Rudolf Roessler

Who was Rudolf Roessler?

In World War II espionage, Rudolf Roessler was the central figure in the Lucy spy ring. He was a German refugee who had moved to Switzerland in 1933, and was the proprietor of a small publishing firm in Switzerland, Vita Novi. During the War, he managed to provide, through a Soviet espionage ring operating in Switzerland, extremely accurate and timely intelligence about German operations and intentions on the Eastern Front, usually within a day of operational decisions being made. His methods of obtaining intelligence information are still not entirely known. It was astonishingly good material, so good as to cause some considerable doubt about it in Moscow. A German Army commander who attacked the Russian-held town of Lomza in Poland, for example, was amazed to find a copy of his own orders when he occupied it. This was reported to the German High Command, yet they were unable to find the leak.

Roessler was eventually arrested by the Swiss police during World War II and again a few years later; he was briefly jailed. He died in the 1950s without, so far as is publicly known, ever explaining how he had done it, or exactly who his confederates in Germany were. It has been suggested that Roessler was actually a British agent, and that "Lucy" was actually a British Secret Service operation intended to get Ultra information to the Soviets in a convincing way untraceable to British codebreaking operations against the Germans.