Handbook for Spies

by Foote Alexander

It was news to me that this was in fact a scheme. At our last meeting Sonia had told me to keep a general eye on Hitler's movements, but in the subsequent two months the idea had burgeoned in the eyes of the Kremlin into a full-blown scheme for assassination with Bill and me apparently cast for the principal roles. We were neither of us very willing actors as neither of us really fancied a martyr's crown- especially since on the face of it the scheme appeared suicidal and doomed to failure. We did feel, however, that in fairness to our employers, who, after all, had been paying us for some months with little or no return for their money, it behoved us to look into the matter- and the result was not unpromising.

It was not necessary to reconnoitre the field because I knew the restaurant extremely well. Hitler always lunched in a private room which was separated only by a thin wooden partition from the corridor leading from the restaurant to the lavatories. It was along this partition that the coats of the customers were hung. As far as we could gather there was no special surveillance of the place and no extra precautions were put into force when the Fuehrer honoured it with his presence. What could be easier, we argued, than to put a time bomb in an attaché case along with our coats and, having had an early lunch, abandon the lot in the hope that the bomb would blow Hitler and his entourage, snugly lunching behind the deal boarding, into eternity. Looking back on the scheme now, it appears to me to have been well-nigh foolproof. It also bears a startling resemblance to the July 1944 attempt by Stauffenberg. In his case wooden partitions caused the scheme to fail: the blast escaped and Hitler survived. We were too innocent then to know of the niceties of explosives, but as the other three walls were solid Bavarian stone it seems likely that we might have been successful. But the whole affair never got further than the planning stage. It is easy enough as an officer cadet to plan a Tactical Exercise without Troops. It is equally easy as a cadet spy to plan a Sabotage Exercise without Explosives. In both cases the individual has the power and not the ultimate responsibility. The officer cadet will blithely throw away a company in a dashing assault on an impregnable position, knowing that the worst that can befall him is a low mark. Similarly we planned the operation knowing that the worst that could befall us would be a sour look from Sonia.

Determined, however, to earn our keep, on paper if not in practice, we went even further and planned an alternative scheme which involved assassination in its more traditional character- by revolver rather than T.N.T. It was Hitler's habit to proceed down the restaurant en route to his private room, acknowledging the plaudits of the lunchers who, not unnaturally, rose to their feet on the entrance of the head of the state. One day Bill stationed himself at the table next to the gangway, and as Hitler approached put his hand rapidly and furtively into his pocket- and drew out a cigarette case. I on the other side of the room watched the reactions of Hitler's entourage and the rest of the lunchers among whom one imagined there must have been a fair sprinkling of trigger-happy Gestapo agents. Nothing whatever happened. No reaction was visible- though to my heated imagination no action could have looked more suspicious. Looking back on this, it all seems incredibly jejune- even though Bill's act required a considerable amount of personal courage as, if the guards had been alert, it would have been small comfort to him to have been beaten to the draw- of a cigarette.

With such innocent sports Bill and I whiled away our ' time in Munich together. He had little more to do in Frankfurt than I had in Munich, and preferred to come down and see me so that we could do nothing together.

In May I met Sonia again at Vevey at the end of the three months' period. She urged me to go on with further plans for the Hitler assassination plot. I agreed to look into the matter in greater detail, which I had no intention whatsoever of doing. There was no more planning to be done- all that was necessary was an explosive suitcase or a potential suicide- and Sonia's network could provide neither. I returned to a Germany where such plots were still only in the backs of the minds of German generals.

There was one more sabotage exercise during our German period. This scheme was born of Bill's enthusiasm for his job. He had discovered that there was a Zeppelin in a hangar close to Frankfurt and conceived the brilliant notion of burning it up. I never saw it, and Bill's description was confused, but I have always imagined that it was the Graf Zeppelin, which was frequently paraded round Germany on show. Bill said that it would be perfectly easy to put a time bomb with a slow fuse in a cigarette packet under one of the seats and let it and the hydrogen in the envelope do the rest. The next step was of course the manufacture of an incendiary mixture. Sonia had given me instructions in the compounding of an efficient incendiary mixture from chemicals which could be bought easily and openly. After this lapse of time I am vague as to the formula but remember that sugar, aluminium powder, and charcoal were among the ingredients. A moderately accurate time fuse was not difficult to make with two chemicals separated by a division which would be dissolved by acid action in a specified length of time depending on the thickness of the partition. Bill and I conducted simple but satisfactory experiments in a secluded meadow near Munich. However, I was not at all convinced that it would set fire to the leather cushion of the seat in the Zeppelin under which it would have to be concealed. I was also under the impression; I believe now wrongly, that they used helium rather than hydrogen filling for the envelope with the result that we would have to rely on the combustion of the interior fittings alone with no assistance from the gas in the envelope. Before I could go further with my experiments I was summoned to Vevey to an emergency meeting with Sonia. This was in August and coincided with Bill's routine visit at the end of his three months' period.

Sonia was extremely excited over the scheme- even more so than she had been over the Hitler plot. We discussed the whole thing at length, walking up and down the front at Vevey. Sonia was convinced that it would work. I was equally certain that the whole thing would be a flop from the start and that even if the bomb could be planted unobserved the incendiary mixture would ignite nothing save itself.

Ultimately Sonia invited me back to her home so that we could try out the mixture in peace and quiet. This was the first time that I had been asked to her house. Previously we had always met at agreed rendezvous, and I felt that it was a step forward in my initiation into the network. Sonia lived in a modest little chalet at Caux sur Montreux with her two children and her old German nurse. As pretty a domestic, bourgeois atmosphere as one could find anywhere. The only slightly incongruous note was struck by the two bits of her wireless transmitter, which at that time, with incredible carelessness; she used to leave lying about the house. Not at all the setup one would expect for a Russian agent of long standing.

After dinner we adjourned to the loggia to test out the bomb. We placed the mixture underneath one of Sonia's sofa cushions which she sacrificed for the purpose. As I had thought, the only result was a large quantity of black smoke and an unholy stink. By mutual agreement no further mention was made of the Zeppelin scheme.

But while we had been indulging in amateur pyrotechnics, fireworks on a larger and more European scheme began to go off. About August 23 I was ordered to return to my post in Munich. I boarded the train for Germany in Lausanne but almost before I had settled down and before the train was fairly under way, to my astonishment Sonia entered the carriage and sat down opposite. Luckily the only other occupant left for a few moments and in a hurried whisper Sonia told me that she felt certain that Great Britain would fight and that despite Moscow's orders it would be better for me to delay my return until things became a little clearer one way or the other. We arranged a series of rendezvous on alternate days in Berne, and I left the train and returned to Montreux.