Classical Spies: American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece

10. Operation Honeymoon

ten  Operation Honeymoon in early april 1944, Young felt that the archaeologists were “gradually being overcome by a sort of creeping paralysis.” No one felt he had any authority . In Cairo, Young was coping with the aftermath of the mutiny and the Greek political crisis. To discover the true intent of EAM/ELAS, SI would partner with the Labor Desk. Together they would send the Pericles mission. It would be the ‹rst to enjoy the privilege of free passage on Evvia. Young warned Caskey that its agent would soon arrive at “Boston.”1 Young’s letter was still en route on April 15 when Caskey stepped out into the cool night air, heavy with jasmine. Caskey was agitated and looked out to sea. That afternoon, representatives of General Arnold, the British military attaché, and MI-5’s internal security of‹cer had asked him to assist them in a top-secret mission.2 Caskey was to receive a most important guest—a fraulein of twenty-‹ve, the daughter of an oldschool Berlin diplomat who had had numerous postings abroad. In 1936 she had moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where her father had served as consul general for ‹ve years.3 Reports varied about his allegiance to Hitler. Word had it that he had displayed a life-size portrait of Hitler in his of‹ce and the swastika in his home in suburban Shaker Heights, spoken at rallies of German-Americans, and supplied the German military attaché in Washington with data and clippings about Cleveland industries and civil defenses .4 Yet his daughter later maintained that he was adamantly antiNazi . Nele Kapp had enjoyed the life of an American teenager, making friends, going by her Americanized name of Cornelia, and perfecting her English in 180 a private high school and at Case Western while her two brothers remained in Germany.5 When the U.S. government closed all German consulates in July 1941, the Kapps returned to Germany. Nele did not adjust well and studied nursing to avoid factory work.6 After her father accepted a posting to Italy and before joining her parents,7 Nele made an extensive tour of Germany and became well informed about conditions there. With the invasion of Sicily, Herr Kapp was reassigned as consul general in So‹a, Bulgaria, and Nele followed, working as an embassy secretary while her brothers fought on the Russian front. According to one account, an OSS agent in Ankara contacted her to spy for the Americans, letting it slip that her Ohio boyfriend was with the OSS in Ankara.8 The Allies bombed So‹a in November and December 1943, killing thousands , destroying hundreds of homes and of‹ces, shutting down water and electricity, and feeding ‹res that ravaged the defenseless city. During one attack , a German embassy employee from Ankara met the Kapps in the airraid shelter of So‹a’s German embassy.9 The shell-shocked girl asked her father to allow her to recuperate in Turkey, where she secretly hoped to defect.10 To get her to safety, her father asked the man about work.11 Impressed by the ef‹cient, well-dressed woman with long blond hair,“a true‘Gretchen,’”12 the Ankara representative mentioned an opening and recommended her for the post. The commercial attaché in Ankara needed someone trustworthy and of an unimpeachable background to ‹ll a con‹dential position as temporary secretary and cipher clerk. Apparently, she struck him as outspoken in her support of National Socialism as the only hope for Germany, and her father’s excellent record with the diplomatic corps, coupled with her family’s standing in German society, recommended her, so Ankara hired her in less than a fortnight.13 A very different young woman presented herself in Ankara early in January 1944. By that time, Kapp had endured yet another bombing raid and suffered a nervous collapse—her eyes were glazed, her hair disheveled, and her skin was gray.14 She lived in perpetual fear and took sleeping pills and drugs to assuage her nerves.15 In this way, she survived, plodding through translating, taking dictation, and answering the phone in the commercial attaché’s of‹ce. Like most attachés, Kapp’s boss at the German embassy in Ankara, Austrian Ludwig Moysich, actually worked in espionage, as Obersturmbannf ührer in the SS and chief of the Ankara Sicherheitsdienst (SD) under Operation Honeymoon • 181 Hitler’s intelligence...