Meanwhile, Roessler alone had to do all the receiving, decoding and evaluating of the "Lucy" messages before passing them on for him during this period it became a full-time operation. At the peak of its operation, Rado's network was enciphering and sending several hundred messages per month, many of these from "Lucy". Roessler, and Rado's network, particularly Allan Foote, Rado's main radio operator, were prepared to work flat out to maintain the speed and flow of the information. During the autumn of 1942, "Lucy" provided the Soviets with detailed information about Case Blue, the German operations against Stalingrad and the Caucasus during this period decisions taken in Berlin were arriving in Moscow on average within a ten-hour period on one occasion in just six hours, not much longer than it took to reach German front line units. Over the next two years "Lucy" was able to supply the Soviets with high grade military intelligence. of the highest importance, and to be transmitted immediately. Following the invasion, in June 1941, Lucy was regarded as a VYRDO source, i.e. Though his warning was initially ignored - as Soviet intelligence had received multiple false alarms about an impending German invasion - Roessler's dates eventually proved accurate. Roessler's first major contribution to Soviet intelligence came in May 1941 when he was able to deliver details of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's impending invasion of the Soviet Union. Rado code-named the source "Lucy", simply because all he knew about the source was that it was in Lucerne. Rado agreed to this, recognizing the value of the information being received.
Roessler was not a Communist, nor even particularly a Communist sympathizer, and wished to remain at arm's length from Rado's network, insisting on complete anonymity and communicating with Rado only through the courier, Christian Schneider. Later, through another contact who was a part of a Soviet ( GRU) network run by Alexander Rado, Roessler was able to pass to the Soviet Union, recognizing the role of the USSR in the fight against Nazism. Roger Masson, the head of Swiss MI, also chose to pass some of this information to the British SIS. This was possible, as those employed to encode the information were unaware of where it was going, while those transmitting the messages had no idea what was in them.Īt first Roessler passed the information to Swiss military intelligence, via a friend who was serving in Bureau Ha, an intelligence agency used by the Swiss as a cut-out. They were able to do this as Thiele, and his superior, Erich Fellgiebel (who was also part of the conspiracy), were in charge of the German Defence Ministry's communication centre, the Bendlerblock. In this way they could openly transmit their information to him through normal channels. This they accomplished by the simple expedient of equipping Roessler with a radio and an Enigma machine, and designating him as a German military station (call-signed RAHS). Thiele and Gersdorf wished him to act as a conduit for high-level military information, to be available to him to make use of in the fight against Fascism. Roessler was approached by two German officers, Fritz Thiele and Rudolph von Gersdorff, who were part of a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler, and had been known to Roessler in the 1930s through the Herrenklub. He was employed by Brigadier Masson, head of Swiss Military Intelligence, who employed him as an analyst with Bureau Ha, overtly a press cuttings agency but in fact a covert department of Swiss Intelligence. Roessler, a German expatriate from Bavaria who fled to Geneva when Hitler came to power, was working as a publisher at the outbreak of World War II in Switzerland, producing anti-Fascist literature. Very little is clear about the Lucy ring, about Roessler, or about Lucy's sources or motives. It was run by Rudolf Roessler, a German refugee and ostensibly the proprietor of a small publishing firm, Vita Nova. In World War II espionage, the Lucy spy ring was an anti-Nazi operation that was headquartered in Switzerland.
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