“The papers helped propel the Japanese Empire to war with the United States and ultimately to its own destruction.”
By Stephen Robinson
ON NOV. 11, 1940, a lookout on the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis spotted an inviting target: a British freighter. The Atlantis, which was hunting Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean, was formerly the freighter Goldenfels until the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) converted the ship into a raider at the port of Bremen. Although the Atlantis was disguised to appear as a harmless Dutch cargo ship, the vessel was heavily armed; its 5.9-inch guns, anti-aircraft cannons and torpedoes were all ingeniously hidden. The raider had departed Germany on March 31, 1940 and since then had already sunk or captured 12 ships.
The lookout had spotted the Automedon, a cargo vessel out of Liverpool with Britain’s Blue Funnel Line. The ship was steaming for Singapore carrying aircraft parts, cigarettes, alcohol and food. Also on board was a consignment of mailbags locked in the ships strong room containing top secret British government documents. These papers were considered so sensitive that the Admiralty had assigned a special security detail to protect them under the command of one Captain Norman Evans. In an emergency, the guards had orders to throw the documents, which were concealed inside weighted canvas mailbags, overboard.
Captain Bernhard Rogge, commander of the Atlantis, ordered his ship to close on the target. Moments later, the crew raised Germany’s Kriegsmarine flag and fired a warning shot across the Automedon’s bow. The British freighter’s master, Captain H.L. Ewan, ignored the warning and his radio operator began transmitting a raider alert. Rogge next ordered his gunners to open fire. Atlantis’ first salvo of 5.9-inch shells completely destroyed the bridge and mid-section of the British ship killing Ewan and two men from the security team guarding the documents. Evans, the security chief, was unconscious from a head injury and Automedon’s second officer Donald Stewart also blacked out. When Stewart regained consciousness, he realized that the key to the locked strong room had been lost in the explosion. The salvos also crippled the freighter and the vessel was slowly sinking.
A German boarding party arrived on the Automedon. The group’s leader, Lieutenant Commander Ulrich Mohr, ordered Stewart, the most senior surviving officer, to accompany him on a search. Stewart was naturally anxious about the strong room. As the two men proceeded through the forecastle, Mohr noticed the room but Stewart successfully convinced him it was the bosun’s store. The secret documents seemed safe as the German boarding party prepared to leave the doomed freighter.
As the boarding party transferred wounded prisoners to the Atlantis, Mohr informed the other captives that they would be shipped to Germany to wait out the war in internment camps. He also instructed them to gather their personal possessions as they needed warm clothes and other items for the voyage ahead. One prisoner, Violet Ferguson, the wife of an engineer from the Straits Steamship Company who had been returning home to Singapore, was reduced to despair. She had two trunks containing a tea set, family photographs and other objects of sentimental value inside the strong room. Ferguson asked Mohr to retrieve her trunks and he agreed – and this simple act of kindness changed the course of World War II.
Mohr fetched Stewart and demanded to be taken to the strong room. The British officer equivocated but Mohr found the door and forced his way in. Ferguson soon recovered her trunks much to her relief. Mohr ordered his men to seize the 125 mailbags, 13 of which contained official secrets, and the boarding party took the entire cache to the raider. The Automedon was scuttled and the Atlantis fled the scene.
Rogge and Mohr later examined the mail and discovered merchant navy codes, shipping orders and maps of minefield channels. More importantly, Mohr found British War Cabinet minutes from the meeting of Aug. 5, 1940 that included a strategic assessment of the Far East prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The minutes also included a report outlining the defense of Malaya and Singapore as well as a complete order of battle for air, land and sea forces.[pullquote]The Automedon documents explained that the limited British forces in Asia would be incapable of thwarting a Japanese attack and that the Royal Navy, committed to containing the German and Italian navies, would not be in a position to send a fleet to the Far East. [/pullquote]The Automedon documents explained that the limited British forces in Asia would be incapable of thwarting a Japanese attack and that the Royal Navy, committed to containing the German and Italian navies, would not be in a position to send a fleet to the Far East. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had concluded that Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies could not be meaningfully reinforced if the Japanese declared war. Rogge immediately realized the importance of the documents – in the hands of the Japanese they were the keys to the fortress of Singapore.
The following day the Atlantis rendezvoused with the Ole Jacob, a captured Norwegian tanker commanded by a German prize crew. Rogge entrusted the Automedon documents to Lieutenant Commander Kamenz who would give them to Admiral Paul Wenneker, the German naval attaché in Tokyo. The Ole Jacob made for Japan with the captured documents and its cooperative Norwegian crew which Rogge had promised would be released in a neutral port.
After the Ole Jacob arrived in Kobe on of Dec. 4, 1940, the German chief liaison officer, a man named Kehrmann, phoned Admiral Wenneker and informed him about the Automedon documents. Kehrmann placed them in a chest and escorted the secrets to Tokyo on a train. Wenneker examined the papers and realized their high importance. “An immediate preliminary search revealed that some of this material was of the very highest significance,” he reported.
Kamenz of the Ole Jacob asked Wenneker for permission to release the Norwegians in line with Rogge’s promise, adding that if he did not the Norwegians might sabotage the vessel. Wenneker agreed and the 61 Norwegians were discharged. Thirty-seven of them went to Hong Kong while the remainder headed home to Norway via the Trans-Siberian Railway by way of an arrangement made between Berlin and Moscow.
Wenneker entrusted the Automedon documents to a diplomatic courier who took them to Germany on the Trans-Siberian. After the intelligence arrived in Berlin, Hitler was presented with a summary and the dictator gave permission for copies to be given to Captain Tadao Yokoi, the Japanese naval attaché in Berlin. Wenneker also received permission to pass copies to his Japanese contacts but, to protect the role the Atlantis had played, he invented a cover story that spies had captured the material. Vice-Admiral Nobutake Kondo read the documents with great interest and that night Wenneker had a private meal with him at a Tokyo restaurant. Afterwards, the German attaché noted in his diary:
Kondo repeatedly expressed to me how valuable the information contained in the War Cabinet memorandum was for the Navy. Such a significant weakening of the British Empire could not have been identified [from outward appearances].
Nevertheless, many people in Japanese naval circles doubted the authenticity of the Automedon documents based on the flimsy cover story. Some suspected them to be forgeries being used in a plot to trick Japan into joining the war. However, initial Japanese skepticism gave way to an acceptance of their authenticity as the Japanese Historian Eiji Seki explained:
. . . when the Japanese Navy spent some time analysing the documents in detail it found that the data on British armaments often matched those procured independently by the Japanese intelligence agencies whose activities were expanding in South East Asia around this time. The navy came to regard the documents as highly reliable. Its initial suspicions gradually faded and gave way to astonishment. In time, this gift from Hitler would have the effect of hastening the Japanese military to war.
Oikawa Koshiro, the Japanese Navy Minister, announced at a conference of 27 Dec. 27, 1940: “According to our intelligence document, it is estimated that Britain would not go to war as long as Japan confines itself to advancing into French Indo-China, but war would become inevitable if Japan should advance into the Dutch East Indies.” A clear reference to the Automedon documents.
[pullquote]The information taken from the captured documents convinced Yamamoto of British weakness giving him the confidence to advocate his sneak attack.[/pullquote]The papers had a profound impact on Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, responsible for overseeing plans for the Pearl Harbor raid as a prelude to a campaign across the Far East. He’d long been concerned that even if his aircraft carriers wiped out the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Royal Navy might still oppose him. The information taken from the captured documents convinced Yamamoto of British weakness giving him the confidence to advocate his sneak attack. The Automedon papers had helped propel the Japanese Empire to war with the United States and ultimately to its own destruction.
On Nov. 22, 1941, the Atlantis refueled the submarine U-126 in the South Atlantic, north of Ascension Island. Allied Enigma code breakers at Bletchley Park had earlier learned about the rendezvous and warned the Admiralty. As the refuelling proceeded, the heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire appeared over the horizon and U-126 promptly dived. The cruiser opened fire at long range. Rogge, Atlantis’ skipper, realizing his position was hopeless, ordered his men to abandon ship. The crew boarded lifeboats and scuttled their raider.
The Devonshire departed the scene fearing a torpedo attack from U-126 and the submarine quickly came to the aid of Rogge and his 366 men in lifeboats. The Kriegsmarine planned a rescue mission and German and Italian submarines picked up the crew who safely arrived in St. Nazaire in occupied France. Before its end, Atlantis had sunk or captured 22 ships totaling 145,960 tons of shipping. Hitler awarded Rogge the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.
Rogge later became chief-of-staff at the Marine Educational Inspector General’s Office in Kiel before being promoted to rear admiral. In 1944, he took command of the First Battle Group in the Baltic. The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen became his flagship and his force included the pocket battleships Lutzow and Admiral Scheer. During the last months of the war, Rogge’s force supported the German soldiers trapped in Riga and in the Kurland pocket, allowing 29 divisions to be evacuated by sea. Rogge also helped evacuate German civilians from Danzig by bombarding advancing Soviet forces. In March 1945, he was promoted to vice admiral and after Germany’s defeat, he surrendered the Prinz Eugen in Copenhagen to the Royal Navy.
Violet Ferguson was repatriated from a German prison camp in 1943. After the war, her trunk was returned to her. She died in 2003 aged 96 years, most likely unaware of the pivotal role she had played during World War Two.
Stephen Robinson is the author of False Flags: Disguised German Raiders of World War II. He studied Asian history and politics at the University of Western Sydney, graduating with First Class Honours. He has worked at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs researching British atomic weapons tests and as a policy officer in the Department of Defence. Robinson is an officer in the Australian Army Reserve and has served as an instructor at the Royal Military College. He also graduated from Australian Command and Staff College.
