Unternehmen Seelöwe: Widerstand im deutschen Geheimdienst

"This evening I spoke with Kenneth Strong of Military Intelligence. He thinks very highly of the efficiency of the Germans and simply cannot believe that their intelligence service is so stupid as to send these people over," noted the director of the spy division of British domestic intelligence in his diary in September 1940. As the vanguard of "Unternehmen Seelöwe" (Operation Sea Lion), the invasion of the German Wehrmacht, a total of over 20 spies were smuggled into England. None of them was able to fulfill their tasks.

On the basis of documents from the British National Archives, Monika Siedentopf shows that German espionage against England did not fail due to the dilettantism of the responsible "Abwehrstelle des Amtes Ausland" (Army Intelligence Bureau) in Hamburg. The head, Captain at Sea Herbert Wichmann and his closest associates were opponents of the regime whose plans they wanted to thwart.