Rösseler, Rudolf ‘Lucy’

1897–1958

   Rösseler was a German publisher whose contacts in the German High Command were able to supply Moscow with invaluable information. Rösseler was a Bavarian protestant who left Germany for Switzerland when HITLER came to power. When war broke out, the contacts he had developed in the Wehrmacht during his service in World War I suddenly supplied him with information on the German invasion of Belgium, Holland and northeast France to take place on 12 November 1939. Hitler postponed the invasion, but the Allies refused to believe Rösseler’s information. Eventually RADOLFI recruited him by an intermediary and Rösseler worked for the USSR. Rösseler supplied STALIN with advance warning of Barbarossa, the strength and composition of the Army and its morale. Stalin ignored this but later information helped the Red Army anticipate pincer movements by Generals GUDERIAN and HOTH. Information on the German build-up at Kursk made an invaluable contribution to the Russian victory in July 1943. After Radolfi’s (‘Rado’) network was liquidated in November 1943, ‘Lucy’ went out of operation. After the war Rösseler continued to work for the USSR and died in 1958, but he never revealed the source of his information in Germany.