Destroying Hitler’s R-Netz Volume IV:: Germany's stay-behind network in Italy

By Bernard O'Connor

In February 1944, the Nazis began planning R-Netz, networks of trained espionage agents, wireless operators, saboteurs and assassins. Once the Allies invaded Western Europe, their missions were to stay behind in Spain, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Italy and Greece; to collect military, economic and political intelligence to be brought back or transmitted by wireless to their German controllers; to acquire new identity cards, currency and ration books; to locate and sabotage military and industrial targets and assassinate key military and political leaders.
Operation EASTER EGG involved the burial of over 1,000 dumps of explosives and sabotage equipment before the retreat of the German forces to Germany. Only a select few knew of their existence.
When British, American and Canadian troops occupied Southern Italy, some of the stay-behind agents surrendered or were denounced and captured. As counter-intelligence officers threatened them with execution as enemy agents, some revealed the location of the sabotage dumps and hidden wireless sets. Most provided details of the schools where they had been trained, their instructors, the syllabus, their missions and the names and descriptions of other students.
As the Allies advanced northwards, more arrests were made which reduced the effectiveness of Hitler’s R-Netz. But there were other reasons why the stay-behind agents failed to achieve their German masters’ dreams.
Bernard O’Connor’s Destroying Hitler’s R-Netz Volume IV tells for the first time the human stories of Nazi intelligence officers, their stay-behind agents in Italy and the Allied counter-intelligence officers who helped neutralise the potentially very serious threat to the Allies’ occupation plans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781446654552

Book preview

Destroying Hitler’s R-Netz   

Volume IV:

Germany’s stay-behind agents in Italy

Bernard O’Connor

Copyright @ Bernard O’Connor 2023

All rights reserved.

Attempts have been made to locate, contact and acknowledge copyright holders of quotes and illustrations used in this work. They have all been credited within the text and/or in the bibliography. Much appreciation is given to those who have agreed that their work is included. Any copyright owners who are not properly identified and acknowledged, get in touch so that necessary corrections can be made.

  Small parts of this book may be reproduced in similar academic works providing due acknowledgement is given in the introduction and within the text. Any errors or suggested additions can be forwarded to the author for future editions. 

ISBN: 978-1-4466-5455-2

The German Secret Service […] had definite plans in the event of an invasion. They had agents in England in whose integrity they believed, and they sent others. They trained line runners for tactical information. They had a network of stay-behind W/T agents quite scientifically disposed over France, Belgium, Holland and Denmark. They engaged fanatics from autonomous movements such as that of Brittany who were prepared to work against their country for ideological motives. They tortured and blackmailed Resistance members into treachery. They finally relied on saboteurs in bunkers to operate in No Mans’ Land and on the same borders of their Vaterland. None of these dangers were overrated, for if the war was to be prolonged each would have developed by experience into a menace indeed.

In consequence the whole situation came under anxious review in order to provide the field with the best and most speedy assistance possible. Plans were laid for spies to be flown from the field to Ham and for reports in each case to be returned in the same manner within the week. […]

Line Runners. Frontlaufer was the designation of the German spy detailed to penetrate the Allied lines and return with tactical information. Personnel selected were traitors. They were paid handsomely by results, but were subject to blackmail. They were trained to observe and report back to field W/T stations. The German Army was briefed to pass to Headquarters any civilian who claimed to be a Frontlaufer and to belong to Eins C.

These spies appeared to be of poor quality, but it would have been a mistake to underrate them, Men of this kidney usually work for the winning side. In the early days it seemed they were assiduously working for the Germans. Once, however, the Allies firmly established in Normandy the enthusiasm waned. Later still of course they would have us believe that they never intended to work for the Germans at all. One went so far as to advance the proposition that he accepted and spent money from the Germans in order to sabotage their treasury.

The sum total of the information collected from these line runners was invaluable. They betrayed their fellow students at the spy schools and this led to further arrests. They gave information which, pieced together, yielded the design of the network of stay-behind agents. (Hoare, Oliver, Camp 020: MI5 and the Nazi Spies, Public Record Office, 2000, pp.59, 61)

Contents Page

Foreword

Introduction

The British Intelligence Service

The American Intelligence Service

The German Intelligence Service

The Italian Intelligence Service

Dr Otto Begus, Austrian sabotage organiser

Pasquale Franconi and Matteo Pesce, stay-behind Italian saboteurs

Ferruccio Furlani, Italian saboteur

Barone and Baroness Filippo Manfredi di Blasis, suspected German-trained stay-behind agents

Helene Ten Cate Brouwer, stay-behind wireless operator

Stephen Springarn and the work of the American Counter Intelligence Corps in Italy

Rolando Santi, stay-behind saboteur

Antonio Mura, stay-behind saboteur

Conclusion

Bibliography

Foreword

Whilst researching German-trained secret agents during the Second World War who were to stay-behind once the Allied forces advanced, the British author discovered a number of references in British and American archives to men and women trained for stay-behind operations in Italy. Destroying Hitler’s R-Netz is a five volume documentary history of the agents trained for missions in Norway, Denmark, Holland (the contemporary term for the Netherlands), Belgium, France, Spain and Italy; the German Intelligence organisations responsible for their selection, training, briefing, equipping and infiltrating them and the attempts of the Allied Intelligence organisations to stop them.

Destroying Hitler’s R-Netz Volume IV is a documentary history telling the stories of many of those trained as wireless operators, saboteurs and espionage agents who were either dropped by parachute, landed by submarine or motorboat, or helped to cross the lines into Allied-occupied territory in Italy.

Ruckzugs-, Ruckbleibe- or Raumungs-netz were the German terms for retreat, stay-behind or evacuation networks. Provided they kept to their cover story, their missions included collecting military, economic and political intelligence; reconnoitering selected targets; locating hidden dumps of explosives; identifying pro-Allied Italians to be assassinated; transmitting by wireless or taking intelligence back to their German control and wait for the Allies to advance.

These R-Netz were then to attack the Allies’ lines of communication, promote anti-Communist and anti-Allied propaganda and encourage support for the return to Fascism. 

Allied interrogation of captured ‘frontlaufers’, line-crossers or line-runners, led the American counter-intelligence officers to learn of existence of the Germans’ Operation EASTER EGG, the burial of sabotage material for stay-behind groups; the location of espionage agents, wireless operators and their sets; names and addresses of safe houses where stay-behind agents were staying as well as local people who supported the Nazis and gave them help. The arrest of many of these groups and the confiscation of weapons, ammunition, wireless sets, explosives and sabotage equipment, significantly reduced the threat to the Allies’ lines of communication. Publicised executions, widespread Allied propaganda and no likelihood of continued funding or support dissuaded those not caught from taking action. 

British and American counter-intelligence service officers typed up interrogation reports of these agents and added intelligence to their card index. The reports, telegrams, letters and memoranda related to their case were kept in folders which, after the war, were deposited in their country’s archives.

British Intelligence historian Bernard O’Connor has used these documents, autobiographies and biographies of some of those involved, history books, websites and newspapers to bring the human stories into the light of day.

O’Connor, a retired teacher, used to live near RAF Tempsford, a disused airfield on the border between Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, about 80km north of London and halfway between Cambridge and Bedford. He researched the airfield’s history and discovered that it played a vital role during the Second World War. Said to have been designed by an illusionist to look like a disused airfield, it only operated on the nights on either side of the full moon and the pilots took off after dusk, without lights, and navigated by moonlight to the drop zone, returning to base before dawn. From March 1942, the airfield served as the base for 138 and 161 Special Duties Squadrons which were engaged in flying out supplies to be parachuted to the resistance movements in enemy-occupied Western Europe. They also parachuted secret agents from numerous Allied countries behind enemy lines and landed one or two agents in small field the size of a football pitch and picked up others and their luggage to return them to Britain.

The organisation responsible for supplying the resistance movements and selecting agents, training, equipping, briefing and arranging their infiltration and exfiltration was the Special Operations Executive (SOE). As well as being parachuted, some were landed by plane, dropped by motorboat, fishing boat and submarine and others went over the Alps or Pyrenees. A number were destined for Italy. All had to sign the Official Secrets Act and many refused to divulge details of their wartime experiences.

However, as some of the pilots and agents received military and civilian decorations for their work, newspaper reporters and biographers were keen to publish their stories. Films were made about their exploits but these tended to be the stories of British and American agents, and generally the more attractive. In the years immediately after the war, the Official Secrets Acts meant that not all the details could be published. The Intelligence Services did not want the names of some of their officers or some politically sensitive details mentioned.

Over the last decades O’Connor has published numerous documentary histories of the airfield’s history; the women who worked there; the women agents; Bletchley Park and the use of carrier pigeons; SOE’s sabotage school and the successes and failures of its ‘graduates’ in Western Europe; blowing up Gibraltar, Spain and the Danube; infiltrating Comintern, Spanish, German and Russian agents; SOE in Afghanistan; the decline in Anglo-Soviet relations during the Second World War; and recently, in collaboration with Nicoletta Maggi, Operation Etna, infiltrating Soviet agents into Italy. His work can be found at www.lulu.com/spotlight/coprolite.

Apologies for any typographical errors. As well as there being different British and American spellings, the original writers of the correspondence were not always good spellers of Italian and German names and place names. Contemporary typewriters did not have umlauts or accents. Some telegrams and copies of wireless transmissions have ‘gp. undec.’ in brackets. Due to atmospheric conditions and wireless telegraphists’ errors, some groups of letters were undecipherable. ‘Grp. Mut’ meant that the letters were mutilated and also undecipherable.

There will be a degree of repetition in places where different people give their accounts of the same incidents. In some cases, the same telegram or memorandum was sent to several different offices and filed in different folders. There may be chronological errors where, for example, on some days there was a glut of correspondence which may not have been reported in the order that it was received. Any errors identified, please send details so that, in the interest of historical accuracy, the text can be corrected for a future edition.

As contemporary German documents have not been accessed (if they still exist given many were destroyed at the end of the war), what follows has to be read through a British and American filter. It includes accounts of inter-service rivalry, national and international diplomacy, personal and political disagreement, nationalism, racism, deception, Nazi degradation and some references to violence and sex.

Text in square brackets within the quotations is explanatory information. A question mark in square brackets means the author does not know everything. You, the reader, as an aspiring intelligence officer, can compare several reports and identify what was included in one and omitted in another and to imagine why there are differences. You are left to make your own assumptions, inferences, deductions, identify allusions and come to your own conclusions as to successes and failures of Hitler’s R-Net.

Gratitude is expressed to the staff of the National Archives in Kew who have generated the Discovery Page allowing researchers to locate files which can be ordered for examination. Whilst some documents have been copied and available as downloads, others need to be seen in person. Steven Kippax, the SOE historian, very kindly helped the British author access many of the files used in this work. As the reports occasionally identified intelligence officers and their informers who were still alive, some names were redacted. Also there were incidents which the government wanted to keep secret. Censors removed pages, placed appropriately sized pieces of blank paper of ‘offending’ paragraphs, phrases or words, copied the offending page and left the copy in the file with a red stamp indicating when it was redacted. Some reports refer to maps, photographs, charts and appendices that were not included in the file. American and British typewriters did not have keys with umlauts so fűhrer was written as fuehrer. There will be other instances where German and French symbols are missing.

Staff at the American Central Intelligence Agency archive need also to be thanked for digitising and making available many Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and United States military documents on their website. 

As much of the British and American wartime correspondence was marked secret, most secret or top secret, for security reasons symbols were used for intelligence officers and important personnel. Fred Judge, the retired senior Intelligence Corps archivist at Chicksands Military History Museum compiled an exhaustive list of these symbols which has allowed the authors to identify the names of virtually all those referred to in the documents. He has also generated an SOE database with details of over 20,000 personnel and a Military, Political and Civilian Abbreviations list. SOE historians, Steve Tyas, Trevor Baker, David Tremain and members of the Axis History Forum provided valuable help with my queries about German intelligence and military organisations and their personnel. Nicoletta Maggi has also helped with Italian queries.

Research undertaken by Roderick Bailey, Perry Biddiscombe, Ian Cobain, Nick Cook, M.R.D. Foot, Oliver Hoare, James Holland, William Mackenzie, Giuseppe Marabini, Jochem Botman, Keith Ellison, Barry McLoughlin, Alan Ogden, Donal O’Sullivan, Stephen Springarn, David Stafford, Nicola Tonietto, Denis Whitehead and Gavin Wiggington has helped shed light on the events that follow.

Introduction

Following the successful Allied invasion of Sicily between 9 July and 17 August 1943, the northward advance of American, Canadian and British troops forced the Italian Army and the Wehrmacht, the German army, to retreat. Allied planes bombed Axis-controlled airfields and denied the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, from dominating the Italian air space. Attacks on German naval and commercial shipping weakened the power of the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy. Many of the Italian forces, recognising that the Allies were a superior force, began putting down their weapons.

On 3 September an Armistice was signed by Allied and Italian generals at a military camp in Cassibile and approved by Italian King Victor Emmanuel II and Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the Italian Prime Minister. Benito Mussolini, the Duce of Italian Fascism, was arrested and imprisoned.

The German response was to attack Italian forces in Southern Italy, France and the Balkans and sent a team of commandos to free Mussolini and create him the head of the Partito Fascista Repubblicano (PFR) in what was called the Republic of Salo in Northern Italy. (https://www.ilpost. it/2013/09/23/repubblica-di-salo/) German troops maintained their hold on the north with a series of defensive lines constructed by the Todt Organisation aimed at halting or slowing down the Allies’ northward advance.

Over the following months American and British intelligence organisations set up bases in Southern Italy. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) set up a forward base in Bari on the southeast coast with a headquarters, wireless station and agent training school. Agents were flown out of the nearby airfield in Monopoli and parachuted with their supplies into German-occupied Italy, southern France, Austria, Yugoslavia and other southeast European countries. The stories of their successes and failures are told in other books.

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated

German defensive lines between September 1943 and June 1944.

Determined Allied attacks on fortified positions along the German lines like Monte Cassino and Anzio led to the fall of Rome on 6 June 1944, the same day as the successful landing of Allied troops on the Normandy coast of France. Resistance groups from Northern Norway to Southern France, assisted for years by Allied-trained secret agents and supply drops from Allied planes, and Allied-trained commandos succeeded in delaying the Panzer Divisions from reaching the landing area, allowing the Allies created a bridgehead. This led to the build-up of forces and supplies and troops to advance east towards Paris. Whilst tens of thousands of German troops surrendered, ports and airfields were vacated and German government officials, intelligence officers from the Abwehr, SS and Gestapo, the Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe and pro-German collaborators began to retreat towards Germany with their, tanks, military equipment, money and plundered goods.

On 15 August, American and French troops landed on the Mediterranean coast of France and began forcing German troops to retreat up the Rhone-Saone corridor. Paris was liberated between 19 and 25 August and in September Allied troops captured Aachen, a German city about 50 km from Liege, Belgium, and about 70 km from Cologne.

Italian historian Nicola Tonietto used Italian, German and American documents to research Nazi-Fascist espionage and sabotage networks in Allied-occupied Italy from 1943 until the end of the war. As the following is largely based on British and American sources, interested readers ought to read Tonietto’s work to gain a more comprehensive knowledge and understanding of this period of Italian history. 

Tonietto reported that the aim of his work was 

… to describe German and Republican Fascists secret services espionage and sabotage networks, their missions and their agents who were sent to the South-Central Italy, between 1943 and 1945, with the goal of obstructing the Allied advance. The two German secret services, namely Abwehr and Sicherheitsdienst, recruited Italian agents (who belonged to the Milizia, the Black Brigades or Borghese's Decima Mas) to take part in espionage and sabotage operations beyond the Allied lines. Even the fascists themselves, through the newborn SID [Mussolini’s Defense Information Service] or other groups like Prince Pignatelli's or Pucci-Del Massa Office, tried to plan espionage networks but also to prepare the ground for the survival of the fascism after the end of the war. (Tonietto, Nicola, Nazi-Fascist espionage and sabotage networks in Allied-occupied Italy (1943-1945), Diacronie, The voice of silence II. Beyond enemy lines: networks of spies and saboteurs, No. 28, 4, 2016)

During this time the Allies in Italy began apprehending men and women trying to cross the lines to return to Allied occupied territory (AOT). On being questioned, some admitted that they had been trained as wireless operators, espionage agents and saboteurs and paid to collect military intelligence and report back to their control in Germany, to sabotage Allied lines of communication and to spread anti-Allied propaganda. Others denied having any link with the Germans. If they convinced their interrogators, they were released. If there were concerns, deeper interrogation was needed.

Faced with potential execution as enemy agents, most who confessed provided the Allied Counter Intelligence officers with details of their training, their schools, instructors, equipment, payment, missions etc. These Frontlaufers provided vital intelligence which allowed the Allies to identify and apprehend not just other stay-behind agents already in place or expected soon but also personnel in the Abwehr, Germany’s Military Intelligence, and the Schutzstaffel, (SS) Hitler’s bodyguard and paramilitary security organisation.

The interrogation reports of the captured men and women revealed that the Abwehr had put in place an extensive network of R-Netz, stay-behind agents from Norway to Spain in the west, Poland through the Balkans in the east to Greece and Italy in the south.

A search of the National Archives Discovery page for Italy and stay-behind agents revealed British War Office files on saboteurs, wireless operators and espionage agents, some of whom were subsequently executed. Most were generated by MI5 and SOE but there were also a number of OSS reports found on the CIA website.

The British Intelligence Service

In 1938, fearing the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, would bomb military and intelligence targets in London, Menzies purchased Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, a large, secluded mansion with extensive grounds about an hour’s drive northwest of London. This was to be SIS’s agent training school. SIS, commonly known as MI6, Military intelligence 6, was responsible for the security of Britain’s dominions and overseas interests. MI5, Military Intelligence 5, was responsible for Britain’s domestic security.

Military attachés, air attachés, naval attachés and press attachés in British embassies and consulates were able to collect and pass on information to the Foreign Office. SIS officers, often posing as Passport Control officers also collected military, economic and political intelligence which was stored and evaluated to be used to provide reports for the Foreign Office to inform the British government and the War Office. Some intelligence was easily available from newspapers, journals, wireless and television broadcasts; some was obtained from speaking with foreign diplomats, government officials and local people; some was provided by paid informers and some was obtained by clandestine means like intercepting post, listening to telephone and telegraph messages or breaking and entering buildings, photographing and stealing documents. 

When the Germans invaded Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France in May 1940, the British diplomatic staff were evacuated. The Foreign Office and importantly the War Office, lost contact with their intelligence sources in occupied Western Europe. Agents with foreign language skills needed to be trained and infiltrated behind enemy lines to re-establish contact with sources, establish new ones, collect relevant intelligence and report back, often by pigeon with a message giving location details, date and times for a moonlit pick up from an isolated field.

SIS’s plans for Bletchley Park had to change when the Government chose it for their Codes and Cypher Section. Another building with extensive grounds was requisitioned, Brickendonbury Manor, near Hertford, about an hour’s drive northeast of London. Agents were provided with physical training, lessons in Morse, wireless telegraphy, codes and cyphers, weapons, fieldcraft, espionage and sabotage. The early agents were Spanish Republicans, Norwegian and Belgians.  A nearby airfield was chosen as the base for the RAF Special Duties Squadron whose mission was to either parachute Brickendonbury- trained agents or land them and later pick them up.

When the British Expeditionary Forces were forced to evacuate from Norway, Belgium and France at the end of May 1940, the War Office feared that Hitler’s next move was to invade Britain, Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar. Almost 120 Spanish Republicans and thirty British officers were trained for stay-behind operation in Iberia.

In Britain, a top-secret British Resistance Organisation was created of highly trained, well-armed, well-supplied and very determined stay-behind agents Known as the Auxiliary Units, the men, known as auxiliers, were to remain undetected in carefully constructed underground bunkers, known as Operating Bases. These were located close to the East and Southeast coasts where German troops were expected to land. Once the enemy had advanced inland, the men were to emerge from their bunkers and, using stored weapons, ammunition and sabotage equipment, cause havoc for the Germans by attacking their supply lines, electricity cables, telephone wires, railway and road infrastructure, docks and airfields.  They had instructions to kill themselves rather than be captured. (https://www.merseamuseum.org.uk/mmresdetails. php?pid=PH01_AUX&ba=mmww2.php)

Black and white group photo of men of The Auxiliary Units (British Resistance Organisation)

Members of Britain’s Resistance Organisation trained for stay-behind operations (https://www.cotswolds.com/whats-on/dads-underground-army-the-auxiliary-units-british-resistance-organisation-p2820143)

Another subversive and clandestine organisation was needed. Winston Churchill agreed to the creation of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) with an instruction ‘to set Europe ablaze by sabotage.’ When SOE was set up in July 1940, it took over agent training from SIS. Preliminary training, paramilitary training, parachute training and clandestine warfare training took place in requisitioned country houses. Brickendonbury became a specialist industrial sabotage training school.

MI5’s B Branch, responsible for Security, was headed from 1939 to 1945 by Guy Liddell. B1 dealt with counter-subversion; B1a with double agents; B1b with decryptions of German intelligence related to the double cross system; B1c with explosives and sabotage; B1d with the London Reception Centre (LRC) which dealt with interrogation of refugees and immigrants, B1e dealt with Camp 020, the codename of Latchmere House at Ham, near Richmond, where enemy personnel were interrogated. There are a number of other branches, some created after the war. (https://powerbase.info/index.php/MI5_B_Branch_(1938-1953)#Directors)

When MI5 transferred its headquarters to Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, at the beginning of the war, B.1.c, section was transferred to Wormwood Scrubs a prison in Hammersmith, northwest London. As shall be seen, B1c, headed by Lord Victor Rothschild, and B1e, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Robin Stephens, assisted by MI5 officers, played a vital role in destroying the R-Netz.

Before that, in 1938, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched a sabotage campaign against communication targets in England, In return for Independence once the Germans occupied Britain, they were assisted with money, weapons, ammunition, explosives, sabotage equipment and advisers by the Abwehr, who also infiltrated their own agents into Eire (Southern Ireland). Abwehr representatives also promised independence to Welsh and Scottish nationalists in return for supporting Operation LENA, Hitler’s planned invasion of England.

Legislation was introduced which led the Police and Special Branch to locate and arrest many IRA men and women and German-trained agents. Their weapons, ammunition, explosives, sabotage equipment, wireless telegraphy equipment, documents and cash were confiscated. Faced with execution, many talked. In this way B1c section begam to build up a collection of German equipment and related documents as well as intelligence from interrogated prisoner. The reports of their training, the material they used, their instructors, their schools and their missions were kept in files and the intelligence disseminated to interested sections of MI5, MI6 and SOE, the Armed Forces and the War Office. They also provided reports for security officers at the ports and airfields, provided printed material and courses on sabotage awareness and counter-sabotage for counter-intelligence units attached to the British and American Army Groups on the continent after D-Day. (O’Connor, Bernard, Operation LENA: Hitlers Plots to Blow up Britain, Amberley Publishing,