WWII Espionage

[W4ASZ]

Thank you as well, Lone Ranger. I am comforted to know that the experts here are of that opinion. I would hate to have missed something !

 

[Talbot]

I would second what AmateisGal wrote, in general the scholarly concensus is that the German espionage in the US and particular the UK was not generally that successful. Unless something pretty recent has come out.

I have read this also. The assessment of how effective the Russian intelligence was (in the UK at least) during WWII was a different matter.

T

 

[Story]

Melbourne/London, Aug.26 (ANI): A tall and glamorous looking 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.

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.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100826/900/twl-blonde-beautiful-nazi-spy-who-helped_1.html

From General Dietl's notebook
http://www.bjerkvik.gs.nl.no/dietl2.htm

11.30
Marina Lie, en meldende agent, forteller at en i løpet av seks dager må vente samtidige angrep fra nord mot Hundalen og fra nordsiden av Rombakken mot malmbanen. Marina Lie har erfart dette ved å overhøre en samtale mellom den norske sendemann og den norske ambassade i Stockholm. Maj Haussels blir straks underrettet om dette.Sverige tillater organisert overføring av norske flyktninger over Finland til Nord-Norge. Herr Kant fra ambassaden i Oslo fikk i oppdrag å få videre bekreftelser av fru Lie.

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3784329.ece

 

[W4ASZ]

Good old Uncle Joe

Replacing a dead yahoo link :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/26/russian-ballerina-nazi-spy-marina-lee

A "friend of Stalin" puts her dead shortly after she was last seen, don't you think ?

 

[Story]

LONDON – Her secret is out. But it is too late for Eileen Nearne to bask in the glory Britain loves to bestow on its World War II heroes.

She died alone, uncelebrated, on Sept. 2 of a heart attack at age 89. Only on Tuesday did the nation learn of her bravery behind enemy lines: She went on a clandestine mission to France in 1944 at the tender age of 23 to operate a wireless transmitter that served as a vital link between the French resistance and war planners in London.

Nearne posed as a French shop girl. She meanwhile helped coordinate supply lines and weapons drops in advance of the D-Day invasion that marked the beginning of the liberation of Europe, then stayed on the job until the Nazis caught her in July 1944, and sent her to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. She later escaped after being sent to a smaller nearby camp.

The accounts of her extraordinary deeds — her grace under fire — were made public by military historians and special forces veterans who had read her secret files and knew what Nearne had accomplished but declined to discuss. Her wartime role was not publicly acknowledged until local officials went into her apartment after her death and found a treasure trove of medals, records and memorabilia, including French currency used during the war.

"She was an excellent agent, very imaginative, but very unobtrusive, and that is a very important quality," said Royal Air Force veteran Beryl Escott, author of an upcoming book on the Special Operations Executive, set up by wartime leader Winston Churchill to infiltrate mainland Europe and provide support for resistance forces. "It was vital and dangerous work, especially for wireless operators."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100914...hdGVfc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawNyZWNsdXNlZm91bmQ-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/g...2-unknowns-are-in-fact-known-–-i-should-know/


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...-Why-modesty-is-something-to-boast-about.html

 

[W4ASZ]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100914...hdGVfc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawNyZWNsdXNlZm91bmQ-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/g...2-unknowns-are-in-fact-known-–-i-should-know/


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...-Why-modesty-is-something-to-boast-about.html

Here is another of those people who had seen enough and accomplished enough to have had no desire to "bask in glory."

Good for you Ms. Nearne, and thank you.

 

[Davep]

The Cate Blanchett Movie "Charlotte Gray" is losely based on the British SOE agent "Nancy Wake". Nancy is 98 and is still alive and well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wake

 

[Story]

One reason why Austin Powers was so upset at losing his mojo...

MI6 'used bodily fluids as invisible ink'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8015180/MI6-used-bodily-fluids-as-invisible-ink.html

*
'Biffy' Dunderdale, model for James Bond?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...Real-James-Bond-revealed-in-MI6-archives.html

 

[Story]

On Tuesday, the anonymity that Ms. Nearne had cherished in life was denied her in death. A funeral service in Torquay featured a military bugler and piper and an array of uniformed mourners. A red cushion atop her coffin bore her wartime medals. Eulogies celebrated her as one of 39 British women who were parachuted into France as secret agents by the Special Operations Executive, a wartime agency known informally as “Churchill’s secret army,” which recruited more than 14,000 agents to conduct espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines.

Funeral costs were paid by the British Legion, the country’s main veterans’ organization, and by anonymous donors who came forward after the circumstances of Ms. Nearne’s death made front-page news in Britain.

The funeral organizers said that in accordance with her wishes, her ashes would be scattered at sea.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/world/europe/22nearne.html?_r=2&ref=obituaries

 

[W4ASZ]

On Tuesday, the anonymity that Ms. Nearne had cherished in life was denied her in death...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/world/europe/22nearne.html?_r=2&ref=obituaries

But once again she had already made good her escape.

 

[Story]

NEW YORK (AP) -- The U.S. government has recognized the World War II architect of a mission to rescue more than 500 U.S. bomber crew members shot down over Nazi-occupied Serbia.

It was the largest air rescue of Americans behind enemy lines in any war.

George Vujnovich (VOOY'-noh-veech) is credited with leading the so-called Halyard Mission in what was then Yugoslavia.

The 95-year-old New York City man was awarded the Bronze Star in a ceremony Sunday at Manhattan's St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Cathedral. He received a standing ovation from a crowd of several hundred.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WWII_RESCUE_MEDAL?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

See also
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451222121/ref=cm_rna_own_review_prod/102-4180183-4068130

Bombing of the Ploiesti, Romania, oil refineries, a key German resource, started in 1942. Allied pilots sustaining damage frequently bailed out over Serbia in German-occupied Yugoslavia, where the resistance and others hid them. By 1944, more than 500 were stranded and slowly starving. The OSS concocted the daring Operation Halyard to airlift them, but they had to construct a landing strip without tools and without alerting the Germans or endangering local villagers, and then the rescuers had to avoid being shot down themselves.

 

[Daze]

A family friend was an operative of SOE

She was captured by the gestapo and was tortured , she had her nipples pulled out with pliers and a load of other nasty stuff, she told her interrogators everything but they still tortured her anyway. but at least she survived the war

This only proves to me the proof of man's inhumanity to man is only lacking in the interrogaters conscience , if they have one

God rest

 

[Story]

http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2010/12/09/8952/


Harry Gold, a low-key South Philadelphia industrial chemist, son of Russian Jewish immigrants, hand-delivered U.S. atomic bomb classified information to the Soviets between 1935 – 1950. He was so under the radar, his obituary wasn’t published until two years after his death. The FBI launched the biggest public manhunt for Gold, who wasn’t interested in Communism nor personal financial gain, but because of what he thought of their stand on anti-Semitism. Gold served 16 years of a 30 sentence at Lewisburg Penitentiary he became a valued resident respected by guards and fellow-inmates, working on chemistry projects. Our guest independent journalist, historian and Philadelphian ALLEN HORNBLUM asks, “How did such a gentle, apolitical person get caught up in the ‘crime of the century’?” Hornblum returns to Radio Times to tell Gold’s story.

 

[Story]

On 13 September 1944, the glamorous British agent, code named "Madeline," was shot dead at Dachau concentration camp.

Despite being tortured by the Gestapo during 10 months of imprisonment, she had revealed nothing of use to her interrogators. Noor Inayat Khan, died aged just 30, but her story has gone down in history. She joined Winston Churchill's sabotage force, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and became the first female radio operator sent into France in 1943, with the famous instruction to "set Europe ablaze". The role was so dangerous that she arrived in Paris with a life expectancy of just six weeks. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12151715

 

[MikeBravo]

But once again she had already made good her escape.

hahaha Very true

 

[Historyguy13]

Of course, if it's fiction, then he can write whatever he wants.

Daniel Silva's first book, The Unlikely Spy, tells the story of a German sleeper spy cell in the U.K. that almost ruined the secret of where the invasion was to take place. Never happened, but it made for a darn good thriller.

Not a book, but does anyone remember the the T.V. series The Blue Light (1966) starring Robert Goulet of all people? It ran for only one season (17 episodes). Goulet played a double agent loyal to the Allies but pretending to be spying for the Nazis. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059971/ I remember watching it as a kid, and quite good as I recall. Those were the days for great WWII T.V.: Combat, Garrison's Gorillas, The Rat Patrol.

 

[MikeBravo]

I would second what AmateisGal wrote, in general the scholarly concensus is that the German espionage in the US and particular the UK was not generally that successful. Unless something pretty recent has come out.

I like the story of an American citizen of German descent who was in Germany prior to America entering the war. He was approached by the Abwehr to spy for them upon his return to America, to which he agreed. They gave him codes, names and contact details for the apparently quite extensive network of German spies in America.

When he arrived in New York he went straight to the FBI Headquarters and told them the whole deal! Cleverly, instead of rounding them all up, the FBI fed them disinformation throughout the war. It was only after the war that they were arrested and charged.

I wish I had the name and could give further information

 

[Story]

The CIA Musem on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov/sets/72157625851180039/with/5416180865/

See
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/02/cia-tools-of-tradecraft/?pid=56&pageid=24022&viewall=true

 

[Story]

In a meticulously researched new biography ("Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage," Free Press, 389 pages, $30), author Douglas Waller tells the fascinating story of the colorful and combative native of Buffalo's First Ward who became America's first spymaster.

http://www.stargazette.com/article/...ploits-subject-new-biography?odyssey=nav|head

 

[Story]

A Silsbee veteran is given a royal honor from the King of Norway, nearly 70 years after he served as a soldier and defended the city of Fredrikstand from the Nazis. Rear Admiral Trond Grytting, of Norway, presented retired captain Leif Oistad the Defense Medal for his role in defending the city as part of the 99th Mountain Battalion. The medal was presented to Oistad Friday morning on behalf of King Harald V of Norway.
*
Oistad and members of his unit of Scandinavian descent were recruited by the O.S.S. to form the Norwegian Special Operations (NORSO) Group.

http://www.cbs19.tv/Global/story.asp?S=14189898