Oster, Maj-General Hans

Oster, Maj-General Hans (1888–1945),anti-Nazi member of the German Abwehr which he joined in May 1933 after being forced to resign from the German Army because of an illicit love affair. Canaris had him readmitted to the officer corps and made him his deputy in 1938. Though they were close friends and political allies before the war—when they planned to remove Hitler by a coup d'état—Canaris was later alienated by what he regarded as Oster's brand of reckless treachery.

In May 1940, via the Dutch military attaché in Berlin, Colonel J. G. Sas, Oster gave last-minute invasion warnings, mostly ignored, to Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The fact that he had the Abwehr's communications network at his disposal, his own extensive ring of agents, and connections in the highest places, make it quite likely that he was the LUCY Ring's most valuable source called Werther. He also used various organizations abroad, which were under Abwehr protection, to help some Jews escape the Final Solution, and for this he was suspended from duty in April 1943. He was later implicated in the July 1944 bomb plot to assassinate Hitler (see Schwarze Kapelle), and was arrested and executed in April 1945.