Kazimierz Leski - Disguises

Disguises

In 1941 Leski made his first trip as a courier to France. In his first trip, he posed as a Lieutenant of the Wehrmacht. However, he decided to promote himself to the rank of Generalmajor for all other trips in order to be able to travel first class, as his wounds made it impossible for him to travel in crowded, third-class railway cars. As General Julius von Halmann he managed to cross Europe several times in a row without his true identity being revealed. The disguise, his fluent knowledge of several languages and his excellently forged documents also allowed him to witness several events he did not plan. Among them was his 1942 visit to the Atlantic Wall construction site, which was made possible because he convinced one of the passengers in his car that his superiors might want to build a similar line of fortifications in the Ukraine. On another occasion he visited the field staff of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. Apart from his service in intelligence and counter-intelligence, he also took over a cell focused on smuggling information and people in and out of German prisons in occupied Poland, notably the infamous Pawiak.