Englandspiel (
Spiel, game), codename for German Sicherheitsdienst (see
RSHA) counter-intelligence operation, called NORDPOL (North Pole) by the
Abwehr, which, between March 1942 and November 1943, deluded
SOE into believing their network of agents in the Netherlands had not been penetrated. It was probably the best-known
Funkspiel (radio game) the Germans played, but far from being the only one.
By March 1942 six SOE and eight
MI6 agents had been landed in the Netherlands; five of them had been captured, two from SOE and three from MI6. One of these, an SOE radio operator named Hubert Lauwers, was used by Lt-Colonel Hermann Giskes, the head of the
Abwehr in the Netherlands, and by Major Josef Schreieder of the
RSHA's Sicherheitsdienst to transmit messages to London.
This was an eventuality both SOE and MI6 had allowed for by issuing each agent with a security check, usually a deliberate spelling mistake. When Giskes had, earlier in the month, tried to start a
Spiel using one of the captured MI6 operators he had failed to get any response from London because the operator, Willem van der Reyden, had not revealed his security check.
But when Lauwers' message arrived without his security check in place the head of SOE's Dutch section, Major Charles Blizard, accepted it as authentic, and began passing messages to Lauwers which, of course, fell into German hands. This resulted in all but two of the remaining agents being arrested. One of them, a radio operator called Hendrik Jordaan, denied having a security check and refused to send any messages. So when a German operator transmitted a message in his name it, too, failed to contain the correct security check. But again Blizard ignored the warning and compounded his error by signalling Jordaan to instruct his new operator in the use of his security check, which only resulted in Jordaan being forced to reveal it.
Giskes and Schreieder were now able to pick up every agent whose arrival was announced to Lauwers and Jordaan and this gave them another three radio links. It also resulted in the capture, on 27 June 1942, of George Jambroes and his radio operator, who were involved in ‘Plan for Holland’, the blueprint for a 1,000-strong Dutch resistance network. This had been drawn up by SOE in collaboration with Colonel M. R. de Bruyne, head of special operations for the Dutch
government-in-exile, and it was later expanded by de Bruyne's ‘Plan B’ which envisaged a 10,000-strong resistance network.
To help implement these plans a further 27 agents were dropped by SOE between September 1942 and May 1943, as were nine others on different missions. All were captured, enabling Giskes and Schreieder to increase their contact with London to several different links. At least four of the messages transmitted to London by these links excluded the security checks of their operators, and Lauwers also tried to reveal his predicament by twice using the word ‘caught’ as the jumble of letters that, as a security measure, preceded and ended all messages. But despite these attempts to warn London, Blizard, and his successor from February 1943, Major Seymour Bingham, continued to transmit messages to the captured agents.
Early in 1943 Bingham, and then de Bruyne, did begin to have doubts about the Dutch network but neither acted when in June a message—admittedly rather garbled—was received from a Dutch resistance leader that eight agents had been ‘arrested weeks ago’. And when, during the summer, Giskes and Schreieder faked a series of sabotage attacks in the Netherlands it apparently assured Bingham that his agents were still free and working successfully.
In November 1943, the same month as the RAF demanded an investigation into the loss of so many aircraft during Dutch clandestine missions, the Dutch legation in Berne reported that two of the captured agents had escaped to Switzerland. Though they revealed the existence of the
Funkspiel, Bingham remained unconvinced anything was amiss, especially when the Germans radioed London that the two agents had not really escaped at all but had been returned to the fold as
double agents. When the two escapers eventually arrived in the UK in February 1944 the authorities, erring on the side of caution, imprisoned them. By then, however, the Joint Intelligence Committee (see
UK, 8) had concluded that penetration of the Dutch network had probably occurred and further communications with it were forbidden. On 1 April 1944 Giskes broke off contact with a mocking message. Although
Englandspiel had been a great tactical success, it had not produced the strategic secret he sought, the date and place of the Allied invasion of Europe (see
OVERLORD).
Englandspiel not only cost the lives of 54 agents—most of whom suffered terrible deaths in
concentration camps—but those of a number of other Dutch civilians and about 50 RAF personnel. It also caused havoc in two French resistance networks when, through information received by the
Funkspiel, Giskes was able to penetrate their organizations. As a result at least 132 people lost their lives and many others were arrested.
After the war there was a Dutch parliamentary commission of investigation, but it discovered neither treachery nor duplicity.
Bibliography
Foot, M. R. D. , SOE in the Low Countries (London, 2001).
