[3] Late in the summer of 1942, Roessler ran the Lucy spy ring, an anti-Nazi espionage operation that was part of the Red Three[4] while working for Rachel Dübendorfer through the cut-out Christian Schneider (editor) [de].

[2] 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.

[2] When he was eighteen, Roessler was drafted into the 120th (2nd Württemberg) Infantry "Emperor William, King of Prussia" regiment of the Imperial German Army in Ulm in 1916.

After the failed British breakthrough attempts came to an end, Roessler took part in trench warfare on the slightly dented German front from 27 November to 21 December.

[11] Roessler was left with a lasting negative opinion of how the war was fought in 1916 and 1917 and the methods with which the lives of frontline soldiers were being wasted for the survival of what he increasingly saw as a power-hungry elite.

However, these efforts were never successful as membership fees, even when combined with state subsidies, were insufficient to enable the organisation to maintain a stable financial position.

[20] On 5 May 1933, the chairman of the KfdK, Hans Hinkel, who later became the third managing director of the Reich Chamber of Culture, placed Roessler on leave and prohibited him from continuing to exercise his directorship, effectively expelling him.

[20] As a result, the Stage People's Association became insolvent and the ethnic Reichsverband Deutsche Bühne e.V filed an application with the Mitte district court on 29 May 1933 to open bankruptcy proceedings because of an outstanding invoice from a typewriter supplier in the amount of 1,170 RM.

[15] Stocker had been encouraged to help co-found the publishing firm by Jesuit priest and theological philosopher Otto Karrer,[24] with the introductions arranged by Schnieper.

[27] The company published some fifty brochures and books that attacked both Nazism and Stalinism, contrasting them with the Christian values of the older Germany and Russia.

[30] He described how Germany would fail to take this lesson into account, particularly in Poland and the Soviet Union, where the campaigns would be designed as a war of annihilation between two races and two world views.

[33] From 1936 to 1939, Roessler worked on the semi-monthly left-wing Catholic and radically democratic journal Die Entscheidung (The Decision)[15] that was published by Xaver Schnieper.

[25] The editors were Xaver Schnieper, the Nidwalden architect and later intelligence officer Arnold Stöckli and the lawyers Hans de Segesser-Brunegg, along with Bernhard Mayr von Baldegg with whom Roessler met regularly in private.

At the same time, Roessler placed an advertisement in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung looking for a publisher who could also work in French-speaking Switzerland and on 17 July 1939 Schneider was hired.

[47] In June 1937, Karel Sedláček, a German speaking Czech intelligence officer, worked undercover as Karl Seltzinger in Zurich as correspondent for the Prague-based newspaper Národní listy.

[48] In early March 1943, Hitler planned a massive offensive against the Kursk salient known as Operation Citadel in the hope of regaining the initiative in the east.

[50] On the 3 April 1943, a message stated: The Wehrmacht's attack on Kursk is to be postponed until the beginning of May 1943 because increasingly stronger Soviet forces are being massed on the northern sector of the front, especially in Velikiye Luki.

[58] Several theories can be dismissed immediately, including by Foote and several other writers, that the code names reflected the sources' access type rather than their identity- for example, that Werther stood for Wehrmacht, Olga for Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, Anna for Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office)- as the evidence does not support it.

[4] They were a German major who was in charge of the Abwehr before Wilhelm Canaris, Hans Bernd Gisevius, Carl Goerdeler and a General Boelitz, who was then deceased.

This theory is supported by Jörgensen,[60] Accoce, Quet,[61] along with Tarrant[62] In Berlin, Roessler was a member of the Herren Klub, a prestigious gentleman's club, where he met senior officers from the German military, many who would later become his contacts within Germany and assist with the disclosure of classified information.

[13] On 30 May 1938 in Lucerne, Roessler was visited by two of his contacts, the German generals Fritz Thiele and Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, who would eventually become the officer in charge of the intelligence department of Army Group Centre in the Eastern Front.

[63] Roessler was provided with an Enigma machine and the latest shortwave transmitter and told to start listening for messages from Thiele who was stationed in the Bendlerblock.

[43] The second newer and simpler theory is described by Kamber who believes that the messages from Roessler's sources from the German Reich were sent via telephone and telex lines to the Milan reporting center.

[65][66] Stöckli who was friends with Roessler from when he first moved to Lucerne, had told two authors, Lutz Mahlerwein and Adalbert Wiemer of a historical TV programme "Dora an Direktor: der Angriff steht bevor" on 18 July 1989, that the reports had come by postal train to Milan.

[21] In the summer of 1943, Heinz Pannwitz of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle despatched the German Jew Ewald Zweig with the cover name Yves Rameau to Switzerland with the intention of penetrating Radó's network.

The division court considered it criminal that Roessler and Schneider also passed on information in reports to Soviet intelligence that the Swiss authorities had determined through interrogations of deserters.

[4] In 1945, shortly after the end of the war, Karel Sedláček, who had regular contact with Hans Hausamann and was now the Czechoslovak Military Attaché in Bern, visited Xaver Schnieper, whom he knew and who was a friend of Roessler.

The second and more important were articles on specific areas of interest, that ran to four or five pages and covered subjects within economic, social, colonial and security policy.

[89] There are a number of sources that claim that the Rote Drei was functioning before the war and that Roessler, as Lucy, sent information to the Soviets that provided advanced warning of Hitler's impending attack on Russia.

[4] However, an examination of the radio messages that were transmitted by the group, proves that Rachel Dübendorfer did not form a clandestine relationship with Roessler until the late summer of 1942.