Cover Name: Dr. Rantzau

AUSA Books – Foreign Military Studies

by Nikolaus Ritter, Mary Kathryn Barbier (Foreword), Katharine R. Wallace (Editor)

Cover Dr. Rantzau is a gripping diary-like personal account of espionage during the Second World War and is one of very few historic memoirs written by an ex- Abwehr officer. Detailed is how Colonel Nikolaus Ritter, following a brief World War I career and over ten years as a businessman in America, returned to Germany in spring of 1935 and became Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr . He was assigned to establish a network of agents to gather information on British and US airfields, aircrafts, and state-of-the-art developments in the aerospace industry. Among others, Ritter's cover names were Dr. Rantzau and Dr. Reinhard in Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Dr. Jansen in Hungary, Dr. Renken in Germany, and Mr. Johnson in America. Throughout his service in the Abwehr , Ritter smuggled America's most jealously guarded secret, the Norden bombsight and the Sperry gyroscope, into Germany, and coordinated the planning for the invasion of the British Isles (Operation Sea Lion). Ritter was incarcerated by the British in 1945 and sent to the Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre.

Katharine Ritter Wallace, the daughter of Col. Ritter, presents the first English translation of the German World War II memoir. With a combination of collected documents, correspondences, personal notes, communications with peers, and from memory, this captivating account by an espionage agent reveals an insider's glimpse of the German intelligence service and of a handler's expansive and diverse agent network.

Genres: Military Fiction

264 pages, Hardcover

Published May 24, 2019

Reviews

[Carolinda Witt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nikolaus Ritter was the German (Abwehr) spymaster whom MI5 sent my grandfather aka Double Agent Celery to meet in Lisbon in March 1941. Celery volunteered to represent himself to the Germans as a British traitor who was willing to sell his country out for cash. Ritter arranged for Celery to be taken into Hamburg to be interrogated where he was drugged, plied with alcohol, tempted with women, cross-examined endlessly and sometimes threatened before being accepted as a German spy (accept he was really working for MI5). Ritter was very significant to MI5's fledgling Double Cross System at the beginning of WWll and I have been longing to read Ritter's memoir in English. In the process of researching my book, 'Double Agent Celery', I got in contact with the editor and translator of this book , Katharine Wallace, who is the daughter of Nikolaus Ritter. Over the years Katherine and I have swapped information and marvelled at the coincidence that brought us together. I am thrilled to say that Katharine has done a wonderful job in translating her father's book and making this important account available to readers, researchers and historians. I highly recommend it as one of the very few personal accounts of one of the most significant members of the Abwehr, whose appointment and his pre-war relationship with Britain's first double agent Snow, would pave the way for one of Britain's most successful wartime intelligence successes - the British Double Cross System of World War Two.