Alexander Foote and the 'Lucy spyring'

Hosted by The Chapel, Middlesbrough ( https://www.facebook.com/chapelwhitehousest/) Chis Jones will be talking about and signing copies of his latest publication The Spy Who Helped the Soviets Win Stalingrad and Kursk: Alexander Foote and the Lucy Spy Ring.

Born in Liverpool in 1905 Alexander Foote was a volunteer for Liberty in the International Brigade in Spain, he later became an agent of Soviet military intelligence in Switzerland. Foote became the key telegraphist of the so-called ‘Red Three’ network of radio stations, communicating top secret German intelligence to the USSR from under the noses of the Swiss authorities. The information from Foote’s Morse key originated from sources in Germany and came to Foote via the enigmatic figure of Rudolph Rossler, known as Agent Lucy. During the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, Soviet generals came to depend on the information from Foote’s transmitter and those of his comrades.

On his release from a ten-month remand in a Swiss gaol on an espionage charge, Foote absconded to Paris in 1944 before being invited for debriefing in Moscow. Disillusioned with life in the USSR, Foote approached British intelligence while he was on a Soviet mission in Berlin. He made them an offer: if they got him back to Britain he would tell them all he knew about Soviet intelligence, from the inside. Chris' book tells this story.

You may also like the following events from North East Volunteers for Liberty:

• Next Saturday, 12th July, 08:00 am, The NEVfL group at the 139th Miners' Gala in Durham