The Hornet's Sting (28 page)
Read The Hornet's Sting Online
Authors: Mark Ryan
Tags: #World War; 1939-1945 - Secret Service - Denmark, #Sneum; Thomas, #World War II, #Political Freedom & Security, #True Crime, #World War; 1939-1945, #Underground Movements, #General, #Denmark - History - German Occupation; 1940-1945, #Spies - Denmark, #Secret Service, #World War; 1939-1945 - Underground Movements - Denkamrk, #Political Science, #Denmark, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #Spies, #Intelligence, #Biography, #History
Sneum hid in a doorway and watched with disgust as the beatings increased in ferocity. Still the police failed to restore order, however. As word spread of the brutality that had accompanied the government’s signing of the pact, the ordinary citizens of Copenhagen became more irate. Huge crowds expressed anti-German feelings that had festered among many for more than a year and there were serious disturbances in the city center all night. Outside the Hotel d’Angleterre, where Sneum had dreamed of assassinating a top Nazi, the people sang Allied songs, such as the old British soldiers’ favorite ‘Tipperary.’ Even when arrested and thrown into cells, they refused to fall silent, singing ‘God Save the King’ and other pro-British anthems until their defiance rang in the ears of their captors.
The following day, students were threatened with expulsion from the universities if they didn’t leave the streets and come to order. Although there was more trouble that night, most felt they had made their point and peace was restored after two momentous days.
Sneum wanted to communicate these events to London, just as Rabagliati would have expected him to, but he didn’t have any crystals to use with his radio set. He didn’t know what the solution might be, but he did know that it was time to make contact with the chief engineer from Bang and Olufsen.
In the first week of December Tommy called Werner Gyberg and asked him to arrange a meeting with Lorens Arne Duus Hansen. Gyberg told him to go to Kongens Nytorv and siton the bench furthest from the Hotel d’Angleterre. At 2.00 p.m. Duus Hansen would introduce himself.
There were sixteen benches in Kongens Nytorv, or the New Royal Market, forming a circle around the central monument, a magnificent statue of King Christian V on horseback. Tommy walked to the appointed one and sat down. Even though he had previously socialized in many bars with the German occupying forces, he felt strangely conspicuous now. Stripped of direct contact and beer as a prop, he worried in case his presence seemed suspicious, and he had the sensation that his loitering would be noticed. Even sitting as far away from German Headquarters as possible, he knew he could still be observed from the windows of the hotel. Across the road, the tall masts of sailing ships towered majestically above beer-drinkers in quayside bars, just as they had done for nearly three hundred years. Nyhavn (Newhaven) had once been home to Hans Christian Andersen, and now it almost seemed to be stretching the imagination too far that a city occupied by Nazis could still have a tourist district. Sneum sat and waited for Duus Hansen, rehearsing what he would say. He remembered: ‘It was a sunny winter’s day and Duus Hansen had been told exactly which bench I was sitting on, because it is a bloody big square. He came down from his office, just a couple of hundred meters away, and when I caught sight of him I got a good feeling.’ A smartlooking forty-year-old approached Sneum’s bench, and his honest-looking face convinced Tommy to trust him. There was something reassuring about Duus Hansen from the start, an unspoken integrity.
The pair walked and chatted, telling each other a little about what they had done since the Nazis had invaded. Sneum was surprised by his own reaction to a man he hardly knew. ‘We got on from the moment we met,’ he recalled. ‘I had complete confidence in Duus and spoke openly to him, and he spoke openly to me, and already we were friends.’
Then, just when all appeared to be well, Duus Hansen dropped a bombshell: ‘Another man, called Christophersen, has been to see me in the last few days. He claims he is the brother of one of the workers at Gyberg and Jensen. He wanted me to help him too; he seemed desperate. He had crystals but no radio.’
Sneum smiled. ‘I have the radio. I didn’t trust him.’
Later Duus Hansen revealed what he had been told by each spy sent from Britain:
The first with whom I came into contact was Christophersen, who told me that he and a comrade had been dropped into the country to gather information and build an organization. From England he had brought some quartz crystals together with an incomplete connecting and signal plan. He did not have a transmitter, he explained, because he had thrown it overboard while on a ferry to Fyn, thinking he was being followed. But he had saved the crystals, he claimed, which was the most important thing. So I started to construct a transmitter which suited the given crystals.
Even before the transmitter was ready, however, I was contacted by Werner Gyberg, a business associate, to say that he had been visited by another agent who had been parachuted in, a Lieutenant Sneum. He told both Gyberg and I that we shouldn’t deal with Christophersen, whom Sneum said was highly unreliable as an organizer and did not possess the personal courage needed to fulfil the obligations he had been given.
Since the conversation had turned to matters of personal courage,Duus Hansen decided to be disarmingly honest with Tommy, who explained: ‘This man would go on to become one of the biggest figures in the resistance, if not the biggest. But the important thing was that even at the start of his involvement, when we met, he knew his value and he knew his limits. He said that he had heard about the torture methods the Germans used, and that he didn’t know how he would react, but that he would do his best.’
Tommy felt this admission was a world away from Christophersen’s casual confession, after being recruited by the British, that he would cooperate freely with the Germans if he felt in any real danger. Duus Hansen was simply expressing every man’s fear—that he might break down under torture. He was aware of his responsibility, as a potential new recruit, to air such concerns at the outset. Making clear that he would try to hold out when subjected to excruciating pain, but didn’t know how long his bravery would allow him to do so, showed commendable honesty.
‘We all have our limits,’ said Sneum supportively. ‘We all have those feelings.’
The Germans knew it only too well. Vestre Prison in Copenhagen would become the scene of some horrendous torture later in the war. Even at this stage, in other occupied territories the Nazis were already infamous for putting matches under fingernails before pulling them off completely. They used thumb screws and tongs to distort and crush the fingers themselves. If that didn’t crack a prisoner’s resolve, they would not hesitate to use the tongs on the testicles of their victims. Some of the most stubborn characters were also softened up with relentless beatings. Although this had not yet happened in Denmark, where the Abwehr and their disciples among the Danish police currently dealt with subversion, Sneum knew that the Gestapo would introduce their sadistic methods sooner or later. Long after the war, Tommy admitted: ‘I was afraid more often than people seem to realize. Some resistance people went into interrogations as men and came out as vegetables. Who wouldn’t have been afraid? I suppressed my fear, and as a result there were those who thought I was a coldblooded fellow, someone who even liked the idea of killing people. But I hated it all.’
Back in Copenhagen on that sunny early winter day, Duus Hansen was allowed to see more of the real Tommy Sneum in the space of a few minutes than many others ever came to know. Each of them had admitted that he was not a superhero. This created trust and, on that basis, Duus Hansen said he was more than happy to work with Tommy. However, he wanted to maintain his anonymity in all his dealings with London, since he didn’t know the spymasters there. Sneum saw the logic of that condition and agreed to it.
Duus Hansen remembered listening to Sneum’s condemnation of Christophersen and believed his criticism to be justified:
From his explanation I realized that Sneum was the man to build up the intelligence organization, for he had only brought Christophersen along as a telegrapher, and therefore Christophersen was in no position to do something on his own because Sneum was his superior. Sneum said that the story about the transmitter being lost on the way to Jutland was wrong, and that he had taken it into his possession, but he was missing the crystals. That meant the crystals and transmitter were safe.
The engineer knew he would be able to unite the two, and Tommy wasn’t about to squander the opportunity to bring a true radio expert on board. This decision would have long-term benefits for British radio communications behind enemy lines, because Duus Hansen’s innovative genius took the design of transmitters to a new level.
When he examined Sneum’s transmitter, he found the technology laughable: ‘A closer look at the transmitter showed that it was not fit for purpose, and it was necessary to build a new transmitter.’ Duus Hansen knew he could create a far more effective radio set which weighed less than a tenth of the cumbersome and primitive British model. His account suggests that he met with Christophersen and persuaded the nervous telegrapher to loan him the vital crystals, however temporarily. For, within seventy-two hours, Duus Hansen had not only constructed the new radio, but also teamed up with Sneum for transmission. Duus Hansen confirmed of that new partnership: ‘As soon as I had built the new transmitter, we tried to contact England.’ They worked enthusiastically, transmitting Tommy’s first-hand account of the Anti-Comintern Pact riots. As usual, there was no reply, but for the first time Sneum was confident that his message had reached London.
At the end of the war, when Duus Hansen was recommended for the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), his file mentioned the first meeting with Sneum:
He [Duus Hansen] succeeded in establishing contact with a man sent from Britain by parachute in 1941. There were two Danish parachutists who went to London and came back to Denmark and [Duus Hansen] contacted them. They carried a radio transmitter with them, but could not operate it because they were not very experienced. They were trying to establish contact with London. [Duus Hansen] asked them if he could repair their sets and work and operate them without London knowing about it. This was the start.
In reality, of course, Sigfred and Tommy made contact with Duus Hansen, not vice versa. But it was Tommy alone who gained his trust, so he was perfectly justified in insisting later:
I recruited Duus Hansen. He would not have become a member of the resistance at that time without me, because he was worried about Sigfred Christophersen. It was because Duus and I got on so well that I was lucky enough to be able to benefit from his help on a regular basis, and that led him to maintain his relationship with the British for the rest of the war.
Others agreed. Although the distinguished Danish historian Joergen Haestrup never accused Christophersen of losing his nerve, he did strongly suggest that the radio operator was responsible for the collapse of the partnership with Sneum:
Sneum’s presence in Denmark was still unknown to the Abwerhstelle. Nevertheless, his mission met serious difficulties, partly because the cooperation between him and Christophersen broke down. There can be no doubt that this was through no fault of Sneum’s. Reports from two men, Duus Hansen and the merchant Werner Gyberg, who worked with Sneum and Christophersen, are unanimous on this point.
In short, Sigfred Christophersen acted unprofessionally, while Thomas Sneum commanded more respect and generated more trust.
Although he was instantly impressed by the engineer, not even Sneum could have foreseen the impact Duus Hansen would have on the Second World War. Growing in confidence, he went on to become head of radio communications for the Danish resistance and the focal point for most British contact. Fortunately, London soon came to appreciate his worth.
In the summer of 1943, Duus Hansen invented the ‘Telephone Book’ radio set, so-called because the engineer managed to pack a great deal of superb technology into a very small space. The radio was a spy’s dream in Nazi-occupied Europe, more practical and effective than anything British experts had devised. It weighed just one and a half kilograms, making it far more suitable for work in the field.