Operation Lena and Hitler's Plots to Blow Up Britain

Bernard O'Connor

• Publisher: Amberley Publishing
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781445669649
• Subtopic: Intelligence & Espionage

Home-grown terrorists equipped by a foreign power are not a new phenomenon. During the Second World War, Hitler's Germany made sustained efforts to inflict a terror campaign on the streets of Britain through the use of secret agents and agents provocateurs. The aim was to blow up military, industrial, transport and telecommunication targets, to lower morale among the civilian population and disrupt the war effort. Even before the outbreak of war, the Nazis provided the IRA with assistance for their plan to sabotage the British mainland. Prior to their planned invasion in the summer of 1940, the Nazis were also keen to recruit members of the Welsh and Scottish Nationalist Parties to engage in sabotaging British targets and, over the course of the war, infiltrated dozens of trained agents from countries including Norway, Denmark, Holland, France and Cuba. What happened to the myriad plots to blow up Britain? We know that intelligence obtained from decrypted enemy messages via Bletchley Park and double agents like ZIGZAG, SUMMER and TATE alerted MI5 to some of these spies' arrivals, but what about the others? And how successful were MI5's efforts to fake acts of sabotage and arrange media coverage to fool the enemy into thinking their agents were still at large and on task? In this book, Bernard O'Connor, a noted wartime espionage historian, tells the complete story of the successes and failures of the Nazi terror offensive on mainland Britain during 1938–1944.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Prologue
• 1 - The ‘S-Plan’: the IRA’s Nazi-backed plan to sabotage England – January 1939–March 1940
• 2 - The British Intelligence Services’ response: Bletchley Park, Aston House, Brickendonbury Manor and the Sabotage Section
• 3 - The Royal Victoria Patriotic Schools, Camp 020, the Twenty (XX) Committee and double agents
• 4 - Arthur Owens, Gwilym Williams and the Welsh Nationalist Party (Part 1) – 1937–August 1940
• 5 - The Nazis’ pre-invasion saboteurs in Eire – 1940
• 6 - Operations MAINAU and SEAGULL: Dr Hermann Görtz and Helmut Clissman – May–August 1940
• 7 - Operations SEALION, GREEN, LOBSTER, SEAGULL and WHALE I and II – July 1940
• 8 - Operations DOVE/PIGEON and SEA EAGLE (DOVE II) – August 1940–Summer 1941
• 9 - Operations OSPREY (FISCHADLER), PASTORIUS and SEAGULL II – January–May 1942
• 10 - Operation LENA: Infiltrating pre-invasion Nazi agents into England, September 1940 – The ‘Brussels Four’
• 11 - Mrs O’Grady, sentenced to death for sabotage – August 1940–February 1941
• 12 - Arthur Owens, Gwilym Williams and the Welsh Nationalist Party (Part 2): October 1940–June 1942
• 13 - Three Cuban saboteurs land in Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, South Wales – November 1940
• 14 - MUTT and JEFF: Plan GUY FAWKES – April 1941 to August 1942
• 15 - Plan BROCK: August–October 1942
• 16 - Plan BUNBURY and Operations HAGGIS and PORRIDGE – September 1942–June 1945
• 17 - Agent ZIGZAG and Operation THOMAS – December 1942–March 1943
• 18 - Agent PRINS, Potential Dutch saboteur – December 1942
• 19 - More potential saboteurs – Agents September 1941–September 1943
• 20 - ZIGZAG’s return and Sabotage before D-Day – 1944
• Plates
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Diary of Mainland Attacks
• Notes
• Bibliography