Uncovered documents reveal spy who fed information on Hitler's secrets - Times Online
Agent Knopf even pinpointed the location of the 'Wolf?s Lair' ? the Führer's headquarters in Eastern Prussia
Ben Macintyre
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MI6 obtained vital secrets from a spy operating at the very heart of Hitler's high command during the most crucial years of the war, newly discovered intelligence documents have revealed.
The secret agent, code-named "Knopf", furnished the intelligence service with information on Hitler's plans in the Mediterranean and on the Eastern Front, the health of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and even the location of the "Wolf's Lair" — the Führer's headquarters in Eastern Prussia.
Historians have tended to play down the wartime role of MI6 — in comparison with the crucial importance of the messages decoded at Bletchley Park — but the discovery of Agent Knopf by the Cambridge historian Paul Winter shows that Britain obtained accurate and highly valuable intelligence from a network of agents in the upper ranks of the Third Reich.
The documents, uncovered in the Churchill Archives in Cambridge and the National Archives, show that Knopf and his sub-agents alerted British Intelligence to German plans for an invasion of Malta in 1942, relayed Rommel's intentions in North Africa and revealed Hitler's fatal obsession with capturing Stalingrad on the Eastern Front.
The Führer was "determined to capture Stalingrad at all costs", Knopf reported. Hitler's disastrous assault on the Russian city, which led to the destruction of the German 6th Army, is seen as a turning point in the war.
Agent Knopf was initially recruited and run by Polish Intelligence. In 1940, the Polish Government in exile in London agreed to hand over all its intelligence material to the Secret Intelligence Service [SIS], better known as MI6, providing Britain with a steady stream of top-grade intelligence for the rest of the war.
The archives of MI6 remain closed, and the real identity of Agent Knopf may never be known but the newly uncovered documents indicate that the star spy was a German with access to high-grade military information.
One British intelligence report noted: "The source, of whom the Poles think very highly, is not himself a Pole. He has not specified his informants, but states that they are highly placed and in touch with the German High Command."
Dr Winter said: "The discovery of Agent Knopf and his fellow spies shows for the first time that Britain's SIS gained a unique entrée into German operational and strategic thinking during the most critical phases of the war. We may never know their true identities or respective fates, but their audacity and courage are beyond doubt."
The officer in charge of liaising between Polish and British Intelligence was Commander Wilfred "Biffy" Dunderdale, the former MI6 station chief in Paris. A friend of Ian Fleming, who was then working in naval intelligence, Biffy Dunderdale was one of the models for the character of James Bond.
Dunderdale and MI6 were plainly delighted with the stream of accurate intelligence arriving in Whitehall via the Polish Secret Service.
In an appraisal of the spy, written in April 1943 for Alan Brooke, the Chief of Imperial General Staff, it was noted that: "Knopf forecast very closely the general outline of the German summer campaign in Russia. Many of his reports were clear and factual and showed an accuracy of detail which precludes the possibility that he was indulging in intelligence guessing."
Knopf's reports were certainly read by Winston Churchill, and the intelligence he provided would have underpinned the Prime Minister's overall war strategy.
Knopf apparently sent his reports by wireless, since the report on his work by MI14, the War Office's German section, refers to "errors in transmission" such as misspelt names.
MI6 was able to confirm Knopf's information, and ensure he was not a double agent feeding false information, by cross-checking his reports against the German messages decrypted by the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, known as "Most Secret Sources".
Between February 1942 and February 1943, Knopf supplied his handlers with at least ten separate reports on German strategy and operations on the Eastern Front, including the date of Hitler's main offensive against the Soviet Union and the "grouping of the armies".
The spy also identified the location of the Wolfsschanze, or Wolf's Lair, Hitler's fortified military headquarters on the Eastern Front. The lair was built in the woods of Eastern Prussia in the run-up to Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and Hitler spent many months there between 1941 and November 1944. The British noted that Knopf's "accurate information on... the position of Hitler's HQ [is] confirmed from Most Secret Sources".
At the time Knopf was reporting, Churchill and Stalin were allies in the battle against Nazi Germany but it is not known whether the intelligence obtained by Britain relating to the Eastern Front was passed to Moscow.
While gratefully accepting Polish Intelligence, Britain was secretly spying on the Polish Government in exile by intercepting and decoding its messages. These intercepted messages provided additional evidence of Knopf's value and reliability as a spy.
One such interception referred to "secret service agents No.594", a network of Polish-run penetration agents closely connected to the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the High Command of the German Armed Forces. It is clear that "secret service agents No.594" and "Knopf" are one and the same.
For example, both "Knopf" (in material passed on by the Poles) and "594" (in material secretly intercepted by Britain) reported that Rommel, the German commander of Axis forces in North Africa, had been "temporarily recalled [to Germany] owing to dangerous symptoms of defective blood circulation caused by overexhaustion and the African sun". The language in both reports is identical.These agents demonstrated their worth on June 19, 1941, when a report arrived at the Polish Government in London warning that a German invasion of the USSR was imminent. Operation Barbarossa was launched three days later.
The same sources later informed the Polish secret service when the German offensive in the East ground to a bloody halt. Hitler, they reported, was demanding that "further offensive operations should be undertaken in the region of Stalingrad until it capitulates, and as regards the capture of the city no account is to be taken of losses".
Britain's spymasters were understandably nervous that Knopf might be a double agent, but an internal appraisal reflects how much confidence MI6 had in the agent: "There can be no doubt that JX/Knopf [JX is shorthand for "Polish Source"] has very good contacts and that much of his information is sound... Knopf has very seldom been guilty of passing on rumours or plants." Historians have long assumed that human intelligence played only a minor part in the war, and that signals intelligence, the interception and decryption of wireless messages, was the determining factor. Dr Winter's research proves not only that Britain had top-level agents within the German High Command, but that these provided crucial intelligence.
Inevitably, the discovery raises additional questions.
Who were Knopf and his informants? How much of the intelligence was passed to Britain's allies in Moscow and Washington, and how did it affect strategic planning? Above all, what happened to Knopf and his co-conspirators?
"Historians may never know the true identities of 'Knopf'/'secret agents No.594' nor why they risked their lives to spy for the Allies," writes Dr Winter in his thesis. Unless MI6 chooses to declassify its wartime files, Agent Knopf, the unsung spy hero of the Second World War, will remain nameless.