The story began in KTB #110 and is, in itself, quite an eye-opener. This is only the tip of the tip of the iceberg! The first part of this story is the extremely long, typewritten letter sent to us by DON ANGEL ALCAZAR de VELASCO (158-+-1985), Chief of the Spanish spy ring working for the Hitler government during WW II. After we have read this story from DON ANGEL, we will then see what our SHARKHUNTERS ETAPPANDIENST agents, such as RADM CLOAK 'N DAGGER; CORDEZ; SIEGFRIED; KARL; "M" & others have dug out of old files around the world.

As you will recall, the first major assignment of DON ANGEL was to entice the pro-German abdicated King Edward VIII; then the Duke of Windsor, out of Portugal and into Spain where Abwehr agents would take the former English King to Germany and to try to work out an exchange of sorts. DON ANGEL played a pivotal role in Operation 'WILLIE' and he failed, so there was no kidnapping and no early end to the War as this plan was intended.

Turn the page for the next amazing insight from DON ANGEL and remember what we cautioned you at the beginning of this piece in KTB #110 - DO NOT FORM AN OPINION until you have read all the amazing facts and theories that will appear on this page. The continuation of the letter from DON ANGEL ALCAZAR de VELASCO (158-+-1985) to HARRY COOPER (1-LIFE-1983), sent about eight years ago. You might wish to save these pages in booklet form for future reference.

Part 2: Don Angel Alcazar de Velasco

"......would be taking me to England. My only comfort was the .32 revolver I had slipped into my jacket pocket before leaving home. Now was the time to use it!

I pulled the pistol from my pocket and fired two shots blindly as I dived for the French windows. I heard them stumbling after me in the darkness as I raced down the garden and scaled the rear wall. I was lucky and found a taxi a few streets away.

Although outwardly friendly, I knew Fulton was deadly serious in his plan to abduct me. Every moment I stayed in Madrid, I knew my life would be in danger. I might not be so lucky the next time. I paused at my home long enough to snatch up a few clothes and papers, and put a call through to my Second-in-Command in Madrid. Explanations weren't necessary. I merely mentioned the code name 'MATILDA'. He knew what to do. 'MATILDA' was a code word in our ring for an emergency exit from Spain.

Within an hour after leaving Blanco's house in the Colonia del Viso district of Madrid, I was being driven in a fast car towards the northwest coast of Spain. Throughout the war, German U-Boats had been patrolling the Gallegian coast, now members of my organization had sent a radio message and arranged a rendezvous.

After a twenty hour journey, I arrived exhausted in the fishing village of Villagarcia. Waiting for me was a powerful diesel launch. I tumbled from the car and jumped aboard, and immediately I was being taken out to sea. A few minutes after 0400, the conning tower hatch on the U-Boat clanged shut behind me. I was on my way to Germany. Our destination was Hamburg. During our trip past England, we dived deeply with the crew at action stations. The U-Boat Captain explained that the area was alive with ships and we guessed that this must be the assembly point for a huge Atlantic convoy.

I experienced the usual depression which grips me on a U-Boat. It was forbidden for men of my profession to mix with members of the armed forces under all but the most exceptional circumstances. And so on a submarine, it was customary for an agent to eat alone, sleep alone and avoid all contact with the officers and crew.

It was therefore with a feeling of great relief that I stepped onto the jetty of one of the huge U-Boat pens in Hamburg docks - a feeling which soon evaporated when I saw the shattered state of the city. The night and day pounding by Allied bombers had taken its toll. I saw signs of their marksmanship along every street. That is, where it was still possible to make out where streets had been. For in places, whole blocks had been flattened, roads obliterated and all that remained were piles of rubble where once had been houses, shops, churches.

News of my arrival was radioed ahead. I was contacted by local intelligence and ordered to report to Berlin. I arrived in the capital, having ridden in the guard's van of a troop train, packed with soldiers heading for the Eastern Front.

In Berlin, I was driven to the old Reichstag in a staff car. My orders had been to report to an SS Intelligence unit stationed there. But when I arrived, the whole place was in pandemonium! The officer who was to deal with my case was in a state of great agitation.

'What is all the panic?' I asked him.

He looked at me incredulously, 'Haven't you heard?' he said, shaking his head in wonder. 'The Allies have landed in Normandy.'

I thought immediately of the huge armada of ships was passed during the journey from Spain.

Within a couple of days - when I was set to work with SS Intelligence, I was to handle hundreds of top secret telegrams from the front. It became clear to me that our Armies in France had been taken completely by surprise. Despite that, Field Marshall von Runstedt, Commander-in-Chief in the West, reported the landings were not of major importance. Our Intelligence Service were hourly receiving what claimed to be authentic reports that he was powerless to prevent the full-scale invasion which would surely take place in the next few days. If the much-praised Atlantic Wall had collapsed so easily, it boded ill for Germany's more pregnable fronts further east.

HARRY'S NOTE - if the handwriting was on the wall at this stage of the War, do you think it just possible that some of those in positions of great power just might think about putting an escape route into effect? Just maybe????

About the middle of June, I was directed to Munich where I was to work in the Foreign section of SS Intelligence and so; equipped with a new passport proclaiming me to be Dr. Juan Gomez, a Spanish doctor of medicine, I caught the train south.

Unfortunately, my stay in Munich was curtailed as the Royal Air Force started to devote their attentions to that city.

Every morning, I noticed a change in the skyline as seen from my hotel window. I was therefore not surprised one morning to learn that a blockbuster had demolished the Intelligence Department offices and, after two days of confusion, I was ordered to Köln and our Central Headquarters.

I was met in Köln by SS Commander Willy Oberbeil. He was a man in his early forties, of medium height and with a short crop of receding brown hair. He wore thick, steel rimmed glasses. He took me into his office on the fifth floor of the headquarters building and he told me something of what had been decided for my future. The NAZI Party he said, were satisfied with the work I had been doing and now that it was no longer possible for me personally to supervise my organization in Spain, I had been chosen to assist him in his work at Intelligence HQ. I was to work in his office and be responsible for editing a mass of reports that came in daily from agents throughout the world. From me, these reports would be wired direct to the Führer. As Oberbeil outlined my duties, I grasped the significance of what he was saying. I was soon to be given a complete panorama of the work of the NAZI espionage service.

Perhaps had I then known what effect this was going to have on my later life, I would have refused this job and walked out on my NAZI masters there and then. But I was flattered by Oberbeil's verbal pat on the back and by the knowledge that the NAZI High Command considered me valuable enough to be entrusted with a position of such responsibility.

My work in Germany showed me the tremendous complexity of their intelligence service, with its spies in every corner of the world. It also showed me for the first time, some of its appalling inefficiencies. I must explain that at this time, the NAZI espionage service was in the process of reorganization. Formerly under the direction of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the service had become so hopelessly unreliable that the whole works was taken over by the SS.

HARRY'S NOTE - After the bomb attempt on Hitler's life in WOLF'S LAIR, Canaris was arrested and held in Flossenberg Prisoner Camp until just before the camp was taken by Allied troops. Canaris was hanged by a thin piece of piano wire, actually strangling to death. It was generally accepted that Canaris was anti-NAZI and anti-Hitler, but it remains to be learned if he was also a traitor to Germany and in the pocket of the Soviets, as one rumor states.

A laughable instance of the unreliability of the Intelligence Service under the Abwehr, I discovered for myself, when checking a file referring to Casablanca in Africa, which is the most top secret category. I had been looking for information on President Roosevelt's residence in Washington and was amazed to find several handfuls of papers reporting the activities of Arab sympathizers. The mix-up was obvious. Reports on both subjects had come in Spanish, & Casablanca literally translated means 'WHITE HOUSE' but no one had troubled to question that there might not be Arabs on Roosevelt's Washington staff!

I settled down to work in Köln but before long, 'round the clock air raids made it almost impossible to carry on. In fact, there wasn't a window left in our office when Willy Oberbeil told me 'Good news, Juan. We're getting out of this hell-hole. We've both been ordered to Berlin.' and he waved a coded telegram jubilantly in front of my face.

But I did not share Willy's joy. From what I had seen of the capital a couple of months earlier, I fancied that Berlin would be no more pleasant than Köln - and I was right. I worked out the last months of 1944 in a draughty, comfortless room behind the old Reichstag in Berlin. I cannot remember clearly Christmas day 1944 - except that everyone drank a little too much. The Führer's name was toasted in a wave of optimism, following the early success of the Ardennes offensive, which he promised would drive the Allies back to the sea.

Instead, it drove him back to Berlin & Oberbeil and myself found ourselves summoned back to the Bunker.

Within a few days of arriving in the Bunker with Oberbeil, I was to be called into that HOLY OF HOLIES, Hitler's private office, to be questioned by the Führer himself. All through my stay in Germany, I had been receiving a trickle of reports from our men in the United States and South America of a new American secret weapon. Although no details were forthcoming, the reports hinted at an entirely new type of bomb of devastating destructive power.

At the same time, I understood that the NAZI scientists were working desperately to design a workable nuclear warhead for our V-2 rockets. However, our hopes were crushed after Allied bombers totally destroyed German atomic research laboratories in Norway and Prussia. It was becoming obvious that the Americans would win the race to perfect this hideous weapon; the first Atomic Bomb. It was in connection with one of our reports from the United States that the Führer sent for me.

One morning in the last week of January, Oberbeil burst into our office, highly excited and spoke to me so rapidly in German that I had difficulty catching what he said. When he finally ran out of breath, I asked him to repeat his message.

'You are ordered to report to Hitler immediately'' he said. 'He wishes to question you personally regarding the reliability of one of our agents. Now come and follow me, quickly.'

This was not the first time I had seen Hitler face to face. Eighteen months earlier I had stood at rigid attention while he decorated me - a Spanish subject, with the IRON CROSS for my services to the NAZI cause. Yet, as I followed Oberbeil in the direction of Hitler's office, I found myself unconsciously straightening my tie and smoothing my hair into place."

More Don Angel Alcazar de Velasco

Part 1: Berlin 1945 and Hitler's Bunker (#110)
Part 2: From Spain 1944 to Berlin 1945 (#111)
Part 3: Meeting Hitler (#112)
Part 4: Meeting Bormann (#113)
Part 5: Final Days of April 1945 (#114)
Part 6: Hitler Alive? Leaving Berlin (#115)
Part 7: Hitler Arrives at Bavarian Redoubt (#116)
Part 8: Escape to Switzerland and Spain (#117)
Part 9: Martin Bormann Arrives in Spain (#118)
Part 10: Martin Bormann in Spain 1946 (#119)
Part 11: Martin Bormann Leaves Spain (#120)
Part 12: Martin Bormann and Hitler (#121)
Part 13: U-Boat Trip to Argentina (#122)
Part 14: South America and Hitler, 1952 (#123)
Part 15: Martin Bormann, 1957 (#124)
Part 16: Home to Madrid (#125)