23 Facts About Nikolaus Ritter

Nikolaus Ritter is best known as the Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr who led spyrings in the United Kingdom and the United States from 1936 to 1941.

Nikolaus Ritter attended Volksschule in Bad Bederkesa from 1905 to 1910, Klostergymnasium in Flensburg from 1911 to 1914, and he finished his high school diploma at Domgynasium in Verden an der Aller, near Bremen.

Nikolaus Ritter then enlisted in the German Imperial Army in World War I and was assigned to the 162nd Infantry Regiment.

Nikolaus Ritter served on the Western Front in France where he was twice wounded.

Nikolaus Ritter returned to Lauban as a superintendent of a textile company, but then emigrated to the United States in January 1924 and found employment as a clerk at the Mallinson Silk Company in New York and he worked odd jobs as a floor layer, house painter, metalworker and dishwasher.

Nikolaus Ritter married Mary Aurora Evans, an Irish-American teacher from Alabama in 1926, and together they had two children: Nikolaus Haviland Ritter and Katharine Francis Ritter.

In spring 1935, Nikolaus Ritter returned to Germany with his wife and children to visit his ailing father, but in Oct of that same year, he left his family in Germany and made a brief round-trip back to NY.

In 1936 Nikolaus Ritter joined the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence Service, and settled in Bremen and later in Hamburg with his wife and children.

Nikolaus Ritter married Irmgard von Klitzing in 1939 and with her had a daughter, Karin Nikolaus Ritter.

KF Nikolaus Ritter, published a 2006 memoir on the life of her mother - Aurora: An Alabama school teacher in Germany struggles to keep her children during WWII after she discovers her husband is a German spy.

Back in 1931, Nikolaus Ritter had met Duquesne in New York, and the two spies reconnected in New York on 3 December 1937.

Nikolaus Ritter provided Ritter a large drawing of the Norden bombsight which Ritter stored inside of a hollow cane umbrella and that he took back to Germany by ship.

Nikolaus Ritter employed several other successful agents across the US, but he made the mistake of recruiting a man who would later become a double agent, William Sebold.

On 8 February 1940, Nikolaus Ritter sent Sebold to New York under the alias of Harry Sawyer and instructed him to set up a shortwave radio-transmitting station to establish contact with the German shortwave station abroad.

Owens operated as an Abwehr agent No 3504, under Nikolaus Ritter and went by the code name: JOHNNY O'BRIEN.

MI5 provided Owens with the false names of agents to give to Nikolaus Ritter, and supplied Owens with MI5 plants to introduce to Nikolaus Ritter as potential German agents who were willing to obtain information and carry out acts of sabotage against Britain.

Owens' downfall came after MI5 sent him on a mission to Lisbon in early 1941 to introduce their latest plant, an ex RNAS officer come confidence trickster, called Walter Dicketts, who worked in intelligence for the Air Ministry during World War I, to meet Nikolaus Ritter and get himself recruited as a German spy.

Nikolaus Ritter continued to believe Owens was always his spy until his death, and that he had been betrayed by Dicketts.

In 1939, Almasy published in Germany a book based on his years in North Africa - Unbekannte Sahara; mit Flugzeug und Auto in der Libyschen Wuste With an interest in forming a spy ring in North Africa, the Abwehr sent Nikolaus Ritter to meet with Almasy in Budapest.

Nikolaus Ritter conceived of a plan, known as Plan El Masri, Almasy's acquaintance with Egyptian General Aziz el Masri, an Arab nationalist whom the British had ousted as Army chief of staff, to organize an Arab revolt against the British.

Nikolaus Ritter's Sonderkommando was tasked to provide military intelligence on desert warfare to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, extract el Masri from Cairo, and to form a spy ring in Egypt.

Immediately assigned to Nikolaus Ritter were two pilots, a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch liaison plane, and two Heinkel He 111 medium bombers for long-distance missions.

When Nikolaus Ritter returned to Germany he became a commander of several anti-aircraft installations, including an installation in Hannover in late 1944.