Lucy spy ring

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In World War II espionage, the Lucy spy ring was an anti-German operation which operated in Switzerland. It was run by Rudolf Roessler, a German refugee, who was ostensibly the proprietor of a small publishing firm, Vita Nova. Very little is publicly clear about the Lucy ring, about Roessler, or about its actual sources or motives.

After the war, Roessler offered a somewhat obscure account in interviews with journalists. According to that account, he left several (a small number, perhaps up to 10) anti-Nazi friends behind in Germany when he moved to Switzerland in the early 30s. Among them were several officers in the German military, who reached high staff positions during the War. Somehow -- and this is one of the most obscure parts of this account -- they were able to transmit information to him (sometimes by his specific request, relayed from Moscow) using major German military transmitters. The implication apparently intended is some sort of clandestine, never noticed by the Germans, piggybacking on German transmissions. This is technically rather more than unlikely and thus not very credible. But, however that may be, the information provided was frequent, accurate, and timely.

Roessler managed to make contact with Alexander Rado's Soviet espionage organization in Switzerland and used it to pass information to Moscow. His required conditions for working for Rado were very odd -- he was never to be forced to disclose his sources, and the Soviets were to make no attempt to discover them. Moscow Centre was initially quite suspicious, but eventually came to rely on his ring's information. The Swiss eventually tracked down the transmitters and put the Lucy ring out of business before the end of the War. Alexander Foote, later author of the controversial Handbook for Spies, was one of Rado's (and Roessler's) radio operators and was one of those arrested.

An additional controversial aspect of the Lucy ring story is the allegation that it was, at its heart, a British Secret service operation intended to get Ultra information to the Soviets in a convincing way untraceable to British codebreaking operations against the Germans. Stalin had shown considerable suspicion of any information from the Americans or British about German plans to invade Russia in 1941, so an Allied effort to find a way to get helpful information to the Soviets in a form that would not be dismissed is, at least, not implausible. Various observations have suggested that Alexander Foote was more than a mere radio operator:

• he was in a position to act as a radio interface between SIS and Roessler and between Roessler and Moscow
• his return to the West in the 50s was a little peculiar
• his book is troublesome in several ways,
• not one of Roessler's 'sources' in Germany has been identified (or come forward)

So, some suspicion has developed that, even for an espionage operation, the Lucy ring was not what it seemed.