Dance-Master to the Wehrmacht!

How Walter Praetorious, a son of the Scottish Clan MacThomas, became an officer of the German Abwehr (Secret Service) during the 2nd World War, sent spies to England, and taught the German Army how to dance

Robert Griffing War Dance

Clan MacThomas Crest Badge

Dance-Master to the Wehrmacht!

National Archives

Oberleutnant Walter Praetorious of the German Abwehr (Secret Service) during WW2, born 1911 I met Walter Praetorious (above) in the pages of a popular book of non-fiction. It was about a hardened young English criminal, con-man and chancer called Eddie Chapman who became a double agent during the Second World War. Praetorious, a Lieutenant in the Abwehr (German Secret Service), was just one of the minor characters in the book. He was part of a German espionage group working in France and later Oslo under a spymaster called Stephan von Grning (photo next page). It was Praetorious, an ardent Nazi at the time, who had actually found and recruited the disaffected ex-convict Chapman as a German agent. Chapman had been serving a three year sentence in a Jersey gaol when the German Army (Wehrmacht) occupied the Channel Islands. He was discovered there by Praetorious in March 1942 and brought to Paris for interrogation and training. Over the next three years the group twice parachuted Chapman into southern England to spy for the Reich. On both occasions he contacted MI5 on landing not for patriotic reasons but purely to save his own skin from the hangmans noose. But as I learnt more of the young Praetorious background and of his bizarre behaviour as the apparently dedicated Nazi in this group of spies, he became by far the most interesting character in the book. In contrast there was the traditionalist von Grning, a liberal-minded aristocrat and veteran of the Great War, and his star agent, the thoroughly disreputable Chapman. We found a letter that Praetorious had written long after the war in which he vividly describes his own background. His parents were both from merchant families of German stock based in Riga, one of the old Hanseatic Ports on the Baltic which was then under Russian control. His mother, Hanna Thoms, had strong Scottish ties and a passport to match. Her grandfather, Henry Thoms, a flax merchant in Dundee and a member of Clan MacThomas, had immigrated to Riga in about 1835 where he married a German girl. Their elder son, Hannas father, was sent back to school in Dundee, so that the young Walter Praetorious was well aware of his Scottish blood despite a youth disrupted by war.

Courtesy of Ingeborg von Grning

Stephan von Grning, the aristocratic German spymaster who worked with Praetorious in France and Oslo. He had been a cavalry officer in WW1. In 1898 the Praetorious family had moved from Riga to Warsaw where Walter was born in 1911. When war arrived in 1914, Walters father went into the Russian Army, and Hanna took the children to stay with her sister-in-law at Saratov on the Volga in Russia, 1300 miles away to the east - safe enough while war raged between the Baltic and the Black Sea. But in 1917 Bolshevik revolutionaries seized their Saratov property. Hanna could not return to Warsaw, which was then in German (enemy) hands, so went to Riga where she still had friends. She and the children returned to Warsaw in 1918 when it became Polish, and her husband rejoined the family there (see family pedigree on last page). Finally they decided effectively to change sides and return to their German roots. So they settled in Berlin where, in 1930, the 19 year old Walter Praetorious went to the university. Three years later, having obtained a good degree, he went as an exchange student to Southampton University in southern England. There he was known as Rusty because of the reddish tinge to his hair possibly a hint to his ancestry. He was fiercely proud of his Scottish blood and used to remind anyone who would listen that he was a scion of the Chiefly line of Clan MacThomas. He was a popular student in England and remembered as having a kind, gentle type of personality. There he excelled at rowing, playing the flute, and dancing. During the vacs he studied English and Scottish folk dancing with enormous enthusiasm, travelling round the country by bicycle photographing the dances; after that he pronounced Morris dancing as the foundation of world culture! His intention had been to remain in England as a teacher, but in 1936 he returned to a Germany where the Nazis had seized power three years before. He was greeted by his mother, Hanna Thoms, who is described in British police files as a rabid Nazi, presumably reflecting the mood of the times. Her sons obsession with folk dancing was soon replaced by a passion for fascism; he embraced the new creed with characteristic fervour, rising swiftly through the ranks of the Hitler Youth. This and his subsequent behaviour suggest that he was deeply impressionable and given to excessive and irrational enthusiasms.

 BBC

British Colonel Robin Tin Eye Stephens, was a formidable and highly successful interrogator for whom violence was taboo. He questioned Praetorious at Bad Nenndorf in 1945, and after several months released him. The story told in Ben Macintyres well-researched and clearly sourced book (Agent Zigzag) is authoritative: it needs to be as Chapman, the hero, was an inveterate liar, a blatant embroiderer of facts to his own advantage. He considered Praetorious an irritating and pedantic companion with a fund of entertaining eccentricities. By 1944 when they were in Oslo the group began to break up. Praetorious then saw himself as a knightly warrior in the old German tradition: an ardent Nazi and anti-Communist, he was itching, he said, to do battle against the Reds and kept up a steady stream of Nazi jingoism. The spymaster, von Grning, thought Praetorious had become neurotic and touchy, as he had accused him of plotting to keep him there and so deny him the heroic military future on the Eastern front that he craved . Finally, after repeated lobbying, Praetorious received orders to move to a new post. He had somehow persuaded the German High Command of the therapeutic, physical and cultural effects of folk dancing: he had been appointed dance instructor to the Wehrmacht! He was delighted, all thoughts of his warlike intentions on the Eastern front forgotten, and a few weeks later he sent von Grning a photograph of himself giving a Scottish sword dancing lesson to the troops. He had finally found his true Scottish roots. At the end of the war, Praetorious was arrested and sent to the Combined Services Interrogation Centre at Bad Nenndorf near Hanover in Germany. After several months the notorious British martinet, Colonel Tin Eye Stephens (above), released him. It is said that the Colonel was impressed by him perhaps because his prisoners Anglomania chimed with his own jingoism. The verdict was that Praetorious had just had a long and possibly creditable record of service as a permanent official of the German Secret Service. Praetorious settled in Goslar, West Germany, where he returned to teaching and dancing. Details of Praetorious family descent from the Thoms of Dundee, members of Clan MacThomas, are given on the next page.

PEDIGREE of the THOMS family of Dundee & Riga, and the PRAETORIOUS family of Riga, Warsaw, Berlin & Goslar
George Thoms of Dundee, Scotland of the Clan MacThomas _________|____________ | | 1838 1854 Patrick Thoms Henry Thoms 1798-1846 = Emilie Nlting = Eduard Hollander 1820-97. Provost of Dundee Dundee flax merchant | born 1815 Last Mayor of Riga before it Emigrated to Riga (Hanseatic port) | German became a Russian town then a German town. All spoke | German, knew English, some | French & Russian | | ___________________________________|___Thoms____________________ | | | | Eliza Henry Thoms 1841-1904 = Hanna Berg George Jessie Sent to school in Dundee | died aged 32 Returned to Riga 1856 | Merchant. Later Brazilian Consul | | ___Praetorious______ | c.1898 | | Hanna M Thoms = Richard Praetorious sister = wealthy husband Married in Riga. Died 1947 | Spoke German but Riga was living at Saratov British passport 1898 | then under Russian control. on the Volga river 1898 they moved to Warsaw (Russian). | 1898 Merchant in Warsaw. in Russia WW1 German in our hearts but living in Russia| 1914-18 in Russian Army fighting 1914-17 Family went to Richards sister | against Germany/Austria. living at Saratov, Russia, until property seized | 1918 Rejoined family at Warsaw. by Bolsheviks. Could not return to Warsaw | which was in German hands so went to Riga and | later returned to Warsaw until it became Polish | in 1918, when the whole family moved to Berlin. | WW2: Hanna described as a rabid Nazi in | British police files | | ____________________________________|________Praetorious________________________ | | | 1942 | Emily 1899-1965 Hans Richard 1905-40 = ? Walter (aka Rusty), born 1911 = Friederika. Ilse Married in Berlin | Berlin University; 1933 Southampton Univ. 1902-04 WW2 German soldier | Played flute, rowed, passion for English and KIA in Poland 1940 | Scottish country dancing, and his Scottish blood. | Returned to Germany 1936 aged 25. Hitler Youth. Gerhard WW2: Oberleutnant in Abwehr. | Alias: Thomas. Living in W Berlin 1988 1942 He recruited the double agent Eddie Chapman. Settled in Goslar after the war as a teacher. Alive 1988. | 4 children (including Richard and Cornelia, both married) SOURCES: Walter Praetorious letter of 1988 addressed to Griselda Turnbull: the original manuscript held by Brian Turnbull, is on the web at http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.thoms/145/mb.ashx . This is the main source for the material in BLACK on this page. The source for the text in RED above, and in BLACK on previous pages is Ben Macintyres book Agent Zigzag (Bloomsbury 2007). PRAETORIOUS is the Latin version of the German name Schultze meaning local official. A name change which was fashionable in the 16th & 17th centuries especially it seems among scholars and musicians.