Real History Spy fiasco cost Britain 50 agents Interesting though this story is, it is fair to say that the England-spiel is already familiar to those who have researched in the files of the Reichsführer SS and the SS (National Archives microfilm series T-175). David Irving refers to the scandal in both Hitler’s War and Churchill’s War .
London, September 21, 1998 The Independent Spy fiasco cost Britain 50 agents By Paul Lashmar and Chris Staerck DETAILS OF Britain’s worst intelligence disaster of the Second World War have finally been released, revealing how Special Operations Executive (SOE) networks in Holland were penetrated by the Germans, resulting in the capture of more 50 agents. Most were executed.
Documents released by the Public Record Office in Kew, and suppressed until now, also show that SOE’s rivals in MI6 under the legendary “C”, Sir Stewart Menzies , tried to use the crisis to absorb the Special Operations Executive. Only five years ago a dispute erupted after it was discovered that documents on the affair had been “removed and destroyed” by Downing Street officials. Whitehall was accused of a cover-up of one of the most shameful incidents of undercover wartime operations.
David Stafford , author of Churchill and Secret Service, published last year, said yesterday: “This is an important release on a terrible tragedy that nearly killed SOE. It encouraged all those in Whitehall who wanted to take over SOE and they came close. It was only Churchill’s intervention and commitment to SOE that saved it.” Churchill had set up the SOE in 1940 to “set Europe ablaze”, by helping the resistance movements in occupied countries.
At its peak it had some 10,000 men and 3,200 women working for it, running agents and arranging resistance and sabotage behind enemy lines. The organisation had many successes, especially in France, but it had some failures, of which the disaster in Holland was by far the worst. The newly released records show that poor leadership of the Dutch section of SOE sowed the seeds of disaster.
In the vital period Major Charles Blizard , who used the codename “Blunt”, headed the Dutch section, though he was replaced by a Major Bingham . Under SOE’s “Plan for Holland” agents started to be dropped into the Netherlands in 1941. Among one of the first teams parachuted in, on a November night, was Thijs Taconis , a trained saboteur, and his wireless operator, Hubert Lauwers .
The German security police then penetrated the embryonic Dutch underground movement and a stool pigeon informed on Lauwers, who was captured early in March 1942. He was forced to transmit messages to England, but was confident that SOE in London would spot a false security check. Unfortunately it did not. Shortly afterwards it told him to receive another agent. “Watercress” arrived on 27 March. He was captured and the process went on as further agents arrived.
The lack of radio security checks was ignored by SOE in London. It was even stupid enough to radio