Hitler's Lost Spy Page 3
1930s Spying in Australia – Why?
The German war plan, prepared under Hitler’s personal scrutiny, never included an invasion of Australia. The possibility of such a venture was militarily absurd. So why was the planting and nurturing of spies within Australia judged by the intelligence agencies in Germany as important? The case for Japanese spying in Australia is more readily understood. Whatever the Japanese plans were for the upcoming conflict with the West, they included Australia, therefore tactical knowledge of the continent was essential. Hitler’s desire to go to war was probably in place prior to his election as Chancellor in 1933. Hirohito’s decision to attack the West in the Pacific was almost certainly resolved by 1935. From these dates, international espionage intensified, and there are several worthy reasons why Australia was a spying target.
From the mid 1930s Germany’s espionage and information gathering processes were based on the simple principle that the net should be cast as far as possible. Any information that fell within dictated parameters and may offer data that could add to similar, and relevant, information from another source was deemed useful. Australia’s relationship with Britain meant that Australia would be a source of vital materials for Britain in a time of war. Following this notion, it would be a logical measure for Germany to identify and acquire data on Australia’s potential levels of assistance.
Unlike the German global strategic objectives, Japanese espionage in the 1930s targeted specific ‘location interests’ that were vital components in the overall Australian defence plan.
Hitler’s initial military plans may have been confined to Europe, North Africa and Western Asia, but he knew the conflict would have huge implications for international commerce. From the outbreak of war the stakes would be higher. As a potential troop, food and raw material supplier to Britain, Australia was relevant to Germany’s entire military evaluation, and would therefore warrant the planting of agents.
The Japanese held to the principle that the impending region to evolve as the ‘Southeast Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’ – meaning political control and economic exploitation by Japan – would include Australia and New Zealand. The spying objective, therefore, was a far-reaching evaluation of the continent, unlike the limited German interest.
Australia’s geographic location was a useful focal point for Berlin to obtain data on the Pacific region in general, which Germany could not ignore. Australia also offered the Germans ‘spying assimilation’ advantages – they would not ‘stand out’ in a crowd – plus it offered space to travel and communicate with greater freedom. The geographical location of Australia meant Japanese spying in the country was inevitable, but the methods employed would need to be unlike those used by the Germans.
The civilian ‘mood’ to a foreign government’s political direction was an important yardstick to be determined by spies and foreign embassy staff. Developing a more favourable ‘mood’ towards a nation was normal diplomatic behaviour, and Nazi Party supporters were expected to direct propaganda campaigns to politicians, business leaders, media outlets and selected community members. In Australia, the emphasis on Nazi opposition to Communism would usually find an element of sympathetic reception, and the German suggestion that their former Pacific islands be returned did not appear unreasonable.
As the ‘mood’ of the Australian people turned against the Japanese following atrocities committed in China, pro-Japanese organisations in Australia did what they could to appease public opinion by humbly explaining the ‘misunderstandings’ of Japanese actions being generated in the Western press.
Learning of shipping traffic from Australia, plus reliable information on coastal transport movements of ships and cargoes would present opportunities for German U-Boats and disguised merchant ‘raiders’. Events in World War I had demonstrated the importance placed by Great Britain on protecting the sea-lanes for imports of strategic commodities. In Hitler’s conflict, Germany would prioritise this requirement to globally assess Allied merchant shipping and strike where possible. Australian and New Zealand shipments of meat, grains, wool and minerals to Britain would be included in the intended targets.
In this war, Hitler would not wait for merchant ships to reach Europe before attempting to sink them – he would conduct an offensive, where possible, near the voyage origins or en-route. Having a network of spies to monitor the movements of ships in Australian ports was essential to the German objective of winning the battle against British imports.
From December 1941, the Japanese also had a keen interest in Australian merchant shipping. But this was very different from the information needed by the Germans. The Pacific war was largely a naval war, and cutting supply routes became a policy of both the Allies and the Japanese. Eliminating the Southwest Pacific merchant ship route to Australia would potentially halt American supplies and possibly create a defensive void in Australia, thus directly assisting an invasion of the Australian mainland. This would also inhibit an American defensive build-up.
The objectives of German and Japanese spies operating in Australia were not limited to secrets and stealth. Promoting their national interests was done at every opportunity. The Germans could fall back on the inequities of the Versailles Treaty and the enviable economic progress under Hitler, while the Japanese, who lacked anything positive to convey about the actions of their government, fought a rear-guard action. occasionally successful, by distortions, propaganda, money, and the long-term benefits to Australia of increased trade with Japan.
Every spy was a potential ambassador. When circumstances allowed – and this may not have been very often – promoting Berlin’s and Tokyo’s policies and ‘peaceful intentions’ was expected to be the standard political fare.
In doing this, the basic rules centred on fostering the positive, ‘massaging’ the awkward, and ignoring the unpleasant.
Wars are won and lost on resources. To understand what role Australia could play in a global military conflict was to identify the likely resources the nation could muster, and how those means could be converted into military power. People, know-how, food, mineral and industrial production, ship and aircraft building capacity, and political will are but a few of a nation’s significant ‘resources’ in times of war. Understanding these elements is imperative, and a competent spy will recognise the signs and pass them on.
The 1930s spy became increasingly absorbed in the uneasy background of political and military uncertainty. Within this setting, building a constructive awareness of a target country’s defence capabilities became the prime intent. During hostilities, knowing the enemy’s strength and weaknesses was the immediate goal at military headquarters. When the war commenced in September 1939, the Germans would have possessed accurate details of the military strengths in all Allied countries. Not known, however, was the detailed capacity of the Allied nations to multiply their military capabilities, or what scientific research may contribute to future defence upgrading. Assessing and passing on details of enemy military capacity changes was a crucial role for the spy remaining behind enemy lines.
In this environment, the volume of material collected by a spy is an important element in the assessment of the spy’s worth. A successful spy will have the capacity to reliably collect a more than adequate volume of suitable information. The spy will also have the ability to move this collection to the next level – from data accumulation to data manipulation. This involves collecting more information than is really necessary, then applying a selective method to remove the debris.
These were the primary espionage considerations existing when Annette Wagner arrived in Australia in March 1938.
The Harbour Lights Guild
Prior to World War II, international communications were very different to those of today. Amongst those whose lives were constantly affected by this were merchant seamen. Long voyages, little or no family contact while at sea and uncomfortable working conditions gave rise to the creation of organisations working towards providing various facilities for
merchant ship crews.
In Australia, the Harbour Lights Guild offered a range of services to seamen including the provision of books and magazines, hospital visits, banking assistance, inward and outward mail, and aiding authorities in tracing missing crew members.
Nazi operatives in Australia took a special interest in the Guild, targeting the organisation as an important maritime information source. Through its doors travelled facts and figures of merchant ships and their cargoes, routes and destinations – just what the German raiders and U-Boats would need to know when the war started.
The Nazis also formed a branch of the Party with a special interest in shipping – the Harbour Port Service. In Melbourne, this was conveniently headed by a ship’s provedore, Hans Renz, who dutifully recorded shipping information for southern Australia, including ‘wayward behaviour’ by German crew members. Reports would be passed on to Gestapo contacts in Australia and then to Berlin. With a similar intent, the Guild was infiltrated by the Nazi Party and in the late 1930s was effectively controlled by two German agents, Rudolph Durkop and Helene Franze, both of whom were known to Annette Wagner.
From Peace to War – the Spying Transition
There is a significant difference between spying in peacetime to that in wartime. In democratic nations the prosecution of foreign espionage activity undertaken in peacetime requires adherence to the law. Photographing harbour installations in peacetime may be suspicious, but it is not illegal. When war is declared, it all changes. Arrests and internment may be initiated on security assessments, not on proven facts. Enemy spies go underground, communications become more secretive, all movements are carefully calculated and contingency plans are put into effect. The Geneva Convention may have offered some protection to prisoners of war, but it did not provide anything to captured spies. If caught, a spy in wartime is on his or her own, and not subject to the ‘humane treatment’ the Convention stipulated for prisoners of war.
The degree to which a spy must ‘adjust’ to wartime conditions depends on how well assimilated he or she is prior to the war commencing. In the above examples of Walter Ladendorff and Arnold von Skerst, their prominent level of public exposure meant that the extent of their community assimilation, i.e. the supportive level they may have expected from the community, was close to zero. It was hardly a secret as to who they were and which side they were backing. The choice for such people was to leave prior to hostilities commencing, go into hiding or be interned. Annette Wagner, on the other hand, required little or no assimilation adjustment after the war commenced. Had suspicions of her activities not been raised previously, and given the opportunity, she probably would have continued her work without disruption. She was, in fact, close to being a perfect ‘sleeper’.
Every Good Spy has a Good Story
The departure or confinement of ‘known’ military or civilian spies from a country of interest is likely to occur when the agents are most needed – when war commences and the collection of strategic information becomes vital. A spy agency with foresight would have regard to this contingency and plan accordingly e.g. the ‘sleepers’. In addition, new agents would need to be brought in, with the difference that ideally their origin, family and work history, and personal presentation would be unlikely to arouse suspicion. Added to this would be a legitimate reason for living in the country of interest. In late 1930s Australia, a female, born, raised and married outside of Germany or Austria, with a ‘justified’ background and a reasonable purpose for her presence in the country should tick all of the boxes. On these considerations alone, suspicion of being a German agent would not exist. In 1938 many people entered Australia with convincing credentials, and amongst them was Annette Wagner.
For a prospective enemy spy working in Australia in 1938 and 1939, being female (usually an advantage), Swiss born, raised from age seven in England, married to a French national and travelling to Australia to reside with relatives who had lived in England, is about as unsuspecting as it gets. Further, the ability to provide a British/French family and employment history would result in a difficulty for authorities to check any queries – untarnished features are more likely to offer a cover for anything else. In addition, an official checking process conducted in foreign countries presented a timing problem. International communications were expensive and, following a declaration of war, the complexity in obtaining personal data would be increased several-fold.
Protracted delays in international exchanges prior to or during the war would have been compounded by a surge in the number of requests between Allied countries searching for advice on personal information offered by suspected spies. A letter addressed to The War Office in London requesting confirmation of Annette Wagner’s details while in England appears in her file. A copy of the letter is marked ‘not sent’. It is probable that British intelligence at that time was overworked with requests to examine suspected spies and their possible networks within Britain, and assisting requests similar to that for Annette received a lower priority.
An allied nation’s request to neutral countries for personal histories on suspects may be stalled, or simply ignored. This was often the result for requests to those neutral countries ‘friendly’ to Germany at the beginning of the war – Spain, Switzerland and Sweden. Even Allied nations, without an urgency attachment, would provide such information on a low importance basis. A war is being fought and military intelligence resources have higher urgencies than researching the activities of suspected overseas spies – many of whom could eventually be determined as harmless, and with others ending inconclusively. There may be thousands of such cases and it is likely that most requests for an individual’s background details would not receive the attention hoped for by those soliciting the request.
There would be exceptions, of course, but these would only be cases producing a high-grade risk profile. Annette Wagner’s security risk profile, when she arrived in Australia in March 1938, had nothing in it to be suspicious about.
Spying for the Emperor
The commencement of World War I nominally brought Japan to the Allied side, and while world attention was focused on Europe, the German island possessions in the Southwest Pacific were occupied by the Japanese navy. The Versailles Conference cautiously initialled Japan’s occupation of the Mariana, Caroline and Marshal island groups. The League of Nations formally granted a conditional mandate over the territories to Japan, but the binding rules were effectively ignored and the Japanese proceeded during the 1920s to develop the islands for both commercial and military purposes.
At the Versailles Conference, Japan also claimed the former German territory of New Guinea. Had this been agreed to, the Japanese Empire would have reached virtually to Australia’s front door by sharing a border with Papua, a short distance from the Australian continent. A very apprehensive Australian government successfully argued that Japanese control of former German colonies in the Pacific should not extend south of the equator.
The escalation of Japanese sabre-rattling in Asia and the country’s military preparations in the Pacific revealed the classification difficulty incurred by most intelligence organisations. This derives from the question ‘What is the tangible differentiation between information gathered by foreign nationals of a general, and harmless nature, and strategic information relevant to the host nation’s security?’ This strategic information could be military, geographic, commercial or scientific. Australia’s increasing uneasiness with the growth of Japanese militarism in Asia and the Pacific during the 1930s resulted in an urgency within Australian Military Intelligence in determining precisely what information the Japanese were acquiring.
The serious interest in collecting Australian information began in the 1890s when Japanese expeditions travelled extensively to Western countries, observing and recording with an unlimited resolve. It would appear that this was no more than the Japanese endeavours at the time to amass comprehensive country information that would have little, if any, military significance.
During the 1930s, security concerns around Japanese intentions increased in Australia. This was attributed to both Japan’s aggressive foreign policy and an increase in suspicious behaviour by both Japanese individuals and organisations. Australian maps, books and charts were copiously purchased by consular officials, tourists and businessmen employed by the large Japanese merchant houses that controlled 95 per cent of the trade between Australia and Japan. In 1931, Japanese visitors purchased 75 per cent of the marine charts sold in Fremantle, Australia’s shipping gateway to the Indian Ocean. Tourist interest in these charts barely existed.
To Australia’s north, the commercial activities of a Japanese company, Nanyo Kohatsu Kabushiki Kaisha (South Seas Development Company), aroused intense misgivings – and for a very good reason. The company received Japanese government funds to assist in its covert political activities conducted in the shadow of its trading operations. In 1935, there was concern in Canberra following the opening of a company office in New Guinea. Dutch authorities in the Netherlands East Indies were similarly worried about the company’s operations. Nanyo Kohatsu was later confirmed as a focal point in the expanding network of Japanese espionage operations being entrenched across the main islands of what is now Indonesia.
In 1935 a spy network operating out of the Japanese consulate in Sydney was confirmed. The monitoring of the network and its manoeuvres was difficult as information did not pass between individuals, but through the protection of the consulate. Further, payments arranged by the consulate for undercover work were in cash, so tracing those individuals who acted within the network was problematic.