Rudolf Roessler

Rudolf Roessler was a Protestant German and a dedicated anti-Nazi. During the interwar period, Roessler was a lively cultural journalist, with a focus on theatre. In 1934, Roessler became stateless by Germany and as a political refugee, moved to Lucerne in Switzerland. There he established a small anti-Nazi publishing firm known as Vita Nova that published Exilliteratur by fellow exiled writers. Late in the summer of 1942, Roessler ran the Lucy spy ring, an anti-Nazi espionage operation that was part of the Red Three while working for Rachel Dübendorfer through the cut-out Christian Schneider (editor). Roessler was able to provide a great quantity of high-quality intelligence, around 12,000 typed pages, sourced from the German High Command of planned operations on the Eastern Front, usually within a day of operational decisions being made. Later in the war, Roessler was able to provide the Soviet Union with intelligence on the V-1 and V-2 missiles. During the Cold War, Roessler reactivated his network and he spied on NATO countries in Western Europe under orders from the military intelligence services of the Czechoslovak Republic, until he was arrested by the Swiss authorities and convicted of espionage in 1953.