Willem Ter Braak

Jan Willem Ter Braak
Allegiance Germany
Service German Intelligence Service (Abwehr)
Active November 3, 1940 to March 31, 1941
Operation(s) Lena
Birth name Fukken, Engelbertus
Born (1914-08-28)28 August 1914
The Hague
Died 31 March 1941(1941-03-31) (aged 26)
Christ's Pieces Park, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Cause of
death		 suicide by gunshot to the head
Buried St. Mary's, Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire
Nationality Dutch

Jan Willem (or Wilhelm) Ter Braak (originally Engelbertus Fukken) (28 August 1914[1] – c. 29 March 1941) was a Dutch espionage agent working for Germany who operated for five months in the United Kingdom. Although his active period was short, Ter Braak is believed to have been the German agent who was at large for the longest time in Britain during the Second World War. When he ran out of money, Ter Braak committed suicide in a public air raid shelter.

The body of Willem Ter Braak, as discovered on 1 April 1941 in Cambridge air raid shelter. In front of the body is the pistol with which Ter Braak killed himself. UK Crown Copyright image from the National Archives.

Arrival

Ter Braak arrived by parachute on the night of 2 November 1940, landing near Haversham in Buckinghamshire.[2] His parachute was discovered the next day but Ter Braak was not found.[3] He had in fact made his way to Cambridge where he arrived on 4 November.[3] He found lodgings with a couple named Sennitt at 58 St. Barnabas Road, who accepted his story of having come from the Netherlands during the Dunkirk evacuation, and claimed to be working with Free Dutch forces in London on a Dutch newspaper.[1][3]

Activities

Despite his false identity papers, Ter Braak was able to rent an office on Rose Crescent where he installed his suitcase transmitter.[2] As an alien from an occupied country, Ter Braak's residence should have been registered with the police, but he did not do so.[3] His landlord did tip the Aliens Officer off that a Dutch national was living with him, but the police did not follow up and speak to him, saying that they were sure he would register before long.[4] He spent most of the day out of the house but never spent a night away, and supported himself from a large amount of cash which he had brought with him and which included United States Dollars.[3]

Suspicion

In January 1941, Ter Braak was contacted by the Food Office about his ration card, which its records showed had been issued to a man named Burton living in Homefields, Addlestone, Surrey.[4] This was because the card had been supplied by the Abwehr using numbers given by the double agent SNOW (Arthur Owens).[3] Ter Braak evidently suspected that he would be detected, and told his landlady that he had to leave for London.[3] In fact, he moved across town and obtained a new set of lodgings on Montague Road.[5]

Suicide

By March, Ter Braak's money was running out and he had to change the dollar bills through a fellow lodger who worked at a bank.[3] At the end of the month he no longer had the money to pay his landlady.[6]

On 29 March he deposited a large case in the left luggage office at the Cambridge railway station, and went to one of the public air raid shelters at Christ's Pieces Park where he committed suicide using an Abwehr-issue pistol.[6] His body was not found until 1 April; the possessions found on him included a forged identity card also carrying numbers issued by SNOW which had obvious errors, a Dutch passport without an immigration stamp, and 1/9d in cash. The case at the station was found to contain a radio transmitter.[3]

Ter Braak was buried in an umarked grave at St. Mary's, Great Shelford, three miles south of Cambridge.[7]

Ter Braak's story was suppressed at the time.[6] An inquest was held in camera; its findings were released, along with other information about him, on 9 September 1945. In 1947, the Dutch Government asked MI5 if they could have an official statement on the death on Engelbertus Fukken as his fiancée, Miss Eeltje van Roon wished to make a claim for his life insurance policy.[5]

References

  1. 1 2 Adams, Jefferson (2009). Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence. Scarecrow Press. p. 458.
  2. 1 2 Hayward, James (2013). Double Agent SNOW: The true story of Arthur Owens, Hitler's Chief Spy in England. Simon and Schuster. p. 184.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Hinsley, F.H.; Simkins, C.A.G. (1990). British Intelligence in the Second World War: Volume 4 - Security and Counter-Intelligence. Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO). p. 326.
  4. 1 2 Hayward, James (2013). Double Agent SNOW: The true story of Arthur Owens, Hitler's Chief Spy in England. Simon and Schuster. p. 192.
  5. 1 2 Levine, Joshua (2011). Operation Fortitude: The Story of the Spy Operation that Saved D-Day. Collins. pp. 119–122.
  6. 1 2 3 Hayward, James (2013). Double Agent SNOW: The true story of Arthur Owens, Hitler's Chief Spy in England. Simon and Schuster. pp. 235–236.
  7. ↑ Hayward, James (2013). Double Agent SNOW: The true story of Arthur Owens, Hitler's Chief Spy in England. Simon and Schuster. p. 277.

Other Resources

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