Willem Ter Braak

Jan Willem (or Wilhelm) Ter Braak (originally Engelbertus Fukken) (c. 1914 – c. 29 March 1941) was a Dutch espionage agent working for Germany who operated for five months in the United Kingdom. Although his active period was short, Ter Braak is believed to have been the German agent who was at large for the longest time in Britain during the Second World War. When he ran out of money, Ter Braak committed suicide in a public air raid shelter.

Arrival
Ter Braak arrived by parachute on the night of 2-3 November 1940, landing near Haversham in Buckinghamshire. His parachute was discovered the next day but Ter Braak was not found. He had in fact made his way to Cambridge where he arrived on 4 November. He found lodgings with a landlord and landlady who accepted his story of having come from Holland during the Dunkirk evacuation, and claimed to be working with Free Dutch forces in London on a Dutch newspaper.

Activities
As an alien from an occupied country, Ter Braak's residence should have been registered with the police, but he did not do so. His landlord did tip the Aliens Officer off that a Dutch national was living with him, but the police did not follow up and speak to him, saying that they were sure he would register before long. He spent most of the day out of the house but never spent a night away, and supported himself from a large amount of cash which he had brought with him and which included United States Dollars.

Suspicion
In January 1941, Ter Braak was contacted by the Food Office about his ration card, which its records showed had been issued to someone else. This was because the card had been supplied by the Abwehr using numbers given by the double agent SNOW (Arthur Owens). Ter Braak evidently suspected that he would be detected, and told his landlady that he had to leave for London; in fact, he obtained a new set of lodgings again in Cambridge.

Suicide
By March, Ter Braak's money was running out and he had to change the dollar bills through a fellow lodger who worked at a bank. At the end of the month he no longer had the money to pay his landlady. On 29 March he deposited a large case in the left luggage office at Cambridge station, and went to the air raid shelter where he committed suicide using an Abwehr-issue pistol. His body was not found until 1 April; the possessions found on him included a forged identity card also carrying numbers issued by SNOW which had obvious errors, a Dutch passport without an immigration stamp, and 1/9d in cash. The case at the station was found to contain a radio transmitter.

Ter Braak's story was suppressed at the time. An inquest was held in camera; its findings were released, along with other information about him, on 9 September 1945.