Hugo Bleicher
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Hugo Ernst Bleicher (born August 9, 1899) was a German senior non-commissioned officer of the Abwehr who worked against French Resistance in German-occupied France.
Hugo Ernst Bleicher was born at Tettnang in Germany in 1899. He served as a private soldier in the World War I in the pioneer gas corps and was captured on the Somme. He was held as a Prisoner of War in 165 POW Camp near Abbeville and succeeded in escaping four times, although he was never able to regain the German lines. He is misreported as having been taken prisoner by the British in Belgium as a spy when wearing British uniform. After the war he became a businessman but was recruited into the Abwehr during World War II because of his knowledge of French and Spanish. However, he never rose above the rank of Feldwebel.
Bleicher was ruthless in his pursuit of anyone in France who opposed German domination. He disabled the Franco-Polish Interallié network and captured both Polish Air Force Captain Roman Czerniawski and some of his headquarters staff, one of whom was Mathilde Carré who had contacts with the Vichy 2nd Bureau and who subsequently become his lover and betrayed everyone she knew in the network, agreed to act as an Abwehr agent and latterly also betrayed her dealings with the Abwehr to MI 5 who used her radio link for deception purposes for a period in conjunction with the Poles and SIS and then imprisoned her until the end of the war when her usefulness had ceased.
In March 1943 Bleicher arrested André Marsac, a member of the resistance organisation known as Carte. Masquerading, on his own initiative, as a German intelligence colonel attempting to defect to the Allies, he deceived Marsac and his associate Roger Bardet, and in April succeeding in capturing SOE agents Peter Churchill and Odette Sansom. Both Churchill and Sansom were subjected to brutal treatment and torture during interrogation before being transferred to a concentration camp although none of this was carried out by Bleicher himself.
Bleicher persuaded Bardet to work for him. As a result, in July 1944 Bleicher captured Henri Frager, another former Carte member who had been commissioned by SOE as leader of its Donkeyman circuit.
He was also associated with SOE agent Henri Déricourt Farrier, who was also a double agent for the Sicherheitsdienst.
Hugo Bleicher, together with two of his French Abwehr agents Jean Rocquefort and Francois Barbier was arrested in Amsterdam on May 15, 1945 by the Dutch NBS, who interrogated him for two weeks on his activities in Holland, before handing him over to the 1st Canadian Army who interrogated him for a further period, also on his operations in the Netherlands before handing him over to the British authorities who transferred him on June 16, 1945 to the UK for longer term interrogation at Camp 020 where he co-operated willingly with his MI5 interrogators. He was handed over to the French government on October 12, 1945 and they subsequently placed him on trial and imprisoned him; as they also did Mathilde Carré.
In 1954, Bleicher published his memoirs, Colonel Henri's story. Bleicher (Sometimes misreported as Bliechert) actively employed the aliases Jean Verbeck and Colonel Henri (often misreported as Colonel Heinrich). He held, but never used, identity papers in the name of Jean Castel. He was landed in the UK under the Canadian supplied alias of Charles Davidson, and has been misreported as using the names von Stahlen, Henri Bothereau or Gottschalk. He was decorated by the Abwehr with the KvK 1st Class for his services.
