This edited article about espionage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

The famous World War Two spy, Violette Szabo, was trapped by an advance guard of the German army

The cinema and the spy thriller have given us a highly coloured picture of the secret agent at work. Armed with a veritable arsenal of fancy equipment, ranging from cameras in cigarette lighters to seemingly innocuous items which turn out to be something capable of blowing up a building, the secret agent of fiction wanders around the world, gaily taking everything in his stride. The truth is something rather different.

The secret agent, which is really a more polite term for a spy, has been with us for a long, long time, and for most of that time his work has been lonely and boring. But, of course, it was still not without its dangers, as we will show you in this new series.

Espionage, in war and in peace, is almost as old as man himself. Certainly it began much earlier than the times of the Old Testament in which it is recorded that Moses sent 12 spies into the land of Canaan. Four thousand years ago, the Egypt of the Pharaohs had a highly sophisticated espionage network in its conquered territories. And espionage has never lacked for its practitioners at any time in history, even though, when caught, the spy can always be certain of two things – that he will be disowned by his masters and that he will be imprisoned or executed.

Probably the most illustrious of all ancient spies was Mithridates, who became king of Pontus in Asia Minor when he was, only 11 years old. Later, he fled from his tempestuous mother and in his wanderings he was said to have learned 25 languages and made a special study of poisons. These attributes Mithridates turned to good account as a spy, a career he pursued while disguised as a caravan boy. He soon learned so much about the strength of tribes in Asia Minor that he was able to vanquish his mother and get back his throne, where he ruled as one of the greatest tyrants of all time.

The ancient Romans had a highly developed espionage service, although their methods were sometimes strangely crude. When a Roman delegation went to the camp of Syphax, king of Numidia, to arrange a peace treaty, the whole delegation were high ranking military spies. Only their leader, Lelius, wore uniform; all the rest were disguised as slaves.

To get information about the strength of the Numidian army, Lelius simply contrived to make one of the Roman horses break away from the delegation’s camp. The slaves then chased the animal through the Numidian army lines, making careful mental note of all they saw.

But one day, a Numidian army officer stopped one of the Roman “slaves” and declared that he had seen him before, in an officers’ training school in Greece, and that he was sure the slave was in fact a Roman officer.

At this, Lelius stepped forward and viciously slashed the “slave” with his horsewhip. The Numidian officer knew that, according to Roman law, it was forbidden under pain of death to strike a Roman officer. What would the “slave” do? Time and time again, Lelius lashed the man until, like a cringing animal, the “slave” crept away. The Numidian was then satisfied: the man could not be an officer or Lelius would never have struck him.

As old as the spy’s profession is his bag of tricks, repeated and permutated down all the centuries, but never losing its fascination. In the Franco-German War of 1870-1, spies disguised as priests walked out of Paris while it was under siege and found their way unmolested into the German lines. In the war between France and Austria in 1813, cryptic writing, which aims at disguising important information with harmless phrases, was widely used. Thus, “Your brother has recovered from his illness and is now in good health” meant, “The Austrian army is mobilised and ready to march.”

One of the papers found in the Austrian army headquarters after that war was the following “business” letter written by a spy from Trieste. Although the “business” seems harmless, the recipient’s knowledge of what the code meant gave the letter a new and vital significance:

“Dear Sir,

“I hope that you are already in receipt of my last letter. I arrived at 5 a.m. today in Trieste to look for the goods that you are particularly anxious to obtain here.

“I have secured the following.

1 cwt, of cinnamon (a fortress)

2 cases of lemons, average size (guns)

60 ditto, smaller size

“These are being stored meantime not far from the shore.

Within the next few days you may expect to receive the following:

4 cases of bitter oranges (earthworks)

2 casks of eels (magazines)

400 sacks of rice (hundredweights of powder)

450 sacks of almonds (light infantry)

1 small cask of figs (brigadier)

1 small cask of pure oil (lieutenant-general)

“For all these articles I have paid a deposit of 1,700 lire (infantry), debiting the amount to your account. Trusting this meets with your entire satisfaction and may prove extremely profitable to you . . .”

Sending such information by post was nothing new. In ancient times, when the “post” was simply a slave courier, the Persians inscribed their secret messages on clay tablets, then covered the tablets with wax, so that the words could not be seen. Then, if the courier was caught, he appeared to be carrying only a blank tablet.

Another favourite spy trick, used as late as the Second World War, was to insert cipher information in the personal advertisement columns of newspapers. When the Germans bombed Paris in the First World War, for instance, their intelligence service in Switzerland eagerly scanned the columns of a well-known French newspaper for days afterwards, until they saw an advertisement that read something like:

“19-22. Bien arrivee avec nos trois amis, mere malade. 3,160.”

The advertisement, placed by a spy, meant:

“Nineteenth district of Paris, Square No. 22 on the military map, bomb hit, three victims, tremendous effect on the population. Sent by agent number 3,160.”

On the French and Belgian battlefields in the First World War, windmills were a favourite means of communication for spies. Once, a Russian spy decided to make use of a windmill just in front of the Russian lines.

For an hour he pleaded with the miller and his wife, with a bribe of fifty roubles, to help the Allied cause by turning the arms of the windmill in a clockwise direction as a signal to the Russians if the Germans should arrive.

When the miller adamantly refused to have anything to do with such an idea, the spy stripped three of the sails, bound the miller’s wife hand and foot; then tied the helpless miller to the remaining sail of the windmill, which he turned upwards.

The spy’s plan, of course, was that if the Germans did arrive they would certainly release the miller by bringing him down to earth. As soon as they did that, one of the stripped sails would go upwards, signalling to the Russians that they were there. That, in fact, was exactly what did happen. As soon as the Germans made to release the miller, the Russians raked the mill with artillery fire, wiping out the enemy.

Today, with most of the world in an uneasy state of peace, there is still plenty of work for spies. The peacetime spy is an industrial spy, whose job is to steal one company’s secrets and sell them to others – or to use them for himself. During the years of the industrial revolution a British ironmaster and industrial spy named Foley played the part of a wandering minstrel by tramping from town to town in Europe with his violin. His real aim was to find out how the Continental method of treating iron and producing steel worked, for it was considered superior to the British method. Returning to England with his secret, “Fiddler” Foley developed his factory at Stourbridge in Worcestershire and became a millionaire.

“Bugs”, or listening devices, are the chief tools of the modern industrial spy. A bug invented by Emanuel Mittleman, of New York, can be planted in the base of the victim’s telephone, and the spy can then eavesdrop from anywhere.

What happens is that the spy dials the number of the bugged telephone and the moment before the telephone rings he blows a single special note with a tiny mouth organ that comes with the bug. The mouth organ note activates the microphone in the base of the telephone at the other end. Two things then happen – the telephone does not ring and the spy is able to hear every word in the room, even though the bugged telephone is still on the hook.

Followers of James Bond and other modern espionage heroes know how important is the miniature camera in the spy’s toolkit. The one most used is, strange to say, one that is on sale to the public – the German Minox miniature camera.

The Minox is only three inches long by an inch wide and weighs only four ounces when fully loaded. It can take sharp pictures down to a range of eight-inches, and with 36 pictures on a single film, it is the perfect instrument for photographing the enemy’s secret documents at close range.

The twelve spies who went into the land of Canaan for Moses had only their eyes with which to record information. Three and a half thousand years later the tools are different – but the basic job is still the same.

This edited article about the Second World War originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 703 published on 5 July 1975.

Nick Alkemade reached for the rip cord and pulled it right away, a charred thread with no effect whatsoever

Behind him was his plane, turned into a ball of fire and smoke after an enemy attack. Below him, well over three miles away, was the ground. And nothing but clouds stood between I. M. Chisov of the U.S.S.R. and what seemed like a swift end on the mountains.

Chisov had fallen from his plane, an Ilyushin 4, before he had had time to strap on his parachute harness in January, 1942, during the Second World War.

Falling at a speed which could have been anything between a hundred and a hundred and eighty miles an hour, Chisov plunged towards the peaks. Bouncing off the edge of a snow-covered ravine, he slid to the bottom, shattering his spine and fracturing his pelvis or hip bone.

But he was alive after a fall of 21,980 ft. (6,700 metres), having made the longest descent without a parachute on record.

Few men can know the fears of such an experience. But one who did share them was Sergeant Nick Alkemade of the R.A.F. who jumped from his blazing bomber over Germany during a war-time raid. When Alkemade pulled the rip cord of his parachute, he found that it had been reduced to ashes by the fire.

He fell from 20,000 ft. (6,096 metres) and landed in a deep drift of snow on the edge of a pine forest some miles outside Berlin.

His only injuries were a broken wrist and leg. He was captured by the Germans, who at first refused to believe his story until he showed them the charred remains of his parachute.

Before he was sent to a prisoner of war camp, Alkemade was given a signed and witnessed document testifying that he had fallen without a parachute from a height of over three miles.

“Without that,” they told him. “No one will believe your story after the war.”

This edited article about the Second World War originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 700 published on 14 June 1975.

The Belgian army in supine retreat in 1940 by Gerry Wood

In the bitter spring of 1940, as the grim grey-uniformed German Army pushed through Northern Europe, one man made a decision that was, for years afterwards, to divide a nation.

At 4 a.m. on May 28, half a million Belgian soldiers laid down their arms and surrendered to the advancing Germans. This they did not on the orders of their generals, nor on the instructions from their political leaders, but at the bidding of their handsome king, Leopold the Third.

Leopold’s instructions to his countrymen – who had fought bravely and acquitted themselves well – were given after a last desperate attempt by his Ministers to make him change his mind.

The king was adamant. He saw no further use in resistance. He told M. Spaak (then Foreign Minister): “I shall stay here whatever happens. I shall ask them (the Germans) to let me live in a castle in Belgium.”

The news that the Belgian Army had stopped fighting stunned and angered the allies. Tempers, already inflamed by the passion of war, were now inflamed in turn by hatred directed at Leopold. At 8 a.m. on the morning of May 28 M. Reynaud, the Prime Minister of France, broadcast to the French people and spoke in terms of contempt of the Belgian king.

The Belgian Prime Minister, M. Piertot, denied the right of Leopold to give a surrender order without the consent of the government.

The Germans were jubilant. “Under the impression of the devastating effect of the German arms the King of the Belgians has decided to put an end to further useless resistance,” screamed the Goebbels propaganda machine.

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This edited article about Poon Lim originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 700 published on 14 June 1975.

All was calm aboard the S.S. Ben Lomond as it steamed through the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean near the equator on 23rd November, 1942, during the Second World War.

Suddenly, the peace of the ship was shattered as an enemy torpedo pierced the ship’s hull and exploded with a loud clap like thunder.

As water rushed through the hole torn in the metal hull, the ship listed to one side. Hurriedly, the crew took to their lifeboats. Among them was Second Steward Poon Lim who flung himself into the ocean and swam strongly towards a raft and scrambled on to it.

Strong currents carried him away from the sinking ship and the other survivors in their boats, and soon he was alone on the vast ocean.

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This edited article about Alfried Krupp originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 699 published on 7 June 1975.

To British Tommies in the Great War the very name Krupp sounded like a shrapnel burst. Picture by Frank Bellamy

The flares from the RAF Mosquito pathfinders lit up the chimneys above the huddled factory roofs. German anti-aircraft shells flashed in a dark sky criss-crossed by the white, weaving ribbons of searchlights. The roar of the approaching Lancaster bombers grew louder. Then the ground trembled as bombs blasted the huge arms plant.

In the garden of his 300-roomed mansion, Villa Hugel, on the outskirts of Essen, Alfried Krupp and his guests watched the raid. At its height, amid the roar of high explosive, he led them through a maze of corridors to his underground bunker.

In the morning, the dead and wounded in the shattered Krupps complex were counted. Most of them were inmates from concentration camps and prisoners of war forced to work for the Nazi arms machine. Krupp had no difficulty in obtaining labour: he replaced the casualties many times to maintain record weapons production despite the British night raids over the Ruhr. For Krupp dispersed his plants throughout Germany and so avoided crippling damage.

Retribution for Alfried Krupp, as for many Nazi leaders, came in 1945. On April 10, Alfried sat down to a game of skat, a German form of bridge, in which one player pits his skill against two others. Allied artillery barked around Villa Hugel yet Krupp ignored the noise and won a small fortune from his guests. The next morning, he was arrested by American troops, but not before he had kept them waiting. He refused to appear until he was impeccably dressed as befitted a Krupps senior executive.

It was two years before he and other directors were brought to trial before a United States military tribunal in Nuremberg, charged with plundering Nazi occupied lands and using 100,000 prisoners as slave labour.

On July 28, 1948, Alfried Krupp was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment and forfeiture of his entire property. But he spent only three years in jail and even there, with his imprisoned directors, he held weekly board meetings to study reports on world trade and, in particular, steel production.

The US High Commissioner in Germany, John McCloy, announced on July 31, 1951, that Alfried Krupp’s sentence had been revised, following a review of the evidence and a reappraisal of personal guilt. He was freed and the confiscation order revoked, signalling once again the rise of the Krupps empire.

The British had always thought of the Krupps family as the sinister armourers of the Kaiser in the First World War and Hitler’s merchants of death in the second one. On the other hand, the Germans had always regarded them with respect and esteem as the founders of social security in the early 1800s, when they created a comprehensive welfare scheme with pensions for the factory workers. It was a family with a proud history dating back to the 16th century, the mainspring of German industrial and social development, creating armaments down the centuries along with other heavy industrial goods that gave them untold millions.

But it was not until the 1800s, that Krupps began to dominate the German industrial and political stage.

When Friedrich Krupp died on October 8, 1826, he left his 14-year-old son, Alfred, the secret of making high quality cast steel with a small workshop in which production was almost at a standstill.

Despite his youth, Alfred accepted the challenge. He took complete charge of the firm. It prospered under his guidance with production expanding after four years to include the manufacture of steel rolls.

Alfred designed and developed new machines, invented a system for making spoons and forks and devised plant for turning out currency. At the first world exhibition in London in 1851, he put on show the largest steel ingot ever cast, weighing 4,300 lb.

With the appearance of railways, Krupp really expanded, turning out rolling stock, establishing collieries, ore mines, blast furnaces and even setting up a laboratory for testing steel. In fact, just to prove how good it was, he decided, like his relatives before him, to turn to making guns.

At first, no one in Europe was interested in his weapons. It was not until 1856 that the first orders came from Egypt. Belgium bought Krupp cannon in 1861 and Russian orders arrived two years later.

When Krupp guns thundered in the Franco-German war of 1870-71, the firm was nicknamed: “The Arsenal of the Reich.” Yet the output of peaceful goods always outpaced the production of armaments in those early days. And all the time, Alfred Krupp kept a benevolent eye on his workers, building houses, hospitals, schools and churches for them. When his father died, there were a mere seven workers in the small Krupp workshop. When Alfred died in Essen on July 14, 1887 he had 21,000 employees.

Under the direction of his son, Friedrich, the firm continued to expand. By the time he died in November, 1902, the staff had doubled. Then the pattern of control began to change. For Friedrich left two daughters, the eldest of whom, Bertha, became the sole heiress.

In 1906, she married Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach, a diplomat, who was subsequently authorised by Kaiser William II to change his name to Krupp, the right to be carried on by his heirs.

To British Tommies in the World War One trenches, the very name of Krupp sounded like a shrapnel burst. By then, Krupp had 151,000 workers turning out fantastic amounts of arms, including the huge guns that bombarded Paris from 75 miles away in 1918. They were named “Big Bertha” after Gustav’s wife.

In the aftermath of war, Krupp manufactured more rolling stock, locomotives, lorries and, of course, weapons. In politics, Gustav was always wily and ready to support the ruling power. He backed Hindenburg against Hitler and changed promptly to throw his weight behind the Nazi leader when he took control. Gustav was believed to have served on various Nazi organisations; he certainly received titles and awards, including the gold party badge.

But as the last war wore on, the tall aristocratic figure with the spade beard and moustache ailed and his son, Alfried, assumed increasing control of the firm.

Gustav was, in fact too senile to be prosecuted with war crimes after the Allied victory, although charges were considered. He died while his son was in prison.

When the Krupp factories were ultimately returned to Alfried, he was ordered by the Allies to sell off his iron and steel properties. But the order was never carried out. Alfried Krupp always pleaded failure to find a buyer and after the order had been extended repeatedly, it was finally lifted altogether.

Alfried Krupp, who died in 1967 when the firm had a turnover of £475 million, created from the ashes of war a new future for the Krupp empire. In 1973, it made a net profit of £16 million, boasted a total sales bill of £1,612 million and a work force of 70,000.

There are more than 150 factories and mines producing 12 per cent of the Ruhr steel and making every kind of machine from ships to diesel engines. And there are the weapons and the roses and orchids, too.

The weapons are made for NATO. And the flowers? The roses and orchids come from the lush grounds of Villa Hugel in their hundreds of thousands. Even the most beautiful and delicate of blooms make money for the Krupps.

This edited article about crazy military inventions originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 697 published on 24 May 1975.

Nesting seagulls

War brings forward plenty of crazy inventions as well as good ones. At the beginning of the Second World War, death rays were all the rage. The trouble was that none of them worked until the terrible atomic bomb made its ghastly debut in 1945.

Incredible schemes in this century, which never got off the ground in more ways than one, have included shells filled with poisonous snakes. When you come to think about it, this would not have been the easiest of things to arrange, and was liable to have backfired if the snakes had decided to crawl back to your own trench. Even the revolting use of poisonous gas, which was tried to such deadly effect, sometimes went wrong when the wind suddenly changed and blew the gas back to the user.

The prize for a silly idea must go to the seagull scheme, which went like this. First build yourself a fleet of dummy submarines, then let their non-dummy guns fire grain into the air, which would then be swallowed by excited seagulls.

From then on, when the seagulls have been taught to identify submarines with a good tuck-in, any real enemy “sub” that surfaces will be besieged by frantic birds, waiting for their free rations. “Ho, ho!” think the gunners on shore, seeing a cloud of seagulls out to sea. “There must be a submarine on the surface.” Not surprisingly, it was never tried.

This edited article about the Orkney Isles originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 697 published on 24 May 1975.

Viking raiders left Norway for the Orkney Isles

In a large room, deeply carpeted, two men in naval uniform stood in front of a wall-chart of the North Sea. The older man, a stick in his hand, traced a line slowly from the German naval base at Kiel across to a group of islands off the north coast of Scotland – the Orkney Isles.

The year was 1939, With Lieutenant Prien, commander of U-boat U47, Admiral Doenitz, Flag Officer (Submarines) of the German Navy, was planning the impossible – an attack on Scapa Flow, the largest expanse of water at the southern end of the Orkneys.

Scapa Flow is almost surrounded by small islands, and for two world wars ships of the British Home Fleet were based there.

The reasons for choosing Scapa as a naval base were these: firstly, the route from the Atlantic to Germany must pass either through the English Channel, or between North Scotland and Norway. Battleships at Scapa Flow could easily sail to intercept any enemy ships using this last passage.

Secondly, tides and currents swirl dangerously through the channels which separate the little islands around the Flow, making those channels extremely dangerous for shipping, so providing a natural defence from attack from the sea.

Thus thought the Admiralty. Admiral Doenitz, however, thought otherwise.

“You will note, Lieutenant,” he rasped, “that on the east side of the Flow, between the Orkney mainland and the island of Burray, there are two channels through which you might pass. They are partly blocked by sunken ships; you will sail between them. That is all. Heil Hitler!”

On October 8, 1939, Lieutenant Prien’s submarine slipped quietly out of Kiel and into the North Sea. Five days later, as dawn broke, Prien could see a faint blue streak on the horizon. It was Orkney.

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This edited article about Hiroshima originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 696 published on 17 May 1975.

Hiroshima

The citizens of Hiroshima were worried. And with good cause. For weeks now, the American bombers had carried out massive air raids on every major city and town in Japan with the exceptions of Kyoto and their own city.

It was possible, they knew, that Kyoto might continue to be spared because of its historical place in Japanese culture. But a commercially important town like Hiroshima, with its busy seaport, which was, moreover, being used as a transport base, could expect no such mercy. Soon now, therefore, it was inevitable that the bombers would come with their incendiaries which could wipe out half the town in a single raid.

The Government had done everything in its power to reduce the horrors that would follow in the wake of the bombers. Thousands had been persuaded to move into the country, and thousands more were packing their belongings to follow them, the schools had been closed, and the pupils had been set to work helping in the massive task of pulling down every building that constituted a fire hazard. Wide swathes, making natural fire breaks, now intersected the city at all points, a visible proof of their efforts.

Everything that could be done, had been done. But everyone knew in their hearts that it was not enough. It was the day of August 5th, 1945, the day before Hiroshima died.

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This edited article about P G Wodehouse originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 692 published on 19 April 1975.

The Nazis arrested P G Wodehouse and, after releasing him from a prison camp, they effectively interned him in Germany for the duration of the war, by Roger Payne

His first comic creation was a character called Psmith, with the P silent, as in psalm, and one of his masterpieces of invention was the monumental Empress of Blandings. No, she was not a mighty ruler, but a prize pig, the pride and joy of that potty peer, the Earl of Emsworth.

For P. G. Wodehouse, who died in February of this year at the grand old age of 93, the clock stopped around 1900, even though some of his more recent characters travelled by jet. He created a timeless fairyland set somewhere in Shropshire, where he placed that noble pile of funny happenings, Blandings Castle.

Also in the fairyland was London, and especially, the Drones Club, inhabited by Eggs, Beans and Crumpets. (Young readers please note that it was quite common to address someone as “Old Bean” or “Old Egg” in not-so-distant days.)

The weather tended to be rather good in this fairyland, except for flashes of Summer Lightning, the title of one of his funniest books, and the loudest noise seemed to be “the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows”. Aunt Agatha was rather noisy, of course, but not the greatest of them all, Jeeves, butler extraordinary to Bertie Wooster.

What a pair! Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. Yes, Wodehouse was in the big league, the lowbrow whom the highbrows, along with millions of others, adored. This most English of writers was even translated into Chinese and Japanese, and his early admirers included Kipling, H. G. Wells, and Hilaire Belloc, who called him the best living writer of English. Ordinary folk just laughed out loud.

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This edited article about Mussolini originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 691 published on 12 April 1975.

The audacious Nazi commando raid which rescued Mussolini was masterminded by Captain Otto Skorzeny. Picture by Neville Dear

Of all the Humpty Dumpty Topsy Turvy dictators of history, few can have been knocked from their perch of power, put together again and then knocked down again as was Benito Mussolini.

A mean, moody but hardly magnificent man who suffered considerable pain from a stomach ulcer – sometimes he would roll about on the floor in anguish – he led his country, Italy, into a disastrous war as an ally of his fellow Fascist dictator, Adolf Hitler.

It was a struggle that Mussolini’s countrymen had little heart for and by early 1943, with the fall of Tripoli to British troops, it was obvious that for the Italians the war was lost.

What really happened after that point – the struggle for power within Italy itself and the strange events that crowded into the life of Europe’s Humpty Dumpty dictator – is a fascinating story.

While their German allies still fought on fiercely the Italian leaders decided to sue for peace.

One man stood in their way. Benito Mussolini, still filled with his vainglorious hopes, remained determined to continue the struggle on behalf of the Fascist cause.

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