You Cannot Out-Spy This Spy.

Context: The Abwehr was a German military intelligence gathering organization from 1921 to 1944, by which I mean, they were Nazi spies during WW2.

And this is the most brilliant espionage-related troll I have ever seen.

“[The Abwehr instructor] had been up at Oxford, and his function in Hamburg was to train the student agents to behave in every way exactly like Englishmen. He pointed out there was nothing to be gained by trying to avoid the police in Britain, and it was far better to get in touch with them as soon as possible in a way which would establish the respectability of the individual spy. He said that in Britain, respectability and the integrity of a citizen were judged by the size of the citizen’s bank balance. Therefore, when a graduate spy arrived in England he should place in the Post Office Savings Bank all the Abwehr funds supplied to him, and the post office would give him a savings book. After a while, the spy should go to the police and report the loss of this book and say how much was in it. The figure would be enough to convince the police that the spy was a very respectable person.

When war was declared on September 3, 1939, the police had a list of practically all the agents in the second network, because the Abwehr instructor was a member of MI6.”

-(Haswell, Jock, The Intelligence and Deception of the D-Day Landings, London: BT Batsford Ltd., 1979)

So, in case you missed that: a British MI6 agent tricked nearly every Nazi Abwehr agent working in Britain at the beginning of the war into outing themselves to the police.

And mugged them in the process.

A+, flawless, would ally with again.

The Only Known Poem By Adult Winston Churchill

The shadow falls along the shore

The search lights twinkle on the sea

The silence of a mighty fleet

Portends the tumult yet to be.

The tables of the evening meal

Are spread amid the great machines

And thus with pride the question runs

Among the sailors and marines

Breathes there the man who fears to die

For England, Home, and Wu-hai-wai.

There is another poem by Churchill, but it was for a competition while he was at school. When he wrote this poem, Churchill was serving as an army war correspondent - a position he chose in order to see the most possible battle. He served in countries including India, Cuba, Egypt and Sudan and wrote dispatches for the Daily Telegraph and the Morning Post.