RIP Carl Aschan
Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 6:01 pm
Wartime intelligence officer who served Britain in his native Sweden and helped to hunt down leading Nazis.
Aschan was given responsibility for planning operations against German garrisons and installations in Norway and the Channel Islands. His immediate superior was a Cuban, Marquis Casa Maury, who had been a racing driver for Bugatti and was married to Freda Dudley-Ward, former mistress of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII.
In 1944 Aschan returned to the Air Ministry, with responsibility for counter-intelligence and security in the pending liberation of German-occupied Denmark. His colleagues included Graham Greene and Kim Philby, "who from the start struck me as excessively secretive and reserved".