Background
Hugo Bleicher was born in Tettnang.
Hugo Bleicher was born in Tettnang.
He served as a private soldier in the First World War in the pioneer gas corps and was captured near the Somme.
A human ferret who destroyed many Allied intelligence operations in France, he used the aliases “Col Henri” and “Monsieur Jean.” In 1939 Bleicher was a businessman in Hamburg when recruited because of his knowd- edge of languages to work w'ith the field police in occupied countries.
He served in Amsterdam before being sent to Paris. Bleicher promptly destroyed Interallie, the first and most important British intelligence network in France. After triumphing on his first mission, in which “Valentin” and “the Cat” (Mathilde Carre) were arrested on 17 Nov 1941, Bleicher was transferred into the Abwehr and sent south with German occupation forces that began moving into Vichy France on 11 Nov 1942. Here he scored another coup. Masquerading as an Abwehr colonel who wanted to defect, the seductive sergeant made contact with Odette Sansom while her chief, Peter Churchill, was visiting London. Almost exactly as he had with Czerniawski and the Cat, Bleicher caught Churchill and Odette Sansom, both on 16 Apr 1943. But Col Henri never knew that Churchill was “Raoul," long-sought head of the “Spindle” network operating from near Annecy.
Bleicher worked with Henri Dericourt, a double agent who in 1944 led him to the arrest of a major secret army organizer, Maj Henry Frager. The zealous Bleicher never rose above the rank of sergeant in the clique-ridden German intelligence system. He was arrested in Amsterdam and sentenced to jail by an Allied court. On orders from his captors, Bleicher wrote his war memoirs, published as Colonel Henri's Story (London: William Kimber, 1954).
He was also associated with SOE agent Henri Dericourt (Farrier), who was a double agent as well for the Sicherheitsdienst.
In 1954, he published his memoirs, Colonel Henri's story. Bleicher (sometimes misreported as Bliechert) actively employed the aliases Jean Verbeck and Colonel Henri (often misreported as Colonel Heinrich). He held, but never used, identity papers in the name of Jean Castel. He landed in the UK under the Canadian supplied alias of Charles Davidson, and has been misreported as using the names von Stahlen, Henri Bothereau or Gottschalk. He was decorated by the Abwehr with the War Merit Cross 1st Class for his services.
