The Spy Net

H
ENRY LANDAU WAS
serving with the British Army in 1916 when he was recruited into the British secret service, the organisation we now know as MI6, in order to reorganise the British networks in Belgium that were watching the German troop trains travelling to and from the Western Front. These train-watching networks allowed the British to work out the locations and numbers of German regiments.

Landau, who was born in South Africa, was talent spotted when he dated one of the secretaries to Mansfield Cumming, the first head of MI6 (then known as MI1c) and the original ‘C’. On finding out that Landau spoke French, Dutch and German, she told him he was ‘just the man my chief is looking for’. He was summoned to see Cumming’s deputy, Colonel Freddie Browning, at the secret service headquarters in Whitehall Court.

Landau went on to run
La Dame Blanche
, a group of more than 1,000 Belgian and French agents who monitored the movement of German troop trains to and from the Western Front. Named after a mythical White Lady, whose appearance was supposed to presage the downfall of the Hohenzollerns, it was arguably the most effective intelligence operation of the First World War and, according to Cumming, produced 70 per cent of Allied intelligence on the German forces.

At the end of the war, Landau was rewarded for his work with
La Dame Blanche
by being offered one of the plum jobs in the post-war intelligence service. ‘I was informed by the chief that, in recognition of my services, he had awarded me the best of his appointments abroad in the post-war re-arrangement of the secret service. I was to open an office in Berlin.’

With Bolsheviks causing mayhem and threatening a German revolution to match that in Russia, Berlin was expected to be the service’s most important overseas station. But Landau not only struggled to come to terms with the work, he also found himself in severe financial difficulties. He left the secret service and went to America, where he became a US citizen and published a book on his wartime intelligence experiences called
All’s
Fair: The Story of the Secret Service Behind the German Lines
.

The book was a bestseller in America, but was not published in the UK for fear of legal action by the authorities. Appearing only a year after Hitler had come to power, its revelations about those who had worked for the British during the First World War and had remained in Germany – in a number of cases, still working for the British – put them at risk. Landau also named his successor as MI1c’s head of station in Berlin, Frank Foley, who would subsequently become better known for his work helping Jews escape from Nazi Germany. Shortly after the publication of
All’s Fair
, the German authorities warned the population to be on the lookout for foreign spies. ‘A large number of spies are busy in Germany collecting all particulars, especially with regard to the possibilities of economic mobilisations,’ they announced. ‘Spies must be energetically brought to book. Great reserve must be shown towards all foreigners encountered in public houses, railway compartments etc.’

A second book was also published in the US to avoid legal action, but this book, originally called
Spreading the Spy Net
, was the most comprehensive, published in both the US and the UK in 1938. Although Landau had let much that it contained out of the bag in his previous two books, it was still
surprising that British secret service chiefs decided against taking any action.

Quite why is not clear, but it might well have something to do with the man Landau describes as ‘the Dane’, in what is a deliberately disguised account of the work of the best MI1c agent inside First World War Germany. Karl Krüger was not, in fact, a Dane. He was a German naval engineer. Codenamed variously TR16, H16 or, as here, R16, he had been recruited by Landau’s wartime boss, the head of MI1c’s Rotterdam bureau, Richard Tinsley. Krüger had extensive access to the German North Sea and Baltic ports and provided the British with often extraordinary and highly accurate detail, both of damage caused to the German Navy by its British counterpart and of the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the new ships and submarines the Germans were building.  

Krüger had continued to work for the British after the First World War and, by the time
Spreading the Spy Net
was published, was providing detailed information on the build-up of German forces under the Nazis. But he was already under suspicion, and taking action against Landau’s book would only have alerted the Germans to the British concerns for his safety.

It is unclear whether the Germans ever discovered the full extent of Krüger’s work for British intelligence, but, shortly after the start of the Second World War, they announced that he had been beheaded by axe (although there is some evidence that he frustrated his would-be executioners by committing suicide). It was initially assumed within MI6 that Landau’s account of Krüger’s work was responsible for his death – and when the Americans entered the war in December 1941, there was even
an attempt to have Landau arrested – but, in fact, when Krüger came under suspicion, the British had put one of their best Dutch agents on his tail to make sure he wasn’t being followed. The Dutchman assigned to cover Krüger’s back was also working for the Germans, and it was he who informed them that Krüger was a British spy, thereby sealing his fate.

Michael Smith
Editor of the Dialogue Espionage Classics Series
May 2015

I
WAS BORN TO
be what by chance I became; no child could have been ushered into the world under better conditions or in a more fertile environment for the dangerous and varied service into which I was thrown at the time of the Great War. By blood, by breeding and education, by the very country and atmosphere into which I was born, and the circumstances through which I grew to manhood, I was a composite of many inheritances and many backgrounds.

I was born of a Dutch mother and an English father, in Boer South Africa. My earliest memories centre about the arduous, almost medieval life of the veldt, and my first vivid impressions were those of war. Hazily I can remember the long trek in ox wagons from the Orange Free State to our farm in the Transvaal,
when I was between four and five years of age; the long spans of red Afrikander oxen, the kaffirs with their long ox whips, the campfires, the hunters returning with their day’s bag of springbok and koorhaan remain in my mind pictures at once remote and vivid.

I have visions, too, of my mother superintending the making of household essentials, which the Boer women of those days had to attend to – remedies for simple illness, soap, candles, and dried beef or
biltong
. She was an excellent horsewoman and a fine shot, and, in addition to her many household duties, it came naturally to her to handle the kaffirs and the stock in my father’s absence. I can see her, at the approach of one of those South African thunderstorms which always seemed to come suddenly from nowhere, calling to the kaffirs to bring in the calves and other small stock, and herself scurrying off to direct them. Married at sixteen, she probably knew more about farming and stock-raising than my father, for she came of a long line of French Huguenots and Dutch, who had lived on the land in South Africa for close on 200 years, ever trekking northward to escape British rule, and in search of freedom. There was something elemental in her makeup, a ruggedness of character which breathed of the veldt itself. Her main qualities were dependability and resourcefulness; she was the master of every situation which arose, largely because of her own experiences and a fund of general knowledge carefully handed down by her pioneer mother.

From seven to ten, I lived in the midst of the fighting of the Boer War, and though I had relatives fighting on both sides, my boyish sympathies were all with the Boers. The coming and going of small groups of horsemen, with their tales of heroic encounters
with the British, their ambushes and skirmishes, their marvellous skill with the rifle, their hairbreadth escapes, their hiding places, their foraging for food, all filled me with the glamour of war, which later on as a young man, on the British declaration of war, sent me trudging to Whitehall in a frenzied endeavour to get into the great adventure before it was too late.

My English father, a burgher on account of his long residence in Boer territory, was forced to join the Boer forces, and was placed by General Joubert at the head of the Commissariat in the Standerton District; but during the latter part of the Boer War, guerrilla warfare removed all need of a fixed commissariat, and so my father’s application for leave of absence was readily granted. Through the back door of Portuguese east Africa and Delagoa Bay he was able to get to Europe to attend to the disposal of a large consignment of wool, which he had shipped at the outbreak of war, and which was being held up in Portugal. Finding himself unmolested on a visit to England, he was bold enough to try to return to the Transvaal via the British base at the Cape. All went well until, on the second day after his arrival in Cape Town, he ran into a group of Boer prisoners from his home district, who were being marched under guard through the street. Their yells of greeting led to his prompt arrest and internment.

My mother and the children were now stranded in the Transvaal, and, as our studies had been sadly disrupted during the war, my father decided to send us all to Europe to complete our education. Passes were eventually obtained permitting us to leave the country. My father was also liberated, as the war was now in its last stages. Mafeking and Ladysmith had been relieved; Lord
Roberts had occupied Pretoria; most of the Boer leaders had surrendered; it was merely a question of rounding up De Wet and the few followers that still remained with him.

I was destined by this removal to lose my home for good; it is true I was to travel with my mother for some time, but I never knew a real home again. The chief impressions it had made upon me, however, strongly survived, because of the dominating character of my father, who had so largely filled my early horizons. A born raconteur, he had filled my boyhood fancies with pioneer tales of the past. In 1874, after a six months’ voyage out from London in a sailing ship, he had landed at the Cape to find that his elder brother, whom he was to join, had returned to England. Thrown entirely on his own, he had lived in succession the life of a transport driver, farmer, trader, and merchant. He had trekked with the Boers from the Cape, to take up new lands in the Transvaal and Orange Free State; he had participated in Kaffir wars; he had been connected with the diamond mines in Kimberley; he had ridden over the Witwatersrand and the site of the city of Johannesburg before the discovery of gold, and when there was hardly a farm-house in sight. He had wonderful tales of the illicit diamond buyers, cattle thieves, and the thousands of wildebeest, springbok, blesbok, and other game, which warmed the veldt in those days. No wonder I grew up into restless manhood, ever ready to follow every impulse and opportunity which led to adventure and travel.

My first sight of the sea and the three weeks’ voyage from Durban to Southampton was a thrill. When I arrived I found the grey treeless veldt, the kopjes, and the wide expanses of the Transvaal exchanged for the green fields, hedges, and lawns of England.
Gone were the ox wagon and the unclad kaffir. I was deposited in London, to experience at the impressionable age of nine the delirium of a nation at the signing of peace, the Coronation of Edward VII with all its pageantry, and the metamorphosis of my own self from Afrikander to European, by means of school days and vacations on the Continent.

My recollection of my first school – Dulwich College – is vague. Memory brings to the surface odd events and impressions of no importance now, but which were probably of great interest to me then: my first Eton suit and bowler hat; P. G. Wodehouse, a prefect at Treddie’s house; the Bedford and Haileybury football matches; Dr Gilkes, the head master, stern and forbidding; and the Latin school song, which impressed me greatly.

Christmas found me in Dresden with my mother and sisters, and later on I was placed in a German school instead of returning to England. Dutch, which, of course, I spoke as fluently as English, helped me with German, and within six months I was speaking the language like a native. I have pleasant memories of Dresden, young as I was; I liked the Saxon people. The parents of my school companions were immensely interested in this boy from South Africa. I am afraid, urged on by repeated questioning, I sometimes gave them exaggerated descriptions of life on the veldt. Rucksack on back, I spent week-ends and vacations with my German companions and some of their parents on short walking tours in Saxon Switzerland. I recall the glorious scenery of the Basteibrücke, Schandau, Pillnitz, and other resorts, and the delightful wayside inns where we slept at night. With the inquisitive eyes of youth, I was absorbing all I saw of German life and customs; partly from my affection for the country,
and partly from the fresh vividness of my boyish impressions, I was effortlessly creating a foundation of assured familiarity with Germany which proved of value later on.

I had now reached an important turning point in my life; the rest of my boyhood and young manhood was to be spent in boarding school and universities. My parents I saw less and less often, for my mother, on her return from Europe, was to obtain a divorce from my father. True to her Boer traditions, she returned to the land to conduct her own stock farm, while my father threw himself with enthusiasm into the multiple developments which were now taking place in South Africa under British rule. At the end of the year in Europe, it was decided that I should return to South Africa, where my father placed me immediately in the Durban High School. I remained there until my sixteenth year.

It was a splendid school, fulfilling the best traditions of the finest of the English public schools, and its faculty was composed of Oxford and Cambridge men. Here I was changed into an Englishman; I was taught to play the game; I excelled in athletics, and I was turned out a scholar. At prize-giving, I was patted on the back by Sir Matthew Nathan, the governor of Natal, in whose brother’s rooms at the Albany in London later on, I was often to sit answering rapid-fire questions on the political situation in Belgium and Germany.

Natal, with Durban, its chief port and city, was at this time a British crown colony, almost more English than England herself. It prided itself in being free of Boer settlers, and it was not until some years later, when it was forced into the Union of South Africa, that Dutch was taught in its schools. French was the modern language used instead, and here, in the Durban
High School, over a period of five years, I gained that thorough knowledge of syntax and grammar, which later, aided by long stays in France and Belgium, and by close contact with their people, made me master of the French language.

Most of my vacations were spent on some farm or other, where my chief occupation was riding and shooting. What other country can boast of three kinds of partridges, quail, bustard, spur-wing goose, pau, muscovy duck (as big as turkeys – they had to be shot with a rifle), snipe, and three or four different species of smaller antelope, all within easy reach of an ordinary farm? It was enough to keep any healthy boy in the saddle from morning to night; I virtually lived on horseback.

At sixteen, I was ready for entrance to a university, but my father judged me too young to proceed overseas. Accordingly, I was entered as a student in the government Agricultural College, at Potchefstroom, in the Transvaal. Here I was in my element. I loved farming; it was in my blood. No course could have been more interesting to anyone who had been raised on the land. For an institution of its kind, we probably had the finest equipment and the most valuable stock in the world, for it was to serve not only as an agricultural college, but as a farm from which thoroughbred cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, poultry, and seeds were to be supplied to the whole of South Africa. I liked everything about the college, and even though I was in competition with boys and men much older than myself, many of them university graduates, my enthusiasm and application enabled me to pass out top of the whole college at the end of the first year.

At this juncture, the South African government decided to award about a dozen scholarships of £400 a year, for four years,
to students for the purpose of study in American and English agricultural colleges. In the light of my success at Potchefstroom, one of these scholarships was mine for the asking, but my father, feeling that he could afford to pay the cost, decided to send me to Cambridge University at his own expense. It was a decision which changed my whole career. Wrongly or rightly, I believed these twelve government students would be given preference over me on their return to South Africa, and so, upon proceeding to Cambridge, I abandoned agriculture for a mining career.

Why I changed from agriculture to mining, instead of to some other profession, I do not know. I was probably influenced by my father’s elder brother, who had made and lost several fortunes in mining: he was one of the first to develop the mines on the Rand, and at one time had owned Auckland Park, the finest residential section of Johannesburg. Later the Witbank Collieries were named after him; he eventually died in Spain developing a cinnabar mine. Or, perhaps, it was that other mining uncle of mine who was on a continual treasure hunt, searching for a fabulous sum in gold bars, which the Boers had instructed him and four other men to bury, one night, on the eve of the British entry into Johannesburg. When they were able to reach the spot in safety, two years later, they were unable to locate the exact site; if he is alive, he is probably still digging. No doubt, it was the love of adventure which played the leading part in my decision.

My three years in Cambridge were the happiest days of my life. The friends I formed there are the only ones I have kept close to my heart. Some were killed in the war; some at odd intervals I still hear from. The will to succeed was driving me on, and scholastically I was a brilliant success: at the end of my first year at
Caius College I was elected an exhibitioner; in my final examinations, in 1913, taking four sciences instead of the usual three, I passed the Natural Sciences Tripos with first-class honours. I mention this point, not in a spirit of braggadocio, but because my precocity played an important part later on in my wartime advancement at a very early age to a position of great importance.

To Cambridge I owe a debt which I shall never be able to repay. Its traditions, its customs, its old colleges with their priceless architecture, their quadrangles, libraries, lawns, and ‘backs’, and, above all, the companionship and the association with the products of England’s finest public schools, all left their imprint on me; they contributed to the moulding of my character, and inspired in me a love of learning and an appreciation of the finer arts. It is the genius of the English schools that they turn out persons who are above all equable and affable, but controlled, reserved, and self-contained – the type that can get along with anyone anywhere without losing its own dignity and self-sufficiency. If I lack anything of these attributes the fault is mine; I was certainly shown the way.

At Cambridge, almost half the year is taken up with vacations, and all of them I spent travelling on the Continent. My bicycle accompanied me always through Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France, and as I spoke the three languages of these four countries fluently, I was continually on the move. I covered hundreds of miles. I rode the pavé from Brussels to Ghent; I climbed the hills in the Ardennes. Walking tours carried me through the Black Forest and the Hartz; I explored the Rhineland from Heidelberg to Diisseldorf, sometimes pedalling my wheel, sometimes gliding lazily on river steamers. It was the people that
interested me above all: their customs, their way of living, their philosophy of life. I was Bohemian in my tastes: sometimes I frequented the homes, cafes, and places of entertainment in the poorer sections; but other times, in the great cities, such as Berlin, I afforded myself the luxury of the big international hotels, the ‘Adlon’ and the ‘Bristol’, and restaurants such as those of Hiller, Borchart, and Horcher.