Agent provided Allies with chance to shorten the war

Press, 26 December 1985, Page 19

Agent provided Allies with chance to shorten the war

By ROY BURKE of the “Waikato Times”

Hamilton The British spy Ron JeL frey penetrated the Nazi Intelligence network in 1944 and handed the allies a chance to shorten World War H.

His remarkable coup came to nothing. The British Secret Intelligence Service discredited his report. It was suggested that he had collaborated with the Nazis. Mr Jeffrey, who for two years had evaded the Gestapo as a member of the Polish underground’s Intelligence service, ended his war cleaning toilets at Maidstone barracks.

Now retired in Auckland, Mr Jeffrey has told his story in a privately published book, '“Red Runs the Vistula.”

He supports his 1944 report with evidence now available, but then out of reach, in Nazi-controlled Europe. He claims every significant detail in his book can be verified. He presents reasons why he was destroyed by the British Intelligence service. They became clear in 1963 when the flight of Russia’s master spy, Kim Philby, exposed corruption in the British service. . In Hamilton, Mr Jeffrey said the Russians had not

wanted a quick end to the European war. The more it was prolonged the more Russia would win in the race to control post-war Europe. Also, Mr Jeffrey had vital information about the massacre of 4000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest deep in Russia. Another 10,000 Polish officers disappeared about the same time, April 1940. The Germans blamed the massacre on the Russians, the Russians blamed it on the Germans. A Russian commission ruled after the war that the Germans were responsible, and this was upheld at the Nuremburg war 'trials. But a wartime inquiry by the Polish underground conclusively proved that only the Russians could have done it In 1944, Mr Jeffrey was instructed to keep quiet about Katyn the Germans were still to be beaten, and no rift with the Russian allies could be risked. The British have “sat on the truth since then to spare their own shame,” Mr Jeffrey claims. After the war Mr Jeffrey emigrated to New Zealand, established himself in a successful manufacturing business, and attempted to live with the inexplicable injustice done him. His book must be read to

appreciate the depth of that injustice. “I’m still something of a folk hero in Poland,” he claims. “They still talk of the mad Englishman Pawel” (the undercover name by which he was known in the underground). Mr Jeffrey, an army corporal captured at Dunkirk, twice escaped and joined the Polish underground army in 1942. A natural linguist since public school days, he could pass as a German. He became fluent in Polish in several dialects, and could also pass as a Pole. A collection of passports and documents, most forged by the Polish underground, gave him remarkably free movement through Europe. His final coup was an agreement, to assist the British, from the Naziappointed chief of the Russian Liberation Army, Colonel Boris Von Reg Enau.

He headed his own string of Intelligence agents through Eastern Europe, and was in touch with dozens of top German officers disgruntled by the direction of Hitler’s war. “We could have had a crack at Hitler himself,” Mr Jeffrey claims. His “in” with the Russian was so secure that Mr Jef-

frey was supplied with Sonderfuhrer (special officer) uniform, and documentation, as a special Intelligence officer. He was chauffeur-driven round Berlin for a day while arrangements were completed to smuggle him over the Norwegian border into neutral (but British favouring) Sweden, from where he was flown home. Mr Jeffrey wanted to pass on his information to the British and immediately parachute back to Germany. He was swung into a round of detained questionings with top military and Intelligence people. A visit to Chartwell for a session with Prime Minister Winston Churchill was laid on, and cancelled. Philby’s team had done their work. Mr Jeffrey had married in Poland. He was told there would be na British help to get his wife and child out if he failed to keep his mouth shut

When his wife was flown to Britian after the war, she was questioned at the airport by British Intelligence. In 1963, from newspaper pictures she learned Philby had been her interrogator. Mr Jeffrey was decorated for valour by the Polish underground in 1943. H«’ was commissioned in the field by the underground

army, which requested his British regiment to grant a similar commission. Years after the war he received through the mail the Polish underground cross. Today Mr Jeffrey is still bitter about wartime injustice to Poland, especially the Russian role in the final destruction of Warsaw.

With Russian troops at the gates of Warsaw, Russia urged the Polish citizenry to rise against the German occupiers. They did, with greatest courage, and with inferior weapons took the German strong points. The Russians held back. The Nazis counter-attacked, and for nine weeks the people of Warsaw fought impossible odds. More than 600,000 citizens died while the Russians watched. When it was all over the Russians rolled ip. Mr Jeffrey finds lessons in this for the present: “If you live next door to a thug you don’t get rid of your Dobermann.”

He believes the Western nations should hope for peace, but always preserve strength to resist a bully. He believes the strongest weapon threatening the west is the influence for disarmament “mobilising the innocent and the ignorant” Experience tells him the influence is sinister.