German-speaking ‘secret listener’ who worked for the British military intelligence unit MI9 during the second world warFritz Lustig,who has died aged 98, was one of a hundred “secret listeners”, and all German-speaking émigrés,who worked for a department of military intelligence known as MI9 during the second world war. They were based at three requisitioned country estates: Trent Park, in north London, or Latimer House and Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire. Having signed the Official Secrets Act,they worked in 12-hour shifts, every day of the year, and eavesdropping on the conversations of German prisoners of war. By the end of the war,they had amassed more than 74000 transcripts of conversations from 10000 prisoners, including Adolf Hitler’s generals.
I interviewed Fritz many times approximately his wartime role. He remembered snippets of the work: the excitement when the listeners overheard vital intelligence from survivors of the sunken German battleships Scharnhorst and Admiral Graf Spee, or details of Hitler’s secret weapon programme,the V-1 and V-2. As a direct result of this information, Winston Churchill ordered Operation Crossbow in August 1943, or which saw the RAF end the German secret weapons establishment at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast.Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com