32:
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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. 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
423:
if they could have an official statement on the death on
Engelbertus Fukken, as his fiancée wished to make a claim for his life insurance policy, which he had put on her name when he left Noordwijk in August 1940. It is thought she never received the money since she had stopped paying the premiums in
279:
Ter Braak left
Noordwijk and his fiancée on 1 August, came back on 12 August for a few hours to say goodbye and to give a present to his fiancée, and then disappeared to "go to France for work" as he told her. It is not clear where he was trained as a spy, although it is believed to have been Germany
259:
Rittmeister Kurt Mirow from Ast
Brussels went to Holland to recruit spies. After having found three spies in Amsterdam, he travelled to The Hague and Noordwijk aan Zee around 25 July. In Noordwijk he had a good relation: Dieter Tappenbeck (1912), who was a cousin of Rudolf Tappenbeck, the director of
418:
MI5 had found a picture of a young woman in his suitcase with the address of the photoshop in
Noordwijk aan Zee. After the information release, the Dutch police found his fiancée, Miss Neeltje van Roon (born 1922 in Noordwijk aan Zee) in November 1946 and told her about his death. In 1947, the Dutch
381:
and disappeared. He is thought to have travelled to somewhere around
Cambridge, where he expected an aeroplane to help him out or provide him with further money, because he wore several layers of clothes in order to protect himself against the cold. The following day he went to one of the public air
324:
Despite his false identity papers, Ter Braak was able to rent an office above the renting firm Haslop & Co in Green Street. As an alien from an occupied country, Ter Braak's residence should have been registered with the police, but it was not. His landlord did tip the Aliens
Officer off that a
267:
He suggested to Mirow that he ask his old friend
Engelbertus Fukken to become a Lena-spy. (As children Dieter and Engelbertus had been pupils at the same school in Noordwijk.) Mirow did so, Fukken happily agreed and was turned into Jan Willem ter Braak. He chose this forename due to his admiration
439:
MI5-file KV2/114, which became public in 1999 gives a good impression of his life in
Cambridge and how MI5 tried to find out more about his spying activities. Historian Winston Ramsey conducted research in 1976 about the days that Ter Braak was found dead and was buried nameless (1-8 April 1941).
228:
His father died in
December 1934 and he had to start working for his money. He got a job as an insurance agent in The Hague but after half a year he did not pay the customer's premiums to his employer and was arrested for fraud. He received a sentence of three months. After that he worked as a
233:(a newspaper from the city of Leiden) but in 1937 he had to return to jail for six months because he had not fulfilled his obligatory duties towards the Reclassification authorities. He was thrown out of the NSB and became unemployed. He lived in several rooms in Noordwijk.
264:. Dieter, who'd worked for the Dutch Press Office, was an active supported of Nazism who was employed for one of the German Ministries in Berlin. But in July/August he was back in the Netherlands for propaganda work in the Reichskommissariat of Seyss Inquart in The Hague.
332:
He left his office in
December 1940. He had installed his suitcase transmitter in his room in St Barnabas Road but around Christmas the batteries had been running down, so since then he could only communicate with the Abwehr in Hamburg by letters, written with
382:
raid shelters at Christ's Pieces Park where, using an Abwehr-issue pistol, he committed suicide. His body was found on 1 April by an electrician; the possessions found on him included a forged identity card also carrying numbers issued by Double Agent SNOW (
431:, a village nearby, never had children and died of a heart attack in 1995. She never talked about the fate of her former fiancé, this being the reason his story remained completely unknown to his family and all inhabitants of Noordwijk aan Zee.
453:
in The Hague. The only English authors who describe Ter Braak's recruitment in Noordwijk and his life in Cambridge in more than one page are Joshua Levine in 'Operation Fortitude' (2011) and James Hayward, in 'Double Agent SNOW' (2013).
307:
It is not clear where he stayed in the few days after his arrival in England. In Cambridge 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
340:
He made daytrips by bus or train to small cities in the neighbourhood, such as Bedford, and travelled several times to London, where he is believed to have inspected the effects of the bombardments on buildings and the citizens..
210:), who were not married because Willem's first wife refused to divorce him. In the end he had three brothers and three sisters. His father was a trader in cereals and later became an accountant. The family moved in 1917 to
449:', which was translated and published in 2022. He found out many things about his youth and recruitment in Noordwijk aan Zee, also with the help of family members of Ter Braak and his fiancée and some Dutch files in the
373:
By March, Ter Braak's money was running out and he had to change his dollar bills through a fellow lodger who worked at a bank. At the end of the month he no longer had enough money to pay his landlady.
457:
About Operation Lena in general there are books by Bryden, Peis, Farago, Levine, Hayward, Siedentopf and Verhoeyen, the memoirs of Masterman (MI5), the diaries of Guy Liddell (MI5), the memoirs of
31:
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In May/June 1940 Holland, Belgium and France were occupied by the Germans. In July 1940 the Hitler regime decided to send spies to England to prepare for the invasion (
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256:) became responsible for this so-called Operation Lena, in cooperation with Ast Brussels, especially for the spies who would land by boat on the shore of England.
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280:(Berlin and Hamburg). After his death, MI5 found boots and some of his clothes which were bought in Brussels, which would signify he stayed there for a while.
365:. Ter Braak evidently suspected that he would be detected, and told his landlady that he had to leave for London. However, he relocated to 11 Montague Road.
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Engelbertus Fukken was born on 28 August 1914, in The Hague (Van Boetzelaerlaan 140). His parents were Willem Briedé (born 1865 in
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Engelbertus Fukken went to the Zeevaartschool in The Hague in 1930. He was interested in politics and became a supporter of
495:
James Hayward, 'Double Agent SNOW: The true story of Arthur Owens, Hitler's Chief Spy in England' (Simon and Schuster 2013)
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In 1939 he met a young woman who became his fiancée, and he was financially supported by her family since that time.
312:, having lived after that in two other places in South-England. He claimed to be working with Free Dutch forces in
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300:. His parachute was discovered on 3 November but Ter Braak was not found. He had in fact made his way to
186:, is believed to have been the German agent who was at large for the longest time in Britain during the
718:
708:
326:
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Joshua Levine, 'Operation Fortitude: The Story of the Spy Operation that Saved D-Day' (Collins 2011)
461:(Abwehr Hamburg) and the website of Giselle Jakobs (a granddaughter of Lena-agent Josef Jakobs).
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89:
73:
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Winston Ramsey (ed.), 'Jan Willem Ter Braak' (After the Battle Magazine, 11-76: 32-34) (1976)
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of Adolf Hitler (NSDAP), which came to power in 1933. In 1934 he became member of the Dutch
187:
504:
J.G. Masterman, 'The Double-Cross System in the war 1939-1945' (Yale University Press 1972)
415:; its findings were released, along with other information about him, on 8 September 1945.
214:, where they rented a villa at Duinweg 7. His mother died in 1920 of her eighth pregnancy.
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British Intelligence in the Second World War: Volume 4 - Security and Counter-Intelligence
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Ter Braak was buried in an unmarked grave (number 154) in the village cemetery in
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Double Agent SNOW: The true story of Arthur Owens, Hitler's Chief Spy in England
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Double Agent SNOW: The true story of Arthur Owens, Hitler's Chief Spy in England
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Double Agent SNOW: The true story of Arthur Owens, Hitler's Chief Spy in England
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Double Agent SNOW: The true story of Arthur Owens, Hitler's Chief Spy in England
534:'The Guy Liddell Diaries: Vol. I: 1939-1942', ed. by Nigel West (Routledge 2005)
480:
Zij spioneerden tegen Engeland; Operatie Lena (1940-1941): tot mislukken gedoemd
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Jan-Willem van den Braak, 'Hitler's Spy against Churchill' (Pen&Sword 2022)
386:) which had obvious errors, a Dutch passport without an immigration stamp, and
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Information about Josef Jakobs, Jan Willem Ter Braak and other Lena agents)
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in cash. The case at the station was found to contain a radio transmitter.
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Jan-Willem van den Braak wrote a biography of Ter Braak in 2017, named '
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In January 1941, Ter Braak was contacted by the Food Office about his
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Operation Fortitude: The Story of the Spy Operation that Saved D-Day
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On 29 March he deposited a large case in the left luggage office at
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on a night between 31 October and 2 November 1940, landing near
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journalist with the weekly Noordwijker paper and probably also
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Spion tegen Churchill; Leven en dood van Jan Willem ter Braak
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Ladislas Farago, 'The game of the foxes' (David McKay 1971)
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Unternehemen Seelöwe; Widerstand im deutschen Geheimdienst
276:, who published many articles against the Nazi policies.
573:. Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO). p. 326.
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that had been given false numbers by the double agent
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507:GĂĽnter Peis, 'They spied on England' (Odham 1958)
405:Ter Braak's story was suppressed at the time. An
206:) and Elizabeth Johanna Fukken (born 1886 in
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586:Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence
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501:Ben MacIntyre, 'A friend among spies' (2014)
427:In 1956 Neeltje van Roon married a man from
357:, Surrey. The card had been supplied by the
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252:office (Ast) Hamburg (Herbert Wichmann and
754:Prisoners and detainees of the Netherlands
513:Nikolaus Ritter, 'Deckname RANTZAU' (1972)
167:(28 August 1914 – 30/31 March 1941) was a
123:Willem Briedé and Elizabeth Johanna Fukken
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248:), which was planned for September. The
724:Abwehr personnel killed in World War II
659:. Simon and Schuster. pp. 235–236.
569:Hinsley, F.H.; Simkins, C.A.G. (1990).
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182:. Ter Braak, whose original name was
7:
178:who operated for five months in the
465:KV2/114 TNA (MI5 file of Ter Braak)
424:1944 and he had committed suicide.
674:. Simon and Schuster. p. 277.
621:. Simon and Schuster. p. 192.
603:. Simon and Schuster. p. 184.
304:, where he arrived on 4 November.
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397:, four miles south of Cambridge.
588:. Scarecrow Press. p. 458.
99:Great Shelford village Cemetery
744:Suicides by firearm in England
194:in a public air raid shelter.
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739:Dutch prisoners and detainees
694:Great Shelford Online website
729:Dutch spies for Nazi Germany
639:. Collins. pp. 119–122.
477:Jan-Willem van den Braak, '
468:Jan-Willem van den Braak, '
223:National Socialist Movement
115:Insurance Agent, Journalist
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528:Spionnen aan de achterdeur
749:Nazis who died by suicide
584:Adams, Jefferson (2009).
379:Cambridge railway station
262:Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin
240:Recruitment by the Abwehr
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36:The body of Braak (1941)
670:Hayward, James (2013).
655:Hayward, James (2013).
635:Levine, Joshua (2011).
617:Hayward, James (2013).
599:Hayward, James (2013).
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56:The Hague, Netherlands
446:Spion tegen Churchill
327:United States Dollars
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525:Etienne Verhoeyen, '
516:Monika Siedentopf, '
474:' (WalburgPers 2017)
165:Jan Willem Ter Braak
154:Jan Willem Ter Braak
24:Jan Willem Ter Braak
363:SNOW (Arthur Owens)
86:Cause of death
310:Dunkirk evacuation
246:Operation Sea Lion
184:Engelbertus Fukken
143:Service years
129:Espionage activity
90:Suicide by gunshot
22:Engelbertus Fukken
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68:(1941-03-31)
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719:1941 deaths
709:1914 births
351:ration card
260:the famous
104:Nationality
703:Categories
539:References
435:Literature
355:Addlestone
320:Activities
219:Nazi Party
135:Allegiance
48:1914-08-28
429:Rijnsburg
412:in camera
409:was held
345:Suspicion
302:Cambridge
294:Haversham
290:parachute
208:Rotterdam
204:Amsterdam
146:1940-1941
120:Parent(s)
80:, England
78:Cambridge
531:' (2011)
151:Codename
407:inquest
369:Suicide
284:Arrival
225:(NSB).
192:suicide
176:Germany
138:Germany
359:Abwehr
314:London
250:Abwehr
198:Youth
169:Dutch
107:Dutch
388:1/9d
63:Died
42:Born
421:MI5
296:in
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645:^
627:^
609:^
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329:.
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46:(
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