NAZI METHODS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 26 June 1940, Page 2

NAZI METHODS

MAPS ON BACK OF POSTERS CODE MESSAGES IN BEER ADVERTISEMENTS ENGLISHMAN’S REVELATIONS [By Air Mail—Special Correspondent] LONDON. Bth June. Secrets of the German Fifth Column attack on Belgium were revealed this week by Mr Tom Hill, an English manager of Belgian racing bicyclists, who has just returned from England. “The Germans dropped large numbers of parachutists in plain clothes,” he said. "The first thing these spies had to do was to make contact with a Nazi agent in the town they were to work in. But if they started by inquiring the way they might arouse suspicion. So the Germans had taken extraordinary measures to help them find their way without asking. “There is a big firm that sells a brand of chicory-coffee. This is widely advertised by posters fixed to trees and hoardings. Some time before the war this firm had quite innocently had a number of posters printed on a solid lead-stiffened paper, by a German firm. “These posters had maps printed on the back of them in invisible ink. All the parachutists had to do on landing was to pull down the first poster they saw and dip it into water, or some such simple process to reveal the map.” A similar use was made of advertisements of the popular beer. Baf Bavary. The advertisements, printed in Germany, were so arranged (without the knowledge of the advertisers) that a message in code was concealed in apparently straightforward sentences. The parachutists walked into the first public house they saw and looked for a Baf Bavary advertisement. If there was not one there they tried the next inn, until they found one bearing the pre-arranged message. Mr Hill strongly criticised the laxity wivh which the Belgian authorities allowed German spies to carry out their investigations until the very eve of the invasion. The long-distance bicycle races, of which the Belgians are extremely fond, gave them a wonderful opportunity. There were, in April, three races of 100-150 miles each, which ran right through the Belgian fortified regions; one of them actually crossed the Albert Canal, Belgium’s main line of defence, three times. These zones were strictly forbidden to civilians. But they were thrown open not only to the racing bicyclists themselves, but to their managers and trainers who followed them in cars. There was a cursory inspection of passports as the managers’ cars entered the defence zones, but no search to see that . they did not take cameras with them—and some of them did. j At least two of these managers proved to have been Nazi spies. 6n j Mr Hill’s suggestion they were arrested and examined as soon as the* inj vasion took place: they were found to have photogranhic neeatives of imI portant parts of the Belgian defences, obtained while they were following their bicyclists round the courses. One of the men was a former German bicycling champion, Werner Mieth. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.