PETER HANSEN (251-LIFE-1987) spent time working for the ABWEHR (the German Secret Service) during WW II and he has information that is known to a mere handful of people. He gives this secret information especially to SHARKHUNTERS. Here he tells us:

In KTB #177, PETER told that Großadmiral Dönitz threatened Captain Bernhard Rogge with court martial if he ever again mentioned the possibilities that the Kriegsmarine Schlussel M (the Enigma) code had been broken by the Allies. We pick up there….

……..includes the interrogation of all captured crewmembers of U-110, naturally excluding the main villain Fritz Julius Lemp, the impatient gambler who lost and caused the death of thousands and the loss of hundreds of U-Boats both directly as well as indirectly too!!! But despite the record statements by some English propaganda fellows, evidence was never presented that some or even one of the captured U-110 crew members turned traitors intentionally or even willingly, though radio station Atlantic left wing organizer Sefton Delmer, Jr. claimed several petty officers became turncoats.

The interrogation reports however do not disclose this, possibly purposely, though this was supposed to have occurred actually only in 1943 & 1944. The successes and information channels of the various Sowjet Russian spy networks do not come into this area of ULTRA and naval Enigma code breaking, though the British clearly filtered specified cracked ULTRA matters to the Russians through the Swiss networks to camouflage where it came from, where they felt the Russians might need it – like the Kursk battle plans etc. But with these millions of Communists everywhere in Europe, they really did not need ULTRA help to know what did go on.

New Letter

Here we begin a new letter from PETER and we’ll tell you in advance, it is jammed with great history that you won’t read anywhere else – it is a long letter with a lot of history. He writes: I would like to refer to KTB #177 briefly. You featured the two traitors for money in connection with the Enigma system. One getting paid by the Czechs, Agent #54 in their records. You wondered why their names and details were not given.

Well, for this man, they are available. His real name was Paul Thümmel. His Nazi Party Number was 61.574 however, he also used the fake names of Peter Teman, René Voral, Dr. Holm and Dr. Steinberg. He was born on the 15 th of January 1902 in the small village of Neuhausen – Saxony in the Erzgebirge Mountains.

Thümmel became co-founder of the local Nazi Party group in Neuhausen in 1927. Heinrich Himmler was the first Nazi speaker there, as an acquaintance of Himmler and his speaking engagement was a reward for Thümmel’s previous Party engagement.

Himmler recommended Thümmel work apposition of trust with the Abwehr office in Dresden where he was employed as a trusted employee in a small office, which mainly worked in spy defense against Czechoslovakia and to a limited degree, against Poland too, occasionally. The Czech secret police was directed by Major General Frantisek Moravec, and one of his closest assistants, Colonel Alois Frank was delegated to handle Thümmel because Frank spoke fluent German.

When Frank was promoted and reassigned, Frantisek Fryc took his place as A-54 handler in 1938. When Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia, terminating the Czechoslovakian Republic while Slovakia became a semi-independent satellite country of the 14 th of March 1939, KLM Dutch airplane took Moravec and a dozen of his most important intelligence officers, including Frank and Fryc, via Rotterdam to London with their entire records and secret files.

This way they were able to immediately restart they spying organization and renewing contact from Switzerland, France and England with their former informants and paid agents, including Thümmel as the most important one of them. Thümmel had visited Prague prior to the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and brought his contacts up to date, informing them amongst other things, about the imminent German occupation plans. This way the Czechs were able to pack and prepare their secret service files in time for the get away. To add insult to injury, Thümmel was transferred from Dresden to Prague shortly after that and promoted too, as resident Abwehr political representative.

Alois Frank was transferred to the Hague, Holland to keep in touch with Thümmel, who was now calling himself either Dr. Holm or Dr. Steinberg while in Prague. Thümmel also worked with the Czech secret service representative in Switzerland, Karel Sedlach who was posted there with cover as a newspaper journalist and had developed close contacts with the Soviet Russian GRU and KGB services in Switzerland upon the direct order of the exiled former Czech President Benes, who was another of these politicians enamored with the Soviet Russians and “Uncle Joe” Stalin, no matter that the Communists were even bloodier and more cruel than the Nazis turned out to be.

EDITOR NOTE – We all know who and what the KGB was, but some might not know that the GRU was Soviet Army Intelligence.

In 1947, it was Benes who returned to Prague from London and his camarilla of Communists and fellow travelers who arranged the elimination of Masaryk and asked the Soviet Russians to occupy Czechoslovakia, their own country. This was the only Eastern country which requested the Soviet Russians to occupy their country by their own choice and demand.

All other Eastern European countries that became Soviet satellites were occupied by military force and with the cover of some native Communists posing as Communist front men and assistants of the Soviets to facilitate the occupation of their respective countries by Soviet Russians troops. Naturally, under the guise of liberating them!!!

As the British and French actually had no reliable secret agents within Germany when the war started who could furnish information of importance and consequence, Thümmel became the “Ace” of the Czechs to pass essential information to the British and French of mainly of political nature, but also advising them of the starting dates and plans of the German military services to attack Holland, Belgium and France as well as the Soviet Union too.

Thümmel’s code name now became Franta, who was supposed to eliminate the Czech underground agents in Prague and elsewhere in Bohemia and Moravia. With other words, the fox was placed in a position to catch the chickens…..but warned them instead.

Only after Thümmel was suspected to be a double agent in the fall of 1941, due to captured radio signal messages from underground radio stations, was Thümmel arrested – but he managed to talk himself out of the situation. He was finally caught after being used as bait for new members of the Czech underground organization upon direct orders of Reinhard Heydrich, the SS/SD Director and new German Plenipotenciary in Prague, who had been given orders to calm down the Czechs and get their industry to work for German orders without further sabotage and open resistance.

On the 20 th of March 1942, Thümmel was finally arrested on the charge of High Treason, was thrown out of the Nazi Party, his Gold Party Badge was revoked and taken away – and Thümmel now offered himself as informer to the SS/SD against the Abwehr and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris but after furnishing Thümmel bogus identity papers as a Dutchman by name of Peter Toman, allegedly a former Army major in Holland who had been the Dutch military representative in Prague until 1940, Thümmel could only deliver more products of fantasy to the SS/SD and was placed into the concentration camp Theresienstadt in Bohemia where he was shot on Hitler’s birthday, the 20 th of April 1945.

Nonetheless, Thümmel had managed during the confusion which reigned after Heydrich was wounded by two Czech parachutists dropped on orders of the British SOE sabotage service and died due to blood poisoning caused by the injuries induced by the attack on Heydrich in his car in Prague. It took a while before the situation was halfways quiet again. The Czech group under Moravec in London had tenuously opposed this parachute drop because they realized full well that the SS/SD would generate a real bloodbath in Bohemia as revenge…..and they did, including the elimination of the village of Lidice where these two parachutists had been sheltered.

Yet Thümmel had baited some Abwehr officers from Munich who were selling art objects and getting foreign exchange money on the black markets in Prague for Abwehr use, and two of them, both Luftwaffe (Air Force Reserve officers) also skimmed part of the foreign money which they obtained, for personal high living expenses. This was the starting point of the big Abwehr investigation by the Luftwaffe Judge Advocate Röder, which unraveled the Abwehr organization eventually and caused the removal of Canaris as its director. Although this was just the door opener actually.

Reinhard Heydrich had been a naval officer of the Class 1922. Admiral Canaris had been his cadet officer in 1923 and they knew each other well. In 1931, when he had become an Oberleutnant, Heydrich had made one of his many girlfriends pregnant. Her father, who happened to be one of the Directors of the Howaldt Germania Shipyard complex in Kiel, complained to Erich Raeder, the Navy’s Chief Commanding Officer because Heydrich refused to marry the girl and dropped her completely.

Admiral Raeder ordered an officer’s Honor Court to investigate the matter and Heydrich was called to be cross examined by this court, where Heydrich declared: “I have known the woman in question, but I have now another girlfriend whom I shall marry instead in the near future, once I obtain the Navy’s agreement to do so, which is in the works!”

Raeder was so furious that he discharged Heydrich immediately without any further investigation, and closed the case.

Heydrich thus found himself in the middle of Germany’s worst depression…..unemployed and kicked out into the street with practically no hope of any type of work. However, his new girl friend, who happened to be a fanatic Nazi Party supporter who had become acquainted with Heinrich Himmler arranged that Heydrich traveled to Munich to see Himmler, asking him for a position with the SS organization, which was quite small at that time…..but she informed that Himmler was trying to enlarge the SS organization considerably and intended to create a new secret service, which later became the SD (Sicherheits Dienst), the Nazi and SS secret service, initially for political intelligence only.

When Heydrich presented himself for his job interview, he drafted a blueprint within 20 minutes and sold it to Himmler. However, he made sure that he would promptly become its manager/director before Himmler could even consider anybody else. 138 th was our good friend and youngest combat submarine Skipper of WW II – Oblt z.S. d.R. HANS-GEORG HESS (125-LIFE-1985), Skipper of U-995. The award was made 11 February 1945. The joker was that by the time Heydrich was posted to Prague, he had become so powerful, devious & fanatic that Heinrich Himmler had grown afraid of Heydrich, as he feared that Heydrich would somehow manage to replace Himmler, take over the entire SS and it was rumored even Hitler himself viewed Heydrich as danger to himself, fearing Heydrich would become the new and next Führer.

EDITOR NOTE – It has long been believed that Heydrich kept secret files on Himmler. Hitler and many of the top government officials, and would use them as necessary to move himself upwards.

Consequently, it seems certain that neither Himmler nor Hitler were really keen to preserve Heydrich’s life – to the contrary, in spite of the State funeral circus set up, both were actually visibly relieved that the British had arranged to kill Heydrich who had just become too powerful and influential to have some kind of German arranged “accident”.

EDITOR NOTE – As reported some time ago in our KTB, it is now known that it was not just two mere partisans who attacked Heydrich. They were schooled by the British SAS, given the plastic explosives by the British – and Himmler “allowed” these people to learn Heydrich’s route & schedules. Sometimes too much power can be fata …………

The story of the second traitor will be taken up later.