Dan Dare
03-05-2006, 06:09 PM
Third Reich nostalgics often like to preen themselves with tales about how gallant the Nazis were in the West, and how they always scrupulously complied with all the international codes governing conduct in warfare, compared to the wicked Allies and their terror-bomber campaign against innocent and defenceless civilians.
Nazis planned biological strike from Shetland
Sunday Times
March 5, 2006
THEY are Britain’s most northerly and remote outposts, where the inhabitants’ Viking ancestry is celebrated every year with the burning of a longboat.
However, newly declassified files show that the Shetland Isles were the focus of a Nazi plot to release deadly bacteria in Britain.
The files show that Hitler planned to use dozens of fishing boats to ferry biological weapons hidden in pens and pencils from Norway to the most northerly part of Britain.
According to the plan, the lethal pathogens were to have been released in Shetland, from where they would have spread death and panic across the British Isles.
The Germans attempted to send three Norwegian spies into Britain, through the port at Lerwick, on an old fishing boat as part a “feeler” mission.
The plot was foiled when the crew of the Reider was arrested by British Intelligence operators as they attempted to come ashore on January 8, 1943.
The Secret Intelligence Service had received a signal the previous week that the Reider was leaving Trondheim on a mission for German Intelligence.
Two of the crew were interrogated and one set free to join the Free Norwegian Forces. The third, Arnold Evensen, admitted that 50 fishing boats had been assembled by the German intelligence office in Norway to carry bacteria to Scotland.
However, he insisted he was a double agent whose real intention was to provide intelligence for the Allied forces.
Evensen told his interrogators that Captain Lieutenant Klein, the head of German intelligence in Trondheim, had ordered the Reider to be sent to Shetland as a feeler.
If the mission had succeeded, Evensen revealed, spies and collaborators would have been dispatched “equipped with the necessary material for spreading bacteria in this country”.
More … (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2070844,00.html)
Nazis planned biological strike from Shetland
Sunday Times
March 5, 2006
THEY are Britain’s most northerly and remote outposts, where the inhabitants’ Viking ancestry is celebrated every year with the burning of a longboat.
However, newly declassified files show that the Shetland Isles were the focus of a Nazi plot to release deadly bacteria in Britain.
The files show that Hitler planned to use dozens of fishing boats to ferry biological weapons hidden in pens and pencils from Norway to the most northerly part of Britain.
According to the plan, the lethal pathogens were to have been released in Shetland, from where they would have spread death and panic across the British Isles.
The Germans attempted to send three Norwegian spies into Britain, through the port at Lerwick, on an old fishing boat as part a “feeler” mission.
The plot was foiled when the crew of the Reider was arrested by British Intelligence operators as they attempted to come ashore on January 8, 1943.
The Secret Intelligence Service had received a signal the previous week that the Reider was leaving Trondheim on a mission for German Intelligence.
Two of the crew were interrogated and one set free to join the Free Norwegian Forces. The third, Arnold Evensen, admitted that 50 fishing boats had been assembled by the German intelligence office in Norway to carry bacteria to Scotland.
However, he insisted he was a double agent whose real intention was to provide intelligence for the Allied forces.
Evensen told his interrogators that Captain Lieutenant Klein, the head of German intelligence in Trondheim, had ordered the Reider to be sent to Shetland as a feeler.
If the mission had succeeded, Evensen revealed, spies and collaborators would have been dispatched “equipped with the necessary material for spreading bacteria in this country”.
More … (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2070844,00.html)