Spying for Hitler

The Welsh Double-Cross

By John Humphries

University of Wales Press

Copyright © 2012 John Humphries
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7083-2520-9

Contents

Foreword,
Index to persons in narrative,
List of illustrations,
Introduction,
1 Operation Crowhurst,
2 Wales Ready!,
3 The Interrogation,
4 If the Invader Comes,
5 Double-Cross, Philately and Submarines,
6 The Cuban Connection,
7 Key to the Diplomatic Bag,
8 The Confession,
9 Inside Alcazar’s Spanish Spy Ring,
10 The Malta Convoy and Sinking of Ark Royal,
11 The Man from Brazil,
12 The Aftermath,
Conclusion,
Notes,
Select Bibliography,

CHAPTER 1

OPERATION CROWHURST

WHEN INSPECTOR GWILYM WILLIAMS retired shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War his only claim to fame after twenty-nine years in the Swansea Constabulary was a commendation for stopping a runaway horse. That was until September 1939 when MI5’s counter-espionage branch sent him to Belgium to infiltrate German military intelligence (the Abwehr) by posing as a Welsh nationalist fanatic and leader of a group of extremists prepared to collaborate in sabotaging the British war effort. Williams avoided politics even after retiring for fear that to become involved would breach the terms and conditions affecting his pension. But he did agree to join Plaid Cymru on the instructions of his MI5 controller in order to reinforce a cover story that would thrust him into the cockpit of the espionage war between Britain and Germany.

Apart from a career as a policeman, Williams had no obvious qualifications for his new role as one of the founding members of MI5’s Double-Cross System, the section inside counter-espionage’s B Branch for turning captured enemy spies into British double agents. Before setting out on his mission the only coaching Williams received was in memorising the names of prominent members of the Welsh nationalist party until able to recite them like a catechism. His cover story for offering his services to the Abwehr was that it was too good a chance to miss: that his Welsh nationalist friends had been waiting years for such an opportunity. If asked who had sent him Williams was to say he was replacing ‘WW’, the code name for an agent the Germans believed they had inside Plaid Cymru, unaware that the man was in fact a British MI5 officer. He was to tell his interrogators that no one apart from WW knew of his visit to Brussels. If faced with any awkward questions from Abwehr officers MI5 advised Williams to create some additional thinking time to reply by asking ‘What?’ or ‘I beg your pardon?’ so that the question had to be repeated. This was the only training Williams received for the first exercise in strategic deception undertaken by MI5 following the outbreak of war.

On leaving the police force Williams had become a private inquiry agent investigating divorce cases not very different to his own after his first wife was caught by police colleagues fornicating with a soldier in a shop doorway late at night. It was the First World War and Williams was serving in France with the Military Foot Police, otherwise known as the ‘Redcaps’, sometimes portrayed with pistol in hand forcing shell-shocked ‘Tommies’ back to the trenches. Demobbed in 1919, his marriage in ruins, Williams had a variety of lodgings before marrying divorcée Mrs Winifred Amelia Thomas in 1932 and moving into 43 Mount Pleasant, an elegant semi-detached house on one of those steep roads climbing out of Swansea Bay like the fingers of an upraised hand.