Hitler's Man in Havana: Heinz Luning and Nazi Espionage in Latin America

3. Back to School! Trained as a Nazi Spy

53  3  Back to school! trained as a nazi spy In July 1941, Hans Joachim Koelln arranged for Lüning to enter the Abwehr academy in Hamburg. From the beginning, Lüning seemed anxious to go to the Western Hemisphere. Later, after he was captured, rumors surfaced about earlier Abwehr service. There is no evidence to support this allegation and considerable evidence that it was not true. An FBI-SIS investigation rejected these unsubstantiated claims that Lüning had conducted espionage activity while in the Dominican Republic in 1936 and 1937. The FBI was convinced that Lüning entered the spy world only in 1941.1 The Abwehr files and other evidence from his family and friends confirm that he entered service in July 1941. Lüning was not a happy spy. He entered Abwehr service only to avoid military service. His description of training and service for the Abwehr exposed many of the less glamorous aspects of espionage. His schooling was rigorously secretive and intense. Prior to entry, Lüning signed a pledge of secrecy. He agreed to keep his Abwehr service secret even from his wife. In 1942, he told the SIS that his class had eleven other students and three instructors. Each student had a code name; Lüning’s was “Lumann.” Presumably, the instructors also had code names. During his interrogations in Havana, Lüning dug back into his memory. To the best of his ability, he supplied the U.S., British, and Cuban intel- 54 Hitler’s Man in Havana ligence agents with the code names, detailed physical descriptions, the language capabilities, and his personal evaluation of his classmates and the instructors at the espionage school.2 He willingly described his experience in the Abwehr academy. The Hamburg Abwehr school commonly trained a class as individuals or in small groups. The members of Lüning’s small class were trained individually. When the students were brought together, they were not allowed to talk to each other. Each day, they signed in with their code names and were checked twice daily for attendance. In the course of the war, the Hamburg Abwehr school trained about two hundred agents.3 During his espionage training, Lüning was exposed to a variety of skills but mastered none of them. His six-week training program covered wireless radio transmission and reception, how to mix and write in three secret inks, and Morse code. In his interrogation, he claimed the ability to transmit seventy letters per minute in Morse code during his training . His only radio transmission and reception, however, occurred with German stations in Bremen and Hamburg-Wohldorf, and even then he used printed exercise drills. He received signals only from the German station in Halle. While some radio trainees monitored night radio reception from less active stations such as Africa, Lüning never was allowed to, probably a sign that his instructors doubted his skill. Thus, during his Abwehr schooling, he never sent signals to or received them from a radio station outside Germany. As part of his training, he successfully constructed a radio set in his instructor’s office. However, all the parts and materials were available. He merely assembled them. Later, in Havana , he could not rise to the challenge. He failed to acquire the necessary parts and materials to assemble a radio. The training in Hamburg also included microdot photography, recognizing and escaping shadows (people following agents), and basic knowledge of the armed forces in the country of the agent’s service (especially identifying ships, planes, and tank types).4 The only “James Bond” characteristics he learned well were how to find girls and drinks. At the end of the course, Lüning became Abwehr agent A-3779. The A indicated that he was in the regular service, the 3 indicated that he had been trained at the Hamburg AST, and 779 was the consecutive Back to school! trained as a nazi spy 55 number assigned to him. His designation suggests that Lüning had entered the service somewhat late since, presumably, the first agent trained by the Hamburg AST would have been designated A-3001.5 However, because most Hamburg Abwehr records were destroyed, it cannot be determined whether all the numbers between 1 and 779 were assigned. In the course of the Abwehr school’s instruction, Alfred Hartmann —who, as we have seen, recruited Lüning and was now training him...