Mel Kavanagh, Hitler’s Spies (Pen & Sword, 2020)
In July 1940, Adolf Hitler all but dismissed any ideas of peace with Britain and gave the green light for an invasion, Operation Sealion. All branches of the German military had their doubts, but German intelligence, the Abwehr, had to prepare the way for the invading forces, and to do that they needed to send spies. That set the platform for Operation Lena. In this detailed and fascinating account, Mel Kavanagh narrates that story.
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Kavanagh introduces the major players tasked with establishing a network of spies in Britain at very short notice. They include the well-known Jodl and Canaris, but also lesser lights such as Herbert Wichmann, Nikolaus Ritter, and Walter Praetorius. The ’Brussels Four’ is Kavanagh’s main focus: Charles Kieboom, Carl Meier, Sjoerd Pons, and Jose Waldberg. He provides potted biographies of them, noting that only Waldberg had any intelligence experience. After introducing a timeline of the war to July 1940, which runs through the narrative, Kavanagh returns to his theme with the spies in Brussels for training and planning for their missions to England. When they were deemed ready, the four set off in small boats on 3 September to spy for Hitler. It would not go well.
Pons and Kieboom were caught almost immediately on landing, Meier soon afterwards. The resultant flurry of activity by the British army ensnared Waldberg, and all four were soon in the hands of MI5. Kavanagh follows the investigation conducted in the shadow of an impending German invasion. The men were sent to Camp 020 where they were reticent to cooperate because they expected a German invasion but did so anyway. Kavanagh includes transcripts of interrogations and secret taping, revealing many interesting aspects of the intelligence war in the process. Kavanagh then works his way through the trial, verdicts, the fates of the spies, and the aftermath of the whole affair, including investigations into other spies, potential and real. He concludes by noting that Operation Lena was a waste of time and epitomised ‘woeful German planning’ and British vigilance. The Brussels Four were also a mine of information for MI5. Why the Germans sent such inept spies remains an open question.
Hitler’s Spies is an odd espionage story in that very little spying took place. Indeed, the incompetence of the spies that Kavanagh highlights bordered on the unbelievable at times. That Kavanagh could write a book packed with information on the Brussels Four and their miserably failed mission is quite impressive in itself. That said, there is a sense of missed opportunity in how Kavanagh wrote this story. Where he just narrates events, Kavanagh writes well, but too often he produces documentary evidence into his text that would have been better placed in the footnotes or appendices. Kavanagh’s attempt to connect the spy story to wider wartime events is also well-meaning but falls flat. Too often such interpolations fracture the narrative and eventually becomes mere noise. That is unfortunate because Kavanagh has a genuinely interesting story to tell, and readers interested in the intelligence war in World War II will take much from it.
