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

2) "Alfredo" and the "Bolívar" Network

«2» 'Alfredo" and the"Bolivar"Network IN THE LATTER PART OF OCTOBER, 1941, a German spy whose code name was "Ivan" traveled from the United States to Rio de Janeiro to consult "Alfredo," an Abwehr agent, about the possibility of establishing a clandestine radio station in the United States. Director of one of the major German firms in South America, "Alfredo" received his visitor—a Yugoslav whose real name was Dusko Popov— at the firm's headquarters. Popov was impressed with the spacious setting and with the cordial, meticulously dressed man who welcomed him. Talking about the war, "Alfredo," a dark-haired, carefully groomed individual who sported a moustache, predicted that Russia would be knocked out of the war by year's end, that England would then be conquered, and that then, since the Americans had no stomach for conflict, Washington would seek an understanding with Berlin. Popov found "Alfredo" to be "a caricature of a Nazi," but one who gave the impression of being efficient.1 "Alfredo" was more than efficient. Indeed, the man whom Popov had sought out during that critical period of World War II was not merely the most important German agent in Brazil; he was the hub of an espionage wheel whose spokes extended through several countries of the Hemisphere, and his powerful secret transmitter , baptized with the name "Bolivar," was a conduit to Germany for political, economic, and military information coming from those countries. According to a wartime secret report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Bolivar" transmitted information sent to "Alfredo" from New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Quito, Valparaiso, and Buenos Aires.2 Who was this key agent "ALFREDO" AND THE "BOUVAR" NETWORK (29 and how did he come to occupy that crucial post within the Abwehr 's network of spies in the Americas? O In the years of turmoil and disillusionment ushered in by the conflict of 1914-18, thousands of young Germans left their homeland to seek better lives elsewhere. One of these emigrants was a young engineer named Albrecht Gustav Engels, who had served during the war as a teenaged lieutenant in the Imperial army and had seen combat in France. Brazil looked promising because of its large German community and its economic ties with Germany, so Engels negotiated a job with the Siemens firm in Rio de Janeiro and sailed from Hamburg in 1923 at the age of twenty-four. He demonstrated both sound technical knowledge and administrative skills and found a propitious atmosphere for advancement in Brazil. After less than a year with Siemens, he moved to a better job with a steel company and subsequently became a manager of the branch of the Allgemeine Elektrizitats Gesellschaft (AEG), or German General Electric , in Belo Horizonte, capital of the adjoining state of Minas Gerais. A young man obviously on the rise, Engels in 1927 married a woman from his hometown in Germany, and two years later she gave birth to their only son. Following the Revolution of 1930, they moved to Rio de Janeiro when Engels was appointed chief engineer at the home office of the AEG of South America. Then, in 1931, he accepted the job of organizing a branch of the company in Joinville, in the South, and two years later he was elected director there.3 Engels' work thus took him to the major commercial-industrial centers of South-Central Brazil where, as an official of one of the leading German enterprises, he built up a wide range of influential and knowledgeable contacts in business, political, and even military circles; as he put it, he enjoyed "personal relations with a series of officers and society figures." His successful adaptation to the Brazilian milieu—in October, 1934, he became a naturalized Brazilian citizen—and his administrative competence brought him to the attention of the Berlin supervisors of the AEG, and in 1939 he was appointed one of its directors with special responsibilities for the branches of the company in South America. Like so many Germans 30) HITLER'S SECRET WAR IN SOUTH AMERICA abroad in the 1930s who were not eyewitnesses to Nazi excesses at home, Engels took pride in the resurgence of his native country and felt it his patriotic duty to assist in that process. His appointment as an AEG director was to be the first step in his enlistment not only as an agent of the Abwehr, but as its...