord, Dulles wrote after the war. "

From "Betraying Hitler" by Delattre

 

Sorry,but the story of the Lucy spy ring is in my opinion(VHO ) only an Indian tale,some 40 years old ,for which no proof had been given .
When Gehlen was fired as chief of the BND,(the BND beying an annexe of the KGB ),he wrote his memoirs and to sell them ,he said that Bormann was a Russian agent .
P.Carrel :was telling that the defeat of Kursk was due to treason (he mentioned even a n ame :I think von Heydebreck )
Some retired officiels of Bletchey Park wanted the glory of the defeat for them and said that the informations came from Ultra .
V.Tammant is writing that it was general Fellgiebel
L.Kilzer (Pulitzer price winner ) is also willing to sell a best-seller and claims that the person responsible for the defeat of Kursk was Bormann.
It's all rubbish and BS ,without any proof .

 

Lieutenant Colonel Sir Claude Edward Marjoribanks Dansey (1876-June 11, 1947), also known as Colonel Z, Haywood, Uncle Claude, and codenamed Z, was the assistant chief of the Secret Intelligence Service known as ACSS, of the British intelligence agency commonly known as MI6.

Claude Dansey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dansey was convinced what he saw was a disaster waiting to happen, so he set up a parallel MI6 structure, a hidden shadow network that could take over when the inevitable happened. By 1936, Dansey's Z Organization (after his own codename, Z) had over 200 executives, most doing it for the thrill of espionage. They were not allowed to take extreme risks, write anything down, take pictures or carry spy equipment.

The Hague was the major shipment point MI6 operations at the time, gathering information from all over Europe and sending them to London. Unfortunately, it was headed by retired military officers Sigismund Payne Best and Major Richard Stevens, who had little intelligence experience. They had been penetrated by a Dutch asset, who was really working for the Nazi's SD and revealed the identities of all agents and assets. SD officer Walter Schellenberg posed as a military officer in the German underground, wishing to approach Best and Stevens, who snapped the bait and were captured at Venlo in September 1939. A few days later, the Nazis knew everything and the entire MI6 structure was destroyed.

Immediately, Dansey switched on his Z Organization, saving MI6. Within weeks, his Z Organization was providing more and better intelligence than the old structure. "Although the Soviets were unaware, Dansey's operation often provided the difference between victory and defeat on the Eastern Front." All this only won him grudging respect, even though he was promoted as deputy to the new head of the agency, Stewart Menzies. This was because Dansey was spiteful, vindicative, short-tempered, and hated anyone with a university degree. Everyone grew to hate him.

 

Carmelo Borg Pisani

Carmelo Borg Pisani (10 August 1915[a] – 28 November 1942) was a Maltese artist and Italian Fascist spy, condemned to death for treason in 1942.[4]

On 18 May 1942 Pisani volunteered for an espionage mission to Malta, to check British defenses and help prepare for the planned Axis invasion of the island (Operation Herkules). He disembarked at the Dingli Cliffs in Ras id-Dawwara, and transferred all his rations to a cave that he knew well from his youth. Unusually inclement weather and a rough sea, however, washed all his possessions away within 48 hours, and he proved unable to climb the cliffs. He was forced to wave down a local boat. Upon rescue by a British patrol boat, he was brought to the naval hospital RNH Mtarfa.[11]

There, Pisani was recognized by one of his childhood friends, Cpt. Tom Warrington, who denounced him. British Intelligence kept him under arrest in a house in Sliema till August. He was then transferred to Corradino prison, accused of treason. On 12 November 1942 he stood trial under closed doors in front of three judges, headed by Chief Justice Sir Georg Borg, and defended by two lawyers.[4] His plea that he had renounced British citizenship by returning his passport and acquisition of Italian citizenship (which would have granted him status of prisoner of war) was not upheld by the military court. On 19 November 1942 he was publicly sentenced to death for espionage, for taking up arms against the Government and forming part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government.[12] His execution by hanging took place at 7:30AM on Saturday, 28 November,[12] after rejection of pleas for reversal and for clemency.[4] His remains, initially buried inside Corradino Prison, are now in the ossuary of the cemetery of Paola.[8].

Carmelo Borg Pisani - Wikipedia

More: List of spies in World War II - Wikipedia

 

The Rosenborg family. The Ultra proved them. Spies. It has been proved by now several times.