To be a spy you need a series of aptitudes and skills, a lot of cold blood and a certain survival instinct. All things that he lacked Werner von Janowski , one of the worst spies in history, if not the worst.
Janowski was born in 1903 in East Prussia, and very little is known about his life until, during World War II, we find him enlisted in the Abwehr, the German intelligence service where his code name is Bobbi .
On November 9, 1942, the same day that Canada broke off relations with the Vichy regime, Janowski arrived on the shores of Chaleur Bay in Quebec aboard the submarine U-518. He did it dressed in the uniform of a German naval officer , because if he were caught he could plead desertion rather than face execution for espionage.
But before heading to his destination, the Canadian town of New Carlisle , he changed the uniform for civilian clothes, adopting the identity of a Parisian businessman emigrated to Canada in 1921. His ultimate goal was to make contact in Montreal with sympathizers of the Nazi party.
Already in New Carlisle he began a succession of failures that would be the beginning of his misfortune. To begin with, he claimed to have arrived by bus, when that morning no bus had entered the city. He then paid for his stay at the hotel with bills that had been out of legal tender since the First World War . There they also noticed that he lit his cigarettes with matches made in Belgium . Something strange considering that Belgium had been under German occupation for three years. And as for his suit, he had an unusual cut in those parts.
The owners of the hotel did not hesitate to immediately notify the authorities as soon as Janowski left the premises to take the train to Montreal. Already on board the railway he was intercepted by a local police agent who required his documentation. When the police went to search his luggage, Janowski identified himself as a German officer . Only twelve hours had passed since he landed.
However, his capture was not made public. The Canadians decided to use him as a double agent kicking off Operation Watchdog . For a whole year Janowski cooperated with Canadian intelligence. However, once again, his incompetence did not produce any results . No other German spy was arrested, and no submarine was captured, despite his apparent collaboration. Tired of him, in August 1943 they sent him to the United Kingdom to be imprisoned in a prison camp, where he remained throughout the war.
In July 1945 he was transferred to a British prison camp in Germany. Released in 1947, he no longer had a home to return to, as East Prussia had been handed over to Poland. He worked for a time as a translator, and in the 1960s he is found again in the German Army. Interestingly, Werner von Janowski died in 1978 while on vacation in Alicante. His story is told in the book Cargo of Lies:The True Story of a Nazi Double Agent in Canada.