Paul Rosbaud (November 18, 1896–January 28, 1963), was a chemist, scientific adviser for Springer Verlag in Germany, and secret agent for British Intelligence during World War II. He was born in Graz, Austria, and died in London, UK. Rosbaud had wide contacts within Germany and provided MI6 with vital information regarding weapon systems. Rosbaud's MI6 code name was "Griffin".

Rosbaud served in the Austrian army during World War I from 1915 to 1918. After the war ended his unit was taken as war prisoners by British forces, the result of this was to give him a liking of all British. He studied chemistry at Darmstadt Technische Hochschule from 1920. He continued his studies at Kaiser Wilhelm Institut in Berlin and took his doctoral thesis at Berlin-Charlottenburg Technische Hochschule. He then started working at the scientific periodical Metallwirtschaft, but quit that work after Hitler came to power, as the owner was a Nazi.

Work under the Nazi regime and during the War

In 1938 he had his Jewish wife Hilde and their only daughter Angela sent to UK to keep them safe from the Nazi harassment. Paul Rosbaud was also offered to stay but decided to keep working in Germany to undermine the Nazi regime. His own family was not the only one he helped to escape, the most notable was the well known Jewish physicist Lise Meitner.

Through his work at Springer Verlag, Rosbaud knew most of the scientific community in Germany, and posing as a Nazi he could supply the allied forces with vital intelligence without any suspecting him being a spy.

One of his first scoops as an agent was to publish Otto Hahn's work on fission in the German physics magazine Naturwissenschaften January 1939. Rosbaud seemed to be well aware of the possible use of this in a nuclear bomb. His immediate publishing thus helped alarm the international physics community and can be connected to the letter [[Albert Einstein] wrote to warn president Roosevelt of a German nuclear bomb.

Among the reports he supplied to the British was that Germany produced rockets (V2) and that the German project for a nuclear bomb was not successful. Rosbaud has also been connected to the "Oslo report", a detailed list of new German weapons systems, but this seems to be the work of Hans Ferdinand Maier, technical director at Siemens.

Many of his reports were smuggled out of Germany by couriers working for the Norwegian intelligence organisation XU. Norwegians that were studying at technical schools in Germany linked up with Rosbaud and transported the intelligence to occupied Norway, and from there it was sent to neutral Sweden. One daring route was with plane from Berlin to Oslo, as mechanics on both airports helped hide microfilms on the plane.

Further reading

Kramish, Arnold (1986) The Griffin: The Greatest Untold Espionage Story of World War II Houghton Mifflin (T) ISBN 0395363187