SPRINGHALL, DOUGLAS• 517Africa, SIS quickly agreed to terms and enrolled von Kotze as
springbok, but the plan to let him go to South Africa collapsed when
the authorities there refused him entry. Instead von Kotze suggested
he might try North America and, with the Abwehr’s consent, he
made his way using the alias ‘‘Johannes van Huges’’ to Canada,
where he attempted to establish wireless contact with Germany
through Werner Waltemath, codenamedantonio, one of the radio
operators in the Engels network who, coincidentally, he had met on
the flight to Recife from Rome. Although he was a trained Wehr-
macht technician, Waltemath experienced considerable problems
with his homemade transmitter in Sa ̃o Paulo and, despite a lengthy
correspondence conducted in 13 letters and 10 telegrams in a code
based onThe Martyrdom of Man, was unable to help von Kotze. In-
stead,springbok, by now ostensibly working for a British company,
Vickers & Benson Ltd. in Toronto, tried to reach the Germans at a
postbox address in Lisbon, but by the time his letter arrived, on a
slow mail ship rather than by airmail on the transatlantic clipper, the
DOPS had pounced on the Engels network and Waltemath had gone
into hiding. When eventually Waltemath was caught by the DOPS, in
June 1943, he accepted an offer from SIS to act as adouble agent,
but his controllers in Germany were not fooled, and the connection
was severed, leaving Waltemath facing a prison sentence of 27^1 / 2
years.
Meanwhilespringbok, out of touch with the Germans, became a
nuisance toBritish Security Coordination(BSC), especially after
he had seduced Dorothy Hyde, the wife of his case officer,Harford
Montgomery Hyde. His role as a double agent ended in August
1943 when his name was released in Brazil and he was sentenced in
absentia. Although BSC arranged for theRoyal Canadian Mounted
Policeto announce his arrest, so as to protect his cooperation, von
Kotze was allowed to sail to England from Halifax in February 1945.SPRINGHALL, DOUGLAS.A member of the Central Committee of
theCommunist Party of Great Britain(CPGB) since 1932, Doug-
las Springhall had been dismissed from the Royal Navy for causing
dissention and had attended the 1924 Communist International in
Moscow. During the Spanish Civil War, he was the first political
commissar of the Xth (British)International Brigade, and upon his