The Double-Cross System or XX System was a World War II counter-espionage and deception operation of the British Security Service. Nazi agents in Britain – real and false – were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves, and were then used by the British to broadcast mainly disinformation to their Nazi controllers. Its operations were overseen by the Twenty Committee under the chairmanship of John Cecil Masterman; the name of the committee comes from the number 20 in Roman numerals: "XX".
Edward Arnold Chapman was an English criminal and wartime spy. During the Second World War he offered his services to Nazi Germany as a spy and subsequently became a British double agent. His British Secret Service handlers codenamed him Agent Zigzag in acknowledgement of his erratic personal history.
Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral and the chief of the Abwehr from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi regime. Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, however, Canaris turned against Hitler and committed acts of both passive and active resistance during the war.
Hugo Bleicher was a senior non-commissioned officer of Nazi Germany's Abwehr who worked against French Resistance in German-occupied France.
New Carlisle, Quebec is a town in the Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine region of Quebec, Canada. It best known as the boyhood home of René Lévesque although he was born in Campbellton, New Brunswick. Its population is approximately 1,388, approximately two-thirds of whom are anglophone and the remainder francophone. New Carlisle is located on the Baie des Chaleurs.
William G. Sebold was a United States citizen who was coerced into becoming a spy when he visited Germany after being pressured by several high-ranking Nazi members. He informed the American Consul General in Cologne before leaving Germany and became a double agent for the FBI. With the assistance of another German agent, Fritz Duquesne, he recruited 33 agents that became known as the Duquesne Spy Ring. In June 1941, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested all of the agents. They were convicted and sentenced to a total of 300 years in prison.
The American Theater was a theater of operations during World War II including all continental American territory, and extending 200 miles (320 km) into the ocean.
Erich Vermehren, also known as Erich Vermeeren de Saventhem or Eric Maria de Saventhem, was an ardent anti-Nazi, an agent of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence organization, and later a leading Catholic Traditionalist.
The Battle of the St. Lawrence involved marine and anti-submarine actions throughout the lower St. Lawrence River and the entire Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Strait of Belle Isle, Anticosti Island and Cabot Strait from May–October 1942, September 1943, and again in October–November 1944. During this time, German U-boats sank over 20 merchant ships and four Canadian warships. There were several near-shore actions involving the drop of German spies, or the attempted pickup of escaping prisoners of war. Despite the 23 ships lost, this battle marked a strategic victory for Canadian forces as ultimately they managed to disrupt U-boat activity, protect Canadian and Allied convoys, and intercept all attempted shore operations. This marked the first time that a foreign power had inflicted casualties in Canadian inland waters since the US incursions in the War of 1812.
John Benjamin Clark Watkins was a Canadian diplomat and scholar who served as Canadian ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1956. Describing Watkins as "sophisticated, erudite and fluent in Russian", Michael Dobbs of The Washington Post wrote that he was the "perfect ambassador" to Moscow. He is credited with organizing a historic meeting between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Canadian External Affairs Minister Lester B. Pearson.
Günther Schütz was a German citizen who worked for German Intelligence (Abwehr) during World War II, he was deployed to Ireland, however, due to being parachuted into the wrong location he was apprehended by Irish police, and spent much of the rest of the war in prison, bar a brief period on the run after escaping from prison and failed to be evacuated to France.
German submarine U-518 was a Type IXC U-boat of the Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. She saw considerable success from her launch on 11 February 1942 until she was sunk on 22 April 1945. The U-boat was laid down at the Deutsche Werft in Hamburg as yard number 314 on 12 June 1941, and commissioned on 25 April 1942 with Fregattenkapitän Hans-Günther Brachmann in command. He was replaced on 19 August 1942 by Kapitänleutnant Friedrich-Wilhelm Wissmann. She sank nine ships and damaged three more in seven active patrols. U-518 had a crew of 56, and was by then commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Hans-Werner Offermann from 13 January 1944.
The Duquesne Spy Ring is the largest espionage case in the United States history that ended in convictions. A total of 33 members of a Nazi German espionage network headed by Frederick "Fritz" Joubert Duquesne were convicted after a lengthy investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Of those indicted, 19 pleaded guilty. The remaining 14 were brought to jury trial in Federal District Court, Brooklyn, New York, on September 3, 1941; all were found guilty on December 13, 1941. On January 2, 1942, the group members were sentenced to serve a total of over 300 years in prison.
The New Carlisle station is a closed railway station in New Carlisle, Quebec, Canada. It served the Montreal-Gaspé train until service was suspended east of Matapédia station in 2013 due to deteriorating track conditions. However, service to Gaspé is scheduled to resume in 2026.
The Abwehr was the German military-intelligence service for the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht from 1920 to 1945. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Weimar Republic from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the Abwehr. The initial purpose of the Abwehr was defence against foreign espionage: an organizational role which later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's Ministeramt within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the Abwehr.
Duško Popov was a Serbian double agent who served as part of the MI6 and Abwehr during World War II. He passed off disinformation to Germany as part of the Double-Cross System while working as an agent for the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London.
Wulf Dietrich Christian Schmidt, later known as Harry Williamson was a Danish citizen who became a double agent working for Britain against Nazi Germany during the Second World War under the codename Tate. He was part of the Double Cross System, under which all German agents in Britain were controlled by MI5 and used to deceive Germany. Nigel West singled him out as "one of the seven spies who changed the world."
Operation Bolívar was the codename for the German espionage in Latin America during World War II. It was under the operational control of Section D (4) from the Foreign Security Service (Ausland-SD), and was primarily concerned with the collection and transmission of clandestine information from Latin America to Europe. Overall, the Germans were successful in establishing a secret radio communications network from their control station in Argentina, as well as a courier system involving the use of Spanish merchant vessels for the shipment of paper-form intelligence.
Johann-Nielsen Jebsen, nicknamed "Johnny", was an anti-Nazi German intelligence officer and British double agent during World War II. Jebsen recruited Dušan Popov to the Abwehr and through him later joined the Allied cause. Kidnapped from Lisbon by the Germans shortly before the Normandy landings, Jebsen was tortured in prison and spent time in a concentration camp before disappearing; he was presumed killed at the end of the war.
Nikolaus Ritter is best known as the Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr who led spyrings in the United Kingdom and the United States from 1936 to 1941.
