Cover Name: Dr. Rantzau is a gripping diary-like personal account of
espionage during the Second World War and is one of very few historic
memoirs written by an ex-Abwehr officer. Detailed is how Colonel
Nikolaus Ritter, following a brief World War I career and over ten years
as a businessman in America, returned to Germany in spring of 1935 and
became Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr. He was assigned to
establish a network of agents to gather information on British and US
airfields, aircrafts, and state-of-the-art developments in the aerospace
industry. Among others, Ritter's cover names were Dr. Rantzau and Dr.
Reinhard in Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Dr. Jansen in Hungary, Dr.
Renken in Germany, and Mr. Johnson in America. Throughout his service in
the Abwehr, Ritter smuggled America's most jealously guarded secret,
the Norden bombsight and the Sperry gyroscope, into Germany, and
coordinated the planning for the invasion of the British Isles
(Operation Sea Lion). Ritter was incarcerated by the British in 1945 and
sent to the Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre.
Katharine Ritter Wallace, the daughter of Col. Ritter, presents the
first English translation of the German World War II memoir. With a
combination of collected documents, correspondences, personal notes,
communications with peers, and from memory, this captivating account by
an espionage agent reveals an insider's glimpse of the German
intelligence service and of a handler's expansive and diverse agent
network.
