Hitler's Lost Spy (12 page)

Wagner and a German claiming to be a Socialist refugee named Kaemper are closely acquainted but do not admit this acquaintanceship in public, as for example, although they used the Clifton Gardens ferry, they never recognised each other. She has been seen to visit his shop (Hairdressers business in King Street).

The Kaemper connection with Annette had a further link. A Military Intelligence report dated 1 March 1939 stated:

The definite tie up between Wagner and Kaemper is now definitely established. During the weekend February 18th to 20th, Kaemper twice visited The Manor and had tea with Wagner. Dinah Marshall was with him on the first occasion, and Jean Morton was also present. This was February 18th. As far as is known on the 19th he went alone.

Three German sailors from the ‘Alster' are believed to have visited Kaemper on Sunday night and also Wagner (whose rooms are accessible at night). The sailors left by the 8:30 a.m. Clifton Gardens ferry on Monday morning. They may have spent the night with either Kaemper or Wagner.
¹¹

The two paragraphs quoted above prompt the question, ‘How did Military Intelligence know these details, particularly information from
The Manor
only obtainable from
within?
' The second paragraph is not very difficult, as an agent could spend an uncomfortable night in the bushes but have sufficient visibility to identify movements of individuals. The first was more complex, but this is explained in the opening sentence of an agent's report on Annette dated 14 February 1939:

At long last I have a contact living at ‘The Manor' …

It would appear that for some time the agent had been attempting to secure an insider for information on Annette, and had now succeeded. The individual's identity is unknown, and the motivation for providing the service may only be speculated upon, but the surveillance of Annette had now become very intimate indeed. We know that one female agent was on Annette's case, and there may have been others. A male agent would have had greater difficulty than a female in obtaining a contact from within
The Manor
. Negotiating through the dynamics of the various layers of female politics and personalities was women's business.

A Visit to the Steelworks

During the weekend of 10 and 11 June, 1939, Annette visited the largest employer in the city of Newcastle – the BHP Steelworks. The strategic significance of the steelworks was referred to earlier in this chapter, and this raises the puzzling question as to why a lady, with personal, social and professional interests seemingly incompatible with steel furnaces and coal dust, would have the interest in sharing a part of her limited spare time strolling through a large industrial complex.

There was another significant element in the visit to BHP – Annette did not go alone. She was accompanied by two German photographers. What access she had to the plant, and what opportunities were available to the photographers, cannot be determined. One likely consequence of the visit however, would have been an increasing suspicion attaching to Annette. This was not a ‘normal' exercise in enhancing Annette's general information portfolio. Her radio broadcasting would not have benefitted, and serious questions would have been raised about the intentions of the photographers. The BHP mission also added a further ‘unbecoming' 
ambiguity – an uncharacteristic interest in a strategic asset. The participation of the German photographers was something from which Annette would later unsuccessfully attempt to distance herself.

So why the BHP visit? The heart of German spy activity in foreign countries was the acquisition of comprehensive information, shrouding itself, to the point of overkill in any opportunity to obtain data of potential benefit. A significant emphasis was placed on commercial activity, much of which was not necessarily covert. Obtaining details on the inner workings of the steelworks may have been regarded by the Germans as 
‘routine foreign data collection', but did BHP have something that Krupp Steel was missing?

In the 1930s, BHP steel production was supported by the development and application of cutting-edge technology, with a remarkably flexible organisational expertise. These facts were probably known to the German agents responsible for organising the BHP tour. 
Any information of value Annette and the photographers succeeded in obtaining in Newcastle would be remitted back to German intelligence, retained for future reference in the economic section, then passed on for close examination by Krupp, or any other steelmaker in the Reich.

A further distinguishing feature of the BHP 
Steelworks was efficiency. Output per blast furnace was the highest in the world, well ahead of the German levels of steel production. BHP was also capable of effectively regulating output for demand. Annette made her visit when the steelworks were preparing for the needs of war, and shell production had commenced. Later, Owen guns, Bren guns and aircraft engine blocks were produced.

In the pre-war period it was difficult for industry to preserve secrecy on successful product development. 
The manufacturer needs to sell the product, and this usually means that buyers, or potential buyers, will be informed of the improvement – without the necessity of revealing the technical details behind the development. 
But commercial news has a history of travelling quickly, even in 1939. As competitors learn about it, efforts are made – by stealth if necessary – to gather data on new developments. Annette was called on to assist this process.

Enquiries at the Post Office

Using the Post Office for sending and receiving secret information would have suited Annette in the period prior to the beginning of the war. The transit time to the recipient may have been slow, but urgency was not entirely essential before hostilities dictated otherwise. 
Disregarding the slow transmission rate, the mailing of handwritten or typed coded messages offered an excellent system for a spy's communications. The security interception and examination of mail, as occurred with Annette's, may not yield any hint as to the
real
meaning of the contents where coded messages are produced with sufficient effort to resemble routine correspondence. However, it appears that Annette went a step further.

A summary report to Military Intelligence on Annette's history and associates while living in Australia includes:

It is understood that Annette is under close scrutiny by the Post Office on account of improper enquiries made by her.

We can only ponder on what the
improper enquiries
were. As she was placed under
close scrutiny
because of them, it is reasonable to suppose that whatever she asked was touching on the boundary of being illegal, or it was simply suspicious.

The monitoring of Annette's ‘unbecoming' conduct yielded a pattern markedly inconsistent with that of her 
‘other side'. Adding to these security concerns were other questionable episodes, varying in degrees of importance, recorded in her file. One disturbing incident recorded by Military Intelligence occurred seven weeks prior to her BHP visit. The implications of this affair were far-reaching, and considerably more dangerous for Australia than unknowingly sharing some steelworks technology.

For this important assignment, Annette needed an aeroplane and a trusted pilot. It was time to call on her friend, Jack Clancy.

FOOTNOTES

9
 Dr Ian Pfennigwerth – The Naval Heritage of Port Stephens, The Australian War Memorial 124, Item 3/59 Henderson Report Action Taken.

10
 Dr Ian Pfennigwerth - National Archives of Australia B197, Item 1851/2/17 – Port Stephens, Jervis Bay Remarks by 1st Naval Member.

11
 The impact of the Wagner-Kaemper relationship is detailed in Chapter 9.

At 11:00 am on Thursday, 20 April 1939, Annette Wagner commenced her weekly fifteen-minute program to listeners of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation through radio station 2FC. Sitting in a studio within the ABC's offices in William Street, Sydney, she began her prepared talk on extracts from the book
The Elephant's
Child
by the English writer, Rudyard Kipling.

The title of her address was
Kipling's Great Green-Grey
Greasy Limpopo
, referring to the book's description of the Limpopo River in north-eastern South Africa, an area with which Annette would have been familiar. It was another of the diverse and unique subjects Annette offered her listeners. At 9:30 that evening, on 2FC's sister station 2BL, she delivered her dialogue on
A Visit to
Zululand
. This was another commentary on her experiences in southern Africa, a destination many Australians could only relate to through knowledge of the Zulu wars with the British, and the Boer War. The previous week Annette's subject was
At the top of Europe's
highest mountain – Mont Blanc
¹²
, a further illustration of the 
variety of themes and locations she presented to her audiences.

Rudyard Kipling's vigorous description of the Limpopo River may have generated a mixed level of audience excitement, but the same could not be said for the lady behind the microphone. Annette Wagner, a suspected Nazi spy, had established a privileged reputation in a foreign land to the remarkable level that she now sat in a radio studio, with complete freedom of script preparation, within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's radio network. While most spies operating in ‘target' countries could only dream about the possibility of manipulating public radio for conveying coded information, Annette was actually
doing it.
Further, she was positioned on that day to do this from the government-owned radio stations. So while Annette was wooing the management of one government enterprise, she was being closely monitored by other government enterprises due to the accumulating suspicions of her secretive endeavours.

We don't know the intelligence agency to which Annette passed information, and it is likely she did not know either. But if this were the German military intelligence branch, the Abwehr, one can imagine its chief, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, sitting in his Berlin headquarters, and saying to his two dogs (which usually  
accompanied him to the office),
If only we had a few more in
a position like the one she is in
.

Annette's mood that day was probably more elevated than usual. She would have listened to broadcasts from Berlin detailing the preparations for the massive military parade to commemorate the Führer's 50th birthday to take place later that same day, European time. A public holiday had been declared in Germany for the occasion. 
As Annette was delivering her Kipling talk, prime viewing positions on the parade's route in Berlin were already being occupied by the early arrivals of the huge crowd that would number some hundreds of thousands. 
Hitler was
Time
magazine's Man of the Year for 1938. 
She would have known that the current weekly edition of that same international magazine featured Heinrich Himmler on the front cover. Germany's rise from the ashes appeared unstoppable and Annette's contribution to the cause was sanctioned by substantial, and on balance, favourable media reviews in most Western countries. While the civilised world shuffled uncomfortably from the less attractive features of Nazi politics there was, nevertheless, from those same nations, a reserved envy when observing the economic and social progress in Hitler's Germany.

Annette's public logo was exceptional for her time. 
Extensive travel and work experiences in England, Switzerland, Egypt, southern Africa and Madagascar all enhanced her apparent outer shell – attractive, tastefully dressed, intelligent, well-mannered all with a pleasant temperament. To those who met her, she almost certainly would have presented as an unusually interesting lady. To French-speaking Jack Clancy, also well-travelled for his age and era, Annette would have been cast as a unique discussion partner.

But accompanying this same charming lady was a calculated deceptiveness. As she politely signed off her Kipling's
Limpopo
talk, her thoughts would not have been far from a very different assignment, due to commence in less than forty-eight hours. This new undertaking would be on behalf of a very different audience to that of the ABC, as the results of Annette's mission would be directed to members of the Japanese Imperial Army Headquarters, located inside the grounds of the royal palace in Tokyo.

The task passed to Annette required a secretive preparation strategy. It would have been conceived in Tokyo, passed on to the Japanese Consulate in Sydney, then possibly to Walter Ladendorff (who was regularly visiting the Consulate), who would select an agent to manage the plan and the personnel required. Annette would have then entered the cast of operatives. Having prepared the blueprint and people, the plan specifics were addressed and these would have been precise but uncomplicated. The potential trouble spot for the project lay not in its execution, but in managing the preliminary arrangements to avoid any uninvited interest. How Annette had received her instructions is unknown, but it is likely that the German agent in control had made contact with Annette's controller and her suitability confirmed – this being with or without her knowledge.

As noted earlier, the volume of Japanese interest in the Newcastle area during the 1930s was deemed by Security as being unusually high. Undoubtedly, some part of the camera clicking was destined for the mapping tables of both the Japanese army and navy. In April 1939 
there probably remained outstanding the vital harbour details that could only be collectively displayed and detailed by way of aerial photography. With war rumblings then permeating throughout Europe, the need was to now undertake the task of collecting the required photographic material – for future reference. Delaying the undertaking may incur a significant obstacle should Germany be at war with Britain and German agents in Australia lose their freedom of movement, and thus their direct association with Japanese spies.