The Rebecca Code Rommels Spy in North Africa and Operation Condor.pdf

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Acknowledgements
Like many people my interest in the German use of the Rebecca Code
during the Abwehr Operation
Kondor,
began with reading Michael
Ondaatje’s 1992 Booker Prize winning novel
The English Patient.
I was
further inspired by the late Anthony Minghella’s 1996 Oscar winning film
of the same name. Much is to be admired in both, at the heart of which is a
love story between the desert explorer Count László Almásy and the
English woman Katherine Clifton.
Most readers I trust will be familiar with the book and/or the film of
The English Patient,
so there is no need to relate it here, other than to say
much of the background of the Western Desert and Cairo was the setting
for real events. Also the character of Almásy depicted in book and film is
a marked distortion of the real man, and his end was in real life very
different. Many of the other characters in the real story are discounted, no
doubt for good reason in that fictional account.
The English Patient
was not the first attempt in fiction to tell this story.
The first book to cover the
Kondor
mission was by war correspondent
Leonard Mosley in his 1958 publication
The Cat and the Mice.
Mosley
was in Cairo at the time the events took place and he interviewed the
German spies John Eppler and Peter Monkaster (Heinrich Gerd Sandstette)
in prison. He also kept in touch with Eppler after the war. However in view
of the later accounts, one written by Eppler, and later firm evidence, it is
certain that Eppler strung him along to a degree in order to embellish his
own image as some sort of James Bond. The 1960 film
Foxhole in Cairo
was based on Mosley’s book, the film poster calling it ‘the greatest spy
story of the desert war’. That is true, but the film has little else to
recommend it. In the film James Robertson Justice plays the British
intelligence officer, a naval commander, tasked with catching the spies,
and Michael Caine is seen in one of his early roles as a German W/T
operator.
Other writers also used the bones of the
Kondor
story in fiction, Ken
Follett in
The Key to Rebecca
(1980) which was filmed in 1989, and Ken
Deighton in
City of Gold
(1992). Both books relied heavily on personal
accounts. Also Anwar Sadat’s
Revolt on the Nile
(1957), A.W. Sansom’s
I
Spied Spies
(1965) and John Eppler’s
Rommel Ruft Cairo
(1960) published
in English as
Operation Condor Rommel’s Spy
(1977). It is doubtful if they
would have used Almásy’s
Rommel Senegenal Libyaban
(1943), translated
into English by Gabriel Francis Horchler as
With Rommel’s Army in Libya
(2001). Or for that matter come across Almásy’s diary of Operation
Salam,
held by the Imperial War Museum in the Lloyd Own Papers.
The Secret MI6 files were closed in 2003 and released to the public in
2006. It was my aim, therefore, to bring the four eyewitness accounts by
Almásy, Eppler, Mosley and Sansom together with the official files and
tell the true story of the Rebecca Code and Operation
Kondor.
Secondary sources that have been useful include Hans-Otto Behrendt,
Rommel’s Intelligence in the Desert Campaign
(1980). John Bierman’s
The
Secret Life of László Almásy
(2004), Paul Carell’s
The Foxes of the Desert
(1958), Christer Jorgensen’s
Hitler’s Espionage Machine
(2004) and Saul
Kelly’s
The Lost Oasis
(2002).
I am grateful to the staff at Bletchley Park, the Imperial War Museum,
the Intelligence Corps Museum, the Public Records Office, Royal
Geographical Society, AKG Images, Hunt Library, US National Archives,
Hungarian Geographic Museum, Bookends of Fowey, and the Forest Park
Hotel Cyprus.
I am also hugely indebted to the following people: Shaun Barrington my
Editor at The History Press for his enthusiastic support for this project
right from the start. Group Captain L.E. (Robbie) Robins AEDL, another
enthusiastic supporter, for free use of his extensive library, his hospitality,
and for reading an early draft making many excellent comments and
suggestions. My late Aunt Olive Hard for her illustrations of Egypt during
the war years. To Ann Willmore, book dealer at her shop Bookends of
Fowey and an expert on the work of Daphne du Maurier, who supplied a
wealth of information on the publishing history of the novel
Rebecca.
Finally my wife Margaret as always gave her whole hearted support in
the nuts and bolts of building a book, with proof reading, index building
etc. Thanks to all.
Contents
Title
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Part I
1
2
3
4
Part II
5
6
7
Part III
8
9
10
11
12
Part IV
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
The Characters
Johannes Eppler, Beirut May 1937
Eppler, Athens and Berlin, July–August 1937
László Almásy
Alfred Sansom
The Scene
Cairo, Spring 1941
The Western Desert
Tripoli, March 1941
Operations
The Troublesome General
Exit Ritter
Under the Pagoda Tree
The ‘Good Source’
Interview with the Führer
Kondor
Planning
The Rebecca Code
False Start
Operation Salam
Assiut
The Flap
Kondor Calling
The Ring Tightens
Currency Matters

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