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Helmut Roewer, Stefan Schäfer, and Matthias Uhl, eds. Lexikon der Geheimdienste im 20. Jahrhundert [Dictionary of Intelligence Services in the 20th Century]. München: F.A. Herbig, 2003. 527 pp., photographs, and illustrations. ISBN 3776623179, €39,90

According to publisher’s information, Helmut Roewer since 1980 has been active in security services, Stefan Schäfer has for years headed a department of a German intelligence service and Matthias Uhl is a historian specialized in the area of intelligence. Considering the almost total neglect by German historians of the history of intelligence services and for that matter of the role of intelligence in modern history, a reference work such as this, regardless of its completeness and degree of reliability, for two reasons is a notable German contribution. First, the publication is likely to awaken an interest among younger German historians and help them to broaden and internationalize their perspective. Secondly, the dictionary will be a useful tool for historians outside of Germany seeking introductory data on German agents and events as well as on specific German views on intelligence in the 20th century. As with previous publications of this nature elsewhere, the editors have included a considerable amount of data known to the professional historian but of considerable interest to a less informed general public.
The authors in their very abbreviated introduction (pp. 5-6) quite openly refer to the potential weaknesses of their undertaking. Evidently, the question of selection would be one major aspect on the trouble side, but the authors also admit quite freely to the difficulty in some cases of separating fact and fiction. The expert will easily agree with them that some of the probably more significant intelligence activities of the 20th century continue to be shrouded in clouds often created intentionally by operatives and those in charge. While these and other difficulties are by-products of most reference publications, the absence in this case of a general index is a serious flaw often preventing the reader from finding names and operations related to a context. The short list of pseudonyms or aliases offered (pp. 522-527) merely serves to remind one of what is missing.
The publication is structured alphabetically listing persons, organizations, institutions, places and events. Lengthy paragraphs on general concepts or terms such as propaganda, journalists, Russian revolution, parliamentary control, high treason or “occupational regime” (Besatzungsregime) may aid non-Germans in gaining a first insight into German perceptions of such terms. The extensive pieces offered on nations such as Yugoslavia, Great Britain, Ireland, the Soviet Union, or France by necessity appear rather general, and one would wish greater detail instead under the respective intelligence organizations. The intelligence expert also would prefer more names and more complete data on many of those included. By contrast, the extensive treatment given to German intelligence organizations and administrative structures such as the Verfassungsschutz (interior intelligence), the Bundesnachrichtendienst (foreign intelligence), the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (East German “Ministry for State Security” or simply “Stasi”), the RSHA or Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Himmler’s imperial security head office), the SD or Sicherheitsdienst (SS intelligence services), or the Abteilung IIIb (military intelligence until the end of World War I), and the Abwehr (military intelligence directed until 1944 by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris) may be very useful as first introductions to students and non-specialists.
Reviewing a work of reference would appear to require at least a routine check of the breadth of the material listed as well as the reliability of the data. This reviewer is painfully aware of the necessary acknowledgment that perfection, however desirable, is rather unattainable. Intelligence services and their operations are an area where much professional research still needs to be done. On the positive side it should be recognized that the authors have succeeded in creating a relatively up-to-date reference work including such recent phenomena as the political collapse of the German Democratic Republic, the accusations against the German Minister of Traffic Manfred Stolpe, and the terrorist destruction of a Pan American airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. Going back to World War I, Werner Otto von Hentig and his famed expedition to Afghanistan are correctly identified, but Johann Heinrich Count von Bernstorff, Imperial ambassador in Washington, D.C., is incorrectly mentioned as a participant in intelligence activities against the neutral United States. “Black Tom”, one of the largest German sabotage operations, is cited as one of the undertakings in which he partook. Instead of Count Bernstorff’s memoirs or respective historical studies available on both sides of the Atlantic, the source given is a less than reliable journalistic account. The reader will look in vain for the names of even the better known German agents in the United States at that time, such as Karl Wunnenberg, Kurt Jahnke, Lothar Witzke, “Victorica”, not to mention Dr. Anton Dilger or Hans Boehm. The colorful German naval officer Franz Rintelen, who was arrested by Blinker Hall and between the wars became a friend of his captor, has his name misspelled, and instead of his published memoirs or historical studies about his activities, the East German Julius Mader is named as a source. Paul von Hintze, German minister in Ciudad Mexico and in charge of German agents in Mexico engaged in sabotage across the Rio Grande in the U.S., was not considered sufficiently important to warrant an entry, and Sir William Wiseman, who ran the British secret service station in New York during World War I, apparently also fell through the net.
While many of the developments between the wars have been included, readers may wonder why the authors decided to exclude the Mixed Claims Commission (Gemischte Kommission), the only continuous venue for Washington and Berlin over the two decades and one where German sabotage in the U.S. during World War I was a major topic. The high calibre individuals negotiating the “sabotage claims” for their respective sides and the various significant go-betweens are not named. Undercover emissaries such as Gerhard Alois Westrick sent to the United States as late as 1940 are missing. Of curious interest is the authors’ placement of the still mysterious “doctor” under “Double Cross” rather than identifying him in connection with the German operations obtaining certain correspondence from the American ambassador at the Court of St. James, Joseph P. Kennedy.
World War II, like World War I and the decades between, is well represented and the larger items on the services are informative entries for beginners. The specialists, fishing for further detail and puzzle pieces, will often be disappointed and frustrated. If Johann Heinrich Count von Bernstorff is listed in connection with German sabotage in World War I, what made the authors decide to skip Albrecht Count von Bernstorff, the well-known diplomat who during the Nazi period travelled abroad and cultivated significant contacts until he was picked up and murdered by the SS? William Joyce, or Lord Haw Haw, is there, though rather abbreviated; his Irish counterpart Francis Stuart, however, was allowed to slip through in spite of the public controversy over the case and Stuart’s own publications, one of which is named as a source for Sir Roger Casement (published 1940 in Berlin!).
Toward the end of World War II agents and representatives of various nations were involved in final covert attempts to reach some sort of armistice. On the German side Karl Wolff negotiated the belated suspension of hostilities on the Italian front, but Operation Sunrise rates no more than a sentence. Walter Schellenberg’s late efforts to contact the Allies and his encounters with Count Folke Bernadotte are barely mentioned, and neither the mysterious Felix Kersten nor Norbert Masur or Hillel Storch are included. The meaningful links in Switzerland that enabled Schellenberg to stay in touch with the international community are treated insufficiently. The thin references to Roger Masson and the oversight of Jean-Marie Musy are other weaknesses in this context.
One could go on and point out further shortcomings or names overlooked. In all fairness though, one could also list intelligence operations and agents included. Compared with another recently published American reference work, the German publication does exhibit certain weaknesses in the international field as well as in the detail, but – and this is of some significance – the German publication also contains a great number of German names in intelligence and, possibly even more important, makes available largely German perspectives to international intelligence experts. In short, there is no doubt that this publication belongs into every public library and will certainly find a place in the private collections of most intelligence buffs.

Reinhard R. Doerries
Nürnberg

Facts v. Fiction:
The Mata-Hari File

Jean-Pierre Turbergue, ed. Mata-Hari. Le Dossier Secret Du Conseil de Guerre. Introduction by Patrick Pesnot, epilogue by général (CR) André Bach. Paris: éditions italiques 2001. 574 pp.
ISBN: 2910536173, €27,00

The French Ministry of Defense is to be congratulated for its decision to grant access to the dossier of the military court which tried the most famous female spy and condemned her to death in 1917. The relevant documents are now open for inspection. They demonstrate above all that, contrary to established opinion, the 3rd Military Court gave Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod alias Mata-Hari a fair trial, and that she nearly got away.
Insufficient Evidence
Mata-Hari (MH) was taken into custody on 13 February 1917 upon a request by the 5th Bureau of the General Staff of the Army to the Military Governor of Paris indicating that, according to ‘information from a secret and very reliable source,’ she was agent H 21 of the German intelligence, had during her stay in Paris in 1916 offered to serve French intelligence with the intention to communicate everything she learned to German intelligence, and had given military and diplomatic intelligence to the German military attaché in Madrid, Major Kalle (pp. 143-144).
The case was referred to the 3rd Military Court, which in the later course of February received additional documents: on 22 February the Préfecture de Police forwarded a file with 114 surveillance reports (pp. 39-139).
When MH had arrived in the French capital eight months before on 17 June 1916, French counter-intelligence heeded warnings received from the British that she might be a German intelligence agent. During her stay in Paris and Vittel from June to September 1916 and again in Paris in January and February 1917 she was put under close surveillance.
The 114 reports in the dossier showed that, during the 111 days MH was followed, the former dancer had practised 22 times well-known techniques of escaping surveillance, for instance waiting until only one taxi was available and then taking it, or audibly giving an address to the chauffeur of the taxi and then going somewhere else. And on two occasions she had been seen speaking to young men, who took notes while listening to her (pp. 42, 80).
But MH could not be convicted on the basis of ‘information from a secret and very reliable source’ and reports of suspicious behaviour alone. The case had to be proved in accordance with established rules of procedure. This was the task of the examining magistrate of the 3rd Military Court, Major Buchardon – a well-known lawyer, who had been Head of the Bureau for Criminal Affairs of the Ministry of Justice from 1908-1912.
But several weeks and seven interviews later Bouchardon had gotten nowhere. He had invited MH to explain herself and had questioned her thoroughly, hoping slips of tongue would give her away. But the prisoner never made any and defended herself adroitly. She denied any contact with German intelligence, declared to have been recruited by French Captain Ladoux to work for French intelligence and conceded that she had contacted the German military attaché in Madrid, but only to obtain valuable information from him which then had been handed over immediately to the French military attaché in Madrid.
As MH admitted nothing, French counter-intelligence had to produce the documents on which its allegations were based. On 21 April 1917, it handed over to Bouchardon 14 decrypted telegrams exchanged between the German military attaché in Madrid and the German general staff in Berlin. Revealing to outsiders the closely guarded secret that the French Section de Chiffre had broken the ciphers used by the German military attaché in Madrid proves that by the middle of April the proceedings against MH were on the brink of collapse.
But when on 1 May 1917 the prisoner was confronted with the text of the cables she did not react as Bouchardon might have expected. MH neutralised the surprising revelation by a brilliant countermove. She simply denied being H 21, pleaded a case of mistaken identity – reminding Bouchardon that while in transit in Great Britain the authorities had initially identified her as German agent Clara Benedict – and shrugged off the various details of the telegrams pointing to her by declaring that the German military attaché might have found these information somewhere and implied that the officer had included them on purpose in the telegrams to draw away suspicion from the real H 21 (pp. 353-361).
This was a powerful argument. If MH had stuck to it, nobody would have been able to disprove her argument that she was being made the scapegoat by the German military attaché to protect the real H 21. Therefore, nothing really dramatic could have happened to her, as according to French rules of procedure it was not possible to convict her on the texts of the decrypted telegrams alone unsupported by independent corroborating evidence.
The Point of No Return
However, three weeks later MH suddenly changed her line of defence: On 21 May 1917 the prisoner admitted, that while in Den Haag in the summer of 1916, German consul Kraemer had asked her to travel to Paris on behalf of German intelligence, for which she would be given 20,000 Francs, and had told her to sign her reports ‘H 21.’ She claimed to have feigned to accept the offer and to have pocketed the money, but only as some sort of refund for personal property sequestered by German authorities during her transit through Germany on the eve of the war, and never to have written to German intelligence during her stay in France. MH declared that she had kept her contact with German intelligence from Captain Ladoux while being recruited by him to work for French intelligence for financial reasons – as the former dancer would receive no pay for her first mission, she could not let him have this information ‘for free.’ And the prisoner conceded to have given information she had somehow read in the papers or remembered to Major Kalle and that she had received 3,500 Pesetas from him. But what she had told the officer had been of no importance and could not have done any damage, and she had done so only to get important informations from him which had then been transmitted to the French Embassy. And on 22 May MH conceded, that she had already been in contact with the German consul since January 1915 and that he had interviewed her after her return from Paris, where she had stayed at the end of 1915 (pp. 390-396).
Why this Change of Strategy?
It is possible, that more than twelve weeks of solitary confinement in a filthy cell with execrable food and the dregs of society her sole companions finally broke MH. After all, she was used to living in excellent hotels, having at least three properly prepared meals a day and enjoying pleasant company of good-mannered people who treated her with respect.
However, experience shows that the effect of dramatically altered living conditions wears off with time. People tend to adjust to the new situation – and it should be remembered that MH was far from being a frail, nervous creature; she was a solidly built woman of Dutch stock whose life in the past decades quite often had been far from pleasant. And: her statements as well as her letters on 21 May 1917 and thereafter do not reflect a person who had undergone a physical and psychological collapse.
Besides, MH later never retracted her confession, pleading that it had been made in a state of utter confusion induced by the prison conditions, as she well might have done..
Performing
To explain MH’s sudden change of strategy a closer look at her person is necessary: Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod was a tall woman of great beauty, considerable charme, pleasant manners, and an instinctive knowledge of how to impress men. This combined with a natural gift for acting the various roles she choose for herself to the extent of identifying with the character she wanted to represent, all this with a view on its effect on men. Her favorite and most successful part was the one she had created for herself and which had made her famous: the Javanese temple dancer MH. The second part she excelled in was the ‘femme du monde’ who moved in the upper circles of society.
Therefore, it can be argued, that after her arrest MH – more by instinct than by formal decision – immediately adopted the role most likely to impress her male interrogator: the terribly suffering woman in despair who never had done anything wrong and who didn’t really understand what was happening to her and why. But when four months had passed and the prisoner realised that apparently both her denials and her charme had had no effect on Bouchardon, she decided to try a different approach.
One of MH’s introspective statements to the officer may be helpful in trying to understand the psychological basis of her change of strategy: “During the whole of my life I have been a spontaneous being,” the prisoner told Bouchardon at the end of June 1917 during her last interview: “I never went with small steps. I have great aims, and I go straight for them.” (p. 444) This implies that MH tended to make snap decisions to succeed, and that her 21-22 Mai confessions may well have been one of these.
The prisoner’s new line of defence coincided with one of her prior statements to Bouchardon: “There are appearances, that is true, but no serious action.” (p. 377). But MH had never taken the trouble to consult a lawyer before setting out for France, and her French lawyer – one of her acquaintances of old – had apparently never coached her properly. Thus, the shock was considerable when Bouchardon explained that according to French law her contacts with German intelligence were espionage. MH immediately realised that her change of strategy had been a deadly mistake. No wonder she told the examining magistrate: “Your law is repulsive. If I had known this, I would never had set a foot here.” (p. 399). The prisoner then tried to revert to her original line of defence, pleading that German intelligence might have issued the designation ‘H 21' twice and that this second ‘H 21' might even have used her name Zelle MacLeod. (p. 433), but to no avail. Her 21-22 May confessions had sealed her fate.
The Legend
When trying to understand the behaviour of MH it has to be remembered that in the decades leading up to the First World War scores of writers and novelists had conditioned the public to believe in the existence of the female super-spy. She was imagined to be a superbly attractive woman moving in the best circles of society who lured important men into her net to make them talk – and generally quite often succeeded, as the human male was presumed not to be able to resist the temptation of a woman of that calibre and would not mind at all what he told her as long as he could win her favour –, and that she received fabulous sums of money from her employer for the sensationally important informations she supplied.
As MH was well-read and World War One had left her stranded in Holland with scant means, she might have decided to slip into the role of the female super-spy which was at least as romantic as her former performance as a Javanese dancer and might well be financially as rewarding, if not more so. Bouchardon accepted her as such, describing her in his summary for the court as “one of these international women … who have become so dangerous since the hostilities started,” because their charmes were simply irresistible: “In fights such as these, man will always be defeated, he may be as adroit as he possibly can be.” (p. 462). This may have been rhetoric to improve the chances for a conviction, but in part it probably showed how much MH had impressed the man who had spent many hours with her in intimate discussions and who had come to know her quite well.
However, while the court rejected MH’s plea that she had never done anything really wrong, published opinion accepted it, starting to present her in the 1920s to public opinion in the contradictory roles of both the female super-spy and the basically innocent female beauty wrongfully condemned to die – and has done so ever since, irrespective of anything which might be argued to the contrary.
It remains to be seen, whether the documents of the Dossier will be able to effect a change.



Léon Schirmann. Mata-Hari. Autopsie D'Une Machination. Paris: éditions italiques, 2001. 319 pp. ISBN: 2910536181, €19,00

The book has been presented to the public as the companion volume to the file of the Military Court. The editor of the Dossier, Jean-Pierre Turbergue, calls it “a must” and states that the author explains the contents of the file “admirably.” (Dossier p. 10)
The result of Schirmann’s detailed study of the Dossier and of extensive additional research in French, British and German archives is remarkable. The author claims that MH's condemnation to death had been the result of the combined machinations of three men: the French counter-intelligence officer Captain Ladoux, the German military attaché in Madrid, Major Kalle, and the examining magistrate of the Military Court, Major Bouchardon, and that the intelligence activities of the famous dancer didn’t amount to very much, if to anything at all (pp. 13-14).
No wonder that press and television took a lively interest in his book and presented his accusations to a wider audience. However, a closer look at the documents and at the facts of the case shows that the author would be well advised to reconsider his position.
The Counter-intelligence Officer
Schirmann accuses Captain Ladoux of having trapped MH. But it doesn’t make sense to accuse a counter-intelligence officer of trapping an enemy agent. It’s his job. Besides, the author like others before him grossly inflates Ladoux's role in the affair. The officer was far from being the mastermind of the counter-intelligence operation against the former dancer. The head of the 2nd Bureau, Col Goubet, who was heard as a witness, stated expressly that the Captain had acted in accordance with his – Col. Goubet's – orders (Dossier p. 235). And the task of the Service de Centralisation de Renseignement, where the officer worked and where MH met him, was liaison between the various services of the Ministry of War and the Préfecture de Police in counter-intelligence affairs, not counter-intelligence per se.
The German Military Attaché in Madrid
Schirmann claims that Kalle considered MH a deserter because she had become an agent of French intelligence, that he decided to punish the former dancer for her assumed betrayal by giving away her connection with German intelligence to the French, that the officer therefore included in his cables to Berlin information making it possible for the French to identify MH and used for these cables a cipher he knew the French had broken.
But why should the Major consider MH a traitor? It was quite a feat for an agent to make enemy intelligence recruit him (or her) and deserved praise – that is, if it was reported. The claimed motive for the alleged denoucement does not exist.
As to the telegrams, the members of the German embassy in Madrid indeed knew that some of its ciphers had been broken. But decrypts of its communications with Berlin prove that the Germans in Madrid believed other ciphers still to be safe – though in fact they were not. And a perusal of Kalle’s decrypted telegrams proves, that the Military Attaché gave MH preferential treatment: the officer never referred to her by name, only by ‘H 21,’ while in another telegram he mentioned the full name of an agent sent to France. However, some of the decrypted telegrams undoubtedly contain specific information which would have facilitated considerably the identification of MH as German agent ‘H 21.’
Schirmann is convinced that the telegrams are authentic. He has to, as they are the basis of the accusation he levels against the German military attaché. But are they?
The 12 decrypted telegrams printed in the ‘Dossier’ of the French Military Court – 14 in all were handed over, but 2 are missing from the file – have two peculiarities: they are translations of the German original into French and they do not contain any of those gaps and garbled passages typical for intercepts (pp. 338-346). And while other decrypts of telegrams of the German embassy in Madrid of the same period likewise present a text without gaps or garbled passages one of it carries the remark “text especially defective.”
The Section de Chiffre of the French Ministry of War may have been under orders to reconstruct missing or defective passages of decrypted telegrams to the best of its ability to improve their usability. These procedures created opportunities for ‘editing’ the text of telegrams unobtrusively. In the MH case, information may have been inserted facilitating considerably the identification of the former dancer as ‘H 21.’ A statement by Dr. Elsbeth Schragmueller, the famous 'Fraeulein Doktor' of German military intelligence of World War I, located and reprinted by Schirmann implies that the text of the telegrams indeed might have been changed. She stated in retrospect: “In our telegrams only H 21 was mentioned, and the person of MH was never referred to” (p. 233). Now this ‘editing’ of the telegrams was certainly illegal but it was of no consequence for the findings of the court because the telegrams were not considered to be legal evidence on which a conviction might be based.
Schirmann tries to neutralize the statement of Schragmueller. The author calls it “a dirty countertruth” (p. 233). He has to, because it invalidates his accusation against Kalle.
The Examining Magistrate
Schirmann accuses Bouchardon of having misinformed and dis-informed the judges in his summary to obtain a death sentence and to prove this, he discusses a sizable number of technicalities in great detail.
But in view of the 21-22 May confessions of MH it is difficult to see how the French Military Court could have let her get away with a prison sentence. Therefore the presumed mis-behavior of the examining magistrate didn’t matter very much, if at all.
The Verdict
Schirmann finally again repeats the well-known accusation that in 1917 MH as well as many others were sentenced to death and executed to prove that ‘foreign agents' and ‘traitors’ were responsible for the disastrous military situation. (p. 14)
The author might at least have tried to prove his contention by discussing the respective legal provisions in detail and compare 1916 and 1917 espionage cases and the findings of the courts. But he does not. And the author never considers a simpler and far more plausible explanation for the rising number of executions in 1917: As the war went on, not only the armies of both sides learned from experience and improved their performance, but they improved intelligence and counter-intelligence, too. It is possible that in 1916 and 1917 the Germans ran more agents in enemy territory than in 1914 and 1915 and that the French caught more of them and knew now much better what evidence to look for to obtain a conviction.
Traces
Schirmann insists that the verdict was far too harsh because according to him the intelligence activities of MH didn’t amount to very much, if to anything at all. Therefore a closer look at the few traces of her intelligence activities still discernible is advisable.
It began in Holland in 1915, when the German consul-general in Amsterdam, Kraemer, contacted MH to offer her employment by German intelligence. Kraemer knew that he risked expulsion from Holland if the socially prominent woman with excellent contacts resented the approach and complained to the authorities. The consul-general must therefore have known in advance that he would be well received.
A reminiscence of ‘Fraeulein Doktor’ supports this assumption. Dr. Schragmueller later remembered that one day one of the German consulates had received a later by “a certain Lady MacLeod” asking to be put in contact with German military intelligence. Schirmann quotes this statement, tries to neutralize its effect by stating that it is difficult to accept (p. 50) but never explains why.
In December 1915, MH was in Paris. From there she reported that for the time being the French had no intention of attacking, especially not right then (“daß vorläufig, namentlich jetzt, in Frankreich nicht an eine franzoesische Offensive gedacht wird.”) Schirmann reproduces this text and comments: “The meager content of the information supplied by the dancer shows that her espionage activities were extremely limited” (Schirmann pp. 32, 34). However, this report will have been helpful for the German High Command which at that time was getting ready for its massive attack on Verdun in February 1916. It will have been relieved to hear that for the time being all available German forces could be concentrated on the French fortress because immediate French counter-attacks elsewhere to relieve the pressure on Verdun were not to be expected, and that it was therefore not necessary to keep a sizable number of divisions back to ward them off. No wonder consul-general Kraemer paid MH 20,000 francs when he met her for the second time in May 1916.
In summer 1916, MH was again in Paris. Schirmann writes, that due to incessant surveillance any intelligence activity had been impossible for her (p. 58). However, her German case officer in the summer of 1916, Captain Roepell, remembered in 1940 in a letter that in the summer of 1916 he had received two or three letters from her. Schirmann quotes this statement but hides it in a footnote (p. 52 Note *). And while reproducing large extracts of Roepell’s letter describing MH’s contacts with German intelligence in spring 1916 in Germany, he ignores Roepell’s last sentence: “She certainly spied for Germany, and in my opinion her execution by the French – regrettably – was justified.” It’s not too difficult to see why.
Schirmann’s book demonstrates the extent to which MH still can cast a spell over an author after so many years. Under its influence, for him the counter-intelligence case against a German intelligence agent changes into the story of three sinister villains persecuting and finally destroying female beauty for trifles.
It seems, for the ‘true believers'’ the facts of the case as reflected in the documents are irrelevant and always will be.

Hilmar-Detlef Brückner
Munich