Hamburg, The Waterfront, Sunday, 19 December 1948
“Fido” was a wharf-rat, one of the many non-descript men who did odd jobs for the stevedoring and shipping companies that kept goods moving through the port of Hamburg. “Fido” was, of course, not his real name, but the one by which his employer tracked the information he provided and the payments made in exchange for it. “Fido” was a ‘sweeper’, a low-level agent who kept British intelligence informed of things of interest in Hamburg. Today he noted the arrival in port of a trio of freighters, moored near the Deschimag ship-repair yard.
His long experience told him the Kriegsmarine was readying several more merchantman for conversion as auxiliaries. He had seen this before – a merchantman, or two, or even three – arrived, were off-loaded, and then taken in hand to emerge weeks later as support ships – ‘Ships Taken Up From Trade’ – which kept the Kriegsmarine’s warships at sea. From where he stood, he could not tell what use these freighters might be put to – but the fact that they had arrived ought to be worth at least a few marks to his contact. And with winter in the offing, a few extra marks would be most welcome.
Berlin, The Admiralstab, Monday, 20 December 1948
Traditionally the Admiralstab looked upon winters as a time for reflection, and so it was for Gerlach. He had finally found opportunity to read the notes and staff studies done by Admiral Eduard von Knorr in the days before the Great War – indeed, before Grand Admiral Tirpitz had imagined the High Seas Fleet and begun the naval arms race with Britain. Von Knorr had studied the means and methods of an invasion of Britain, and had propounded a detailed scheme to bring it about. The arrival of Tirpitz, the commitment of funds to a massive battleship construction programme, and the Kaiser’s continual blustering that brought about Germany encirclement by the nation of the Entente had rendered von Knorr’s ideas moot. But these concepts were not without influences. An Irishman had picked up von Knorr’s ideas for a massive fleet of barges written a novel, The Riddle of the Sands, exposing the potential threat to Britain; not that anyone had taken his story seriously. A thinly-disguised version of von Knorr had even appeared in the novel as the sinister ‘Baron von Brunning’.
Still, Gerlach found much to commend von Knorr’s work – for a study completed in 1899 it examined the question of a successful amphibious assault on Britain’s eastern coast in quite realistic terms. The lengthening list of notes that he made while re-examining von Knorr’s papers would tell its own story.
Colchester, The George Hotel, Tuesday, 21 December 1948
Mach spent the early evening in the lounge of the old coaching inn, noting his impressions of East Anglia. In the morning he would depart for Harwich, taking the boat train to Hook of Holland. He had gathered more than enough material to write the travel guide which was his ostensible reason for visiting Britain; and he could not gather more detailed information on his other targets without giving the game away.