516 • SPRINGBOK
died in February 1979, explained how their friendship, which was to
last 33 years, began.SPRINGBOK.TheSecret Intelligence Service(SIS) code name for
Hans von Kotze, a German aristocrat married to an Englishwoman,
who had emigrated to South Africa in 1929 to work as a fur buyer
and miner. Soon after the outbreak of World War II, hoping to avoid
internment as an enemy alien, he had moved to Portuguese East Af-
rica but had been expelled. In a further attempt to avoid internment,
von Kotze took a passage to Europe but had been captured by a
French ship and detained in Morocco until July 1940. When he was
finally released, he was offered the option of serving in the Wehr-
macht or working for theAbwehr, and he chose the latter. In June
1941 he was dispatched on a LATI flight from Rome to Brazil to join
an organization headed by Albrecht Engels asfred, under commer-
cial cover as a buyer in the leather trade, but what he really wanted
to do was reestablish contact with his wife, who had been interned in
South Africa, and their children.
When finally in March 1942 he was ordered to move to South Af-
rica, von Kotze wrote to the British consulate in Sa ̃o Paulo and of-
fered his services to SIS. In exchange for a British passport after the
war, some money, and the opportunity to be reunited with his wife
without being arrested, he was prepared to supply a wealth of infor-
mation about the Abwehr’s network in Brazil, its members, and its
codes and to identify its leader Engels, codenamedalfredo.Von
Kotze also revealed that, accompanied by his beautiful Hungarian
girlfriend, he had visited Buenos Aires in late August 1941 to confer
with Dietrich Niebuhr and had also had dealings with the German
military attache ́in Brazil, Gu ̈nter Neidenfuhr, who apparently had
expressed his disapproval of the frequency with which von Kotze’s
had been spotted at the gaming tables in Santos, accompanied by
conspicuously attractive young women. Doubtless it was General
Neidenfuhr’s attempt to instill some discipline in his subordinate that
had prompted him to approach the British, although he may also have
been unnerved by some unsubtle surveillance by the Brazilian secret
police (DOPS), which included snatching a few photographs of him
relaxing on a beach near Santos.
As he also had much to say about an Abwehr spy ring in South