Hitler's Spy (37 page)

Patricia Owens
went on to become a moderately successful film actress, often playing American characters on account of her Canadian accent. She relocated to
Hollywood in 1956, and under contract to 20th Century Fox starred with Vincent Price in science fiction classic
The Fly
. Irene, her mother, briefly joined her in America, but soon wore out
her welcome. Pat’s movie career failed to catch fire, and by the late 1960s she was day-playing on television serials such as
Lassie
and
Perry Mason
. Briefly married to
screenwriter Sy Bartlett, Agent Snow’s eldest daughter died in California in August 2000, aged 75. Like her brother Graham, she refused to acknowledge that her father had acted as
Hitler’s chief spy in England.

Walter Dicketts
(aka CELERY aka Jack Brown) returned to Lisbon in May 1941 in an unsuccessful bid to persuade George Sessler to defect. In July he was offered
the choice of an assignment in Brazil, or an SO2 mission to France, though it is unclear whether he undertook either. Following yet another financial scrape Dicketts was declared bankrupt in 1947
and imprisoned at HMP Wandsworth. MI5 declined to provide evidence in mitigation at his trial, having no doubt digested information provided by Ritter and Ruser which confirmed
that Agent Celery had been flipped in Hamburg in March 1941. Compounding tragedy with irony, in August 1957 Dicketts followed the example of William Rolph by committing suicide with
the aid of coal gas. Like Rolph, his death certificate was signed by William Bentley Purchase. Like Owens, he would be partially unmasked by
John Bull
.

Sam McCarthy
(aka BISCUIT aka MAC) is known to have been a Canadian named Frank but eludes precise identification. Perhaps Biscuit was a McVitie. In 1951 he
was charged with embezzlement at East Grinstead, though the case went unreported. Notwithstanding an ‘excess of zeal’, McCarthy deserved credit for enabling the Snow show to run beyond
May 1940, when others – Tar Robertson included – were inclined to throw in the towel.

Gwilym Williams
(aka G.W.) died in 1949 at the age of 62. According to John Humphries in
Spying for Hitler
, the only noteworthy entry in
Williams’ police record is that he once stopped a runaway horse.

Nikolaus Ritter
(aka DR RANTZAU) ended the war as a lieutenant colonel, still in charge of a flak unit despite the Hanover debacle in 1945. Briefly employed by
American forces as a translator, in July 1945 he was arrested by a British Field Security section and held at the CSDIC (WEA) detention centre at Bad Nenndorf, where the commandant was Tin-Eye
Stephens. There British interrogators noted ‘a curious lack of knowledge about his own cases’ and made Ritter sweep the officers’ mess. ‘This was not the time to reveal the
truth nor his achievements,’ a relative hinted much later. Eventually released from custody in 1947, Ritter returned to Hamburg and scraped a living in various casual jobs, settling on
import/export sales, and ended his working life as managing director of a charity. His
unpublished memoirs informed
They Spied on England
(1958) and
The Game of
the Foxes
(1971), and would eventually appear as
Deckname Dr Rantzau
in 1972. According to his son-in-law, Manfred Blume, the former Doctor Rantzau feared prosecution (or worse), and
thus the text omits as much as it covers. Nevertheless, by 1972 Ritter was happy to reveal that which had to remain secret at Bad Nenndorf. ‘Our little Johnny played his unremitting and
fascinating game out right to the very end. The British are right to claim that Johnny worked for their intelligence service. But what the British did not know was that he did so only with my
agreement and encouragement.’ The dapper, extrovert Rhinelander passed away in 1974.

Thomas Argyll Robertson
(aka TAR) retired from MI5 in 1948 with the rank of colonel, unhappy with the new regime imposed by Sir Percy Sillitoe. In the opinion
of John Masterman, his decision ‘at the end of the war to leave the service in order to farm was one of the greatest losses which MI5 ever suffered.’ Tar farmed 120 acres near Evesham
in Worcestershire, but was not best pleased by Masterman’s decision to publish
The Double-Cross System
in 1972. He died in 1994, never having been allowed to speak freely about his
remarkable double-cross war. ‘It was people that counted with Tommy,’ his brother-in-law Peter Stormonth Darling told author Geoffrey Elliott. ‘They all started equal in his eyes.
He saw the best in everyone and rarely disliked anyone, though he could disapprove strongly of other people’s actions or words. He was non-judgemental and had a soft spot for the unusual
types, including the odd rogue with a bit of charm.’

Wulf Schmidt
(aka TATE aka LEONHARDT) buzzed his last message to Wohldorf on 2 May 1945, after four and a half extraordinary years as a XX agent. Granted
British citizenship as Harry Williamson, the well-travelled Dane settled in Watford
and worked as a photographer on a local newspaper, later becoming a leading breeder of
canaries and other caged birds. Four decades after Schmidt received his Iron Cross, several members of his German family believed that he was still working undercover in England, though media
coverage surrounding an unpaid Poll Tax bill led to colourful publicity. He succumbed to cancer in October 1992, aged 80, still under the protection of MI5.

Gösta Caroli
(aka SUMMER aka NILBERG) was deported to Sweden in 1945 and took a job with a firm of seed merchants near Malmö. Scarred by his wartime
experiences his health gradually deteriorated, condemning him to several years in a wheelchair before his death in 1975. The German government had earlier rejected his claim for a disability
pension.

Jan Willem Ter Braak
lies buried in an unmarked grave at St Mary’s, Great Shelford, three miles south of Cambridge. The Hinxton Home for Incurables is
but an hour’s brisk walk away.

George Hamilton
(aka G. C. Hans Hamilton), the wealthy investment banker and company sponsor who brought Snow to London in 1933, introducing him both to NID
and the Abwehr, served in combined operations during the Second World War. ‘Hamilton should be interviewed and required to give a full account of his dealings with Snow,’ proposed an
MI5 memo in 1944. ‘He may have seen in Snow’s position an opportunity for profitable, if rather sharp, business.’ Evidently Hamilton was cleared of any wrongdoing, and remained on
the army emergency reserve list until 1957. He died in 1960.

Guy Liddell
retired from MI5 in 1952, afterwards serving as a security adviser to the Atomic Energy Commission. He had been expected to succeed David Petrie as
Director-General of
MI5 but was passed over in favour of Sir Percy Sillitoe, a decision due in part to Liddell’s friendships with Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Anthony
Blunt, all three of whom were unmasked as Soviet spies. Liddell died of heart failure in 1958. Codenamed WALLFLOWERS, his unique daily journals remained classified until 2002, when – suitably
weeded – they were released to The National Archive.

John Masterman
left MI5 in September 1945, though not before writing
The Double-Cross System
as an internal history. One hundred copies were printed,
of which 75 were promptly destroyed. Masterman returned to the dreaming spires of Oxford, becoming first Provost of Worcester College, then Vice-Chancellor of the University. He was knighted in
1959. Masterman repeatedly pressed for publication of his official XX history, arguing that confidence in the British secret service had to be restored following the scandal of the Cambridge spy
ring. Three successive MI5 DGs declined, after which Masterman arranged to publish
The Double-Cross System
through Yale University Press in 1972. In a remarkable (but pragmatic)
volte-face, the British edition was issued through HMSO – with the Crown retaining a royalty of 50 per cent.

Masterman died in 1977. His oft-quoted statement (that ‘by means of the double agent system
we actively ran and controlled the German espionage system in this
country
’) remains largely – but not entirely – true.

Detailed chapter by chapter source notes for
Double Agent Snow
can be viewed online at:

www.ltmrecordings.com/doubleagentsnownotes.html

Please note: some dialogue cited or referred to in official files has been edited to aid clarity.

Archive Sources

National Archives (London): KV2/444–453 (Snow case); KV2/85–88 (Ritter case); KV2/468 (GW case); KV2/674 (Celery case); KV2/60 (Summer case); KV2/114 (Ter Braak
case); KV4/13–15 (Camp 020); KV4/185–196 (unedited Guy Liddell diaries); KV2/1452 (Kieboom and Dungeness spies)

Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (Freiburg): RW49/566–567 (Snow/Johnny reports, file copies recovered in 1945 from Bremen stelle)

Books

Articles and Journals