This personal biography reveals the incredible true story of the British secret agent who posed as a Nazi spy during WWII. With Britain braced for a German invasion, MI5 recruited Walter Dicketts, a former officer of the Royal Naval Air Force—and a known con artist—as a double agent. Codenamed Celery, Dicketts was sent to Lisbon with the mission of persuading the Germans he was a traitor and then extracting crucial secrets. Once there, the Nazis brought Dicketts to Germany, where he had to outwit his interrogators in Hamburg and Berlin before returning to Britain as, in the Nazis’ eyes, a German spy. Even before he left for Germany, Celery knew that he had been betrayed by a fellow agent. Yet somehow he not only got back to Lisbon, but persuaded a German Intelligence Officer to defect before spending nine months undercover in Brazil. A mixture of hero and crook, Dicketts was smart, worldly and charismatic. Sometimes rich and sometimes poor, his private life was a complicated web of deception. Using both family and official documents, as well as police records, newspaper articles and personal memories, Carolinda Witt—Dicketts’s granddaughter—unravels the incredible yet true story of Double Agent Celery.

On the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War the double-agent Arthur Owens, codenamed SNOW, is summoned to Berlin and appointed Hitler's chief spy in Britain. Days later he finds himself in Wandsworth prison, betrayed by the wife he traded for a younger model, and forced to transmit false wireless messages for MI5 to earn his freedom - and avoid the hangman's noose. A vain and devious anti-hero with no moral compass, Owen's motives were status, money and women.He mixed fact with fiction constantly, and at times insisted that he was a true patriot, undertaking hazardous secret missions for his mother country; at other times, Owens saw himself as a daring rogue agent, outwitting British Intelligence and loyal only to the Fatherland. Yet in 1944, as Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, Hitler was caught unawares, tricked into expecting the invasion across the Pas de Calais in a strategic deception played out by Owens and the double-cross agents of MI5. For all his flaws, Agent Snow became the traitor who saved his country.Based on recently de-classified MI5 files and previously unpublished sources, Double Agent Snowis the story of a secret Battle of Britain, fought by Snow and his opposing spymasters, Thomas 'Tar' Robertson of MI5 and Nikolaus Ritter of the Abwehr, as well as the tragic love triangle between Owens, his wife Irene, and his mistress Lily Funnell. The evocative, fast-paced narrative moves from seedy south London pubs to North Sea trawlers, from chic Baltic spa resorts to Dartmoor gaol, populated by a colourful rogue's gallery of double-cross agents.

Dickie Metcalfe was not your typical secret agent, but he was larger than life in more ways than one. Unlike many other agents who were part of the Double Cross System during the Second World War, he did not defect; nor was he blackmailed into becoming a spy. Instead, using his father’s connection with Sir Vernon Kell, the first Director of MI5, Metcalfe volunteered his services. Recently cashiered from his infantry regiment, he had an ulterior motive – by supplying MI5 with tidbits of information about weapons and arms deals in his newfound profession as an arms dealer, he hoped they would be able to help him get his commission reinstated. Metcalfe became BALLOON, a sub-agent of double agent TRICYCLE’s Yugoslav spy ring. Concurrent with his spying activities, he collaborated with the co-inventor of the Bren gun to develop a new submachine gun for British forces. After the war, he was also a celebrated motor racing driver and continued to compete until shortly before his death. His success as a double-cross agent in the eyes of both his masters – British and German – is examined in this book, using official documents as a primary source.

This is the first volume of Nigel West's acclaimed presentation of these fascinating diaries from the heart of Britain's Second World War intelligence operations. 'No intelligence buff can be without this volume and anyone interested in British twentieth century history needs it too.' M.R.D. Foot, The Spectator 'Regarded by historians as the most important military intelligence documents from the whole of the Second World War.' Irish Independent '[A] unique insight into the espionage secrets of the Second World War. Its historical importance is enhanced by the editing of Nigel West who, apart from decoding several obscure references to the secret war, persuaded the Security Service to break their rule of maintaining an agent's anonymity.' BBC History Magazine WALLFLOWERS is the codename given to one of the Security Service's most treasured possessions, the daily journal dictated from August 1939 to June 1945 by MI5's Director of Counter Espionage, Guy Liddell, to his secretary, Margo Huggins. The document was considered so highly classified that it was retained in the safe of successive Directors General, and special permission was required to read it. No other member of the Security Service is known to have maintained a diary and the twelve volumes of this journal represent a unique record of the events and personalities of the period, a veritable tour d'horizon of the entire subject. As Director, B Division, Liddell supervised all the major pre-war and wartime espionage investigations, maintained a watch on suspected pro-Nazis and laid the foundations of the famous 'double cross system' of enemy double agents. He was unquestionably one of the most reclusive and remarkable men of his generation, and a legend within his own organization.

After Dunkirk, the British Army was broken, the country isolated and invasion imminent. German Military Intelligence was sat the task of recruiting collaborators from among Welsh nationalists to sabotage military and civilian installations ahead of the landing. Strategic deception was one of the few weapons left. To fool the Germans into believing Britain was ready and able to repel invaders when in fact it had only the weapons salvaged from Dunkirk, MI5 invented an imaginary cell of Welsh saboteurs led by a retired police inspector. This is the true, action-packed account of how a bogus Welsh nationalist infiltrated German Military Intelligence during the Second World War.

Cover Name: Dr. Rantzau is a gripping diary-like personal account of espionage during the Second World War and is one of very few historic memoirs written by an ex-Abwehr officer. Detailed is how Colonel Nikolaus Ritter, following a brief World War I career and over ten years as a businessman in America, returned to Germany in spring of 1935 and became Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr. He was assigned to establish a network of agents to gather information on British and US airfields, aircrafts, and state-of-the-art developments in the aerospace industry. Among others, Ritter's cover names were Dr. Rantzau and Dr. Reinhard in Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Dr. Jansen in Hungary, Dr. Renken in Germany, and Mr. Johnson in America. Throughout his service in the Abwehr, Ritter smuggled America's most jealously guarded secret, the Norden bombsight and the Sperry gyroscope, into Germany, and coordinated the planning for the invasion of the British Isles (Operation Sea Lion). Ritter was incarcerated by the British in 1945 and sent to the Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre. Katharine Ritter Wallace, the daughter of Col. Ritter, presents the first English translation of the German World War II memoir. With a combination of collected documents, correspondences, personal notes, communications with peers, and from memory, this captivating account by an espionage agent reveals an insider's glimpse of the German intelligence service and of a handler's expansive and diverse agent network.

"Nigel West has presented the most complete account of the Abwehr to date. It will serve as a valuable reference work." — Studies in Intelligence As the Second World War progressed and defeat for Hitler’s Third Reich in all theatres became ever more certain, the tight Abwehr network, built so effectively by its head, Admiral Canaris, began to unravel. High-level defections to the Allies and bitter disputes with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) added to a collapse in morale. Most notably was the increasing opposition within the officer ranks of the Army to Hitler fermented by Canaris and his deputy Generalmajor Hans Oster. The final years of the Abwehr were marked by the Abwehr’s efforts to undermine the regime, which came to a bloody conclusion following the Valkyrie assassination attempt of 20 July 1944. This saw the arrest of many Abwehr officials and the execution of Canaris and Oster. In this penetrating study of the final years of the Abwehr, Nigel West, a world-renowned specialist in the field, pieces together the gradual decline in the organization’s role and importance with Hitler and his acolytes paying little heed to reports that were increasingly cautionary. Among the many previously undisclosed stories are details gleaned from recently opened files which tell of a hitherto unknown spy-swap. This was the exchange of Berthold Shulze-Holthus, a German spy detained in Iran, for Ferdinand Rodriguez, a British radio operator captured in France. This was the only such exchange that took place during the whole of the Second World War – though the fact that the swap took place at all suggests that a previously unsuspected degree of communication existed between the Allies and Nazi Germany. Perhaps most tantalizingly of all, is the new night light thrown upon the role the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, had, in league with the Abwehr, in the Valkyrie bombing which almost killed Hitler.

A thrilling history of MI9—the WWII organization that engineered the escape of Allied forces from behind enemy lines When Allied fighters were trapped behind enemy lines, one branch of military intelligence helped them escape: MI9. The organization set up clandestine routes that zig-zagged across Nazi-occupied Europe, enabling soldiers and airmen to make their way home. Secret agents and resistance fighters risked their lives and those of their families to hide the men. Drawing on declassified files and eye-witness testimonies from across Europe and the United States, Helen Fry provides a significant reassessment of MI9’s wartime role. Central to its success were figures such as Airey Neave, Jimmy Langley, Sam Derry, and Mary Lindell—one of only a few women parachuted into enemy territory for MI9. This astonishing account combines escape and evasion tales with the previously untold stories behind the establishment of MI9—and reveals how the organization saved thousands of lives.

Spies have made an extraordinary impact on the history of the 20th Century, but fourteen in particular can be said to have been demonstrably important. As one might expect, few are household names, and it is only with the benefit of recently declassified files that we can now fully appreciate the nature of their contribution. The criteria for selection have been the degree to which each can now be seen to have had a very definite influence on a specific course of events, either directly, by passing vital classified material, or indirectly, by organizing or managing a group of spies. Those selected were active in the First World War, the inter-war period, the Second World War, the Cold War and even the post-Cold War era. These include Walther Dewé who formed a spy ring in German-occupied Belgium during the First World War. This train-watching network, known as ‘White Lady’, reported on German troop deployments and possible weaknesses in the German defences. Extending its operations into northern France, the ring provided 75 per cent of the information received by GHQ, British Expeditionary Force. By the time of the Armistice in 1918, Dewé’s group had a staggering 1,300 members. Olga Gray, the 27-year-old daughter of a Daily Mail journalist, was employed as a secretary by the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1931 she undertook a mission for MI5 to penetrate the organization and discover its secret channel of communication with Moscow. Gray learned that the Party’s cipher was based on Treasure Island and this breakthrough enabled the Party’s messages to be read by Whitehall cryptographers. Renato Levi, an Italian playboy, was the longest-serving British agent of the Second World War and is credited with creating the concept of strategic deception. While operating in Cairo as a double agent working for the Abwehr and the British he was instrumental in misleading the Axis about Allied strength across the Middle East and helped Montgomery achieve his victory over Rommel’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein. So successful was Levi in this and other deceptions, he was employed to persuade the Germans that the D-Day landings in Normandy were a diversionary feint, in anticipation of an invasion in the Pas-de-Calais. These, and other surprising stories, are revealed in this fascinating insight into a secret world inhabited by mysterious and shadowy characters, all of whom, though larger than life, really did exist.

"...presents an excellent and concise narrative of the Abwehr's global intelligence network. West draws from hundreds of firsthand debriefing and summary reports including disclosed sources not previously available to scholars."—American Intelligence Journal Modern historians have consistently condemned the Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence service, and its SS equivalent, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), as incompetent and even corrupt organizations. However, newly declassified MI5, CIA and US Counterintelligence Corps files shed a very different light on the structure, control and capabilities of the German intelligence machine in Europe, South America, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It is usually stated that, under Admiral Canaris, the Abwehr neglected its main functions, its attention being focused more on trying to bring down Hitler. Yet Canaris greatly expanded the Abwehr from 150 personnel into a vast world-wide organisation which achieved many notable successes against the Allies. Equally, the SD’s tentacles spread across the Occupied territories as the German forces invaded country after country across Europe. In this in-depth study of the Abwehr’s rise to power, 1935 to 1943, its activities in Russia, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Japan, China, Manchuko and Mongolia are examined, as well as those in Thailand, French Indo-China, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, and the Arab nations. In this period, the Abwehr built a complex network of individual agents with transmitters operating from commercial, diplomatic and consular premises. Before, and in the early stages of the war, it later became apparent, the Abwehr was controlling a number of agents in Britain. Indeed, it was only after the war that the scale of the Abwehr’s activities became known, the organisation having of around 20,000 members. For the first time, the Abwehr’s development and the true extent of its operations have been laid bare, through official files and even of restored documents previously redacted. The long list of operations and activities of the Abwehr around the world includes the efforts of an agent in the USA who was arrested after a bizarre attempt to obtain a quantity of blank American passports by impersonating a senior State Department official, Edward Weston, an Under-Secretary of State. Also, former U.S. Marine, Kurt Jahnke, who was recruited to collect information about the American munitions production and send it on to Germany. These are just two of the numerous and absorbing accounts in this all-embracing study.