The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [324]
As 21st Army Group moved into Germany, No. 2 Intelligence Unit continued to mount short-range operations ahead of its advance. In February, for example, Operation ‘Fugitive’ was designed to assist ‘in the mounting of a feint attack across the [River] Roer’, near the Dutch- German frontier just north of Maastricht. Two Dutch agents were put across the enemy lines to spread false information among local villagers about Allied troop concentrations. This they did, and also returned with information about German troop dispositions. The army subsequently expressed themselves as ‘highly satisfied with the result’. Paulson noted, however, that, while ‘our fundamental job is to help the Army in any way we can’, ‘this sort of operation does NOT really come into our brief ’. SIS was also asked to consider what could be done in the Kiel and Schleswig-Holstein region in view of the possibility that the Army Group might have to fight its way into Denmark. Although an officer with Danish experience was sent out, in April 1945 Kenneth Cohen in London reflected the SIS view that ‘generally speaking we had hoped to be released from such operations and from short-term infiltrations which from recent experience are quickly overrun and have little opportunity in the present disorganised state of German formations of providing military intelligence of value’. He was ‘most anxious’ that Paulson’s unit and P.6 ‘should now begin to concentrate on longer term schemes’.
Reviewing the work of No. 2 Intelligence Unit three weeks before the German capitulation Paulson confirmed that he had discontinued most ‘short-term tactical missions’ and now considered that for the immediate future SIS’s role in Germany was ‘to prepare the ground for future clandestine work by investigating the possibilities of placing long-term agents behind our own lines and in “British” [meaning British-occupied] Germany generally’. He would continue ‘the investigation of likely recruits and the search for personal and other documents for which we have already been asked by H.O.’, and also ‘prepare lists of, and if possible with great care to make contacts with, individuals who may be of use in the future’. Meanwhile plans were made for the post-hostilities SIS organisation in Germany. The headquarters unit was to be called the War Office Liaison Group, with an establishment of thirty, under 12000, and Paulson (‘12600’) as second-in-command. Headed by Gallienne, No. 2 Intelligence Unit would continue to serve as the link between SIS and the local army headquarters, but it was to be renamed No. 5 CCU (Civil Control Unit).
Scandinavia
Although Finland was allied to Germany from the summer of 1941 until late 1944, during this period some of Harry Carr’s old contacts in the Finnish intelligence community kept in touch with him while his station was in exile in Stockholm, as did various Finnish agents reporting on both Finnish and German matters, including Axis shipping movements. Towards the end of 1943 Colonel Reino Hallamaa (head of Finnish signals intelligence) met Carr and told him of plans to evacuate key members of his staff and all his records from Helsinki to Sweden to prevent them falling into the hands of the Soviets should Finland be forced out of the war. Hallamaa proposed that SIS should take over the lot and move them to the United Kingdom, where they could continue to work on the Soviet target. Before returning to Helsinki he gave Carr a German Enigma machine for secret communication with him in Finland (presumably in blissful