The Nazis had spies all over the world, and while the operations in Latin America were
arguably more appealing than those in the Middle East and Africa, they were less deadly
as well.
Today we’ll look at Cuba, Mexico and Brazil and figure out what Abwehr spies were up to
in Latin America, during the Second World War.
-intro-
Havana, Cuba
In the harbour of Havana, Cuba, a German secret agent managed to, as so often German spies
in Latin America did, combine pleasure and work.
The German Abwehr had tasked this man with reporting information on enemy shipping movements,
and that is what he has done for the past couple of months, without so much as arousing
suspicion from anyone.
During the second world war, Cuba was neutral and it was ruled by the dictator Fulgencio
Batista, who first had overthrown General Gerardo Machado in nineteen-thirty-three and
in nineteen-fifty-two he once again led a military coup against president Carlos Prio
Socarras.
Anyway, as for the Abwehr, Cuba was ideal for spying on the United States.
The island was only 160 kilometers, approximately one-hundred miles, away from Florida and cargo
ships of the Allied powers that traveled from Latin America to Britain often anchored at
Cuban ports.
The intelligence about these ships the Abwehr agents managed to pass to Germany aided German
U-boats in sinking these ships on the Atlantic Ocean.
The Abwehr agent in Cuba used the name Enrique Luni, his real name was Heinz August Luning,
born in Hamburg and fluent in Spanish.
He had joined the Abwehr in nineteen-forty and was tasked with spying on the shipping
ports in Cuba, setting up a dress shop as cover, sending his daily reports on ship movement
back to Germany.
He even had a radio, in case an event took place that required urgent communication.
Luning lived on the easy-going island for eleven months and probably would have managed
to sit out the war there, if he had not made one crucial mistake, as spies often do.
During the second world war, nearly all mail that was sent towards Europe from Latin America,
including Cuba, was sent via the island Bermuda, which was under British control.
Now, The Letter Interception Unit of the British Letter Censorship Office housed its largest
overseas office on this island, headed by SIS officer Peter Wilson.
This office was a large source of information for MI-five, which hunted down German agents
on the American continent.
Our secret agent Luning, taking precautions and everything, wrote his letters to Germany
but occasionally altered the names that signed them.
The problem was that his handwriting didn’t change, and the LIU noticed this.
Copies of the letters were sent to the FBI in Havana, who traced and arrested Lunging
in August nineteen-forty-two.
While Nazi sympathisers and anti-American voices in Cuba protested this arrest, it didn’t
help and Luning was executed in November that same year, the only German spy that was executed
in Latin America throughout the entire second world war.
That didn’t mean, however, that there weren’t any other German spies on the continent.
Mexico
Because of the long-troubled relationship between Mexico and the United States, there
were Mexicans that understood Germany, now that the country was heading towards a war
with the USA, was a good ally to have.
However, Mexico had a left-leaning president during the nineteen-thirties, President Lazaro
Cardenas, that supported the Republican side during the Spanish civil war, whereas the
Nazi regime supported General Francisco Franco.
When in nineteen-forty Manuel Avila Camacho became president, the Abwehr saw its chance
to establish itself in the country and use it as an espionage base to infiltrate the
US.
It didn’t take long for three different networks and around forty agents to establish
themselves, supplying Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne with intelligence on the USA.
While the US hadn’t declared war with Germany just yet, the Germans understood that the
US would ally themselves with Britain, and they ought to keep an eye on the country.
Max und Morris
Within Mexico the two German spymasters used the codename “Max und Moritz”, which sounds
as if they were a comical duo, but in fact they were efficient and ruthless Abwehr agents.
Max’s real name was Georg Nikolaus, who was a banker in Colombia until nineteen-thirty-eight,
and Morris was colonel Baron Karl von Schlebrügge, a former Luftwaffe commander that made a living
as a representative of a German arms manufacturer before the war.
When Nikolaus arrived in Mexico he set up a spy ring and front companies in order to
hide their actual activities.
German agents within the USA sent their reports straight to the Abwehr post office in Mexico
City, from which they were sent to Germany.
Edgar J. Hoover, head of the FBI, stated in nineteen-forty, that “the best way to control
Nazi espionage in the United States, was to wipe out the spy nests in Latin America.”
President Roosevelt agreed with him and the Special Intelligence Service was swiftly created,
of which the abbreviation, the SIS, was shared with their British counterpart, you know,
as if it wasn’t confusing enough already.
The new service immediately embarked on an efficient campaign of rooting out the spy
nests.
Schlebrügge was expelled by the Mexicans in April nineteen-forty-one and the FBI and
SIS put Nikolaus under twenty-four hour surveillance, working together with the Mexican Federal
Police.
As nineteen-forty-two came along, the US and Mexico were working together, with encouragement
of the British, and the Abwehr’s activities in Mexico came to a near halt, as the war
on the European continent was turning against Germany as well.
Another interesting ‘spy nest’, to call it that, was Brazil, where nearly a million
German immigrants lived before the war broke out.
Furthermore, the long coastline provided the ideal setting for the Abwehr to spy on allied
ships, although the German Ambassador to Rio de Janeiro, Karl Ritter, met with reluctance
and hostility from the Brazilian president, Getúlio Vargas.
Brazil
The man that was the spymaster of Abwehr agents in Brazil was German Naval Attaché Captain
Hermann Bohny.
Alfredo was the main agent of the Brazilian Abwehr branch, and Alfred Kempter, a German
immigrant businessman, was given the task by Canaris and Dönitz to investigate Recife,
particularly the Pan Am airfields and the US south Atlantic Fleet’s patrols.
Both Canaris and Dönitz were head of the U-boat fleet and this intelligence was crucial
for U-boats being used effectively to sink ships of the allied powers.
Kempter wasn’t a patriot, unlike many of his colleagues, and worked for the Abwehr
because of the pay.
Together with his business partner, Herbert Müller, he set up a front in Rio: The Rapid
information company, and Müller subsequently joined the Abwehr, providing their superiors
with a decent amount of intelligence of shipping, convoys, cargoes and general US activity.
At the end of nineteen-forty-one, over four-hundred radio messages were transmitted to Germany,
and Kempter was awarded the War Service Cross first class, for his outstanding work.
It wasn’t just intelligence Kempter provided his superiors with.
He named his network the “König” network and put it into action helping the U-boats
disturb the British shipping lines.
During that year, the British Rodney Star was sunk as she left Buenos Aires, and a Norwegian
Tanker was sunk as well, both thanks to Kempters intelligence.
The König network was good for over one-hundred-thousand tonnes of allied shipping sunk per month in
nineteen-forty-one, making him invaluable to the Germans.
He provided a whole range of intelligence, among which even tide and water conditions,
and the quality of the anti-submarine netting.
Another effective intelligence agent in Brazil was Albrecht Engels, head of an import firm
and an Abwehr agent since the early thirties.
He recruited the German harbour master of Rio, Herbert von Heyer, and a similar agent
in Recife where allied ships bunkered and US planes were refuelled.
A less effective agent was the Polish man Josef Starzicny, who wasn’t as well paid
as the other Abwehr agents due to his Polish background.
That wasn’t the only thing though, he was incompetent to such a degree that the Hamburg
station could not decipher his poorly written English messages.
Considering this, it is rather surprising he was living in a luxurious villa in Copacabana,
but then again, most spies lived it up and combined pleasure with work when they reached
their destination.
When Germany declared war on the US in nineteen-forty-one Brazil sided with the US and started ejecting
German agents.
By march nineteen-forty-two only Kempter and Engels were left, their colleagues that got
caught were arrested and tortured by the Brazilian Secret Police.
Eventually, in August nineteen-forty-two, Brazil was forced by the US to enter the second
world war, although the entire continent did not harbour more than a few pockets of Abwehr
agents by that time.
There are many more operations that involved spies in the second world war, but that’s
a story for another time.
Thank you for watching this video and what is an event or person from the second world
war that you would like to know more about, and perhaps see a video of?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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