4 March 2008 releases: Soviet intelligence agents and suspected agents

Duke Charles Alexander Wurttemburg, aka Father Odo

File ref KV 2/2772

This slim, reconstituted and weeded file gives intriguing glimpses into the inter-war and wartime activities of the former Duke of Wurttemburg, who took holy orders after the First World War as Dom Odo. Though listed here as a suspected Communist agent, the file shows considerable uncertainty as to his true status. He figures as a leading figure in the Catholic Refugee Committee, but is also suspected on the file as a diplomatic agent of the Vatican, a leading figure in the German monarchist movement, and as a spokesman for dissatisfied German generals in 1940 (summary, serial 12a); but the file also speculates that he was the "chief Gestapo agent in Switzerland" (serial 13a), and includes press cuttings identifying him as Hitler's secret peace envoy to the United States. While in the UK in 1939 and 1940 he is recorded as having meetings with his relative Queen Mary, and also Baldwin. Amongst all this, the most curious feature of the file is perhaps the revelation that Father Odo, in his guise of work for Catholic Refugees, had been helpful to the British authorities, and that as a result they discussed ways that he could be assisted in avoiding the worst consequences of the colour markings on his registration book which identified him as an alien while in the United Kingdom.

Gerhart Eisler

File ref KV 2/2773-2774

Eisler, who was supposed by many to be the covert leader and director of the Communist Party in America during and after the Second World War, became the centre of a diplomatic incident in 1949 when, having stowed away on a Polish ship out of New York, he was forcibly removed and arrested in Southampton. This file documents the Security Service's involvement in the case. The earliest traces of Eisler in the file (KV 2/2773, 1936-1949) date from 1936, when Comintern efforts to secure a false American passport in the name of Edwards were reported. In 1947 information obtained from Eisler's former wife, Hedwiga Messing, suggested that Eisler had used this cover name in New York in 1934.

However, it is not really until Eisler arrived in America in 1941 as a refugee that systematic reporting of his activity is made. Working as a journalist, Eisler was reported to be leading the Communist Party covertly. Having avoided calls to give evidence, he was arrested and brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee in February 1947. He refused to testify, and was jailed, and on release was re-arrested for deportation in February 1948. It was while the deportation legal processes dragged on that in May 1949 he stowed away on the SS Batory, which was heading for Gdynia via Southampton and Le Havre. British police forcibly removed him from the ship and he was arrested (there is an account of the arrest at serial 56a). The subsequent court hearings established convincingly that he had not committed any crime in Britain and could not be extradited to America, but in the interim, there were vigorous public demonstrations against his arrest and a diplomatic row between Britain and Poland.

The Service file holds copies of the petition cards calling for Eisler's release distributed by the Communist Party in Sheffield (serial 63z) and includes intercepted communications of British Communists discussing events. Eisler was freed at the end of May, and his intercepted correspondence notes his views on the differences between the UK and America (serial 67z): "What strikes me at once coming from America is the absence of that hysterical warmongering practiced in America. Whether this is a happier state of affairs is another question. Evidently one dare not spread such exaggerated rumours among the English." This file includes one photograph of Eisler, at serial 52a, used to aid in identifying him on the boat at Southampton.

KV 2/2774 (1942-1958) includes further, better quality photographs (serial 155a), and covers Eisler's departure form the UK for Poland and eventually East Germany, where after apologising for his transgressions while living in the West, he re-entered German political life. This file goes some way to refute claims that the crew of the SS Batory tried to hide Eisler from the authorities - for it is clear that it was the crew who reported Eisler as a stowaway, when, after the ship left port, he tried himself to purchase a ticket from the purser. The file on Eisler's brother, the composer Johann, was released to The National Archives in 2005.

Michail Kotschesch

File ref KV 2/2775

This reconstituted file is in all likelihood the first released by the Security Service relating to a triple agent. It consists principally of the interrogation report of Waldemar Bartsch taken in 1946. Bartsch had been Kotschesch's handler when the Germans attempted to play him back against the Russians in 1944-1945, so the story is told very much from the German point of view - but it seems not improbably that Kotschesch may have in turn been working as a triple cross agent for the Russians all the while.

Kotschesch was a Hungarian who, having been drafted to fight on the Eastern front, was captured in mid-1942. The Russians picked him from a prisoner of war camp to be trained as an agent, and according to the tale as related by Bartsch, he was dropped by parachute into Hungary in 1944, handed himself in to the Hungarian police and admitted to being a Russian agent but saying he wanted instead to be played back as a double agent. The Russian plan was that he should eventually begin covertly introducing real information into the false intelligence the Germans provided him with. The Hungarians handed his case on to the Germans who then did use Kotschesch as a double agent.

Though there is no conclusive proof on the file, it seems possible that Kotschesch stayed true to the original Russian plan and may indeed have fed them real intelligence as a triple agent, unbeknown to the Germans. The file includes the text of his sent messages, as provided by Bartsch.