Liverpool-born Alexander Foote became a Soviet spy in Switzerland,
transmitting German intelligence before facing betrayal and
disillusionment. In his short life, Liverpool-born Alexander Foote
went from being a volunteer in the International Brigade in Spain to
becoming an agent of Soviet military intelligence in Switzerland.
Pretending to his friends that he was a dim-witted Englishman with
private means, Foote became the key telegraphist of the so-called
‘Red Three’ network of radio stations, communicating top secret
German intelligence to the USSR from under the noses of the Swiss
authorities. The information from Foote’s Morse key originated from
sources in Germany and came to Foote via the enigmatic figure of
Rudolph Rossler, known as Agent Lucy. Where he obtained the
information from is a mystery that has never been solved. During the
battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, Soviet generals came to depend on the
information from Foote’s transmitter and those of his comrades. On
his release from a ten-month remand in a Swiss gaol on an espionage
charge, Foote absconded to Paris in 1944 before being invited for
debriefing in Moscow. When he arrived, he became aware that he was
under suspicion of being a British spy and it took all his wit to talk
his comrades in Soviet intelligence out of sending him to the gulag: a
fate that waited for many of the others in his Swiss network.
Disillusioned with life in the USSR, Foote approached British
intelligence while he was on a Soviet mission in Berlin. He made them
an offer: if they got him back to Britain he would tell them all he
knew about Soviet intelligence, from the inside. This is his story.
Les mer
Alexander Foote and the Lucy Spy Ring
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781036115746
Publisert
2025
Utgiver
Vendor
Pen and Sword Military
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter