Hitler's Secret War In South America, 1939–1945: German Military Espionage and Allied Counterespionage in Brazil

14) The Abwehr's Last Salvo in Brazil

«14)> The Abwehr'sLast Salvoin Brazil THE COASTAL DISTRICT of Sao Joao da Barra in the state of Rio de Janeiro was a region of decadent fishing villages whose inhabitants struggled hard to make a living. One of the poorest villages was Gargau, a riverport. There, early on the morning of August 10, 1943, while the town was just awakening, Donato Menezes, a revenue officer for the municipio who served without pay as a deputy policeman in Gargau, and a friend, Moacyr Veloso, were trying to fix a stalled truck that they planned to use to haul workers for repair work on the dirt road that linked the village to a nearby settlement called Sao Francisco de Paulo. While they tinkered with the truck, Veloso suddenly remarked: "There comes a Turk down the road." Menezes looked up and saw a man of foreign appearance coming toward them from the direction of Sao Francisco. He was Caucasian and tall, and as he drew near, Menezes noticed that he sported sideburns on a fleshy face. He was wearing a raincoat, carried a suitcase, and limped badly on one leg. The stranger stopped when he reached the truck and asked Veloso, "in a tongue pretty hard to understand," if the city of Campos was nearby, saying that he needed a doctor for his leg. He said somewhat apologetically that he was Spanish, which explained his accent. Menezes only recently had received a circular from Niteroi, the state capital, instructing him to detain any "suspicious" individuals until their identity could be established, so he suggested to his friend that they arrest the stranger, who did not sound like a Spaniard. Veloso was hesitant: the man might be a "German" who had legal papers. Menezes relented momentarily, but his curiosity had been aroused— 296) HITLER'S SECRET WAR IN SOUTH AMERICA and this curiosity on the part of a backwater constable was the first step in aborting the Abwehr's last intelligence operation in Brazil.1 O Wilhelm Kopff was a "good German" whose background was not dissimilar to that of other agents recruited by the Abwehr for work in South America, except for the fact that he was a Nazi party member . Born in Hamburg at the turn of the century, he had seen military service during World War I as a volunteer in an infantry battalion that fought in France, where he had been wounded and interned for a time as a prisoner of war. After the armistice, he worked in various jobs until 1925, when he accepted employment with a Bremen firm that sent him to Lima. There he married a Peruvian woman, who gave birth to their only daughter on the eve of World War II. During his lengthy residence in Peru, he set up his own boat-building company and enjoyed excellent contacts in local business circles and even with the Peruvian government, which gave him a contract to build military launches for use on the Amazon River.2 From the very beginning, Kopff was an enthusiast of the New Order in Germany. He joined the Nazi party in Peru in 1933, and during business trips to Europe in following years he had opportunities to view at first hand the Nazi "miracle." On one of these visits, he attended a public gathering in Munich, and when a car bearing the Fiihrer passed slowly by him, his emotion led him to leap onto the running board to shake Hitler's hand—a gesture that brought him an invitation to visit the Nazi leader at his private residence . On his return to Peru, Kopff quickly became known as a Nazi activist.' The outbreak of war had a disastrous impact on Kopff's business and private life. In February, 1941, his company was placed on the British blacklist, and shortly thereafter American authorities froze funds that he had deposited in a bank in the United States. He had to dismiss several employees and, in an effort to salvage something , he changed the name of his firm, but to no avail: in September it was placed on the American blacklist. With this, he later recalled bitterly, "nearly ten years of intensive work were entirely THE ABWEHR'S LAST SALVO IN BRAZIL (297 lost." Kopff had difficulty adjusting to financial hardship and began to drink and gamble. His relationship with his wife turned sour, and later that same year they separated.4 When...