Hitler's Spies in Great Britain | Operation Lena

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After Operation Sea Lion, the German plan for the invasion of the United Kingdom was written out by the German High Command, they realized they barely had any intelligence officers in Britain, and they weren’t sure what was going on across the English Channel. They thought up Operation Lena, and its purpose was to establish a network of Abwehr agents in Britain. It would be one of the most disastrous intelligence missions the Nazi regime would undertake during the Second World War.

When the invasion plan of Britain, codenamed ‘Unternehmen Seelöwe’ or ‘Operation Sea Lion’, was established, most senior German military commanders weren’t exactly thrilled, especially the navy. Many ships were lost during ‘Operation Weserübung’, the invasion of Denmark and Norway, and the Royal British Fleet outmatched the Kriegsmarine in virtually everything. Furthermore, the Wehrmacht voiced complaints that in order for troops to cross the English channel, both air and sea protection was required to hold back imminent British attacks. Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe ought to obtain absolute control over the skies before Sea Lion could be launched, according to the Kriegsmarine and Wehrmacht. Göring accepted the task, though the Luftwaffe wasn’t suited to wage battle on its own, and Hitler voiced his complaints that “while the occupied territories were divided from Britain by a 23-mile channel, they did not even know what was going on there”. The lack of accurate intelligence could be fatal, and a plan was devised by the Abwehr to send secret agents to Britain.

In July 1940, Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, Heinz Piekenbrock, a Wehrmacht general and Erwin von Lahousen, a high ranking Abwehr official, attended the conference that outlined Sea Lion. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and Hitler himself pressed the men to find spies to gather intelligence in Britain, which Canaris thought was a suicide mission, as he could not suddenly conjure up agents. Resisting the orders wasn’t an option, and as such, men were recruited to become Abwehr Spies in what would become known as Operation Lena.

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Time Codes:

0:41 Operation Sea Lion (Unternehmen Seelöwe)
2:27 The London Brothel
3:54 Abwehr Agents in Great-Britain
6:45 Double Agents Jeff and Mutt

Sources:

Christer Jörgensen. Spying for the Führer (Berlin, 2014).
T. Crowdy. Deceiving Hitler: Double-Cross and Deception in World War II (Bloomsbury, 2011).

Photos, paintings and imagery: Public Domain, Wikicommons

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