Bureau (Second Bureau) for intelligence evaluation.
For almost two years, Section D yielded nothing of great value. With the approval of his chiefs, Bertrand contacted the intelligence services of countries keeping an anxious eye on a restive Germany: Poland and Czechoslovakia, with both of which France had military alliances, and Great Britain. They exchanged intercepts and direction-finding results, but no cryptanalytic results. Then Bertrand got a break.
In the summer of 1931, there arrived at the squalid offices of the
Service de Renseignements
, in a Ministry of War annex at 75 rue de l’Université on Paris’s Left Bank, a letter dated July 1 and mailed from Prague. It stated that the writer had contacted the intelligence representative at the French embassy in Berlin on June 8 and had offered to sell documents of the highest importance. If the French were interested, they should contact him at Kaufhausgasse 2 in Basel, Switzerland, by October 1. If he had not heard from them by that date, he would go elsewhere. He listed two documents that he could deliver: the instructions for the use of the German army Enigma cipher machine and the instructions for setting its keys. The letter was signed Hans-Thilo Schmidt.
Paris contacted the Berlin embassy, and the
Deuxième Bureau
contact there, Maurice Dejean, confirmed that Schmidt had visited him. He added that Schmidt and his older brother, a lieutenant colonel, were both listed as being in the German Defense Ministry. This improved the chances that the approach was real and not a provocation.
The
Service de Renseignements
assigned the task of making the first contacts with Schmidt to its man Friday, who handled all sorts of details for the service—he could get train reservations that Cook’s couldn’t—but who specialized in recruitment and in the puchase of secret codes.
His codename was REX , he claimed to have been named von Koenig (“king” in his native German), his legal name was now Rodolphe Lemoine, but he had been born Rudolf Stallmann in Berlin on April 14, 1871. The son of a wealthy Berlin jeweler, he preferred travel—in France, Italy, England, Africa, Chile, and Argentina—to going into his father’s business. Somewhere along the way he met and married a Frenchwoman, whose name he adopted; in 1900, he was naturalized as a French citizen. During World War I, in Spain, he developed a taste for spying, and in 1920 he came to Paris to work full-time for France’s intelligence service. His pay came in the form of protection from the police in his shady dealings and of business concessions abroad that the French government awarded him. These activities he ran out of an office at 27 rue de Madrid in Paris’ fancy eighth arrondissement.
Writing to the Basel address, REX arranged to meet Schmidt on November 1, 1931, at the Grand Hotel in Verviers, a town in eastern Belgium some 15 miles from the German border. There he learned much of the would-be spy’s history.
Schmidt, then forty-four, had been born May 13, 1888, in Berlin, the second son of Professor Dr. Rudolf Schmidt and his wife, Johanna. The father, who was thirty-seven when Hans-Thilo was born, taught at the Charlotten school in Berlin. The first son, Rudolf, two years older than Hans-Thilo, had brought honor to the family when at twenty he was accepted into the army as a cadet. Hans-Thilo had had the standard college-preparatory classics education but then had studied business, with an emphasis on chemistry and technology. Both brothers had served in World War I. Rudolf distinguished himself in various signal corps posts, winning the Iron Cross, rising tocaptain, and ending the war in the general staff of the Fourth Army. Hans-Thilo, a lieutenant, likewise won the Iron Cross but had the bad luck to be gassed.
Rudolf was retained in the 100,000-man army that the Versailles treaty allowed Germany. Hans-Thilo started a soap factory, but in Depression- and inflation-ridden postwar Germany, the
For almost two years, Section D yielded nothing of great value. With the approval of his chiefs, Bertrand contacted the intelligence services of countries keeping an anxious eye on a restive Germany: Poland and Czechoslovakia, with both of which France had military alliances, and Great Britain. They exchanged intercepts and direction-finding results, but no cryptanalytic results. Then Bertrand got a break.
In the summer of 1931, there arrived at the squalid offices of the
Service de Renseignements
, in a Ministry of War annex at 75 rue de l’Université on Paris’s Left Bank, a letter dated July 1 and mailed from Prague. It stated that the writer had contacted the intelligence representative at the French embassy in Berlin on June 8 and had offered to sell documents of the highest importance. If the French were interested, they should contact him at Kaufhausgasse 2 in Basel, Switzerland, by October 1. If he had not heard from them by that date, he would go elsewhere. He listed two documents that he could deliver: the instructions for the use of the German army Enigma cipher machine and the instructions for setting its keys. The letter was signed Hans-Thilo Schmidt.
Paris contacted the Berlin embassy, and the
Deuxième Bureau
contact there, Maurice Dejean, confirmed that Schmidt had visited him. He added that Schmidt and his older brother, a lieutenant colonel, were both listed as being in the German Defense Ministry. This improved the chances that the approach was real and not a provocation.
The
Service de Renseignements
assigned the task of making the first contacts with Schmidt to its man Friday, who handled all sorts of details for the service—he could get train reservations that Cook’s couldn’t—but who specialized in recruitment and in the puchase of secret codes.
His codename was REX , he claimed to have been named von Koenig (“king” in his native German), his legal name was now Rodolphe Lemoine, but he had been born Rudolf Stallmann in Berlin on April 14, 1871. The son of a wealthy Berlin jeweler, he preferred travel—in France, Italy, England, Africa, Chile, and Argentina—to going into his father’s business. Somewhere along the way he met and married a Frenchwoman, whose name he adopted; in 1900, he was naturalized as a French citizen. During World War I, in Spain, he developed a taste for spying, and in 1920 he came to Paris to work full-time for France’s intelligence service. His pay came in the form of protection from the police in his shady dealings and of business concessions abroad that the French government awarded him. These activities he ran out of an office at 27 rue de Madrid in Paris’ fancy eighth arrondissement.
Writing to the Basel address, REX arranged to meet Schmidt on November 1, 1931, at the Grand Hotel in Verviers, a town in eastern Belgium some 15 miles from the German border. There he learned much of the would-be spy’s history.
Schmidt, then forty-four, had been born May 13, 1888, in Berlin, the second son of Professor Dr. Rudolf Schmidt and his wife, Johanna. The father, who was thirty-seven when Hans-Thilo was born, taught at the Charlotten school in Berlin. The first son, Rudolf, two years older than Hans-Thilo, had brought honor to the family when at twenty he was accepted into the army as a cadet. Hans-Thilo had had the standard college-preparatory classics education but then had studied business, with an emphasis on chemistry and technology. Both brothers had served in World War I. Rudolf distinguished himself in various signal corps posts, winning the Iron Cross, rising tocaptain, and ending the war in the general staff of the Fourth Army. Hans-Thilo, a lieutenant, likewise won the Iron Cross but had the bad luck to be gassed.
Rudolf was retained in the 100,000-man army that the Versailles treaty allowed Germany. Hans-Thilo started a soap factory, but in Depression- and inflation-ridden postwar Germany, the
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