Hitler's Lost Spy

HITLER'S LOST SPY

Sunda Publications Pty Ltd

PO Box 77

Roseville NSW 2069 Australia

[email protected]

Author's email:

[email protected]

First edition 2014

This edition 2015

© Greg Clancy

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Author: Clancy, Gregory Bruce, 1944–

Title: Hitler's lost spy: The true story of a female spy in Australia

ISBN: 9780994158406 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781925280319 (eBook)

Notes: Includes index

Subjects:

Australian National Socialist Party

Women spies – Australia – Biography

Espionage, German–Australia

World War, 1939–1945 – Secret service – Germany Espionage, Japanese–Australia

Dewey No.:

940.548743

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover design by Red Ape, St Leonards, NSW

Layout by MoshPit Publishing, Hazelbrook, NSW

Digital edition distributed by

Port Campbell Press

www.portcampbellpress.com.au

eBook Conversion by
Winking Billy

To the memory of my father,

William Gerald Clancy (1907–1963)

who introduced me to three extraordinary stories –

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea,

Mutiny on the
Bounty
, and
Annette Wagner, Hitler's Lost Spy
.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Prologue

1 A Death on the Île

2 Spying for Hitler and Hirohito in Australia

3 The Lady Arrives

4 Annette's Radio Coup – Espionage over the Airwaves

5 A Perfect Spy … Almost

6 Annette's Jigsaw – Some Ill-fitting Pieces

7 Conduct Unbecoming

8 A Flight for the Emperor

9 Annette's Last Stand

10 The Lady Departs

11 Annette Wagner – A Profile of Paradox

12 Conclusion

Epilogue

Appendix: The Japanese Empire – Australia Included?

Glossary

Index

The following organisations offered valued information and assistance in the preparation of the manuscript: The National Archives of Australia, Canberra and Sydney, the State Library of New South Wales, the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, the Sydney Maritime Museum, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Theosophical Society, Sydney, the United Nations Archives, Geneva, the Stadarchiv Biel-Bienne, Switzerland, the Bundesarchive, Berlin, The Radio Heritage Foundation, Alliance Francaise, Sydney, the Port Stephens Historical Society, the New South Wales Police Force, the Blue Mountains Historical Society, the Aviation Historical Association of Australia, Mosman Library, and State Records (NSW).

My thanks to Anthony Adolph for the research he administered in the United Kingdom and France, and to Peter Dunn, Jill Farish, Professor Bridgit Griffin-Foley, Macquarie University, Gunter Hanemann, Bill Kennedy, George Kunzelmann, Margaret Lemon, Barry Matthews, Christopher Netherclift, Dr Pam Oliver, Monash University, Dr Ian Phennigwerth, Jean Rheuben, Rene Vandervaere, and Clive Williams.

My cousins, Lynette Butler and Carole Clancy-O'Hehir, supplied valuable information on the flying history of their late fathers, Jack and Allan Clancy. The photos and logbooks furnished important background details to Annette Wagner's spying mission to Newcastle in April 1939. My wife Pam offered a continuous stream of text advice, and my daughter Joanne delivered IT assistance and provided research into Annette Wagner's period of residence in France.

The Annette Wagner project was enhanced by helpful ideas and suggestions and thanks are due to my editors Jennifer Mosher and Sarah McCloghry and to Serge Medina and Graham Beattie at Red Ape.

I was in primary school when my late father, Bill Clancy, introduced me to the Annette Wagner story, but not by name. He told me what he knew, the essence of which remained with me, about a woman suspected of being a German spy who ‘Uncle Jack had flown to Newcastle before the war'. Jack, my father's brother, had been met by security officers on his return to Sydney, and asked to accompany them for a meeting to discuss details of the flight and his passenger.

It was only at a final meeting with the late Jack Clancy in 2000, that I asked him for details on the story for the first time. It is likely that my indifference over the years – to what should have been an exciting account in my family history – stemmed from the improbability of what I had heard from my father. In later years I reflected on the question:
Why would the Germans be interested in placing spies half way around the world and away from their area of interest?
And at the time, a woman didn't tone in very well with the imagined
modus operandi
of a
real
1930s spy. Secrecy, stealth, gadgets, disguised radio transmitters and dismantled weapons were the supposed devices in the spy's tools of trade, and these were characteristically male. Seduction, manipulation, inducement and skilfully forging an access into target groups were the imagined stratagems of the female spy.

However, these television-induced images were too far removed from the known conduct of my immediate and extended family to allow for any realistic connection. The notion that Jack would have known or befriended a foreign spy was not credible.

Hollywood's Cold War productions in the 1950s and 1960s added to this rather blinkered vision of the contemporary spy world. It was a time when the regular CIA agent was good-looking, dedicated, wore a fine-wool suit and always succeeded in his missions. His Russian KGB opposite number was normally cast as being intelligently evil, or dim-witted with a thick neck, a course-wool overcoat and a 1930s hat pulled down to his ears – even in the 1960s. It may have been because of these prejudiced images, and that my father had prematurely passed away in 1963, that I allowed the story to effectively file itself away without any serious consideration for future research until my final meeting with Jack in April 2000.

While writing this book, one of my intentions has been to stress the personal, not the political. Through books and documentary television programs the politics and events of that momentous decade, 1935–1945, have been exhaustively reproduced to satisfy a relentless public interest. There has been, however, a tendency in this surge of information to obstruct the study of personal traits and behaviour. We are then deprived of witnessing the amazing human parallels that result when individual, cultural and historical layers are peeled away. The story of Annette Wagner includes this interesting characteristic, and I have attempted to portray her accordingly.

Original documentation has been relied upon where possible. That Annette Wagner's talents were drawn upon by one or other of the German intelligence services during 1938 and 1939 I have no doubt. Unfortunately, her full story cannot be told. As the war in Europe concluded, sensitive files retained by the Nazi regime were earmarked for destruction, and the records of German intelligence agents, held in Berlin and elsewhere, were allotted a high priority for disposal. It was a final undertaking to protect the identity of those individuals, and their masters in Berlin, who had served the Third Reich by way of espionage in foreign countries.

Since 1938, records from a variety of sources that would have assisted in providing a more meticulous insight into the lady and her espionage role in both Australia and occupied France have also been lost, or routinely removed in one way or another from public view. There remains, however, sufficient reliable material to support the book's conclusions.

I have withheld some personal names and locations. To cite details of those close to Annette Wagner, and who were probably unaware of her undercover enterprise, serves little purpose. To do so may, quite unintentionally, impact on those living today who are separated from this lady by only one generation. Had she lived, Annette would have celebrated her 100th birthday in 2012.

I have avoided the inducement of passing judgement on Annette. Whatever her motives, objectives and espionage results in Australia and France, she was also a lady who had previously offered her services, for an extended period and in unpretentious conditions, for the benefit of others less fortunate. In all probability, her decision to join German intelligence was motivated by a desire, misguided perhaps, to contribute to a political cause, the true intentions and end results of which could not be imagined in the late 1930s.

Many people alive today, advanced in age but with memories intact, will have nostalgic recollections of her name, heard on radio stations around Australia in 1938 and 1939. The revealing of the ‘broadcasting spy' and her contribution to the incessant debate on what is commonly referred to as
The Battle for Australia
, secures for Annette Wagner a modest, but enticing place in Australian history.

My key research source has been the file referenced Series A367, Item C67722 retained by the National Archives of Australia. This is the file to which I refer when stating, ‘the Military Intelligence file', ‘her file' or ‘the file'.

April 2000

Jack Clancy held his hand to his ear imitating a telephone call he had received in July 1946:

‘Would you like to know what happened to Annette Wagner?' he said while looking at me, smiling. The ‘caller' was a security officer who had met Jack in 1939 while working on the Wagner case.

‘We have just heard that she committed suicide by jumping out of a window in the Paris Police Headquarters. We believe the police were looking for her husband and asked her to come in for a talk. She ran over to a window and leapt out'.

The Annette Wagner affair was over. It was the final act in the life of the cryptic lady whose two years in Australia were marked by ambiguity, secrecy and a prolonged inconvenience to security organisations.

Visiting Jack for the last time was not comfortable. It never is when a family member has little time remaining. The visitor may be ill at ease on such occasions, as discussions usually relate to any subject except the reason for being there. But Jack's high spirits, mental alertness and sharp memory ensured that our final encounter would be far more interesting and memorable than I could have imagined.

While my formative years were shared with the better times and optimism of 1950s Australia, the experiences of my parent's generation were very different. Jack knew well the grave international uncertainties, the social costs and traumas of the Depression, and the events and states of affairs provided by World War II, and seeing his readiness to talk about old times, I was eager to listen – particularly regarding the mystery lady.