in May 1953. Her objective was the headquarters of U.S. Air Force
intelligence at Tempelhof Airport, where she enticed several officers
into an intimate relationship and thereby secured a position in the
Order of Battle section. When Schmidt’s unusual interest in official
papers and unlocked safes aroused some suspicion, she was merely
transferred to another office. Yet when she agreed to marry a Ger-
man employee of her former section if he would provide confidential
information, he reported the incident to American authorities. Given
a bogus report, which she concealed in a cigarette package, Schmidt
was arrested en route to East Berlin and then tried before the U.S.
High Commission court in December 1954. Despite her guilty plea
and explanation of having been blackmailed by the Soviets, the court
sentenced her to five years in prison.SCHMIDT, WULF (1911–1992). One of the most prized British
double agents during World War II, Wulf Schmidt was born in
Abrenra, a town in Jutland then in German possession but given
back to Denmark in 1919. After completing his military service with
the Danish army, he abandoned his plan to study agriculture at the
university and took a job at an Argentine cattle ranch and then at a
banana plantation in the Cameroons. Returning to Abrenra in 1939,
Schmidt responded to an advertisement for people fluent in several
languages and became a member of the Abwehr (code name han-
sen). His first secret mission took him from Hamburg to Copenhagen
and was executed flawlessly.
Owing to his fluency in the language, Schmidt’s next assign-
ment involved a paradrop into England to conduct reconnaissance
prior to a presumed German invasion. After landing outside Cam-
bridgeshire on 19 September 1940, he was taken into custody at a
local cafe. Unbeknownst to both him and the Abwehr, Goesta Car-
oli, a Swedish agent who had preceded him, had been apprehended
by the British and divulged the details of Schmidt’s arrival. Besides
matching Caroli’s description, he was carrying a genuine Danish
passport bearing his real name and a forged British identity card
with the name Harry Williamson. Disheartened by the discrepancy
between the Abwehr’s bleak picture of England and actual condi-
tions, as well as by the inadequate preparations for his assignment,
Schmidt accepted MI5’s offer to work as a double agent. Because
402 • SCHMIDT, WULF