Request by Rudolf Rössler for the issuance of an identity card, 1938.Swiss Federal Archives
A spy called Lucie
Rudolf Rössler was a mild-mannered journalist who ran a publishing firm in Lucerne. At the same time, he was supplying the Soviets with highly sensitive information straight from the Führer’s headquarters. The story of the master spy Lucie.
Gabriel Heim
Gabriel Heim is a book and film author and exhibition organiser. He is principally concerned with research into topics of modern and contemporary history and lives in Basel.
The head of this Geneva outpost, which later became famous as the Red Three (Rote Drei), was the Hungarian Alexander Radolfi – codenamed Dora. When Rudolf Rössler agreed in 1941 to supply his ‘notes’ directly to the Red Three through the intermediation of his employee Schneider and the Polish agent Rachel Dübendorfer, who worked in Geneva, Dora was operating three illegal radio stations in Geneva and Lausanne. Geneva radio dealer Edmond Hamel (codename: Eduard) had one of these radio devices hidden behind a wall shelf in his apartment, Route de Florissant 192. His wife Olga (codename: Maud) helped with transmission and encryption. Rado paid the couple 1,000 francs a month. The second shortwave device was hidden in Geneva at Rue Henry Mussard 8. The apartment’s occupant, Marguerite Bolli (codename: Rosa), a waitress and Radolfi’s lover, had hidden her radio transmitter in a record player. The third device was in Lausanne, at Chemin de Longeraie 2. Englishmen Alexander Foote (codename: Jim), who had previously fought in Spain, had incorporated it into his typewriter.
The instructions for Lucie were also received in Lausanne. For example, on 9 November 1942: Where are the rear defensive positions of the Germans on the line southwest of Stalingrad and along the Don? On 16 February 1943: Find out immediately via Lucie whether Vyazma and Rzhev will be evacuated. On 22 February 1943: Urgently find out the OKW’s plans for the Kluge commando. On 9 April 1943: What operations is the OKW preparing in the spring and summer of 1943, where, with what aims and with what forces, and which armies?Alexander Radolfi, also known as Rado, was head of the Soviet intelligence service in Switzerland from 1938.WikimediaLucie supplied Moscow with the latest information on the situation of German troops on the Eastern Front on a daily basis. Colonel-General Franz Halder, Hitler’s chief of staff until the autumn of 1942: “Virtually all German acts of aggression became known to the enemy as a result of treachery by someone connected with the OKW immediately after their planning in the High Command of the Armed Forces, before they even landed on my desk. Throughout the entire war it was not possible to block this source”, a revelation which caused the 1967 Der Spiegel cover story to state:
From ‘Werther’ and from ‘Olga’, from ‘Teddy’ and from ‘Anna’ and around 200 other agents [placed in Germany], the threads ran to ‘Lucie’ in Lucerne and ‘Dora’ in Geneva. The intelligence from the German Reich and its staff was collected there. ‘Lucie’ and ‘Dora’ knew in broad brushstrokes and in detail more about the German armies than any individual German general.Franz Halder in a 1939 photograph.WikimediaTowards the end of 1943, when it became apparent that Germany was on the brink of defeat and Bern felt compelled to again turn its thoughts to the virtue of neutrality, the federal prosecutor’s office (Bundesanwaltschaft) decided to dig out the network of Rado and his syndicate. The Soviet agents Foote, Dübendorfer, Böttcher, Schneider, Bolli and the Hamels were arrested. Rado went into hiding. Rudolf Rössler, however, remained unmolested, because his contacts were still valuable to the ND and Büro Ha even though, as an agent of the Soviets, he was still on the ‘wrong side’ at the end of the war.
As before, he was to continue to be an inconspicuous man. Together with his long-time friend Xaver Schnieper, a left-wing Catholic and at that time still a member of the Partei der Arbeit (Party of Labour), in the early years of the Cold War he scouted military secrets in the Federal Republic of Germany on behalf of the Czech secret service. It wasn’t long before that went wrong. On 5 November 1953, the Federal Criminal Court of Switzerland (Bundesstrafgericht) sentenced Rössler to twelve months in prison, and Schnieper to nine months. In the grounds for its judgment, the court did at least confirm that the German emigré Rössler had rendered valuable services to Switzerland.Trial of Rudolf Rössler (front) and Xaver Schnieper, in Lucerne in 1953. Both were sentenced to several months in prison.RDB by DukasRössler served his sentence and then returned to Lucerne. Six months before his death, he had revealed to Schnieper’s 18-year-old son the names of his German informants from World War II: “When you are a grown man and all those currently still alive are dead, you may name them publicly.” A year later, Schnieper Junior was killed in a car accident. Despite endless rumours and conjecture, the true identities of Werther, Anna, Teddy and Olga are still unknown today, and the question of how the numerous secret messages were smuggled to Rössler’s publishing house in Lucerne also remains unanswered. Rudolf Rössler passed away in Lucerne in 1958, as quietly as he had lived.
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