The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [228]
Among the best wartime agents in Switzerland, Halina Szymańska, remembered by one SIS officer as ‘a very attractive and formidable personality’, began working in late 1940. Szymańska’s husband had been Polish military attaché in Berlin, where the couple had become acquainted with the Abwehr chief Admiral Canaris.7 After the defeat of Poland, Canaris had arranged for Szymańska to escape to Switzerland, where he put her in touch with the Abwehr representative in Zurich, Hans-Bernd Gisevius. Although nominally working as a secretary in the Polish legation in Berne, Szymańska became a Polish intelligence agent (though paid from British funds) and began to cultivate Gisevius for information about German policy and internal conditions. As well as passing information to the Poles, with their agreement she also reported directly to SIS using the code-name ‘Z.5/1’. In January 1941, for example, she reported details of German aircraft stocks, Gisevius’s belief that there would now be ‘no invasion Great Britain but aerial bombardment on increasing scale also submarine activity’, and ‘no action Balkans before March’. Three months later Gisevius told Szymańska he was ‘convinced hostilities between Russia and Germany will start early in May’. Much of this intelligence was very sound. The German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece was launched on 6 April, and Operation ‘Barbarossa’, the invasion of the USSR, had originally been planned for May, but was postponed until 22 June 1941.
The most intriguing aspect of the Szymańska-Gisevius relationship, however, is the role of Canaris, or ‘Theodor’ as SIS called him. There has been much speculation about the precise nature of this sensational Swiss link between the intelligence services of Britain and Germany and whether, for example, Canaris and Menzies were in personal contact. The SIS archives reveal that Gisevius (though never an SIS agent) was a regular source of intelligence. Between August 1940 and December 1942 Geneva sent London twenty-five reports with information provided by him. Almost all of this was channelled through Szymańska. Although Vanden Heuvel told London that Gisevius was ‘first and foremost acting as intermediary for Theodor’, this is not unambiguously supported by the evidence, and only nine of the reports specifically quote Canaris. Indeed, Vanden Heuvel’s assertion may have been calculated to boost his station’s intelligence product as much as anything else. One report, however, was based on a dinner Szymańska had with Canaris in Berne on 19 October 1941. This is the only recorded face-to-face meeting between Canaris and anyone reporting directly to SIS. Canaris had just returned from a tour of the Russian front and reported the difficulties the German forces were experiencing there on account of severe winter weather. Hitler, he said, had miscalculated and had ‘counted on support from dissatisfied elements in Russia itself, which had completely failed to materialise’.
Both Canaris and Gisevius were involved with opposition groups in Germany, but the extent to which their contacts with foreign intelligence agencies in Switzerland - Polish, British and American (from the spring of 1943 Gisevius also passed on information to Allen Dulles, representative in Berne of the United States Office of Strategic Services) - constituted treason is debatable. While Canaris and Gisevius may certainly have been keeping both their own and their country’s options open, cultivating Polish and British contacts was legitimate Abwehr business which could produce valuable intelligence and even provide them with a channel for spreading disinformation.