Defectors from the Reich: The Double Agent and the Adventurer

Two German defectors turned British double agents, disillusioned with Nazism, manipulated wartime intelligence and postwar politics.

Two German defectors who were to serve British Intelligence from 1942 to 1945 were, in many ways, two of a kind. One was a Nazi, having served in the Waffen-SS and given the code name COLUMBINE as a double agent under the Double-Cross System, while the other was not. Both had become disillusioned with the way things were going with the war and generally disgusted with the Nazi regime and resolved to try to change the course of events. One was an adventurer who claimed after the war to have been a British agent and parachuted into France, yet nothing could have been further from the truth. He even tried his hand at acting in an American B-movie.

There was also a family connection with a future British prime minister. Like many spies, they both had large egos and were good at manufacturing information or distorting the truth. One of them ended up working for the Political Warfare Executive, so it is perhaps not surprising that he exploited his craft in post-war West Germany, mostly for his own ends. Between them, they were to cause MI5 a lot of headaches both during the war and afterwards into the Cold War period.