Category Archives: Personal

On ‘Wilmington’s Lie’

‘Wilmington’s Lie’ by David Zucchino

I interrupt this bulletin to note the deaths of two significant persons related to the world of intelligence that have been recorded in NYT obituaries in the past ten days, reminders of the feverish days of World War II.

On April 2, Walentyna Janta-Polczynska died in Queens, New York. She was appointed personal secretary to General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, in 1939. She translated and prepared reports by Jan Karski, who brought the first eyewitness accounts of atrocities against the Jews in Warsaw. In 1943 she assisted in Sikorski’s funeral arrangements after his plane crashed after takeoff from Gibraltar. She was born in Lemberg (Lvov, now Lviv): her father ‘hailed from an English family that had initiated oil exploration in eastern Poland’. Ms. Janta-Polcynska was 107.

On April 7, Henry Graff, historian, died in Greenwich, Connecticut, aged 98. In November 1943 [date probably wrong], he translated part of a message sent by Hiroshi Oshima, the Japanese ambassador in Berlin who had regular discussions with Hitler, and passed on encrypted summaries of what he learned. In this case, Oshima described German plans for countering the expected D-Day invasion. Nine months later [sic], shortly after Hiroshima, Graff translated a message from Japan to the Soviet Union, for some reason directed at Bern in Switzerland, asking for help extricating Japan from the war. [I informed the ‘New York Times’ of these anomalies, but have not received a reply, and, as yet, the publisher has not issued a Correction.].

Wilmington, NC and the Beautiful Blue Danube . . . I mean the Cape Fear River

Next, four anecdotes . . .

  1. Soon after we retired to Southport, North Carolina, at the beginning of August 2001, I made a trip into Wilmington, a town about thirty-five miles away, a port city on the Cape Fear River. I wanted to explore it, to familiarize myself with its layout, find out where the libraries and bookshops were, and, while I was about it, to get a haircut. I found a barber’s shop in a quiet street, went in, and sat down, waiting for my turn. I was then horrified when I heard the man I believed to be the owner, snipping away at a customer’s hair, say: “Of course the blacks were much happier when they were slaves.”

I had come across some casual racism in my time in the United States, mainly in the South, but not exclusively there, and had even experienced some ‘ethnic’ hatred directed at me, but I had never heard such a blatant example of stupid, ugly, patronizing, disgusting, ignorant speech before. How dare this redneck put himself in the minds of his fellow citizens, and make a facile conclusion about them and their ancestors of almost two centuries ago? I would not call it ‘prejudice’, because this insect had clearly thought about the matter before coming up with his well-exercised opinion. And the fact that he was ready to speak up openly about it, in the presence of a stranger, made the expression of his opinion even more frightful and alarming than it would otherwise have been.  Was this a common feeling among ‘white’ Wilmingtonians?

I felt like standing up and biffing the perpetrator on the nose, but thought that causing an affray so soon after my arrival in South-Eastern North Carolina might not be a good idea. The barber might claim that I had misheard him, after all, or that it was a joke taken out of context. But I knew it was not. I simply stood up and walked out of his establishment, and found a proper hairdresser in the centre of town. Maybe that was a shabby exit, not confronting evil when it pushes its voice into your face, but it was all a bit overwhelming at the time.

I have since discovered that sentiments like the barber’s are not that uncommon, and that even though Wilmington has overall become more civilized by the arrival of Yankees and others in its population, and joining its media outlets, etc. (much of it resented by some locals, I should add), a combination of resentment that the Civil War was lost, and regret over the decline of ‘white’ supremacy, can still be found in many pockets of New Hanover County and its surrounding rural areas.

2. Early in 2000, about eighteen months before we left Connecticut for good (we have not been back in almost twenty years), I read in the New York Times about a photographic exhibition being held at a small gallery in New York City. It concerned records of lynchings that has been carried out in the United States in the twentieth century, with some of the photographs taken after I was born (in 1946). These had apparently not been shown before. I had reason to make a business trip to New York – about an hour away by train – so I decided to make time to visit this gallery. I am not somebody who chases down the grisly out of some perverse pleasure, but I believed that this might be a once-only opportunity to become educated about a horrific aspect of American history about which I had only vague understandings.

It was an experience both moving and horrifying. I had read about the British soldiers who discovered Belsen, and were so shocked by what they found that it made them physically sick. I had a similar reaction – not quite so physical, but creating that roiling in the stomach. To see a ‘black’ man strung up on a tree, and ‘white’ families celebrating as if it were a public holiday (which is how they probably treated it), was nauseating. What made it even worse –  although this is a specious argument – was that it had taken place in my lifetime. One thinks of ‘medieval’ practices, but all this happened frequently in the first part of the twentieth century, in a country that made all manner of claims about human liberty, and ‘making the world safe for democracy’.

‘Kolyma Stories’ by Varlam Shalamov (no photograph of Kolyma does justice to the horrors)

After all, this was not Stalin’s Gulag, where in fact the horrors were far worse in number. I have just read Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Stories, covering a largely contemporaneous period (1937-51) when Shalamov spent most of his incarceration working as a slave in or around the notorious goldmines of Kolyma. The death rate there was truly monstrous, and dwarfed the assaults on humanity represented by the lynchings. Yet the photographic record of Kolyma is scanty: the world knows little about the broken bodies, the mutilations and executions. Shalamov’s vignettes provoke similar feelings of disgust, but the Gulag reflected a different kind of cruelty – the abomination of State-run terror run amok. Prisoners were sentenced to ten years in Kolyma for being members of the Esperanto Society, for expressing a hope for the return of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for praising the exiled poet Ivan Bunin, for complaining about the length of the queue for soap, or on the false denunciation of a neighbour, and few would survive. The lynchings were private vigilante operations, and took place in a supposedly democratic society run by the rule of law. How can one compare them? A few hundred lynchings in twentieth-century America, six million dead in the Holocaust, over a million in Kolyma alone? Every brutal death was an individual calamity.

Notes taken after seeing the ‘Witness’ Exhibition

(Amazingly, I was able to dig out, on the afternoon after I wrote the above two paragraphs, my clippings file on the exhibition, and related topics. I had forgotten that I had composed a brief memorandum immediately afterwards, which I present here, in its unimproved form. As is evident, one or two of the references are incomplete, but I believe it sums up well my immediate disgust. I recall now that the main reference I left unfinished was the final passage of Emanuel Litvinoff’s searing Faces of Terror trilogy, where Peter Pyatkov is taken down to the cellars of the Lubianka:

            ‘Cold metal against the nape of his neck. His moment.

            “Who am – ? . . .’

I also reproduce in this page some clippings from The New York Times of that time. A warning: they are discomforting to look at.)

It was at that time that I understood there was something much darker and more pervasive going on. I had rather naively imagined that the absurd colour barriers and divisiveness had broken down in the ‘Great Society’ of the 1960s. I knew that it had been illegal in North Carolina, up until 1965, for a marriage between a ‘white ‘ person and a ‘black’ one to take place (which would have meant that Sylvia and I could not have wed), but thought that these absurd racial categories were gradually being eroded. Other political trends, however, were in fact re-emphasising this false science.

3. A few years after we moved down her, Sylvia, Julia and I made a visit to the Orton Plantation. This was one of the few private estates that are open to visitors in this neck of the woods – or even across the whole of the country. It is attached to the Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson Historic Site, half-way between Southport and Wilmington, on the west side of the Cape Fear River. Brunswick Town was a port that was destroyed by the British in 1776, but never rebuilt, while Fort Anderson was constructed on the ruins, as a fort in the Civil War. There is not much to see there, especially for those familiar with the variety of castles that can be inspected in Great Britain, but it is of great historic interest, and a compulsory target for any tourist or resident of the area.

The Orton Plantation

Near the historical site lies the Orton Planation, of which the jewel is the antebellum country house, considered to be one of the best of its kind. It has apparently been used in many movies and TV shows (none of which I profess to have seen: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood somehow escaped my attention), as the following link explains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orton_Plantation) . We were able to walk around the park, and survey what had been the rice plantations, worked by hundreds of slaves, that led down to the Cape Fear River. We were reminded of how many of England’s fine country houses were constructed with the wealth derived from the exploitation of slaves, only in their case not in their back yard, but mostly thousands of miles overseas, such as in St. Vincent, where Sylvia was born.

The house itself was not open to the public, but as we walked near it, an elderly gentleman saw us, and approached us, and, perhaps after learning where we were from, invited us to take a look round. I don’t recall much of the details (there was a billiard-table in good condition), but it was charming house, and we considered ourselves very fortunate. The gentleman gave his name as ‘Sprunt’: I worked out later that he was probably Kenneth Murchison Sprunt, whose name appears in the Wikipedia entry. In 2010, the Sprunts sold the whole property to Louis Moore Bacon, a hedge fund manager, and descendant of the house’s original owner and builder, Roger Moore. The grounds have not yet been re-opened.

4. Earlier this month, Sylvia and I filled out the US 2020 Census forms, on-line this time. It was quite a simple operation: we were asked for birthdate information for the three of us, and whether we rented or owned the house, and whether we had any mortgage. What business was it of theirs, we asked ourselves? And then we came to the bulk of the form, which was about ‘ethnicity’. The first part required us to state whether we were ‘Hispanic’ or not – and did not allow this binary question to be ignored! At the same time, it reminded us that ‘Hispanics’ or ‘Latinos’ could be of any race.

How in heaven’s name were they going to use this information? Deciding what federal aid should be given to each State, I suppose, but how could they verify whether anybody really understood the question, or could even be relied upon to tell the truth on the form? And how would such information affect the government’s decisions? I thought of a root of my maternal-grandfather’s family, the Robinis, who were Huguenots escaping via Guernsey, and suddenly felt a surge of Italianate fervour. And then there was my unexplained partiality to Neapolitan ice-cream and pizza margherita. Were such features part of my ‘identity’? H’mm. But there was no way out. We decided to say ‘No’, and move on.

The last section concerned ‘race’, and in this area the Census Bureau believed they were on firmer ground. The first option was ‘White’, but if you rejected that, it offered a whole host of exotic categories to choose from, including ‘Pacific Islander’ (about which I have written before here). Why it believed that, in 2020, American citizens would universally want to define themselves in such terms is absolutely beyond me, but it keeps many Census Bureau people in employment, and helps to foment those minor distinctions that can breed resentment, and feelings of entitlement, and which accompany the notions of ‘identity’ which the sociological professors get so excited about. Fortunately, the very last option was to tick off ‘Other’, and Sylvia and I happily entered ‘Human’ in the box, and were gratified that our submission was not rejected. But should we expect a visit from the Census Police, to verify that we are indeed so?

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

I shall get round to ‘Wilmington’s Lie’ soon, but I need to digress over some science, and some definitions. As readers may have noticed, in this text I have used ‘black’ and ‘white’ in quotation marks. Since all reputable scientists have concluded that ‘race’ is a sociological construct, and that the genetic differences between human beings of different pigmentation are smaller than those found within any one particular ‘ethnic group’, I struggle with what language to use in this discussion. American institutions have for a long time advised us that anyone born with a drop of ‘black’ blood should be defined as ‘black’, which is obviously nonsense. Yet using some term is inescapable in this discussion. Selecting the term ‘Negro’ is disdained these days; ‘colo(u)red’ is a ridiculous hangover from South African categorisations, although it endures in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; ‘African-American’ is simply inaccurate (what about Egyptians?), and some famous Americans, such as Colin Powell, have objected to it (his parents came from Jamaica), since they do not regard themselves as having ‘roots’ in the African continent.

To remind readers of the stubbornness of some sectors of government and the academic world to recognize the facts about race, I present the following paragraphs. I picked them out of a book review from the Listener of 13 November, 1935. For some reason, I had acquired a few years ago a bound copy of the issues of that magazine from September to December 1935: they present a fascinating perspective of the world seen from a variety of educated viewpoints as the totalitarian states of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia started to exert an eerie hold over the democracies’ attentions. The review is titled Racial Problems in Europe, and it comprises a critique of We Europeans, by Julian Huxley, A. C. Haddon, and A. M. Carr-Saunders, written by A. S. Russell.

“‘In a scientific age’, say the authors, ‘prejudice and passions seek to clothe themselves in a garb of scientific respectability; and when they cannot find support from true science, they invent a pseudo-science to justify themselves’. There is today a pseudo-science of ‘racial biology’ which has been erected to justify political ambitions, economic ends, social grudges, and class prejudices. ‘Race’ and ‘racialism’ are regarded by the authors as almost blasphemous terms, and it is against the fallacies associated with these vague and mischievous ideas that the principal part of the book is directed.

People who talk about pure races nowadays do not know what they are talking of. You cannot judge a man’s race accurately from externals. You can be certain of a man’s racial purity only when you know his ‘genetical constitution’. The discovery of the gene, thousands of which go to the physical make-up of an individual, has revealed how immensely more complex inheritance in the physical sense is than was thought of in old days, when the characteristics of a child were considered to be a mere blending of those of the parents.  It was convenient at one time to make a rough classification of Europeans into the Nordic, the Alpine and the Mediterranean ‘races’; the first exemplified in the tall, ‘long-headed’, fair-haired Swede; the second in the ‘round-headed’ Russian peasant of medium height; the third in the dark, ‘long-headed’, small inhabitant of southern Italy. Actually these types, like every other in Europe, are just different mixtures; they aren’t in any sense pure races. Everybody in Europe is of mixed race as evidenced by his or her ‘genetical constitution’. And the reason for this is plain.  For tens of thousands of years man has been on the move in every part of the world inter-breeding and inter-breeding. There might have been pure races at one time; sections of mankind might have got isolated geographically from the rest for thousands and thousands of years and evolved so as to become adapted to their climactic environment; but those days are long past and it is in the highest degree unlikely they will ever recur.”

One might observe that even Wallace didn’t quite get it, what with his references to ‘racial purity’ and ‘inter-breeding’. Yet the challenge to the monstrous racial theories of Hitler is clear. Nevertheless, in what could be considered a provocative commentary on Hitler’s dogma, later in the review, Wallace questions the authors’ application of their research into the identity of the Jews (“  . . . the authors assert the Jews are of mixed origin and no more different from the mass of Europeans than ourselves or the Germans” – a judgment that would anticipate what Schlomo Sand wrote recently in his engrossing and controversial Invention of the Jewish People). Wallace concludes by accepting that nations of ‘inter-marriage’ are based purely on sentiment and tradition. I could point to dozens of articles that I have read over the years that would reinforce the assertions of Huxley and co.  They got it right eight-five years ago, but too many people still resist those notions. For example, I marvel at the unscientific way that certain liberal arts critics misrepresent how genetics works. My latest offering: “Whether they have been hard-wired into a Jewish genetic make-up after centuries of the singular Jewish experience it’s impossible to prove, but Lebrecht’s passion is persuasive”, from Mark Glanville’s review of Norman Lebrecht’s Genius and Anxiety, in the TLS of February 28.

And now to Wilmington’s Lie. I had been vaguely aware of the murky secret that the city of Wilmington had tried to hide. I have another clipping, from the New York Times of December 19, 2005, showing a report by John DeSantis headed ‘North Carolina City Confronts Its Past in Report on White Vigilantes’. His second paragraph sums up the event very succinctly: “Only scant mention is made, however, of the bloody rioting more than a century ago during which black residents were killed and survivors banished by white supremacists, who seized control of the city government in what historians say is the only successful overthrow of a local government in United States history.”

What prompted the attention then to the happenings of November 10, 1898 was the release of a draft of a 500-page report ordered by the state legislature. In what may come as a surprise to many European readers, after the Civil War, the government of Wilmington, which had been ruled by the Democratic Party, was replaced by a coalition that was dominated by Republicans, and contained many ‘blacks’. (It was the Republican Abraham Lincoln who had resisted the Southern States’ rights to continue slavery, and the switch of party allegiances around civil rights and white supremacism would come much later.) The growing power and influence of those persons whom reactionary Democrats considered as inferior to them, and responsible for diminishing their prosperity, caused a mass of resentment that broke out murderously before Election Day of November 9, 1898. A mob of white vigilantes invaded ‘black’ businesses, most notably the printing-press of The Daily Record, and shot ‘black’ men in the streets of Wilmington. The report estimated that up to a hundred ‘black’ deaths were recorded, and hundreds fled from the city.

The Wilmington 1898 Memorial

I regret not getting hold of the full report, which, according to de Santis, was to be delivered the following year. There was some controversy over its release, as many felt that the ‘mistakes’ of over a hundred years ago should be buried. In 2008, however, a Memorial Park was opened in Wilmington, although the City still seems very ambivalent about promoting and describing it. A link on the City’s webpage, indicating the website of the memorial, leads to a Facebook Page: a full description can be seen at https://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/monument/842/. I have visited the memorial, and was moved by it, but was sorry it had been placed somewhat off the beaten track, and found the symbology puzzling. The monument itself consists of six 16-feet tall paddles, which, according to a plaque nearby, refer to the role of water in ‘the spiritual belief system of people from the African continent’. Why the memorialists would want to generalise all the religions of the African continent in that stereotypical way, especially when almost universally those who suffered at the time of the events (and those who come to honour them today) were and are devout Christians is one of those weird dimensions of ‘identity’ and ‘heritage’ that dominate discussions of such topics today.

And then, earlier this year, David Zucchino’s account of the incidents, Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, was published. Zucchino gained his Pulitzer Prize for feature-writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1989: he has also published Thunder Run and The Myth of the Welfare Queen. His book provides a very thorough history of the events that led up to what he characterises as the 1898 ‘coup’: the action was, however, not so much the directing ousting of a governing body as the terroristic oppression of those citizens who would democratically elect that group, but the result was the same. Zucchino uses the official report (available at https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p249901coll22/id/5842, released on May 31, 2006, which I have not read), as well as an account by LeRae Umfleet, the principal researcher on the project, A Day of Blood, which I have also not looked at. So I regret I cannot compare Zucchino’s account with Umfleet’s. Zucchino has also trawled through an impressive list of books, unpublished memoirs and diaries, articles, theses, dissertations, and government publications and documents.

The Wilmington Coup, 1898

Zucchino takes his readers painstakingly through the background that led to the vigilantism of 1898. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Wilmington became the largest city in North Carolina, and freed slaves flocked to it for the opportunities in trade and exports that it provided. In the author’s words, ‘it was a bustling port city with a burgeoning African American middle class and a Fusionist government of Republicans and Populists that included black aldermen, policemen and magistrates.’ The Ku Klux Klan had made an attempt to roll back Reconstruction in 1868, but had been driven out of town. Abraham Galloway (of ‘mixed race’) had been the vigorous senator who had encouraged the locals to defend their right, and when he died in 1870, the cause was taken up by Alexander Manly, the publisher of the Daily Record. “Manly”, Zucchino writes, “could easily have passed as white, the preferred option of so many so-called mulattoes.”  Manly spoke up for Negro rights, and pointed out the hypocrisy that occurred when ‘white’ supremacists spoke up for the virtue of their women intermingling with ‘black’ males, while they themselves had affairs with ‘black’ women. He thus became the prime target of the frustrated Democrats.

In 1897, several lynchings occurred in Georgia. ‘White’ leaders could not imagine that a sexual act between a ‘white’ woman and a ’black’ man could be consensual, and vigilante justice was frequently the outcome. After a Mrs. Felton defended the practice of lynching, Manly wrote an editorial that pointed out the hypocrisy, and ridiculed the insecurity and self-delusion that lay at the heart of the hatred of Southern ‘white’ men. Thus the office of the Daily Record became the prime target of the rebels. Two days after voting took place for the state legislature on November 8, 1898, over two thousand Red Shirts (as they were called), heavily armed, piled into Wilmington looking for victims. Buildings were burned, and at least sixty ‘black’ men were killed in the streets.

Zucchino reports how the Wilmington Messenger published the lyrics to ‘Rise Ye Sons of Carolina’ on November 8, 1898.

“Proud Caucasians one and all . . .

Hear your wives and daughters call  . . .

Rise, defend their spotless virtue

With your strong and manly arms  . . .

Rise and drive this Black despoiler from your state.”

It is a message that anticipates Hitler. A shocking and nauseating refrain, blatantly ignoring the fact that the forbears of these ‘black despoilers’ had been brought to those shores against their will, in utterly cruel conditions, when, if they had survived, they were forced into slavery. What demagogues, preachers or teachers had embedded this sort of thinking? How could anyone today not denounce such ugliness?

I shall not relay all the details of the coup. Readers can pick up the book. Zucchino has performed an absolutely vital task of chronicling the details of this ghastly event, one that remained buried for so long. Yet Wilmington’s Lie is not very easy reading: not because of the grisly subject-matter, but because the author lacks a good narrative sweep, and moves around without a clear chronology. Events outside Wilmington are sketched very thinly, so we do not gain a good understanding of, for example, why federal or state officials were so reluctant to intervene. He leaves the meatier issues for the Epilogue, almost as an afterthought, such as the way that Wilmington became an example for ‘white’ supremacists in other states to pick up on voter suppression, and vicious attacks on ‘blacks’. He has nothing to say about the culture and political battles that encouraged such cruelty, or how the fundamentalist Josiah Nott, who had Gobineau’s dangerous writings on the Aryan race translated, exerted such a swift and penetrative effect on the Southern states and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Where did they learn about ‘Caucasians’? This, for me, was an extraordinary omission.

The Dawes Severalty Act

Moreover, Zucchino makes no references to the expulsion of indigenous Americans of a couple of generations before, which these horrors echoed, or even the infamous Dawes Act of 1887, which applied different racial principles to the treatment of indigenous American tribes.  The author makes a link between the events of 1898 and current attempts to implement voter ID laws: such initiatives may or may not be stirred by similar impulses, but Zucchino does not examine the case. He skims over in one paragraph the bouleversement in Party allegiances (when minority rights became a Democratic plank of policy) that was caused by the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, noting that in 1972 North Carolina elected its first Republican US senator for seventy-four years – the notorious Jesse Helms. And lastly, he appears to be a prisoner of his own cultural milieu – talking about ‘white blood’ and ‘black blood’ as if they were realities, and never analysing seriously the pseudo-science behind these notions. (As I was completing this piece, I encountered the following quotation from the NYT obituary of Abigail Thernstrom, a stolid opponent of affirmative action, a woman who had grown up in a communist household: “Race is the American dilemma. It is race that, you know, keeps this country in agony. It is our most serious domestic problem. And therefore, we want to think specially hard about anything that involves sorting people out on the basis of one drop of blood of this or that.”)

I noticed one poignant aspect. The captain general of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina in 1868 was a Colonel Moore, who led the attempt to terrorize ‘blacks’ in April 1868, was then repulsed, and was left licking his wounds inside Thalian Hall. Thirty years later, no longer Klan leader, he was still active in Wilmington, and had been elected to the County Board of Commissioners in the corrupt elections of 1898. Yet he was outsmarted by another political rival, Colonel Alfred Waddell, who led the attack on Manly’s newspaper offices. After the killings of November 10, one of the businessmen who tried to persuade Waddell to allow the ‘blacks’ who had been chased out of town, since he needed them for loading the seven steamships backed up at the port, was a James Sprunt. Sprunt ‘told a reporter he was confident that the city’s blacks would be reassured by Mayor Waddell’s public declarations of equal treatment for both races’. He had been born in Glasgow, was British vice-consul, and later became renowned for his philanthropic work in Wilmington, and his dedication to local history.

Colonel Roger Moore was a descendant of Roger Moore, a brother of Maurice. Maurice Moore sold the Orton Planation to Roger when the latter moved into the area from South Carolina, in 1725, and together they founded Brunswick Town. Roger Moore had to deal with unfriendly native Americans, who destroyed his first house, but then set up the rice plantation with slave labour. The gentleman whom we met at the Orton Plantation, Murchison Sprunt, was a grandson of James Laurence Sprunt, who, with his wife, Luola, purchased the property in 1904, on the death of his father-in-law, Colonel Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison, a Confederate military officer. In May 2010, as I described earlier, the Sprunt family sold the Plantation to Louis Moore Bacon, who informs us that he is a direct descendant of the first Roger Moore. (How he might be related to the notorious Klansman Roger Moore, I do not know.)

Thus are the fortunes and careers of North Carolinians – like those of everyone, I suppose –intertwined. Allowing for about ten generations since 1725, Louis Moore Bacon could also claim that he was the direct descendant of about one thousand other people. Yet, like many others, he favours a single lineage with a name that endured, and a known family history. Likewise, there are probably thousands of other persons who could claim ‘direct descendancy’ from Roger Moore, but who did not have the money, the genealogical insights, or the personal interest, to want to bid for the Orton Plantation, and invest in it. That is the way the world works.

Back to today’s Wilmington. It is easy for someone like me to sit back, and proclaim that all these racial categories are absurd, when such loftiness in fact could show an insensitivity to the realities of the stories of humiliation passed down, and the daily insults that continue. Whenever I walk around in Wilmington, I am especially careful, say, to open the door for any ‘black’ person coming into the Post Office, and offer them a friendly ‘Take your time, sir!’, or ‘Have a good day, madam!’, perhaps to balance the affronts or rudenesses they may have encountered from persons who share my skin pigmentation, and I deliver such politesses a little more enthusiastically than I might do to anyone else. Maybe it is condescending behaviour, but I trust it helps. Because I can hope for the day when these categories will be meaningless (and I think of our beautiful Anglo-Irish-Italian-French-German-West Indian-Vietnamese grand-daughters – ignoring, for now, the Persky branch from Minsk), but have to accept that reality is different. So long as census-takers, white supremacists, affirmative action lawyers, ethnic studies professors, fundamentalist preachers, racial activists, identity politicians, Dixie whistlers, sociologists, psephologists, pseudo-historians, eugenicist neo-confederates, Marxist academics, cultural appropriation specialists, self-appointed ‘community’ spokespersons, and general grudge-grinding journalists have a job to hold on to, the distinctions will continue. And, after all, if the New York Times says that a ‘Latinx’ community exists, it must be so, right?

My gestures are a kind of reparation, I suppose. And thereby lies one final dilemma, as the irrepressible and overexposed Ta-Nehisi Coates has promoted, urging that ‘blacks’ should receive money for the injustices performed against them (or their forebears). Yet not all those who would have to pay are guilty, nor are all those who would be remunerated necessarily victims. None of us automatically inherits the sins or the virtues of our forebears, and each us should be free to reject the indoctrination of parents, school or religious institution.

I made light of this at my seventieth birthday party a few years ago, attended by a few dozen of my closest friends, at which I made a speech (see Taking the Cake). At one point, I took out a piece of paper from my jacket pocket, and told the assembled diners that it was a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice. I proceeded to read it: “Dear Mr. Percy . . . blah, blah, blah,  .  .  . We have to inform you that, according to recent legislation, you, as a descendant of colonialist oppressors, are hereby ordered to make the following reparations payments to victims of such injustices. (Pause.) Mr. Tiger Woods: $5,000. Mrs. Sylvia Percy: $10,000. And to Mr. Douglas Hamilton (not his real name, but a prosperous ‘black’ friend of mine sitting at Table 4): $50,000!”

Yet so long as that barber, and persons like him, are around, it is no laughing matter.

(Recent Commonplace entries can be found here. This month’s collection includes a special not-to-be-missed feature on Gavin Ewart and light verse.)

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War in 1944: Howard’s Folly

I was reading, in the Times Literary Supplement of January 17, a review of a book titled The French Revolutionary Tradition in Russian and Soviet Politics, Political Thought, and Culture. The author of the book was one Jay Bergman, the writer of the review Daniel Beer, described as Reader in Modern European History at Royal Holloway, University of London. I came across the following sentences: “The Bolsheviks could never admit that Marxism was a failed ideology or that they had actually seized power in defiance of it. Their difficulties, they argued, were rather the work of enemies arrayed against the Party and traitors in their midst.”

This seemed to me an impossibly quaint way of describing the purges of Stalin’s Russia. Whom were these Bolsheviks trying to convince in their ‘arguments’, and where did they make them? Were they perhaps published on the Letters page of the Pravda Literary Supplement or as articles in The Moscow Review of Books? Or were they presented at conferences held at the elegant Romanov House, famed for its stately rooms and its careful rules of debate? I was so taken aback by the suggestion that the (unidentified) Bolsheviks had engaged in some kind of serious discussions on policy, as if they were an Eastern variant of the British Tory Party, working through items on the agenda at some seaside resort like Scarborough, and perhaps coming up with a resolution on the lines of tightening up on immigration, that I was minded to write a letter to the Editor. It was short, and ran as follows:

“So who were these Bolsheviks who argued that ‘their difficulties were rather the work of enemies arrayed against the Party and traitors in its midst’? Were they perhaps those ‘hardliners in the Politburo’ whom Roosevelt, Churchill and Eden imagined were exerting a malign influence on the genial Uncle Joe Stalin, but whose existence turned out to be illusory? Or were they such as Trotsky, Kirov, Radek, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, etc. etc., most of whom Stalin had murdered simply because they were ‘old Bolsheviks’, and knew too much? I think we should be told.”

Now the Editor did not see fit to publish my offering. Perhaps he felt that, since he had used a letter of mine about the highly confused Professor Paul Collier in the December 2019 issue, my quota was up for the season. I can think of no other conceivable reason why my submission was considered of less interest than those which he did select.

Regular readers of coldspur will be familiar with my observations about the asymmetry of Allied relationships with the Soviet Union in World War II. See, for instance, https://coldspur.com/krivitsky-churchill-and-the-cold-war/, where I analysed such disequilibrium by the categories of Moral Equivalency, Pluralism vs. Totalitarianism, Espionage, Culture, and Warfare. The misunderstanding about the nature of Stalin’s autocracy can be viewed in two dimensions: the role of the Russian people, and that of Stalin himself.

During the war, much genuine and well-deserved sympathy was shown in Britain towards the long-suffering Russian people, but the cause was often distorted by Soviet propaganda, either directly from such as ambassador Maisky and his cronies, or by agents installed in institutions such as the Ministry of Information. The misconceptions arose from thinking that the Russians were really similar to British citizens, with some control over their lives, where they worked, the selection of those who governed them, what they could choose to read, how they were allowed to congregate and discuss politics, and the manner in which they thus influenced their leaders, but had unfortunately allowed themselves to sign a pact with the Nazis and then been treacherously invaded by them. Their bravery in defending their country against the assault, with losses in the millions, was much admired.

Yet the catastrophe of Barbarossa was entirely Stalin’s fault: as he once said to his Politburo, using a vulgar epithet, ‘we’ had screwed up everything that Lenin had founded and passed on. And he was ruthless in using the citizenry as cannon fodder, just as he had been ruthless in sending innocent victims to execution, famine, exile, or the Gulag. For example, in the Battle of Stalingrad, 10,000 Soviet soldiers were executed by Beria’s NKVD for desertion or cowardice in the face of battle. 10,000! It is difficult to imagine that number, but I think of the total number of pupils at my secondary school, just over 800, filling Big School, and multiplying it by 12. If anything along those lines had occurred with British forces, Churchill would have been thrown out in minutes. Yet morale was not universally sound with the Allies, either. Antony Beevor reports that in May 1944 ‘nearly 30,000 men had deserted or were absent without leave from British units in Italy’ – an astonishing statistic. The British Army had even had a mutiny on its hands at Salerno in 1943, but the few death sentences passed were quickly commuted. (Stalin’s opinions on such a lily-livered approach to discipline appear not to have been recorded.) As a reminder of the relative casualties, the total number of British deaths in the military (including POWs) in World War II was 326,000, with 62,000 civilians lost. The numbers for the Soviet Union were 13,600,000 and 7,000,000, respectively.

As my letter suggested, Western leaders were often perplexed by how Stalin’s occasionally genial personality, and his expressed desire for ‘co-operation’, were frequently darkened by influences that they could not discern. They spoke (as The Kremlin Letters reminds us) of Stalin’s need to listen to public opinion, or deal with the unions, or heed those hard-liners on the Politburo, who were all holding him back from making more peaceful overtures over Poland, or Italy, or the Baltic States. During negotiations, Molotov was frequently presented as the ‘hard man’, with Stalin then countering with a less demanding offer, thus causing the Western powers to think they had gained something. This was all nonsense, of course, but Stalin played along, and manipulated Churchill and Roosevelt, pretending that he was not the despot making all the decisions himself.

Thus Daniel Beer’s portrayal of those Bolsheviks ‘arguing’ about the subversive threat holds a tragi-comic aspect in my book. Because those selfsame Bolsheviks who had rallied under Lenin to forge the Revolution were the very same persons whom Stalin himself identified as a threat to him, and he had them shot, almost every one. The few that survived did so because they were absolutely loyal to Stalin, and not to the principles (if they can be called that) of the Bolshevik Revolution.

I was reminded of this distortion of history when reading Professor Sir Michael Howard’s memoir, Captain Professor. I had read Howard’s obituary in December 2019, and noted from it that he had apparently encountered Guy Burgess when at Oxford. The only work of Howard’s that I had read was his Volume 5 of the History of British Intelligence in the Second World War, where he covered Strategic Deception. (The publication of this book had been delayed by Margaret Thatcher, and its impact had thus been diminished by the time it was issued in 1999. I analysed it in my piece ‘Officially Unreliable’. It is a very competent but inevitably flawed analysis of some complex material.) With my interest in Burgess’s movements, and his possible involvement in setting up the ‘Oxford Ring’ of spies, I wanted to learn more about the timing of this meeting, and what Burgess was up to, so I acquired a copy of Howard’s memoir.

Captain Professor

The paragraph on Burgess was not very informative, but I obviously came to learn more about Howard, this acknowledged expert in the history of warfare. He has received several plaudits since his death. In the January issue of History Today, the editor Paul Lay wrote an encomium to him, which included a quotation from the historian’s essay ‘Military Experience in European Literature’. It ran as follows: “In European literature the military experience has, when it has been properly understood and interpreted, immeasurably enriched that understanding of mankind, of its powers and limitations, of its splendours and its miseries, and not least of its relationship to God, which must lie at the root of all societies that can lay any claim to civilization.”

Now what on earth does that mean? I was not impressed by such metaphysical waffle. If I had submitted a sentence like that in an undergraduate essay, I would not have been surprised to see it returned with a circle of red ink. Yet its tone echoed a remark by Howard, in Captain Professor, that I had included in my December 2019 Commonplace file: “I had written a little about this in a small book The Invention of Peace, a year earlier, where I tried to describe how the Enlightenment, and the secularization and industrialization it brought in its wake, had destroyed the beliefs and habits that had held European society together for a thousand years and evoked a backlash of tribal nationalism that had torn apart and reached climax with the two world wars.” (p 218) Hallo, Professor! ‘Beliefs and habits that had held European society together for a thousand years’? What about all those wars? Revolutions? Religious persecution? Specifically, what about the Inquisition and the Thirty Years War? What was this ‘European society’ that cohered so closely, and which the Professor held in such regard? I wondered whether the expression of these somewhat eccentric ideas was a reason why the sometime Regius Professor of History at Oxford University had not been invited to contribute to the Oxford Illustrated History of Modern War, or the Oxford Illustrated History of World War II.

Apparently, all this has to do with the concept of ‘War and Society’, with which Howard is associated. Another quote from Captain Professor: “The history of war, I came to realize, was more than the operational history of armed forces. It was the study of entire societies. Only by studying their cultures could one come to understand what it was they fought about and why they fought in the way they did. Further, the fact that they did so fight had a reciprocal impact on their social structure. I had to learn not only to think about war in a different way, but also to think about history itself in a different way. I would certainly not claim to have invented the concept of ‘War and Society’, but I think I did something to popularize it.” Note the contradiction that, if these ‘societies and cultures’ were fighting each other, they could hardly be said to have ‘held together for a thousand years’. I am also not sure that the Soviet soldiers in WII, conscripted and harassed by the NKVD, shot at the first blink of cowardice or retreat, thought much about how the way they fought had a reciprocal impact on Soviet culture (whatever that was), but maybe Howard was not thinking of the Red Army. In some sense I could see what he was getting at (e.g. the lowering of some social barriers after World War II in the United Kingdom, because of the absurd ‘officers’ and ‘men’ distinctions: no one told me at the time why the Officers’ Training Corps had morphed into the Combined Cadet Force). Nevertheless, it seemed a bizarre agenda.

And then I came on the following passage, describing Howard’s experiences in Italy: “In September 1944, believing that the end of the war was in sight, the Allied High Command had issued orders for the Italian partisans to unmask themselves and attack German communications throughout the north of Italy. They did so, including those on and around Monte Sole. The Germans reacted with predictable savagery. The Allied armies did not come to their help, and the partisan movement in North Italy was largely destroyed. It was still believed – and especially in Bologna, where the communists had governed the city ever since the war – that this had been deliberately planned by the Allies in order to weaken the communist movement, much as the Soviets had encouraged the people of Warsaw to rise and then sat by while the Germans exterminated them. When I protested to my hosts that this was an outrageous explanation and that there was nothing that we could have done, they smiled politely. But I was left wondering, as I wondered about poor Terry, was there really nothing that we could have done to help? Were there no risks that our huge cumbrous armies with their vast supply-lines might have taken if we knew what was going on? – and someone must have known what was going on. Probably not: but ever since then I have been sparing of criticism of the Soviet armies for their halt before Warsaw.”

My initial reaction was of astonishment, rather like Howard’s first expression of outrage, I imagine. How could the betrayal of the Poles by the halted Soviet forces on the banks of the Vistula, in the process of ‘liberating’ a country that they had raped in 1939, now an ally, be compared with the advance of the Allied Armies in Italy, trying to expel the Germans, while liberating a country that had been an enemy during the war? What had the one to do with the other? And why would it have been controversial for the Allies to have wanted to weaken the Communist movement? But perhaps I was missing something. What had caused Howard to change his mind? I needed to look into it.

Her Majesty & Professor Sir Michael Howard

The poignant aspect of this anecdote was that Howard had been wounded at Monte Sole, only in December 1944, some two months after the Monte Sole massacre. Howard had been commanding a platoon, and had been sent on a reconnaissance mission with ‘poor Terry’ (an alias). Returning from the front line, they had become disoriented, and stumbled into an ambush, where Terry was mortally wounded by a mine, and Howard, having been shot in the leg, managed to escape. He was mortified by the fact that he had chosen to leave Terry to die, and felt his Military Cross was not really deserved. He had fought courageously for the cause of ridding Italy of fascism, yet the fact that he had not known at the time of the Massacre of Monte Sole (sometimes known as the Marzobotto Massacre) was perplexing to me.

These two closely contemporaneous events – the Warsaw Uprising, and the Monte Sole Massacre – were linked in a way that Howard does not describe, as I shall show later. They could be summarised as follows:

The Warsaw Uprising

As the Red Army approached Warsaw at the end of July of 1944, the Polish government-in-exile in London decided that it needed to install its own administration before the Communist Committee of National Liberation, established by the Soviets as the Lublin Committee on July 22, could take over leadership. Using its wireless communications, it encouraged the illegal Polish military government in Warsaw to call on the citizenry to build fortifications. On July 29, the London leader, Mikolajczyk, went to Moscow, whereupon Moscow Radio urged the Polish Resistance to rise up against the invader. A few days later, Stalin promised Mikołajczyk that he would assist the Warsaw Uprising with arms and ammunition. On August 1, Bor-Komorowski, the Warsaw leader, issued the proclamation for the uprising. In a few days, the Poles were in control of most of Warsaw, but the introduction of the ruthless SS, under the leadership of von dem Bach-Zelewski, crushed the rebellion with brutal force. Meanwhile, the Soviets waited on the other side of the Vistula. Stalin told Churchill that the uprising was a stupid adventure, and refused to allow British and American planes dropping supplies from as far away as Italy to land on Soviet territory to refuel. The resistance forces capitulated on October 2, with about 200,000 Polish dead.

The Monte Sole Massacre

In the summer of 1944, British and American forces were making slow progress against the ‘Gothic Line’, the German defensive wall that ran along the Apennines. Italy was at that time practically in a stage of civil war: Mussolini had been ousted in the summer of 1943, and Marshall Badoglio, having signed an armistice with the Allies, was appointed Prime Minister on September 3. Mussolini’s RSI (the Italian Social Republic) governed the North, as a puppet for the Germans, while Badoglio led the south. Apart from the general goal of pushing the Germans out of Italy, the strategic objective had been to keep enough Nazi troops held up to allow the D-Day invasion of Normandy to take place successfully. In late June, General Alexander appealed to the Italian partisans to intensify a policy of sabotage and murder against the German forces. The Germans already had a track-record of fierce reprisals, such as the Massacre at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome in March 1944, when 320 civilians had been killed following the murder of 32 German soldiers. The worst of these atrocities occurred at Monte Sole on September 29-30, where the SS killed 1830 local villagers at Marzabotto. Shortly after that, Alexander called upon the partisans to hold back their assaults because of the approach of winter.

Site of the Monte Sole Massacre

Now, there are some obvious common threads woven into these narratives (‘partisans’, ‘reprisals’, ‘invasions’, ‘encouragement’, ‘SS brutality’, ‘betrayal’), but was there more than met the eye, and was Howard pointing at something more sinister on the part of the Western Allies, and something more pardonable in the actions of the Soviets? I needed some structure in which to shape my research, if I were to understand Howard’s weakly presented case. Thus I drew up five categories by which I could analyse the events:

  1. Military Operation: What was the nature of the overall military strategy, and how was it evolving across different fronts?
  2. Political Goals: What were the occupier’s (‘liberator’s’) goals for political infrastructure in the territories controlled, and by what means did they plan to achieve them?
  3. Make-up, role and goals of partisans: How were the partisan forces constituted, and what drove their activities? How did the respective Allied forces communicate with, and behave towards, the partisan forces?
  4. Offensive strategy: What was the offensive strategy of the armed forces in approaching their target?  How successful was the local operation in contributing to overall military goals?
  5. The Aftermath, political outcomes and historical assessment: What was the long-term result of the operation on the country’s political architecture? How are the events assessed seventy-five years later?

The Red Army and Warsaw

  1. Military Operation:

The most important resolution from the Tehran Conference, signed by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin on December 1, 1943, was a co-ordinated approach to ensuring that the planned D-Day operation (‘Overlord’) would be complemented by assaults elsewhere. Such cooperation would prevent German forces being withdrawn to defend the Allies in eastern France. Thus an operation in the South of France (‘Anvil’) was to take place at the same time that Stalin would launch a major offensive in the East (‘Bagration’). At that time Overlord was planned to occur in late May; operational problems, and poor weather meant that it did not take place until June 6, 1944.

Stalin’s goal was to reach Berlin, and conquer as much territory as he could before the Western Allies reached it. Ever since his strategy of creating ‘buffer states’ in the shape of eastern Poland, the Baltic States, and western Ukraine after the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 had been shown to be an embarrassing calamity (although not recognized by Churchill at the time), he realised that more vigorously extending the Soviet Empire was a necessity for spreading the cause of Bolshevism, and protecting the Soviet Union against another assault from Germany. When a strong defensive border (the ‘Stalin Line’) had been partially dismantled to create a weaker set of fortifications along the new borders with Nazi Germany’s extended territories (the ‘Molotov Line’), it had fearfully exposed the weaknesses of the Soviet armed forces, and Hitler had invaded with appalling loss of life and material for the Soviet Union.

In 1944, therefore, the imperative was to move forward ruthlessly, capturing the key capital cities that Hitler prized so highly, and pile in a seemingly inexhaustible supply of troops. When the Red Army encountered German forces, it almost always outnumbered them, but the quality of its leadership and personnel were inferior, with conscripts often picked up from the territories gained, poorly trained, but used as cannon fodder. Casualties as a percentage of personnel were considerably higher than that which the Germans underwent. The Soviet Union had produced superior tanks, but repair facilities, communications, and supply lines were constantly being stretched too far.

On June 22, Operation ‘Bagration’ began. Rokossovsky’s First Belorussian Front crossed the River Bug, which was significantly on the Polish side of the ‘Curzon Line’, the border defined (and then modified by Lewis Namier) in 1919, but well inside the expanded territories of Poland that the latter had occupied and owned between the two World Wars. On July 7, Soviet troops entered Vilna to the north, a highly symbolic city in Poland’s history. On July 27, they entered Bialystok and Lvov. By July 31, they had approached within twenty-five miles of the Vistula, the river that runs through Warsaw, and four days later, had actually crossed the waterway 120 miles south of Warsaw. At this stage, exhausted and depleted, they met fiercer opposition from German forces. Exactly what happened thereafter is a little murky.

  • Political Goals:

The Soviets’ message was one of ‘liberation’, although exactly from what the strife-worn populations of the countries being ‘liberated’ were escaping from was controversial. The Baltic States (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia) had suffered, particularly, from the Soviet annexation of 1940, which meant persecution and murder of intellectuals and professionals, through the invasion by Nazi forces in the summer of 1941, which meant persecution and murder of Jews and Communists, to the re-invasion of the Soviets in 1944, which meant persecution and murder of anyone suspected of fascist tendencies or sympathies. Yet the British Foreign Office had practically written off the Baltic States as a lost cause: Poland was of far greater concern, since it was on her behalf that Great Britain had declared war on Germany in September 1939.

The institution favoured by the British government to lead Poland after the war was the government-in-exile, led, after the death in a plane crash of General Sikorski in June 1943, by Stanisław Mikałojczyk. It maintained wireless communications with underground forces in Poland, but retained somewhat unreasonable goals for the reconstitution of Poland after the war, attaching high importance to the original pre-war boundaries, and especially to the cities of Vilna and Lvov. The London Poles had been infuriated by Stalin’s cover-up of the Katyn massacres, and by Churchill’s apparent compliance, the British prime Minster harbouring a desire to maintain harmonious relations with Stalin. Mikałojczyk continuously applied pressure on Winston Churchill to represent the interests of a free and independent Poland to Stalin, who, like Roosevelt, had outwardly accepted the principles of the Atlantic Charter that gave the right of self-determination to ‘peoples’. Mikałojczyk was adamant on two matters: the recognition of its traditional eastern borders, and its right to form a non-communist government. Stalin was equally obdurate on countering both initiatives, and his language on a ‘free and independent Poland’ started taking on clauses that contained a requirement that any Polish government would have to be ‘friendly’ towards the Soviet Union.

Stanislaw Mikolajcyzk

On July 23, the city of Lublin was liberated by the Russians, and Stalin announced that a Polish Committee of National Liberation (the PCNL, a communist puppet) had been set up in Chelm the day before. Churchill was in a bind: he realised which way the wind was blowing, and how Soviet might would determine the outcomes in Poland. He desperately did not want to let down Mikałojczyk, and preferred, foolishly, to trust in Stalin’s benevolence and reasonableness. Churchill had been pressing for Mikałojczyk to meet with Stalin, as he was beginning to become frustrated by the Poles’ insistence and romantic demands. Stalin told Churchill that Mikałojczyk should confer with the PCNL.

When Stalin made an ominously worded declaration on July 28, where he ‘welcomed unification of Poles friendly disposed to all three Allies’ (which made even Anthony Eden recoil in horror), Churchill convinced Mikałojczyk to visit Moscow, where Stalin agreed to see him. On July 29, Moscow Radio urged the workers of the Polish Resistance to rise up against the German invader. Had Mikałojczyk perhaps been successful in negotiating with Stalin?

  • The Partisans:

On July 31, the Polish underground, encouraged by messages from the Polish Home Army in London, ordered a general uprising in Warsaw. It had also succeeded in letting a delegate escape to the USA and convince the US administration that it could ally with Soviet forces in freeing Warsaw. (It is a possibility that this person, Tatar, was a Soviet agent: something hinted at, but not explicitly claimed, by Norman Davies.) It was, however, not as if there was much to unite the partisans, outside a hatred of the Fascist occupying forces. The Home Army (AK) was threatened by various splinter groups, namely the People’s Army (AL), which professed vague left-wing political opinions (i.e. a removal of the landowning class, and more property rights for small farmers and peasants), the PAL, which was communist-dominated, and thus highly sympathetic to the Soviet advance, and the Nationalist Armed Forces (NSZ), which Alan Clark described as ‘an extreme right-wing force, against any compromise with Russian power’. Like any partisan group in Europe at the time, it was thus driven by a mixture of motivations.

Yet for a few short weeks they unified in working on fortifications and attacking the Nazis. They mostly took their orders from London, but for a short while it seemed that Moscow was supporting them. According to Alexander Werth (who was in Warsaw at the time), there was talk in Moscow that Rokossovsky would shortly be capturing Warsaw, and Churchill was even spurred to remind the House of Commons on August 2 of the pledge to Polish independence. On August 3, Stalin was reported by Mikałojczyk to have promised to assist the Uprising by providing arms and ammunition – although the transcripts of their discussions do not really indicate this. By August 6, the Poles were said (by Alan Clark) to be in control of most of Warsaw.

The Home Army was also considerably assisted by Britain’s Special Operations Executive, which had succeeded in landing hundreds of agents in Warsaw and surrounding districts, with RAF flights bringing food, medical supplies and wireless equipment. This was an exercise that had started in February 1941, with flights originating both from Britain and, latterly, from southern Italy. By the summer of 1944, a majority of the military and civilian leadership in Warsaw had been brought in by SOE. Colonel Gubbins, who had been appointed SOE chief in September 1943, was an eager champion of the Polish cause, but the group’s energies may have pointed to a difference in policy between SOE’s sabotage programme, and Britain’s diplomatic initiatives, a subject that has probably not received the attention it merits.

Yet the Rising all very quickly turned sour. The Nazis, recognizing the symbolic value of losing an important capital city like Warsaw, responded with power. The Hermann Goering division was rushed from Italy to Warsaw on August 3. Five days later the SS, led by von dem Bach-Zelewski, was introduced to bring in a campaign of terror against the citizenry. After a desperate appeal for help by the beleaguered Poles to the Allies, thirteen British aircraft were despatched from southern Italy to drop supplies: five failed to return. The Chiefs of Staff called off the missions, but a few Polish planes carried on the effort. Further desperate calls for help arrived, and on August 14 Stalin was asked to allow British and American planes, based in the UK, to refuel behind the Soviet lines to allow them more time to focus on airdrops. He refused.

By now, however, Stalin was openly dismissing the foolish adventurism of the Warsaw Uprising, lecturing Churchill so on August 16, and, despite Churchill’s continuing implorations, upgraded his accusations, on August 23, to a claim that the partisans were ‘criminals’. On August 19, the NKVD had shot several dozen members of the Home Army near the Byelorussian border, carrying out an order from Stalin that they should be killed if they did not cooperate. Antony Beevor states that the Warsaw Poles heard about that outrage, but, in any case, by now the Poles in London were incensed to the degree that they considered Mikałojczyk not ‘anti-Soviet’ enough. Roosevelt began to tire of Churchill’s persistence, since he was much more interested in building the new world order with Uncle Joe than he was in sorting out irritating rebel movements. By September 5, the Germans were in total control of Warsaw again, and several thousand Poles were shot. On September 9, the War Cabinet had reluctantly concluded that any further airdrops could not be justified. The Uprising was essentially over: more than 300,000 Poles lost their lives.

  • Offensive Strategy:

Accounts differ as to how close the Soviet forces were to Warsaw, and how much they were repulsed by fresh German attacks. Alexander Werth interviewed General Rokossovsky on August 26, 1944, the latter claiming that his forces were driven back after August 1 by about 65 miles. Stalin told Churchill in October, when they met in Moscow, of Rokossovsky’s tribulations with fresh German attacks. Yet that does not appear to tally with Moscow’s expectations for the capture of Warsaw, and it was a surprising acknowledgement of weakness on Rokossovsky’s part if it were true. Soviet histories inform us that the thrust was exhausted by August 1, but, in fact, the First Belorussian Front was close to the suburb of Praga by then, approaching from the south-east. (The Vistula was narrower than the Thames in London. I was about to draw an analogy of the geography when I discovered that Norman Davies had beaten me to it, using almost the exact wording that I had thought suitable: “Londoners would have grasped what was happening if told that everyone was being systematically deported from districts north of the Thames, whilst across the river to Battersea, Lambeth, and Southwark nothing moved, no one intervened,”  from Rising ’44, page 433).  Rokossovsky told Werth that the Rising was a bad mistake, and that it should have waited until the Soviets were close. On the other hand, the Polish General Anders, very familiar with Stalin’s ways, and then operating under Alexander in Italy, thought the Uprising was a dangerous mistake.

General Rokossovsky

Yet all that really misses the point. It was far easier for Stalin to have the Germans exterminate the opposition, even if it contained some communist sympathisers. (Norman Davies hypothesizes that the radio message inciting the partisans to rebel may have been directed at the Communists only, but it is hard to see how an AL-only uprising would have been able to succeed: such a claim sounds like retrospective disinformation.) Stalin’s forces would eventually have taken over Warsaw, and he would have conducted any purge he felt was suitable. He had shamelessly manipulated Home Army partisans when capturing Polish cities to the east of Warsaw (such as Lvov), and disposed of them when they had delivered for him. Thus sitting back and waiting was a cynical, but reasonable, strategy for Stalin, who by now was confident enough of his ability to execute – and was also being informed by his spies of the strategies of his democratic Allies in their plans for Europe. Donald Maclean’s first despatch from the Washington Embassy, betraying communications between Churchill and Roosevelt, was dated August 2/3, as revealed in the VENONA decrypts.

One last aspect of the Soviet attack concerns the role of the Poles in the Red Army. When the captured Polish officers who avoided the Katyn massacres were freed in 1942, they had a choice: to join Allied forces overseas, or to join the Red Army. General Zygmunt Berling had agreed to cooperate after his release from prison, and had recommended the creation of a Polish People’s Army in May 1943. He became commander of the first unit, and eventually was promoted to General of the Polish Army under Rokossovsky. But it was not until August 14 that he was entrusted to support the Warsaw Uprising, crossing the Vistula and entering Praga the following day – which suggests that the river was not quite the natural barrier others have made it out to be. He was repulsed, however, and had to withdraw eight days later. The failed attempt, with many casualties, resulted in his dismissal soon afterwards. Perhaps Stalin felt that Polish communists, because they were Poles, could be sacrificed: Berling may not have received approval for his venture.

  • The Aftermath:

With Warsaw untaken, the National Council of Poland declared Lublin as the national capital, on August 18, and on September 9, a formal agreement was signed between the Polish communists and the Kremlin. In Warsaw, Bach-Zelewski, perhaps now concluding that war crimes trials might be hanging over him, relented the pressure somewhat, and even parleyed with the survivors. He tried to convince them that the threat from Bolshevism was far more dangerous than the continuance of Fascism, even suggesting that the menace from the East ‘‘might very well bring about the downfall of Western culture’ (Clark). It was not certain what aspects of Western culture he believed the Nazi regime had enhanced. (Maybe Professor Howard could have provided some insights.)

The Lublin administration had to wait a while as the ‘government-in-waiting’, as Warsaw was not captured by the Red Army until January 17, 1945. By that time, imaginative voices in the Foreign Office had begun to point out the ruthlessness and menace of the tide of Soviet communism in eastern Europe, and Churchill’s – and even more, Roosevelt’s – beliefs that they could cooperate with the man in the Kremlin were looking very weary. By the time of the Yalta conference in February 1945, any hopes that a democratically elected government would take power in Poland had been abandoned.  Stalin had masterfully manipulated his allies, and claimed, through the blood spent by the millions who pushed back the Nazi forces, that he merited control of the territories that became part of the Soviet Empire. There was nothing that Churchill (or then Attlee), or Roosevelt, rapidly fading (and then Truman) could do.

The historical assessment is one of a Great Betrayal – which it surely was, in the sense that the Poles were misled by the promises of Churchill and Roosevelt, and in the self-delusion that the two leaders had that, because Stalin was fighting Hitler alongside them, he was actually one of the team, a man they could cooperate with, and someone who had tamed his oppressive and murderous instincts that were so evident from before the war. But whether the ‘Soviet armies’ deserved sympathy for their halt on the Vistula is quite another question. It was probable that most of the Ivans in the Soviet armed forces were heartily sick of Communism, and the havoc it had brought to their homes and families, but were instead conscripted and forced to fight out of fear for what might happen if they resisted. By then, fighting for Mother Russia, and out of hatred for the Germans because of the devastation the latter had wrought on their homeland, they were brought to a halt before Warsaw to avoid a clash that may have been premature. But they were Communists by identification, not by conviction. Stalin was the sole man in charge. He was ruthless: he was going to eliminate the Home Army anyway: why not let the Germans do the job?

Alan Clark’s summing-up ran as follows: “The story of the Warsaw uprising illustrates many features of the later history of World War II. The alternating perfidy and impotence of the western Allies; the alternating brutality and sail-trimming of the SS; the constancy of Soviet power and ambition. Above all, perhaps, it shows the quality of the people for whom nominally, and originally, the war had been fought and how the two dictatorships could still find common ground in the need to suppress them.”

The Allies in Italy

  1. Military Operations

The invasion of Italy (starting with Operation ‘Husky’, the invasion of Sicily) had always been Churchill’s favoured project, since he regarded it as an easier way to repel the Germans and occupy central Europe before Stalin reached it. It was the western Allies’ first foray into Axis-controlled territory, and had been endorsed by Churchill and Roosevelt at Casablanca in January 1943. Under General Alexander, British and American troops had landed in Sicily in July 1943, and on the mainland, at Salerno, two months later. Yet it was always something of a maverick operation: the Teheran Agreement made no mention of it as a diversionary initiative, and thereafter the assault was regularly liable to having troops withdrawn for the more official invasion of Southern France (Operation Anvil, modified to Dragoon). This strategy rebounded in a perhaps predictable way: Hitler maintained troops in Italy to ward off the offensive, thus contributing to Overlord’s success, but the resistance that Alexander’s Army encountered meant that the progress in liberating Italy occurred much more slowly than its architects had forecast.

Operation ANVIL

Enthusiasm for the Italian venture had initially been shared by the Americans and the British, and was confirmed at the TRIDENT conference in Washington in May 1943. At this stage, the British Chiefs of Staff hoped to conclude the war in a year’s time, believing that a march up Italy would be achieved practically unopposed, with the goal of reaching the ‘Ljubljana Gap’ (which was probably a more durable obstacle than the ‘Watford’, or even the ‘Cumberland’ Gap) and striking at the southern portions of Hitler’s Empire before the Soviets arrived there. Yet, as plans advanced, the British brio was tempered by American scepticism. After the Sicilian campaign, the Allied forces were thwarted by issues of terrain, a surprising German resurgence, and a lack of coordination of American and British divisions. In essence, clear strategic goals had not been set, nor processes by which they might be achieved.

Matters were complicated in September 1943 by the ouster of Mussolini, the escape of King Emanuel and General Badoglio to Brindisi, to lead a non-fascist government in the south, and the rescue of Mussolini by Nazi paratroopers so that he could be installed as head of a puppet government in Salò in the North. An armistice between the southern Italians and the Allies was announced (September 3) the day before troops landed at Salerno. The invading forces were now faced with an uncertain ally in the south, not fully trusted because of its past associations with Mussolini’s government, and a revitalized foe in the north. Hitler was determined to defend the territory, had moved sixteen divisions into Italy, and started a reign of terror against both the civilian population and the remnants of the Italian army, thousands of whom were extracted to Germany to work as slaves or be incarcerated.

The period between the armistice and D-Day was thus a perpetual struggle. As the demands for landing-craft and troops to support Overlord increased, morale in Alexander’s Army declined, and progress was tortuously slow, as evidenced by the highly controversial capture of Monte Cassino between January and May 1944, where the Polish Army sustained 6,000 casualties. The British Chiefs of Staff continually challenged the agreement made in Quebec that the Anvil attack was of the highest priority (and even received support from Eisenhower for a while). Moreover, the Allies did not handle the civilian populace very shrewdly, with widescale bombing undermining the suggestion that they had arrived as ’liberators’. With a valiant push, Rome was captured on June 4, by American forces, but a rivalry between the vain and glory-seeking General Clark and the sometimes timid General Alexander meant that the advantage was not hammered home. The dispute over Anvil had to be settled by Roosevelt himself in June. In the summer of 1944, the Allies faced another major defensive obstacle, the Gothic Line, which ran along the Apennines from Spezia to Pesari. Bologna, the city at the center of this discussion, lay about forty miles north of this redoubt. And there the Allied forces stalled.

  • Political Goals

The Allies were unanimous that they wanted to install a democratic, non-fascist government in Italy at the conclusion of the war, but did not really define what shape it should take, or understand who among the various factions claiming ideological leadership might contribute. Certainly, the British feared an infusion of Communism into the mix. ‘Anti-fascism’ had a durable odour of ‘communism’ about it, and there was no doubt that strong communist organisations existed both in the industrial towns and in the resistance groups that had escaped to the mountains or the countryside. (After the armistice, a multi-party political committee had been formed with the name of the ‘Committee of National Liberation’, a name that was exactly echoed a few months later by the Soviets’ puppets in Chelm, Poland.) Moreover, while the Foreign Office, epitomised by the vain and ineffectual Anthony Eden, who still harboured a grudge with Mussolini over the Ethiopian wars, expressed a general disdain about the Italians, the Americans were less interested in the fate of individual European nations. Roosevelt’s main focus was on ‘getting his boys home’, and then concentrating on building World Peace with Stalin through the United Nations. The OSS, however, modelled on Britain’s SOE, had more overt communist sympathies.

Yet there existed also rivalry between the USA and Great Britain about post-war goals. The British were looking to control the Mediterranean to protect its colonial routes: the Americans generally tried to undermine such imperial pretensions, and were looking out for their own commercial advantages when hostilities ceased. At this time, Roosevelt and Churchill were starting to disagree more about tactics, and the fate of individual nations, as the debate over Poland, and Roosevelt’s secret parleys with Stalin, showed. Churchill was much more suspicious of Soviet intrigues at this time, although it did not stop him groveling to Stalin, or singing his praises in more sentimental moments.

The result was a high degree of mutual distrust between the Allies and its new partners, the southern Italians, and those resisting Nazi oppression in the north. As Caroline Moorehead aptly puts it, in her very recent House in the Mountains: “Now the cold wariness of the British liberating troops puzzled them. It was, noted Harold Macmillan, ‘one vast headache, with all give and no take’. How much money would have to be spent in order to prevent ‘disease and unrest’? How much aid was going to be necessary to make the Italians militarily useful in the campaign for liberation? And what was the right approach to take towards a country which was at once a defeated enemy and a co-belligerent which expected to be treated as an ally?”

  • The Partisans

The partisans in northern Italy, like almost all such groups in occupied Europe, were of very mixed origins, holding multitudinous objectives. But here they were especially motley, containing absconders from the domestic Italian Army, resisting deportation by the Nazis, escaped prisoners-of-war, trying to find a way back to Allied lines, non-Germans conscripted by the Wehrmacht, who had escaped but were uncertain where to turn next, refugees from armies that had fought in the east, earnest civilians distraught over missing loved ones, Jews suddenly threatened by Mussolini’s support of Hitler’s anti-Semitic persecution, the ideologically dedicated, as well as young adventurists, bandits, thieves and terrorists. As a report from Alexander’s staff said: “Bands exist of every degree, down to gangs of thugs who don a partisan cloak of respectability to conceal the nakedness of their brigandage, and bands who bury their arms in their back gardens and only dig them up and festoon themselves in comic opera uniforms when the first Allied troops arrive.”  It was thus challenging to find a way to deal consistently with such groups, scattered broadly around the mountainous terrain.

The British generally disapproved of irregular armies, and preferred the partisans to continue the important work of helping POWs escape to Switzerland, where they were able to pass on valuable information to the SIS and OSS offices there. As Richard Lamb wrote: “However, the Allies wanted the partisan activities to be confined to sabotage, facilitating the escape of POWs, and gathering intelligence about the Germans.”  Sabotage was encouraged, because its perpetrators could not easily be identified, and it helped the war effort, while direct attacks on German forces could result in fearful reprisals – a phenomenon that took on increasing significance. Hitler had given instructions to the highly experienced General Kesselring that any such assaults should be responded to with ruthless killing of hostages.

Yet the political agitators in the partisans were dominated by communists – who continuously quarreled with the non-communists. The British did not want a repeat of what had happened in Yugoslavia and Greece, where irredentists had established separate control. The CLN had set up a Northern Italian section (the CLNAI) in January 1944, and had made overt claims for political control of some remote areas, seeing itself as the third leg of government. Thus the British were suspicious, and held off infiltrating SOE liaison officers, and parachuting in weapons and supplies, with the first delivery not occurring until December 1943. This encouraged the partisans to think that the Allies were not interested in widespread resistance, and were fearful of communism – which was largely (but not absolutely) true. Tellingly, on July 27, 1944, in the light of Soviet’s expansive colonial intentions, Chief of the Imperial General Staff Alan Brooke first voiced the opinion that Britain might need to view Germany as a future ally against the Soviets.

Churchill expressed outwardly hostile opinions on the partisans in a speech to the House of Commons on February 22, 1944, and his support for Badoglio (and, indirectly, the monarchy) laid him open to the same criticisms of anti-democratic spirit that would bedevil his attitude towards Greece. Ironically, it was the arrival of the Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti from Moscow in March 1944, and his subsequent decision to join Badoglio’s government, that helped to repair some of the discord. In May, many more OSS and SOE officers were flown in, and acts of sabotage increased. This interrupted the German war effort considerably, as Kesselring admitted a few years later. Thus, as summer drew on, the partisans had expectations of a big push to defeat and expel the Germans. By June, all Italian partisan forces were co-ordinated into a collective command structure. They were told by their SOE liaison officers that a break through the Gothic Line would take place in September.

Meanwhile, the confusion in the British camp had become intense. Churchill dithered with his Chiefs of Staff about the competing demands of Italy and France. General Maitland Wilson, who had replaced Eisenhower as the Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean in January 1944, was in June forecasting the entry into Trieste and Ljubljana by September, apparently unaware of the Anvil plans. He was brought back to earth by Eisenhower. At the beginning of August 1944, Alexander’s forces were reduced from 250,000 to 153,000 men, because of the needs in France. Yet Churchill continued to place demands on Alexander, and privately railed over the Anvil decision. Badoglio was replaced by Bonomi, to Churchill’s disappointment. Alexander said his troops were demoralized. There was discord between SOE and the OSS, as well as between SOE and the Foreign Office. It was at this juncture that the controversy started.

  • Offensive Strategy

On June 7, Alexander had made a radio appeal to the partisans, encouraging sabotage. As Iris Origo reported it in, in War in Val D’orcia (written soon after the events, in 1947): “General Alexander issues a broadcast to the Italian patriots, telling them that the hour of their rising has come at last. They are to cut the German Army communications wherever possible, by destroying roads, bridges, railways, telegraph-wires. They are to form ambushes and cut off retreating Germans – and to give shelter to Volksdeutsche who have deserted from the German Army. Workmen are urged to sabotage, soldiers and police to desert, ‘collaborators of fascism’ to take this last chance of showing their patriotism and helping the cause of their country’s deliverance. United, we shall attain victory.”

General Alexander of Tunis

This was an enormously significant proclamation, given what Alexander must have known about the proposed reduction in forces, and what his intelligence sources must have told him about Nazi reprisals. They were surely not words Alexander had crafted himself. One can conclude that it was perhaps part of the general propaganda campaign, current with the D-Day landings, to focus the attention of Nazi forces around Europe on the local threats. Indeed the Political Warfare Executive made a proposal to Eisenhower intended to ‘stimulate . . . strikes, guerilla action and armed uprisings behind the enemy lines’. Historians have accepted that such an initiative would have endangered many civilian lives. The exact follow-up to this recommendation, and how it was manifested in BBC broadcasts in different languages, is outside my current scope, but Origo’s diary entry shows how eagerly the broadcasts from London were followed.

What is highly significant is that General Alexander, in the summer of 1944, was involved in an auxiliary deception operation codenamed ‘Otrington’, which was designed to lead the Germans to think that an attack was going to take place on the Nazi flanks in Genoa and Rimini, as opposed to the south of France, and also as a feint for Alexander’s planned attack through the central Apennines north of Florence. (This was all part of the grander ‘Bodyguard’ deception plan for Overlord.) Yet in August 1944, such plans were changed when General Sir Oliver Leese, now commanding the Eighth Army, persuaded Alexander to move his forces away from the central Apennines over to the Adriatic sector, for an attack on August 25. The Germans were misled to the extent that they had moved forces to the Adriatic, thus confusing Leese’s initiative. Moreover, the historian on whom we rely for this exposition was Professor Sir Michael Howard himself – in his Chapter 7 of Volume 5 of the British Intelligence history. Yet the author makes no reference here to Alexander’s communications to the partisans, or how such signals related to the deception exercise, merely laconically noting: “The attack, after its initial success, was gradually brought to a halt [by Kesselring], and Allied operations in Italy bogged down for another winter.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the message provoked even further animosity from the Germans when Alexander made three separate broadcasts through the BBC, on June 19, 20 and 27, where he encouraged Italian partisans to ‘shoot Germans in the back’. The response from Kesselring, who of course heard the open declaration, was instantaneous. He issued an order on June 20 that read, partially, as follows: “Whenever there is evidence of considerable numbers of partisan groups a proportion of the male population of the area will be arrested, and in the event of an act of violence these men will be shot. The population must be informed of this. Should troops etc. be fired at from any village, the village will be burnt down. Perpetrators or ringleaders will be hanged in public.”

The outcome of this was that a horrible series of massacres occurred during August and September, leading to the worst of all, that at Marzabotto, on September 29 and 30. A more specific order by the German 5 Corps was issued on August 9, with instructions as to how local populations would be assembled to witness the shootings. Yet this was not a new phenomenon: fascist troops had been killing partisan bands and their abettors for the past year in the North. The requirement for Mussolini’s neo-fascist government to recruit young men for its military and police forces prompted thousands to run for the mountains and join the partisans. Italy was now engaged in a civil war, and in the north Italians had been killing other Italians. One of the most infamous of the massacres had occurred in Rome, in March 1944, at the Ardeatine Caves. A Communist Patriotic Action Group had killed 33 German soldiers in the Via Rasella, and ten times that many hostages were killed the next day as a form of reprisal. The summer of 1944 was the bitterest time for executions of Italians: 7500 civilians were killed between March 1944 and April 1945, and 5000 of these met their deaths in the summer months of 1944.

The records show that support for the partisans had been consistent up until September, although demands had sharply risen. “In July 1944 SOE was operating 16 radio stations behind enemy lines, and its missions rose from 23 in August to 33 in September; meanwhile the OSS had 12 in place, plus another 6 ready to leave. Contacts between Allied teams and partisan formations made large-scale airdrops of supplies possible. In May 1944, 152 tons were dropped; 361 tons were delivered in June, 446 tons in July, 227 tons in August, and 252 tons in September.” (Battistelli and Crociani) Yet those authors offer up another explanation: Operation ‘Olive’ which began on August 25, at the Adriatic end of the Gothic Line, provoked a severe response against partisans in the north-west. The fierce German reprisals that then took place (on partisans and civilians, including the Marzobotto massacre) by the SS Panzer Green Division Reichsführer contributed to the demoralization of the partisan forces, and 47,000 handed themselves in after an amnesty offer by the RSI on October 28.

What is not clear is why the partisans continued to engage in such desperate actions. Had they become desperadoes? As Battistelli and Crociani write, a period of crisis had arrived: “In mid-September 1944 the partisans’ war was, for all practical purposes, at a standstill. The influx of would-be recruits made it impossible for the Allies to arm them all; many of the premature ‘free zones’ were being retaken by the Germans; true insurgency was not possible without direct Allied support; and, despite attacks by the US Fifth and British Eighth Armies against the Gothic Line from 12 September, progress would be slow and mainly up the Adriatic flank. Against the advice of Allied liaison officers, the partisan reaction was, inexplicably, to declare more ‘free zones’.” Things appeared to be out of control. Battistelli and Crociani further analyse it as follows: “The summer of 1944 thus represented a turning-point in partisan activity, after which sabotage and attacks against communications decreased in favour of first looting and then attacks against Axis troops, both being necessary to obtain food and weapons to enable large formations to carry on their war.” And it thus led to the deadliest massacre at Marzabotto, south of Bologna, where the SS, under Sturmbannführer Walter Reder, shot about 770 men, women, and children.

The wholesale deaths even provoked Mussolini to beg the SS to back off. On November 13 Alexander issued a belated communiqué encouraging the partisans to disarm for the winter, as the campaign was effectively coming to a halt. Alexander’s advice was largely ignored: the partisans viewed it a political move executed out of disdain for communism. The Germans viewed it as a sign of weakness, and it deterred any thoughts of immediate surrender. Thus the activity of the partisans continued, but less vigorously, as air support in the way of supplies had already begun to dwindle. And another significant factor was at work. Before he left Moscow, Togliatti, the newly arrived Communist leader, had made an appeal to the Italian resistance movement to take up arms against the Fascists. Yet when he arrived in Italy in March 1944, Togliatti had submerged the militant aspects of his PCI (Communist Party of Italy) in the cause of unity and democracy, and had the Garibaldi (Communist) brigades disarmed. Moorehead points out that the Northern partisans were effectively stunned and weakened by Togliatti’s strategic move to make the Communists appear less harmful as the country prepared for postwar government.

In addition, roles changed. Not just the arrival of General Leese, and his disruption of careful deception plans. General George Marshall, the US Chief of Staff, took the view that Italy was ‘an expensive sideshow’ (Brian Holden Reid). In December, Alexander had to tried to breathe fresh life into the plan to assault the Ljubljana Gap,  but after the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Alexander, now Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean, was instructed simply to ensure that the maximum number of German divisions were held down, thus allowing the progress by Allied troops in France and Germany to be maintained. Bologna was not taken until April 1945, after which the reprisals against fascists began. Perhaps three thousand were killed there by the partisans.

  • The Aftermath

The massacres of September and October 1944 have not been forgotten, but their circumstances have tended to be overlooked in the histories. It is difficult to find a sharp and incisive analysis of British strategy and communications at this time. Norman Davies writes about the parallel activities in Poland and Italy in the summer of 1944 in No Simple Victory, but I would suggest that he does not do justice to the situation. He blames General Alexander for ‘opening the floodgates for a second wave of German revenge’ when he publicly announced that there would be no winter offensive in 1944-45, but it was highly unlikely that that ‘unoriginal thinker’ (Oxford Companion to Word War II) would have been allowed to come up with such a message without guidance and approval. Davies points to ‘differences of opinion between British and American strategists’, which allowed German commanders to be given a free hand to take ruthless action against the partisans’. So why were the differences not resolved by Eisenhower? Moreover, while oppression against the partisans did intensify, the worst reprisals against civilians that Davies refers to were over by then.

Had Alexander severely misled the partisans in his encouragement that their ‘hour of rising’ had come at last? What was intended by his open bloodthirsty call to kill Nazis in the back? Did the partisans really pursue such aggressive attacks because of Alexander’s provocative words, or, did they engage in them in full knowledge of the carnage it would cause, trying to prove, perhaps, that a fierce and autocratic form of government was the only method of eliminating fascism? Were the local SOE officers responsible for encouraging attacks on German troops in order to secure weapons and food? Why could Togliatti not maintain any control over the communists? And what was Alexander’s intention in calling the forces to hold up for the winter, knowing that the Germans would pick up that message? Whatever the reality, it was not a very honourable episode in the British war effort. Too many organisations arguing amongst themselves, no doubt. Churchill had many things on his mind, but it was another example of where he wavered on strategy, then became too involved in details, or followed his buccaneering instincts, and afterwards turned sentimental at inappropriate times. Yet Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander, and clearly had problems in enforcing a disciplined approach to strategy.

At least the horrendous reprisals ceased. Maybe, as in Warsaw, the SS realised that the war was going to be lost, and that war crimes tribunals would investigate the legality of the massacre of innocent civilians. Yet a few grisly murders continued. Internecine feuds continued among the partisans during the winter of 1944-45, with fears of collaborators and spies in the midst, and frequently individuals who opposed communism were persecuted and killed. It is beyond the scope of this article to describe the events of this winter in the north (see Moorehead for more details), but a few statements need to be made. The number of partisans did decline sharply to begin with, but then ascended in the spring. More supplies were dropped by SOE, but the latter’s anti-communist message intensified, and the organisation tried to direct weaponry to non-communist units. Savage reprisals by the fascists did take place, but not on the scale of the September massacres. In the end, the communists managed to emerge from World War II with a large amount of prestige, because they ensured that they were present to liberate finally the cities of Turin, Milan, and Bologna in concert with the Allied forces that eventually broke through, even though they were merciless with fascists who had remained loyal to Mussolini and the Nazis. As with Spain, the memories of civil war and different allegiances stayed and festered for a long time.

And the communists actually survived and thrived, as Howard’s encounter forty years later proved –  a dramatic difference from the possibility of independent democratic organisations in Warsaw enduring after the war, for example. Moreover, they obviously held a grudge. Yet history continues to be distorted. Views contrary to the betrayal of such ‘liberating’ communists have been expressed. In his book The Pursuit of Italy David Gilmour writes: “At the entrance of the town hall of Bologna photographs are still displayed of partisans liberating the city without giving a hint that Allied forces had helped them to do so.” He goes on to point out that, after the massacre of the Ardeatine Caves, many Italians were of the opinion that those responsible (Communists) should have given them up for execution instead. Others claim that the murders of the German soldiers were not actually communists: Moorhead claims they were mainly ‘students’. It all gets very murky. I leave the epitaph to Nicola Bianca: “The fact is that brutalization was a much part of the Italian wars as of any other, even if it was these same wars which made possible the birth of the first true democracy the country had known.”

Reassessment of Howard’s Judgment

Professor Howard seemed to be drawing an equivalence between, on the one hand, the desire for the Red Army to have the Nazis perform their dirty work for them by eliminating a nominal ally but a social enemy (the Home Army), and thus disengage from an attack on Warsaw, and, on the other, a strained Allied Army, with its resources strategically depleted, reneging on commitments to provide material support to a scattered force of anti-fascist sympathisers, some of whom it regarded as dangerous for the long-term health of the invading country, as well as that of the nation it was attempting to liberate. This is highly unbalanced, as the Home Army had few choices, whereas the Italian partisans had time and territory on their side. They did not have to engage in bloody attacks that would provoke reprisals of innocents. The Allies in Italy were trying to liberate a country that had waged warfare against them: the Soviet Army refused to assist insurgents who were supposedly fighting the same enemy. The British, certainly, were determined to weaken the Communists: why was Howard surprised by this? And, if he had a case to make, he could have criticised the British Army and its propagandists back in London for obvious lapses in communications rather than switching his attention to expressing sympathy for the communists outside Warsaw. Was he loath to analyse what Alexander had done simply because he had served under him?

It is informative to parse carefully the phrases Howard uses in his outburst. I present the text again here, for ease of reference:

“In September 1944, believing that the end of the war was in sight, the Allied High Command had issued orders for the Italian partisans to unmask themselves and attack German communications throughout the north of Italy. They did so, including those on and around Monte Sole. The Germans reacted with predictable savagery. The Allied armies did not come to their help, and the partisan movement in North Italy was largely destroyed. It was still believed – and especially in Bologna, where the communists had governed the city ever since the war – that this had been deliberately planned by the Allies in order to weaken the communist movement, much as the Soviets had encouraged the people of Warsaw to rise and then sat by while the Germans exterminated them. When I protested to my hosts that this was an outrageous explanation and that there was nothing that we could have done, they smiled politely. But I was left wondering, as I wondered about poor Terry, was there really nothing that we could have done to help? Were there no risks that our huge cumbrous armies with their vast supply-lines might have taken if we knew what was going on? – and someone must have known what was going on. Probably not: but ever since then I have been sparing of criticism of the Soviet armies for their halt before Warsaw.”

‘In September 1944, believing that the end of the war was in sight, the Allied High Command . . ’

Did the incitement actually happen in September, as opposed to June? What was the source, and who actually issued the order? What did that ‘in sight’ mean? It is a woolly, evasive term. Who actually believed that the war would end shortly? Were these orders issued over public radio (for the Germans to hear), or privately, to SOE and OSS representatives?

‘ . . had issued orders to unmask themselves’.

What does that mean? Take off their camouflage and engage in open warfare? The Allied High Command could in fact not ‘order’ the partisans to do anything, but why would an ‘order’ be issued to do that? I can find no evidence for it in the transcripts.

‘ . . .and attack German communications’.

An incitement to sabotage was fine, and consistent, but the communication specifically did not encourage murder of fascist forces, whether Italian or German. Alexander admittedly did so in June, but Howard does not cite those broadcasts.

‘The Germans reacted with predictable savagery.’

The Germans engaged in savage reprisals primarily in August, before the supposed order that Howard quotes. The reprisals took place because of partisan murders of soldiers, and in response to Operation ‘Olive’, not simply because of attacks on communications, as Howard suggests here. Moreover, the massacre at Marzabotto occurred at the end of September, when Kesselring had mollified his instructions, after Mussolini’s intervention.

‘Allied armies did not come to their help’.

But was anything more than parachuting in supplies expected? Over an area of more than 30,000 square miles, behind enemy lines? Bologna only? Where is the evidence – beyond the June message quoted by Origo? What did the SOE officers say? (I have not yet read Joe Maioli’s Mission Accomplished: SOE in Italy 1943-45, although its title suggests success, not failure.)

‘The partisan movement in northern Italy was largely destroyed’.

This was not true, as numerous memoirs and histories indicate. Admittedly, activity sharply decreased after September, because of the Nazi attacks, and the reduction in supplies. It thus suffered in the short term, but the movement became highly active again in the spring of 1945. On what did Howard base his conclusion? And why did he not mention that it was the Communist Togliatti who had been as much responsible for any weakening in the autumn of 1944? Or that Italian neo-fascists had been determinedly hunting down partisans all year?

‘It was still believed . .  .’

Why the passive voice? Who? When? Why? Of course the communists in Bologna would say that.

‘ . . .deliberately planned to weaken the communist movement’.

Richard Lamb wrote that Field Marshal Harding, Alexander’s Chief of Staff, had told him that the controversial Proclama Alexander, interpreted by some Italian historians as an anti-communist move, had been designed to protect the partisans. But that proclamation was made in November, and it encouraged partisans to suspend hostilities. In any case, weakening the communist movement was not a dishonourable goal, considering what was happening elsewhere in Europe.

‘. . . much as the Soviets had encouraged the people of Warsaw to rise and then sat by while the Germans exterminated them’.

Did the Bologna communists really make this analogy, condemning the actions of communists in Poland as if they were akin to the actions of the Allies? Expressing sympathy for the class enemies of the Polish Home Army would have been heresy. Why could Howard not refute it at the time, or point out the contradictions in this passage?

‘ . . .was there really nothing that we could have done to help?

Aren’t you the one supposed to be answering the questions, Professor, not asking them?

‘. . . huge cumbrous armies with their vast supply-lines’

Why had Howard forgotten about the depletion of resources in Italy, the decision to hold ground, and what he wrote about in Strategic Deception? Did he really think that Alexander would have been able to ignore Eisenhower’s directives? And why ’cumbrous’ – unwieldy? inflexible?

‘Someone must have known what was going on’.

 Indeed. And shouldn’t it have been Howard’s responsibility to find out?

‘Ever since then I have been sparing of criticism of the Soviet armies’

Where? In print? In conversations? What has one got to do with the other? Why should an implicit criticism of the Allied Command be converted into sympathy for Stalin?

The irony is that the Allied Command, perhaps guided by the Political Warfare Executive, did probably woefully mismanage expectations, and encourage attacks on German troops that resulted in the murder of innocent civilians. But Howard does not make this case. Those events happened primarily in the June through August period, while Howard bases his argument on a September proclamation. He was very quick to accept the Bologna communists’ claim that the alleged ‘destruction’ of the partisans was all the Allies’ fault, when the partisans themselves, northern Italian fascists, the SS troops, Togliatti, and even the Pope, held some responsibility. If Howard had other evidence, he should have presented it.

Why was Howard not aware of the Monte Sole massacre at the time? Why did he not perform research before walking into the meeting in Bologna? What did the communists there tell him that convinced him that they had been hard done by? Did they blame the British for the SS reprisals? Why was he taken in by the relentless propagandizing of the Communists? Why did he not explain what he thought the parallels were between Alexander’s actions and those of Rokossovsky? The episode offered an intriguing opportunity to investigate Allied strategy in Italy and Poland in the approach to D-Day and afterwards, but Howard fumbled it, and an enormous amount is thus missing from his casual observations. He could have illustrated how the attempts by the Western Allies to protect the incursions into Europe had unintended consequences, and shown the result of the competition between western intelligence and Togliatti for the allegiance of the Italian partisans. Instead the illustrious historian never did his homework. He obfuscated rather than illuminated, indulging in vague speculation, shaky chronology, ineffectual hand-wringing, and unsupported conclusions.

Perhaps a pertinent epitaph is what Howard himself wrote, in his volume of Strategic Deception, about the campaign in India (p 221): “The real problem which confronted the British deception staff in India, however, was that created by its own side; the continuing uncertainty as to what Allied strategic intentions really were. In default of any actual plans the best that the deceivers could do as one of them ruefully put it, was to ensure that the enemy remained as confused as they were themselves.” He had an excellent opportunity to inspect the Italian campaign as a case study for the same phenomenon, but for some reason avoided it.

This has been a fascinating and educational, though ultimately sterile, exercise for me. It certainly did not help me understand why Howard is held in such regard as a historian. ‘Why are eminent figures allowed to get away with such feeble analysis?’, I asked myself. Is it because they are distinguished, and an aura of authority has descended upon them? Or am I completely out to lunch? No doubt I should read more of Howard’s works. But ars longa, vita brevis  . . .

Sources:

War in Italy 1943-1945, A Brutal Story by Richard Lamb

Russia at War 1941-1945 by Nicholas Werth

Barbarossa by Alan Clark

The Second World War by Antony Beevor

War in Val D’Orcia by Iris Origo

Captain Professor by Michael Howard

The House in the Mountains by Caroline Moorehead

World War II Partisan Warfare in Italy by Pier Paola Battistelli & Piero Crociani

The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmour

Between Giants by Prit Buttar

Winston Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-1945 by Martin Gilbert

Rising ’47 by Norman Davies

No Simple Victory by Norman Davies

The Oxford Companion to World War II edited by Ian Dear and M. R. E. Foot

The Oxford Illustrated History of World War II edited by Paul Overy

British Intelligence in the Second World War, Volume 5, Strategic Deception by Michael Howard

(New Commonplace entries may be viewed here.)

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The Mystery of the Undetected Radios – Part VII

[An imagined conversation between Stewart Menzies, SIS Chief, and Richard Gambier-Parry, head of Section VIII, the Communications Unit in SIS, in early March 1941. Both attended Eton College, although Gambier-Parry was there for only one ‘half’ (i.e. ‘term’): Menzies is four years older than Gambier-Parry. Menzies replaced Admiral Sinclair as chief of SIS in November 1939, on the latter’s death. Sinclair had recruited Gambier-Parry from industry in April 1938. At this stage of the war, Menzies and Gambier-Parry were both Colonels.]

Stewart Menzies
Richard Gambier-Parry

SM: Hallo, Richard. Take a pew.

RG-P: Thank you, sir.

SM: I expect you are wondering why I called you in.

RG-P: Mine not to reason why, sir. Hope I’m not in trouble.

SM: Dammit, man. Of course not. Some news to impart.

RG-P: Good news, I trust.

SM: Fact is, our man has gone over to the enemy.

RG-P: The enemy, sir? Who?

SM: [chuckles] Our Regional Controller in the Middle East. Petrie. He’s agreed to become D-G of MI5.

RG-P: Very droll, sir! But that wasn’t a surprise, was it?

SM: Well, Swinton always wanted him. Petrie went through the motions of performing a study of ‘5’ first, but there was no doubt he would take the job.

RG-P: I see. So how does that affect us, sir?

SM: First of all, it will make it a lot easier for us to work with MI5. No longer that clown Harker pretending to be in charge . . .

RG-P: Indeed. But I suppose Swinton and the Security Executive are still in place?

SM: For a while, yes. But there are other implications, Richard. [pauses] How is Section VIII coming along?

RG-P: Fairly well, sir. We had a tough few months in 1940 learning about the struggles of working behind enemy lines, but our training efforts are starting to pay off, and our ciphers are more secure. Moving the research and manufacturing show from Barnes to Whaddon has worked well, and it is humming along. As you know, the first Special Signals Units are already distributing Ultra.

SM: Yes, that seems to have developed well. Swinton signed off on Section VIII’s readiness a few weeks ago. [pauses] How would you like to take over the RSS?

RG-P: What? The whole shooting-match?

SM: Indeed. ‘Lock, stock and barrel’, as Petrie put it. The War Office wants to rid itself of it, and MI5 feels it doesn’t have the skills or attention span to handle it. Swinton and Petrie want us to take it over.

RG-P: Dare I say that this has always been part of your plan, sir? Fits in well with GC&CS?

SG: Pretty shrewd, old boy! I must say I have been greasing the wheels behind the scenes . . .  Couldn’t appear to push things too hard, though.

RG-P: Indeed, sir. I quite understand.

SG: But back to organisation. Petrie has a very high opinion of your outfit.

RG-P: Very gratifying, sir. But forgive me: isn’t RSS’s charter to intercept illicit wireless on the mainland, sir? Not our territory at all?

SM: You’re right, but the latest reports indicate that the German threat is practically non-existent. We’ve mopped up all the agents Hitler has sent in, whether by parachute or boat. The beacon threat has turned out to be a chimera, as the Jerries were using guidance from transmitters in Germany for their bombers, and our boffins have worked out how to crack it. The really interesting business is picking up Abwehr transmissions on the Continent. Therefore right up our street.

RG-P: I see. That changes things.

SM: And it would mean a much closer liaison with Bletchley. Denniston and his crew at GC&CS will of course decrypt all the messages we pick up. Dansey’s very much in favour of the move – which always helps.

RG-P: Yes, we always want Uncle Claude on our side. I had wondered what he had been doing after his organisation in Europe was mopped up . . .

SM: You can never be sure with Colonel Z! He’s got some shindig underway looking into clandestine Russian traffic. He’s just arranged to have a Soviet wireless operator from Switzerland arrive here, and wants to keep an eye on her. He’ll be happy to have RSS close by on the ranch.

RG-P: Fascinating, sir. Should I speak to him about it?

SM: Yes, go ahead. I know he’ll agree that the move makes a lot of sense. Learning what the enemy is up to is a natural complement to designing our own systems.

RG-P: Agreed, sir . . .  But isn’t RSS in a bit of a mess? All those Voluntary Interceptors, and all that work farmed out to the Post Office? And didn’t MI8 want MI5 to take it over?

SM: Yes, they did. So did Military Intelligence. But once Simpson left, MI5 lost any drive it had.

RG-P: Ah, Simpson. The ‘Beacon’ man. I spoke to him about the problem back in ‘39.

SM: Yes, he went overboard a bit on the beacons and criticized the GPO a bit too forcefully. He wanted to smother the country with interceptors, and set up a completely new organisation with MI5 at the helm. MI5 had enough problems, and wouldn’t buy it. Simpson gave up in frustration, and went out East.

RG-P: So what does Military Intelligence think?

SM: As you probably know, Davidson took over in December, so he’s still learning.

RG-P: Of course! I do recall that now. But what happened to Beaumont-Nesbitt? He’s a friend of yours, is he not?

SM: Yes, we were in Impey’s together. Good man, but a bit of a . . .what?  . . . a boulevardier, you might say. I worked with him on the Wireless Telegraphy Committee a year ago. He seemed to get on fine with Godfrey then, but maybe Godfrey saw us as ganging up on him.

RG-P: Godfrey wanted your job originally, didn’t he?

SM: Indeed he did. And, as the top Navy man, he had Winston’s backing. I managed to ward him off. But later things turned sour.

RG-P: So what happened?

SM: Unfortunately, old B-N made a hash of an invasion forecast back in September, and the balloon went up. Put the whole country on alert for no reason. Godfrey pounced, and he and Cavendish-Bentinck used Freddie’s guts for garters. The PM was not happy. Freddie had to go.

RG-P: Well, that’s a shame. And what about Davidson?

SM: Between you and me, Richard, Davidson’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I don’t think he understands this wireless business very well.

RG-P: I see. What did he say?

SM: Not a lot. He was initially very sceptical about the transfer. Didn’t think we had the skills, but wasn’t specific. He’s probably still seething about Venlo.

RG-P: Is Venlo still a problem, sir?

SM: Always will be, Richard. Always will be. But it damaged Dansey more than me. Partly why I am here, I suppose. And it makes Bletchley – and RSS – that more important.

RG-P: Access to the PM?

SM: Precisely. Ever since he set up those blasted cowboys in SOE, it has become more important. They’ll go barging in on their sabotage missions, raising Cain, and make our job of intelligence-gathering more difficult. I see Winston daily now, which helps.

RG-P: I see. And Gubbins is starting to make demands on our wireless crew. Should I slow him down a bit?

SM: I didn’t hear you say that, Richard  . . . 

RG-P: Very good, sir. But I interrupted you.

SM: Where was I?

RG-P: With Davidson, sir.

SM: Yes, of course. He did come up with a number of better questions about the proposed set-up a few weeks ago, so maybe he’s learning. He’s probably been listening to Butler in MI8. And I think he’s come around. Swinton has been working on him, and I don’t think he wants to upset the apple-cart. But you should try to make an ally of him. I don’t trust him completely.

RG-P: Very well, sir. I wouldn’t want the Indians shooting arrows at me all the time. And, apart from Petrie, is MI5 fully behind the move?

SM: Very much so. Liddell is all for it. They still have this BBC chappie Frost making a nuisance of himself. His appointment as head of the Interception Committee went to his head, I think. I gather he has upset a few people, and even Swinton – who brought him in in the first place – is getting fed up with him.

RG-P: I think I can handle Frost. I knew him at the BBC. I agree: he needs to be brought down a peg or two. But he has enough enemies in ‘5’ now, doesn’t he?

SM: So I understand. Wants to build his own empire: Liddell and co. will take care of him. Your main challenges will be elsewhere.

RG-P: Agreed. The RSS staff will need some close attention.

SM: Yes, it will entail a bit of a clean-up. Augean stables, and all that, don’t you know. That is why I am asking you to take it over . . .

RG-P: Well, I’ve got a lot on my plate, sir, but I am flattered. How could I say ‘No’?

SM: That’s the spirit, man! I knew I could rely on you.

RG-P: I may need to bring in some fresh blood . . .

SM: Of course! We’ll need our best chaps to beat the Hun at the bally radio game. And you’ll need to speak to Cowgill. The W Board has just set up a new committee to handle the double-agents, run by a fellow named Masterman. One of those deuced eggheads that ‘5’ likes to hire, I regret. But there it is. Cowgill is our man on the committee.

RG-P: Very good, sir. What about the current RSS management?

SM: Good question. Those fellows Worlledge and Gill are a bit dubious. Worlledge is something of a loose cannon, and I hear the two of them have been arguing against an SIS takeover.

RG-P: Yes, I had a chat with Worlledge a few weeks ago. He asked some damn fool questions. But I didn’t take them too seriously, as I didn’t think we were in the running.

SM: Well, he was obviously testing you out. Quite frankly, he doesn’t believe that you, er, we  . . . have the relevant expertise. Not sure I understand it all, but I have confidence in you, Richard.

RG-P: Very pleased to hear it, sir. Anyway, I think Worlledge’s reputation is shot after that shambles over the Gill-Roper decryptions.

SM: Oh, you mean when Gill and Trevor-Roper started treading on the cipher-wallahs’ turf at Bletchley with the Abwehr messages?

RG-P: Not just that, which was more a matter for Denniston. Worlledge then blabbed about the show to the whole world and his wife, including the GPO.

SM: Yes, of course. Cowgill blew a fuse over it, I recall.

RG-P: Worlledge clearly doesn’t understand the need for secrecy. I can’t see Felix putting up with him in SIS.

SM: You are probably right, Richard. He’d be a liability. But what about Gill?

RG-P: Can’t really work him out, sir. He definitely knows his onions, but he doesn’t seem to take us all very seriously. Bit flippant, you might say.

SM: H’mmm. Doesn’t sound good. We’ll need proper discipline in the unit. But if you have problems, Cowgill will help you out. Felix used to work for Petrie in India, y’know. Now that he has taken over from Vivian as head of Section V, Felix is also our point man on dealing with ‘5’. He won’t stand any nonsense.

RG-P: Will do, sir.

SP: What about young Trevor-Roper? Will he be a problem, too?

G-P: I don’t think so. He got a carpeting from Denniston after the deciphering business with Gill, and I think he’s learned his lesson.

SP: Cowgill told me he wanted him court-martialled  . . .

G-P:  . . . but I intervened to stop it. He’s a chum of sorts. Rides with us at the Whaddon. Or rather falls with us!

SP: Ho! Ho! A huntin’ man, eh? One of us!

G-P: He’s mustard keen, but a bit short-sighted. We have to pick him out of ditches now and then. I think I can deal with him.

SP: Excellent! But you and Cowgill should set up a meeting with Frost, White and Liddell fairly soon. Make sure Butler is involved. They will want to know what you are going to do with the VIs. They have been losing good people to other Y services. 

RG-P: Very good, sir. (pauses) I think Worlledge and Gill will have to go.

SP: Up to you, Richard. Do you have anyone in mind to lead the section?

RG-P: H’mmm. I think I have the chap we need. My Number Two, Maltby. He was at the School as well, and he has been in the sparks game ever since then. He’s a good scout. Utterly loyal.

SP: Maltby, eh? Wasn’t there some problem with the army?

RG-P: Yes, his pater’s syndicate at Lloyd’s collapsed, and he had to resign his commission. But he bounced back. I got to know him again after he helped the Navy with some transmission problems.

SP: And what about that business in Latvia? Didn’t we send him out there?

RG-P: Yes, he reviewed operations in Riga in the summer of ‘39. And it’s true we never received any intelligible messages from them. But I don’t think it was Maltby’s fault. Nicholson and Benton didn’t understand the ciphers.

SP: I see. So what is he doing now?

RG-P: He’s running the Foreign Office radio station at Hanslope Park. I know I shall be able to count on him to do the job. He also rides with the Whaddon.

SM: Capital! Have a chat with him, Richard, and let me know. All hush-hush, of course, until we make the announcement in a week or two.

RG-P: Aye-aye, sir. Is that all?

SM: That’s it for now. We’ll discuss details later. Floreat Etona, what, what?

RG-P: Floreat Etona, sir.

Edward Maltby

 “Maltby, who seemed to have started his military career as a colonel – one has to begin somewhere – was also an Etonian, but from a less assured background, and he clearly modelled himself, externally at least, on his patron. But he was at best the poor man’s Gambier, larger and louder than his master, whose boots he licked with obsequious relish. Of intelligence matters he understood nothing. ‘Scholars’, he would say, ‘are two a penny: it’s the man of vision who counts’; and that great red face would swivel round, like an illuminated Chinese lantern, beaming with self-satisfaction. But he enjoyed his status and perquisites of his accidental promotion, and obeyed his orders punctually, explaining that any dissenter would be (in his own favourite phrase) ‘shat on from a great height’. I am afraid that the new ‘Controller RSS’ was regarded, in the intelligence world, as something of a joke –  a joke in dubious taste. But he was so happily constituted that he was unaware of this.” (Hugh Trevor-Roper, quoted by Edward Harrison in The Secret World, p 6)

“Peter Reid considers Gambier-Parry, Maltby & Frost as bluffers, and to some extent charlatans.” (from Guy Liddell’s diary entry for June 9, 1943)

*                *                      *                      *                      *                      *

In preparation for this month’s segment, I was organizing my notes on the Radio Security Service over the holiday in California, when I discovered that a history of the RSS, entitled Radio Wars, had recently been published by Fonthill Media Limited, the author being one David Abrutat. I thus immediately ordered it via amazon, as it seemed to me that it must be an indispensable part of my library. I looked forward to reading it when I returned to North Carolina on January 2.

For some years, I have been making the case on coldspur that a serious history of this much under- and mis-represented unit needed to be written, and hoped that my contributions – especially in the saga of ‘The Undetected Radios’ – might provide useful fodder for such an enterprise. Indeed, a highly respected academic even suggested, a few weeks ago, that I undertake such a task. This gentleman, now retired, is the unofficial representative of a group of wireless enthusiasts, ex-Voluntary Interceptors, and champions of the RSS mission who have been very active in keeping the flame alive. He was presumably impressed enough with my research to write: “The old stagers of the RSS over here would be delighted if you were to write a history of the RSS.”

I told him that I was flattered, but did not think that I was the right candidate for the task. My understanding of radio matters is rudimentary, I have no desire to go again through the painful process of trying to get a book published, and, to perform the job properly, I would have to travel to several libraries and research institutions in the United Kingdom, a prospect that does not excite me at my age. Yet, unbeknownst to my colleague (but apparently not to some of the ‘old stagers’, since Abrutat interviewed many of them), a project to deliver such a history was obviously complete at that time. My initial reaction was one of enthusiasm about the prospect of reading a proper story of RSS, and possibly communicating with the author.

The book arrived on January 4, and I took a quick look at it. I was then amazed to read, in the brief bio on the inside flap, the following text: “David Abrutat is a former Royal Marine commando, RAF officer, and zoologist: he is currently a lecturer in international relations and security studies in the Department of Economics at the University of Buckingham. He has long had a passionate interest in military history.” How was it possible that an academic at the institution where I had completed my doctorate was utterly unknown to me, and how was it that we had never been introduced to each other, given our shared interests, his research agenda, and the record of my investigations on coldspur?

What was more, the book came with a very positive endorsement from Sir Iain Lobban, Director of GCHQ from 2008-2014. He referred, moreover, to the author as ‘Dr Abrutat’, and finished his Foreword by writing: ‘I commend Radio War to all students of the strategic, operational, and tactical difference that intelligence can make in conflict and what passes for peacetime’. My interest heightened, I flipped through the book quickly, but then decided I needed to know more about the author.

His Wikipedia entry is inactive, or incomplete. I then discovered his personal website, at https://www.abrutat.com/. This confirmed his biography, but added the factoid that he also held the post of’ ‘Associate Fellow’ at Buckingham University. So I then sought out the Buckingham University website, but was puzzled to find that he was not listed among the faculty staff. Was the information perhaps out of date? I noticed that in 2018 Abrutat had delivered a seminar at Prebend House (the location where I had delivered my seminar on Isaiah Berlin), but I could not find any confirmation that he was a permanent member of the faculty. I thus posted a friendly message under the ‘Contact’ tab on his website, explained my background and interests, introduced him to coldspur, and indicated how much I looked forward to collaborating with him.

While I was waiting for his response, I reached out to Professor Anthony Glees, as well as to Professor Julian Richards, who now leads the Security and Intelligence practice (BUCSIS) after the retirement of Glees (my doctoral supervisor) last summer. Indeed, Professor Glees’s initial reaction was that Abrutat must have been signed up after his retirement, as he knew nothing of the engagement. I very gently pointed out to Richards the anomalies in the record, and stated how keen I was to know more about the doctor whose research interests so closely overlapped with mine. I also contacted my academic friend, whose ‘RSS’ colleagues appeared to have contributed much of the personal reminiscences that are featured in Abrutat’s book.

What happened next was rather shocking. Professor Richards admitted that Abrutat has been recruited as an occasional lecturer, but was not a member of the faculty. He insisted that Abrutat’s bona fides were solid, however, encouraging me to contact Abrutat himself to learn more about his qualifications, including the nature of his doctorate. After an initial warm response, Abrutat declined to respond further when I asked him about his background. Yet he did indicate that he had been appointed ‘Departmental Historian’ at GCHQ, a fact that was confirmed to me by another contact, who said that Arbutat was replacing Tony Comer in that role. An inquiry at GCHQ, however, drew a highly secure blank.

Thus I had been left out in the cold. But the information gained was puzzling. How was it that Abrutat had been engaged as some kind of contract lecturer without Professor Glees being in the know? And why would Abrutat claim now that he was a member of the faculty when he had indicated to me that his lecturing days were in the past? Why would the University not challenge Abrutat’s claims, and request that he correct the impression he had been leaving on his website and in his book that he was a qualified member of the faculty? And why would he give the impression that he had a doctorate in a relevant subject?

A few days later, I was just about to send a further message to Richards, when I received another email from Abrutat, in which he said that he had indeed been involved in some ad hoc engagements as a lecture at Buckingham, but had insisted on secrecy and anonymity because he was working for British Intelligence at the time. Now, such an explanation might just be plausible, except that, if Richard was hired in 2018, after his guest seminar at Prebend House in March, he was at exactly the same period publicising his relationship with the University to the world beyond. His website page declaring the affiliation was written in 2018, as it refers to a coming book publication date in May 2109, and one can find several pages on the Web, where, in 2018 and 2019, Abrutat promotes another book of his (Vanguard, about D-Day), exploiting his claimed position on the faculty of Buckingham University. So much for obscurity and anonymity! Moreover, the blurb for Radio Wars describes his current role as a lecturer ‘in the Department of Economics’ at Buckingham, even though Abrutat implied to me that even the informal contract was all in the past.

I thus replied to Abrutat, pointing out these anomalies, and suggesting that he and Professor Richards (who had taken five days to work out this explanation) might care to think again. Having heard nothing in reply, on January 13 I compiled a long email for Richards, expressing my dismay and puzzlement, informing him of my intentions to take the matter up the line, and inviting him thereby to consult with his superiors to forestall any other approach, and thus giving him the opportunity to take corrective action. My final observation to Richards ran as follows: “It occurs to me that what we might have here is what the business terms a ‘Reverse Fuchs-Pontecorvo’. When the scientists at AERE Harwell were suspected of spying for the Soviet Union, MI5 endeavoured, out of concern for adverse publicity, and in the belief that the miscreants might perform less harm there, to have them transferred to Liverpool University. The University of Buckingham might want to disencumber itself from Abrutat by facilitating his installation at GCHQ.”

After more than a week, I had heard nothing, so on January 21 I wrote to the Dean of the Humanities School, Professor Nicholas Rees, explaining the problem, and attaching the letter I had sent to Richards. A few days later, I received a very gracious response from Professor Rees, who assured me he would look into the problem.

On January 29, I received the following message from David Watson, the Solicitor and Compliance Manager at Buckingham:

“Dear Dr Percy

I refer to your email to Professor Rees of 21st January, which has been referred to me for response. I advise that Dr Abrutat, who has recently been appointed the official historian at GCHQ, is an Honorary Associate Fellow of the University of Buckingham (“the University”) and he does occasionally lecture at the University. The University intends for this relationship to continue and does not consider Dr Abrutat to have made any representations regarding his relationship with the University that would be harmful to the University’s reputation. In the circumstances, the University does not intend to take this matter any further.

As an alumni [sic!] of the University, as well as having been a student in the BUCSIS Centre, we would like to maintain close contacts and good relations with you.  As in all matters academic, there are some matters of academic judgement involved, and is important to respect the views of those with whom we might not always agree. 

I note your comment to the effect that you will “have to change your tactics” if the University does not act upon your concerns. Whilst it is not clear what you mean by this, I trust  that you do not propose to engage in any activities, which might be considered defamatory to the University and would request that you refrain from making any statements that go beyond the realm of reasonable academic discourse and which could potentially damage the University’s reputation (this includes ad hominem attacks on the University’s academic staff and/or associates).

I trust that the University’s position has now been made clear and advise that the University does not propose to enter into any further communications with yourself on this matter.

Yours sincerely 

David Watson”

I leave it at that. I have presented most of the facts, though not all.

Lastly, I have now read Abrutat’s Radio War. I decided that I needed to see what the author had to say, and the method he used to tell his story, before concluding my investigation of his relationship with Buckingham University. The experience was not good: it is a mess. I have, however, not addressed the book thoroughly, or taken notes – yet. I wanted to keep this segment exclusively dependent on my own research, and I shall defer a proper analysis of Abrutat’s contribution to the story of RSS for another time.

*                *                      *                      *                      *                      *

This segment of ‘The Mystery of the Undetected Radios’ is something of an aberration, designed to amplify statements and conclusions I made some time ago. It has been provoked by my access to a large number of National Archives files, non-digitised, and thus not acquirable on-line. This inspection was enabled by the efforts of my researcher Dr. Kevin Jones, photographing the documents at Kew, and sending them to me. I wish I had discovered Dr. Jones, and been able to us these files, earlier in the cycle, as this analysis would have found a better home in earlier chapters, especially Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the saga, and it should probably be integrated properly later. Readers may want to refresh their memories of my earlier research by returning to those segments, or reading the amalgamated story at ‘The Undetected Radios’. There will be some repetition of material, since I believe it contributes to greater clarity in the narrative that follows. It covers events up to the end of 1943.

The following is a list of the files that I relied on extensively for my previous research: WO/208/5096-5098, HW 34/18, HW 43/6, CAB 301/77, ADM 223/793, and FO 1093/484

For this segment, I have exploited the following files: DSIR 36/2220, FO 1093/308, FO 1093/145, FO 1093/484, HO 255/987, HW 34/18, HW 34/19, HW 34/30, HW 40/190, HW 62/21/17, KV 3/7,  KV 3/96, KV 3/97, KV 4/27, KV 4/33, KV 4/61, KV 4/62, KV 4/97, KV 4/98, KV 4/213, KV 4/214, MEPO 2/3558, WO 208/5095, WO 208/5099, WO 208/5101, WO 208/5102, and WO 208/5105.

This list is not complete. In my spreadsheet that identifies hundreds of files relevant to my broader inquiries, I have recorded several concerning RSS and wireless interception that my researcher/photographer in London has not yet captured. At the same time, Abrutat lists in his Bibliography many of the files that I have inspected, as well as a few that I did not know about, or had considered irrelevant. I have added them to my spreadsheet, and shall investigate those that relate to my period. (I have spent little time studying RSS’s story after the D-Day invasion, and have steered clear of its activities overseas.) On the other hand, I note several files used by me that have apparently escaped Abrutat’s attention. Thus some further process of synthesis will at some future stage be desirable.

One of the files (FO 1093/308) I received only at the end of January, just in time for me to include a brief analysis. This file, in turn, leads to a whole new series, the transactions of the Wireless Telegraphy Board (the DEFE 59 series), which should provide a thorough explanation of how the organisational decisions made on Wireless Telegraphy (‘Y’ services) in early 1940 affected wartime policy. That will have to wait for a later analysis.

I should also mention that E. D.R. Harrison’s article, British Radio Security and Intelligence, 1939-43, published in the English Historical Review, Vol. CXXIV No 506 (2009) continues to serve as a generally excellent guide to the conflicts between MI5 and SIS, although it concentrates primarily on the control over ISOS material, and does not (in my opinion) do justice to the larger issue of Signals Security that caused rifts between MI5 and RSS. I note, however, that Harrison lists some important files (e.g. HW 19/331) that I have not yet inspected.

I have organized the material into seven sections: ‘Tensions Between MI5 and RSS, Part 1’ (1940-41); ‘Tensions Between MI5 and RSS, Part 2’(1942-43); ‘The Year of Signals Security’;  ‘Mobile Direction-Finding’; ‘The Management of RSS’; ‘The Double-Cross Operation’, and ‘Conclusions’.

Tensions between MI5 & RSS, Part 1 (1940-41)

The overall impression given by various histories is that the transfer of control of RSS from MI8 to SIS in the spring of 1941 all occurred very smoothly. This tradition was echoed in the Diaries of Guy Liddell, who was initially very enthusiastic about the change of responsibility, since he knew that the Security Service was hopelessly overburdened with the challenges of sorting out possible illegal aliens and ‘Fifth Columnists’ at a time when the fear of invasion was very real. MI5 was deficient in management skills and structure, and Liddell initially had great confidence in the capabilities of Gambier-Parry and his organisation. It is true that, as the war progressed, Liddell voiced doubts as to whether SIS’s Section VIII was performing its job properly, but his complaints were generally very muted.

An early indication of MI5’s exclusion from the debates can be observed in the early wartime deliberations (January and February, 1940) of the Wireless Telegraphy Board, chaired by Commander Denniston of GC&CS (visible at FO 1093/308). Maurice Hankey, Minister without Portfolio in Chamberlain’s Cabinet, called together a task force consisting of the Directors of Intelligence of the three armed forces, namely Rear-Admiral Godfrey (Admiralty), Major-General Beaumont-Nesbitt (War Office), and Group-Captain Blandy (acting, for Air Ministry), Colonel Stewart Menzies, the SIS chief, and the Zelig-like young Foreign Office civil servant, Gladwyn Jebb. The group recommended a full-time chairman for a task that had changed in nature since war broke out, what with such issues of beacons, domestic illicit wireless use, and German broadcasting complicating the agenda. Yet what was remarkable was that the Group seemed to be unaware that Y services were being undertaken outside the armed forces. Moreover, there was no room for MI5 in this discussion, even though Lt.-Colonel Simpson was carrying on an energetic campaign to set up a unified force to handle the challenge of beacons and illicit domestic transmissions. Amazingly, the Board appeared to be completely unaware of what was going on inside MI5, or the negotiations it was having with MI8.

MI5 was in danger of losing its ability to influence policy. A year later the transfer of RSS took place, despite the fact that influential figures had challenged SIS’s overall competence. Major-General Francis Davidson, who had replaced Beaumont-Nesbitt as Director of Military Intelligence in December 1940, in February 1941 first questioned Swinton’s authority to make the decision to place RSS under Section VIII. (Beaumont-Nesbitt, who held the position for only eighteen months, was probably removed because he was notoriously wrong about a predicted German invasion, in a paper written on September 7, 1940. Noel Annan indicated that Admiral Godfrey did not rate ‘less gifted colleagues’ such as him highly, and in Changing Enemies  Annan witheringly described him as ‘the charming courtier and guardsman’.) Davidson apparently knew more about MI5’s needs than did his predecessor, and, as WO 288/5095 shows, he subsequently expressed major concerns about SIS’s ability to understand and manage the interception of signals, and to deal with the Post Office. He regretted that Petrie had apparently not yet spoken to Worlledge, or to Butler in MI8. (Handwritten notes on the letters suggest that Davidson was getting tutored by Butler.) Davidson’s preference echoed Simpson’s ‘unified control,’ but he was perhaps revealing his naivety and novelty in the job when he stated that MI5 (‘our original suggestion’) was the home he preferred for RSS, being unaware of MI5’s deep reluctance to take it on. He nevertheless accepted Swinton’s decision.

Colonel Butler had been particularly scathing about Gambier-Parry’s understanding of wireless interception issues. Before the decision was made, he stated (WO 208/5105) that Gambier-Parry had ‘little or no experience of this type of work’, and on March 23 reported Gambier-Parry as saying that, if RSS were under his control in the event of an invasion, he could not be held responsible for the detection of illicit wireless within the Army Zone, and had suggested a new organisation under GHQ Home Forces. “Colonel Gambier-Parry refers to operational agents and static agents but I do not know how one can differentiate between the two when heard on a wireless set,” wrote Butler. Both Butler and Worlledge thought that Petrie did not have full knowledge of the facts – a justifiable complaint, it would seem.

Worlledge had written a very sternly worded memorandum on February 14, 1941, where he stated: “It is not clear to me that anything would be gained by the transfer of R.S.S. ‘lock, stock, and barrel’ to any other branch unless that branch is in a position to re-organize R.S.S. completely on a proper military basis. In my opinion, R.S.S. should be organized as one unit, preferably a purely military unit though I would not exclude the possibility of a mixed military and civilian unit.” He was chafing more at the frustrations of dealing with the Post Office rather than the reliance on a crew of civilian interceptors, and his concerns were far more with the threat of soldiers in uniform invading the country, bearing illicit radio transmitters, than with the possibility of German agents roaming around the country. His voice articulated the broader issue of Signals Security that would rear its head again when the circumstances of war had changed.

And in April, 1941 (after the decision on the transfer was made, but before the formal announcement) when the threat of invasion was still looming, Butler had to take the bull by the horns, and inform the General Staff that RSS was incapable of providing the mechanisms for locating possible illicit wireless agents operating in the area of active operations, and that military staff should take on that responsibility, using some RSS equipment. Butler showed a good insight into the problem: “Apart from actual interception, the above involves a number of minor commitments such as the control of some wireless stations erected by our Allies in this country, monitoring of stations in foreign Legations in London, checking numerous reports of suspected transmissions and advising the Wireless Board and G.P.O on the control of the sale of radio components.” Fortunately, the threat of invasion was now receding, and Operation Barbarossa on June 22 confirmed it. The problem of ‘embedded’ agents was deferred, and the General Staff relaxed.

A valuable perspective on the challenges of the time was provided by one R. L. Hughes. In 1946, Hughes, then of MI5’s B4 section, submitted a history of the unit he had previously occupied, B3B, which had been a section in Malcom Frost’s group (see KV 4/27), and had played a large role in the exchanges of the time. What was B3B, and what was its mission? The exact structure of B3 between the years 1941 (after Frost’s W division was dissolved, and B3 created), and 1943 (when Frost left MI5, in January, according to Curry, in December according to Liddell!) is elusive, but Curry’s confusing organisation chart for April 1943, and his slightly contradictory text (p 259), still show Frost in charge of B3A (Censorship Issues, R. E. Bird), B3D (Liaison with Censorship, A. Grogan), B3B (Illicit Wireless Interception: Liaison with RSS, R. L. Hughes), B3C (Lights and Pigeons, Flight-Lieutenant R. M. Walker) and B3E (Signals Security, Lt. Colonel Sclater).

The confusion arises because Curry added elsewhere that Frost had taken on ‘Signals Security’ himself, and B3E was created only when Frost departed ‘in January 1943’. The creation and role of B3E needs to be defined clearly. B3E does not appear in the April 1943 organisation chart which Curry represented, and Frost did not depart until the end of November 1943. As for Sclater, the Signals Security expert, Colonel Worlledge had appointed him several years before as his ‘adjutant’ (according to Nigel West) at MI8c, and he thus may have been a victim of the ‘purge’ after Gambier-Parry took over. But a valid conclusion might be that Frost was unaware of how Sclater was being brought into MI5 to replace him, and saw his presence as a threat, even though Signals Security was nominally under his control. That Sclater would effectively replace Frost was surely Liddell’s intention, as Signals Security once again became a major focus of MI5’s attention.

Thus Hughes was right in the middle of what was going on, liaising with RSS, and he adds some useful vignettes to the tensions of 1940 and 1941, echoing what Lt.-Colonel Simpson had articulated about the importance of Signals Security. For example: “Colonel Simpson reported on the 15th September, 1939 on the condition of affairs at that time. He considered it quite unsatisfactory and suggested that the assistance of Colonel xxxxxxxxx should be sought. It is interesting to note that he stressed the importance of Signals Security and recommended that there should be a monitoring service studying our own Service transmissions. He also stressed the importance of the closest possible collaboration between the Intelligence Organisation, M.I.5. and the technical organisation, R.S.S. He drew a diagram which pictured a wireless technical organisation in close liaison with the Services, G.C.& C.S., M.I.5., R.S.S. (then known as M.I.1.g.) and, through Section VIII, with M.I.6. M.I.5.was to provide the link with police and G.P.O. It may be noted that during the latter part of the war the organisation approximated to this, as Section V of M.I.6. established a branch working with R.S.S. under the name of the Radio Intelligence Section (R.I.S.)  . . .”

Why the name of the Colonel had to be redacted is not clear. As I have written before, it was probably Gambier-Parry himself, as the names of all SIS personnel were discreetly obscured in the records, and Curry in a memorandum indicated that Simpson had indicated that the Colonel was in MI6 (SIS). Gambier-Parry was not known for his shrewd understanding of signals matters, however, and at this stage Simpson would more probably have been invoking support from his true military colleagues. In any case, it is salutary that Simpson was so early drawing attention to the failings of security procedures within the armed forces, as this would be an issue of major concern later in the war, in which Frost would take a keen interest. Simpson’s message of ‘Unified Control’ is clear, and Hughes states that this issue caused a breakdown in negotiations between MI5 (then represented by Simpson) and RSS/MI8c. He goes on, moreover,  to describe how Malcolm Frost had responded to Walter Gill’s memorandum describing the functions of RSS by making a bid to manage the whole operation. This was a somewhat audacious move, as Frost had been recruited from the BBC to investigate foreign broadcasts, and he had nothing like the stature or reputation of Simpson.

Malcolm Frost is one of the most interesting characters in this saga, as his role has been vastly underrepresented. He may be one of those public servants whose contributions were sometimes diminished by jealousy, or personal dislike – perhaps like Felix Cowgill in SIS, or Jasper Harker of MI5 – and whose reputations have suffered because they were not invited to tell their side of the story. He was certainly a favourite of Lord Swinton for a while, as Swinton appointed him from the BBC, where he had been Director of Overseas Intelligence, to chair the important Home Defence Security Intelligence Committee, which included wireless interception. This promotion apparently went to his head a bit, and his ambitions and manœuverings quickly got under the skin of Liddell – and eventually Swinton himself. Yet, even though Swinton was recorded as saying, at the end of 1940, that Frost’s days at MI5 were numbered, Frost was a survivor, and proved to be an important thorn in the flesh of Gambier-Parry and RSS for the next couple of years. He seemed to be a quick learner, an analytical thinker, and a painstaking recorder of conversations, an operation that may have been designed to cover himself should his enemies turn against him more volubly. And indeed he had many enemies, probably because he behaved so antagonistically when trying to work through differences of opinion with anyone.

Ironically, however, the primary challenge to RSS’s governance in mid-1940 had come from the Post Office. What might have pushed Simpson over the edge was the GPO’s insistence that it had a charter to provide personnel and materials to MI8c, granted by the War Office, and approved by the Cabinet. When it was challenged on the quality of such, and on its sluggish bureaucracy, however, its representative dug his heels in, and reminded MI8c and MI5 that it was exclusively responsible for the detection of illicit wireless transmitters and would pursue that mission on its own terms. That charter was a legacy of peacetime operations, when it needed to track down pirate operators who might have been interfering with critical factory operations, or public broadcasting. Yet it was an argument doomed to failure.

Yet the GPO was not the only fly in the ointment. As the military threat increased, and Swinton soured on MI5’s capabilities, competent critics sighed over the apparent muddle. Before the SIS takeover, RSS had set up regional officers at exactly the same time (June 1940) that MI5 had established its own Regional Security Liaison Officers (RSLOs), leading to conflicts in searches and reporting. Both the military and the police were confused as to who exactly was in charge. And while the responsibility was more clearly defined with the transfer to SIS, several observers expressed their doubts about Gambier-Parry’s understanding of the true problem. As I have showed, the Director of Military Intelligence, Major-General Francis Davidson, newly appointed to the post, expressed his strong concerns to Swinton in January 1941, before the official decision was announced. Swinton tried to assuage him, but he was still expressing doubts in May 1941.

At the same time, Worlledge, having had a meeting with Gambier-Parry, also thought that the future new owner of the unit did not understand the technical issues well. Likewise, Colonel Butler of MI8c concluded that Gambier-Parry had ‘little or no experience’, and pointed out that Gambier-Parry had told him that he did not think that RSS would be responsible for any detection of illicit wireless in the event of an invasion – an appalling misjudgment. (At this stage of the war, there was a deathly fear of the possibility of German wireless agents working on English soil, assisting the invaders, with their traffic inextricably entwined with military communications.) But Butler was not to last long: he was feuding with Gordon Welchman of GC&CS at the time, and was let go in June 1941, perhaps another victim of Gambier-Parry’s purge.

What is fascinating is that Frost, despite his being logically discarded by his sponsor, Lord Swinton, in December 1940, evolved to be the main agent pestering Gambier-Parry over his inadequate machinery for tracking illicit transmitters in the UK – the core mission of RSS. KV 4/97 and KV 4/98 show how, after the year of acquaintanceship in 1941, when committees were setup, and procedures defined, the distrust began to establish itself in 1942. Liddell had already clashed with Gambier-Parry in May 1941 over possible undetected transmissions, Gambier-Parry holding on to the Gillean line that they would have to be two-way, and using this argument to deny that any could exist. (He was probably politically correct, but technically wrong, but at that stage of the war, a German invasion had not been excluded from consideration.) Trevor-Roper, performing brilliant work in developing schemata of the Abwehr’s operations, but now forced to work formally under Cowgill, was by now chafing at his boss’s obsession about control, as Cowgill was unwilling to distribute Trevor-Roper’s notes to MI5 or even to GC&CS, and a series of meetings attempted to resolve the impasse.

Frost was in the meantime becoming too inquisitive. On September 9, 1941, another meeting was held between Liddell, Frost, Gambier-Parry and Maltby to define Frost’s charter. A document was approved, although Liddell noted in his diary that it contained ‘a good deal of eyewash’. At an important meeting on October 3, Frost kept up the attack. Liddell reported that RSS was now intercepting 216 stations, and that there had been a steady rise in decoded traffic. Yet Frost voiced concerns about RSS’s energies being directed too much at group (i.e. Abwehr) traffic, and that a gap between RSS & Army Signals continued to exist. Liddell deemed that nobody was responsible for parachutists and the Fifth Column (if, of course, there was one: in truth, it remained a creation of another group in MI5 at the time.) In November, Cowgill was still expressing horror at the distribution of ISOS material, and effectively preventing MI5 from gaining feedback on the activities of its double agents.

Then, on November 19, Frost made a very puzzling comment to Liddell, informing him that ‘Gambier-Parry & Maltby deprecated his departure to the B.B.C.’ It would appear from this item that Frost was at this stage on the way out, and it might partly explain why Curry (who had moved on to a position as Petrie’s aide in October 1941) later wrote in his ‘History’ that Frost left MI5 in January of 1943, which was admittedly over a year later, but still a long time before Frost’s eventual departure. This show of remorse was certainly one of crocodile tears from Gambier-Parry and Maltby, and maybe Frost, under attack on all sides, was making a plea to Liddell that his talents were still needed. By this time, Liddell, who was beginning to get frustrated by illicit wireless transmissions (mostly from foreign embassies), may have concluded that, while he continued to complain to Vivian at SIS of the problem, he needed a dedicated pair of hands working below decks, and, with Frost having had his ambitious wings clipped, the BBC-man gained a stay of execution. Indeed, Liddell did later plan to liquidate Frost’s division: on February 9, 1943, however, he wrote that that move had been shelved, and Frost was not to leave until the end of November of that year. Liddell was probably already looking for a replacement.

Tensions between MI5 & RSS, Part 2 (1942-43)

Thus, despite the efforts to move him out, Frost survived, and 1942 was his most significant year in MI5. KV 4/97 shows a fascinating account of his perpetual tussles with Gambier-Parry and Maltby. In December 1941 and January 1942 he harangued Maltby over the problems and responsibilities of the mobile units, and argued with Morton Evans over transferring receivers to them. He asked questions about the distribution and equipment of personnel and equipment, which caused Morton Evans to rebuke him for being nosy. He became involved with the abortive exercise to exchange details of codes and frequencies with Soviet intelligence, and asked Maltby to disclose SIS secrets. Gambier-Parry had to lecture him that everything was under control. He wrote a detailed report on the state-of-the-art of interception, again suggesting that RSS did not really understand it. On September 20, he submitted a report to Liddell that criticised the clumsiness of current mobile detection devices, and his text indicates that at this stage MI5 was performing some experimental work of its own. A meeting was set up with Liddell and Maltby just over a week later, and soon afterwards Maltby was forced to admit that current coverage in the UK was inadequate. Frost pointed out problems with Elmes, one of Maltby’s sidekicks, and had to inform Liddell that the minutes of one RSS meeting needed to be corrected to include the mission of identifying illicit wireless in the British Isles – the perpetual blind spot of Gambier-Parry’s team.

All this resulted in a spirited defence by Major Morton Evans, who submitted a carefully argued paper on March 3, 1942 about the conflicts between the demands of watching and recording the undeniably real traffic of the enemy, and the need to uncover any wireless agents on the mainland (the ‘General Search’ function), concluding that a necessary balance was maintained that could not ensure both goals were perfectly met. He introduced the challenge of domestic illicit interception by writing: “By working at full pressure it is only possible to take about one hundred effective bearings a day, which means that only a very small percentage of the signals heard can be D/F’d, since the number of transmissions taking place throughout the day is in the order of tens of thousands. It therefore becomes necessary to narrow the field of those signals which are to be put up for bearings, and this means that the signal has to be heard more than once before it can be established that it is unidentified and therefore suspicious. The D/F stations are therefore employed largely by taking bearings on signals which have been marked down for special investigation, and when this is not a full time job the remainder of their time is spent on taking bearings of all suspicious signals which may be put up at random.”

This is a highly important report which shows the stresses that were placed on the Discrimination Unit that passed out instructions to the VIs, and how ineffective the Mobile Units would have been if they had to wait for multiple suspected transmissions, and then organize themselves to drive maybe hundreds of miles in the hope of catching the pirate transmitting again from the same location. It is also presents a provocative introduction to the claims made by Chapman Pincher about what Morton Evans told him about the traffic suspected as being generated by Sonia, and what Morton Evans was supposed to have done with it. As I shall show in a later piece, Morton Evans’s career makes Pincher’s testimony look highly dubious.

All this pestering by Frost, however, must have caused immense irritation to Gambier-Parry, Maltby and Cowgill, and may well have contributed to SIS’s suggestion (made through Vivian) that the RSS Committee be abolished. At a meeting on December 2, all except Maltby and Cowgill voted that the committee should not be discontinued, however, and a useful compromise, whereby the committee was split into two, a high-level and a low-level group, was eventually worked out. But, by now, the planning emphasis was much more on signals protection and detection of ‘stay-behind’ agents on the Continent when the inevitable Allied invasion of Europe took place, and Frost’s attention to domestic mobile units was beginning to sound wearisome.

In 1943, Frost took up the cudgels again, as KV 4/98 shows. A note by Frost to Liddell, dated January 27, 1943, indicates that Frost has now immersed himself into the techniques of broader signals security, and violently disagrees with Vivian and Gambier-Parry. Frost wrote: “He [Vivian] appears to presume that Gambier-Parry and S.C.U.3 are responsible for all functions which can be included under the heading ‘Radio Security’. This is false. Radio security involves not only the technical interception of suspected enemy signals, which is the function of R.S.S., but the planning of our own and Allied radio security measures and the investigation of illicit wireless activities from an intelligence angle. Parry frequently implies that he is responsible for all these activities. In fact, many bodies other than R.S.S. and the Security Service are engaged on radio security work under one heading or another, including the British Joint Communications Board, the Wireless Telegraphy Board, the Censorship, and the Signals Department of the Three Services.”  Thus Gambier-Parry was accused of two crimes: ineffectiveness in illicit wireless detection, a function he denied having, and misunderstanding the scope of Signals Security, a responsibility he thought he owned.

Frost goes on to mention Gambier-Parry’s excuse that he needs more funding: Frost asserts that Gambier-Parry has plenty of money for his own pet projects. Two weeks later, Frost is making demands to be on the high-level committee, and that Gambier-Parry should be removed – a bold initiative, indeed. This echoes the statement that Liddell had made to Petrie in December 1942, that ‘the plumbers (i.e. Gambier-Parry and Maltby) were directing intelligence, rather than the other way around’. Yet there was a further problem: while Vivian may have been declaring Gambier-Parry’s overall responsibility, Gambier-Parry was becoming a reluctant warrior on the broader issue of civil and military signals security. Gambier-Parry’s chief interest was in technology, in apparatus and codes, and some of the more complex and political aspects of radio security eluded him.

By now Frost was being eased out. Vivian’s proposal to Liddell on participants on the low-level committee excludes Frost, with Dick White and Hubert Hart suggested as members instead. Liddell and Vivian argue, about Frost and the Chairmanship, as well. Even Petrie agrees that MI5’s radio interests are not being adequately represented. The record here goes silent after that, but an extraordinary report in KV 4/33 (‘Report on the Operations of B3E in Connection with Signals Security & Wireless Transmission during the War 1939-1945’), written in May/June 1945 (i.e. as Overlord was under way) suggests that MI5 thereafter effectively took control of signals security through the efforts of Lt.-Colonel Sclater, a probable reject from Maltby’s unit at Hanslope, who at some stage led the Signals Security Unit within MI5.

The Year of Signals Security

A close reading of Liddell’s Diaries gives a better insight into the machinations of this period than does anything that I have discovered at Kew. 1943 was the Year of Signals Security, and the matter had several dimensions. The overall consideration was that, as the project to invade Europe (‘Overlord’) developed, the security of wireless communications would have to become a lot tighter in order to prevent the Nazis learning of the Allies’ battle plans. The unknown quantity of dealing with possible ‘leave-behind’ Abwehr wireless agents in France would require RSS to turn its attention to direction-finding across the Channel. Moreover, there were military, civil, and diplomatic aspects. While the Navy and the Air Force had adopted solid procedures for keeping their traffic secret, the Army was notoriously lax, as the General Staff had learned from decrypted ULTRA messages. * Much government use of wireless was also sloppy, with the Railways particularly negligent. When troops started to move, details about train schedules and volumes of personnel could have caused dangerous exposures. Governments-in-exile, and allied administrations, were now starting to use wireless more intensively. The JIC welcomed the intelligence that was gained by intercepting such exchanges, but if RSS and GC&CS could understand these dialogues, why should not the Germans, also?

[* The frequently made claim that naval ciphers were secure has been undermined by recent analysis. See, for example, Christian Jennings’s The Third Reich is Listening]

These issues came up at the meetings of the high-level Radio Security Committee. Yet, as Liddell reported in March 1943, Gambier-Parry was very unwilling to take the lead. He refused to take responsibility for signals security (suggesting, perhaps, that he had now taken Frost’s lesson to heart), and used delaying tactics, which provoked Frost and Liddell. Liddell believed that the JIC and the Chiefs of Staff should be alerted to both the exposures caused by lax wireless discipline and Gambier-Parry’s reluctance to do anything. As Liddell recorded on April 12: “G-P has replied to the D.G. on the question of Signals Security. His letter is not particularly satisfactory and we propose to raise the matter on the Radio Security Committee. Parry is evidently afraid that it may fall to the lot of R.S.S. to look after Signals Security. He is therefore reluctant to have it brought to the notice of the Chiefs of Staff that the Germans are acquiring a considerable knowledge about the disposition of our units in this country and elsewhere through signals leakages.” What is perplexing, however, is that Liddell does not refer in his Diaries to the April 1943 report put out by Sclater [see below], which presumably must have been issued before Sclater was officially hired to MI5.

Another trigger for action (May 31) was the discovery that agent GARBO had been given a new cipher, and that he had been given instructions to use the British Army’s procedure (callsigns, sequences) in transmitting messages. While this news was encouraging in the confidence that the Abwehr still held in GARBO, it was alarming on two counts. It indicated that the Germans were successfully interpreting army traffic, and it indicated that it would be a safe procedure as RSS had not been able to distinguish real army messages from fake ones. (Astute readers may recall that agent SONIA received similar instructions: the Soviets probably learned about it from Blunt.) This was of urgent concern to MI5, since, if RSS could not discriminate such messages, unknown Abwehr agents (i.e. some not under control of the XX Operation) might also be transmitting undetected. Even before this, the Chiefs of Staff realised that special measures need to be taken. In classic Whitehall fashion, they appointed a committee, the Intelligence Board, to look into the question. But in this case, they selected a very canny individual to chair the committee – one Peter Reid, who was a close friend (and maybe even a relative) of Guy Liddell.

On June 9, Liddell had a long chat with Reid, and informed him of the details of Garbo’s new cipher. Reid was characteristically blunt: “Reid considers G-P, Maltby & Frost as bluffers, and to some extent charlatans”, wrote Liddell. Reid thought that the Army ciphers and operations had to be fixed first: fortunately the Army staff now recognised the problem. A couple of weeks later, Reid was telling Liddell that MI5 should ‘logically control RSS’. He thought Frost was not up to the mark, technically inadequate, and probably recommended at this stage an outsider for Liddell to bring in, which might explain the eventual recruitment of Sclater. Reid’s committee also inspected RSS’s operation itself: Frost told Liddell that Reid might be looking into the communications of SIS and SOE, which had been Gambier-Parry’s exclusive bailiwick, and of which the head of Section VIII was particularly proprietary. Reid is much of a mystery: where he came from, and what his expertise was, are not clear. It is difficult to determine whether he is offering strong opinions based on deep knowledge of the subject, or energetic fresh views deriving from relative ignorance. (He was not the P.R. Reid who escaped from Colditz, and wrote of his exploits.) On August 20, Liddell recorded that Reid was ‘almost violent about the stupidity in handling intercept material’.

While Gambier-Parry was becoming increasingly under siege, Frost also appeared to have received the message that a career move was imminent. He told Liddell on August 7 that he was investigating a job with the Wireless Board. He was unhappy with his salary, and said ‘he should give another organisation the benefit of his services’, an observation that defines well his pomposity and high level of self-regard. Soon after this, one finds the first references to Sclater in Liddell’s Diaries. Yet Sclater is talking to Liddell ‘in the strictest confidence’ on August 26, which suggests that his appointment has not yet been regularized. It suggests that Sclater was frustrated with working at RSS (as any man of his calibre reporting to Maltby must surely have been): similarly, one can never see him accepting a job under Frost, to endure the same insufferable management style.

A few paragraphs in Sclater’s post-war History of the unit, submitted to Curry, gives a hint of how Sclater’s influence started. He claims that MI5’s initiative, in raising questions about possible leaks from civilian authorities, such as the Police and Railway Lines, resulted in the collection of ‘all possible details from other departments thought to be using radio communications’. MI5 then requisitioned the services of some RSS mobile units to monitor them. But the outcome was not good. “The results of monitoring some Police and Railway communications indicated a deplorable lack of security knowledge and some examples were included in a report which eventually reached the Inter-Department W/T Security Committee.” MI5 then succeeded in expanding the scope of the committee to include civilian use, the Committee having its name changed to ‘W/T Security’. This new Committee then issued the report that appeared on April 28, under Sclater’s name. Thus it is probably safe to assume that Sclater was at this time on secondment, since he did not appear in Curry’s organisation chart of April 1943, and would hardly have been nominated to criticize RSS from within the unit. Frost, however, should be credited with keeping the matter alive, even if he did not show mastery over the subject, or display tact when pursuing his investigations. (Harrison states that Sclater was not officially recruited by MI5 until January 1944.)

Liddell here records some shocking details of Sclater’s conclusions about RSS: “He told me in the strictest confidence that they had 3 M.U.s [mobile units] which had been carrying out exercises under McIntosh. He does not however think that the latter is a suitable person to conduct a search. He also told me that RSS in d.f.ing [direction-finding] an alleged beacon near Lincoln had given an area of several hundred square miles in which the search would have to be made. Their methods in d.f.ing continental stations were improving but they reckon on an error of 1% per hundred miles. This would mean a transmitter could only be located within an area of some 400 sq. miles. He also told me confidentially that he believed RSS were attempting to d.f. certain stations in France which only came up for testing periodically since they are believed to be those which will be left behind in time of invasion. RSS have said nothing to us about this officially. All this of course will have to come out when we get down to I.B. [Intelligence Board] planning.”

This exchange shows the high degree of confidence that Sclater had in Liddell and MI5 assuming the responsibility for Signals Security, but also his disillusion with Gambier-Parry. (A few weeks later, Gambier-Parry was to suggest that mobile units should not be taken across the Channel until the RSS had detected an illicit transmitter. A rather feeble interpretation of ‘mobility’  .  . .  Gambier-Parry certainly did not understand the problem of mobile illicit wireless use.) Yet Sclater’s willingness to criticize the RSS’s direction-finding capabilities implicitly suggests that the acknowledged expert on direction-finding, Major Keen, who also reported to Maltby, was not being used properly. Did Keen perhaps have something to do with Sclater’s move away from RSS?

Sclater’s arrival must have boosted Liddell’s knowledge – and confidence. An entry in his diary from September 10 is worth citing in full. The first significant observation is that he records that Vivian appeared not to be aware of RSS’s mission in detecting illicit wireless from the UK, thus providing solid reinforcement of the signals that Gambier-Parry had been issuing. In the only chapters of substance covering RSS (that I have found, before Abrutat), namely in Nigel West’s Sigint Secrets, suggests that RSS’s straying into counteroffensive operations at the expense of defensive moves was a result of Guy Liddell’s success, and that he himself initiated it (p 154). Since West mistakenly informs us that RSS was in fact created by MI5, and given the identity of MI8c ‘as a security precaution’, one has to remain sceptical of the author’s conclusions, while understanding how he might have contributed to the confusion about RSS

Newly emboldened, Liddell then wrote: “The other question to be decided is the security of the communications of allied Govts. This can be divided into three parts: allied forces, allied diplomatic and allied secret service. Vivian takes up a rather non possumus attitude on this question by saying that monitoring of the services of allied forces can easily be evaded by the transfer of the traffic to diplomatic channels. If this possibility exists, and obviously it does, we should monitor the diplomatic channels. All we are really asking is a clear statement of the facts. The services are supposed to be responsible for the security of the signals of allied services. What in fact are they doing about it? The Secret Service communications of allied Govts’ are supposed to be the responsibility of SIS. Have they the cyphers? Do they know the contents of the messages? If the cyphers are insecure what steps have been taken to warn the governments concerned? Do SIS ever take it upon themselves to refuse to send certain communications? If so is it open to government concerned to have them sent either through military or diplomatic channels? Our sole locus standi in this matter is that when a leak occurs we may well be looking all over the country for a body whereas in fact the information is going out over the air.” He followed up with a trenchant analysis of the R.S.C.  committee meeting on September 14, encouraging the RSS to deal with the Reid committee directly.

Realising that Frost was not a good ambassador for MI5, Liddell at this point tried to harness his  involvement with the Reid Committee until his new position was confirmed. “It was agreed at that meeting that RSS should monitor the civil establishments as and when they were able and turn in the results to the Reid Committee on which are represented Min. of Supply, MAP, GPO, Railways, and Police. All these bodies are on occasions co-opted to the Reid Committee. The reason why I did not press this matter at the meeting at Kinnaird House was that I did not want to build Frost up in a new job where he would again be at logger-heads with everybody. Had he not been there I should have pressed hard for our taking over the educational side and urged that RSS as our technical tool should monitor from time to time and turn in the products to us”, he recorded on November 12. The next day, Reid told Liddell that Frost had accepted a job with the BBC in connection with broadcasting from the Second Front. Frost’s swansong was to try to ‘liquidate’ the whole Barnet operation, and told his staff, before he left, of that drastic action. But, after his departure, Sclater was able to take on his role in B3E officially, and consider more humane ways of dealing with the problems at RSS. By then, with Frost gone, Maltby was sending out conciliatory signals to Sclater and Liddell about wanting to cooperate.

The relevant files on B3E (KV 4/33) can thus now be interpreted in context. The unit was stationed close to RSS’s Barnet headquarters, an outpost of MI5 in RSS territory, and Sclater maintained close contacts with parties involved with wireless, including the GPO Radio Branch, the Telecommunications Dept., responsible for Licenses, the Inspector of Wireless Telegraphy (Coast Stations), the Wireless Telegraphy Board, as well as the RSIC, the low-level RSS committee. Sclater’s main point was that the lessons of listening to the Abwehr, with their lack of discipline to names, identities, repeated messages, en clair transmissions, etc. were not being applied to British military or civilian communications in 1942. He pointed out that MI5 also had no official knowledge of all the many organisations that were using transmitters legally, which must have inhibited the effectiveness of any interception programme, whoever owned it. He identified appalling lapses of security, especially in the Police and Railways. The outcome was the report published on April 28, 1943, which made some urgent recommendations. Yet it must be recalled that B3E was apparently not established until after Frost left in December 1943, so Sclater’s account is not strictly accurate in its self-representation as an MI5 document.

This report therefore (with some allowances, perhaps, for the author’s vainglory) makes the claim that MI5 effectively took over control of RSS, ‘rooting out undisciplined use’, especially in the Home Guard. RSS was given strict instructions on how to deploy resources to cover Civil or Service traffic ‘as shall appear to the Security Service desirable’. MI5 was now represented on all bodies to do with radio interception, and exerted an influence on the JIC and SHAEF. MI5 co-authored with the Home Office instructions to all civil units, which were copied to the RSS. This file contains a fascinating array of other information, including examples of flagrant breaches of security, and it demands further attention. Signals Security had come full circle from Simpson to Sclater in five years. The ascent of Sclater marked the demise of Frost. Can it all be trusted? I don’t know. You will not find any reference to ‘Sclater’ or B3E’ in Christopher Andrew’s Defence of the Realm, but that fact will perhaps not surprise anybody.

Mobile Direction-Finding

The course of mobile direction-finding (and, implicitly, location-finding) during the war was not smooth. It was partly one of technology (miniaturizing the equipment to a degree that vans, or even pedestrians, could pick up signals reliably), and partly one of resources and logistics (to what extent was the dedication of personnel to the task justifiable when the threat seemed to diminish). Thus the years 1941-1943 can be seen in the following terms: a year of sustained concern about the threat of an invasion (1941); a year of relative quiet, and thus reflection, on the mainland, while the outcome of the war generally looked dire (1942); and a year of earnest preparation for the Allied invasion of Europe, when security of radio traffic, and the threat of illicit broadcasts, again rose in importance (1943).

The GPO had begun serious experiments as early as 1935, as is shown in DSIR 36/2220. The fact that a problem of ‘illicit radio transmissions’ in rural districts was considered a threat at this stage, even before Hitler had occupied the Rhineland, is breathtaking. Hampshire was chosen as the locality, and the exercise led to some dramatic conclusions. Negotiating country roads, and relying primarily on 1” scale maps (since cars had no built-in compasses) required much visual indication, and constant changing of direction to take fresh bearings. It was estimated that forty minutes of transmitting-time were required for any successful pursuit. Market-day interfered with the activity, and night operations required stationary observations at main road crossings, ‘as these are the most easily identifiable landmarks’. This was, for 1935, a remarkably imaginative exploit by the Post Office, and showed some important lessons to be built on.

By 1938, the War Office and the GPO, assuming war was imminent, were bringing the role of mobile operations to the forefront. Colonel Ellsdale of the Royal Engineer and Signals Board submitted a very detailed report (WO 208/5102, pp 68-74) of the perceived threat from agents operating in Britain, even ascribing to them a degree of mobility that was far beyond capabilities at the time. In March 1939, the War Office agreed to a considerable investment in Illicit Wireless Interception, including significant investment in mobile stations (see HW 62/21/17). Yet the focus by November 1939 had very quickly switched to beacon-finding, in the erroneous belief that Nazi sympathisers or German agents in Britain would be using such signals to help direct bombers to their targets. Thus the GPO’s annual expenditure in detection was planned to rise from £27,058 in 1939 to £343, 437 in 1940, and capital expenditures to increase from £13,425 to £211,325. A rapid-response squad was envisaged, with up to one hundred vans operating, and identifying the target in a period of between thirty and ninety minutes.

Fortunately, this investment was quickly shelved, as interrogations of prisoners-of-war indicated that there were no beacons operating from British territory. The direction of flights was maintained by tail bearings in Germany. Despite the generic concern about illicit transmissions, and MI5’s lack of knowledge of what licit transmissions were occurring, Beaumont-Nesbitt, the Director of Military Intelligence, called for a slowdown because of the costs. The GPO continued to make investments, but drew criticism from other quarters because of its inefficiencies and bureaucracy. By October 14, 1939, a meeting revealed that the GP had 200 mobile units in operation, but Simpson complained that the staff operating them were not competent. It was this background which prompted Colonel Simpson’s energetic response, but, since he was the individual most closely associated with the Beacon Scare, his voice was not always attended to seriously enough. In all probability, the units were disbanded, the staff was moved elsewhere, and the equipment was put in storage.

After the transfer of RSS to SIS in May 1941, MI5 actually started cooperating with the GPO on the creation of its own mobile units. In a history of B3B written by a Captain Swann (and introduced by R. L. Hughes of B3B – see KV 4/27), can be found the following statement: “Two mobile D/F and interception units were designed and constructed in co-operation with the G.P.O. Radio Branch, for use in special investigations outside the scope of the R.S.S. units. [What this means is not clear.] These cars were provided with comprehensive monitoring and recording facilities, and proved very useful in connection with the special monitoring assignments involved in the campaign to improve the Signals Security of the country’s internal services.”  A laboratory and workshop were set up, using contents of a private laboratory placed at the section’s disposal by one of the MI5 officers. The author said that it was cost-effective, supplemented by GPO apparatus. Hughes comments that this enterprise was a mistake, as it competed with RSS, and earned their enmity. (RSS obviously learned about it.) But ‘it filled the gap that RSS declined to stop’. Units and laboratories were supplied and equipped by the GPO: they were not handed over to RSS until March 1944. Thus another revealing detail about how RSS was seen to be unresponsive to MI5’s needs has come to light.

I shall consider Maltby’s approach to the problems of the mobile units later, when I analyse the minutes of his meetings. Malcolm Frost, meanwhile, was making constant representations to Liddell about the failings of the operation, and how it was having a deleterious affect on RSS-MI5 relationships (see KV 4/97). He reported on October 18, 1942, on a meeting with Gambier-Parry, which resulted in a commitment to provide greater local detection capabilities, but still using equipment and research facilities from the GPO. A few days later, Maltby, Elmes and Frost discussed moving MU bases from Leatherhead and Darlington to Bristol and Newcastle respectively. This was the period (as I discussed above), where Maltby was reluctantly admitting that little had been done with the units since RSS took them over from the GPO in the summer of 1941. The record is important, since it shows that Frost was capable of making some very insightful comments about the state-of-the-art of wireless interception. On September 8, 1942, he submitted a long report to Guy Liddell on the implications of signals security in the event of an allied invasion.

Moreover, policy in the area of follow-up remained confusing. Frost was also energetic in ensuring that local police forces did not act prematurely when illicit transmissions were detected – presumably to safeguard the sanctioned traffic of the double-agents around the country, and to ensure they were not arrested and unmasked. Regulations that MI5 had to be consulted in all cases had been set up on August 9, 1941, but they were not being obeyed faithfully. HO 255/987 describes some of the incidents where Frost had to remind the authorities of the law. “The Home Office has instructed Police that they may not enter houses of people suspected of possession of illicit wireless transmitters, without prior reference to MI5.” The exception was the case of suspected mobile illicit transmitters, since all double agents were stationary. Though even this policy had its bizarre aspects, as another memorandum notes: “An Individual apparatus is not enough for impounding; there have to be sufficient components to form a complete transmitter.” And Frost sometimes received his rewards. One notorious case (the Kuhn incident, wherein an employee of the Ministry of Supply was discovered using a radio illegally in Caldy, Cheshire) resulted in Frost’s receiving an obsequious letter of apology by a Post Office official.

Lastly, a section of the report on B3E gives a glimpse of how MI5 was at some stage strengthened by the arrival of personnel from RSS. In a report titled ‘Liaison with R.S.S. Mobile Units’, the author confirms that MI5 was deploying a parallel organisation. “For this purpose,’ the report runs, ‘in addition to the main D/F stations belonging to R.S.S., there was a Mobile Unit Organisation with 4 bases, namely Barnet, Bristol, Gateshead and Belfast. At each base were station cars fitted with direction-finding apparatus for the search after the fixed D/F Stations had defined the approximate area in which it was thought the agent’s transmitter was situated. It was the duty of B.3.E. to co-operate with R.S.S. Mobile Unit Section at all times and, if necessary, supply an officer to accompany the units on any operation which might take place in the U.K.” Such cases came two ways: through RSS interception, and from MI5 evidence. The MI5 officers on whom liaison duty evolved were all ex-RSS employees.

This is a strange account, for, if B3E was indeed not established until January 1944 (as Harrison asserts), the threat of detection of domestic illicit wireless agents (the ‘purpose’ referred to above) was at that time negligible. Is this another example of grandstanding, in this instance by Sclater? By now, the primary and consuming focus was to on the challenges of mobile units in Europe, on ‘the Second Front’, as Liddell and all irritatingly continued to call it, echoing Stalin’s propaganda. Illegal transmissions would continue to be an irritant, as HW 34/18 displays, but they would occur when the war was virtually over, and then won, such as in foreign embassies. One entry from December 20, 1945 even states that ‘Much useful information was passed on to Discrimination as a result of further transmissions from the Soviet Embassy, only 100 yards from Colonel Sclater’s home, from where the MU detachment worked.’ The fact that those who are entrusted with the task of writing the history may distort it to their own benefit is once again a possibility.

The Management of RSS

Was Maltby unfairly maligned by Trevor-Roper? The historian’s experiences in dealing with the Controller of the RSS are, it appears, a rare impression. Trevor-Roper’s waspish comments about members of the military whom he encountered during the war may not be entirely fair: he accused Gambier-Parry of ‘maintaining a fleet of Packards’ at Whaddon , without indicating that it had been acquired in order to provide mobile units equipped with wireless to accompany the major command headquarters of the Army with capabilities for Ultra intelligence to be distributed. It is true that the seventy or so 1940 Packard Coupes included three that Gambier-Parry reserved for himself, Maltby and Lord Sandhurst, as Geoffrey Pidgeon’s Secret Wireless War informs us. When the first models were shipped out to North Africa, they were however found to be unsuitable for off-road use, and in 1943 the equipment was installed in existing army vehicles instead. This perhaps echoed the unfortunate experiences of wireless equipment that could not survive parachute jumps.

An equipped RSS Packard in Alexandria

Yet Pidgeon’s fascinating compendium does provide some other hints to Maltby’s character and prowess. He was apparently not the sharpest technical officer, and relied largely on Bob Hornby: the episode of his travelling to Latvia to coach embassy staff (cited by Nigel West in GCHQ) is confirmed by Philip J. Davies, in MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, but does not reflect well on his technical competence.  Davies states that Maltby made a ‘cameo appearance’ in the memoir by Leslie Nicholson, the Passport Control Officer (cover for SIS) in Riga, which was confirmed by Kenneth Benton, Nicholson’s deputy. Pidgeon describes how the ace technician, Arthur ‘Spuggy’ Newton, made several trips to Europe before and during the war to install two-way wireless links. Between 1938 and the end of 1941 he was constantly travelling, and one of these assignments involved Nuremberg, Prague, Warsaw, Tallinn, Helsinki and Stockholm. It is probable that Riga was another capital he visited, although one John Darwin was also involved. Maltby may have toured Europe after Newton, checking on the field networks. Pat Hawker recorded how Maltby was more ‘in his element’ showing VIPS around the premises at Whaddon, and Pidgeon claims that Arkley (the headquarters of RSS), ‘although nominally under Maltby, was actually run on a daily basis by Kenneth Morton-Evans’, his deputy.

Maltby was generally not popular. At one stage there were three candidates in the running for the position as Gambier-Parry’s second-in-command, Maltby, Micky Jourdain, and John Darwin. On June 6, 1939, Darwin wrote that he took Maltby out to lunch, writing: “I think we will get on well together but if I am to be Gambier’s second-in-command, it is going to be a trifle difficult.” Pidgeon states that harmony between all three deputies did not last.  Squabbling between Gambier-Parry’s wife and Mrs. Jourdain broke out openly, with the result that Jourdain had to be transferred.  Darwin was in fact mortally ill, and had to leave the unit in January 1940, so Maltby rose by default to his post as Gambier-Parry’s deputy.

After Maltby’s appointment as chief of RSS, Lord Sandhurst, who had been responsible for assembling the troupe of Voluntary Interceptors, indicated he disapproved of Maltby’s appointment as Controller of RSS. Pat Hawker, one of the VIs, wrote the following: “‘Sandy’ was no longer in a position directly to influence RSS policy; indeed both he and particularly his wife had little affection for [Colonel] Ted Maltby who had been made Controller, RSS by Gambier-Parry. Unlike most of the original Section VIII senior personnel, Maltby had not come from Philco (GB) but had been chief salesman to a leading London hi-fi and recording firm well used to ingratiating himself with his customers and superiors.” It is perhaps surprising how the wives were integral to the career prospects of such officers, and there may be some disdain for commerce behind these opinions, but the indications are that Maltby was better at public relations than he was in intelligence matters or leadership.

He left a remarkable legacy, however. The National Archives file at HW 34/30 offers a record of all Maltby’s staff meetings from 1941 to 1944. The first noteworthy aspect of this is that the minutes exist – that a highly secret unit would perform the bureaucratic task of recording discussions and decisions made. The second is the manner in which Maltby went about it. He was clearly a lover of protocol, and believed that his primary job was recording decisions made in order to improve communications, and the understanding of responsibilities by his staff. Moreover, each meeting is numbered, so the record can be seen to be complete. (No meetings were held in 1944 until after D-Day, which is a solid signal that security was tightened up everywhere.)

The first meeting of the Senior Officers’ Conference was held on September 29, 1941, and sessions were held each Tuesday in Maltby’s office at Barnet. The initial intent was to hold meetings weekly: this apparently turned out to be excessive, and the frequency diminished, with intervals of up to several weeks, on occasion, but each meeting was still numbered sequentially. Maltby’s obsession with recording every detail shows an organizing mind, but also betrays that he really did not distinguish between the highly important and the trivial: thus the ordering of gumboots for the mobile unit personnel in Thurso, Scotland, the construction of womens’ lavatories, the ordering of photocopying equipment, and the precise renaming of Trevor-Roper’s unit as 3/V/w/ are given exactly the same prominence as the major problem of trying to make the Post Office deliver the secure lines required for communication between Hanslope and Whaddon. Maltby is not one who can make things happen behind the scenes: he likes to delegate, but does not intervene when tasks cannot be accomplished on time, which probably frustrated many of his team. Lord Sandhurst, for instance, was an active participant for the first few months, but left to take up a senior post elsewhere in SIS by the end of 1941.

The authorised historian (whoever that will be) will do proper justice to these minutes, and maybe they will be transcribed and published one day. I here simply extract and analyse a few items that touch the question of the detection of illicit wireless in the United Kingdom, and shed light on Maltby’s management style. One sees glimpses of the recognition that a more disciplined approach to classifying suspicious traffic was needed. Hence a meeting of November 9, 1941 focuses on the matter of General Search, ‘to ensure that any new and unidentified signal shall be heard and reported’. The VI, ‘having found a new transmission he should continue to watch it whenever heard, until his initial report has been returned with instructions.’ ‘Normally signals such as (i) a known R.S.S. Service. (ii) Army, Navy and Airforce traffic of all nations. (iii) known commercial stations. (iv) transmissions previously reported but identified as unwanted by R.S.S. are not suspicious. But the V.I. should bear in mind that an illicit signal might be an imitation of (i) or (iii).’ The effort is considered tedious, but very important. Yet the issue is left dangling, and it was behaviour like that which must have frustrated Frost and Liddell in MI5. (This analysis was picked up by Morton Evans in the report mentioned earlier.)

What puzzles me is that a complete register of known approved and official transmitters of wireless messages, with their schedules, callsigns, frequencies, patterns, etc., was not compiled at the outset. (This was a problem that Sclater had identified, noting in his report that at the beginning of the war, ‘MI5 had no official knowledge of many organisations using transmitters: Experimental Stations of the Ministry of Supply, Ministry of Aircraft Production, Police, Fire Brigade, Railways, in addition to all the G.P.O. and Cable and Wireless Stations.’ Sclater estimated a thousand transmitters in operation, excluding the supply ministries and the services.) A forceful leader would have overcome the security objections that would no doubt have been raised, and accomplished such a project, thus making it much easier to detect signals that were not covered by the register. And if an earlier motion had been made in demanding the improvement of Army Signals Security, the troublesome matter of alien transmissions imitating Army procedures could have been forestalled. Indolence in that area led to the departure of Sclater to work on the problem for the Intelligence Board, and then MI5.

Another example involves Major Keen, the acknowledged worldwide expert on direction-finding.  At a meeting on October 7, 1942 (Number 26), under the line item ‘VHF – DF Equipment’, it is recorded: “Major Keen reported that he had been in touch with Marconis regarding the delivery of this equipment, and had found that the holdup was not due to non-availability of vibrator units but to the fact that Marconis were prone to concentrate on the orders of those who badgered them most.” The Controller (always identified as such) responded in less than helpful terms: “The Controller suggested that Major Keen should apply pressure to expedite delivery and that, if necessary, he would himself call and see Admiral Grant. It was decided that he would not do this until Major Keen had made further efforts to expedite delivery.” Major Keen was not suited to such work, and it was inefficient to make further demands on him in this role: the matter should have been sorted out at the Gambier-Parry level.

The file is replete with such gems. My conclusion is that Trevor-Roper was probably justified in describing Maltby as he did. He was unsuitable in the post, and resembled an Evelyn Waugh figure from Men at Arms, promoted above his due by the fortunes of war, and the fact that Gambier-Parry seemingly found his company congenial. Moreover, I can find no reference to Major Sclater, Worlledge’s adjutant. The minutes of the first few meetings include the ‘Deputy Controller’ as one of the attendees, and since most of them were Majors, one might expect Sclater to have been on the team in that function. Yet the indication is that Lt.-Colonel Lacey filled that role, as his name appears in the minutes, but he is not identified separately as attending. (In 1942, Major Morton Evans would become Deputy Controller: after the war, he joined MI5, and would work in B Division, as his name appears as ‘B2B’ in the Foote archive. At some stage, in 1950 or later, he was appointed Security Adviser to the Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell, since Nigel West states that, when Liddell retired, he replaced Morton Evans in that role.) As former adjutant, Sclater may have been listed as ‘C/ i/c Administration’, with access to the minutes, but not invited to the conference. Further investigations may show us the facts, but, in any case, one cannot see Sclater lasting long under Maltby’s leadership. Worlledge had resigned, or been forced to move out, in the summer of 1941, and maybe Sclater soon followed him.

The Double-Cross Operation

A few important activities have come to light in a perusal of KV 3/96 and 3/97, HW 40/90, KV 4/213 and KV 3/27.

A decryption of Abwehr traffic from August 13, 1940, made on September 20, indicated that General Feldmarschall Milch had reported that thirty spies were then in training to be sent to the United Kingdom. Soon afterwards, Vivian of SIS informed Dick White (assistant director of B Division) that the Germans claimed to have efficient agents in many British harbour towns who were supplying information on shipping movements. This advice may have alarmed White, but it was probably unreliable. Vivian was able to provide much more useful information in December, when an agent in Budapest telegraphed that the Germans were planning to insert several Sudetenland Germans into the country under the guise of being Czech refugees. This confirmed the German policy of not sending German nationals as part of the LENA spies, as their cover stories would not hold up so well, and the Nazis may have judged non-German natives might well escape the direst prosecution of ‘working for the enemy’.

Another item shows that DMI Davidson was learning – slowly.  KV 4/213 provides great insights into MI5’s thoughts as to how the double agents should be most effectively used, and indicates that after the threat of invasion had passed, and plans for using them for deception proposes to support OVERLORD were not yet relevant, there was much discussion as how they might be sued for propaganda purposes. (It was not until July 1942 that operational plans were advanced enough for the double-agents to be considered suitable for deception purposes.) After one meeting in mid-February, 1941, when Masterman had been educating members of government about the project, he added a fascinating observation to his memorandum to his boss: “D.M.I. asked me after the meeting whether R.S.S. picked up the messages of our agents. He made the point that, if they did not, it was an alarming criticism of their efficiency and utility. If, however, they did, it was equally alarming, because our messages would then be known to a large number of people, including many of the voluntary interceptors.”

Davidson was groping towards an important truth. As Masterman pointed out to him (although the record shows that Masterman himself was not really familiar with the details, since he admitted that he was not sure how often RSS picked up their messages). ‘it would be difficult for the voluntary interceptors to decode the messages.’ In fact it would have been impossible, owing to skills and time pressures, but, the major point was that, if RSS could pick them up, then certainly German Intelligence Services would have been able to. That was the perpetual dilemma that MI5 had to deal with throughout the war.

Lastly, KV 4/27, outlining the achievements of B3B, contains some rich accounts both of Illicit Wireless activity investigated by MI5 from 1939-1945, as well as the duties that the unit assumed in liaising with B1A in controlling double agents, based on interceptions reported from RSS. The former report is worthy of deeper analysis another time, but the author reported that about 2,400 incidents were investigated during the course of the war, and some were of B1A double-agents whose activity had raised suspicions by housewives, window-cleaners, etc. R. L. Hughes, B4 in August 1946, included the following paragraphs, when describing how he kept RSS informed of what B1A’s agents were doing: “B.3.B maintained records of no less than 14 agents who came into this category. The work involved reporting back to B.1.A.the results of R.S.S. monitoring of any suspicious stations noted and was undoubtedly of value to both parties. Full details of these cases concerned will be found in the B.1.A. records referring to ZIGZAG, TATE, ROVER, SNIPER, BRUTUS, FATHER, MUTT & JEFF, SPRINGBOK, TRICYCLE, DRAGONFLY, MORIBUND, GARBO, IMMORTAL and MOONBEAM.” Rather mournfully, he added: “The B.3.B. papers concerning these activities have been destroyed.” The list is fascinating, as little is known about ROVER or MOONBEAM (apparently based in Canada), and I have not come across IMMORTAL or MORIBUND before.

Conclusions

In January, 1946, Sir Samuel Findlater Stewart wrote a report on the achievements of RSS, with recommendations for its future disposition (see FO 1093/484). His DNB entry states that, during the war he had been ‘chairman of the Home Defence Executive and chief civil staff officer (designate) to the commander-in-chief, Home Forces. He was also appointed chairman of the Anglo-American co-ordinating committee set up to deal with the logistic problems of the establishment of the United States forces in Britain, and ‘played a significant part during this period in dealing with the problems of security’. Findlater Stewart also had to approve the information to be passed on by the double agents of the XX Operation. He was thus in all ways in an excellent position to assess the mission and contribution of RSS. I shall return to Findlater Stewart’s report in my final chapter, and merely highlight a few of his observations here.

The report is drafted with typical civil servant vagueness, with heavy use of the passive voice. The author does, however, indicate that it had originally (when?) been intended (by whom?) that the RSS should report to Menzies’s Communications Section, because of the natural affinity between the latter’s establishment of secret radio communications, and the RSS’s need to detect them, but that Swinton wanted to wait until Section VIII had matured. Findlater Stewart then went on to write: “The new system attempted a much greater precision. It started from the proposition that the basis of an efficient service must be as complete an identification of all the traffic capable of being received in this country. When this had been done the task of identifying illicit transmission would be simplified, because almost automatically the suspect station would be thrown up as one which did not fit into the pattern of licit transmissions the Service had drawn.”

This is, to me, an astonishing misrepresentation of the problem and the response. Apart from crediting too much to the level of systematization achieved, the emphasis on reception in the UK, rather than transmission from it, betrays a lack of understanding of the challenge. To assert that all traffic from around the world that was perceptible by monitoring stations in the UK could be catalogued, and sorted into licit and illicit transmissions is ridiculous: the volume was constantly changing, and the notions of ‘licit’ and ‘illicit’ have no meaning on international airwaves. Moreover, many of the UK’s interception (Y) stations were overseas. What might have been possible was the creation of a register of all licit transmitting stations in the UK, so that apparently unapproved stations – once it could be shown that they were operating from UK soil, which almost exclusively required detection of the groundwave – could be investigated. Maybe that was what Findlater Stewart meant, but on this occasion ‘his sound practical judgment of men and things; his capacity to delegate; his economy of the written word’ (DNB) let him down. And even if we grant him license for the occasional muddling of his thoughts, he greatly overstated the discipline of any such system. What he hinted at would have made obvious sense, and it may have been what he was told at Security Executive meetings, but it definitely did not happen that way.

Thus, as the story so far covers events up until the end of 1943, I would make the following conclusions:

  1. Military Intelligence wanted to cast off RSS (MI8c), because of a) the problems of managing civilian staff, b) the struggles in dealing with the General Post Office, and c) the responsibility of a mission for civilian protection. Yet it neglected its responsibility of wireless security in the military. Worlledge and Sclater were champions of the latter, but lost out. Worlledge’s pressing for MI5 after Simpson left, however, was foolish. If Military Intelligence couldn’t solve the GPO supply problem, why did it think MI5 or SIS could do so?
  2. Y (interception) services were surpassingly scattered, among the GPO, RSS (professional stations as well as Voluntary Interceptors), the Army, Navy and Air Force, Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company, and even GCHQ itself. This was probably not an efficient method of organizing the collection of potentially harmful messages and valuable enemy traffic. Simpson’s energies within MI5 and the efforts of the high-level Y investigation in 1940 appeared to proceed in parallel, without any cross-fertilisation. The new Y Committee, set up in 1941, was not an effective force. The VIs were allowed to drift into concentrating more on Abwehr signals, and the domestic threat was not approached in a disciplined fashion. Gambier-Parry’s and Vivian’s repeated denials of responsibility for interception are very provocative in their disingenuousness. (Even such an accomplished historian as David Kenyon has been swept into this misconception: in his 2019 book, Bletchley Park and D-Day, he describes RSS as ‘a body tasked with the interception of Abwehr wireless traffic’.)
  3. RSS was weakly led, but it did not receive much direction –  not from Maltby, not from Gambier-Parry (whose preferences were more in design of equipment), not from Menzies (who, according to JIC chairman Cavendish-Bentinck, would not have survived for more than a year had it not been for GC&CS), not from the JIC, not from the General Staff, and certainly not from the Foreign Office or the Home Office. Findlater Stewart of the Security Executive was confused, as was Davidson, the Director of Military Intelligence.
  4. Gambier-Parry’s Section VIII did some things very well (the secure distribution of ULTRA), but others not so well (manufacturing of equipment for SIS and SOE agents, and providing mobile units to accompany the army).
  5. Signals Security did not appear to be the responsibility of Section VIII or RSS, but it took an ex-RSS adjutant, working independently for the Intelligence Board, and then for MI5, to get matters straightened out. A History of Signals Security needs to be written: not just RSS (but other Y), not just GC&CS, not just SIS (where Jeffery fails). It would analyse MI5, SIS, including RSS & GC&CS, the armed forces, the GPO, the BBC, the JIC, the General Staff and Military Intelligence, the Foreign Office and Governments-in-exile.
  6. The practice of domestic illicit wireless was never tackled properly, especially when it came to a disciplined approach of tracking it down. What mobile units were supposed to achieve was never defined, and they remained a gesture of competence, frequently inventive, but too sparse and too remote to be a rapid task-force. Fortunately, they were never really required.
  7. MI5 was caught in a Morton’s Fork over its double agents, but got away with it. It desperately did not want them to be casually discovered, and the whole secret to come out in public. It wanted RSS to be able to detect their transmissions, even when they were masked as official military signals, as it was important that MI5 became aware of any unknown German agents who had infiltrated the country’s defences, and were transmitting back to Germany. Yet, if RSS did indeed pick up and discern these transmissions, it meant that the Germans might in turn be expected to wonder why its agents were so remarkably able to broadcast for so long undetected.
  8. There was a tendency, once the war was won, to praise every section enthusiastically. The RSS VIs did well, and so did GCHQ, but SIS and Section VIII had a very mixed track-record, and the Double Cross operation was exaggeratedly praised. A remarkable number of persons and officers were unsuited to their jobs, and, despite the coolness with which the authorised histories describe events, the conventional array of jealousies, feuds, ambitions, rivalries and even blunders exerted a large influence on proceedings.

The last chapter of the saga will describe the events of the first six months of 1944, when the FORTITUDE deception campaign led to the successful invasion of Normandy.

This month’s Commonplace entries can be found here.

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Border Crossings: Coldspur & Stalin

NIHIL ARCANUM MIHI ALIENUM EST

Immigration Problems

One of the most stressful days of my life occurred at the end of July 1980. I had been spending the previous few months commuting between the UK and the USA, courtesy of Freddy Laker, spending three weeks in Connecticut before a break of a week at home in Coulsdon with Sylvia and the infant James, and then flying back to the USA for another sojourn. For some months, we had been trying to sell the house, while I looked for a place to live in Norwalk, CT., and began to learn about US customs, banking practices, documentary requirements for applying for a mortgage, etc. etc.. Meanwhile, I started implementing the changes to the Technical Services division of the software company I was working for, believing that some new methods in the procedures for testing and improving the product with field enhancements, as well as in the communications with the worldwide offices and distributors, were necessary. Sylvia successfully sold the house. I had to arrange for our possessions to be transported and stored, and decide when and how we should eventually leave the UK. On the last decision, Sylvia and I decided that using the QEII for the relocation would be a sound choice, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, perhaps, and one that would be less stressful for the three of us. We thought we would stay in the USA for a few years before returning home.

And then, three days before we were due to sail, I discovered that our visas had still not come through. I had been told by my boss (the CEO of the company) that an attorney who specialised in such matters would apply for an L-1 visa (a training visa, of limited duration), and that it would later be upgraded to a resident alien’s visa. I had met the attorney, and given him all the details, and he had promised me that I would be able to pick it up at the American Embassy in London. But when I went there, the officials knew nothing about it. Some frantic phone-calls across the Atlantic followed, and I was eventually able to pick up the visas the day before we left Southampton. Such was the panic that I cannot recall how we travelled from home to Southampton, or how we packed for the week’s cruise with a ten-month old son, but we made it. The cruise itself turned out to have its own nightmares, as my wallet was stolen (probably by a professional pickpocket who funded his trips by such activities), and I spent the last three days on the ship desperately looking for it, since it contained my driving licence (necessary for applying for a US driver’s license), as well as a few other vital items. It was not a comfortable start to our new life.

Fortunately, we still had our passports and visas intact. We were picked up in New York, and I was able to show Sylvia her new house (which, of course, she had never seen before). If she had any qualms, she was very diplomatic in suppressing them. We settled in: the neighbours were kind. They were Jews originally from Galicia, Bill and Lorraine Landesberg. I recall that Bill named ‘Lemberg’ as his place of birth – what is now known as Lvov, in Ukraine. (Incidentally, I recall a school colleague named Roy Lemberger. I conclude now that his forefathers must have moved from Lemberg some generations before in order for his ancestor to be given the name ‘the man from Lemberg’.) I suspect that the Landesbergs found us a bit exotic, even quaint.

I recall also that my boss had encouraged me to rent, not buy (‘Interest rates will come down in a couple of years’), but I had thought that he was probably trying to cut down on relocation expenses. That conclusion was solidified by another incident. During the summer, he had succeeded in selling his outfit to a local timesharing company (‘timesharing’ being what was not called ‘cloud computing’ at the time). I obtained a copy of the parent company’s Personnel Policies, and discovered that it offered a more generous overseas relocation allowance, and presented my findings to my boss. He was taken by surprise, and somewhat crestfallen, as he knew nothing of the policy, and the expenses had to come out of his budget.

In any case, this windfall helped with the acquisition of new appliances, required because of the voltage change. I must have applied for a re-issue of my UK licence, and soon we acquired two cars. We chose General Motors models, a decision that my colleagues at work also found quaint, as they were buying German or Swedish automobiles, and stated that no-one would buy an American car those days. Gradually, we found a pace and rhythm to life, a reliable baby-sitter, and the changes I had made at the company seemed to have been received well – especially by the support personnel I had left behind in Europe. My parents were coming out to visit us that Christmas.

Indeed, I was next recommended (by my predecessor) to host and speak at the key product Users’ Group being held that autumn/fall. I later learned that relationships between the company management and the Users’ Group were very strained, because of failed promises and indifferent support, and I was thus a useful replacement to address the group – a fresh face, with a British accent, an expert in the product, with no corporate baggage. I thus quite eagerly accepted the assignment, prepared my speeches, and set out for Toronto, where the meeting was being held. It all went very well: the group seemed to appreciate the changes I was making, and I was able to offer several tips on how to diagnose the system expertly, and improve its performance.

Thus I made my way back through Toronto airport with some glow and feeling of success. Until I approached the US customs post, after check-in. There I was told that I was not going to be allowed to re-enter the United States, as I was in possession of an L-1 visa, and as such, had committed an offence in leaving the country, and could not be re-admitted. (My visa had not been checked on leaving the US, or on entry to Canada, where my British passport would have been adequate.) I was marched off to a small room to await my fate. Again, the experience must have been so traumatic that I don’t recall the details, but I believe that I pleaded, and used my selling skills, to the effect that it had all been a harmless mistake, and Canada was really part of the North-American-GB alliance, and it wouldn’t happen again, and it was not my fault, but that of my employer, and I had a young family awaiting me, so please let me through. The outcome was that a sympathetic officer eventually let me off with an admonishment, but I could not help but conclude that a tougher individual might not have been so indulgent. What was the alternative? To have put me in a hotel, awaiting a judicial inquiry? This could not have been the first time such a mistake occurred, but maybe they didn’t want to deal with the paperwork. And I looked and sounded harmless, I suppose.

I eventually acquired the much cherished ‘Green Card’, which gave me permanent resident status, and the ability to change jobs. (That became important soon afterwards, but that is another story.) This was an arduous process, with more interviews, forms to fill out, travelling to remote offices to wait in line before being interrogated by grumpy immigration officials. Many years later, we repeated the process when we applied for citizenship. It was something we should have done before James reached eighteen, as he had to go through the process as well on reaching that age. One reason for the delay was that, for a period in the 1990s, adopting US citizenship meant a careful rejection of any other allegiance, and we were not yet prepared to abandon out UK nationality. At the end of the decade, however, we were allowed to retain both, so long as we declared our primary allegiance to the USA. (Julia was born here, so is a true American citizen, as she constantly reminds us.) More questions, visits to Hartford, CT., citizenship tests on the US constitution and history, and then the final ceremony. I noticed a change: when I returned from a visit abroad, and went through the ‘US Citizens’ line, the customs official would look at my passport, smile and say ‘Welcome Home’.

Illegal Immigration

All this serves as a lengthy introduction to my main theme: what is it about ‘illegal immigration’ that the Democratic Party does not understand? I know that I am not alone in thinking, as someone who has been through the whole process of gaining citizenship, that such a firm endorsement of an illegal act is subversive of the notion of law, and the judicial process itself. When, at one of the early Democratic Presidential Candidate debates held on television, all the speakers called not only for ‘open borders’ but also for providing free healthcare to all illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers, I was aghast. Did they really think that was a vote-winner, or were they all simply parading their compassionate consciences on their sleeves, hoping to pick up the ‘progressive’ or the ‘Hispanic’ vote? For many congresspersons seem to believe that all ‘Hispanics’ must be in favour of allowing unrestricted entry to their brethren and sisterhood attempting to come here from ‘Latin’ America. (Let us put aside for now the whole nonsense of what ‘Hispanic’ or ‘Latino’ means, in relation to those inhabitants of Mexico and South America who speak Quechua, Aymara, Nahuatl, Zapotec, German, Portuguese, etc. etc.) Many ‘Hispanic’ citizens who are here legally likewise resent the entitlements that others from south of the border claim, suggesting that it is somehow their ‘right’ to cross the border illegally, and set up home somewhere in the USA. There should either be a firmer effort to enforce the law, as it is, or to change it.

Moreover, the problem is by no means exclusively one of illegal immigration. It concerns authorized visitors with temporary visas who outstay their welcome. Almost half of the undocumented immigrants in the USA entered the country with a visa, passed inspection at the airport (probably), and then remained. According to figures compiled by the Center for Migration Studies, ‘of the roughly 3.5. million undocumented immigrants who entered the country between 2010 and 2017, 65% arrived with full permission stamped in their passports.’ The government departments responsible can apparently not identify or track such persons. I read this week that an estimated 1.5 million illegal immigrants reside in Britain.

The problem of mass migration, of refugees, of asylum-seekers affects most of the world, in an environment where asylum was conceived as a process affecting the occasional dissident or victim of persecution, not thousands trying to escape from poverty or gang violence. But we do not hear of throngs of people trying to enter Russia, China, or Venezuela. It is always the liberal democracies. Yet even the most open and generous societies are feeling the strain, as the struggles of EU countries trying to seal their borders shows. It is not a question of being ‘Pro’ or ‘Anti’ immigration, but more a recognition that the process of assimilation has to be more gradual. A country has to take control of its own immigration policy.

I was reminded that this cannot be made an issue of morality, instead of political pragmatism, when I recently read the obituary of the Japanese Sadako Ogata, the first woman to lead the U.N. Refugee Agency. She was quoted as saying: “I am not saying Japan should accept all of them [people escaping from Syria]. But if Japan doesn’t open a door for people with particular reasons and needs, it’s against human rights.” The statement contained the essence of the dilemma: Ogata recognised presumably inalienable human ‘rights’ to move from one country to another, but then immediately qualified it by suggesting that only ‘particular reasons and needs’ could justify their acceptance. And who is to decide, therefore, which reasons and needs are legitimate? Not an Open Borders policy, but some form of judicial investigation, presumably.

. . . and Healthcare

The Democratic candidates then compounded their confusion by their demonstration of ‘compassion’ for claiming that they would allow such illegal immigrants free access to healthcare. Now here is another controversial example of the clash between ‘rights’ and pragmatism. Heaven knows, the healthcare ‘system’ in this country is defective and ‘broken’, but then I suspect that it is in any other country where, alternatively, medical treatment is largely controlled by the state. I read last week that Britain’s National Health Service has 100,000 vacancies, and that 4.4 million persons are now on waiting lists. (We have the antithesis of the problem over here. While a patient needing a knee-replacement has to wait six months or more in the UK, when I was referred to a knee specialist a few months ago, within ten minutes, without even calling for an MRI, the doctor recommended, because of arthritis showing up on X-Rays, that I needed a knee-replacement, and, before you could say ‘Denis Compton’, he would probably have fitted me in for the operation the following week if I had pursued it. His prosperity relies on his doing as many operations as possible. I am successfully undertaking more conservative treatments. Moreover, the American insurance system is littered with incidents where insurance companies pay absurd sums for processes that never happened.) France, I read, is having similar problems as the UK: is Finland the current model for how welfare and enterprise coexist successively? Maybe we should all migrate to Finland.

‘Medicare for all’. Apart from the fact that such a program is estimated by its champions to cost about $30 trillion over the next ten years, where will all the doctors and medical practitioners come from to satisfy the new demands? Will they be raided from ‘developing’ nations, who would surely ill afford the loss? Again, this matter is often represented as an ‘entitlement’ issue, one of ‘basic human rights’.  Consider what the UN says. Article 25 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that ‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.’ Well, one can regret the obviously sexist language here – what about ‘every person and his or her wife or husband, and members of their blended or rainbow family, including members of the LGBQT community’ – but let that pass. It also did not state that subscribing nations should appoint a Minister for Loneliness. This was 1948, after all.

Reflect also on what the Declaration does not say: “Every individual should have access to healthcare, including the ability to gain, in a matter of four weeks, an appointment with a reputable gastro-enterologist whose practice is within twenty miles of where he or she lives.” “Every individual has the right to be treated by a qualified shaman who can recite the appropriate incantations over the invalid for an affordable fee.” “Every individual has the right to decline approved immunization processes for their children out of religious conviction.” I do not make these points as a frivolous interjection, but again to point out how the provision of healthcare in any country has to be based on pragmatics and economics, and will often clash with religious opposition and superstitions.

It is bewildering how many of the electorate in the USA appear to have swallowed the financial projections of Senators Warren and Sanders for their expansive plans. To suggest that such money can be raised by taxing what are mostly illiquid assets, and that such government programs could presumably be permanently funded by the continuance of such policies, is economic madness. Some commentators have pointed out that wealthy individuals would find ways of avoiding such confiscation, yet I have noticed very little analysis of the effect on asset prices themselves in a continued forced sale. The value of many assets cannot be determined until they are sold; they would have to be sold in order to raise cash for tax purposes; if they are to be sold, there have to be cash-owning buyers available; if a buyers’ market evolves, asset values will decline. (One renowned economist suggested that the government could accept stocks and shares, for instance, and then sell them on the open market  . .  . . !) The unintended consequences in the areas of business investment and pension values would be extraordinary. Yet the Democratic extremists are now claiming that such a transfer of wealth will provoke economic growth, quickly forgetting the lessons of a hundred years of socialism, and also, incidentally, undermining what some of them declare concerning the deceleration of climate change.

In summary, we are approaching an election year with a Democratic Party desperate to oust Donald Trump, but in disarray. The candidates for Presidential nominee are a combination of the hopelessly idealistic, the superannuated and confused, and the economically illiterate. I believe that those who stress the principles of Open Borders and a revolutionary Medicare for All program seriously misjudge the mood and inclinations of what I suppose has to be called ‘Middle America’. But now Michael Bloomberg has stepped into the ring. As [identity alert] ‘an Independent of libertarian convictions with no particular axe to grind’, I have found it practically impossible to vote for either a Republican or a Democratic Presidential candidate since being granted the vote, but here comes someone of proven leadership quality, a pragmatist (for the most part), and one who has changed his political affiliations – just like Winston Churchill. In a recent interview, he described himself as ‘a social liberal, fiscal moderate, who is basically nonpartisan’. I could vote for him. But Michael – you will be 78 next February! Another old fogey, like Biden and Sanders! Why didn’t you stand four years ago?

The Kremlin Letters

‘The Kremlin Letters’

I started this bulletin by referring to experiences from thirty-nine years ago, and conclude by describing events thirty-nine years before that, in 1941. This month I started reading The Kremlin Letters, subtitled Stalin’s Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt, edited by David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov, which was published last year. It is proving to be an engrossing compilation, since it exploits some previously undisclosed Russian archives. The Acknowledgements inform readers that ‘a carefully researched Russian text was revised and rewritten for an Anglophone audience’. The core material is therefore what historians prefer to base their interpretations on – original source documents, the authenticity and accuracy of which can probably not be denied. A blurb by Gabriel Gorodetsky on the cover, moreover, makes the challenging assertion that the book ‘rewrites the history of the war as we knew it.’ ‘We’? I wondered to whom he was referring in that evasive and vaguely identified group.

Did it live up to the challenge? A crucial part of the editing process is providing context and background to the subjects covered in the letters. After reading only one chapter, I started to have my doubts about the accuracy of the whole process. David Reynolds is a very accomplished historian: I very much enjoyed his In Command of History, which analysed Winston Churchill’s questionable process of writing history as well as making it. I must confess to finding some of Reynolds’s judgments in The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century a little dubious, as he seemed (for example) to understate what I saw as many of Stalin’s crimes.

What caught my attention was a reference to the Diaries of Ivan Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador in London for much of WWII. I have previously explained that I think Maisky’s Diaries are unreliable as a record of what actually transpired in his conversations with Churchill and Eden, in particular, and regretted the fact that certain historians (such as Andrew Roberts) have grabbed on to the very same Gabriel Gorodetsky’s edition of the Diaries (2015) as a vital new resource in interpreting the evolution of Anglo-Soviet relations. (see https://coldspur.com/guy-liddell-a-re-assessment/) Now David Reynolds appears to have joined the throng. Is this another mutual admiration society?

The controversy (as I see it) starts with Stalin’s initial letter to Churchill, dated July 18, 1941, a few weeks after Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany), following Churchill’s two messages of support communicated via Ambassador Cripps. Stalin’s message included the following paragraph:

“It is easy to imagine that the position of the German forces would have been many times more favourable had the Soviet troops had to face the attack of the German forces not in the region of Kishinev, Lwow, Brest, Kaunas and Viborg, but in the region of Odessa, Kamenets Podolski, Minsk and the environs of Leningrad”. He cleverly indicated the change of borders without referring to the now embarrassing phenomenon of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. (Stalin then went on to request, absurdly and impertinently, that Great Britain establish ‘fronts’ against Germany in northern France and the Arctic.)

What is this geographical lesson about? Reynolds introduces the letter by writing: “And he sought to justify the USSR’s westward expansion in 1939 under the Nazi-Soviet Pact as a life-saver in 1941, because it had given the Red Army more space within which to contain Hitler’s ‘sudden attack’.” My reaction, however, was that, while Stalin wanted to move very quickly on justifying the borders defined by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, his military analysis for Churchill’s benefit was poppycock. For what had been a strong defensive border built up during the 1930s, known as the Stalin Line, had effectively been dismantled, and was being replaced by the Molotov Line, which existed as a result of aggressive tactics, namely the shared carve-up of Poland and the Baltic States by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. (See diagrams below. In all the historical atlases I possess, I have not been able to find a single map that shows the Stalin and Molotov Lines, and the intervening territory, clearly, and have thus taken a chart from Read’s and Fisher’s Deadly Embrace, which does not include the border with Finland, extended it, and added the locations Stalin listed.)

The Stalin Line
The Molotov Line
The Area Between the Stalin Line and the Molotov Line

I was confident, from my reading of the histories, that the Soviet Union’s annexation of the limitrophe states (as Hitler himself referred to them) had weakened the country’s ability to defend itself. After all, if the ‘buffer’ states’ that Stalin had invaded (under the guise of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) had been allowed to remain relatively undisturbed, Hitler’s invasion of them on the way to Russia in the spring of 1941 would have warned the Soviet Union that Hitler was encroaching on the Soviet Union’s ‘sphere of influence’ and that its traditional, internationally recognised border would soon be under attack. ‘More space’ was not a benefit, in other words. Thus the analysis of this period must address how seriously Stalin believed that forcing the buffer states to come under the control of the Soviet army would impede a possible invasion (which Stalin expressly still feared) rather than facilitate it. Reynolds does not enter this debate.

Ambassador Maisky delivered this message from Stalin to Churchill at Chequers. Reynolds then echoes from Maisky’s diary the fact that Churchill was very pleased at receiving this ‘personal message’, and then goes on to cite Maisky’s impression of Churchill’s reaction to the border claims. “Churchill also expressed diplomatic approval of Stalin’s defence of shifting Soviet borders west in 1939-40: ‘Quite right! I’ve always understood and sought to justify the policy of “limited expansion” which Stalin has pursued in the last two years’.”

Now, my first reaction was that Churchill, as a military historian and as a politician, could surely not have expressed such opinions. I seemed to recall that he had been highly critical of both the Nazi invasion of Poland as well as the Soviet Union’s cruel takeover of the Baltic States, where it had terrorized and executed thousands, as well as its disastrous war against Finland in the winter of 1940. (Lithuania was initially assigned to Germany, according to the Pact, but was later transferred to the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence.) Churchill must also have known that dismantling a strong defensive wall, and trying to establish a new one, under pressure, in countries where Stalin had menaced and antagonised the local citizenry, would have been a disastrous mistake as preparation for the onslaught that Hitler had long before advertised in Mein Kampf. Did he really make that statement to Maisky? Had these assertions of Maisky’s been confirmed from other sources?

Then I turned the page to read Churchill’s response to Stalin, dated July 20. Here was the evidence in black and white: “I fully realise the military advantage you have gained by forcing the enemy to deploy and engage on forward Western fronts, thus exhausting the force of his initial effort.” This was astonishing! What was Churchill thinking? Either I was completely wrong in my recollection of how historians had interpreted the events of Barbarossa, or Churchill had been woefully ignorant of what was going on, and insensitive to the implications of his message, or the British Prime Minister had been tactfully concealing his real beliefs about the annexations in an attempt to curry favour with Generalissimo Stalin. Which was it? In any case, he was shamelessly and gratuitously expressing to Stalin approval of the brutal invasion of the territory of sovereign states, the cause he had gone to war over. Churchill’s message consisted of an unnecessary and cynical response to Stalin’s gambit, which must have caused many recriminations in negotiations later on. As for ‘exhausting the force of his initial effort’, Churchill was clutching at Stalin’s straws. Where was the evidence?

I decided to look up evidence from sources in my private library to start with. First, Maisky’s Diaries. Indeed, the details are there. Maisky indicates that he translated (and typed up) the message himself, and that, since he told Anthony Eden that it dealt with ‘military-strategic issues’, the Foreign Secretary did not request that he be in attendance when it was read. Maisky adds that ‘the prime minister started reading the communiqué ‘slowly, attentively, now and then consulting a geographical map that was close at hand’. (Those placenames would certainly have not been intimately familiar.) Maisky singles out, rather implausibly, Churchill’s reaction to the ‘expansion’ policy. When Churchill had finished reading the message, however, Maisky asked him what he thought of it, and Churchill ‘replied that first he had to consult HQ’. One thus wonders whether he would have given anything away so enthusiastically in mid-stream, and why he would have concentrated on the geographical details when the substance of the message related to more critical matters.

What other records of this visit exist? I turned to John Colville’s Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries,1939-1955. Colville records the meeting, albeit briefly. “At tea-time the Soviet Ambassador arrived, bringing a telegram for the P.M. from Stalin who asks for diversions in various places by English forces. It is hard for the Russians to understand how unprepared we still are to take the offensive. I was present while the P.M. explained the whole situation very clearly to poor, uninformed Maisky.”  Maisky records Churchill’s protestations about the futility of trying to invade mainland Europe without admitting his own miserable ignorance: Colville makes no reference to the exchange over the Baltic States.

Did Churchill or Eden make any relevant observation at this time? I have only my notes from Eden’s The Reckoning, which refer to Maisky’s demands for the Second Front, but indicate nothing about the Baltic States at this time. (The matter would surface ominously later in the year, when joint ‘war aims’ were discussed.). I own only the abridgment of Churchill’s war memoirs, which contains no description of the meeting with Maisky. And what about the biographies? The Last Lion, by William Manchester and Paul Reid, while spending several paragraphs on Stalin’s demands for a second front, makes no mention of the telegram and the Maisky meeting, or the contentious issue of Soviet borders. Roy Jenkins’s Churchill is of little use: ‘Maisky’ appears only once in the Index, and there are no entries for ‘Barbarossa’ or ‘Baltic States’. I shall have to make a visit to the UNCW Library in the New Year, in order to check the details.

Next, the military aspects of the case. Roger Moorhouse, in The Devil’s Alliance, provides a recent, in-depth assessment. “Since the mid-1920s, the USSR had been constructing a network of defenses along its western border: the ukreplinnye raiony, or ‘fortified areas,’ known colloquially as the ‘Stalin Line.’ However, with the addition of the territories gained in collaboration with the Germans in 1939 and 1940, those incomplete defenses now lay some three hundred or so kilometers east of the new Soviet frontier. Consequently, in the summer of 1940, a new network of defenses was begun further west, snaking through the newly gained territories from Telŝiai in Lithuania, via eastern Poland, to the mouth of the Danube in Bessarabia. It would later be unofficially named the ‘Molotov Line’.” These were the two boundaries to which Stalin referred, obliquely, in his telegram.

Moorhouse explains how the Soviets were overwhelmed in the first days of the invasion, partly because of Stalin’s insistence that his forces do nothing to ‘provoke’ Hitler, but also because his airfields and troops were massively exposed. “After two days, the capital of the Lithuanian Soviet Republic, Vilnius, fell to the Germans; a week after that, the Latvian capital, Riga, the Byelorussian capital, Minsk, and the western Ukrainian city of L’vov (the former Polish Lwów) had also fallen. By that time, some German units had already advanced over 250 miles from their starting position. Already, almost all the lands gained under the pact had been lost.” The Red Air Force had been annihilated on the ground, with thousands of aircraft destroyed because they sat in airfield in rows, unprotected and unguarded. “Facing the full force of the blitzkrieg, the Red Army was in disarray, with surviving troops often fleeing eastward alongside columns of similarly leaderless refugees. In some cases, officers attempting to stem the panic and restore order were shot by their own troops.”

This account is echoed by Antony Beevor, in The Second World War: “The Red Army had been caught almost completely unprepared. In the months before the invasion, the Soviet leader had forced it to advance from the Stalin Line inside the old frontier and establish a forward defence along the Molotov-Ribbentrop border. Not enough had been done to prepare the new positions, despite Zhukhov’s energetic attempts. Less than half of the strongpoints had any heavy weapons. Artillery regiments lacked their tractors, which had been sent to help with the harvest. And Soviet aviation was caught on the ground, its aircraft lined up in rows, presenting easy targets for the Luftwaffe’s pre-emptive strikes on sixty-six airfields. Some 1,800 fighters and bombers were said to have been destroyed on the first day of the attack, the majority on the ground. The Luftwaffe lost just thirty-five aircraft.” Michael Burleigh, in his outstanding Moral Combat, reinforces the notion of Soviet disarray: “On 22 June three million troops, 3,350 tanks, 71.146 artillery pieces and 2,713 aircraft unleashed a storm of destruction on an opponent whose defences were in total disarray, and whose forces were deployed far forward in line with a doctrinaire belief in immediate counter-attack.”

Yet I struggled to find detailed analysis of the effect of the moved defensive line in accounts of the battles. Christer Bergstrom’s Operation Barbarossa 1941: Hitler Against Stalin, offers a detailed account of the makeup of the opposing forces, and the outcomes of the initial dogfights and assaults, but no analysis on the effect on communications and supply lines that the extended frontier caused. Certainly, owing to persecutions of local populations, the Soviet armies and airforce were operating under hostile local conditions, but it is difficult to judge how inferior the Soviet Union’s response was because of the quality of the outposts defending the frontier, as opposed to, say, the fact that the military’s officers had been largely executed during the Great Purge. The Soviet airfields were massively exposed because German reconnaissance planes were allowed to penetrate deep into the newly-gained territory to take photographs – something they surely would not have been permitted to perform beyond the traditional boundaries. On the other hand, I have found no evidence that the Soviet Union was better able to defend itself in Operation Barbarossa because of the movement of its western border, as Stalin claimed in his telegram.

I have also started to inspect biographies of Stalin. Dmitri Volkogonov’s Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (1998, English translation 1991) is quick to list several causes for the disaster of Barbarossa: Stalin’s hubris in wanting to restore the old imperial borders too quickly, the lack of attention to defensive strategies, the fact that, in January 1941, General Zhukov recommended unsuccessfully that the ‘unfavourable system of fortified districts’ be moved back 100 kilometres from the new border, the overall zeal in meeting production quotas resulting in too many defective aircraft, and high crash rates, and their poor protection on exposed airfields. But while criticising Stalin, Volkogonov appears the inveterate Communist, claiming equivocally that  ‘while the moral aspect of the annexation of the Baltic states was distinctly negative, the act itself was a positive [sic!] one’, that ‘the overwhelming majority of the Baltic population were favourable to their countries’ incorporation into the Soviet Union in August 1940’, and even that ‘the decision to take over Western Ukraine and Byelorussia  . . . was broadly in accord with the desire of the local working class population’. These statements are highly controversial, and further study is called for. Meanwhile, Marshall Zhukov in his Memoirs (1969) offers a mostly propagandist account of the tribulations of 1941, but does provide the scandalous information that German saboteurs had cut the telegraph cables in all of the Western Frontier Districts, and that most units had no radio back-up facilities.

How did Churchill’s attitudes over the Baltic States evolve over time? Anthony Read’s and David Fisher’s Deadly Embrace contains an indication of Churchill’s early opinions cited from the latter’s Gathering Storm: “The British people  . . . have a right, in conjunction with the French Republic, to call upon Poland not to place obstacles in the way of a common cause. Not only must the full co-operation of Russia be accepted, but the three Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, must also be brought into the association  . .  There is no means of maintaining an eastern front against Nazi aggression without the active aid of Russia. Russian interests are deeply concerned in preventing Herr Hitler’s designs on Eastern Europe.” Yet that was said in April 1939, well before the pact was signed. Churchill at that time was surely not considering that the Baltic States had to be occupied by the Soviet Union in order to provide a bulwark against the Germans. In any case, the States (and Poland) were more in fear of the Bolsheviks than they were of the Nazis.

I turned to Robert Rhodes James’s edition of his speeches, Churchill Speaks 1897-1963, and was rather astonished by what I found. On October 1, 1939, after war had been declared, and after the dismemberment of Poland, Churchill referred to ‘Russia’s’ interests without referring to the fate of the Baltic States. “What is the second event of this first month? It is, of course, the assertion of the power of Russia. Russia has pursued a cold policy of self-interest. We could have wished that the Russian armies should be standing on their present line as the friends and allies of Poland instead of as invaders. But that the Russian armies should stand on the line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace.” A highly inflammatory and cynical opinion expressed by the future Prime Minister, who quickly turned his attention to the Balkans in his ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’ oration.

A few months later, Churchill picked up his analysis with commentary on the Finnish war, where the Soviet invasion (part of the exercise to create a buffer zone between Leningrad and hostile forces) had provoked a robust reaction in Britain, and even calls to send troops to help the Finns. Again, Churchill evinced more rhetoric than substance. “Only Finland – superb, nay sublime – in the jaws of peril – Finland shows what fine men can do. The service rendered by Finland to mankind is magnificent. They have exposed, for all to see, the military incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red Air Force. Many illusions about Soviet Russia have been dispelled in these fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle. Everyone can see how Communism rots the soul of a nation: how it makes it abject and hungry in peace, and proves it base and abominable in war. We cannot tell what the fate of Finland may be, but no more mournful spectacle could be presented to what is left to civilized mankind than this splendid Northern race should be at last worn down and reduced to servitude by the dull brutish force of overwhelming numbers.” Well, it surely did not take the invasion of Finland to show how a nation subjugated by Communism could be ruined, as the famines of the Ukraine and Stalin’s Gulag had showed.

On March 30, 1940, Churchill was again critical of the two totalitarian states. “What a frightful fate has overtaken Poland! Here was a community of nearly thirty-five millions of people, with all the organization of a modern government, and all the traditions of an ancient state, which in a few weeks was dashed out of civilized existence to become an incoherent multitude of tortured and starving men, women and children, ground beneath the heel of two rival forms of withering and blasting tyranny.” Indeed, sir. Yet Churchill could be remarkably selective in identifying the places suffering under extremist cruelty: Britain was at war with Germany, not with the Soviet Union, and he would come to soften his criticism of Stalin’s variety of tyranny.

For the year after his appointment as Prime Minister, Churchill was concentrated primarily on the war in western Europe, and the threats of invasion, and his speeches reflect those concerns. All that time, however, he was welcoming the time when the Soviet Union would be forced to join the Allies. In February, 1941, he reminded his audience that Hitler was already at the Black Sea, and that he ‘might tear great provinces out of Russia.’ In April, he said that the war ‘may spread eastward to Turkey and Russia’, and that ‘the Huns may lay their hands for a time upon the granaries of the Ukraine and the oil-wells of the Caucasus.” By this time he was warning Stalin of the coming German invasion, advice that the dictator chose to ignore.

When the invasion occurred, Churchill immediately declared his support for the Soviet Union. This was the occasion (June 22, 1941) when he professed that ‘no one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the past twenty-five years’. But then he dipped into his most sentimental and cloying prose: “I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. [Actually, not. Millions of peasants had been killed and persecuted by Stalin, whether by famine or deportation. Their fields had been disastrously collectivised.] I see them guarding their homes where mothers and wives pray – ah yes, for there are times when all pray – for the safety of their loved ones, the return of their bread-winner, of their champion, of their protector. I see the ten thousand villages of Russia, where the means of existence was wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens laugh and children play.”

This is all romantic tosh, of course. Stalin had so monstrously oppressed his own citizens and those in the countries he invaded that the Nazis, from Estonia to Ukraine, were initially welcomed as liberators by thousands who had seen family members shot or incarcerated, simply because they were bourgeois or ‘rich peasants’, who had seen their churches destroyed and their faith oppressed, and who had experienced their independent livelihood being crushed. As Christopher Bellamy writes, in the Oxford Companion to Military History. “The next biggest contribution [to Soviet victory] was made by Hitler, who failed to recognize the importance of the fact that his armies were initially greeted as liberators in Belorussia and the Ukraine.” Some maidens did indeed start laughing when the Germans arrived, as Georgio Geddes’s extraordinary account of Ukraine in 1941 to 1943, Nichivó: Life, Love and Death on the Russian Front, informs us.

Moorhouse and others have written of the dreadful purges and deportations that took place after the Soviets invaded the Baltic States, and the portion of Poland awarded to it through the Pact. From The Devils’ Alliance, again: “In the former Polish eastern regions, annexed by Stalin in 1939, at least 40,000 prisoners – Poles, Ukrainians, Byelorusians, and Jews – were confined in overcrowded NKVD prisons by June 1941. As elsewhere, some were released or evacuated, but around half would not survive. The worst massacres were in L’vov, where around 3,500 prisoners were killed across three prison sites, and at Lutsk (the former Polish Ĺuck), where 2,000 were murdered. But almost every NKVD prison or outpost saw a similar action – from Sambor (600 killed) to Czortkov (Czortków) (890), from Tarnopol (574) to Dubno (550).” Moorhouse continues: “Latvia had scarcely any history of anti-Semitism prior to the trauma of 1939 to 1941; it had even been a destination for some Jews fleeing the Third Reich, including Russian-born scholar Simon Dubnow. Yet, in 1941 and beyond, it became the scene – like its Baltic neighbors – of some of the most hideous atrocities, in which local units, such as the infamous Arajs Kommando, played a significant role. It seems that the Soviet occupation – with its informers, collaborators, denunciators, and persecutions – had so poisoned already fragile community relations that, even without Nazi encouragement, some sort of bloody reckoning became inevitable.”

These facts were all revealed with the benefit of hindsight, and access to archives. I need to inspect diplomatic and intelligence reports to determine exactly how much Churchill knew of these atrocities at the time. After all, the deportation and execution of thousands of Polish ‘class enemies’ was concealed from Western eyes, and the Katyn massacre of April-May 1940 remained a secret until April 1943, to the extent that Stalin claimed that the Germans were responsible. By then, his British and American allies were too craven to challenge him, even though they knew the truth. Yet Churchill’s previous comments showed he was under no illusions about Soviet persecution of even nominal opposition. If ‘communism rots the soul of a nation’, it presumably rotted the Baltic States, too.

I started this exercise in the belief that I would be uncovering further mendacity by Maisky, and soon reached the stage where I was astonished at Churchill’s obsequious response to Stalin. Stalin laid a trap for Churchill, and he walked right into it. One cannot ascribe his appeasement of Stalin solely to his desire to encourage the Soviet leader to continue the fight against Hitler, and his need to rally the British public behind a regime that he had condemned for so long. Churchill acted meanly, impulsively, and independently. In his recent biography of Churchill, Andrew Roberts writes: “Churchill announced this full-scale alliance with Soviet Russia after minimal consultation with his colleagues. Even Eden had precious little input into the decision. Nor had he consulted the Russians themselves. Over dinner at Chequers that evening Eden and Cranborne argued from the Tory point of view that the alliance ‘should be confined to the pure military aspect, as politically Russia was as bad as Germany and half the country would object to being associated with her too closely’. Yet Churchill’s view ‘was that Russia was now at war; innocent peasants were being slaughtered; and that we should forget about Soviet systems or the Comintern and extend our hand to fellow human beings in distress’. Colville recalled that this argument ‘was extremely vehement’.” He does not mention whether anyone brought up the fact that Stalin himself was responsible for the deaths of millions of peasants in his own homeland.

Throughout, Churchill showed as much disdain for the fate of the Baltic States as Chamberlain had done over the rape of Czechoslovakia. I believe that it is a topic that cries out for re-assessment. Churchill certainly did not know the extent of the disaster in the Soviet Union’s defences in July 1941, but, knowing so little, he did not need to go overboard in agreeing with Stalin’s claims. We thus have to face the possibilities: either a) Churchill knew all along about the cruelty of Soviet oppression in the areas between the Stalin Line and the Molotov Line, and chose to suppress them in his desire to rally Stalin to the cause of fighting Hitler, or b) he had managed to remain ignorant of what persecutions were occurring in these buffer states, sandwiched between the infernal machines of Nazism and Bolshevism. And, whichever explanation is correct, he omitted to explain why he, a military man, believed that the Soviet Union had managed to contain better the onslaught of the Nazi war machine by choosing to defend remote boundaries created in a campaign of aggression.

It is hard to accept the second thesis. The famous cartoon by Low, published in Punch in September 1939, where Hitler and Stalin rendezvous over dead bodies, with Hitler saying ‘The scum of the earth, I believe?’, and Stalin responding ‘The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?’, reflected well the mood and knowledge of the times. In the USA, Sumner Welles was much more hard-nosed about the menace represented by the Soviets. As the excellent Moorhouse again writes: “Nonetheless, in British government circles the idea of de facto recognition of the annexations was soon floated as a possible sop to bring Stalin onside. The American reaction was more principled. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles issued a formal statement – the Welles Declaration – condemning Soviet Aggression and refusing to recognize the legitimacy of Soviet control in the region, citing ‘the rule of reason, of justice and of law,’ without which, he said, ‘civilization itself cannot be preserved.’ In private he was even more forthright, and when the Soviet ambassador, Konstantin Oumansky, opined that the United States should applaud Soviet action in the Baltic, as it meant that the Baltic peoples could enjoy ‘the blessings of liberal and social government,’ his response was withering. ‘The US government,’ Welles explained, ‘sees no difference in principle between the Russian domination of the Baltic peoples and the occupation by Germany of other small European nations.’”

David Low’s Cartoon on the Nazi-Soviet Pact

The research will continue. I believe an opportunity for re-interpretation has been missed, contrary to Gorodetsky’s bubbly endorsement. (And I have read only one chapter of The Kremlin Letters so far. What fresh questions will it provoke?) Can any reader out there point me to a book that carefully dissects the implications of the defence against Barbarossa from the Molotov line, and maybe a study of virtual history that imagines what would have happened had Stalin been able to restrain himself from moving his defensive line westwards? Did Basil Liddell Hart ever write about it? In the meantime, I echo what I wrote about the Appeasement of Stalin a few months ago (see coldspurappeasement), except that I admit that I may have been too generous to Churchill in that piece. What was really going on in his mind, apart from the sentimentality, and the desire to capture some moving sentences in his oratory? It seems to me that Hitler inveigled Stalin into exposing his armies where they would be more vulnerable to his attack, that Stalin hoodwinked Churchill into making a calamitous and unnecessary compliment to Stalin’s generalship, and that Churchill let down the Baltic States by mismanaging Stalin’s expectations.

The last point to be made is to draw parallels with these times. The question of borders is all very poignant in view of current geopolitics. NATO was designed to provide concerted defence against westward extensions of the Soviet Empire. When communism died, NATO’s mission became questionable. Then Putin annexed the Crimea, supported separatists in eastern Ukraine, and this month forged a tight embrace with Belarus. Largely because of the reoccupation by the Soviet Empire after World War II, both Estonia and Latvia have 25% Russian ethnicity. Could Putin, in his desire to ‘make Russia great again’, possibly have designs on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?

I wish all coldspur readers the compliments of the season. I leave for two weeks in Los Altos, CA on December 17.

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A Thanksgiving Round-Up

NIHIL ARCANUM MIHI ALIENUM EST

When I first started planning this bulletin, I had imagined that Sylvia, Julia and I would be leaving North Carolina for California for a couple of weeks over Thanksgiving, departing on November 18, and that I would thus not be able to publish any intensive research this month. We then learned that our son’s new house, being built in Los Altos, would not be occupiable until late November, so we had to postpone our visit until mid-December. The tragic fires in the state have imposed additional stresses on Pacific Gas and Electric, which has accordingly been tardy in installing the power-lines for the house (which involved digging a trench under the road). PG&E may not be the best managed utility in the country, but others’ suffering has been unimaginable, and we must all be patient.

Nevertheless, I decided that I needed a break from the more intensive and exhausting work that a segment like the study of the House of Peierls demanded, and I am using this opportunity to bring readers up-to-date on a number of research projects.

The BBC and Christopher Andrew

One of my most intense recent frustrations has to do with the behaviour of the BBC, specifically the editors of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, and what I have called the ‘grandstanding’ of Sir Christopher Andrew, who is wheeled out by the corporation when it wants to add gravitas to some segment on intelligence. The matter in question concerns an intelligence officer, Eric Roberts, who was informed in 1947 by Guy Liddell of suspicions about a senior MI6 officer’s being a Soviet mole, but was then apparently strongly discouraged from saying anything further in 1949, when he (Roberts) returned from an assignment in Vienna. The easiest way for me to explain the saga here is to reproduce part of the text that I sent to Sarah Sands, the current editor of Today. (She was not Editor when the segment in question was aired, but I would claim that she holds a professional responsibility on behalf of her predecessors.)

“The story was issued by Sanchia Berg on July 14, 2015, and the related Magazine entry can be seen at https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33414358 . It concerns a letter that Eric Roberts, an MI5 field agent, wrote to Harry Lee, an old friend, in the late 1960s. Sir Christopher Andrew is quoted as commenting: ‘It’s the most extraordinary intelligence document I’ve ever seen. It’s 14 pages long – it will keep conspiracy theorists going for another 14 years. It’s a mixture of fact and fiction and the other thought I have is to be desperately sorry for the individual who wrote it.’

Now, I suspect that you will agree that, in order for the ‘conspiracy theorists’ (itself an odd, and disparaging, term for the authorised historian of MI5 to use) to be kept busy, the letter would have to become publicly available for inspection. A research colleague of mine approached Ms. Berg, asking about the letter’s availability. Her reply was evasive, maintaining that, as far as she knew, the family had not published the letter in full, and suggesting we consult ‘Agent Jack’, by Robert Hutton, for possible further extracts. Hutton does indeed quote from Roberts’s letter, but provides no clue as to its whereabouts, and our attempts to contact him on the matter have remained unanswered.

We thus next contacted Professor Andrew himself, and were astonished to receive his reply, by email, part of which ran as follows: “Sorry, I don’t have a clear recollection of this document.” Given the significance that he imparted to the document only four years ago, it seems inexplicable to me that Sir Christopher could have so easily forgotten about it. And, in view of the fact that he is regarded as the doyen of intelligence historians, I believe those of us who toil without such publicity deserve greater consideration than he offers us by what I can only describe as irresponsible behaviour. I know of other prominent researchers in this field who resent Sir Christopher’s constant criticism of anyone whose research into intelligence penetration contradicts his often erroneous conclusions. [I note now that Professor Andrew has not been knighted. coldspur, February 2, 2021]

I wonder, therefore, whether it is timely for you to enter the ring, to contact Sir Christopher about his high-handed behaviour, to ask him to offer the world an explanation, to re-consider using him for such promotional purposes in the future, and perhaps to engage other academics and historians who would provide a more insightful opinion on intelligence matters. Most important of all, however, I should like you and Ms. Berg to provide to the public the letter so vigorously advertised by your programme.”

I sent this letter, both by email and by airmail, on October 9. I never received any acknowledgment, let alone a reply. On October 28, I accordingly sent a letter to both Mohit Bakaya, Controller of Radio 4, and Bob Shennan, Director of BBC Radio, requesting them to intervene and give me a response. Four weeks later, I have heard nothing. Between them, three BBC’s executives trousering annually well over half a million pounds of license fee money from the public cannot organise themselves even to send out an acknowledgment of a letter from a member of the public. True, I am not a license-payer, but BBC promotes its brand strongly overseas, and I am a UK tax-payer. (The BBC website knows where I live from my TCP/IP address, and thus prevents me from viewing recent videos from the cricket coverage, yet it does send me annoying pop-up windows inviting me to participate in a survey. I thus feel entitled to offer the institution my opinions.)

It seems to me that, if Sir Christopher Andrew is too senile to provide continuity and enlightenment in these matters, his contract with the BBC should be terminated. And if he has been muzzled by MI5 because of its discomfort over the revelations, he should disqualify himself from any further involvement since he can no longer provide objective analysis. So what do I do next? Invoke the Curse of Gnome, and appeal to Private Eye? Organise a demonstration in Trafalgar Square? Chain myself to the railings at Broadcasting House? Engage the support of Greta Thunberg?

On November 26th, I decided to try to call Mr Shennan in person. First, I inspected the ‘Contact’ button on the BBC website, but the last thing the BBC wants members of the public to do is actually ‘contact’ any of its precious executives, so you will find no telephone numbers there. ‘Contact’ in BBC-speak means reading the institution’s ‘how to’ guides. By pressing the ‘Complaints’ tab, however, I did find a number to call, in Darlington, with the disturbing rubric ‘charged as geographic numbers’ (I do not know what that means), so I decided to call the main switchboard at Broadcasting House, and asked to be put through to Mr. Brennan. After the operator took down my particulars, so that I could be introduced appropriately to Mr. Brennan’s PA, I was soon talking to that lady. After I explained my mission, she told me that Mr. Brennan has since been promoted. I had noticed that he is now a member of the Executive Board, but wondered, since my letter had also gone to Sarah Sands and Mohit Bakaya, why none of the three could have responded. A positive signal, however – the PA remembered my letter, and had in fact sent it to ‘Audience Services’. I expressed my alarm that, without some person with authority taking responsibility for tracking its progress, my letter might disappear in another Reithian or Birtian labyrinth, and reminded the good woman that, since the BBC had my email address, it did not have to rely on the slow transatlantic postal traffic (a factor she had brought up as a reason for the tardiness in response) to keep me informed of progress. She committed to be that pointperson: we shall see.

Agent Jack

Meanwhile, Robert Hutton’s book about Eric Roberts, Agent Jack, was published this month in the USA, and I received my copy forty years to the day after Anthony Blunt’s pardon was disclosed. (Forty Years On – what a great title for a play!) I immediately turned to the pages where the exchanges between Guy Liddell and Roberts are recorded, and reproduce their contents as follows. Before Roberts left for Austria in 1947 (no specific date offered), on secondment to MI6 (SIS), Liddell ‘hinted that he suspected MI6 might have been penetrated by the Soviets’. On his return in 1949 (‘after just over year’, which suggests a late 1947 departure), dispirited from a fruitless mission trying to inveigle Soviet intelligence to approach him, Roberts talked to Liddell again, looking for career advice. But Liddell ‘changed the subject’, and wanted to know whether Roberts suspected that MI5 had itself been infiltrated by a traitor. He followed up by asking Roberts how he thought MI5 might have been penetrated.

The conversation prompted Roberts to reflect on the time he had confided to Dick Brooman-White, another officer in MI5, that he suspected two MI5 men might be working for the Abwehr. (Infuriatingly, the encounter is undated: all that Hutton writes is ‘not long after he began working for Rothschild’, which suggests early 1941.) One of the men was in Maxwell Knight’s department, and the other was ‘a man with access to some of MI5’s greatest secrets’. At the time, Brooman-White ridiculed his suspicions, saying (with unconscious irony): “You will be suspecting Victor Rothschild next!” According to Andrew Boyle, Brooman-White, who died in 1964, went to his grave firmly believing in Philby’s innocence, so he was perhaps not the best judge of character. Apparently, Roberts did not share this anecdote with Liddell in 1949, but when he suggested to him that the ‘perfect spy’ would ‘be a member of one or two of the most exclusive clubs’, and thus have an unimpeachable reputation, Liddell went very silent, and the conversation came to a close. The two men never spoke again.

(Can traitors be detected by their habits? In an article on John le Carré in the Times Literary Supplement of November 8, the writer of spy fiction Mick Herron recalls that his father, when watching the first scene of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on television in 1979 immediately identified Bill Haydon (as played by Ian Richardson) as the traitor because he entered the room carrying a cup of tea, on which he had balanced a saucer, to prevent spillage. “That’s a strange way of carrying his tea”, said Herron pêre. “I bet he’s the traitor.” P.S. I have never read any of Mick Herron’s books. Mark Amory’s enthusiasm for him in the Spectator’s Books of the Year segment suggests that I should.)

Years later, in 1968, when Roberts had retired to an island off Vancouver, he was visited by Barry Russell Jones of MI5, who presented him with a sealed envelope that contained the name of a man who had confessed to being as Soviet spy four years earlier, ‘in return for a guarantee of anonymity and immunity from prosecution’. The name was, of course, Anthony Blunt, the same person whom Roberts had identified to Brooman-White. As Hutton observes: “He now believed he had got the country for whom the man was spying wrong, but not the identity of the agent.” Blunt had been recruited as Liddell’s personal assistant.

Thus it must have been all too poignant for Liddell in 1949. As attentive readers of Misdefending the Realm will recall, Liddell was very aware of Soviet penetration of MI5, since Blunt – alongside Leo Long – had been discovered stealing secrets during the war, and had been let go with a slap on the wrist and a spot of gardening-leave. And, early in 1949, MI5 was deep in the inquiry into the leakages from the British Embassy, prompted by the VENONA traffic, that would lead to the unmasking of Donald Maclean. Moreover, it was clear that MI5 had been building a file on Kim Philby, whose possible guilt had been strengthened by the mysterious Volkov incident in 1945, and the increase in radio traffic between London and Moscow immediately after Volkov’s attempt to flee to the West. It was all starting to unravel for Liddell. Moreover, it sounds as if MI5 and SIS had performed a deal whereby SIS would stay silent about Blunt if MI5 kept quiet about Philby.

Yet we still do not have the transcripts of the letters that so excited Christopher Andrew. Material to keep the conspiracy theorists active for years? So far just old-fashioned clues, traditional digging at the coalface, and confirmation of cover-ups. In other words, routine business in the world of intelligence.

At the end of the month, I completed my reading of Agent Jack. Robert Hutton has written a very engaging and accessible account, in the style of Ben Macintyre, of a story that needs to be told. But I wonder whether he has missed the larger point. The ‘Fifth Column’ that MI5 encouraged was a fantasy of Victor Rothschild and Guy Liddell, sustained by a blatant provocation exercise. It was dominated by some veritable fruitcakes, and it did contain some potentially dangerous Nazi enthusiasts, including some German nationals who never should have been allowed to work on sensitive weapons programmes where they were able to purloin or copy important material. But neither the Abwehr nor the Wehrmacht ever knew of their existence, and no information passed on to Roberts ever reached Nazi hands. The artificial group was never a true ‘Fifth Column’.

Moreover, the project sheds searching light on the characters and motivation of Liddell and Rothschild. Liddell is again shown to be a man of straw, who allowed matters to drift because he did not want to face the implications of the entrapment: at some stage, MI5 would have to recommend that that the offenders be arrested. But a highly skeptical Home Office would demand that an open trial be carried out, whereupon both the identity of Roberts and the nature of the illegal provocation exercise would come to light. Thus Liddell and Rothschild ignored the obvious, and tried to continue the program even after the war was over as a default from taking any decision at all. Petrie, White and Hollis were all critical of the operation, and wanted it closed down, and the perpetrators prosecuted. But Liddell waffled, and Rothschild temporised, not considering the possible outcomes of a highly controversial provocation game. After the war, Rothschild omitted any mention of the operation in his in-house history of the department.

Rothschild’s motivations must be carefully scrutinised, however. Here was the leader of MI5’s anti-sabotage group (B1c) taking control of what was effectively a counter-espionage project, one that should strictly have been managed by Roger Hollis’s F Division. Moreover, Rothschild maintained separate, highly detailed files of all the several hundred persons who were part of Roberts’s ‘Fifth Column’ organisation. Hutton refers to the accusations made against Rothschild as a Soviet agent – something Rothschild strenuously denied in the Thatcher era, even misguidedly asking the Prime Minister to provide Sabine Lee-esque ‘proof’ that he had not been a spy – and also points out that fact that Rothschild’s crony, Anthony Blunt, turned out to be a dangerous Soviet agent. Yet Hutton never considers investigating whether Rothschild’s motives might have been to distract attention from the Soviet subversive threat, and prepare for his putative Moscow controllers a list of possibly dangerous opponents who would need to be eliminated.

In addition, Hutton, in his focus on the years of the ‘Fifth Column’ investigation, leaves unattended the hare that he scares out of Roberts’s experiences in Vienna, and who might have architected the utter failure of Roberts’s mission. Vienna was in 1947 and 1948 a very dangerous place, and to think that a bank-clerk with a gift for enticement in his own country could somehow star as a potential plant with Soviet intelligence was an exercise in self-delusion. Why would SIS have plucked Roberts from obscurity, and on what pretext would they have had him resident in Vienna? Sanchia Berg reported, citing Roberts’s letter, that he was ‘posing as a disaffected British civil servant and passing low-grade harmless information, to a Communist named Jellinek’, and that he, Roberts, then declined to meet a ‘star agent’ maintained by the SIS station chief, George Kennedy Young. Young revealed to Roberts a few weeks later that his ‘star agent’ turned out to be a Soviet spy, and Roberts credited Liddell’s advice for his evasion of the encounter.

Moreover, if Liddell confided to Roberts that he thought SIS had been penetrated, why on earth would he have encouraged Roberts to be recruited by SIS for a mission the security of which was highly questionable? And why would Roberts have accepted such an assignment in the knowledge that his recruiters contained a mole? It also seems bizarre that Barry Russell Jones would travel all the way to Vancouver to discuss Blunt’s pardon with Roberts. Was that, in itself, not a great security risk, especially if MI5 suspected that Roberts himself was a Soviet agent, as Roberts hinted at in his letter? What else had Roberts done to warrant such attention? Lastly, Young’s replacement in 1950 as station chief in Vienna was one Andrew King, who concealed his communist past from his superiors. Nigel West wrote, in The Friends (p 73), that Philby in 1946 ‘could not have had any illusions about keeping his Party membership concealed, for Andrew King, one of his contemporaries at Cambridge and another rising star in SIS, had attended Party meetings with him at Cambridge.’ Since Philby was stationed in Turkey in 1947, was it perhaps King whom Liddell was warning Roberts about?

There is a lot more to be told here, and I am analyzing it with one of my most supportive and dedicated coldspur colleagues – someone who understands well the mechanics of ‘dangling’ operations.

The House of Peierls

I have received some very positive reactions to last month’s segment on Rudolf Peierls. I was hoping for some challenges, as well, as I believed my piece might arouse some controversy. I had alerted Frank Close and Sabine Lee shortly before it appeared, but heard nothing from either of them. True, I had given up on Ms. Lee (Professor of Modern History and Head of School in History and Cultures at Birmingham University), as it was clear from her last message to me that she was clueless about the process of historical analysis and the establishment of ‘proofs’, but I expected some response from Professor Close. After all, he had been tutored by Peierls, was – and remains – an admirer, is in touch with Peierls family members, and had urgently encouraged me to drop my investigation into Peierls’s libel action. I had occasion to contact Close in the middle of the month with some questions about Bruno Pontecorvo, and asked him, in an aside, whether he had had a chance to read my article.

I was a bit dumbfounded by his response. He said he had ‘skimmed’ it. ‘Skimmed’, eh? That was all. Now, as some of my readers point out to me, my pieces are not easily read superficially. They call for either intense concentration, or icy disdain. Is it not extraordinary that an academic in Frank Close’s shoes, with his biographies of Pontecorvo and Fuchs published, and given Peierls’s close involvement in the affairs of both these men and of Alan Nunn May, would not show more intellectual interest in a piece that tries to evolve our understanding of what was going on in the parallel worlds of British and Soviet physics, and the intelligence subterfuges behind them – especially since Close has so stoutly defended Peierls’s innocence in the whole endeavor? In a way, I am not surprised. I have learned that persons – especially academics – who have found themselves on a lofty pedestal, but who harbour secret fears that they do not really deserve such recognition, frequently display such behaviour. Remarkably, Close and I continue to have cordial email exchanges about other matters of intelligence; yet any discussion of Peierls appears to be off limits. I refuse to consider myself insulted [are you sure? Ed.], and shall continue as if nothing were awry.

I learned from my days as a Gartner Group analyst that companies did not really care much when you got their story or strategy wrong, as in that case they complacently believed that they had hoodwinked you, and what they were up to remained a secret. What really upset them was the realisation that you had worked out the truth. I suspect I may have stumbled on a more accurate account of Peierls’s career, and that Close has been stunned into silence. Moreover, there is an amusing side to this process of ‘skimming’. The point I was asking Close about concerned an FBI document on Pontecorvo from December 1949: he replied that he was not aware of any such document. I pointed out the pages in Half Life where he had discussed it, and I believe he was a little humbled. We shall see what evolves: I should be very interested if any of the Peierls controversy comes up during the Skimmer’s forthcoming book-signing tour for Trinity. I am sure my spies on the ground will keep me informed.

I shall be returning to Peierls’s activities, concentrating on his time in the UK, and his associations with other scientists, especially with Max Born and Klaus Fuchs, in a future coldspur bulletin. As dedicated readers will recall, I analysed the efforts of Peierls and Born to secure Fuchs’s return to the UK from detention in Canada in Misdefending the Realm (pp 216-223), and it would probably be appropriate for me to reproduce that section on coldspur, as a segue to my next piece on Peierls. At the time of writing that segment of my book, I was using notes that I had taken from the Peierls-Born correspondence at the Bodleian. Sadly, I shall not now have access to that resource, or Peierls’s numerous other letters. Sabine Lee’s two volumes of the Peierls Letters (very expensive, poorly edited, and selected very much with a bias towards highly technical scientific exchanges) will be of little use, I fear. Christopher Laucht has written some interesting passages about Peierls’s correspondences in Elemental Germans, but my study will have to rely mostly on other sources until I can return to Oxford some time. I plan for the next chapter to appear on coldspur in February or March of next year.

RSS and the Undetected Radios

I had started gathering my research for the last episode of ‘The Undetected Radios’ when I came across (thanks to the photographic skills of my London-based researcher, Dr. Kevin Jones) some obscure files at the National Archives that covered aspects of the history of the Radio Security Service, as well as others that contained various interrogations of German intelligence officers after the war. While these files did nothing to contradict my main conclusions so far (that the tensions between MI5 and SIS over the RSS were more highly strung than portrayed, that both the RSS and the Abwehr/Funküberwachung greatly misrepresented the strength of their interception and direction-finding capabilities after the war, that agents were in many cases poorly trained and ill- prepared for infiltration into Europe, and were much more frequently discovered by local betrayal than through interception and location-finding, that SOE’s and SIS’ wireless equipment was often defective, that RSS’s general surveillance of illicit transmissions was very lax, and the state of Britain’s mobile-direction finding service feeble, and that the Double-Cross organisation acted very naively in managing its agents’ wireless communications), these archives certainly revealed some valuable new detail on some of the personalities and committees involved. I have thus decided to allocate one more chapter summarizing these findings before I cover the final six months of wireless activity up until D-Day. My current plan is to write this additional report in January of next year.

Maclean and Boyle

Regrettably, there is little to report on the Boyle-Gallienne connection (see https://coldspur.com/two-cambridge-spies-dutch-connections-1/ and https://coldspur.com/the-importance-of-chronology-with-special-reference-to-liddell-philby/ . National Archive files including Gallienne’s reports from Estonia are not revealing, and do not show any links between Soviet Intelligence, Krivitsky, and the ‘Imperial Council’ spy. My following up the rather feeble leads in the Boyle archive led me to an unresolved question about Liddell’s role in leaking information to writers such as Boyle, and an expressed intent to explore the Springhall archive in depth, a project not yet started. So this matter has had to be placed on the back-burner for a while.

Project ‘Hegira’ and the Double-Agents

I have recently been studying some of the lesser-known files at The National Archives. One of these, KV 4/211, was titled ‘Functions and Disposal of Special Agents in Event of Invasion of UK’. Well, that ‘Disposal’ was somewhat alarming, but I learned a fair amount about Project Hegira, which was designed at the beginning of 1941 as a procedure for ensuring that double agents, and other potentially dangerous individuals, would not be allowed to escape and inform the invaders of what MI5 had been up to. The file contains few sparkling revelations, although Hegira was a project that has not received the attention it deserves. You will find no mention of it in Christopher Andrew’s authorised History of MI5, nor in Nigel West’s unauthorised account of the story of the Security Service’s development.

One might have thought that MI5 had more important fish to fry than the safety or security exposures of having double agents ‘fall into the hands of the enemy’, as the introductory letter describes the problem, but, in early 1941, when there were only three named agents, it appeared to be a manageable problem. The fact that the project seemed unworkable was highlighted later by Cyril Mills in a long memorandum of March 25, 1943, when he wrote about the stretch on resources to handle all the agents, especially since Billy Luke had now left B1A. He recommended instead that all agents should be taken to Colonel Stevens’s Camp020 for incarceration, or to its back-up location in the country. But by then, the threat of invasion had receded.

Yet the file betrays some secrets. For those analysts still keen to portray MI5 as some kind of secret police organisation, it may come as a shock to learn that ‘Tar’ Robertson had to apply to the Special Branch to borrow five pairs of handcuffs (as well as pistols, and ammunition) to be used in the event of invasion. These had to be signed for, and duly returned, at the end of 1943, when the threat of an invasion had disappeared. All the letters and receipts are here to be inspected. It is difficult to think of the civil security service of any other country being forced to go through such bureaucratic procedures, and to document it all for posterity, providing evidence that all legal processes were being followed.

The plan was to secrete double agents and other dubious personages in Colwyn Bay, in North Wales, and hotels were identified for their accommodation. I suppose that such locations would have been the last place where the dastardly Nazis would have looked for their ‘Fifth Column’, but perhaps the agents would by then have suffered so much under their strict Methodist landladies that they would have been willing to talk to anyone. (I hasten to add that, despite my experiences with the University of Aberystwyth, I have nothing against what must be called ‘the Welsh Methodist Landlady community’.) But what is highly interesting is the identification of such agents in the memoranda and letters, as the latter reveal important facts about the existence of such persons at different times. Thus, in January 1941, the emphasis is on TATE, SNOW and STORK. Two months later, GANDER and SUMMER are listed. Soon after, reflecting capture of other agents, MUTT and JEFF are added, and, as the year goes on, we see the names of BALLOON and others.

I was familiar with most of these names, even such as VICTOIRE, who was a Frenchwoman of dubious character who had ‘escaped’ to Britain after betraying the Interallié network. She was not an exclusive MI5 ‘double agent’, as her fate – and expense of upkeep – was shared between MI5, SOE and SIS. (I have just finished David Tremain’s epic and encyclopaedic, but ultimately indigestible, Double Agent Victoire: Mathilde Carré and the Interallié Network, which describes a wilderness of subterfuge and double-dealing in French, Polish and British agent networks in France in 1941 and 1942, so I was well-armed.) But other names were puzzling.

Agent STORK, for instance. I could not recall ever reading about a double agent with the cryptonym STORK. Neither West, nor Andrew, nor even Ben Macintyre lists this person in their books. Yet here he was in KV 4/211, described as a Norwegian agent, accompanied by a wife and son, who would need to be evacuated to the fjords of North Wales. I found his name in one place, in Guy Liddell’s Diaries, and Nigel West, in his published version of the same, provides an extract for February 17, 1941, which notes that STORK, ’who has refused to go into his house at Hendon as his wife is going to have a baby’. (Was that the reason for the choice of cryptonym?) But West lists STORK as an MI5 ‘agent’, as if he were a hired hand to spy on domestic institutions like the Communist Party. I have found no record of the real name of STORK, or when and how he landed in the United Kingdom. And his name quickly disappears from the roster. It is all very odd.

Two others of special interest are Reisen (GANDER) and Caroli (SUMMER). Reisen (listed as ‘Riesen’) is mentioned in March 1941, but in all other accounts his name fades away – except for here, where Cyril Mills refers to him in his letter of March 1942! Nigel West just records that Reisen was no longer used after the end of 1940, as he had a transmitter only. Moreover, he was probably not a committed anti-Nazi, and thus potentially dangerous, but the revelation here is astonishing, since the implication is that he has not had to be interned since the time that he was de-activated. SUMMER disappears after March 1941, however, as if he no longer had need to be specially ‘disposed of’ in the event of invasion. Studious readers of coldspur will recall that a far more ominous explanation of SUMMER’s disappearance from the scene has been posited: that he was extrajudicially hanged in prison after his attempt to escape and kill his guard in the process. If that did indeed happen in March 1941 (as some authors have suggested), it would explain why his name was no longer mentioned when the list of agents to be transported to the provinces increased in 1941 and into 1942.

By 1943, the whole operation (now affectionately referred to as ‘Mills’ Circus’, after the member of the Bertram Mills Circus family who worked for MI5 and Robertson, Cyril Mills), was called off. The handcuffs could then be safely returned to a grateful Special Branch.

The ODNB

Following my pointed remarks about the inferior quality of Nigel West’s entry on Guy Liddell in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, I wrote to my contact at the ODNB, pointing her to my coldspur article. She promised that its editors would look into the topic, and get back to me. In what has become a sadly predictable phenomenon, I never heard back. So I thought I should check out the latest versions of the biographies of intelligence officers, physicists and spies, and accordingly spent a couple of hours recently at the University of North Carolina Library in Wilmington, using the on-line access provided, to verify whether any changes had been made.

Sadly, nothing has changed. Liddell’s entry was last updated on May 24, 2008. And I was struck by how unimpressive and incomplete many of the entries were. Dick White (head of MI5 and SIS) was responsible for the entries on Roger Hollis (who succeeded White as head of MI5) and John Sinclair (whom White succeeded as head of SIS). An unimaginative choice. There is no mention of Philby, or how Sinclair protected him, in the latter entry. The entry for Klaus Fuchs is by one Mary Flowers, who coyly refers to a ‘relationship’ at Harwell, but does not identify Erna Skinner. The biographies of Max Born, Nevill Mott, Herbert Fröhlich and Joseph Rotblat are all very bland, and omit any controversial aspects.

What struck me most, however, was that the ODNB carries no entry for Bruno Pontecorvo, the famous Italian-born physicist who defected in 1950, and has been suspected by some of spying for the Soviet Union (a fact which Roy Medvedev confirmed in Let History Judge). Now, the reason for this cannot be nationality: after all, the ODNB finds room for Pyotr Kapitza, the Soviet physicist who spent many years in Cambridge in the 1930s, and even was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1929, but never became a British citizen. Pontecorvo took up British citizenship in 1948, and other proven spies (such as Fuchs) have been awarded entries. I again wrote to my contact at the ODNB, asking for an explanation over this extraordinary omission, but answer came there none.

No doubt the ODNB is struggling with its business model, and finding it difficult to attract thorough and objective writers who know their stuff, and to create a mechanism for updating entries in the light of new research findings. It is all rather sad, but the ODNB is turning out to be little better than Wikipedia – and in some cases inferior. I often have reason to dip into the volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography on my shelf, and am rewarded by the unfailingly fascinating, thorough and elegant (though frequently overdiscreet) accounts of lives – in a recent trawl in the 1961-70 edition, for instance, Cockcroft, Forster, and Eliot – to be found there. The ODNB has sacrificed quality for volume.

Methodology

“The art of writing history is the art of understanding men and events more profoundly than they were understood when they lived and happened.” (Michael Oakeshott)

“The great challenge facing the storyteller and the historian alike is to get inside people’s heads, to stand where they stood and see the world as they saw it, to make some informed estimate of their motives and intentions – and this is precisely where recorded and recordable history cannot reach.” (Michael Frayn, in Postscript to Copenhagen)

One of my most loyal supporters has urged me to publish the chapter on methodology from my thesis. When my editor and I considered how the thesis should be adapted for publication as a book, we agreed that the introductory chapter, which contained some historical background as well as a detailed exposition of my methodology, should be trimmed back. Some of the material was omitted, a brief Preface on methodology was added, while another section was incorporated into Chapter 8 of Misdefending the Realm. I have now thus posted the complete content of the original chapter on coldspur, and it can be found here.

Other Projects

In the longer term, I have a number of other projects that I want to pursue.

  1. The Apostates: One important topic that I believe has not been addressed comprehensively is that of members of the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain) who renounced their membership – or were banned from the party. I am thinking predominantly of such as Frederick Copeman and Humphrey Slater. Did they rebel against Stalinism, but remain communists? Or did some perform a complete volte-face, and suddenly become crusty conservatives? Some became informers – but was the apostasy sometimes a ruse engineered by the Party? And were they in danger? Were their occasionally premature and unusual deaths not accidental? (I think of the fate of Juliet Poyntz and others in America, thrown from high buildings . . . )

Incidentally, I was reminded of the parallels in the USA when I started reading The Millionaire Was a Soviet Mole: The Twisted Life of David Karr, by the estimable Harvey Klehr. A couple of weeks ago, I had noticed a letter in the New York Times Book Review from one Jonathan Brent, who described himself as ‘the visiting Alger Hiss professor of history at Bard College’. I found it hard to believe that a chair would be named after the notorious Soviet spy, but it is true. It was as if a Kim Philby chair in Moral Philosophy had been established at Trinity College, Cambridge. And then I noticed a blurb on the back cover of Klehr’s book from the same Jonathan Brent, here introduced as ‘YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and author of Inside the Stalin Archives’. No mention of the Alger Hiss professorship. Quite understandable, but rather coy, Professor Klehr (Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus of Politics and History at Emory University), but how very odd! For Klehr, along with John Earl Haynes, wrote VENONA: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, the book that confirmed Hiss’s guilt despite the protestations of the Left. Perhaps Mellon and Hiss are designed to cancel each other out, but shouldn’t Klehr have perhaps been more open about Brent’s credentials, and how he liked to describe himself? It would have been an amusing flourish.

2. Chapman Pincher: I have for some time intended to perform a thorough analysis of Chapman Pincher’s Treachery, and the claims he makes about Roger Hollis. Sadly, Pincher’s thesis was fuelled very much by ‘insider’ information, often anonymous, and mostly unverifiable, and some of his claims are openly ridiculous. Others may be confirmed or refuted by more reliable evidence.

3. Alexander Foote & Canada: The enigma of Alexander (Alan) Foote remains, an earthy uneducated countryman who rose to become not only an expert wireless operator (true) but also a skillful negotiator of international banks (highly unlikely). I intend to return to the two different editions of his ghost-written memoir Handbook for Spies, and the extensive archives from Kew, to check out his career – and also those of the mysterious Sedlacek and Roessler. Foote showed a deep interest in the processes of the Canadian Royal Commission into the Gouzenko affair, primarily because of the interrogation of his banking contact there, and the Dallin archive may show up some fresh intelligence. My correspondent via coldspur Greg McNulty has performed some diligent delving into Foote, and I look forward to collaborating with him further on these matters.

4. Pontecorvo and Liverpool University: The case-histories of Herbert Skinner, Klaus Fuchs and Bruno Pontecorvo indicate that Liverpool University was sometimes unwittingly involved in a strange game of academic musical chairs, where positions were to be opened up for the putting out of distressed spies to grass. The integration of archival material from Kew and Churchill College suggests that MI5 learned of Pontecorvo’s communism a few months before it let it be recorded for posterity in Pontecorvo’s files. Once Fuchs was arrested, the prospect of having to park him at Liverpool disappeared, but similar plans to deal with Pontecorvo had antedated even Fuchs’s arrest. All this is complicated by a running feud between John Cockcroft (of AERE Harwell) and James Chadwick (whose chair at Liverpool Skinner filled in a very puzzling sequence of events) over Harwell’s intrusions on the turf of British universities, and its being granted generous capital expenditures. Chadwick was reluctant to leave Liverpool, his staff did not want him to leave, he had good relations with his boss .  . .  and yet he left. Who pushed him, how, and why? One little-known irony of the whole fiasco is that, while Fuchs and Pontecorvo, as potentially dangerous communists, were going to be dumped on to a provincial university where it was assumed that they could do no harm, Nunn May, who was convicted of espionage, was blacklisted by all British universities on his release from prison. A very English arrangement.

5. MI5 & Gouzenko: Another aspect of the Gouzenko case that puzzles me is the way that SIS succeeded in hi-jacking the inquiry away from MI5. Canada was MI5’s territory, and, while posts were sometimes shared between the two services (the MI5 representative happened to be returning to the UK when the story broke), there was no reason for SIS to intercept the communications that came to the Foreign Office in that September of 1945, with the result that Philby heard of it before Liddell and White. This is not a major item of research, more a loose end that needs to be tidied up. Yet Roger Hollis’s subsequent interrogation of Gouzenko is also problematic.

6. Isaiah Berlin in Lisbon: I had left readers in suspense when describing the surely coincidental presence of Isaiah Berlin in Lisbon, in January 1941, at the same time that Sonia was attempting to get her visa papers for the final leg of her journey to Britain. Berlin was characteristically evasive about his movements before and during his stay in Portugal, and the account of his activities on behalf of the Jewish Agency needs to be inspected more closely. I doubt whether any further documentary evidence will turn up, but Henry Hardy has already discovered that contemporary guest records for the period that Berlin stayed at the hotel have gone missing  . . .

7. The Law, ter Braak and Caroli: I believe that the British authorities got themselves into a fearful tangle when they enabled the passing of the Treachery Act in 1940, in an attempt to be able to exploit newer legislation that would address the challenge of prosecuting enemy agents infiltrated into the United Kingdom, without having the embarrassment of a public trial, and the possible security exposure concerning the Double-Cross system. Giselle Jakobs, in her study of her grandfather (executed as one of those spies) The Spy in the Tower, has very capably analysed the unsatisfactory attempt to resolve the dilemma, but my study of archival material suggests to me that the topic is worthy of deeper inspection. This casualness about precision in legal verbiage extended into the Official Secrets Act, and the prosecution and conviction of Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs. I have not looked closely into the literature yet, but I believe justice has not yet been done to the legitimacy of the forces applied to some of these ‘traitors’. I notice that an article on the Treachery Act was published in the Modern Law Review of January 1941 by D. Seaborne Davies. I have ‘skimmed’ this short piece, and shall study it carefully at some later date.

8. The Oxford Ring: I am again not very hopeful, but I believe some tighter analysis of the group of Communists that comprised the counterpart to the Cambridge Spies and the latter’s cohorts is required. Guy Burgess was a link between the two, but MI5’s investigation into the Ring was abandoned when supposed members of it started committing suicide. Nigel West has identified Arthur Wynn as its leader, and archival material is starting to surface that may shed more light on his activities, and his links with other such subversives.

That should keep me busy for a while. And then there are always books coming out that generate fresh controversy. I expect Ben Macintyre’s book on Sonia, planned for publication early next year, will be one such volume . . .  Lastly, I realised that I have not updated my examples of the Hyperbolic Contrast for a couple of years, so the latest entries can be seen here. The newest Commonplace entries appear here. And my December bulletin will be published on or around December 16.

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Special Bulletin: A Letter to Frank Close

Professor Frank Close

Almost two years ago, I contacted the particle physicist Professor Frank Close by email. I had just read his biography of the Soviet atom spy, Bruno Pontecorvo, titled ‘Half Life’, and had some questions about Rudolf Peierls. Peierls had been the mentor of the atom spy Klaus Fuchs, and, in ‘Misdefending the Realm’, I had suggested that Peierls, while not a spy himself, had probably abetted Fuchs in his endeavours, and that the conventionally described career of his wife, Genia, whom he had married in the Soviet Union, was highly questionable. Close had worked under Peierls, and I believed he might have some insights.

What followed was a very thorough, productive, and detailed exchange, lasting several months. Close and I shared a similar doggedness in working through the archives, and were similarly puzzled by the conflicting stories thrown up by the records, and by the memoirs of the participants. Close was researching a book on Fuchs: he was not familiar with my book (which devotes two chapters to Fuchs), so I introduced it to him. I think we both learned from each other, although we had different methods for interpreting the evidence.

Our communications suddenly stopped – outwardly because of Close’s deadlines, but in fact, as I learn now, for reasons that I am not at liberty to divulge. Thus I looked forward to the arrival of his book on Fuchs, ‘Trinity’, with great expectations. When it came out this summer, I sent a message to Close, congratulating him on the event of publication, but he did not respond. I started reading the book with enthusiasm, but, as I progressed, I began to experience disappointment, as the letter below explains. I felt that Close had stepped away from engaging with some of the remaining problematic aspects of Fuchs’s espionage, aspects that I and others (e.g. Mike Rossiter) had explored.

I thus compiled the following message for Close. He responded quickly, and we have since commented creatively on many of the points that I brought up. He is, however, very busy because of the success of his book (lucky man!), and said he could not respond fully for a month or more. I thus let him know about my intention to publish my message on Coldspur, and invited him to offer a placeholder response if he wanted to. I am not sure what the best forum for pursuing these ideas is: Coldspur is all I know. (Any other medium simply takes too long, and has too many hurdles.) At some stage I want to publicise Close’s responses to my questions, and summarise our dialogue, but I shall not post verbatim his messages to me without his permission.

For some reason, Close appears to want to discourage any further discussion on Peierls. I believe the message he wants to leave is what he wrote to me: ‘You perceive some deep mystery or conspiracy and will not take yes for an answer. That is your affair not mine.’ While I hold a very high regard for Close’s dedication and skills, and believe we continue to enjoy a very cordial relationship, I find that an odd response for any historian/biographer who presumably should retain a natural curiosity about his area of interest. In this business, no issue is completely settled. Moreover, I do not see my mission as having to convince Close of anything. I plan to return to the Mysterious Affair at Peierls in a future edition of Coldspur. Meanwhile, here is the unexpurgated text of my message.

(We patiently await the arrival of Dorian. We are sitting it out, hoping that it will not leave us without power as long as Florence did last year.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dear Frank,

I have just read your epic ‘Trinity’. It is an astonishing work, showing very patient and broad research into archival material, well-written, and unique because of the expert knowledge of atomic science that you bring to the table. I congratulate you on it.

I was obviously delighted about the credit that you gave to our electronic discussions, for including ‘Misdefending the Realm’ in your Bibliography, and for the three (as far as I could see) references to my book in your Endnotes. Thank you very much.

In the spirit of historical curiosity, however, I have to add that I was disappointed in some of your interpretations, and alarmed by some of your conclusions. I should have liked to see perhaps less detail on (say) the overheard conversations of Fuchs, the Skinners and the Peierls, and more analysis of what it all meant. It led me to ponder on how you would describe your methodology.  I recall that you wrote to me once that, as a physicist accustomed to the scientific method, you were very reliant on documentary evidence, and reluctant to hypothesize. (“Being trained as a research physicist and not a historian has mixed blessings. It makes me focus obsessively on facts and only give a judgment when the conclusion is beyond doubt. In physics I can do that; in history I prefer to assemble everything I can find first hand and then leave it to the reader to decide what to do with it.” : November 6, 2017)

Have you changed your opinion since then about what your role as scientist/biographer should be? What is your methodology for determining which ‘facts’ are reliable, and which are not? How do you deal with uncertainties? Are the books listed in your Bibliography to be considered utterly dependable? Do you believe that all other biographers of Fuchs would agree with you on the dependability of the documentary evidence? In any case, I do not think you should be surprised if one of your readers takes up the gauntlet of ‘deciding what to do with it’, or if, having presented conclusions yourself that you consider ‘beyond doubt’, you might be challenged by readers who do not share your degree of confidence. The contradictions and paradoxes of evidence in this sphere do not go away simply by being ignored.

I would aver that the archives of the world of ‘intelligence’ are inevitably deceptive, and sometimes deceitful, that ‘facts’ are frequently highly dubious, and that historians have to develop theories of what actually happened from incomplete or conflicting information. If one abandons interpretation to the reader, one ends up being just a chronicler – and maybe a selective one at that – and allowing all manner of theories to flourish. Moreover, in ‘Misdefending the Realm,’ I presented evidence on several subjects that I think is critical to understanding the Fuchs case (e.g. on Rudolf and Genia Peierls, on Radomysler, on Moorehead) that you appear to have overlooked or forgotten. I wonder why that is? My conclusion would be that the ‘definitive’ story about Fuchs (and his mentor Peierls, who is so vital to the analysis), still remains to be written.

So what should be the forum for developing these discussions? I noticed that, on page 458, you write: “Although somewhat peripheral to our primary purpose. I record this in the hope that subsequent investigations might shed light on this episode [Jane Sissmore/Archer’s return to MI5], and Jane Sissmore’s career in general”, indicating a curiosity to extend the research process. I clearly share your interest in Jane, as well as your desire for the exchange of ideas. But I have been frustrated in my attempts to find a mechanism for such explorations to be shared (see my account at ‘Confessions of a Conspiracy Theorist’ at https://coldspur.com/confessions-of-a-conspiracy-theorist/ ), and I do not believe that the Royal Historical Society will come to our rescue. I have thus continued to try to bring www.coldspur.com to a broader audience, and am gratified to receive comments on the subjects I raise from readers (professional and amateur historians, intelligence officers, journalists, enthusiasts) around the world.

In that spirit of continuous discovery, I therefore present a number of topics which I believe are still controversial, and do not appears to have been settled by your study. There is no particular order to these, but I do analyse what I consider the most important first.

  1. The Overall Judgment on Fuchs: I am clearly not competent to express opinions on the matters of Fuchs’s technical expertise. I admit, however, that I was a little puzzled over the paradox that ‘the Most Dangerous Spy in History’, who knew more about the conception and construction of the atom bomb ‘than anyone in the UK’ was really only outstanding in solving mathematical equations. And how did his contribution rank alongside that of Melita Norwood, whom recent evidence indicates was very highly regarded by the KGB? I notice there is no mention of Norwood in your book. I was confused as to how you wanted to define his legacy.

You rightly highlight his ‘treachery’ in the subtitle of ‘Trinity’, but then, on page  418, you refer to the testimony of Lorna Arnold (who, you state, inspired you to perform your research into Fuchs) as follows: “She insisted that he [Fuchs] had not been understood, and that he was an honourable man who stuck by his principles; people might disagree violently with those principles, but there are many who shared them, and to decree what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is a profound question of moral philosophy where the line of neutrality itself moves with the era. For Lorna, Fuchs was man who had yet to receive a fair trial. I hope to have contributed to that.” Were you aware that Lorna Arnold, who was not a physicist, contributed greatly to Margaret Gowing’s Britain and Atomic Energy, which relied for much of the coverage of Fuchs on Alan Moorehead’s mendacious work of public relations commissioned by MI5, The Traitors, instead of inspecting source materials? See ‘Officially Unreliable’ at https://coldspur.com/officially-unreliable/ . Do Arnold’s close association with Peierls and his political aims, and her controversial statements about loyalty and morality, perhaps make her not an entirely objective muse?

While a case could be made that Fuchs’s legal trial was fixed, and the procedures sadly broken, the fact that you seem to want to present evidence in his defence rather counters the notion of the ‘treachery’ of ‘this most dangerous spy in History’ that your title embraces. A further clue might be what you record, without commentary, on page 321: “The answer [to Peierls], which the detective overheard, was that he felt ‘knowledge of atomic research should not be the private property of any one country, but, instead, shared with the world for the benefit of mankind.’” I am not sure what ‘principles’ drive that admission. Fuchs did not share his knowledge of atomic research with the world: he gave it to the Soviet Union, whose mission was to destroy the western liberal world in what it saw as the inevitable clash between capitalism and communism (as Lenin and his adherents erroneously characterized the conflict.) Fuchs, who betrayed his adopted country, and broke the Official Secrets Act, an honourable man? I do not think so.

2. The Timing of Fuchs’s Espionage:  I was a little surprised to read, in Jay Elwes’s review of ‘Trinity’ in The Spectator, that ‘Close suggests that he [Fuchs] offered his services to Moscow even while it was still aligned with Nazi Germany’, as my reaction was that you remained equivocal on this point. Moreover, that was a claim that I had first made in ‘Misdefending the Realm’, one which you rejected in our correspondence (“You write as if it’s established that Fuchs was active during the Soviet-Nazi pact, which is tantalisingly possible as I mentioned in my first email but I have not been able to establish that”: November 11, 2017). I cannot find anything stronger in your text than: “This is, however, an example of Fuchs crafty setting of false trails, as he was in fact spying by the summer of 1941, and possibly even earlier. The date is of more than scholastic concern, for if he began to spy soon after he joined Peierls that would have been in the period when the Soviet Union still had a non-aggression pact with Germany, and was by implication an enemy of the United Kingdom.” (page 63) On page 287, however, you do offer a Note: “It seems that Fuchs was deliberately hiding his 1941 espionage, probably because his initial contacts were made dangerously near to the time when the USSR was allied to Germany – up until June 1941.” I am not sure what ‘dangerously near’ implies, because the issue is surely binary: he either passed on information before Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, or he did not. The fact that Fuchs continually lied about the dates, changing his testimony from ‘1942’ to ‘late 1941’, when the VENONA transcripts prove he was already active by August, and had met with Jürgen Kuczynski (whom he had known earlier) soon after he was recruited by Peierls in April, suggested to me that he passed on to fellow-Communists all he knew about his assignment as soon as possible. As we both agree, it was in the interests of everybody (British, Soviets, Fuchs) to pretend that the betrayal did not happen while the Soviet Union was sharing its pact with Germany. Since there is no ‘proof’, and no unquestionable ‘fact’ for you to rely on, I imagine you would abstain from any judgment, which rather undermines Elwes’s observation. Have you protested it?

3. The Role of Rudolf Peierls: I believe that Peierls, as Fuchs’s mentor and recruiter, is very central to the story. I was thus astonished at the almost hagiographical treatment that you gave him. You make him out to be a victim of the ‘communist witch-hunt’ until 1954 (page 399), and then skate over the Deacon lawsuit, which we discussed at length a couple of years ago. Yet, as ‘Misdefending the Realm’ explains, there is so much more to the Peierls story. I wrote to you then: “I believe there are simply too many incriminating actions or words to conclude that Peierls was innocent of abetting the Soviets. Like most agents of influence, he was very careful not to leave any obvious trails behind (such as purloined documents, or meetings with intermediaries), but a whole list of incidents and anecdotes indicate his guilt.

1) Pressure on him and Genia from OGPU. There was no way a Soviet citizen would be allowed to leave the country, especially marrying a foreigner, without his/her committing to espionage. This was not really blackmail, but threatening the safety of family members unless the person obeyed instructions.

2) Relationship with Gamow. I take it you have read my piece on Wilfred Mann, and Genia’s relationship with him, and Gamow’s deviousness [at  https://coldspur.com/mann-overboard/ ].

3) Peierls’ lies over his return visit to the Soviet Union.

4) Peierls’ deceptive correspondence with Born.

5) Peierls’ pretence that the idea of Fuchs working for him came only when Fuchs had returned from internment, when he had worked with Born to get him released.

6) Genia’s response when Fuchs was arrested.

7) Peierls’ relationship with Kapitsa and the chair at Cambridge.

8) Peierls’ exaggerated response to Deacon (but I may be wrong on this).”

These were just the primary examples. I wonder, have you read Nigel West’s ‘Mortal Crimes’, which develops this theme? I notice it is not in your Bibliography. You also did not refer to the intriguing MI5 file on the service’s suspicions of espionage surrounding Fuchs and Peierls, which was suddenly withdrawn. You informed me that you looked into the Deacon lawsuit in some detail, but omit any analysis in the book: you do not mention Alexander Foote, and what Deacon claimed Foote told him.  I shall say no more about this now, but I think the whole question of Peierls’ possible knowledge of what Fuchs was up to deserves some very detailed analysis.

4. The Role of Genia Peierls: Genia is even more controversial, I believe. I recall that you were sceptical about my claims that the OGPU would have applied pressure to any Soviet citizen allowed to marry a foreigner and escape to the West. That is nevertheless the undeniable fact about how they operated. Yet your account oddly chooses to finesse the whole question of Genia’s marriage, and her background in the Soviet Union. On page 318, when describing Genia’s reaction to Fuchs’s arrest, you write, again without comment: “In Russia, members of Genia’s family had been incarcerated on the whims of the authorities (see chapter 1). News of Fuchs’ arrest renewed nightmares, which now made her afraid that the same might be possible in Britain.” And later you cite the extraordinary statement of Freeman Dyson (page 415) – perhaps not an objective observer:  “For Genia with her long experience of living in fear of the Soviet police, the key to survival was to have friends that one could trust, and the unforgivable sin was betrayal of that trust”.

But Genia did not have a long experience of ‘living in fear of the Soviet police’! She married Rudolf at the age of 22, having lived a protected life as a physicist assistant to the Nobelist Lev Landau, and occasionally frolicking on the knee of George Gamow, another scientist who made a miraculous escape from Soviet Russia. It is true that she may have been put in a very invidious position, with threats concerning her extended family made if she did not meet OGPU’s demands, but misrepresenting her experience, and not giving ‘credit’ to the known and widely repeated practices of Stalin’s intelligence organs, does not perform justice to her story. And her supposed suggestion that Britain’s authorities were about to engage upon ‘whimsical incarcerations’ in the manner of the KGB is simply ridiculous. Was it not the civility of life in the UK that eventually impressed Fuchs? What could Genia have intended with those absurd comments?

And then there is her highly suspicious reaction to the news of Fuchs’s arrest on charges of espionage. If an innocent person, unaware of a friend’s possible treachery, had heard of such an event, my belief would be that that person might exclaim: “How can that be true?” Yet Genia’s first response, as you report on page 318, was: “Good God in Heaven. Who could have done this?”, as if her stupefaction was over who could possibly have shopped Fuchs, not whether he was guilty or not. Her comments to her husband afterwards (that a similar fate might overcome him), and their careful conversations in Russian, suggest an awkwardness that indicates another explanation. In this light, Fuchs’s regretful musings in prison over the betrayal of their friendship could take on another whole meaning. The FBI file on Genia Peierls shows a committed communist: I believe this is another dimension to the story that needs to be studied in more detail.

5. Fuchs’s Confessions to Communism: In a Note on p 41, you write: “The myth that Fuchs announced his communism at the Aliens’ Tribunal in 1941 appears to have been a creation of the writer Rebecca West in 1950 with no basis in fact. Contrary to a widely held misconception, there is no evidence that Fuchs ever admitted to membership or support of the Communist Party, at least in any publicly available document.” I believe this statement is contestable, but, on the other hand, it may not perhaps matter much. For example, as you write on page 284: “Picking up from his tête-à-tête with Arnold, Fuchs talked [to Skardon] about his work for the Communist underground in Germany, and his fight against the Nazis . . .” In addition, the FBI report on the Second Confession (issued October 10, 2014 by the Los Alamos Laboratory) cites that ‘Fuchs stated that he joined the Communist Party of Germany while he was attending the University of Kiel.’ Furthermore, “Fuchs said that he was  considered to be a member of this section of the German Communist Party, and  probably had filled out a biography concerning himself and furnished it to  officials of the German Communist Party sometime after his arrival in England,  because of the fear of the Party that they might be infiltrated by Nazis. Fuchs also said that he was aware that Jürgen Kuczynski was regarded as the head of the underground section of the German Communist Party during this period. Thus there is no doubt that he did not deny his communist beliefs.” Maybe Fuchs made no admission before his arrest, but that is not what you claimed.

What is perhaps more surprising, and worthy of inspection, is why, given his understanding of the value of proper espionage tradecraft (which his contact Harry Gold was not aware of), Fuchs did not conceal his associations with communists and ‘anti-fascist’ activity during his time in Bristol and Birmingham, as this should surely have drawn the attention of the authorities. Max Born and others were clearly aware of it.  But that question leads into the whole discussion of how woolly MI5 was at the time over communist subversion, and the belief it held that dangerous activity would originate only from persons who were actually members of the Communist Party. Fuchs’s leftist persuasions never got in the way of his recruitment to Tube Alloys, and official policy even drifted into that netherworld where he was regarded as a loyal servant because he was a communist.

6. The FBI and McCarthyism: I was disappointed that you fell into the habit of inseparably linking ‘McCarthyist’ with ‘witch-hunts’ in your text, a tired trope of the left. However one may regret the extent that Senator McCarthy pushed his agenda, and disapprove of his personal habits, the fact is that it was the House of Representatives’ Committee on Unamerican Activities that took up the cause, a cause that the State Department tried to stymie. Moreover, while there never was such an entity as ‘witches’, there was a group of communist infiltrators in US government who were loyal to Joseph Stalin. That the hunt was justified is hardly deniable now, especially since the VENONA transcripts have identified many of the traitors for us. (For more analysis, please see https://coldspur.com/soviet-espionage-transatlantic-connections/ )

I was also shocked at the parallels that you implied between the FBI and the NKVD/OGPU/KGB. On page 212 you write: “The Cold War provided a perfect backdrop, even while Hoover’s spying on American citizens was often indistinguishable from the totalitarian regimes he despised.” Really? The Soviet Secret Police exercised a terror on citizens, with powers of immediate arrest without cause, followed by secret shooting, or staged trials followed by ‘judicial’ execution or despatch to the Gulag. Stalin had millions of his own citizens murdered – and was ready to murder his own atomic scientists if the Soviet bomb project failed. How on earth were the actions of Hoover’s FBI ‘indistinguishable’ from those of the Soviet Secret Police? I find your comparison very unfortunate.

7. Herbert and Erna Skinner: This couple remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Is there more to be told about Herbert’s activities? He was ‘of the left’: did he have similar political beliefs as Blackett and Bernal, for example? I was in communication with a distinguished alumnus of Liverpool University last year who told me that the official historian of the University knew nothing about the shenanigans at Harwell: he (the alumnus) was in disbelief when I told him that Fuchs and Erna had been having an affair. And Herbert’s death in Geneva at the comparatively young age of 60 – has that ever been investigated? Rossiter also tells us that Skinner informed Fuchs that someone in MI6 had told him about the Soviet atomic research taking place in Odessa. How was it that Skinner was informed of this? Was this an official briefing – or a leak? Was he alone in receiving this information, and, if so, why? Do you have any opinions?

Another aspect that intrigues me is Fuchs’s revelations to the FBI about the Skinners. In the FBI report that I referenced earlier, this remark about Fuchs, concerning his stay in New York in 1947, appears: “He recalled 111th Street in view of the fact that he remembered that Mrs. H. W. B. Skinner was residing in an apartment on that street.” Later, when Fuchs describes meeting Dr. Cohen, he introduces a seemingly irrelevant detail about a lost hat. “Fuchs said that he left his hat in the restaurant and later requested Cohen pick up the hat and return it to the home of Mrs. [?] Skinner, West 111th Street, in New York City. Fuchs said that this incident did not have anything to do with his espionage activities.”  Erna Skinner was presumably in New York, staying with her father-in-law, since Herbert accompanied Klaus to Washington. (Rossiter states that it was here that Fuchs became more acquainted with Herbert and Erna.) Was the fact that Fuchs identified Erna Skinner as the contact not extraordinary? And, in any case, why would Fuchs gratuitously introduce their names to the FBI at a time when the organisation was strenuously looking for leads on further spies? Would anyone really trust what Fuchs said was connected to his spying activities? It is all very strange. Have you considered this anecdote?

8. Halperin’s Diary: In an endnote to page 376, you refer to my claims about the possible concealment of the evidence from Halperin’s diary, in which the appearance of Fuchs’s name led the FBI to him. Note 14: “MI5 records imply that they first learned of these documents only on 4 October 1949, TNA KV 2/1247, s. 230c. In his critique of MI5, Antony Percy, Misdefending the Realm . . . suggested on page 255 that early references to Halperin were removed from Fuchs’ file and ‘the record edited to make it appear that the FBI had only recently (October 1949] informed MI5 of the discoveries in Halperin’s diary,’ He offers no direct evidence to support this.”

The evidence I used was the letter from Geoffrey Patterson, the MI5 representative in Washington, to Arthur Martin of MI5. I wrote: “The British Embassy letter, dated October 4, 1949, is from a G. T. D. Patterson, addressed to A. S. Martin, Esq., and begins: “With reference to previous correspondence about FUCHS and HEINEMAN I have just received from the FBI some further information about their activities in this country. Much of it you already know, but some is new and I think you will agree of considerable interest.”[i] The next paragraph has been redacted: the letter then starts describing (repeating?) the evidence of Halperin’s address book when he was arrested in February 1946, and it later cites the captured German document compiled in 1941. Paragraph 18, which appears after Patterson’s suggestion that Fuchs and his father are “key GPU and NKVD agents” has also been redacted. The inference is clear: the majority of the information had been given to MI5 some time before. This evidence is conclusive that Archer, Robertson and Serpell were basing their claim on the revelations from Washington in 1946 – intelligence that White and Hollis did not want to accept as valid.”

In our correspondence, I also wrote the following: “In Amy Knight’s ‘How The Cold War Began’, she says that the RCMP told the FBI that they had made the Halperin evidence available to the British. She offers the following reference for the paragraph: NARA, S.3437. Fuchs Case, 882012-359-383. I performed a search on this, but came up with nothing.”

Now this may not meet the requirements of the strictest scientific investigation, but I continue to assert that Patterson’s reference to ‘previous correspondence’ which is not to be found on file is extremely provocative, and should not be dismissed lightly.’

9. MI5 Suspicions of Sonia/Sonya: On page 421, you refer to the fact that MI5 apparently overlooked Sonia as a candidate for espionage. “Sonya – interviewed by Skardon and Serpell in 1947, overlooked by everyone in 1950, and only identified after she had escaped to East Germany.” On page 57, you state that ‘this manoeuvre’ (her acquisition of a passport) was ‘noticed by MI5’. What is your explanation for the inactivity of the Security Service, given the circumstances?

As I believe I have fairly convincingly shown in my on-line articles titled ‘Sonia’s Radio’ (see https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio/ ), senior officers in both MI5 and MI6 were very aware of Sonia’s activity, facilitating her bigamous marriage in Switzerland, her application for a British passport, and her eventual return to the United Kingdom, where they probably kept an eye on her, hoping to surveille her wireless transmissions. Yet lower-level officers were not confided in, and eventually left hanging. Michael Serpell and Hugh Shillito were two officers who doggedly tracked such malfeasants as Sonia and her husband, the Soviet spy Oliver Green, and Fuchs himself. For example, on November 13, 1946, Serpell demanded that the Fuchs case be followed up, and he was the officer who interrogated Alexander Foote in July 1947, before the interview with Sonia. Shillito, in November 1942, had recommended that the Beurtons be prosecuted, and in 1943 he was responsible for the Green case, and wanted him prosecuted. Yet their efforts were quashed – even, I suspect, to the chagrin of David Petrie himself, to whom Serpell was close. I believe this was an internal tension that should not be overlooked.

In addition, I should mention that in two places (pages 57 and 382), you describe Sonia as ‘head of the GRU network’, or ‘GRU station chief”. That is not true. As you accurately state on page 92, she was the leading GRU ‘illegal’ in the country.

10. The Gouzenko Case: On page 376, you remark, in connection with the follow-up to Gouzenko’s disclosures, and Peter Dwyer’s declining to take the Halperin information from the FBI: “ . . . nor, if the FBI account is correct, does it explain why MI6 had failed to act. Whatever the reasons, MI5 was unaware of these aspects of Fuchs’ history.” Yet I believe that there lies another fascinating anomaly in this story. The Gouzenko affair took place on Canadian soil, which was the province of MI5, not MI6. Dwyer was the MI6 representative in Washington, but he took over the case on behalf on MI5 because Cyril Mills, the MI5 Security Liaison Officer for the Service (who had been GARBO’s handler before Tomàs Harris in WWII) was on his way back to the UK – temporarily, according to one account by Nigel West, permanently because of demobilization, as the same author wrote elsewhere. Yet, when Dwyer’s report was sent in to the Foreign Office, it was routed, on September 9, 1945, not to Liddell and Sillitoe in MI5, but to Menzies, the head of MI6, who gave it to Philby to look at. As his Diaries inform us, Liddell learned of the matter from Philby on September 11. Astonishingly, Liddell does not express any protest to Philby that the matter was not the latter’s responsibility, and most written accounts echo the account that Philby was able to manipulate the whole event by not having Jane Archer sent over to investigate, but the pliable Roger Hollis (who did of course work for MI5.) On whose authority was Dwyer acting, if he did indeed decline the FBI’s help, and why was MI5 so timid in this exchange? Why did MI5 have no representative of its own in Washington between August 1945 and February 1948 (when Thistlethwaite arrived)? It is all very puzzling.

11. ‘TAR’ Robertson’s Role: On page 173, when describing Fuchs’s unexpected and (by MI5) unknown return to the United Kingdom in October 1946, you state that Robertson was head of Soviet Counter-Espionage, at B4. I do not think that is true. Christopher Andrew’s authorised history of MI5 is of no use on post-war organisation, but Nigel West, in his account of MI5, states that Robertson was so disgusted with the appointment of Sillitoe (official on May 1) that he immediately resigned. That is clearly not true, as the memoranda signed by Robertson prove. But he was surely not in charge of Soviet counter-espionage, in which he had no expertise. In his biography of Robertson, ‘Gentleman Spymaster’, Geffrey Elliott informs us that, when Dick White returned from Europe to take over B Division, Robertson was put in charge of ‘Production and Coordination of Aids to Investigation, etc.’. In October 1947, it seems that Sillitoe gave him the responsibility for tackling ‘Russian and Russian Satellite Espionage’. Robertson fell out with Sillitoe, however, and in 1948 was given a menial post, as B3, with some responsibility for liaising with Overseas Stations. Robertson retired on August 31, 1948.

12. Philby as Double-Agent: I have spent some considerable time trying to classify properly the notions of spies and double-agents (see ‘Double-Crossing the Soviets’ at https://coldspur.com/double-crossing-the-soviets/ ). I do not expect my terminology to gain widespread adoption (although no one has yet challenged me on it), but I do believe my claim that a person with inimical convictions who signs up for his or her national intelligence service with an intent to betray that service, and the national interest, to a foreign power is not a ‘double-agent’. He is a traitor. A double-agent is an enemy agent who has been arrested and ‘turned’ – either ideologically or through some kind of threat, or via a mechanism of controlling his or her communications apparatus. In several places, you refer to Philby as a ‘notorious double-agent’ (e.g. page 78), and on page 247 you even describe him as ‘the notorious double-traitor’. I do not know what that last term means, but I would continue to suggest that it is inaccurate to call Philby a ‘double-agent’.

13. Liddell’s Marriage and Career: I thought you might be interested to read what I have uncovered about Guy Liddell’s fortunes, inspectable at ‘Guy Liddell: A Reassessment’ (https://coldspur.com/guy-liddell-a-re-assessment/) . Thus what you write about the departure of his wife, Calypso, and the subsequent lawsuit, should be updated.

14. Enemy Status: Maybe I share with you some confusion about how British politicians and lawmakers consider how Britain’s ‘enemies’ should be defined. In the quotation I used earlier, you wrote (page 63): “The date is of more than scholastic concern, for if he began to spy soon after he joined Peierls that would have been in the period when the Soviet Union still had a non-aggression pact with Germany, and was by implication an enemy of the United Kingdom.” And on a Note to page 338, you write: “Russia was at no stage an enemy of the United Kingdom during Fuchs’ Birmingham period but had become so by 1950. Fuchs’ espionage at Harwell, which was on the charge sheet, is consistent with Perrin’s description. [‘potential enemy’]”

Is this not critical to the legal case against Fuchs? If the Soviet Union was ’by implication’ an enemy of the United Kingdom by virtue of its non-aggression pact with Germany, would that have affected the treachery charge? As Fuchs was not yet a citizen, what did that mean? (MI5 had problems during the war because of the inability of current laws to address ‘treachery’ by foreign agents, not part of a military organisation, who had entered Britain illegally, and thus had no predefined loyalty to the country.) But was Russia (the Soviet Union) truly an ‘enemy’ in 1950? War had not been declared (apart from the Cold War, I suppose!), but what validity did ‘potential enemy’ on the charge sheet have? Was giving secrets to any foreign power – which was essentially what the McMahon Act defined – merely enough? 

15. US & UK Espionage: I was intrigued by what you wrote on page 315: “Fuchs was a ’very eminent scientist in his own right’, Souers pointed out, and might have information about the state of British atomic science.’” That suggests that the USA, having recently banned any sharing of atomic research with even its allies, was still interested in staying up-to-date with what its former partner was doing. The corollary of that, of course, is the claim, made by Mike Rossiter and others, that Fuchs was actually spying on the USA on Britain’s behalf. Rossiter writes in his book, ‘The Spy Who Changed the World’, that the documents concerning the latter had been suspiciously removed from the National Archives after he had previously successfully inspected them. If it had been true, I would be surprised that Fuchs did not bring that up with his defence lawyer. Is this something you looked at?

16. Photograph of Sonia: I noticed that the photograph you used came from your ‘personal collection’. May I ask where you acquired this? I scanned the same photograph from my copy of the English version of Sonia’s memoir, and posted it on my website, where it is searchable by Google. Indeed, the editors of two separate biographies of Richard Sorge approached me asking where I had found it, as they wanted to use it in their authors’ books. I have not checked them out yet, but the publisher of Sonia’s memoir came up a blank, and I recommended approaching Sonia’s son.

Thank you for reading this far. I hope you will agree that stepping into what Christopher Andrew calls the ‘Secret World’ involves a lot of murkiness, where matters are not black and white. Most months I write about various unresolved aspects of espionage, counter-espionage and intelligence on my website, and open myself up to questions, criticisms and challenges all the time. I welcome it, as it is an inevitable part of the task of trying to establish the truth. Thus I hope you will accept what I have written in the same spirit.

Very best wishes, Tony.


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A Rootless Cosmopolitan

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A Rootless Cosmopolitan

A few weeks ago, at the bridge table at St. James, I was chatting between rounds, and my opponent happened to say, in response to some light-heated comment I made: ‘Touché!’  Now that immediately made me think of the famous James Thurber cartoon from the New Yorker, and I was surprised to learn that my friend (who has now become my bridge partner at a game elsewhere) was not familiar with this iconic drawing. And then, a few days ago, while at the chiropractor’s premises, I happened to mention to one of the assistants that one of the leg-stretching pieces of equipment looked like something by Rube Goldberg. (For British readers, Goldberg is the American equivalent of W. Heath Robinson.) The assistant looked at me blankly: she had never heard of Goldberg.

James Thurber’s 1932 Cartoon

I recalled being introduced to Goldberg soon after I arrived in this country. But ‘Touché’ took me back much further. It set me thinking: how had I been introduced to this classic example of American culture? Thurber was overall a really poor draughtsman, but this particular creation, published in the New Yorker in 1932, is cleanly made, and its impossibly unrealistic cruelty did not shock the youngster who must have first encountered it in the late 1950s. A magazine would probably not get away with publishing it these days: it would be deprecated (perhaps like Harry Graham’s Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes) as a depiction of gratuitous violence, likely to cause offence to persons of a sensitive disposition, and also surely deemed to be ‘an insult to the entire worldwide fencing community’.

Was it my father who showed it to me? Freddie Percy was one of the most serious of persons, but he did have a partiality for subversive wit and humour, especially when it entered the realm of nonsense, so long as it did not involve long hair, illicit substances, or sexual innuendo. I recall he was fan of the Marx Brothers, and the songs of Tom Lehrer, though how I knew this is not certain, as we had no television in those days, and he never took us to see a Marx Brothers movie. Had he perhaps heard Tom Lehrer on the radio? He also enjoyed the antics of Victor Borge (rather hammy slapstick, as far as I can remember) as well as those of Jacques Tati, and our parents took my brother, sister and me to see the films of Danny Kaye (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – from a Thurber story – and Hans Christian Andersen), both of which, I must confess, failed to bowl me over.

Freddie and Mollie Percy (ca. 2004)

What was it with these Jewish performers? The Marx Brothers, Lehrer, Borge (né Rosenbaum) and Kaye (né Kaminsky)? Was the shtick my father told us about the Dukes of Northumberland all a fraud, and was his father (who in the 1920s worked in the clothes trade, selling school uniforms that he commissioned from East London Jewish tailors) perhaps an émigré from Minsk whose original name was Persky? And what happened to my grandfather’s Freemason paraphernalia, which my father kept in a trunk in the attic for so long after his death? It is too late to ask him about any of this, sadly. These questions do not come up at the right time.

I may have learned about Thurber from my brother. He was a fan of Thurber’s books, also – volumes that I never explored deeply, for some reason. Yet the reminiscence set me thinking about the American cultural influences at play in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and how they corresponded to local traditions.

Movies and television did not play a large part in my childhood: we did not have television installed until about 1965, so my teenage watching was limited to occasional visits to friends, where I might be exposed to Bonanza or Wagon Train, or even to the enigmatic Sergeant Bilko. I felt culturally and socially deprived, as my schoolmates would gleefully discuss Hancock’s Half Hour, or Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and I had no idea what they were talking about. (It has taken a lifetime for me to recover from this feeling of cultural inferiority.) I did not attend cinemas very often during the 1950s, although I do recall the Norman Wisdom escapades, and the Doctor in the House series featuring Dirk Bogarde (the dislike of whom my father would not shrink from expressing) and James Robertson Justice. Apart from those mentioned above, I do not recall many American films, although later The Searchers made a big impression, anything with Audrey Hepburn in it was magical, and I rather unpredictably enjoyed the musicals from that era, such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The King and I.

It was perhaps fortunate that I did not at that stage inform my father that I had suddenly discovered my calling in the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd, as the old meshugennah might have thrown me out of Haling Park Cottage on my ear before you could say ‘Jack Rubenstein’. In fact, the theatre had no durable hold on me, although the escapist musical attraction did lead me into an absorption with American popular music, which I always thought more polished and more stimulating than most of the British pap that was produced. (I exclude the Zombies, Lesley Duncan, Sandy Denny, and a few others from my wholesale dismissal.) Perhaps seeing Sonny and Cher perform I Got You Babe, or the Ronettes imploring me to Be My Baby, on Top of the Pops, led me to believe that there was a more exciting life beyond my dreary damp November suburban existence in Croydon, Surrey: California Dreaming reflected that thwarted ambition.

We left the UK in 1980, and, despite my frequent returns while I was working, and during my retirement, primarily for research purposes, my picture of Britain is frozen in a time warp of that period. Derek Underwood is wheeling away from the Pavilion End, a round of beers can be bought for a pound, the Two Ronnies are on TV, the Rolling Stones are just about to start a world tour, and George Formby is performing down the road at the Brixton Essoldo. [Is this correct? Ed.] I try to stay current with what is going on in the UK through my subscriptions to Punch (though, as I think about it, I haven’t received an issue for quite a while), Private Eye (continuous since 1965), the Spectator (since 1982), and Prospect (a few years old), but, as each year goes by, a little more is lost on me.

We are just about to enter our fortieth year living in the USA. As I wrote, we ‘uprooted’ in 1980, although at the time we considered that the relocation would be for just a few years, to gain some work experience, and see the country, before we returned to the UK. My wife, Sylvia, and I now joke that, once we have settled in, we shall explore the country properly. We retired to Southport, North Carolina, in 2001, and have thus lived here longer than in any other residence. Yet we have not even visited famous Charleston, a few hours down the road in South Carolina, let alone the Tennessee border, which is about seven hours’ drive away. (The area of North Carolina is just a tad smaller than that of England.) We (and our daughter) are not fond of long journeys in the car, which seems to us a colossal waste of time overall, and I have to admit there is a sameness about many American destinations. And this part of the world is very flat – like Norfolk without the windmills. You do not drive for the scenery.

Do I belong here? Many years ago we took up US citizenship. (I thus have two passports, retaining my UK affiliation, but had to declare primary loyalty to the USA.) My accent is a giveaway. Whereas my friends, when I return to the UK, ask me why I have acquired that mid-Atlantic twang, nearly everyone I meet over here comments that ‘they like my accent’ – even though some have been known to ask whether it is Australian or South African. (Hallo! Do I sound like Crocodile Dundee?) Sometimes their curiosity is phrased in the quintessential American phrase: ‘Where are you from?’, which most Americans can quickly respond to with the name of the city where they grew up. They may have moved around the country – or even worked abroad – but their family hometown is where they are ‘from’.

So what do I answer? ‘The UK’ simplifies things, but is a bit dull. To jolly up the proceedings, I sometimes say: ‘Well, we are all out of Africa, aren’t we?’, but that may unfortunately not go down well with everyone, especially in this neck of the woods. Facetiousness mixed with literal truth may be a bit heady for some people. So I may get a bit of a laugh if I respond ‘Brooklyn’, or even ‘Connecticut’, which is the state we moved to in 1980, and the state we retired from in 2001 (and whither we have not been back since.)

What they really want to know is where my roots lie. Now, I believe that if one is going to acknowledge ‘roots’, they had better be a bit romantic. My old schoolfriend Nigel Platts is wont to declare that he has his roots in Cumbria (wild borderlands, like the tribal lands of Pakistan, Lakeland poets: A-), while another old friend, Chris Jenkins, claims his are in Devon (seafarers, pirates, boggy moors: B+). My wife can outdo them both, since she was born in St. Vincent (tropical island, volcano, banana plantations: A+). But what do I say? I grew up in Purley, Coulsdon, and South Croydon, in Surrey: (C-). No one has roots in Purley, except for the wife of the Terry Jones character in the famous Monty Python ‘Nudge Nudge’ sketch. So I normally leave it as ‘Surrey’, as if I had grown up in the remote and largely unexplored Chipstead Valley, or in the shadow of Box Hill, stalking the Surrey Puma, which sounds a bit more exotic than spending my teenage years watching, from a house opposite the AGIP service station, the buses stream along the Brighton Road in South Croydon.

Do I carry British (or English) culture with me? I am a bit skeptical about these notions of ‘national culture’. One might summarise English culture by such a catalogue as the Lord’s test-match, sheepdog trials, pantomime, fish and chips, The Last Night of the Proms, the National Trust, etc. etc., but then one ends up either with some devilish discriminations between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture or with a list of everything that goes on in the country, which makes the whole exercise pointless. And what about ‘European’ culture? Is there such a thing, apart from the obvious shared heritage and cross-influences of music, art and literature? Bullfights as well as foxhunting? Bierfests alongside pub quizzes? The Eurovision Song Contest? Moreover, all too often, national ‘culture’ ends up as quaint customs and costumes put on for the benefit of the tourists.

Similarly, one could try to describe American culture: the Superbowl, revivalist rallies, Fourth of July parades, rodeos, NASCAR, Thanksgiving turkey. But where does the NRA, or the Mormon Church (sorry, newly branded as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), fit in? Perhaps the USA is too large, and too new, to have a ‘national culture’. Some historians have claimed that the USA is actually made up of several ‘nations’. Colin Woodard subtitled his book American Nations ‘A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America’, and drew on their colonial heritages to explain some mostly political inclinations. Somewhat of an oversimplification, of course, as immigration and relocation have blurred the lines and identities, but still a useful pointer to the cultural shock that can occur when an employee is transplanted from one locality to another, say from Boston to Dallas. Here, in south-eastern North Carolina, retirees from Yankeedom frequently write letters to the newspaper expressing their bewilderment and frustration that local drivers never seem to use their indicators before turning, and habitually drive below maximum speed in the fast lane of the highway. The locals respond, saying: “If you don’t like how we do things down here, go back to where you came from!”.

And then is the apparent obsession in some places about ‘identity’ and ‘ethnicity’. The New York Times, leading the ‘progressive’ (dread word!) media, is notorious on this matter, lavishly publishing streams of Op-Ed articles and editorial columns about ‘racial’ identities and ‘ethnic’ exploitation. Some of this originates from the absurdities of the U.S. Census Bureau, with its desperate attempts to categorise everybody in some racial pigeonhole. What they might do with such information, I have no idea. Shortly after I came to this country, I was sent on a management training course, where I was solemnly informed that I was not allowed to ask any prospective job candidate what his or her ‘race’ was. Ten minutes later, I was told that Human Resource departments had to track every employee’s race so that they could meet Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines. So it all depended on how a new employee decided to identify him- or her-self, and the bureaucrats got to work. I might have picked ‘Pacific Islander’, and no-one could have questioned it. (Sorry! I meant ‘Atlantic Islander’ . . .) Crazy stuff.

A few weeks ago, I had to fill out one of those interminable forms that accompany the delivery of healthcare in the USA. It was a requirement of the March 2010 Affordable Care Act, and I had to answer three questions. “The Government does not allow for unanswered questions. If you choose not to disclose the requested information, you must answer REFUSED to ensure compliance with the law”, the form sternly informed me. (I did not bother to inquire what would happen to me if I left the questions unanswered.) The first two questions ran as follows:

1. Circle the one that best describes your RACE:

  1. American Indian or Alaska native
  2. Asian
  3. Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander
  4. Black or African American
  5. White
  6. Hispanic
  7. Other Race
  8. REFUSED

2. Circle the one that best describes your ETHNICITY:

            a. Hispanic or Latin

            b. Non-Hispanic or Non-Latin

            c. REFUSED

What fresh nonsense is this? To think that a panel of experts actually sat down around a table for several meetings and came up with this tomfoolery is almost beyond belief. (You will notice that the forms did not ask me whether the patient was an illegal immigrant.) But this must be one of the reasons why so many are desperate to enter the country – to have the opportunity to respond to those wonderful life-enhancing questionnaires created by our government.

This sociological aberration leaks into ‘identity’, the great hoax of the 21st century. A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an editorial in which it, without a trace of irony, announced that some political candidate in New York had recently identified herself as ‘queer Latina’, as if that settled the suitability of her election. The newspaper’s letter pages are sprinkled with earnest and vapid statements from subscribers who start off their communications on the following lines: “As a bald progressive Polish-American dentist, I believe that  . . . .”, as if somehow their views were not free, and arrived at after careful reflection, but conditioned by their genetic material, their parents, their chosen career, and their ideological group membership, and that their status somehow gave them a superior entitlement to voice their opinions on the subject of their choice.  (I believe the name for this is ‘essentialism’.) But all that is irrelevant to the fact of whether they have anything of value to say.

The trouble is that, if we read about the views of one bald progressive Polish-American dentist, the next time we meet one of his or her kind, we shall say: “Ah! You’re one of them!”, and assume that that person holds the same opinions as the previously encountered self-appointed representative of the bald progressive Polish-American dentist community. And we end up with clumsy stereotypes, which of course are a Bad Thing.

Identity should be about uniqueness, not groupthink or unscientific notions of ethnicity, and cannot be defined by a series of labels. No habits or practices are inherited: they are all acquired culturally. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily bad for that reason, but people need to recognize that they were not born on predestinate grooves to become Baptists or Muslims, to worship cows, to practice female circumcision, or to engage in strange activities such as shooting small birds in great numbers, or watching motor vehicles circle an oval track at dangerous speeds for hours on end, in the hope that they will at some time collide, or descending, and occasionally falling down on, snowy mountainsides with their feet buckled to wooden planks, while doing their best to avoid trees and boulders. It is not ‘in their blood’, or ‘in their DNA’.

Social workers are encouraged (and sometimes required) to seek foster-parents for adoption cases that match the subject’s ‘ethnicity’, so as to provide an appropriate cultural background for them, such as a ‘native American’ way of life. Wistful and new-agey adults, perhaps suffering from some disappointment in career or life, sometimes seek out the birthplace of a grandparent, in the belief that the exposure may reveal some vital part of their ‘identity’. All absolute nonsense, of course.

For instance, I might claim that cricket is ‘in my DNA’, but I would not be able to tell you in what epoch that genetic mutation occurred, or why the gene has atrophied in our rascally son, James, who was brought to these shores as a ten month-old, and has since refused to show any interest whatsoever in the great game. On the other hand, did the young Andrew Strauss dream, on the banks of the blue Danube, of opening the batting for England? Did Michael Kasprowicz learn to bowl outswingers in the shadow of the Tatra Mountains? 

Yet this practice of pigeon-holing and stereotyping leads to deeper problems. We now have to deal with the newly discovered injustice of ‘cultural appropriation’. I read the other day that student union officials at the University of East Anglia had banned the distribution of sombreros to students, as stallholders were forbidden from handing out ‘discriminatory or stereotypical imagery’. Well, I can understand why Ku Klux Klan hoods, and Nazi regalia, would necessarily be regarded as offensive, but sunhats? Were sombreros introduced by the Spanish on reluctant Aztecan populations, and are they thus a symbol of Spanish imperialism? Who is actually at risk here? What about solar topis? Would they be banned, too?

We mustn’t stop there, of course. Is the fact that Chicken Tikka Masala is now viewed by some as a national British dish an insult to the subcontinent of India, or a marvellous statement of homage to its wonderful cuisine? Should South Koreans be playing golf, which, as we know, is an ethnic pastime of the Scots? Should non-Maori members of the New Zealand rugby team be dancing the haka? English bands playing rhythm ‘n’ blues? Should Irving Berlin have written ‘White Christmas’?

The blight has even started to affect the world of imaginative fiction. I recently read, in the Times Literary Supplement, in an article on John Updike, the following: “Is self-absorbed fiction always narcissistic, or only if it’s written by a straight white male? What if it’s autofiction, does that make it ok? What are the alternatives? If a writer ventures outside their own socio-cultural sphere, is that praiseworthy empathy or problematic cultural appropriation? Is Karl Ove Knausgaard more self-absorbed than Rachel Cusk? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” (‘Autofiction’ was a new one on me, but it apparently means that you can invent things while pretending to write a memoir, and get away with it. Since most autobiographies I have read are a pack of lies planned to glorify the accomplishments of the writer, and paper over all those embarrassing unpleasantnesses, I doubt whether we need a new term here. Reminiscences handed down in old age should more accurately be called ‘oublioirs’.)

The writer, Claire Lowdon, almost nails it, but falls into a pit of her own making. ‘Socio-cultural sphere’? What is that supposed to mean? Is that a category anointed by some policepersons from a Literary Council, like the Soviet Glavlit, or is it a classification, like ‘Pacific Islander’, that the author can provide him- or her-self, as with ‘gay Latina’? Should Tolstoy’s maleness, and his ‘socio-cultural sphere’, have prevented him from imagining the torments of Anna Karenina, or portraying the peasant Karatayev as a source of wisdom? The defenders of culture against ‘misappropriation’ are hoist with the petard of their own stereotypes. (And please don’t ask me who Karl Ove Knausgaard and Rachel Cusk are. Just because I know who John Updike, James Thurber and Rube Goldberg are, but fall short with these two, does not automatically make me nekulturny, and totally un-cool.)

The whole point of this piece is to emphasise the strengths and importance of pluralism, and diminish the notion of multiculturalism. As I so urbanely wrote in Chapter 10 of Misdefending the Realm: “In a pluralist society, opinion is fragmented – for example, in the media, in political parties, in churches (or temples or mosques), and between the legislative and the executive arms of government. The individual rights of citizens and their consciences are considered paramount, and all citizens are considered equal under the law. The ethnic, cultural, religious or philosophical allegiances that they may hold are considered private affairs – unless they are deployed to subvert the freedoms that a liberal society offers them. A pluralist democracy values very highly the rights of the individual (rather than of a sociologically-defined group), and preserves a clear line between the private life and the public sphere.”   

Thus, while tracing some allegiance to the cultures of both the UK and the USA, I do not have to admit to interest in any of their characteristic practices (opera, horse-racing, NASCAR, American football, Game of Thrones, etc. etc.) but can just quietly go about my business following my legal pursuits, and rejoice in the variety and richness of it all.

It was thus refreshing, however, to find elsewhere, in the same issue of the TLS, the following statement  –  about cricket. An Indian politician, Shashi Tharoor, wrote: “And yet, this match revealed once again that cricket can serve as a reminder of all that Indians and Pakistanis have in common – language, cuisine, music, clothes, tastes in entertainment, and most markets of culture, including sporting passions. Cricket underscores the common cultural mosaic that brings us together – one that transcends geopolitical differences. This cultural foundation both predates and precedes our political antipathy. It is what connects our diasporas and why they find each other’s company comforting in strange lands when they first emigrate – visibly so in the UK. Cricket confirms that there is more that unites us than divides us.”

Well, up to a point, Lord Ram. That claim might be a slight exaggeration and simplification, avoiding those tetchy issues about Hindu-based nationalism, but no matter. Cricket is a sport that was enthusiastically picked up – not appropriated – in places all around the world. I cannot be the only fan who was delighted with Afghanistan’s appearance in the recent World Cup, and so desperately wanted the team to win at least one game. I have so many good memories of playing cricket against teams from all backgrounds (the Free Foresters, the Brixton West Indians, even the Old Alleynians), never questioning which ‘socio-cultural sphere’ they came from (okay, occasionally, as those readers familiar with my Richie Benaud experience will attest), but simply sharing in the lore and traditions of cricket with those who love the game, the game in which, as A. G. McDonnell reminded us in England Their England, the squire and the blacksmith contested without class warfare getting in the way. Lenin was said to have despaired when he read that policemen and striking miners in Scotland took time off from their feuding to play soccer. He then remarked that revolution would never happen in the UK.

For a while, I considered myself part of that very wholesome tradition. I was looking forward, perhaps, to explaining one day to my grandchildren that I had watched Cowdrey and May at the Oval (‘Oh my Hornby and my Barlow long ago  . . .’), and that I could clearly recall an evening in late July 1956 where I overheard a friend of my father’s asking him whether he had heard that ‘Laker took all ten’. But Ashley, and the twins Alexis and Alyssa (one of their maternal great-grandfathers looked just like Ho Chi Minh, but was a very gentle man with no discernible cricket gene in his make-up) would surely give me a quizzical look, as if it were all very boring, and ask me instead to tell them again the story of how I single-handedly tracked down the Surrey Puma . . .

Alyssa, Alexis and Ashley reacting to the story of Jim Laker’s 10-53 at Old Trafford

Uprooted and rootless I thus remain. My cosmopolitan days are largely over, too. Even though I have never set my eyes on Greenland’s icy mountains or India’s coral strand (or Minsk), I was fortunate enough to visit all five continents on my business travels. I may still make the occasional return to the United Kingdom: otherwise my voyages to major metropolitan centres are restricted to visits to Wilmington for appointments with the chiropractor, and cross-country journeys to Los Altos, California to see James and his family.

So where does that leave me, and the ‘common cultural mosaic that binds us together’? A civilized culture should acknowledge some common heritage and shared customs, while allowing for a large amount of differences. Individuals may have an adversarial relationship in such an environment, but it should be based on roles that are temporary, not essentials. Shared custom should prevent the differences becoming destructive. Yet putting too many new stresses on the social fabric too quickly will cause it to fray. For example, returning to the UK has often been a strange experience, revealing gradual changes in common civilities. I recall, a few years ago, walking into the branch of my bank in South Croydon, where I have held an account since 1965. (The bank manager famously gave me what I interpreted as a masonic handshake in 1971, when I was seeking a loan to ease my entry into the ‘property-owning classes’.)  The first thing I saw was a sign on the wall that warned customers something along these lines: “Abuse of the service staff in this bank will not be tolerated! Offenders will be strictly prosecuted.”

My, oh my, I thought – does this bank have a problem! What a dreadful first impression! Did they really resent their customers so much that they had to welcome them with such a hostile message? Was the emotional well-being of their service staff that fragile? Did the bank’s executives not realise that customer service requires a thick skin? And perhaps behind all that lay a deeper problem – that their customer service, and attentiveness to customers’ needs, were so bad that customers too often were provoked into ire? Why would they otherwise advertise that fact to everyone who walked in?

I can’t see that happening in a bank in the United States, where I am more likely to receive the well-intentioned but cringe-making farewell of ‘Have a blessed day!’ when I have completed my transaction. That must be the American equivalent of the masonic handshake. (No, I don’t do all my bank business via my cell-phone.) Some edginess and lack of trust appear to have crept in to the domain of suburban Surrey – and maybe beyond. Brexit must have intensified those tensions.

Another example: In North Carolina, when walking along the street, we residents are in the habit of engaging with strangers as we pass them, with a smile, and a ‘Good Day!’, or ’How are you doin’?’, just as a measure of reinforcing our common civility and good humour. When I last tried that, walking around in South Croydon, where my roots are supposed to be, it did not work out well. I got a scared look from an astonished local, as if to say: ‘Who’s that weird geezer! He clearly doesn’t belong here’. And he would be right.

In conclusion: a list. As a retired Anglo-American slightly Aspergerish atheist ex-database administrator, I love lists, as all persons with the above description predictably do. My choice below catalogues fifty cultural figures (including one pair) who have influenced me, or for whom I hold some enthusiasm, a relationship occasionally enhanced by a personal encounter that contained something special. (I should point out, however, that I was brought up in a milieu that stressed the avoidance of showing excessive enthusiasm: ‘Surtout, pas trop de zèle!’. Somehow I survived American business without being ‘passionate’ about anything.) That does not mean that these persons are idols, heroes, icons, or role-models – they simply reflect my enthusiasms and tastes. But they give an idea of how scattered and chaotic any one person’s cultural interests can be in a pluralist society. Think of them as my cosmopolitan roots. Rachel Cusk did not make the list, but she would probably have beaten out J. R. R. Tolkien and Eric Hobsbawm.

Kingsley Amis

Jane Archer

John Arlott

Correlli Barnett

Raymond Chandler

Anton Chekhov

John Cleese

Robert Conquest

Peter Cook

Peter Davison

Theodor Fontane

Milton Friedman

Alan Furst

Peter and Rosemary Grant

Robert Graves

Emmylou Harris

Friedrich Hayek

Audrey Hepburn

Ronald Hingley

Clive James

Paul Jennings

Gordon Kaufmann

Hugh Kingsmill

Heinrich von Kleist

Arthur Koestler

Osbert Lancaster

Philip Larkin

Stephen Leacock

Fitzroy Maclean

D. S. Macnutt

René Magritte

Nadezhda Mandelstam

John Martin

Peter Medawar

H. L. Mencken

Christian Morgenstern

George Orwell

Arvo Pärt

Sergey Rachmaninov

Joseph Roth

Peter Sellers

Eric Shipton

Posy Simmons

Joe Simpson

Wilfred Thesiger

Alan Turing

Immanuel Velikovsky

Carolyn Wells

Michael Wharton

P. G. Wodehouse

(New Commonplace entries can be found here.)

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Filed under General History, Geography, Literature/Academia, Personal, Philosophy, Uncategorized

The Mystery of the Undetected Radios (Part 5)

News update: A few weeks ago, one of my on-line research colleagues contacted me on some topic, adding incidentally: “You probably know that Ursula Beurton [i.e. SONIA] is the title of Ben Macintyre’s next book.” Well, I did not know that, but was able to verify the information at https://www.thebookseller.com/news/macintyre-reveals-20th-centurys-greatest-woman-spy-viking-979556. I thought it appropriate and timely to record the fact that I had tried to contact Macintyre towards the end of last year, sending the following message to his agent at Penguin/Random House, and asking her to forward it to the author:

“Dear Mr Macintyre, 

I have just finished reading ‘The Spy and the Traitor’, which I enjoyed as much as your previous books on espionage and sabotage (all of which I own). 

I wondered whether you were searching around for a topic for your next project. If you consider that extra-judicial execution of a German spy by the British authorities in World War II might be an attention-getting subject, may I suggest that you look at my latest monthly blog at www.coldspur.com? This is a fascinating case that has not received the attention it merits. Alternatively, you might want to pursue a highly credible explanation for the failure by Britain’s Radio Security Service to detect Soviet agent SONIA’s radio transmissions a little later on. The full saga can be seen at https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio/.

I am a serious historian. My book ‘Misdefending the Realm’, about the communist subversion of Britain’s security during the time of the Nazi-Soviet pact, published a year ago, was based on my doctoral thesis at the University of Buckingham. I clearly have some copyright interest in what I have written on my website, but I am keen to encourage an author like you to pick up my research, and collaborate with me on broader publication. 

I thank you for your time, and look forward to hearing from you. 

Sincerely,

Antony Percy (Southport, NC)”

I did not receive the favour of a reply, not even an acknowledgment, but that is sadly not an unusual experience. I am intrigued to know what secret sources Mr. Macintyre has been able to lay his hands on, but I would have thought that ‘Sonia’s Radio’, and ‘Sonia and the Quebec Agreement’ would have provided him with some valuable research fodder. After all, if he came up with similar conclusions to mine, that would be quite noteworthy. On the other hand, if he did not, it would mean that he had missed an opportunity. Just sayin’. (And of course he may come up with some spectacular evidence that counters everything I have written.)

So I thought I should lay this marker on the ground, just in case.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

The Mystery of the Undetected Radios, Part 5

“S.I.S. foresee no difficulties in the provision of W/T sets on the scale we understand the S.O.2. require, but the extension of this form of communication will raise demands for an increase in the W/T frequencies and the number of skilled wireless operators allotted to the S.I.S., or to S.O.2. if an independent organisation is set up under their direction. As the whole plan will depend on successful communications, and their establishment must necessarily form a commitment in the early stages, we feel that favourable consideration should be given to these demands.” (from ‘Special Operations Executive’, Report by the Joint Planning Staff, 9 August 1941)

The previous chapter in this saga concluded with an analysis of the military situation in Europe of June 1941. Hitler’s war machine had recently invaded the Soviet Union, prompting the latter’s agents back in Germany to be urgently re-activated by Moscow Centre. In Britain, the Radio Security Service had found its permanent home within SIS, and David Petrie, the new Director-General of MI5, was implementing the organisation he had envisioned before he accepted the job, which allowed B Division to concentrate exclusively on anti-Axis counter-espionage and counter-sabotage activity. The Nazi invasion of Great Britain had been (temporarily) called off, but the Abwehr believed it maintained a few residual spies from the Lena operation in place, to keep it informed of morale, weather conditions, and military plans. A year after its foundation, the Special Operations Executive was still groping its way in search of an effective and secure model for building a sabotage network in Nazi-occupied Europe. The acquisition of new territories brought more flexible and more powerful wireless detection capabilities to the Reich’s defence and intelligence organisations, but presented fresh challenges in scope, geography, communications and the management of hostile populations.

France – Occupied Zone & Free Zone

I had originally intended, in this installment, to take the story up to the end of 1943, but the volume of material forced me to be more conservative. Instead, this chapter covers the period up to the autumn of 1942 – a similarly critical turning-point in the conduct of the war. Fortunes for the Allies were probably at their lowest in 1942. Even though the USA had now joined the conflict, Great Britain was being battered on all fronts, and the Soviet Union was trying desperately to repel the Nazi advance. Stalin and his minions were applying pressure on the UK and the USA to open a ‘Second Front’, yet Churchill did not impress upon the dictator the impossibility of launching a successful invasion of Europe so soon. Nevertheless, plans were already underway for the deception campaign deemed necessary for the eventual assault on the European mainland, and the unit responsible, the London Controlling Section, acquired new leadership. The XX Committee nursed some doubts: whether their most established agent, TATE, was trusted by the Abwehr, and whether their opponents saw through the whole deception exercise. Attempts to cooperate with the Soviets on wireless and cypher matters (some officers hoped that the Soviets would share with them their codes, and thus eliminate decryption needs!) also started to break down at the end of 1942.

Meanwhile, the Abwehr, now joined by the Gestapo, was starting to mop up the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra), the spy network controlled by the Soviets. Schulze-Boysen was arrested on August 30, 1942, and Germany had by then started to apply to the operations of SOE and SIS what it had learned in radio detection and infiltration of Soviet enemy cells. The invasion of North Africa prompted Germany, in November 1942, to take over control of Vichy France, putting a severe dent in the efforts of French resistance movements that had been operating with relative freedom there. In Britain, the Soviet Union’s spies were able to take advantage of the pusillanimity displayed by British politicians, anxious not to upset Stalin. SONIA was active, and had been joined by her husband: Fuchs had recently adopted British citizenship. Despite Petrie’s concerns, the communist spy Oliver Green was not prosecuted. And the RSS appeared to ignore many illicit wireless transmissions that were being made from British soil.

I should make clear that it is not my intention to provide a comprehensive summary of all aspects of these resistance movements, and the various attempts at espionage and sabotage. My goal has been to show patterns of wireless usage among the various agencies, the techniques that led to both success and failure, and reveal how the advances in expertise and technology in radio-detection and location-finding contributed to the fortunes of the secret radio-operators, and thus to the outcome of the war.

Countering the Red Orchestra

Plans for increased wireless activity from Soviet spies in Germany had begun before Barbarossa. At the beginning of May 1941, for example, Berlin station had asked for more, and improved, radio-sets for the Harnack group. Thus it was only a few days after Barbarossa, on June 26, that German monitoring-stations intercepted the first of the transmissions from the network that the Nazis would come to call the ‘Rote Kapelle’. It was the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, in its interception station at Cranz, that picked up the callsign ‘KLK from PTX’. As Heinz Höhne wrote, in Codeword Direktor: “By 8 July 1941 the intercept service had seventy-eight Comintern transmitters on its books and by October there were a further ten. (By July 1942 there were 325 clandestine Soviet sets working in German-occupied Europe, the majority admittedly on the Eastern Front.)”

Organisation of German Radio Counterintelligence (Praun)

The Funkabwehr (Wireless Defence, which was not subordinate to the Abwehr) had been approved by Hitler as the authority for radio monitoring in June 1941. Competing intelligence groups had tried to take responsibility for the interception of illicit broadcasting, but both the Abwehr and the Ordnungspolizei (the Orpo, or regular police) had failed. The Orpo, which at the start of the war was responsible for locating unlicensed transmitters, had tried to develop its own interception capabilities, and, after setting up in Norway and the Netherlands, extended its reach into France, Poland and Russia, hoping to be able to work independently.  Yet it was overwhelmed by sheer volumes. The Funkabwehr was stronger, bolstered by the transfer of expertise and men from the army interception service, with five companies formed to cover Europe from Norway to the Balkans. Yet, at this stage, the equipment used by the Funkabwehr was inferior to, say, that of the Luftwaffe. It possessed only short-range direction-finders, and its mobile units were too bulky and obvious. It might have come as a surprise to the British authorities (who, it will be remembered, were at the time concerned that transmissions from their double-agents might be accurately located by the Abwehr) to learn that the FuIII (the shortened version of the very Teutonic name for the radio section, OKW/WNV/FuIII) as late as September was still trying to establish whether the transmitter with the PTX callsign was working in North Germany, Belgium, Holland or northern France – that is an area as large as England itself.

In fact FuIII discovered, through ground-wave detection,  three illicit transmitters on its doorstep, in Berlin, and by October 1941 was ready to pounce. The operation was bungled, however, and an observer was able to warn Schulz-Boysen of the impending raid, after which the transmitters (who had deployed solid security practices) were shut down on October 22, and not reactivated until February 1942. FuIII had thus to return its attention to PTX, and, with improved direction-finding techniques, was soon confident that its operator was working in Belgium, probably in Bruges. FuIII then engaged the assistance of the local Abwehr office. A few weeks later, on November 17, Berlin confidently informed the local team that Brussels was now the source. Captain Piepe flew over the city with direction-finding equipment, and aided by improved short-range detection gear (as well as by disastrously long broadcasts by the radio operators), a successful raid was conducted on the night of December 13/14. The agent KENT’s set had been disabled, and the chief, Trepper, had to flee to France.

German Direction-Finding Operation (Praun)

The Rote Kapelle in Germany was eventually mopped up quite speedily. Hitler, provoked by the insult of hostile wireless operators continuing to transmit, ordered its destruction in early 1942, and brought the Gestapo in to assist. The exercise was a rare example of the German intelligence agencies cooperating. As Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote in his report on the Abwehr: “Liaison at the centre for the most part consisted of little more than the transmission of reports between departments, though some large-scale cases, such as the Rote Kapelle, appear to have been centrally controlled by co-operation between different organisations.” The counter-espionage operation was thus aided by the secret police’s merciless interrogation and torture of agents they had arrested, as well as by some absurdly irresponsible behavior by the wireless operators. The papers seized in Brussels had given Germany’s decryption agency insights into the codes used, and this experience was parlayed into more aggressive pursuit of the members of the network in 1942. Yet as early as October 10, 1941, a fateful message had been sent from Brussels that revealed the addresses of the major spies in Berlin, Schulze-Boysen, Harnack and Kuckhoff, and when that message was deciphered in July 1942, it allowed the traitors to be tracked down quickly, and eventually executed.

For some time more, the Rote Kapelle operated outside the boundaries of Germany: the Brussels cell was effectively moved to Paris, while the unit in Switzerland, first detected in September 1942, would remain a thorn in the Funkabwehr’s flesh until late in 1943. The Abwehr learned, however, several lessons from the successful exercise in Brussels and Berlin. More accurate long-range direction-finding was necessary, but it would always have to be complemented by more discrete, miniaturised, and concealable local equipment. Gaining access to codebooks, and torturing spies to betray secrets, made up for slow and lengthy decryption capabilities. Given the rivalries that were endemic to German intelligence, a degree of cooperation between the Gestapo, the Orpo, and the Abwehr (who all had different agendas) turned out to be an important contributor to success. Moreover, the experiences that shortly followed in the Netherlands and Belgium proved that an efficient machine could, with some patience, ‘turn’ radio networks into an efficient vehicle for arresting further agents before they even started broadcasting. The improved techniques in location-finding would eventually, some time in 1943, be consolidated in the Gestapo’s headquarters on the Avenue Foch in Paris.

The Abwehr and the ‘Englandspiel’

The Abwehr was then able to apply some its lessons learned to confounding the attempts of the SOE to install sabotage agents into Nazi-occupied Europe. The Netherlands was one of the busiest countries, and, from the German standpoint, had one if its most ingenious teams working on the problem of illicit wireless. With its territory expanded, the RSHA was able to deploy more accurate direction-finding techniques, and Section IX of the Abwehr in the Netherlands had been informed, in the summer of 1941, of what sounded like classical agent activity (call-signs, irregular times of communications, short traffic-periods, etc.) in the country, in a triangle with a base of about twelve miles between Utrecht and Amersfoort. Another transmitter was indicated in an equilateral triangle of about twenty miles between Gouda, Delft and Noordwijk. An intense campaign of close-range tracking was initiated.

Issues of territorial ownership had to be resolved, however. If the groups responsible were working independently of London, it would fall to the Orpo (which, predictably, had its own Radio Observation Office, known as FuB) to investigate and prosecute. In the Abwehr’s mind, the Orpo would enter the project bull-headedly, quick to trumpet its success and punish the offenders: Himmler’s Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei, or Sipo), of which the secret police, the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), was a part, alongside the criminal police (Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo), would be even more aggressive. The Abwehr, on the other hand, had longer-term goals of undermining the network, learning more, and inveigling further indiscretions. Hermann Giskes of the Abwehr had been able to gain the cooperation of the Orpo and the Sipo, and was then informed that the Funkabwehr had been able to prove that the stations were communicating with contacts in England. (A few months later, the station communicating with PTX had been localised to ‘North of London’ – still not a very precise estimate.)

The transmitter with the callsign UBX was caught red-handed by the Sipo, but the opportunity to play the agent back dissolved, as Sipo insisted on performing the interrogation, and the codes used turned out to be hard to crack. Another failure occurred in the Hague, where the local direction-finder, disguised as a meter-reader, was too obvious. Even though the operator with callsign TBO was localised to a single block of flats, the operator got away. These failures, and the corresponding decline in illicit transmissions, meant that the Wehrmacht direction-finding detachment was withdrawn from the Netherlands at the end of September, showing that, at this time, such units were something of a luxury that had to be deployed sparsely. Yet, early in 1942 the FuB had discovered a new transmitter with the call-sign RLS, located only as ‘somewhere in South Holland’. Close-range direction-finding was able to ‘pinpoint’ (a perhaps overused term in this sphere of discourse) to a modern block of flats in the Farhenheitsstraat in the Hague. The Sipo was able to conduct a successful raid on March 6, and haul in one Lauwers, who was to play a major role in allowing the Germans to run the SOE network in the famed ‘Englandspiel’, by which the Abwehr controlled almost all the SOE’s network in the Netherlands..

When Giskes wrote his book about the operation (London Calling North Pole), he described how incompetent and poorly trained the SOE wireless operators had been. “Without doubt, lack of experience and gullibility played an important part on the other side. The agents were really amateurs, despite their training in England, and they had no opportunity to work up through practice to the standard required for their immensely difficult task.” Yet the main fault lay with their contacts in England, who overlooked the omission of security signals that would have indicated that the agents were not operating under duress. Giskes rightly criticised the total radio organisation of British Intelligence for its sloppy approach to security, which allowed a small team of Orpo men to hoodwink the Baker Street setup, going on to write: “The carelessness of the enemy is illustrated by the fact that more than fourteen different radio links were established with London for longer or shorter periods during the Nordpol operation, and these fourteen were operated by six ORPO men!” He also showed that both parties were in total ignorance of the enemy’s direction-finding techniques, grossly overestimating the comparative capability of the other. Giskes said that the Abwehr assumed that the British would be taking bearings on the wireless locations of their agents, just as B1a in MI5 took pains to ensure that agents like TATE did actually transmit from where they were supposed to be.

The successful deception would carry on until March 1944, when Giskes recommended to the RSHA of putting a stop to it, sending a message of disdain and triumph to the British when he did so. The whole exercise was a coup for the Germans, and a tactical disaster for the British. Certainly, Giskes and his team showed as much flair and imagination as the members of the Double-Cross operation, and the British SOE Netherlands group was woefully naïve and gullible about what was going on (and later tried to cover up its mistakes). Yet the impact on the war’s outcome was meagre: many gallant lives were lost (the Germans executed most of the wireless operators, despite the Gestapo making promises to Giskes to the contrary), but sabotage in the Netherlands was not a critical component of the conflict, while deception of Allied invasion plans most assuredly was.

I shall study the infrastructure that the Funkabwehr supposedly deployed from the Gestapo headquarters in Paris in the next instalment. It represents an impressive achievement – if it can be entirely believed. Hugh Trevor-Roper, who wrote a very informative account of the detection and location methods deployed by the Orpo and the Funkabwehr, which can be seen in the HW 34/2 folder at Kew, encouraged a certain degree of caution. After describing the technical means by which a transmitting station could be precisely located within half an hour, he went on to write: “The greater amount and reliability of information which has become available since the end of the war has shown that the picture presented by these reports was very far from accurate. In point of fact there is no real evidence that the size of the Funkabwehr was in any way remarkable nor that it possessed greater technical efficiency than might have been expected. This throws an interesting light on the origin of these reports which came from apparently quite distinct sources but which were yet mutually confirmatory. In the light of this it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that they were the result of exaggerated information deliberately put out by the German authorities to discourage the Allies from the use of illicit wireless. In this case they may in effect have been a form of preventive weapons used by the Funkabwehr itself whose effectiveness may have been feared by its own chiefs or by other security services to be very different from what these reports suggested.” That judgment would echo a familiar theme – that the Germans exaggerated their direction-finding abilities in order to deter operators and instill fear.

German Radio Counterintelligence Operations (Praun)

Lastly, the Germans admitted that ‘cooperation’ was a technique forced upon them by confused organizational structure. In his report on German Radio Intelligence given to the Americans in March 1950, General Praun wrote that this structure: “ . . .  in which the authority of the counterintelligence agencies, the civilian police, the Central Office of National Security, and the like overlapped constantly –  –  led to a waste of effort and constant jurisdictional conflicts. As a result many an enemy radio agent was able to escape, although his whereabouts had been definitely established by D/F.”  Maybe there is an element of buck-passing in General Praun’s account, but the reputation for ruthless efficiency over wireless matters enjoyed by the Nazi counter-intelligence machine received another buffeting.

SOE Strikes for Independence

In the previous instalment, in which I concentrated on SOE in France, I showed how histories of SOE have tended to overstate the efficiencies of Nazi radio-detection and location-finding techniques in the first couple of years of its existence, as an honourable but incorrect method of covering up its own operational failures, primarily in the area of training and security. Thus the experience in the Netherlands constitutes a more useful representation of how the Germans made advances in their defensive techniques, taking advantage of geography (a smaller, adjacent area, with flatter terrain, which made concealment difficult, and radio-wave distortion less likely). The Netherlands was also a crowded theatre in terms of the overall conduct of the war: the obvious sea-based entry towards Germany from the British Isles, and the territory that bombers on their way to the German heartland had to cross. For those two reasons it was stoutly defended. I now turn to analyzing the Allied perspective of SOE’s accomplishments in the Low Countries.

Whereas British Intelligence was able to compose (primarily through interpretation of ULTRA intercepts) a highly accurate picture of the organisation of their Nazi counterparts – insights that amazed officers interrogated after the war – the Germans had only a hazy idea of the structure of their adversaries’ intelligence units. M.R.D. Foot has written about how the SS and the Abwehr did not understand the distinctions between SOE and SIS, were slow to conclude that they had separate missions (sabotage and intelligence-gathering, respectively), and even thought that the SAS was a uniformed wing of SOE. Yet SIS and SOE were at daggers drawn, in a rivalry that matched any of the internecine battles of the Nazi hierarchies. From the outset, Stewart Menzies, the head of SIS, had regarded SOE, set up under the civilian control of Hugh Dalton, as an irresponsible upstart unit whose destructive sabotage activities would interfere with SIS’s mission of intelligence-gathering. While jealously protecting his ULTRA information sources, since the Government Code and Cypher School reported to him, Menzies had also been given control of RSS, and had established a wireless section (Section VIII) under Richard Gambier-Parry.

The problem was that SOE was scorned by SIS, interfered with by the Foreign Office, and excluded from the military planning mechanism in the War Office, all of which led Frank Nelson to threaten to resign in November 1941. Hugh Dalton does not even mention SIS or Menzies in his diaries (primarily for reasons of secrecy), but they were a thorn in his flesh, and it was not until after Dalton was relieved of his post in February 1942 that SOE was able to take better control over its own communications. For SOE had to go begging, not only for airplanes that it had to plead for against the priorities of the Air Ministry, but also for wireless equipment and ciphers. As Foot wrote: “ . . . all SOE’s W/T equipment and ciphers were handed out by SIS, of which the home station handled all the traffic – with no increase in the cipher staff. This naturally caused delays, which in turn caused friction.” Thus the dry, bureaucratic minute with which I introduced this segment does not do justice to the struggle that evolved between SOE and SIS. SOE’s requirements had by far surpassed what SIS could provide. The matter would not be resolved until June 1942. Professor Hinsley, who in Volume 2 of his History of British Intelligence in World War II overall revealed a rather hazy and misleading understanding of how MI8 morphed into RSS, recorded how SOE, in March 1942, ‘acquired its own codes and wireless organisations and no longer depended on those of the SIS’.

Moreover, Menzies, and his sidekick Dansey controlled the information coming back from SOE agents. Claude Dansey – – an even more committed enemy of SOE than Menzies – was the latter’s liaison at Baker Street, the headquarters of the SOE, and was responsible for ensuring that, under an agreement made as early as September 15, 1940, any intelligence gathered by SOE agents had to be passed to Menzies even before SOE officers and managers had a chance to see it. (I was intrigued to read in the London Review of Books, May 9, 2019, an extract from an unpublished memoir by Kenneth Cohen, shared by his son, in which Cohen, who had worked for Dansey in the highly clandestine ‘Z’ unit, reported that ‘the SIS organisation was at its worst, partly because it made no serious attempt to pool varied intelligence sources on France: diplomatic (even Vichy); Free French; SOE, and our own counter-espionage were all operating uncoordinated.’ Neglect of SOE was no surprise, but Menzies was clearly in love with ULTRA, and derived his power and prestige from his role as communicator to Churchill of the output of the project.)

Thus the setbacks which SOE experienced in the Low Countries have to be reviewed in the light of the challenges imposed upon them by SIS. Several mishaps were reported in the attempts to land agents in the Netherlands in the summer of 1941. Radio equipment frequently failed, as it had been wired improperly (or so was the claim by SOE alumni). A lone agent, J. J. Zomer, was parachuted in in mid-June, and the first successful pair (Homburg and Sporre) arrived by the same means on September 7, which time happened to coincide with an increase in sabotage, probably caused by Dutch communists who had now changed sides. In any case, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who had been appointed Reichskommissar over the Netherlands in May 1940, was ordered to clamp down. As Giskes reported in detail, none of the agents survived long undetected. Zomer was discovered near Utrecht on August 31, by direction-finding equipment: his capture turned out to be a colossal liability, as ‘the text of about a hundred messages that he had exchanged with London since his arrival in mid-June, both in cipher and in clear’ (Foot), was captured with him. On the night of November 7/8, Taconis and Lauwers were sent into Holland to find out what had happened to Homburg and Sporre. Lauwers’s set would not work, and he had to get it repaired by a student. It was not until early January that Lauwers was able to make his first transmission, a delay in operation that some at Baker Street thought suspicious, only this time his silence had been an accident.

By now, the Abwehr knew about planned aircraft arrivals, with stores or further agents. Lauwers was arrested on March 6, and was turned just quickly enough to meet his transmission schedule. When a junior employee in N Section of SOE pointed out that Lauwers’s next message did not contain any security checks, he was told ‘not to worry about trivia, at the start of great events’. Foot indicates that security checks were regarded as an annoying fad of Menzies’s, but in this case, Gambier-Parry and his team were correct. It took a long while for Baker Street to come to the conclusion that its network had been suborned: since running a successful agent was what defined the career of the home officers, they were reluctant (as were the Abwehr espionage officers) to believe the evidence they had been trained to suspect. At the end of April, Gubbins, responsible for operations, expressed to Hambro the uncertainty felt by the Dutch authorities about which groups in the Netherlands should be regarded as intact. Yet the network was not closed down, and further agents were needlessly sacrificed.

SOE was undone more by its own incompetence in Belgium: it seemed to experience special trouble in recruiting appropriate persons. If no subversion of the networks on the lines of the Dutch fiasco occurred, enough missteps were made for ‘T’ Section of SOE effectively to shoot itself in the foot. Parachute drops started in May 1941, but the navigator on the first run forgot to press the switch to release the container of the wireless, with the result that it actually landed in Germany. Training was frequently rushed. The wireless operator Leblicq died horribly after making a bad exit from a plane. Agents were frequently dropped miles beyond their designated dropping-zone. One Courtin foolishly strung up his set immediately he had booked himself into a hotel: the casual curiosity of the local police resulted in his aerial being spotted, and his wireless set discovered under his jacket. (That is at least an indication that less clumsy and bulky apparatus was in use at the time.) Another, called Campion, started transmitting on December 1, but he was quickly captured, and his set turned, allowing the Germans to confirm new arrivals, and be waiting for them. Agents frequently fell out with their wireless operators, whom they regarded as feckless, careless or idle. One named van Impe plugged his AC-adapted set into a DC socket, and burned it out. Brion and van Horen stayed on the air for over an hour, and were caught by direction-finding: Van Horen had to watch while an Orpo sergeant played his set back. Fonck always transmitted from the same place – his mother’s home, and was caught on May 2, 1942. In June 1942, ‘Lynx’ could not make his wireless work.

Such maladroitness was compounded by the nervousness of the local population. Belgium was a small country, and it was difficult to hide. It was perhaps understandable that scared members of the population, doing all they could to survive the war, brought such illicit goings-on to the attention of the authorities. Thus Foot’s conclusion is not wholly surprising: “London normally put these arrests of wireless operators down to efficient German direction-finding. D/F was in fact often the cause; but so was careless talk, and so sometimes – as Campion’s example shows – was treachery. It suited the Germans to have the British believing in D/F, rather than realizing how widespread were the Germans’ informers, conscious and unconscious, in resistance circles. One contemporary account put down denunciation as responsible for 98 per cent of the arrests in Belgium.” It was much more Secret Army than ‘Allo ‘Allo.

And I unashamedly quote Foot again, at length, with his final judgment on the Belgian operation.

“By late October 1942 T had dispatched forty-five agents to Belgium, of whom thirty-two had fallen into enemy hands, ten of them – including three killed in enemy action – on their dropping zones. Besides Leblicq, who had never landed, eighteen of these forty-five were wireless operators. Among these, Verhafen had returned safely, Vergucht had no set, and all the rest were already dead or in enemy hands: in most cases, unknown to T. It may help the reader to have these unhappy results set out in the table on the following page; which adds two relevant agents from DF and one from the NKVD to T’s tally.”

“The Germans were both ingenious and assiduous in playing back their captured sets; T’s war diary is full of imaginary tales of minor acts of sabotage, with a few major ones – undetectable from the air – thrown in; T dutifully reported all this to higher authorities, and it was generally understood in the secret world in Whitehall that Belgian resistance showed great promise. This was all illusion: T had so far achieved very little.” The sense of failure was crystallized in the fact that, in August 1942, SOE and the Belgian government-in-exile came to break off relations in a dispute over objectives.

The timing of Foot’s analysis (and what I reported in January) shows that SOE’s move to independence from SIS brought results only slowly, and that the lessons of security were not quickly learned by Gubbins himself. The switch occurred in June 1942, and SOE took control of wireless, as well as the deployment of codes and ciphers. It constructed its own sets, and developed a training centre at Thame Park in Oxfordshire. It established two transmitting-receiving statins at Grendon Underwood and Poundon, on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border. Later, Passy, of de Gaulle’s government-in-exile, was to claim that SOE professionalism in wireless operation greatly improved after this, but the service was still hindered by the abilities of those it could hire, and the struggle to complement solid, reliable and more concealable equipment with safe transmission practices.

SIS in Europe

While most of the attention in the media has focused on SOE, SIS had a valuable role to fill in providing intelligence from Nazi-occupied Europe. The networks had to be re-built almost from scratch, however, as the Venlo incident (whereby two SIS agents had been captured by the Germans, and identities of SIS networks betrayed), and the rapid overrun of European territories by the German war machine had left SIS without active agents or wireless capabilities to communicate back to the United Kingdom. The history of this attempt at reconstruction is choppy: much of it relies on individual testimonies that have frequently been romanticized to emphasise the heroic. Keith Jeffery, in The Secret History of MI6, provided some fragmented accounts of the challenges and successes, but there is no dedicated ‘authorised’ history of SIS espionage in Europe to draw on. Hinsley’s history reminds us that SOE was accused by SIS of recruiting some of its agents, and then invading its turf by using them to transmit intelligence when its mission was one of sabotage.

Claude Dansey’s Z organisation had moved to Switzerland at the outbreak of war, but the wireless set in Geneva could be used only for receiving messages, because of local regulations. Despite friction between SIS and the Dutch government-in-exile, SIS was able to send in fifteen agents into the Netherlands between June 1940 and the end of 1941, but eleven of these lost their lives. Operations in Belgium were a little more successful: Gambier-Parry learned a lesson from early mishaps that trying to train an agent with no signalling experience into reliable wireless practices was a lost cause. (He apparently did not pass this insight on to his dependent ‘colleagues’ in SOE; moreover, it was a hopelessly utopian principle, given the recruitment pool to which the subversive organisations had access.) Thus a successful network called ‘Cleveland’, later ‘Service Clarence’, under Dewé operated fruitfully until Dewé was captured and shot in 1944. ‘Cleveland’ was joined by three other networks at the end of 1941, although Jeffrey writes that their effectiveness as a source of intelligence was jeopardized by their use of a courier service for British service personnel trying to escape home via Spain. By 1942, however, with new, properly-trained wireless operators in place, the Air Ministry and the War Office were complimenting the SIS networks in Belgium for their valuable intelligence on German troop movements, night fighter organisations, and railway activity.

The theatre of France differed in many ways. What it offered in the way of terrain – large and spacious, offering scope for concealment – was offset by some intractable political problems, very representative of the fact that, while all the governments-in-exile were bitterly opposed to Hitler, they frequently nourished vastly differing visions of what should replace the Nazi tyranny when the war was won. France had a strong Communist contingent, which was muted during the Nazi-Soviet Pact, but took on new breakaway life after Barbarossa. SIS’s strongest contacts had been with men who continued to serve under the Vichy regime, a faction that was strongly opposed by de Gaulle’s Free Frenchmen. Thus, as Jeffery points out, the split was reflected within SIS where Wilfred (‘Biffy’ *) Dunderdale headed Section A.4, in contact with the Vichy French, reporting directly to Menzies, while Kenneth Cohen, who had served under Dansey in the Z Organisation in Paris, continued to report to Dansey as head of A.5, dealing with the Free French.

[* It is one thing for Wodehousian or Boy’s Own Paper -type nicknames, such as ‘Biffy’, ‘Jumbo’, ‘Bobbety’, ‘Buster’, and ‘Sinbad’, to be used by their colleagues, but a regrettable aspect of this mannerism is that all too frequently the sobriquets leak into the authorised histories, sometimes perpetuating a character belied by the evidence.]

The War Office applied pressure on SIS to infiltrate France immediately after the country’s fall. For the first year, efforts were tentative, and successes meagre. The professionalism of agents sent in was sub-standard, and attention to security was weak. Far too many persons knew the names of other agents in a network, and the networks were too big. One of the most prominent networks, Navarre’s ‘Kul’ organisation, had successfully penetrated much of Northern France, as well as the unoccupied zone, but Navarre was arrested in July 1941. The network was then taken over by Marie-Madelene Fourcade, as ‘Alliance’, and the latter has received a large amount of attention in histories and biographies. Cohen was able to report a high degree of success in many exploits, including the information gained by the Confrérie de Notre Dame about Saint-Bruneval that led to the successful raid on the radar station in February 1942, but the losses, especially of wireless operators, caused a constant drain on efforts to get information back to London.

Alliance was largely undone by the recruitment of one Blanchet who, immediately after Navarre’s incarceration, was sent out by London with a new type of transmitter, and a mission to train agents in its operation, and in cyphers. At about the same time, communist resistance fighters took up a more aggressive campaign of assassinating German officers, which provoked sterner measures on all in the movement. The Metro Barbès assassination of August 21, 1941 led to fierce reprisals culminating in the execution of forty-eight hostages at Chateaubriant on October 22. In turn, fierce debates took place between the governments-in-exile and the more radical leadership of SOE, again spotlighting the contrary aims of sabotage and intelligence-gathering.

SIS benefitted from some relaxation. In the spring of 1942, for example, the British Ambassador in Spain cancelled his ban on the deployment of clandestine wireless sets. SIS thus continued with its mission, but in much of France and the Low Countries the atmosphere had been contaminated by carelessness and civilian fear. For a while, a burst of productivity allowed reports to be sent to London from six French cities, but then disasters started to occur. Agents in Pau were betrayed by the head of Alliance in the Dordogne, who had been having an affair with the daughter of a policeman. Blanchet turned out to be a Nazi informer: he was eventually executed by Alliance officers in November 1942. David Stafford informs us of another major disaster: “In November 1942 the names of 200 of its [Carte’s] important members fell into the hands of the Abwehr when a courier fell asleep on a train and a German agent walked off with his briefcase . . .” While the intensity of requests from London for information increased every week, the networks were becoming under more and more stress.

A significant fact about this period is that radio direction-finding, at least until the summer of 1942, did not play a large role in the dissolution of the networks, which were undermined by traitors and poor security procedures. Yet the Nazi RSHA was impatient at the progress that the Abwehr had been making in eliminating all illicit wireless activity. On April 18, 1942, the ardent pro-Nazi Pierre Laval became head of the Vichy government, and collaborated in a much harsher policy. Laval gave his approval for the SS to transport into the South nearly three hundred agents from the SS and the Abwehr, accompanied by a fleet of cars and vans with the latest direction-finding equipment. Alliance tried to adapt by giving instructions to operators to move around more, and restrict their broadcasts, but the attempt was largely futile. On November 11, the so-called ‘Free Zone’ was invaded by several divisions of the Wehrmacht: the period of intense and accurate surveillance, so familiar from the war movies, started at this time. As Hinsley records:  “  . . .operation Torch led to a further setback for the SIS by precipitating the German occupation of Vichy France, where its own and Polish and the Free French networks suffered heavy casualties and widespread arrests, and Bertrand [who had developed productive connections both in Vichy and Paris] forced to retreat to the Italian-occupied zone in the south, lost most of his remaining contacts.”

The Double-Cross Operation

Back in Great Britain, as the threat of imminent invasion wore off, MI5 started to prepare its double-agents for the inevitable deception operation that would be required when Allied forces would cross the Channel into Europe. Some had had to be discarded, because their credible sell-by date had elapsed, or they had turned out to be untrustworthy (e.g. Reysen (GOOSE), ter Braak, Caroli (SUMMER), and Owens (SNOW) – all incarcerated or dead. TATE (Wulf Schmidt) appeared to have the most potential, but he had to be given a credible cover-story to explain his survival. While the investments that MI5 made in his equipment eventually provided him with a reliable transmitting capability, the need for him to find permanent employment put restrictions on his mobility, and he was thus prevented from answering much of the questionnaires sent to him by his handlers. But first, his ability to maintain reliable communications with the Abwehr had to be developed.

Coverage of Great Britain by German agents (from KV 3/77)
Guide to German agent activity – October 1940 (from KV 3/77)

TATE experienced an extensive number of teething-problems when his communications were tested out in the latter half of 1941. He had been given frequencies that were too close to a commercial station, and thus needed an alternative crystal. But when Karel Richter flew in with a replacement, in May 1941, Reed of B1A later discovered that it would not work on TATE’s apparatus. His transmitter was unstable, his receiver was too weak; modifications had to be made to his aerial. His handlers failed to pick up messages on his alternative wavelength (which made MI5 question how efficient the German equivalent of the RSS was). He was having problems with corroded parts, but received poor technical advice from the Germans on replacements. The apparatus was too large and conspicuous, and thus could not be moved around the country easily.

The experiments and tinkering went on into March 1942, when it appears that MI5 had almost given up. RSS was constantly monitoring TATE’s attempts to make contact (and the responses from the Abwehr). One irony from this exercise was the arrived conclusion that any double-agent working in the UK would be at great risk from direction-finding. As Reed wrote on March 16, 1942: “It is quite apparent from this that as soon as any agent here starts to send more than one or two messages at a time the possibility of his station being intercepted and located by means of direction finding is very great. TATE for example can usually get through his traffic in about ten or twelve minutes, but operating is spread over a period of an hour to an hour and a half, the danger to the agent is great . . .” Reed therefore made efforts to reduce the radiation output from the set, so that groundwave detection would be more difficult.

At last, in the spring of 1942, regular communications were achieved, and TATE’s wireless traffic was of high standard, and being picked up. RSS was able to monitor the fact that TATE’s organisational control was based in Hamburg, and that there were regular exchanges between Hamburg and Paris about his messages. The state of the art of remote direction-finding can be assessed by the fact that Reed was able to report that bearings indicated that the replying station was probably located ‘some twenty miles south of Paris’. By this time, however, TATE had been set up with a new legend: having been called up for military service, he had found notional employment on a farm, in September 1941. His apparatus had been in actuality been established in Letchmore Heath, east of Watford, which was presumably near enough to agricultural land to convince the German direction-finders, if they were indeed similarly acute in such calculations, that his new occupation was genuine. TATE’s opportunities for secret communications, however, were small, what with his long farming hours. He kept his transmissions short, and infrequent, just at the time that the pressures for increasing the information he could send were intensifying. But by the end of 1942, MI5 was confident that the enemy trusted its prime radio performer.

While the London Controlling Section, given the mission of masterminding the deception campaign, had been set up in April 1941, it was slow finding its feet, and acquiring the appropriate leadership. And MI5 struggled to expand its array of agents with wireless capabilities: it is astonishing how much information at this time was still relayed through invisible ink to poste restante letter boxes in neutral countries. John Moe (MUTT) and Tor Glad (JEFF) had arrived in April 1941, in Scotland, but their behavior was often troublesome, and JEFF had to be interned in September 1941. It was not until February1943 that MUTT received a new workable wireless set, parachuted in near Aberdeen. One agent who eventually turned out to be the most productive, Garby-Czerniawski (BRUTUS), arrived in Gibraltar in October 1942, after making a deal with the Nazis, who had arrested him, but he did not disclose his full story and hand over his wireless crystal until November 1942, so his story belongs to the next episode. Likewise, Natalie Sergueiew (TREASURE), who had even been trained in wireless operation and tradecraft in Berlin in 1942, and who would turn out to be a valuable (but temperamental) contributor, was in May 1942 taught how to use invisible ink. After moving to Madrid that summer, she had to remind her handler, in November 1942, that she had had wireless training, and needed to be equipped with a proper apparatus. Thus her story will appear in the next instalment, also. Dusko Popov (TRICYCLE) did not bring back a wireless set from Lisbon until September 1943.

Perhaps the most famous of the XX agents was Jan Pujol (GARBO), who will turn out to be the most controversial of all those who broadcast before D-Day, and whose wireless habits are critical to the story. Not only did he himself (or, more accurately, his MI5 wireless operator) provide some of the most important messages concerning invasion plans, but he also ‘recruited’ a complex network of imaginary sub-agents who were able to report from around the country. Yet GARBO’s ability to use wireless was also delayed: he had arrived in London in April 1942, and Reed had quickly acquired a transmitter for him and his network to use. Yet it was not until August of that year that his handlers in Lisbon gave him permission to use it, and in fact it took until March 1943 before his first transmission was sent.

On May 21, 1942, the Chiefs of Staff had approved John Bevan to replace Stanley as head of the London Controlling Section. He would turn out to be a great success: calm, forceful, inspiring, and insightful. Thus the pressures on MI5 and the XX Operation increased. At that time, MI5 confidently told the LCS that it controlled ‘80% of the German espionage network’, which was a surprising assertion, in many ways. How did it know who the remaining 20% were? And what efforts was it making to unveil them? Yet it was probably very sure that it controlled all the wireless agents, as it had an effective RSS on its side; indeed, Masterman wrote to the W Board in July, 1942, claiming all such agents were under his control. Yet some eerie fears set in. On August 8, one of Robertson’s officers, John Marriott, voiced the concern that the Germans might be suspicious of TATE. In his diary entry for August 13, Guy Liddell expressed a general scare that the Abwehr must realise that its ciphers had been broken, and its messages were being read. And how effectively was RSS operating in picking up illicit traffic?

The Radio Security Service

(I have already written quite deeply about the activities of RSS, and interception of illicit Soviet and Russian traffic  – the two not necessarily being synonymous, of course – in the 1941-1943 period,  at https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-ix//.  Rather than my repeating that analysis, I would suggest that readers might like to refresh their memories by inspecting the latter part of that instalment. I summarise here the findings, and add a few observations gained from research since, with the contributions of a former RSS interceptor, Bob King, especially poignant and relevant.)

Unlike the USA, which enforced a ban on any non-governmental wireless traffic when it entered the war on December 7, 1941, Great Britain had a more complicated set-up to deal with. It had granted permission to the Polish and Czechoslovakian governments-in-exile to have their own telecommunications facilities. Thus official bans became difficult to enforce, especially since SIS was trying to gain foreign government approval for its own clandestine wireless usage overseas (such as in Switzerland). Moreover, with the Soviet entry into the war, a more testing challenge reared its head, what with the Russians seeking permission for similar facilities – and if not gaining permission, going ahead anyway. In the United States, the FBI had its claws clipped on April 2, 1942, when it had to agree not to move against any clandestine transmitters without service approval, suggesting that some illicit operators were working under military control.

In Britain, the coyness of the early part of the war disappeared. The National Archives (HW 34/1) report that RSS in 1942 busily started monitoring the communications of the foreign governments-in-exile – ‘mainly [sic] Polish, Czech, Yugoslav, French, Russian’, thus proving that spying on allies was viewed as a necessary ploy. Guy Liddell and Richard Gambier-Parry, the head of SIS’s Section VIII (which controlled RSS) had frequent disagreements about illicit transmissions. Early in 1942, Liddell noted in his diary that he was being let down by RSS, as it had failed to detect transmissions from the Soviet consulate, and (maybe more alarmingly) from German agents in Croydon and Blackpool. Gambier-Parry was not interested, enigmatically insisting that he had everything under control with the Russians. “They are well watched”, he dismissively told Malcom Frost on March 6, 1942, when Frost wrote to complain about illicit transmissions detected at 3, Rosary Gardens in London, effectively telling the MI5 officer to mind his own business. Gambier-Parry would later have to review his casualness.

RSS grew under its new control, SIS. One report indicates that, at its peak, it had a staff of 2094, of which 98 were officers, 1317 operators, 83 engineers and 471 administrative personnel, as well as 125 civilian clerks. That team was complemented by over 1200 Voluntary Interceptors in the UK, as well as units abroad. And, while it eventually had to concede some of its control of equipment and codes to the SOE, it took ownership of more location-finding capabilities. In the autumn of 1941, SIS terminated its contract with the General Post Office for mobile direction-finding units. The GPO had developed quite an extensive fleet of such vans, but they were judged (by one RSS insider) as being too obvious, too slow, and their operators not disciplined enough. Yet, by this time, the prevailing wisdom was that, since all extant enemy wireless operators were under MI5, no remaining operators, however illicit, could harm the national war effort.

What spurred all this research, as will be known to those who are familiar with ‘Sonia’s Radio’, is the question of how such an efficient RSS organisation could have overlooked the transmissions of Sonia. I reproduce here an extraordinary artefact from December 1941 that was passed to me by Bob King, a veteran of RSS. As is clear, it is a log sheet of Mr. King’s as a ‘watcher’ in the Oxford area, where Sonia Kuczynski operated. In an email message to me last summer, Mr. King wrote: “The RSS knew of her [Sonia’s] presence, with over 2,000 widely spread operators listening for any unidentified signals we could hardly miss her. But as she was not Abwehr we didn’t follow her up. I expect someone else did.” He later added: “I can say the tests and good evidence shows that it is unlikely that any illicit transmission within the UK during the war years escaped our notice. If it was not our assignment we dropped it. Whether the information (call sign, frequency, time and procedure, if any) was passed to some other organisation I cannot say. I was informed by one RSS operator that Sonia (he later discovered it was she) was copied and told ‘Not wanted’”, and then: “But it is certain that no Abwehr traffic escaped our notice including the movements of all spies/agents (with the exception of Ter Braak).”

I was overwhelmed by being able to exchange information with a survivor from the war who had operated before I (now a 72 year-old) was born, and intrigued by Mr. King’s revelations. I followed up with other questions, asking, for instance, how his unit knew that the operator, was Sonia, even that she was a woman. Mr. King replied: “I am sorry but I have no further information.  We identified the Abwehr by several means: procedure, tying in with other Abwehr (already known) and such things as operator recognition, note of transmitter and an experienced knowledge hard to describe. It was an operator (I forget who) who wrote to me long after the war saying that he had copied Sonia (this was sometime after 1946 I believe) when I left RSS and had no connection with it at all. Surveillance of short waves continued post-war I understand and exercises demonstrated that transmitters could not go undetected for long. Pre-war a rogue transmission was located by the GPO in many cases, it was their job to catch unlicensed transmitters and post war radio amateurs as well to report a station sending coded messages which in peace time was strictly forbidden.  This is why I maintain that Sonia could not have been undetected at any time since.  What the authorities did about it I am not in a position to say.” Mr. King also told me that the Interceptors were instructed to log everything, indiscriminately, on the wavelengths they were responsible for. They could not make independent decisions, say, on listening for overseas transmitters.

RSS Logsheet from December 1941

When commenting on one of my posts on Sonia, Mr. King summed up his experiences and opinions: “I am convinced that no illicit, or other, transmission audible in the UK could escape detection for long.  The whole high frequency spectrum was divided into sections (the size dependent on frequency) and searched regularly by several thousand skilled listeners.  All signals, recognised or not, by the operator, were passed to Arkley unless directed otherwise.  If not identified by us as Abwehr we either asked for a ‘Watch please’ or ‘Not wanted’. We had several VIs in or near Oxford (I was one in 1941) and I visited a full time one in Somerton so Sonia’s signals must have been reported. In my nearly 5 years at Arkley reading logged reports I may well have stamped ‘Not Wanted’ on a Sonia transmission.  There were some inquisitive attempts to discover the ownership of strange signals but I know no more or where information that we had was dealt with. Embassy traffic also I am sure was monitored.”

Like all members of RSS who were sworn to secrecy about what they did in the war, Mr. King obeyed the interdiction, but was then taken aback by the sudden revelations in the 1980s and 1990s, with books like The Secret Listeners by Sinclair McKay being published, and he warns about the possibility of faux memoirs among such publications. (I have written about the inventions recited in the periodical After the Battle, and how they have been promulgated by careless writers.) Mr. King’s goal is only to keep the memory of the dedicated persons who worked for RSS alive, and to ensure that the truth is told. He is very confident about the watertight coverage of illicit transmissions that occurred, and added the following: “We were always concerned that an enemy agent may have slipped our notice and put the XX system in danger.  It transpired after the war from our records and those of the Abwehr that no operational agent went undetected.  Several times spoof transmissions were arranged by us to test the RSS intercept capabilities.  They always appeared on our operators’ logs.  The longest delay was only about 5 to 6 weeks but usually much quicker.   This is hardly surprising with a least 2,000 people listening (about 500 on 24 hour watch) distributed over the UK.”

Yet there was a darker story behind the energies of RSS, an account that the rather sunny analysis in Hinsley’s official history overlooks. The archive at KV 4/97 (itself frequently redacted, which is alarming) shows a prolonged struggle between the forces of MI5, pressing for stricter interception of illicit wireless, and the more relaxed, but obviously arrogant, leaders of RSS, who were driven by other priorities. The main protagonist was the maverick Malcolm Frost, the ex-Post Office man who had so excited Guy Liddell early on in his career with MI5, but then antagonised so many by his own power-seeking and arrogance. From the time that SIS took over RSS up until the end of 1942, Frost ceaselessly prodded RSS to be more communicative on its ‘discrimination’ practices (i.e. selection of wavelengths and messages to pursue), and to bolster up the defective mobile units that the RSS had inherited from the General Post Office. This thrust, gradually taken up more enthusiastically by Guy Liddell himself, evolved from two drivers: the increasing knowledge that the airwaves in the UK were being illegally exploited by various agents, including suspicious Russian traffic, and the developing recognition that such interception apparatus and skills would be required after the eventual invasion of Europe in order to handle all the wireless-using agents that the Nazis were expected to leave behind as they retreated from the Allied attack.

Maltby in RSS at last grudgingly agreed with much of Frost’s argument: that the RSS Engineering staff had been dedicated to other work, and had not invested anything in the ‘deplorable’ state of the mobile units they had taken over (a fact they had concealed from Liddell). The apparatus was bulky, and required too many operators probably visible to the subject under scrutiny. They had made poor personnel choices, the incompetent Elmes heading up the teams being a prime example, and morale in the detection squads was low. RSS reputation for arrogance and poor leadership went before it: potential candidates for detection squads were refusing to join it. The mobile units themselves were too sparse, and too slow to move in on their prey. (A note by Guy Liddell in October 1942 states, for instance, that ‘the existing Mobile Unit bases at Leatherhead and Darlington should be transferred to Bristol and Newcastle respectively’, with Newcastle having to cover an area from Edinburgh to Leeds, and Bristol required to cover Wales. That is not a rapid-response organisation.)

Frost continued to probe and pester. In September 1942, he had reported that it could take three weeks for a unit to move in on suspect premises. Communications were slow and insecure, via telephone, when radio contact was essential. For such a search operation to be successful, of course, the illicit transmitter would have to keep on operating at the same location – highly likely if the culprit was an operator at a foreign embassy in London, but less probable if the transgressor was a trained Abwehr agent or Soviet spy looking out for detector vans. On October 23, 1942, Frost requested a correction/insertion to the minutes of the recent RSS Committee meeting: meeting: “Major Frost said in his experience it was unlikely that d/f bearings taken from this country could possibly give an clearer indication of the location of an illicit transmitter than a minimum area of 100 square miles, and he did not consider that this would be of much material assistance in making an arrest.” This observation matched what an expert such as Frank Birch wrote in his Official History of British Signals Intelligence. The fact that Frost had to make this observation would suggest that RSS was probably making exaggerated claims about the power of remote direction-finding techniques when mobile units tracking groundwaves were essential to trap offenders.

What all this meant was an expressed desire by Frost and Liddell to bring back the GPO, and Dollis Hill as a research establishment, and have MI5 put in charge of the mobile units. Liddell, somewhat belatedly complained, in September 1942, that ‘for eighteen months, RSS had done nothing to provide a solution to the problem which was of vital interest to the Security Services’. (He even told Maltby that MI5 had been undertaking its own research into better apparatus, which rather shocked the RSS man.) Yet RSS was overall obdurate, claiming territorial ownership. The foolish Vivian had endorsed the breaking up of the joint RSS-MI5 committee, being pushed by Gambier-Parry without knowing the facts, and then had to climb down. Maltby had to admit that his unit was really only interested in technical matters, and did not want to deal with the messy details of liaising with the Police, for instance. Gambier-Parry was clearly impossible to negotiate with, condescending and obstinate: he did not want his operation run by any committee, and he was evidently just very single-minded and parochial, or simply taking his orders from someone behind the scenes. Thus matters between RSS and MI5 (not purely involving intercepts) came to a head at the end of 1942, when new committees were set up, and an improvement in operations occurred.

Conclusion

The rapid progress that the German intelligence machinery made in detection techniques and apparatus during 1942 contrasted sharply with the relaxed and inefficient way that the British infrastructure dealt with the challenge. First of all, the Weimar Republic’s prohibition of private radio traffic, an order provoked by the fear of illicit Communist communications, ironically deprived it of a pool of capable amateur interceptors. The Germans were faced with a real and growing threat as their Reich expanded, and they complemented their improvements in technology with an uncharacteristic degree of cooperation between rival agencies, as well as a ruthless approach to interrogation and torture. It was a necessary survival technique – or so they believed. The various forces working subversively helped to soak up valuable German effort and resources, and both their intelligence and sabotage ingredients contributed much to the success of OVERLORD. Whether the carpet bombing of Germany or the thrust of SOE – so often at apparent loggerheads in the demand for resources – was a more effective factor in the prosecution of the war is still debated by historians. But the Germans took SOE and SIS very seriously – and probably exaggerated their detection capabilities as a deterrent.

The British, on the other hand, got lulled into a false sense of security by virtue of their isolation and relative impregnability, by their confidence that they had turned all existing wireless agents of the Abwehr, and probably by the notion that their decryption of the ULTRA traffic was really the key to winning the war. Unlike the Germans, they had a very gifted set of ‘amateurs’ in their Voluntary Interceptors: the Germans recognized the diligent way that the ‘Radio Amateur Association’ (as General Praun called the Radio Society of Great Britain) had selected and managed its members. On the other hand, the overall organisation and management of RSS was flawed. (Of course, it helped the cause of the Double-Cross Operation if the Germans gained the impression that British location-finding was weak!)  The British were not helped by a more bureaucratic approach to decision-making, a greater respect for the law, and a more humane approach in handling offenders. Yet there was also a failure of will, a slowness to respond to political conflicts, and a lack of clear leadership from the top. One can detect an absence of resolve in such subjects as how important the actions of SOE were, and how the organisation should be helped, how firm a line should be taken with such a dubious ally as the Soviet Union, and what actions should be taken with obstinate leaders such as ‘Bomber’ Harris  or Richard Gambier-Parry, and how the weaknesses of Stewart Menzies’s organisation was protected by his custodianship of the ULTRA secret. Certainly SOE suffered especially from some very poor management and preparation of agents. Yet overall there endured a cultural respect for rival personalities and institutions, a feature entirely lacking in their adversaries, which helped them surmount the various crises.

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The Importance of Chronology (with special reference to Liddell & Philby)

I had been hoping to deliver the next chapter in The Mystery of the Undetected Radios this month, but I have been thwarted by circumstances. Towards the end of March, I suffered a recurrence of tendinitis caused by whiplash to my neck in a traffic accident thirty-five years ago, and started undergoing a three-month treatment of spinal decompression. This process fixed the problem last time I had it seven years ago, but I must have been negligent on maintenance, and the complaint suddenly returned with a vengeance, with acute stabbing pain in my neck and shoulder. Yet, when my doctor gave me cortisone and lidocaine injections, they did not seem to be having an effect. Moreover, he also prescribed painkillers and a muscle relaxant, which likewise did not ease my condition. After a very painful and sleep-deprived weekend at the beginning of April, I saw the doctor again, and he very quickly identified the culprit as shingles. This was puzzling, as only last summer I had undertaken the course of anti-shingles vaccine. My doctor had not encountered a case of a vaccinated person catching the disease. Could the GRU or MI5 have been involved? No explanation has been excluded.

What it means is that for several weeks I could not work at my desktop for more than 5-10 minutes at a time, which made the task of researching files, checking my notes, and compiling fresh text impossible. I also realized that there were at least three more books I needed to read to cover the 1941-1942 period adequately: M. R. D. Foot’s SOE in the Low Countries, Hermann Giskes’s London Calling North Pole, and a volume that came out only a few weeks ago, Lynne Olson’s Madame Fourcade’s Secret Army. I have also read from cover to cover David Stafford’s Britain and European Resistance 1940-1945, a work that I have owned for a long time, but only dipped into beforehand. I have acquired the other three, and read all four now, but have only recently been able to transcribe my notes, and enter items in my chronology.

For the issue dated April 18, the London Review of Books commissioned from a ‘writer’ with the improbable name of Colm Tóibín – an Hibernian, I would wager – an article of some 9,000 words that described his experiences with testicular cancer. I am deeply sorry about the gentleman’s condition, but this self-indulgent piece was of such relentless tediousness that I can only conclude that the editrix of the LRB, Mary-Kay Wilmers (she with the Eitingon connections), presented it as an effort to win some obscure journalistic contest. While judging myself capable of similar medical discourse, I can assure coldspur readers that I shall not burden them with comparable distressing details of my complaints. During my disability (which has now mercifully abated), I was able, however, to create instead fresh text in relative comfort on my iPad, and hence present a report for April on an important intelligence-related subject that did not require close, integrative research.  Restored almost to tip-top form, I was able to resume work on my PC towards the end of the month, and thus I also present some updates to the Liddell affair, which, I hope, will fascinate my readers as much as they fascinated me. This bulletin, which started out as a reasonably modest report, took on a vigorous new life in the last week of the month. It could probably merit a post on its own, but, having invested some thought in putting this methodological introduction together, I decided to remain with it as the lead. Moreover, the analysis of Liddell and Philby represents an outstanding example of why attention to chronology is important.

The Importance of Chronology

For me, one of the most annoying aspects of any historical book, or volume of biography, is inattention to chronology. I read a few pages, unanchored precisely by date, and then suddenly come across a phrase like ‘the following spring’. What year are we talking about? I suspect that the author him- or her-self has only a hazy idea of what is happening when he or she [I refuse to use the fashionable ‘they’ in this situation] carelessly lays out events out of sequence, and thereby does not provide solid references in the calendar for many critical happenings.

I am under no delusions about causes and seriality. The proximity of an event to another does not necessarily indicate that the earlier one influenced the second, but it is very important to place events in their proper sequence, and tether them precisely. (What is undeniable, pace J. B. Priestley, is that events with a verifiable date cannot have exerted any influence on events proven to have occurred earlier.) Very rarely do original sources lack a date attached to them, and they should be echoed in any text that exploits them. Moreover, for the historian, organization of dates coming from disparate sources can show new patterns of discovery that might not otherwise have been apparent. I think, for example, of my locating the row over authority between Jane Archer and Guy Liddell that was not covered properly in the latter’s Diaries when he described the circumstances of her sacking.

Accordingly, the creation and maintenance of a detailed chronology have been integral to my research methodology ever since I set out on what evolved to become my doctoral thesis. I maintain a Word document of over three hundred pages, covering military and political, but chiefly intelligence and counter-intelligence, events for four decades in the twentieth century. There are almost 300 pages of pure timeline, with 13 pages of references, constituting about 500 different sources, including 30 from the National Archives. I try to maintain every entry to a single line. The years 1936 to 1950 are particularly densely covered: for example, the year 1940 has over 2400 entries. Each entry has at least one source appended to it. (See sample page)

A typical page from my Chronology

The Preamble to the document reads as follows:

Chronology: WWII – Prelude & Aftermath

This chronology is constructed to provide a guide to the history of intelligence and counter-intelligence in Britain and the US between 1917 and 1956, and focuses on key dates relating to:

a) the recruitment and establishment of Soviet agents in British intelligence, and their subsequent deeds and movements;

b) the actions by Soviet intelligence agencies to subvert British institutions:

c) the plot by Guy Burgess and Isaiah Berlin to go to Moscow in the summer of 1940;

d) attempts by MI5 (and its predecessor, the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch) to counter subversion and Fifth Columns; 

e) the various reorganisations of British Intelligence;

f) the WWII rivalry between the Ministry of Information and the Foreign Office for controlling propaganda, especially in the USA;

g) the purging of OGPU/NKVD agents by Stalin, with special reference to the revelations, and death, of Walter Krivitsky;

h) activities involving Eduard Beneš of Czechoslovakia, and his contacts in the UK and the Soviet Union;

i) the stealing of US/GB atomic power secrets by the Soviet Union, with special reference to Stalin’s manipulation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and the espionage activities of Klaus Fuchs;

j) revelations about the massacre of Jews by the Nazis;

k) pre-war negotiations between Zionists and the UK government, and subsequent actions to further or delay the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948;

l) the evolution (and decline) of communistic/anti-fascist thought among British intellectuals;

m) attitudes of British politicians towards the Soviet Union between the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and Barbarossa;

n) Walter Krivitsky’s revelations about Stalin’s negotiations with Germany and his supply of arms to the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War;

o) the growing awareness by the US and GB of the coming postwar threat posed by the Soviet Union as WWII proceeded, and its effect on intelligence sharing;

p) activities associated with the detection and decryption of illicit radio transmissions in WWII, and decryption of enemy (including Soviet) communications, especially involving disagreements between SIS and MI5;

q) the Nazis’ successes in unmasking members of the Soviet spy network, the ‘Red Orchestra’, especially as it relates to Alexander Foote and the ‘Rote Drei’ in Switzerland;

r) the activities of British communists in the International Brigades in Spain;

s) the effect of the failure to follow up Krivitsky’s warnings on Allied negotiations for postwar security, and the onset of the Cold War;

t) the activities of US-based, and Canada-based, Soviet spies with British links;

u) the management of the Double-Cross operation, and its effect on other disinformation campaigns;

v) the Abwehr’s management of spies sent to Britain for intelligence or sabotage purposes, and Britain’s responses.

(The somewhat erratic structure of this list, which I have not re-ordered through time, shows the evolution of my research focus.)

Readers can probably now understand how critical a part of my methodology the chronology is. It gives me the following benefits:

a) On looking up an event, I can quickly identify its source, and go back to my notes on each book listed (taking notes after the conclusion of reading a book is an equally important part of the methodology). Dates are a vital part of the notes: page numbers are listed, and I can go back to the original text, if necessary. (I own an overwhelming majority of the books.)

b) I can immediately spot anomalies in dates, such as occasions where different authors represent the same event differently. This allows me to verify sources, and give some indication of reliability. Dubious unconfirmed events are marked with a ‘?’.

c) I can examine the authority of references. Authenticity is not automatically guaranteed simply because multiple historians or journalists quote an identical date. They may all be using the same defective source, such as Professor Hinsley’s dubious claim about Churchill’s ordering interception of Soviet messages to cease. Weight does not necessarily indicate quality.

d) Insights can be gained by the adjacency of apparently unrelated themes, and common names appearing in discrete threads. They allow new hypotheses to be explored, and fresh analysis of subject-matter to take place (such as the progress in Radio direction-finding across different countries and zones).

e) Word’s Search capability allows me to highlight the occurrence of any name within the whole Chronology, thus simplifying the tracking of the career or activities of any prominent figure.

It all leads me to a vital principle of my methodology: A chronology will never be able to write the story by itself, but the creation of a proper narrative will be impossible without a rigorous chronology. The maintenance and exploitation of this document are thus my ‘Crown Jewels’, my ‘secret sauce’. One day I may make it universally acceptable (or even have it published as a book?). I have shared extracts of it with other historians, but no one else has seen the complete artefact.

Another aspect of chronology that intrigues me is the relationship of publications to the dates of release of official material, or the issuance of authorised histories. As far as British counterintelligence is concerned, one can identify seminal events that changed the historiography of espionage (e.g. Gouzenko’s defection in 1945, Fuchs’s confession in 1950, the escape of Burgess and Maclean in 1951) and can map also critical government-sponsored or -approved publications, such as the admission of the Double-cross system (in 1972), the disclosures about the Ultra Secret (in 1974), or the Official Histories of British Intelligence in WWII (starting in 1979), which freed many others to talk. Yet in the background one can detect a vast amount of noise – memoirs and off-the-record briefings from intelligence officers who felt that the real story was not being told, or wanting to influence the history to show themselves in better light.

When reading any book that claims insights into these events, one has therefore to ask: ‘Where did the author derive his/her information?’; ‘Why was the Official Secrets Act not applied?’; ‘Should some of these exercises be treated as government-controlled disinformation’? One thinks of the slew of romanticized and frequently erroneous accounts of espionage and counter-espionage that came out in the decade following WWII, often brazenly declaring the help the authors gained from government departments such as the War Office. Of course, the perpetrators never imagined that official archive material would be released at some time to contradict the errors of their analyses. But that did not matter, as all the authors would be dead by then. Yet books still come out that cite some of these flights of fancy as if they contained relevant facts.

To complete the story, one would also have to list all the critical archival material that has been made available in the past twenty years. I have not done that here, as my Chronology focuses on the first 60 years after the outbreak of WWII. Here follows a personal, and highly selective, account of dates (in years, only), which the general reader may find useful in tracking the history of intelligence matters affecting the UK since WWII, and putting accounts of it into proper perspective. I encourage readers to send me additions to the list that would help clarify the dynamics.

Key events in Espionage History (MI5, and to lesser extent SIS)

1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact

1940 Krivitsky’s revelations to MI5 & SIS

1940 Blunt & Rothschild recruited by MI5

1940 Double-Cross System set up

1941 Krivitsky murdered

1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union

1941 USA enters the war

1942-43 German Englandspiel turns Dutch SOE network

1943 Comintern ‘dismantled’

1943 VENONA project of decryption of Soviet cables starts

1944 Leo Long detected spying in MI14

1945 Gouzenko defects in Canada

1945 Volkov (would-be defector from Ankara) betrayed by Philby

1947 Cookridge publishes ‘Secrets of the British Secret Services’

1949 Foote’s ‘Handbook for Spies’ published (ghost-written by MI5)

1950 Fuchs convicted

1951 Burgess & Maclean abscond

1952 Cairncross’s first ‘confession’

1953 Giskes reveals Englandspiel (control of Dutch SOE)

1954 Petrov defects in Australia: confirms careers of Burgess and Maclean

1956 Gaitskell dies, with suspicions of Soviet poisoning

1956 Goronwy Rees’s disclosures about Burgess in ‘People’

1962 Golitsyn’s defection confirms treachery of Philby: ‘the five’

1963 Philby defects

1963 Straight betrays Blunt

1964 Cairncross confesses to MI5

1966 Publication of ‘SOE in France’ & AJP Taylor’s ‘History 1914-1945’

1967 Philby’s ‘My Silent War’ published

1967 Phillip Knightley’s exposé of Philby in the ‘Sunday Times’

1968 Trevor-Roper reveals decryption of Abwehr messages in Canaris essay

1972 ‘The XX System’ by John Masterman appears

1972 Ritter publishes ‘Deckname Dr. Rantzau’

1973 Malcolm Muggeridge publishes ‘Chronicles of Wasted Time’

1973 Seale and McConville hint at VENONA programme in book on Philby

1974 Winterbotham reveals ULTRA secret

1978 David Kahn publishes ‘Hitler’s Spies’

1979 Andrew Boyle’s ‘Climate of Treason’ published: Blunt outed

1979 Thatcher announces Blunt’s pardon

1979 Penrose outs Cairncross

1979 Rees’s deathbed revelations

1979 Volume 1 of Hinsley’s History appears

1980 David Martin’s ‘Wilderness of Mirrors’ identifies VENONA

1981 Nigel West publishes ‘MI5’ (with information from disenchanted White)

1981 Volume 2 of Hinsley’s History appears

1981 Harold Macmillan publicly denounces Michael Howard for irresponsibility

1982 Existence of VENONA starts to leak out

1983 Nigel West publishes ‘MI6’

1984 Pincher’s ‘Too Secret Too Long’ accuses Hollis

1984 Volume 3 of Hinsley’s History appears

1985 Gordievsky escapes to UK

1986 Nigel West publishes ‘GCHQ’

1986 Joan Miller publishes ‘One Girl’s War’

1986 Lamphere publishes ‘FBI-KGB War’

1987 Peter Wright publishes ‘Spycatcher’

1989 Government recognizes MI5

1990 Volume 4 of Hinsley’s History appears

1990 Volume 5 of History (Howard) appears

1991 Nigel West writes about VENONA in ‘7 Spies . . .’

1991 End of Communist regime in Russia

1992 Mitrokhin brings his Archive to the UK

1992 Queen recognizes SIS in speech to parliament

1993 Primakov identifies threat from NATO

1994 Intelligence Services Act: Existence of SIS & GCHQ acknowledged

1994 Weinstein given access to KGB files

1994 Aldrich Ames convicted

1996 USA declassifies VENONA materials

1999 Nigel West publishes book on VENONA

1999 Haynes & Klehr publish book on VENONA

2000 Weinstein’s ‘Haunted Wood’ published

2009 History of MI5 appears

2010 History of SIS appears

2014 First volume of History of JIC appears

2017 History of GCHQ commissioned

This litany of publication shows a number of developing themes and tensions, namely:

i) the overall desire of government organizations to maintain a veil of secrecy over intelligence operations;

ii) the eagerness of journalists and (some) agents and officers involved in intelligence to reveal clandestine operations to the public;

iii) the expressed need by the security services to assist public relations efforts by selective breach of the Official Secrets Act, and granting controlled access to certified materials, or leaking certain information;

iv) simultaneous prosecution of authors trying to breach the OSA when the authorities believe such disclosures might harm the reputation of the intelligence services, on the pretext that national security is at risk;

v) unofficial leaking of information to journalists and historians by insiders frustrated by prolonged secrecy, and perhaps anxious to establish their own legacy;

vi) a recognition by the authorities that information may be revealed from other countries (e.g. the USA, Germany and Russia), a process they cannot control, while that information may or may not be any more reliable than domestic archives;

vii) with the fading-away of uncontrollable ‘amateurs’ successfully telling their stories of war-time exploits, the new professional heads of intelligence agencies attempt to re-tighten the screws of security (this is a point made by Hugh Trevor-Roper in a 1981 letter to Lord Annan);

viii) an eventual, though sometimes reluctant, admission by the authorities that it is now acceptable for an ‘authorised’ or ‘official’ history to be told, and the commissioning of respectable and reliable scholars to perform exclusive research on security organizations;

ix) the appearance of authoritative-sounding such histories, which are incomplete, unverifiable, and frequently cite questionable facts or conclusions from works published in the controversial period;

x) the fostering of the belief that, now such an official history has been written, it can be viewed as reliable, and need not be examined or contested;

xi) the incorporation of such lore, both from official histories and semi-historical accounts, into such presumed reliable references as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography;

xii) the declassification of archival material which, if inspected closely and properly synthesized, sheds doubts on some of the main assertions of the histories;

xiii) the tendency for new history-writing to drill down into horizontal cases of personal appeal rather than attempt to integrate more complex cross-disciplinary topics;

xiv) a mutually reinforcing admiration process between the experts and the authorised historians, who are reluctant to have their reputations spoiled by any admission of errors;

xv) a state of confusion, where the reading public is faced with a mixture of fact and fiction, finding it difficult to find bearings in a world of circular regurgitation of dubious reportage, conspiracy theories, fake news, and the chaotic aggregation of information on the Web.

xvi) the gradual disappearance of capable and affordable professionals chartered with acting as gatekeepers to maintain integrity in the historiography of Intelligence matters.

And I suppose that’s a good way of reminding myself why Coldspur exists.

Finally, I want to expand on this matter of ‘gatekeepers’. Shortly before I left Gartner Group in 1999, a case was made for opening up all of the company’s research on the Web, as ‘everybody was doing it’. I strongly resisted this, saying that anything given away for free would essentially be seen as valueless, and no better than anything else published there. It would have reduced Gartner’s business to a conference and consulting affair, rather than a leveraged product. To this day, I support strongly those on-line publishers who are subscription-based, and who presumably believe they can command decent fees through a commitment to excellence. On the other hand, I never make a charitable donation to any free site (such as the undisciplined and unreliable Wikipedia), since the outfit does not have a business model that drives quality, and I have no wish to encourage such unscholarliness.

Yet there are challenges in trying to compete with an advertising model. For example, in the Intelligence world, Taylor and Francis has acquired prominent publishers, and offers access to their on-line journals through subscriptions. These publications are in many ways essential reading for the serious analyst, but the fees are penal for the individual researcher not affiliated with an academic institution. (It was a long struggle to get hold of critical articles even when I was affiliated with the University of Buckingham.) I have suggested alternative plans to T & F (who also offer enhanced packages of National Archives material): the company has acknowledged the problem, but is inflexible.

I have an especial interest in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which also offers a subscription service. Several years ago, I was commissioned to create an entry for the architect Gordon Kaufmann. (see http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-98440) This exercise involved much self-education, the acquisition of a few books on architecture, some fee-based exploration of genealogy sites, visits to libraries in Palo Alto and London, and to a house in Sussex, email exchanges with historians of California, and some patient detective work. I was proud of the final result, which was well annotated, and closely inspected by the ODNB editor. The entry was used as a showcase sample to promote the new on-line version of the ODNB. I was paid a modest amount for my work, and offered a 50% reduction in fees for a year’s access to the electronic version of the Dictionary.

I had no complaints about this. I was very happy to perform the work, believing that it is becoming for those who have benefitted from the education system at Oxford (for example) to contribute to scholarship in what ways they can, even if the beneficiary is a commercial enterprise. That is one of the many ways the public (‘the little platoons’) assists in the continuity of Britain’s cultural heritage. I did not become a regular subscriber, however: I can drive thirty-five miles to the University of North Carolina library in Wilmington to inspect the on-line edition.

This, when I went, a few weeks ago, to look up the entry for Guy Liddell (see last month’s post), I was shocked and disgusted. The piece was riddled with errors, and looked as if had been composed in a couple of hours, without any editorial supervision. It debases the whole value principle of the ODNB. It would have been better not to have published any entry at all instead of this shoddy compilation. I have brought my dismay to the attention of my contact there, and received, a couple of weeks ago, an acknowledgment of my message. Since then – nothing. I await the next step with interest, and shall report what happens on coldspur.

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Guy Liddell, Eric Roberts and Kim Philby

The Cookridge Archive

Perspicacious readers will recall that in February of this year, I made the following observation concerning the irritatingly vague references given by the author of The Climate of Treason, Andrew Boyle:

“While I have not performed a cross-reference, I would hazard that most of the correspondence with these persons is to be found in the Boyle Archive, where individual letter-writers are clearly identified. Of this period, Boyle writes, for example (p 455, Note 15): “Confidential information to the author as attested in E. H. Cookridge’s notes from Guy Liddell of MI5.” One might react: What on earth was Liddell doing speaking to Cookridge? Did Cookridge (who died on January 1, 1979) ever publish an account of these confidences? Did Boyle consider, now that Liddell and Cookridge were both dead, that he could safely write about these secrets, or did he still fear the Wrath of White? I hope that a study of the correspondence with Cookridge will clear some of this up.”

E. H. Cookridge (born Ernest Philo)

I inquired of the Cambridge University Library about the availability of selections from the Boyle archive, and, at considerable expense, ordered a sample of photographs of items of Boyle’s correspondence, namely his exchanges with Isaiah Berlin, Malcolm Muggeridge and E. H. Cookridge. These arrived at the beginning of April, but were largely disappointing. I was, however, able to determine in what circumstances Cookridge had consulted Guy Liddell, and to establish what Liddell said to him (or, at least, what Cookridge claimed he said). Unfortunately, Boyle and Cookridge converse somewhat at cross-purposes, and the loose ends from their correspondence are never neatly tied up. Two questions that Boyle posed to Cookridge, on August 30, 1977, run as follows:

“3) Was the substance, or even outline, of the Krivitsky testimony ever made known? If not, why do people refer to it as though they were familiar with it?

4) In stating ‘I believe that originally Philby was introduced by Springall to Leonid Tolokovisky [sic]’, what is your evidence – or is this merely a hunch?”

Cookridge’s answers, given on September 5, were:

“3) Krivitsky referred to it in his book ‘I Was Stalin’s Agent’ (Hamish Hamilton, 1939) and I believe Elsa Poretsky mentions something about it when dealing with some detail with Krivitsky’s activities. I recall to have seen something of interest in Krivitsky’s testimony published in the House Reports of the Un-American Activities Committee. That was many years after his death.

4) No, it’s not just a hunch. But unfortunately the people who had good evidence are dead. One was Guy Maynard Liddell. He was Deputy Director of M.I.5 to Sir David Petrie, later head of B-division under Sir Percy Sillitoe from 1945 to about 1952. He later became Director of Security for the Atomic Energy Authority. In 1955 when the ‘Third Man’ business bust, he was asked to go to Washington and investigate Philby’s activities. He also knew – from the secret investigations conducted about Philby’s past – all about Philby. About a year or two before Liddell’s death (in 1960) I had a talk with him on a quite different subject. I intended to write about the suspected betrayal of the Arnhem operation. Liddell (with a captain of Mil. Intell. named Wall) interrogated the suspected Dutch traitor Christiaan Lindemans in November 1944 in Holland and then at a London ‘cage’ (020). I wanted to learn from what he got out of Lindemans and he did tell me a lot. In the course of our conversation we got to Philby (who had by then, of course, gone to Beirut). I told him that I knew Philby in Vienna and he told me that he knew Philby was recruited in London or Cambridge by a Russian agent of the Cagan [Cahan? : coldspur] team. I can’t remember whether he mentioned Tolokonsky (NOT Tolokovisky) and Aslakov. I was then not yet concerned with the Philby story. Much later I learned from Derek Mark, editor of the Daily Express (who had initiated the big hunt after Philby) that several of his reporters, particularly John Mather, found out that the controller of Philby was Tolokonsky. I believe the Daily Express did publish it there.”

The answer to ‘3’ famously misses the point. Boyle was assuredly referring to Krivitsky’s testimony given to his MI5 & SIS interrogators in January 1940, not what he declared to US Senate inquiries before he made his visit to the United Kingdom. This is remarkably obtuse of Cookridge, unless he seriously did not know about Krivitsky’s exploits with Jane Archer and company. As for Douglas ‘Dave’ Springhall, the communist spy jailed in 1943, I have no idea why Philby would ever have dealt with him, although some books do still claim, as did Cookridge, that it was Springhall who recruited Philby in 1933, acting as an intermediary for Tolokonsky and Cahan.

Yet it is Cookridge’s reference to Liddell’s visit to Washington that primarily intrigued me. Allowing for Cookridge’s mistakes over Liddell’s roles under Petrie and Liddell before he left MI5, as well as the date of Liddell’s death (1958), it is unlikely that he would have confused Liddell’s visit to Washington on March 14, 1946 (which is confirmed by USA archives) with a post-retirement voyage in 1955. It would have been unusual for Liddell to have been brought out of his retirement from MI5 to consult with Washington, unless Dick White (who was Director-General until 1956) believed that under cover, and because of previous relationships, it would be preferable to send out on a special assignment Guy Liddell than, say – ahem –  White’s deputy and successor, Roger Hollis.

The Philby Inquiry

This was a difficult year for the Philby inquiry. By then, MI5 leaders were convinced that he was the ‘Third Man’, but SIS was defending him. In August 1954, Vladimir Petrov had defected in Australia, and brought confirmation that Burgess and Maclean had been tipped off. Yet defining what action to take was a hazardous project. Moreover, the new head of SIS, John ‘Sinbad’ Sinclair, who had replaced Stewart Menzies in 1953, came to Philby’s defence, writing to Dick White on July 20, 1955 that the interrogation of Philby by Helenus Milmo had been biased, and that Philby was being unfairly treated. The story of Petrov’s defection broke on September 18, 1955, when the Royal Commission in Australia published its report, but Philby was given a soft interrogation by SIS on October 7, which infuriated Dick White.

Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, who was convinced of Philby’s guilt, expressed similar frustration at Philby’s continuing to live scot-free and unchallenged. As Ben Macintyre reports in A Spy Among Friends, on Sunday, October 23, the New York Sunday News ran a story naming Philby as the Third Man. This publication led to the famous questions by Marcus Lipton in the House of Commons, Harold Macmillan’s feeble denial, and Philby’s eventual manipulation of the Press to convince them of his innocence. In his 1968 book The Third Man, Cookridge states that a journalist showed Lipton the story from the Sunday News, but says that the story was written by the paper’s London correspondent, ‘an American, known for his associations with the C.I.A.’  That could have been a blind, although the FBI agent Robert Lamphere, in his book The FBI-KGB War, tells us that the informant was his friend, the CIA’s Bill Harvey. Perhaps Liddell had been sent out as an emissary to Hoover to help stoke the fires, and fight the battle on White’s behalf without drawing SIS’s attention? Given the timing and the circumstances, it is difficult to project any other rationale, and this would follow a pattern (as I explain later). Liddell must have been very flattered.

The next question that must be posed is: was Liddell indeed the major source for Cookridge’s assertions in The Third Man? Describing Lipton’s question in the House of Commons, Cookridge informs us that Lipton remarked that he had further information but could not disclose it because it concerned ‘secret agents’, and that this observation was understood as meaning that it came from somebody in M.I.5.  Cookridge then laconically adds: “It is not for me to interpret Colonel Lipton’s remark, but we know now that he had good reason to believe his information was correct, thought whether it emanated from Dick White or the New York Sunday News must remain a matter of speculation.” In other words, in the vernacular of House of Cards: “You might say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment”.

Cookridge’s comments to Andrew Boyle suggest very strongly that Liddell was his source. In his Preface to The Third Man, Cookridge rather disingenuously attributes his ability to get a scoop to his work as a political journalist. Intriguingly, he says he started the book that very same year, 1955. “At that time (and for eleven years) I was the political correspondent of a British newspaper. Through my work in the Lobby of the House of Commons I had access to sources of information not available to the public. But because of the confidential nature of much of this information  . . .  I was compelled to put away the Philby manuscript.” Yet his confidence to Andrew Boyle twenty-two years later, when he probably suspected all had blown over, reveals an apparently critical role that Liddell played in disclosing MI5’s substantial evidence against Philby.

Who Recruited Philby?

This leads directly into another aspect that intrigued me, namely the reference to Cahan, and possibly Tolokonsky. A search of books that cite the fact that Philby was originally recruited by Cahan and Tolokonsky leads normally to Andrew Boyle as the source, and we can now see that Boyle relied on Cookridge, and Cookridge apparently on Liddell. In The Third Man Cookridge reported that Springhall, early in 1933 at a house in Rosary Gardens in London, introduced Kim Philby ‘to his new masters, Leonid Tolokonski [sic] and George Aslakoff, and there he received his initial briefing.’ The Soviet officers then (according to Cookridge) directed Philby to go to Vienna, to work as a courier ‘maintaining communications between the outlawed leaders of the Austrian Communists and GB agents in Vienna and the ‘foreign bureaus’ of the Comintern which functioned without interference in Prague’.

So why, the incident recollected in tranquillity, did Cookridge misrepresent what happened? When he wrote to Boyle that he could not recall whether Liddell mentioned Tolokonsky or Aslakoff, did he not have a copy of his book at hand? Perhaps when he wrote his book he was relying on the supposed publication of the ‘facts’ by the Daily Express rather than his briefing by Liddell. (I cannot find any Daily Express reference to Cahan on www.newspapers.com, but, of course, that does not mean that one did not exist.) It is thus impossible to ascertain whether the Daily Express received its information likewise from Liddell, who may have been on a mission to enlighten Fleet Street in MI5’s campaign against SIS.

Yet how did Liddell, if he was indeed aware of Philby’s recruitment, learn about it? There are no files for ‘Samuel Cahan’, ‘Tolokonsky’ or ‘Aslakoff’ at the National Archives. Christopher Andrew’s authorized history contains no reference to any of them. Nor do their names appear in the PEACH materials, as recently displayed in Cold War Spymaster (see last month’s blog). Anthony Cave-Brown does not refer to them in Treason in the Blood. Even that exhaustive and prodigious chronicler of Stalin’s espionage, Boris Volodarsky, in Stalin’s Agent, has only a fleeting sentence on Tolokonsky, recording his murder in Siberia in 1936. All of these phenomena are very puzzling, even disturbing. Is it possible that Liddell alone knew about the recruitment? After all, Cookridge told Boyle that ‘he’ (Liddell) knew about it, not that MI5 knew about it. Was that not an odd way for Liddell, and then Cookridge, to represent the lesson? It would appear that, if MI5’s senior officers were aware of the story, they managed to throw a wrap over it, and suppress any information that they held on the KGB or GRU officers in London. But why would they do that?

(The only other reference to Tolokonsky that I have found is in a novel based around Kim Philby and his Russian handler, given the name Orloff, titled A Spy In Winter, by one Michael Hastings, published in 1984. ‘Michael Hastings’ is a pseudonym of Michael Ben-Zohar, an Israeli historian born in Bulgaria, and the author has Orloff declare: “Until I came into the open, the British secret services believed that Maly and Tolokonsky had recruited and run Philby.” Whatever his sources were, Ben-Zohar’s text suggests that there was some substance behind the Tolokonsky claim. Of course, he may simply have used what he read in The Climate of Treason or The Third Man as a useful aid to authenticity. I have attempted to contact Ben-Zohar via his publisher, but, as so often happens in such cases, I have not even received an acknowledgment of my inquiry.)

If Liddell had exclusive knowledge, therefore, it could not have come from shared sources, such as Gouzenko or Petrov, unless he had private conversations with them. And there is no evidence of that. Candidates, therefore would have to include Krivitsky (with whom Liddell did have one-on-one discussions, the details of which were reacted from his Diaries) or maybe Douglas Springhall. Another candidate might be Fred Copeman, who was a close comrade of Springhall’s in 1933, but later turned respectable, and may have been an informer for MI5.

Krivitsky seems highly unlikely. I believe no mention of the triad of Cahan, Tolokovsky or Aslakoff appears in the transcripts of his interrogations. And 1940 would be very early for Liddell to receive a tip on Philby and do nothing about it. Moreover, Krivitsky had shown himself unwilling to reveal Philby’s identity as the journalist sent to Franco’s Spain under cover. Springhall is problematical. On my desktop computer, I have twenty-seven bulky PDFs from his files at the National Archives, which I have not yet inspected properly. They provide a fairly exhaustive account of his movements, but Special Branch did not appear to track him having a meeting with members of the Soviet Embassy in 1933. (Springhall did make a request to visit Cambridge in March of that year, however.) I suppose it is possible that Liddell had an interview with the communist activist at the time of his conviction in 1943, but it is improbable that a record of such a conversation has lain undiscovered. Somewhere in that archive (according to Springhall’s Wikipedia entry) is a suggestion that Springhall was working for the GRU from 1932 onwards, but locating that record is a task that will have to wait – unless any alert reader is already familiar with the whole of KV 2/2063-2065 & KV 2/1594-1598 . . .

Liddell and Eric Roberts

All this links to the third leg of this particular inquiry, which casts dramatic new light on the compelling question of whether British intelligence nourished stronger suspicions about the activities of the Cambridge Five well before they admitted so to the public. “It has been brought to my attention” (as Sir Edward Heath was accustomed to start his letters of complaint to the Spectator, presumably being too busy or too important to read the magazine himself), that, in other records recently declassified and released to the National Archives, Guy Liddell pointed out as early as 1947 that a spy existed in SIS.  This astonishing story concerns the MI5 officer, Eric Roberts, and the germ of it can be found on the MI5 website at https://www.mi5.gov.uk/eric-roberts-undercover-work-in-world-war-ii. A more detailed explanation can be seen in a BBC article posted back in 2015, where Christopher Andrew is quoted commenting on an extraordinary testimony that Eric Roberts left behind. The story can be inspected at https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33414358, and contains the dramatic statement: “In 1947 Roberts was seconded to Vienna to work with MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. Before Roberts went, he spoke to Liddell. According to Roberts, Liddell warned him ‘there was a traitor operating at the highest level’ of the SIS.”

Before I analyse this vital claim, I need to step back and critique the way this story has been presented, as I think the whole issue of the ‘Fifth Column’ has been distorted., and that the MI5 bulletin contributes to the muddle. As you will see, the piece starts: “In the early part of WWII  . . .”, and goes on: “It was hoped by this means to ‘surface’ others of a similar pro-Nazi persuasion who might be capable of forming a fascist 5th Column – still a major source of anxiety for MI5 so long as invasion remained a threat.” Yet the narrative suddenly jumps to ‘early 1942’, when Eric Roberts’s role was decided, namely almost halfway through the war. Hitler had in fact called off the invasion by September 1940, and, though Britain had to prepare for it still throughout much of 1941, by the end of that year, the conditions of engagement had changed considerably. Both the Soviet Union and the United States had joined the Allies, and the focus was then on the question of when a so-called ‘Second Front’ (a misleading Soviet-inspired term, as Britain was already fighting the Germans on several fronts) would be opened, and a European invasion begun. Thus, with the Abwehr’s network of agents already controlled by the Double-Cross system, the manipulation of a rather tawdry set of Nazi sympathisers, in the belief that MI5 was warding off a dangerous threat, seems a somewhat quixotic and perhaps a merely futile exercise. This was no ‘Fifth Column’, since the Wehrmacht surely was unaware that any of these persons were active on its behalf, and the MI5 piece rightly suggests that they could probably not have been prosecuted because of the ‘spectre of provocation’.

The records of Eric Roberts and this adventure can be inspected at KV 2/3783 & 2/3784 in the National Archives. The latter is downloadable at no charge, and contains the myriad conversations between Roberts and his Nazi sympathisers that were recorded. Unfortunately, the former, which must contain the more interesting articles described in the BBC story, has not been digitized, and I have thus not yet been able to inspect it. (As I was completing this story for my press deadline, I heard from my researcher in London that the 14-page testimonial is not in the archive, but presumably owned by the Roberts family. Given the publicity on the MI5 and BBC sites, including Christopher Andrew’s provocative comments that appear below, it would seem that the family is seeking greater attention to Eric Roberts’s claims, so I am hopeful of gaining access via the BBC.) It also occurs to me that Kate Atkinson, whose novel Transcription I reviewed on this site a few months ago, exploits these recordings, and Henry Hemming, whose biography of Maxwell Knight, MI5’s Greatest Spymaster, I read when it came out in 2017, also describes the activities of Roberts. I should probably annotate my review of Atkinson’s work, although I think her timetable becomes even messier, given the period at which the events occurred. Hemming, whose approach to chronology is also a little wayward, in his concentration on Maxwell Knight, appears not to have exploited this mine of information.

Additionally, it was with some amusement that I read the MI5 comment: “For a variety of reasons, until very recently the story of her [Marita Perigoe’s] group and Eric Roberts’ achievements had gone largely unseen by MI5 historians and accordingly the significance of these events was unnoticed.” MI5 ‘historians’? Who might they be, I wonder? Since Andrew’s authorised history came out some six years before these files were released, did MI5 for some reason forget to draw the historian’s attention to their existence when our intrepid researcher was being walked round the archives? Would the MI5 spokesperson be prepared to explain what the ‘variety of reasons’ was? Was MI5 perhaps embarrassed at some of the revelations that came forth from the 14-page document that Andrew is quoted as describing in the following terms: “It’s the most extraordinary intelligence document I’ve ever seen. It’s 14 pages long – it will keep conspiracy theorists going for another 14 years”? Well, here is one professional conspiracy theorist who can’t wait to get his hands on it. If it is going to keep us busy, we have to see the document.

Yet it is Roberts’s friendship with Guy Liddell that is for me the most compelling aspect of the story. In 1947, before his secondment to Vienna, we learn that Eric Roberts was warned by his friend that ‘there was a traitor operating at the highest level of the SIS’. Roberts thus credited Liddell with helping him in an awkward situation, but, when he returned to London in 1949, and asked his friend whether the traitor had been identified, Liddell ‘evaded the question’. That is surely evidence that he was not alone in his suspicions, but had been told to clam up. If we inspect my Chronology above, it is clear that the predecessor event that might have convinced Liddell of the guilt of a senior officer in SIS would clearly have been the hapless attempt to defect from Istanbul, Turkey by Konstantin Volkov, on August 16, 1945. We now know of Philby’s manoeuvres to have the informant captured, with the result that Volkov was drugged and executed by Moscow before London could work out what was going on.  (This was before the notorious episode of Teddy Kollek, who had witnessed what Philby was up to in Vienna in 1934, being shocked by spotting Philby in a diplomatic role in Washington in 1949.) Did Liddell rumble Philby then? The reason that this question is so important is that conventional accounts of the ‘Third Man’ scandal have focused on the identification of Philby as a possible traitor only after the abscondment of Burgess and Maclean in 1951.

I present Liddell’s relevant Diary entry for October 5, 1945 in its entirety: “The case of the renegade WOLKOFF in the Soviet Embassy in Istanbul has broken down. In accordance with instructions he was telephoned to at the Soviet consulate. The telephone was answered by the Russian Consul-General on the first occasion and on the second by a man speaking English claiming to be WOLKOFF but clearly was not. Finally, contact was made with the Russian telephone operator who said that WOLKOFF had left for Moscow. Subsequent enquiries showed that he and his wife left by plane for Russia on Sept.26. Wolkoff had ovvered [sic: ‘offered’] to give a very considerable amount of information but much of it appeared to be in Moscow. WOLKOFF estimated that there were 9 agents in London of one of whom was said to be the ‘head of a section of the British counter-espionage service’. WOLKOFF said he could also produce a list of the known regular NKGB agents of the military and civil intelligence and of the sub-agents they employed. In the list are noted about 250 known or less well known agents of the above-mentioned services with details. Also available were copies of correspondence between London and General Hill of SOE in Moscow. WOLKOFF maintained that the Soviet authorities had been able to read all cypher messages between our F.O. and Embassy in Moscow and in addition to Hill’s messages [line redacted] the Russians had according to WOLKOFF two agents inside the F.O. and 7 inside the British Intelligence Service.”

Does this indicate that he believed that Philby was the guilty party? Maybe he was already starting to question why such a valuable potential operation had suddenly turned so sour. We should also recall that Jane Archer, the author of the Krivitsky report, had returned to MI5, probably at the beginning of 1946, from working for Philby in Section V of SIS. It seems inconceivable that she and Liddell would not have discussed her previous boss, the Volkov incident, and maybe started to look more closely at Philby’s career. Archer would have been fascinated by the information revealed in Liddell’s diary entry, and Philby, who wrote of her knowledge of the ‘journalist in Spain’ in My Silent War, might have been alarmed by her return to MI5. Did Liddell also discuss the affair with Dick White? Not so certainly, but White (who was by now taking charge of MI5, as I explained in last month’s report, and moving to squeeze out his mentor at the top) may have cautioned him to silence, unaware that Liddell had shared his suspicions with Roberts. With Blunt (as I confidently assert) recently unmasked in MI5, and Philby a strong suspect in SIS, White may have felt that they could control the poison – and preserve the reputation of the service. As we see, Liddell was going to have to suppress his suspicions when his friend Roberts returned from Vienna, suggesting that he was not alone in harbouring serious doubts about Philby’s loyalties, but that pressure was being applied not to rock the boat. That was not the behavior of a Soviet mole, but of a weak and frightened man.

Confusion in Washington

Moreover, my overseas informant (who wishes to remain anonymous) has pointed out to me a dramatic new twist to the story. In the 1967 Sunday Times article that broke the Philby story, there appears a provocative statement concerning Philby after the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean in May 1951. It runs as follows: “The weekend after the defection, a four-man team, led by G. A. Carey-Foster, the head of Q-Branch in the Foreign Office, flew to Washington and questioned Philby. Almost immediately afterwards Philby was withdrawn from his post as CIA/SIS liaison officer: apart from any suspicions the British had, the Americans were no longer prepared to deal with him.” If this were true, the team presumably flew out to forestall any attempt by Philby to defect, which must have meant that MI5 and the Foreign Office harboured deep suspicions about Philby’s loyalties, and were very quick to adopt a ‘Third Man’ theory. So what happened to this story? The cavalcade of events constitutes an excellent example of the importance of Chronology.

Surprisingly, the claim does not appear in the 1968 book that followed the Sunday Times article – The Philby Conspiracy, by the Sunday Times journalists Bruce Page, David Leitch and Phillip Knightley. In fact, the only publication where I have been able to find the story duplicated is in that now familiar compendium, E. H. Cookridge’s The Third Man, where he wrote (p 208): “What followed was a world sensation. Sir Percy Sillitoe flew to Washington six days after the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean; he was preceded by a team, led by Mr. Carey-Foster, sent to interrogate Philby.” This account, if only partially true (Sillitoe did not fly out until two weeks after the spies’ absence was noticed), would tend to confirm the preparedness of British security organs to spring into action. But where did Cookridge get his information from? The Sunday Times? Or the same source who provided it to the newspaper? It is not clear, and, unless the Cookridge archive can shed light on the matter, we shall probably never know.

The circumstances of Philby’s departure from the USA at that time are represented inconsistently in the literature. Perhaps the most detailed account of the goings-on is S. J. Hamrick’s 2004 opus Deceiving the Deceivers. Hamrick was a former US intelligence officer who believed that MI5 and the Foreign Office had deceived the British public – and the CIA – about their investigation into Maclean and Philby. Unfortunately, Hamrick, who compiled a detailed chronicle of the events leading up to Burgess and Maclean’s disappearance, spun a yarn that had Dick White and the RAF trying to use Philby in an extravagant operation to feed false information on atomic weapons to the Soviets. This fantasy was deftly dissected and trashed by Nigel West himself, in a review titled ‘Who’s Fooling Who?’, which appeared in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence in 2006. (Yet West lists the work as a source in Cold War Spymaster, without any explanation why a work that he has panned elsewhere has suddenly become worthy of being recommended to his readership. A very bizarre practice, which must be condemned.) The account of Philby’s departure is quite clear, however: he received a telegram recalling him to London before Sillitoe and Martin flew out, and arrived the day they left London.

As I delved more deeply into the various accounts of Philby’s recall in early June 1951 (I have made notes from about twenty), I realized that the whole saga is more complicated, more puzzling, and more disturbing than I ever imagined. I cannot possibly do justice do it in this report, and shall have to dedicate a whole future instalment of coldspur to the full exploration of the inconsistencies. It may not surprise readers to learn that one of the latest renderings, Christopher Andrew’s authorised history of MI5, Defend the Realm (2009), despite having all the records at the author’s disposal, seems to me to have got the timetable dramatically wrong. (Chronology again!) On the other hand, the supposed visit to Washington by Carey Foster and his team may be purely mythical – and may not matter much. So I shall here simply outline my main findings and conclusions.

First, let us step back a bit. Just before Kim Philby was posted to Washington in September 1949, as the liaison for British intelligence with the US government, he was briefed by Maurice Oldfield, deputy head of counter-intelligence in SIS, about the VENONA project. This programme, by which certain wartime cables between Moscow and outlying embassies had been (partially) decrypted by US and GB teams, had by then thrown up the cryptonym HOMER as an important source of highly sensitive information passed on to the Soviets. It was Philby’s job to assist the FBI in identifying possible suspects. Given that the ‘Foreign Office’ spy (namely Maclean) had been identified, but not named, by Krivitsky, it took an unconscionably long time for British intelligence to whittle down the candidates for this breach to Maclean himself. MI5 would later claim that only in April 1951 could HOMER’s identity be firmly nailed on to Maclean, after which the bumbling investigation (hindered by the Foreign Office) sputtered along so ineptly that it allowed Burgess and Maclean to escape on May 25.

The whole point of the investigation was to delay and prevaricate. Yet, when the story broke to the astounded FBI and CIA, MI5 had to act fast to try to restore confidence. The records point dominantly to the fact that Percy Sillitoe, the Director-General of MI5, accompanied by one of his junior officers, Arthur Martin, flew out to Washington the same day that Philby, who had been recalled, flew into Heathrow (June 12). (Philby had given the impression to his friends, such as James Angleton, that he would be returning.) Yet the files at the National Archives in Kew show that this goodwill trip had been planned before Burgess and Maclean escaped, as part of the charm offensive that MI5 knew it would have to undertake when Maclean was brought in for questioning. The days June 12/13 had already been chosen, at the planning meeting for the interrogation of Maclean, on May 23, as the dates to speak to Hoover. The records show that Sillitoe intended to inform Hoover of the name of the ‘principle suspect’.

In the changed circumstances, however, with the renegades escaping under MI5’s noses, a different strategy was required. Arthur Martin brought a sharp seven-point memorandum with him, which he apologetically shared with his FBI contact Robert Lamphere, while his chief had a meeting with his counterpart, Edgar Hoover. This report listed some major damning reasons why Philby was seen as a security risk, and clearly would be interpreted as putting an end to his career with SIS. Lamphere documented them (in The FBI-KGB War) as follows:

  1. Maclean, Burgess and Philby had all been communists at Cambridge
  2. Philby had become pro-German to build his cover story
  3. Philby had married the communist Litzi Friedman
  4. Krivitsky had pointed to a journalist in Spain (who was in fact Philby)
  5. Philby was involved in the Volkov affair
  6. Philby was involved in infiltrating Georgian agents into Armenia
  7. Philby was suspected in assisting in the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean.

It had presumably not been the plan to open up so blatantly when preparations for the visit were originally made. Yet Sillitoe did not take this memorandum to Hoover.

The CIA Takes Charge?

When Bedell Smith, the head of the CIA, heard of the Burgess-Maclean fiasco, he apparently asked his lieutenants to write up reports on what they knew about Philby. Even though there had been no deep briefing of the CIA by Sillitoe and Martin, one of Smith’s officers, Bill Harvey, responsible for countering Soviet espionage, used information which was uncannily similar to that supplied by Martin to give meat to his account. James Angleton, the other prominent agent, wrote more about the rude behavior of Burgess in Washington, but was overall more forgiving of Philby. Bedell Smith then wrote to Stewart Menzies, the head of SIS, insisting that Philby never represent the British government again – as if he had been unaware of the Martin submission. What is most critical for this story, however, is the fact that Harvey’s report was dated June 18, the day Sillitoe and Martin returned to London after their conversations with their counterparts in the FBI. Philby was already out of the country.

It is important to note a few important aspects of Philby’s recall. The first concerns the fact that Stewart Menzies, the head of SIS, very quickly sent a recall message to Philby after his friends had fled. That would suggest that Menzies, who was later to become a stout defender of this high-flying officer, at the time had doubts about him – perhaps because some analysts were suggesting that Philby was ‘STANLEY’ in the VENONA decrypts – and recognized that Philby was a security risk. Yet a disturbing part of the recall was the unusual behavior of Menzies, in that he first sent a letter to Philby, in which he warned him that an official telegram would soon be arriving. Some interpreters of this (e.g. Hamrick) have suggested that this was an alert for Philby to indicate that he should fly the coop if he wanted to. It is difficult to imagine Menzies taking advice on this matter from anyone else.

As Genrikh Borovik recorded in The Philby Files (1994) (and confirmable in KV 6/143 at Kew) Philby was also asked by MI5, by telegram, to contribute an opinion on the Burgess and Maclean affair before the letter from Menzies came through. He sent two messages back, of which the second, dated June 6,is on file, and danced a cautiously informative line, dropping hints about the pair’s possible association and friendship, and identifying possibly incriminating property (a sun-lamp, a camera, books by Stalin) in Burgess’s possession. It was crafted to provide just enough awareness to show a degree of observation, but not enough to have implicated himself.

Hamrick reports that the letter-carrier was one John Drew, who ‘happened to be leaving for Washington on official business’, and that the letter had been written at Menzies’ request. “The purpose was to warn Philby of the coming cable recalling him to London so he could quickly pack up and hustle out of town before Percy Sillitoe arrived for his talks with J. Edgar Hoover. MI6 wanted to make sure Philby was beyond Hoover’s grasp and unavailable for FBI interrogation.” That sounds fraudulent and unlikely to me: why on earth would Philby, as an SIS employee, have to submit to interrogation by the FBI? If accurate, however, it also shows that Menzies was aware of the planned Sillitoe visit: Patrick Reilly, identified as ‘SIS Foreign Office Adviser’, attended the vital planning meeting on May 24 at which the timetable was laid out. Reilly had also been Menzies’s private secretary during the war, so Menzies would quickly have learned all that was going on. Reilly (who was the gentleman selected to prepare, a few years later, the lie to the House of Commons about Burgess’s career with the Foreign Office) could have also been called ‘Foreign Office SIS Adviser’.

Another significant fact is that Philby maintained cordial relations with his contacts in the CIA (for example, James Angleton) right up to his departure. That would indicate that the CIA did not connect any dots until after he had left, for whatever reason, and that Bill Harvey’s work on building a case against Philby did not occur until Sillitoe and Martin had arrived in Washington. No record of Harvey’s report to Bedell Smith, which has received so much attention in the various accounts of this period, exists. Gordon Corera, in The Art of Betrayal (2012) informs us that he made repeated requests through the Freedom of Information Act, but came up with nothing. (Corera, by the way, is another historian who ignores the chronology: he has ‘Washington’ insisting that Philby leave.)

Moreover, Corera also has Harvey sending his memorandum not to Smith, but to Allen Dulles, who was Deputy-Director of Plans at that time. Yet this was assuredly a different memorandum. The Cleveland Cram Archive at George Washington University reveals that Harvey and Angleton probably submitted two separate memoranda: when Jack Easton of SIS returned to Washington in July, he pointed out that Sillitoe had been given these memoranda by the CIA, and that the one written by Harvey claimed that Philby was ‘ELLI’. That assertion was not part of the Martin-Lamphere-Harvey communication, and it would appear clear that Harvey had been instructed not to let the Director-General of MI5 see the infamous memorandum with the seven points. In addition, the missive to Dulles was dated June 15, while that to Smith was written two days earlier, immediately after Lamphere’s meeting with Martin.

Christopher Andrew is another of those observers who assert that Philby was recalled because of Bedell Smith’s ‘prompt’ action in demanding Philby’s recall, and that such a demand then required Sillitoe to travel to Washington to mollify Bedell Smith! Moreover, Andrew makes no reference to the seven-point memorandum which Lamphere clearly described in his book, published as early as 1986. Even Anthony Cave Brown, not regarded as the most reliable of historians, reflected the Martin disclosures, in his 1994 epic Treason in the Blood, although he suggested that the dossier on Philby was created by Martin in a rush, when he inspected the records on Philby only after Burgess and Maclean were shown to have flown (May 28) –  a highly improbable scenario. While a fresh decision was no doubt made to communicate its contents to Lamphere, the dossier had surely been compiled beforehand. Nigel West, in his recent Coldwar Spymaster (see last month’s report) quotes Liddell’s diary entry of June 18, when he shares Sillitoe’s statement of regret that the FBI had not been shown the shortlist, but otherwise does not explain the circumstances by which this memorandum was created and passed on.

The comments in Liddell’s diary indicate a highly significant and devious plot, however.  On June 14, he reports that Sillitoe has sent in a telegram, ‘saying that the CIA are already conducting enquiries about Philby, whom they regard as persona non grata, and that the FBI may take up the running before long. He [Sillitoe] thinks, however, that we should disclose to the FBI now that Kim’s first wife was a Communist’. Liddell was doubtful about providing this information, and recorded that the decision should be left to Sillitoe: “.  . .  he should make it clear that no proper assessment of Philby’s position has so far been possible.” Apart from the absurdity of the Director-General of MI5 having to telegram home for instructions (I cannot see J. Edgar Hoover calling back from Topeka, Kansas to ask his subordinates ‘What should I do?’), Liddell’s state of ignorance would seem to be confirmed.

Given that Martin had just informed Lamphere of the fact of Philby’s first marriage, as one of the seven points, it would appear to prove that (unless Liddell had been creating fake entries for posterity) i) Liddell himself knew nothing of Martin and his seven points; ii) Sillitoe knew nothing of the seven points, and iii) Lamphere could be trusted not to have shared what he was told with his colleagues at the FBI. The only person who could have managed this whole exercise was Dick White. As it turned out, Sillitoe went on to have a meeting with Bedell Smith, but since he had been deliberately kept in the dark about the mission of his sidekick Martin, it is safe to assume that he could have told Bedell Smith nothing about MI5’s dossier on Philby. Ironically, as late as June 27, Liddell records in his diary that White ‘has agreed a memorandum with SIS on the subject of Kim Philby, which is to go to the FBI’. Dick White must have struggled to keep a straight face.

The American side of the story is equally bizarre, with the CIA’s Bill Harvey clearly trying to steal the thunder, claiming he had come to his conclusions about Philby while stuck in traffic on the way to work. (In his 2001 Secret History of the CIA Joseph J. Trento relates an alternative version which Harvey used to tell his team in Berlin, where he was posted in 1953 – that the breakthrough occurred while he was sitting in the barber’s chair: maybe he had trouble remembering his legend.) Harvey was an unusual character, in that he had been recruited from the FBI in 1950 after he had effectively been fired from Hoover’s organisation, probably because a hangover caused him to miss an appointment. Trento, citing William R. Corson, offers a more dramatic explanation – that Hoover set up the incident, so that he could infiltrate Harvey into the CIA as a mole. Whether that is true or not, Harvey had also been enraged when Guy Burgess drew an unflattering caricature of his wife at a party hosted by the Philbys. The story of his epiphany comes from the very influential, but woolly and unreliable 1980 book, Wilderness of Mirrors, by the journalist David Martin, who echoed the claim that Bedell Smith gathered Angleton’s and Harvey’s reports, and let Menzies know that Philby was no longer welcome in Washington. Martin went on to write, in blissful ignorance of what his namesake Arthur had provided, that MI5, ‘working from Harvey’s premise’ then compiled a dossier against Philby that included the seven points of light. “I have toted [sic] up the ledger and the debits outnumber the assets’, he had the head of MI5 (i.e. not Menzies, but Sillitoe) then informing the CIA in response. Wilderness of Mirrors builds up a paean to Harvey as ‘the man who unmasked Philby’ and upstaged his rival James Angleton, the start of a lifelong reputation that was then reinforced by everyone who read Martin’s book: it was all a sham.

In his profile of Philby, The Master Spy (1982), Phillip Knightley (who interviewed his subject in Moscow) manages to record both anecdotes in the space of two pages – Harvey’s extraordinary insight, and the fact that Lamphere was informed by Arthur Martin of the seven points – without recognizing the paradox. Moreover, he also echoes David Martin’s absurd claim that White then endorsed the Bedell Smith report by compiling its own dossier on Philby.  As a weird adjunct to his written testimony, Lamphere then informed Knightley that Martin was accompanied by White himself in a visit to Washington after the Bedell submission, and thereby convinced him of Philby’s guilt! Knightley’s account is typical of this genre in showing an utterly undisciplined approach to chronology, an impressionability to unreliable sources, and a lack of rigorous methodology to sort out conflicts.

Lamphere thus seemed to contradict himself, sealing the fact of his complicity in the plot. As further evidence, Lamphere, who documented the Arthur Martin revelations in 1986, appeared not to object to this flagrant distortion of the truth when Burton Hersh, in The Old Boys (1992) regurgitated this story that appeared in the more definitive history of the CIA, John Ranelagh’s The Agency (1986). The CIA and the FBI were fierce rivals, and culturally very different. Why would he not call out his vainglorious counterpart, and correct the record? (Questioning the possible motives of participants is another aspect of my methodology.) Probably because Harvey was his friend and ally, and they agreed that it was the best way of getting rid of the odious Philby.

Dick White’s Plot

My theory about this is, therefore, that Lamphere knew that a wily plot was under way, and went along with it to enhance the CIA’s reputation. I suspect that Dick White, alerted by Liddell (and maybe by the very astute Maurice Oldfield, an SIS officer who had come to similar conclusions about Philby, but was not yet influential enough to challenge Menzies) crafted the policy of leaking a dossier on Philby to the CIA via Lamphere, so that the CIA could challenge SIS on it, thus deflecting the source of the attack away from MI5. Since Harvey was an ex-FBI man, he had a special relationship with his former colleague: he and Lamphere were old friends. The CIA had been depressed by its recent failed exploits in Albania, with which Philby had been involved, and MI5 was in no shape to make any open criticisms of SIS, what with the Fuchs fiasco fresh in its collective minds. What better way for MI5 of raising its esteem in the opinion of the CIA, and diverting attention to the misfortunes of SIS, than enabling the passing on to the CIA secret information with which it could assail SIS, and secure Philby’s demise?

Thus Lamphere became a willing participant in the scheme, and remained silent. In his book, he very smoothly elides over Harvey’s ‘breakthrough’: “In the summer of 1951, in my in-service lectures to FBI field agents, I was discussing Philby as a major spy; simultaneously, over at the CIA, Bill Harvey and Jim Angleton had no doubts about Philby’s perfidy.” He says nothing about Harvey’s ‘Aha!’ moment when stuck in traffic. He subdued his ego for the greater cause. By 1986, however, he no doubt felt that it was safe to explain what really happened. Yet no one picked him up: instead we read all these stories, no doubt encouraged by the CIA, of MI5 responding to the shrewd insights of its operatives by compiling its dossier on Philby in response to the CIA’s breakthroughs.

MI5 was thus clearly trying to play a very cagey game, no doubt inspired by Dick White rather than the bemused Sillitoe or the cautious Liddell, playing off the Foreign Office and SIS, and attempting to curry favour with the CIA, minimizing MI5’s culpability in the sluggish investigation into HOMER. The service surely had compiled a dossier on Philby much earlier (as the Roberts-Liddell exchanges will probably confirm), and many commentators, such as Hamrick, imply that the study of the VENONA texts had led White and co. to Maclean much earlier than MI5 later claimed. SIS’s passivity in the whole affair is a bit surprising, unless Menzies and White (acting on behalf of the confused Sillitoe) had done a deal whereby they would quietly ‘bury’ Philby in the same way that White and Liddell had smothered any disclosures about Anthony Blunt and Leo Long. Yet the fact that Menzies sent his emissary Jack Easton out to Washington in July to explain to Bedell Smith that Philby’s only identified transgression so far had been to board Guy Burgess in his Washington home indicated that SIS was probably not aware of the beans that had been spilled by Arthur Martin earlier.

As for Liddell, it was surprising that he was not sent on the mission with Sillitoe – after all, he was Sillitoe’s deputy, was nominally in charge of the investigation, and knew as much as anybody about Soviet espionage – but maybe he was considered not devious enough, and might have betrayed the fact that he had harboured suspicions about Philby for some years already. White may have therefore manoeuvered Martin into the assignment, as a less imaginative spokesperson. Yet Tom Bower’s biography of White, The Perfect English Spy, offers a different explanation. The account of these weeks is a chronological disaster, as White clearly wanted to deceive his interlocutor. The future head of MI5 and SIS gave his biographer a complete tissue of lies, not only massively confusing the timetable of events, but omitting some vital aspects of the story. Again, this episode merits a report of its own, and I need to interweave the claimed chronology with my previous account of Liddell’s meetings with Rees and Blunt (see https://coldspur.com/donald-macleans-handiwork ), so I shall just highlight the main travesties here.

Among the distortions, Bower has White approaching John Sinclair, the deputy-director of SIS, after Sillitoe’s return from the USA, requesting that Philby be brought back to England for questioning, while indicating that Philby was not under suspicion at that time. He makes no mention of the detailed plans for visiting Washington that Kew has now disclosed, most significantly overlooking the dossier that Arthur Martin shared with Lamphere, instead saying that Martin’s conversations with Lamphere ‘were focused on Burgess’. Instead, White has himself and Martin compiling the dossier after the request to Philby went out. Moreover, he repeats the story of the letter of warning to Philby before the telegram, but again, being sent after Sillitoe and Martin had returned. It is apparent, also, that White told Bower that he wanted Liddell out of the investigation because of Liddell’s associations with Burgess and his injudicious meeting with Blunt, and Liddell’s foolish request to Blunt to open Burgess’s flat to look for clues and correspondence.

White hints broadly to his biographer that Liddell came under suspicion as a Soviet spy, yet on January 2, 1980, he would declare (as reported by the Canberra Times) that “Any suggestion that Liddell was a Russian agent is the most awful, rotten nonsense. I knew him well and never had the slightest doubt about his good faith.” What is also remarkable is the evidence, in the Cleveland Cram files, that, when White came over to Washington in January 1952, he admitted to Scott, Dulles and Wisner in the CIA that Philby had been spying for the Soviets up until 1945, but had then ‘probably stopped’ his activities. That was an extraordinarily reckless statement to make, especially in view of the fact that MI5 had not elicited a confession from Philby, and that Harold Macmillan would go on to clear him, to the House of Commons, in 1955. It was overall a very slippery, mendacious performance by White in trying to put a positive seal on his legacy, concealing the bulk of the facts, and shifting the blame to Liddell when he, White, was just as responsible as his mentor. After all, if, as I claim is true, Blunt and Leo Long were discovered spying in 1944, White and Liddell should both have steered very clear of Blunt in 1951. ‘Dick White – A Re-assessment’ is urgently required.

But why MI5 thought that it had to bow to Foreign Office pressure, and could get away honourably, and without detection, with showing Lamphere the seven-point memorandum while concealing it from Hoover remains a puzzlement. It is all very amateurish, suggesting perhaps that the Foreign Office, which in May had been insistent that Martin not tell the FBI that Maclean was a suspect, was in on the ruse, perhaps believing that it would move attention away from Maclean to Philby. The whole saga demands further analysis.

Conclusion (for now)

In conclusion, therefore, it would appear that the judgments made against Philby by Liddell in 1947 were indeed shared, but suppressed. If there is one continuous theme to my research, it is the fact that awareness of the Cambridge Five’s treachery existed well before the authorities admitted it: Burgess with the Comintern in 1940, Blunt in 1944, Philby by 1947, Cairncross in 1952, and Maclean in 1949 – or even earlier. We also have new dimensions to Liddell’s career – an insider who guessed too much too soon in 1947, a senior officer, during the vital Philby inquiry in 1951, being pushed aside and outwitted by someone who would vanquish him in the competition for Director-General a year later, and then a possible secret assignment for the same erstwhile colleague in 1955, after his retirement from MI5. And was he perhaps an articulate and expert source to favoured journalists, trying to get the hidden facts revealed in some way without his fingerprints detectable on the medium?

The irony is that E. H. Cookridge, of all observers, because of his first-hand knowledge of Philby’s activities in Vienna, should be the one to learn from Liddell of Philby’s recruitment before he set out for Austria. The conversation must have been two-way: no doubt Cookridge helped fill in the background to Philby’s communist agitation for Liddell. In 1968, however, with Liddell dead, Cookridge still felt he could not identify his source when he wrote The Third Man, but no doubt sensed the sands of time were running out when he communicated with Andrew Boyle in 1977. There is work to do: trying to inspect travel records for 1955, having a look at the  photographs of KV 2/3783, applying to the BBC for access to Roberts’s testimonial, wading through the voluminous Springhall files myself, tracking down those CIA memoranda, reading Bayard Stockton’s biography of Bill Harvey, Flawed Patriot, applying some more rigorous structure to the events of May and June 1951 (including re-inspecting KV 6/143, and attempting to integrate Dick White’s erroneous chronology), and, maybe most significant of all, gaining access to the Cookridge archive at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Is there anyone out there who can help with that last task?

Oh, and by the way, is there anyone in MI5 or SIS keeping tabs on coldspur? If such a person has any questions – or any tips – you know how to get hold of me.

This month’s Commonplace entries can be found here.

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Filed under Espionage/Intelligence, General History, Personal, Politics

Guy Liddell: A Re-Assessment

Guy Liddell

Guy Liddell’s ‘Guardian’ – Nigel West

I have met Nigel West, the pen name adopted by Rupert Allason, the undisputed doyen of British writers on intelligence matters, on three occasions, as I have recorded in previous blogs. I met him first at a conference on wartime Governments-in-Exile at Lancaster House several years back, and he kindly agreed to come and listen to the seminar on Isaiah Berlin that I was giving at the University of Buckingham the following week. We exchanged emails occasionally: he has always been an informative and encouraging advisor to researchers into the world of espionage and counter-espionage, like me. A couple of years ago, I visited him at his house outside Canterbury, where I enjoyed a very congenial lunch.

Nigel West

Shortly before Misdefending the Realm appeared, my publisher and I decided to send Mr. West a review copy, in the hope that he might provide a blurb to help promote the book. Unfortunately, Mr. West was so perturbed by the errors in the text that he recommended that we withdraw it in order to correct them. This was not a tactic that either of us was in favour of, and I resorted to quoting Robin Winks to cloak my embarrassment: “If intelligence officers dislike a book, for its tone, revelations, or simply because the find that one or two facts in it may prove compromising (for which, also read embarrassing), they may let it be known that the book is ‘riddled with errors,’ customarily pointing out a few. Any book on intelligence will contain errors, given the nature and origin of the documentation, and these errors may then be used to discredit quite valid judgments and conclusions which do not turn on the facts in question.”  (Robin W. Winks, in Cloak & Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961, p 479) Since then, therefore, I have not dared to approach Mr. West on questions of intelligence where I might otherwise have sought his opinion.

I would still describe myself as being on friendly terms with Mr. West, though would not describe us as ‘friends’.  (No collector like Denis Healey or Michael Caine am I.  I count my friends in this world as a few dozen: most of them live in England, however, which makes maintenance of the relationship somewhat difficult. On my infrequent returns to the UK, however, I pick up with them as if I had last seen them only the previous week. What they say about the matter is probably better left unrecorded.) And I remain an enthusiastic reader of Mr. West’s books. I have about twenty-five of his publication on my shelves, which I frequently consult. I have to say that they are not uniformly reliable, but I suspect that Mr. West might say the same thing himself.

His latest work, Cold War Spymaster, subtitled The Legacy of Guy Liddell, Deputy Director of MI5, is a puzzling creation, as I shall soon explain. Two of Mr. West’s works on my bookshelf are his editions of Guy Liddell’s Diaries – Volume 1, 1939-1942, and Volume 2, 1942-1945. In a way, these items are superfluous to my research needs, as I have the full set of Liddell’s Diaries on my desktop, downloaded from the National Archives website. Mr. West told me that he would have dearly liked to publish more of Liddell’s chronicle, but it was not considered economically viable. Yet I still find it useful to consult his editions since he frequently provides valuable guides to identities of redacted names, or cryptonyms used: it is also important for me to know what appears in print (which is the record that most historians exploit), as opposed to the largely untapped resource that the original diaries represent. Cold War Spymaster seems to reflect a desire to fill in the overlooked years in the Liddell chronicle.

Guy Liddell, the Diaries and MI5

As West [I shall, with no lack of respect, drop the ‘Mr.’ hereon] points out, Liddell’s Diaries consist an extraordinary record of MI5’s activities during the war, and afterwards, and I do not believe they have been adequately exploited by historians. It is true that a certain amount of caution is always required when treating such testimony: I have been amazed, for example, at the attention that Andrew Roberts’s recent biography of Churchill has received owing to the claim that the recent publication of the Maisky Diaries has required some revisionist assessment. The Soviet ambassador was a mendacious and manipulative individual, and I do not believe that half the things that Maisky ascribed to Churchill and Anthony Eden were ever said by those two politicians. Thus (for example), Churchill’s opinions on the Soviet Union’s ‘rights’ to control the Baltic States have become distorted. Similarly, though to a lesser degree, Stephen Kotkin takes the claims of Maisky far too seriously in Volume 2 of his biography of Stalin.

Diaries, it is true, have the advantage of immediacy over memoirs, but one still has to bear in mind for whose benefit they are written. Liddell locked his away each night, and probably never expected them to be published, believing (as West states) that only the senior management in MI5 would have the privilege of reading them. Yet a careful reading of the text shows some embarrassments, contradictions, and attempts to cover up unpleasantries. Even in 2002, fifty years later, when they were declassified, multiple passages were redacted because some events were still considered too sensitive. Overall, however, Liddell’s record provides unmatched insights into the mission of MI5 and indeed the prosecution of the war. I used them extensively when researching my thesis, and made copious notes, but now, each time I go back to them on some new intelligence topic, I discover new gems, the significance of which I had overlooked on earlier passes.

Describing Liddell’s roles during the time of his Diaries (1939-1952) is important in assessing his record. When war broke out, he was Assistant-Director, under Jasper Harker, of B Division, responsible for counter-intelligence and counter-espionage. B Division included the somewhat maverick section led by Maxwell Knight, B1F, which was responsible for planting agents within subversive organisations such as the Communist Party and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. When Churchill sacked the Director-General, Vernon Kell, in May 1940, and introduced the layer of the Security Executive under Lord Swinton to manage domestic intelligence, Liddell was promoted to Director of B Division, although he had to share the office with an inappropriate political insertion, William Crocker, for some months. As chaos mounted during 1940, and Harker was judged to be ill-equipped for leadership, David Petrie was brought in to head the organisation, and in July 1941 he instituted a new structure in which counter-intelligence against communist subversion was hived off into a new F Division, initially under John Curry. Thus Liddell, while maintaining an interest, was not nominally responsible for handling Soviet espionage during most of the war.

David Petrie

Petrie, an effective administrator appointed to produce order, and a clear definition of roles, was considered a success, and respected by those who worked for him. He retired (in somewhat mysterious circumstances) in 1946, and was replaced by another outsider whose credentials were superficially less impressive, the ex-policeman, Percy Sillitoe – an appointment that Liddell resented on two counts. Petrie was a solid administrator and planner: he had been in his position about a year-and-a-half when he produced, in November 1942, a paper that outlined his ideas about the future of MI5, how it should report, and what the ideal characteristics of officers and the Director-General should be. His recommendations were a little eccentric, stressing that an ideal D-G should come from the Services or Police, and have much experience overseas. Thus Liddell, who probably did not see the report, would have been chagrined at the way that career intelligence officers would have been overlooked. In the same file at Kew (KV 4/448) can be seen Liddell’s pleas for improving career-paths for officers, including the establishment of a permanent civilian intelligence corps in the services.

Petrie was reported to have kept a diary during his years in office, but destroyed it. The authorised historian, Christopher Andrew, glides over his retirement. In a very provocative sentence in his ODNB entry for Petrie, Jason Tomes writes: “In retrospect, this triumph [the double cross system] had to be set alongside a serious failure: inadequate surveillance of Soviet spies. Petrie sensed that the Russian espionage which MI5 uncovered was the tip of an iceberg, but the Foreign Office urged restraint and MI5 had itself been penetrated (by Anthony Blunt).” What Soviet espionage had MI5 uncovered by 1945? Green, Uren and Springhall were convicted in 1942, 1943 and 1944, respectively, but it is not clear why Petrie suspected an ‘iceberg’ of Communist penetration, or what sources Tomes is relying on when he claims that Petrie had evidence of it, and that he and the Foreign Office had a major disagreement over policy, and how the Director-General was overruled. Did he resign over it? That would be a major addition to the history of MI5. The defector Gouzenko led the British authorities to Nunn May, but he was not arrested until March 1946. Could Petrie have been disgusted by the discovery of Leo Long and his accomplice Blunt in 1944? See Misdefending the Realm for more details. I have attempted to contact Tomes through his publisher, the History Press, but he has not responded.

Like several other officers, including Dick White, who considered resigning over the intrusion, Liddell did not think the Labour Party’s appointing of a policeman showed good judgment. Sillitoe had worked in East Africa as a young man, but since 1923 as a domestic police officer, so he hardly met Petrie’s criteria, either.  Astonishingly, Petrie’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography asserts that Petrie had recommended Liddell for the post, but had been overruled by Attlee – an item of advice that would have been a complete volte-face in light of his memorandum three years earlier. On the other hand, it might be said that Sillitoe could have well riposted to his critics, after the Fuchs affair, that the established officers in MI5 did not understand counter-intelligence either. And in another of those enigmatic twists that bedevil attempts to work out what really happened here, Richard Deacon (whose role I shall inspect later in this piece), wrote about Sillitoe in The Greatest Treason: “The picture which has most unfortunately been portrayed since Sillitoe’s departure from MI5 has been that of a policeman totally out of place in a service which called for highly intellectual talents. This is total balderdash: someone like Sillitoe was desperately needed to put MI5 on the right track and to get rid of the devious amateurs who held power.” One might ask: was that not what Petrie had been doing for the past five years?

Percy Sillitoe

In any case, Liddell also thought that he deserved the job himself. Yet he did receive some recognition, and moved nearer to the seat of leadership. In October 1946 he replaced Harker as Deputy Director-General, and frequently stood in for his new boss, who had a rough time trying to deal with ‘subversive’ MI5 officers, and reportedly liked to travel to get away from the frustrations of the office climate.  What is puzzling, however, about the post-war period is that, despite the fact that the Nazi threat was over, and that a Labour government was (initially) far more sympathetic to the Soviet cause, B Division did not immediately take back control of communist subversion. A strong leader would have made this case immediately.

The histories of MI5 (by Christopher Andrew, and West himself) are deplorably vague about responsibilities in the post-war years. We can rely on John Curry’s internal history, written in 1945, for the clear evidence that, after Petrie’s reorganization in the summer of 1941, F Division was responsible for ‘Communism and Left-Wing Movements’ (F2, under Hollis), which was in turn split into F2A (Policy Activities of CPGB in UK), under Mr Clarke, F2B (Comintern Activities generally, including Communist Refugees), and F2C (Russian Intelligence), under Mr. Pilkington. Petrie had followed Lord Swinton’s advice in splitting up B Division, which was evidently now focused on Nazi Espionage (B1A through B1H). Dick White has been placed in charge of a small section simply named ‘Espionage’, with the mission of B4A described as ‘Suspected cases of Espionage by Individuals domiciled in United Kingdom’, and ‘Review of Espionage cases’. Presumably that allowed Liddell and White to keep their hand in with communist subversion and the machinations of the Comintern.

Yet that agreement (if indeed it was one) is undermined by the organisation chart for August 1943, where White has been promoted to Deputy Director to Liddell, and B4A has been set a new mission of ‘Escaped Prisoners of War and Evaders’. F Division, now under the promoted Roger Hollis, since Curry has been moved into a ‘Research’ position under Petrie, still maintains F2, with the same structure, although Mr Shillito is now responsible for F2B and F2C. With the Soviet Union now an ally, the intensity of concerns about Communist espionage appears to have diminished even more. (In 1943, Stalin announced the dissolution of the Comintern, although that gesture was a fraudulent one.) One might have expected that the conclusion of hostilities, and the awareness within MI5, and even the Foreign Office, that the Soviet Union was now the major threat (again), would provoke a reallocation of forces and a new mission. And, indeed, this appears to be what happened – but in a quiet, unannounced fashion, perhaps because it took a while for Attlee to be able to stand up to the Bevanite and Crippsian influences in his Party. A close inspection of certain archives (in this case, the Pieck files) shows that in September 1946, Michael Serpell identified himself as F2C, but by the following January was known as B1C. This is an important indicator that White’s B Division was taking back some responsibility for Soviet espionage in the light of the new threat, and especially the Gouzenko revelations of 1945. Yet who made the decision, and exactly what happened, seems to be unrecorded.

According to Andrew, after the war, B Division was highly focused on Zionist revolts in Palestine, for which the United Kingdom still held the mandate. Yet he (like West) has nothing to say about F Division between Petrie’s resignation in 1946 and Dick White’s reorganisation in 1953. The whole of the Sillitoe era is a blank. Thus we have to conclude that, from 1947 onwards, Hollis’s F Division was restricted to covering overt subversive organisations (such as the Communist Party), while B Division assumed its traditional role in counter-espionage activities, such as the tracking of Klaus Fuchs and Nunn May, the case of Alexander Foote, and the interpretation of the VENONA transcripts. The artificial split again betrayed the traditional weaknesses in MI5 policies, namely its age-old belief that communist subversion could come only through the agencies of the CPGB, and that domestically-educated ‘intellectual’ communists would still have loyalty to Great Britain. White held on to this thesis for far too long. Gouzenko’s warnings – and the resumption of the Pieck inquiry – had aroused a recognition that an ‘illegal’ network of subversion needed to be investigated. Yet it was not until the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, with the subsequent executions, and the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948, that Attlee’s policy toward the Soviets hardened, and B Division’s new charter was accepted.

I return to West and Liddell. On the inside cover of each volume of the published Diaries appear the following words: “Although reclusive, and dependent on a small circle of trusted friends, he (Liddell) was unquestionably one of the most remarkable and accomplished professionals of his generation, and a legend within his own organisation.” Even making allowances for the rhetorical flourish of granting Liddell a ‘mythical’ status, I have always been a little sceptical of this judgment. Was this not the same Liddell who recruited Anthony Blunt and Victor Rothschild into his organisation, and then wanted to bring in Guy Burgess, only being talked out of it by John Curry? Was this the same officer who had allowed Fuchs to be accepted into atomic weapons research, despite his known track-record as a CP member, and who allowed SONIA to carry on untouched in her Oxfordshire hideaway? Was this the same officer whom John Costello, David Mure, Goronwy Rees, Richard Deacon and SIS chief Maurice Oldfield all * thought so poorly of that they named him as a probable Soviet mole? Moreover, in his 1987 book, Molehunt, even West had described Liddell as ‘unquestionably a very odd character’. Can these two assessments comfortably co-exist?

* John Costello in Mask of Treachery (1988); David Mure in Master of Deception (1980); Goronwy Rees in the Observer (1980); Richard Deacon in The Greatest Treason (1989); Maurice Oldfield in The Age, and to US intelligence, quoted by Costello.

To balance this catalogue of errors, Liddell surely had some achievements to his credit. He was overall responsible for conceiving the Double-Cross Operation (despite White’s claims to his biographer of his taking the leading role himself, and ‘Tar’ Robertson receiving acclaim from some as being the mastermind of the operation), and basked in the glory that this strategic deception was said to have played in ensuring the success of OVERLORD, the invasion of France. He supervised Maxwell Knight’s infiltration of the Right Club, which led to the arrest and incarceration of Anna Wolkoff and Tyler Kent. He somehow kept B Division together during the turmoil of 1940 and the ‘Fifth Column’ scare. His Diaries reveal a sharp and inquiring mind that was capable of keeping track of myriads of projects across the whole of the British Empire. Thus I opened Cold War Spymaster in the hope that I might find a detailed re-assessment of this somewhat sad figure.

‘Cold War Spymaster’

First, the title. Why West chose this, I have no idea, as he normally claims to be so precise about functions and organisation. (He upbraided me for getting ‘Branches’ and ‘Divisions’ mixed up in Misdefending the Realm, although Christopher Andrew informs us that the terms were used practically interchangeably: it was a mess.) When Geoffrey Elliott wrote about Tommy (‘Tar’) Robertson in Gentleman Spymaster, he was somewhat justified, because Robertson’s main claim to fame was the handling of the German double-agents in World War II. When Martin Pearce chose Spymaster for his biography of Maurice Oldfield, he had right on his side because Oldfield headed SIS, which is primarily an espionage organisation. Helen Fry used it for her profile of the SIS officer, Charles Kendrick, and Charles Whiting wrote a book titled Spymasters for his account of GCHQ’s manipulation of the Germans. But Liddell headed a counter-espionage and counter-intelligence unit: he was not a master of spies.

Second, the subject. Subtitled The Legacy of Guy Liddell, Deputy Director of MI5, the book ‘is intended to examine Liddell’s involvement in some important counter-espionage cases’. Thus some enticing-looking chapters appear on The Duke of Windsor, CORBY (Gouzenko), Klaus Fuchs, Konstantin Volkov (the would-be defector from Turkey who almost unveiled Philby), BARCLAY and CURZON (in fact, Burgess and Maclean, but why not name them so? : BARCLAY does not appear until the final page of a ninety-page chapter), PEACH (the codename given to the investigation of Philby from 1951), and Exposure. One might therefore look forward to a fresh analysis of some of the most intriguing cases of the post-war period.

Third, the sources. Like any decent self-respecting author of average vanity, the first thing I did on opening the book was to search for my name in the Acknowledgments or Sources. But no mention. I might have thought that my analysis, in Misdefending the Realm, of Liddell’s flaws in not taking the warnings of Krivitsky seriously enough, in not insisting on a follow-up to the hint of the ‘Imperial Council’ source, worthy of inclusion. I saw such characters as Tommy Robertson, Dick White, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross, Yuri Modin and even Jürgen Kuczynski listed there, which did not fill my bosom with excitement, as I thought their contributions would have been exhausted and stale by now. The Bibliography is largely a familiar list of books of various repute, going back to the 1950s, with an occasional entry of something newer, such as the unavoidable and inevitable Ben Macintyre, from more recent years. It also, not very usefully, includes Richard Deacon’s British Connection, a volume that was withdrawn and pulped for legal reasons, and is thus not generally available  So what was this all about?

It turns out that the content of the book is about 80% reproduction of public documents, either excerpts from Liddell’s Diaries from the time 1945 to his resignation in 1953, or from files available at the National Archives. (It is very difficult to distinguish quickly what is commentary and what is quoted sources, as all appear in the same typeface, with many excerpts continuing on for several pages, even though such citations are indented.  And not all his authoritative statements are sourced.) The story West tells is not new, and can be largely gleaned from other places. Moreover, he offers very little fresh or penetrating analysis. Thus it appears that West, his project on publishing excerpts from the Diaries forced to a premature halt, decided to resuscitate the endeavour under a new cover.

So what is Liddell’s ‘legacy’? The author comes to the less than startling conclusion that ‘with the benefit of hindsight, access to recently declassified documents and a more relaxed attitude to the publication of memoirs [what does this mean? Ed.], we can now see how Liddell was betrayed by Burgess, Blunt and Philby.’ Is that news? And does West intend to imply that it was not Liddell’s fault? He offers no analysis of exactly how this happened, and it is a strain to pretend that Liddell, whose object in life was to guard against the threats from such lowlifes, somehow maintained his professional reputation while at the same time failing calamitously to protect himself or the Realm. What caused the fall from grace of ‘unquestionably one of the most remarkable and accomplished professionals of his generation’? Moreover, the exploration of such a betrayal could constitute a poignant counterpoint to the sometime fashionable notion – espoused by Lord Annan and others –  that Goronwy Rees had been the greater sinner by betraying, through his criticisms of Burgess and Maclean in his People articles, the higher cause of friendship. Cold War Spymaster thus represents a massive opportunity missed, avoided, or perhaps deferred.

Expert, Administrator or Leader?

In Misdefending the Realm, my analysis of Liddell concluded that he was an essentially decent man who was not tough enough for the climate and position he was in. Maybe someone will soon attempt a proper biography of him, as he deserves. His earlier years with Special Branch and the formative years in the 1930s are not really significant, I think. West starts his Chronology with January 1940, when Krivitsky was interrogated, and I agree that that period (which coincides closely with the start of the period studied in Misdefending the Realm) is the appropriate place to begin.

I have always been puzzled by the treatment of Jane Archer, whom Liddell essentially started to move out at the end of 1939. Why he would want to banish his sharpest counter-espionage officer, and replace her with the second-rate Roger Hollis – not the move of a ‘remarkable and accomplished professional’ – is something that defies logic. Yet the circumstances of Archer’s demise are puzzling. We have it solely on Liddell’s word that Archer was fired, in November 1940, at Jasper Harker’s behest, because she had reputedly mocked the rather pompous Deputy Director-General once too much. (She did not leave the intelligence world, but moved to SIS, so her behaviour cannot have been that subversive.  Incidentally, a scan of various memoranda and reports written by Harker, scattered around MI5 files, shows a rather shrewd and pragmatic intelligence officer: I suspect that he may have received a poor press.) I should not be surprised to discover that there was more going on: I am so disappointed that no one appears to have tried to interview this gallant woman before her death in 1982.

Kathleen (aka ‘Jane’) Archer, nee Sissmore, MI5’s most capable counter-espionage officer

It would be naïve to imagine that MI5 would be different from any other organisation and be immune from the complications of office politics – and office romance. If I were writing a fictionalized account of this period, I would have Guy Liddell showing an interest in the highly personable, intelligent, humorous and attractive Jane Sissmore (as she was until September 1939). Liddell’s marriage had fallen on rocky ground: in Molehunt, Nigel West stated that his wife Calypso née Baring (the daughter of the third Baron Revelstoke) had left him before the start of the war.  John Costello, in Mask of Treachery, related, having interviewed Liddell himself, that Calypso had absconded as early as 1938, and that Liddell had travelled to Miami in December of that year, and surprisingly won a successful custody battle. Yet contemporary newspapers prove that Calypso had left her husband, taking their children to Florida as early as July 1935, in the company of her half-brother, an association that raised some eyebrows as well as questions in court. Liddell followed them there, and was able, by the peculiarities of British Chancery Law, to make the children wards of court in August. In December, Calypso publicly called her husband ‘an unmitigated snob’ (something the Revelstokes would have known about, I imagine), but agreed to return to England with the offspring, at least temporarily. At the outbreak of war, however, Calypso had managed to overturn the decision because of the dangers of the Blitz, and eventually spirited their children away again. West informs us that, ‘for the first year of the war Liddell’s daughters lived with his widowed cousin Mary Wollaston in Winchester, and Peter at his prep school in Surrey, and then they moved to live with their mother in California’. (Advice to ambitious intelligence officers: do not marry a girl named ‘Calypso’ or ‘Clothilde’.)

The day before war broke out, Jane Sissmore married another MI5 officer, Joe Archer. In those days, it would have been civil service policy for a female employee getting married to have to resign for the sake of childbearing and home, but maybe the exigences of war encouraged a more tolerant approach. Perhaps the Archers even delayed their wedding for that reason. In any case, relationships in the office must have changed. There is not a shred of evidence behind my hypothesis that Liddell might have wooed Sissmore in the first part of 1939, but then there is not a shred of evidence that he maintained a contact in Soviet intelligence to whom he passed secrets, as has been the implication by such as Costello. Yet it would have been very strange if, his marriage irretrievably broken, he had been unappreciative of Sissmore’s qualities, and not perhaps sought a closer relationship with her. It might also explain why Liddell felt uncomfortable having Jane continue to work directly for him. Despite her solid performance on the Krivitsky case, she was appointed supremo of the Regional Security Liaison Officers organisation in April 1940. In this role she quickly gained respect from the hard-boiled intelligence officers, solicitors, stockbrokers and former King’s Messengers who worked for her, until she and Liddell in late October 1940 had another clash (as I reported in the Mystery of the Undetected Radios: Part 3). She was fired shortly after.

Liddell’s life was complicated by the insertion, in August 1940, of William Crocker as his co-director of B Division, at Lord Swinton’s insistence, and no doubt with the advice of Sir Joseph Ball. It is not clear what the exact sequence of events was, but Crocker, who was a solicitor, and Ball’s personal one to boot, had acted for Liddell in trying to maintain custody of the three children he had with Calypso. While the initial attempt had been successful, it was evidently overturned in 1939, and Liddell and his wife were legally separated in 1943. Crocker did not last long in MI5, and he resigned in September of 1940. While David Petrie brought some structure and discipline to the whole service by mid-1941, Liddell had buried himself in his work (and in the task of writing up his Diaries each night), and had found social company in circles that were not quite appropriate for his position. The personal stress in his life, alone and separated from his four children, must have been enormous.

Such contacts would come back to haunt Liddell. When Petrie retired from the Director-Generalship of MI5 in 1946, Liddell was overlooked as replacement, some accounts suggesting that a word in Attlee’s ear by the leftwing firebrand, ‘Red’ Ellen Wilkinson, had doomed his chances. The most recent description of this initiative appears in Michael Jago’s 2014 work, Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister, where he describes Liddell’s rejection despite the support for him from within MI5. Wilkinson had apparently told her lover, Herbert Morrison, who was Home Secretary in the postwar Labour administration, that Liddell had in 1940 betrayed the communist propagandist Willi Münzenberg, who had entered Stalin’s hitlist and been assassinated in France.

Several aspects of such an assertion are extremely illogical, however. It is true that the suspicions that Attlee and his ministers had about the anti-socialist tendencies of MI5 coloured the Prime Minister’s perspectives on security matters, but this narrative does not bear up to examination. First, for a leftist agitator like Wilkinson (who had also been the lover of Münzenberg’s henchman, Otto Katz) to confirm her close association with Münzenberg, and take up Münzenberg’s cause against Stalin, was quixotic, to say the least, even if her convictions about the communist cause had softened. Second, for her to believe that the democratically-minded Attlee would look upon Münzenberg’s demise as a cause for outrage reflected a serious misjudgment. He would not have been surprised that MI5, and Liddell in particular, would have taken such a stance against Communist subversion, especially when he (Attlee) learned about the activities of the Comintern a decade before. Third, for Wilkinson to think that Attlee could be persuaded that Liddell had abetted the NKVD in eliminating Münzenberg, showed some remarkable imagination. Fourth, if Attlee had really listened carefully to her, and found her arguments persuasive, he would hardly have allowed Liddell to continue on in MI5 without even an investigation, and to be promoted to Deputy Director-General as some kind of designate. (Churchill was back in power when Sillitoe resigned.) Thus Wilkinson’s personification of Liddell as an agent of Stalinism has the ring of black comedy.

Donald McCormick (aka Richard Deacon)

I have discussed this with the very congenial Mr. Jago, who, it turns out, was at Oxford University at exactly the same time as I, and like me, relocated to the USA in 1980. (We worked out that we must have played cricket against each other in opposing school teams in 1958.) He identifies his source for the Wilkinson anecdote as that figure with whom readers of this column are now very familiar, the rather problematical Richard Deacon. Indeed, in The Greatest Treason, Deacon outlined Wilkinson’s machinations behind the scenes, attributing her reservations about Liddell to what Münzenberg had personally told her about his ‘enemy in British counter-espionage’ before he was killed. Deacon had first introduced this theory in his 1982 memoir With My Little Eye, attributing the source of the story to the suffragette Lady Rhondda, who had apparently written to Deacon about the matter before she died in 1958, also suggesting that Liddell ‘was trying to trap Arthur Koestler’. Yet Deacon qualified his report in The Greatest Treason: “Whether Ellen Wilkinson linked the Münzenberg comments with Guy Liddell is not clear, but she certainly remembered Münzenberg’s warning and as a result expressed her doubts about him. Morrison concurred and it was then that Attlee decided to bring an outsider in as chief of MI5.” I rest my case: in 1940, with Nazi Germany an ally of Soviet Russia, Liddell should have done all he could to stifle such menaces as Münzenberg. Of course Münzenberg would have ‘an enemy in MI5’. I cannot see Attlee falling for it, and this particular urban legend should be buried until stronger independent evidence emerges.

The rumour probably first appeared in David Mure’s extraordinary Last Temptation, a faux memoir in which he uses the Guy/Alice Liddell connection to concoct a veiled dramatization of Liddell’s life and career. This work, published in 1980, which I have analysed in depth in Misdefending the Realm, exploits a parade of characters from Alice in Wonderland to depict the intrigues of MI5 and MI6, and specifically the transgressions of Guy Liddell. If anyone comes to write a proper biography of Liddell, that person will have to unravel the clues that Mure left behind in this ‘novel of treason’ in order to determine what Mure’s sources were, and how reliable they were. Mure describes his informant for the Ellen Wilkinson story as an old friend of Liddell’s mother’s, ‘the widow of a food controller in the First World War’, which does not quite fit the profile of Sir Humphrey Mackworth, whom Viscountess Rhondda had divorced in 1922. A task for some researcher: to discover whether Mure and Deacon shared the same source, and what that person’s relationship with Ellen Wilkinson was.

‘The Greatest Treason’

Regardless of these intrigues, Nigel West suggested, in A Matter of Trust, his history of MI5 between 1945 and 1972, quite reasonably that an ‘insider’ appointment would have been impossible in the political climate of 1945-1946, what with a rampant Labour Party in power, harbouring resentment about the role that MI5 had played in anti-socialist endeavours going back to the Zinoviev Letter incident of 1924. Yet West, while choosing to list some of Liddell’s drawbacks (see below) at this stage of the narrative, still judged that Liddell could well have been selected for the post had Churchill won the election. The fact was that Churchill returned, and Liddell again lost.

Another Chance

When Sillitoe’s time was over in 1953, Liddell still considered himself a candidate for Director-General, and faced the Appointments Board in the Cabinet Office on April 14. (West reproduces his Diary entry from that evening.) It appears that our hero had not prepared himself well for the ordeal. Perhaps he should have been alarmed that a selection process was under way, rather than a simple appointment, and that one of his subordinates was also being encouraged to present himself. When the Chairman, Sir Edward Bridges, asked him what qualifications he thought were appropriate for the directorship, Liddell recorded: “I said while this was a little difficult to answer, I felt strongly somebody was need who had a fairly intimate knowledge of the workings of the machine.” That was the tentative response of an Administrator, not a Leader. Later: “Bridges asked me at the end whether I had any other points which had not been covered, and on reflection I rather regret that I did not say something about the morale of the staff and the importance of making people feel that it was possible for them to rise to the top.” He regretted not saying other things, but his half hour was up. He had blown his opportunity to impress.

Even his latest sally probably misread how his officers thought. Few of them nursed such ambitions, I imagine, but no doubt wanted some better reward for doing a job they loved well. For example, Michael Jago (the same) in his biography of John Bingham, The Spy Who Was George Smiley, relates how Maxwell Knight tried to convince Bingham to replace him as head of the agent-runners. Jago writes: “He strenuously resisted promotion, pointing out that his skills lay as an agent runner, not as a manager of agent runners. The administrative nature of such a job did not appeal to him; his agents were loyal to him and he reciprocated that loyalty.” This is the dilemma of the Expert that can be found in any business, and is one I encountered myself: should he or she take on managerial duties in order to gain promotion and higher pay, or can the mature expert, with his specialist skills more usefully employed, enjoy the same status as those elevated to management roles?

Dick White

Liddell was devastated when he did not get the job, especially since his underling, Dick White, whom he had trained, was indeed appointed, thus contradicting the fact of White’s ‘despondent’ mood after his interview, which he had communicated to Liddell. The authorised historian of MI5, Christopher Andrew, reported the judgment of the selection committee, which acknowledged that Liddell had ‘unrivalled experience of the type of intelligence dealt with in MI5, knowledge of contemporary Communist mentality and tactics and an intuitive capacity to handle the difficult problems involved’. But ‘It has been said [‘by whom?’: coldspur] that he is not a good organiser and lacks forcefulness. And doubts have been expressed as to whether he would be successful in dealing with Ministers, with heads of department and with delegates of other countries.’ This was a rather damning – though bureaucratically anonymous – indictment, which classified Liddell as not only an unsuitable Leader, but as a poor Administrator/Manager as well, which would tend to belie the claim that he had much support from within MI5’s ranks.

(Incidentally, Andrew’s chronology is at fault: he bizarrely has Liddell retiring in 1952, White replacing him as Deputy Director-General and then jousting with Sillitoe, before the above-described interviews in May 1953. The introduction to the Diaries on the National Archives repeats the error of Liddell’s ‘finally retiring’ in 1952. West repeats this mistake on p 185 of A Matter of Trust, as well as in Molehunt, on pp 35-36, but corrects it in the latter on p 123. Tom Bower presents exactly the same self-contradiction in his 1995 The Perfect English Spy. West’s ODNB entry for Liddell states that “  . . . , in 1953, embarrassed by the defection of his friend Guy Burgess, he took early retirement to become security officer to the Atomic Energy Authority”, thus completely ignoring the competition for promotion. It is a puzzling and alarming pattern, as if all authors had been reading off the same faulty press release, one that attempted to conceal Liddell’s embarrassing finale. In his 2005 Introduction to the published Diaries, West likewise presents the date of Liddell’s retirement correctly, but does not discuss his failed interview with the Appointments Board. The Introduction otherwise serves as an excellent survey of the counter-intelligence dynamics of the Liddell period, and their aftermath.)

Liddell’s being overlooked in 1946 cannot have helped his cause, either. West wrote, of the competition for D-G that year, that Liddell’s intelligence and war record had been ‘exceptional’, and continued: “He was without question a brilliant intelligence officer, and he had recruited a number of outstanding brains into the office during his first twelve months of the war. But he had a regrettable choice in friends and was known to prefer the company of homosexuals, although he himself was not one. [This was written in 1982!] Long after the war he invariably spent Friday evenings at the Chelsea Palace, a well-known haunt of homosexuals.” West updated his account for 1953, stating that Liddell ‘might have at first glance have seemed the most likely candidate for the post, but he had already been passed over by Attlee and was known to have counted Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess amongst his friends.’ In the light of Burgess’s recent decampment with Maclean, that observation strikes an inappropriate chord, as if Burgess’s homosexuality rather than his involvement in Soviet espionage had been the aspect that tarnished Liddell’s judgment, and that Liddell’s now recognized professional failings were somehow not relevant. After all, Burgess’s homosexuality was known to every government officer who ever recruited him.

Moreover, if associating with the Bentinck Street crowd that assembled at Victor Rothschild’s place cast a cloud over Liddell’s reputation, Dick White may have been as much at fault as was Liddell. It is somewhat difficult to find hard evidence of how close the associations at the Rothschild flat were, and exactly what went on. Certainly, Rothschild rented it to Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. Goronwy Rees’ posthumous evidence, as retold by Andrew Boyle, was melodramatic. The Observer article of Sunday, January 20, 1980 was titled ‘The Brotherhood of Bentinck Street’, with Rees explaining how ‘Burgess and Blunt entangled top MI5 man Guy Liddell in their treachery’. Rees went on to say that Liddell was one of Burgess’s ‘predatory conquests’, and that Burgess’s ‘main source’ must have been Liddell. Rees certainly overstated the degree of sordidness that could be discovered there. White, meanwhile, still a bachelor, was reported, according to his biographer, Tom Bower, to attend wartime parties in Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, hosted by Tomas ‘Tommy’ Harris, where he mixed with such as Blunt, Philby, Burgess, Rothschild, Rees and Liddell himself. White, however, was not a ‘confirmed bachelor’ and married the communist novelist Kate Bellamy in November 1945.

Yet none of this would have been known about in 1953, or, if it had, would have been considered quite harmless. After all, the top brass in Whitehall was unaware at this time of Blunt’s treachery (although I contend that White and Liddell, and maybe Petrie, knew about it), and Burgess had mixed and worked with all manner of prominent persons – all of whom rapidly tried to distance themselves from any possible contamination by the renegade and rake. Moreover, Liddell had not recruited Burgess to MI5, even though he had wanted to, but been talked out of it by John Curry. John Costello, in his multipage assault on Liddell in Mask of Treachery, lists a number of ‘errors’ in Liddell’s behavior that raise ‘serious questions about Liddell’s competency, bad luck, or treachery’, but most of these would not have been known by the members of the Appointments Board, and the obvious mistakes (such as oversights in vetting for Klaus Fuchs) were not the responsibility of Liddell alone. He simply was not strong enough to have acted independently in protecting such persons.

Thus it is safe to assume that Liddell was rightly overlooked in 1953 because he was not leadership material, not because of his questionable associations. White was, on the other hand, a smoother operator. He had enjoyed a more enterprising career, having been posted to SHAEF at the end of 1944, and spent the best part of eighteen months in counter-intelligence in Germany, under General Eisenhower and Major-General Kenneth Strong, before touring the Commonwealth. (Strong was in fact another candidate for the MI5 leadership: White told his biographer that he noted Strong’s lack of interest in non-military intelligence.) He knew how to handle the mandarins, and sold himself well. As Bower wrote, in his biography of White, The Perfect English Spy: “The qualities required of an intelligence chief were evident: balance, clarity, judgment, credibility, honesty, cool management in the face of crisis, and the ability to convey to his political superiors in a relaxed manner the facts which demonstrated the importance of intelligence.” Malcolm Muggeridge was less impressed: “Dear old Dick White”, he said to Andrew Boyle, “‘the schoolmaster’. I just can’t believe it.”

White was thus able to bury the embarrassments of two years before, when he and Liddell had convinced Sillitoe to lie to Premier Attlee over the Fuchs fiasco, and he had also somehow persuaded the Appointments Committee that he was not to blame for the Burgess/Maclean disaster. This was an astounding performance, as only eighteen months earlier, in a very detailed memorandum, White had called for the Philby inquiry to be called off, only to face a strong criticism from Sir William Strang, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office since 1949, who was also on the Selection Committee. Yet White had previously clashed with Strang when the latter held back secret personal files. They shared similar convictions of misplaced institutional loyalty: Strang could not believe that there could be spies in the Diplomatic Service, while White refused to accept that there could be such among the officers of the intelligence corps.

White had also benefitted from Liddell’s promotion. He had returned from abroad in early 1946, and had been appointed head of B Division, since Liddell had been promoted to Deputy Director-General under Sillitoe, with Harker pushed into early retirement. Thus White took over centre-stage as the Cold War intensified, and was in obvious control of the meetings about Fuchs (1949-50), and then Burgess and Maclean (1951), with Liddell left somewhat out of the main picture. White was then able to manipulate the mandarins to suggest that the obvious mistakes had either not occurred on his watch, or had else been unavoidable, while Liddell was left in a relatively powerless no-man’s-land. It would appear that White out-manoeuvred his boss: how genuine was his display of ‘despondency’ to Liddell after the interview, one wonders?

White was probably also a better Leader than a Manager. He was somewhat bland, and smoothness was well-received in Whitehall: he had the annoying habit of agreeing with the last person who made a case to him – a feature that I came across frequently in business. There can be nothing more annoying than going in to see a senior manager, and making a well-prepared argument, and see a head nodding vigorously the other side of the desk, with its owner not challenging any of your conclusions or recommendations. Yet nothing happens, because the next person who has won an audience may put forward a completely different set of ideas, and still gain the nodding head. That is a sign of lack of backbone. R. A. (later Lord) Butler ascribed the same deficiency to his boss, Lord Halifax, and Franklin Roosevelt was said to exhibit the same tendency, preferring to manipulate people through his personal agencies and contacts, and commit little in writing. But White dealt well with the politicians, who considered him a ‘safe pair of hands’, and his career thrived after that.

Re-Assessing Liddell

When Kim Philby was being investigated as the possible ‘Third Man’ in the latter part of 1951, George Carey-Foster, the Security Officer in the Foreign Office, wrote to Dick White about their suspect’s possible escape: “Are you at any stage proposing to warn the ports, because even that may leak and bring in the Foreign Office? For these reasons as well as for those referred to in my previous letter I think we ought to know how we are to act before we are overtaken by events.” That was one of the main failings of Liddell’s that I identified in Misdefending the Realm: “Liddell was very reactive: he did not appear to prepare his team for any eventuality that came along” (p 284). How should MI5 respond if its recommendations over vetting were overruled? What policies were in place should a defector like Gouzenko or Volkov turn up? How should MI5 proceed if it came about that one of its officers was indeed a Soviet spy, yet the evidence came through secret channels? Who should conduct interrogations? Under what circumstances could a prosecution take place? There was no procedure in place. Events were allowed to overtake MI5.

The task of a regular counter-espionage officer was quite straightforward. It required some native intelligence, patience and attention to detail, stubbornness, curiosity, empathy, a knowledge of law and psychology, unflappability (the attributes of George Smiley, in fact). As it happens, I compiled this list before reading how Vernon Kell, the first Director of MI5 had described the ideal characteristics of a Defence Security Officer: ‘Freedom from strong personal or political prejudices or interest; an accurate and sympathetic judgment of human character, motives and psychology, and of the relative significance, importance and urgency of current events and duties in their bearing on major British interests’. They still make sense. Yet, if an officer performed his job of surveillance industriously, and identified a subversive, not much more could be recommended than ‘keeping an eye on him (or her)’. MI5 had no powers of arrest, so it just had to wait until the suspect was caught red-handed planting the bomb in the factory or handing over the papers before Special Branch could be called in. That process would sometimes require handling ‘agents’ who would penetrate such institutions as the Communist Party HQ, for example Olga Gray and her work leading to the capture and prosecution of Percy Glading. That was a function that Maxwell Knight was excellent at handling.

With the various ‘illegals’ and other aliens floating around, however, officers were often left powerless. They had to deal with busybody politicians interfering in immigration bans and detention orders, civil servant poohbahs overriding recommendations on non-employment, cautious ministers worried about the unions, inefficient security processes at sea- and air-ports, leaders cowed by their political masters, Foreign Office diplomats nervous about upsetting Uncle Joe Stalin in the cause of ‘cooperation’, or simple laziness and inattention in other departments – even absurd personnel policies. Thus Brandes and Maly and Pieck were allowed to escape the country, Krivitsky’s hints were allowed to fade away, Fuchs was recruited by Tube Alloys, and Burgess and Maclean were not fired from their positions in the Foreign Office but instead moved around or given sick leave, and then allowed to escape as the interrogation process ground into motion. These were problems of management and of leadership.

If a new manager asks his or her boss: “What do I have to do to perform a good job?”, and the boss responds: “Keep out of trouble, don’t rock the boat, and send your status reports in on time”, the manager will wisely not ruffle feathers, but concentrate on good recruitment, training, and skills development, following the procedures, and getting the job done. The problem will however arise that, after a while when the ship is running smoothly, the manager may be seen as superfluous to requirements, while his or her technical skills may have fallen by the wayside. That may lead to a loss of job (in the competitive commercial world anyway: probably not in government institutions.) If, however, the boss says: “I want you to reshape this unit, and set a few things on fire”, the candidate may have to develop some sharp elbows, lead some perhaps reluctant underlings into an uncertain future, and probably upset other departments along the way. That implies taking risks, putting one’s head above the parapet, and maybe getting metaphorically shot at. In a very political organisation – especially where one’s mentor/boss may not be very secure – that rough-and-tumble could be equally disastrous for a career. I am familiar with both of these situations from experience.

So where does that leave ‘probably the single most influential British intelligence officer of his era’ (West)? We have to evaluate him in terms of the various roles expected of him. He was indubitably a smart and intelligent man, imaginative and insightful. But what were his achievements, again following what West lists? ‘His knowledge of Communist influence dated back to the Sidney Street siege of January 1911’ – but that did not stop him recruiting Anthony Blunt, and allowing Communists to be inserted into important positions during his watch. ‘He had been on the scene when the Arcos headquarters in Moorgate had been raided’, but that operation was something of a shambles. ‘He had personally debriefed the GRU illegal rezident Walter Krivitsky in January 1940’, but that had been only an occasional involvement, he stifled Jane Archer’s enterprise, and he did not put in place a methodological follow-up. ‘He was the genius behind the introduction of the now famous wartime Double Cross system which effectively took control of the enemy’s networks in Great Britain’, but that was a claim that White also made, the effort was managed by ‘Tar’ Robertson, and the skill of its execution is now seriously in question. As indicated above, West alludes to Liddell’s rapid recruitment of ‘brains’ in 1940, but Liddell failed to provide the structure or training to make the most of them. These ‘achievements’ are more ‘experiences’: Liddell’s Diaries contain many instances of decisions being made, but it is not clear that they had his personal stamp on them.

Regrettably, the cause of accuracy is not furthered by West’s entry for Liddell in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Again, vaguely referring to his subject’s ‘supervision’ of projects, and ‘key role’ in recruiting such as White and Blunt, West goes on to make the following extraordinary claim: “Thus Liddell was closely associated with two of MI5’s most spectacular accomplishments, the interception and decryption of German intelligence signals by the Radio Security Service, and the famed ‘double cross system’. The Radio Security Service had grown, under Liddell’s supervision, from an inter-service liaison committee known as the Wireless Board into a sophisticated cryptographic organisation that operated in tandem with Bletchley Park, concentrating on Abwehr communications, and enabling MI5 case officers to monitor the progress made by their double agents through the reports submitted by their enemy controllers to Berlin.” Yet this is a travesty of what occurred. As I showed in an earlier posting, the Radio Security Service (RSS) was a separate unit, part of MI8. MI5 rejected taking it over, with the result that it found its home within SIS. It had nothing organisationally to do with the Wireless Board, which was a cross-departmental group, set up in January 1941, that supervised the work of the XX Committee. RSS was an interception service, not a cryptological one. It was the lack of any MI5 control that partly contributed to what historian John Curry called the eventual ‘tragedy’. Thus West founds a large part of what he characterizes as a ‘remarkable’ career on a misunderstanding: Liddell’s lifework was one dominated by missed opportunities.

Moreover, West cites one of his sources for his bibliographic entry on Liddell as Richard Deacon’s Greatest Treason. This seems to me an error of judgment on at least three counts, and raises some serious questions of scholarship. While Deacon’s work contains the most complete account of Liddell’s earlier life, it is largely a potboiler, having as its central thesis the claim that Liddell was an agent of Soviet espionage, and may even have been the elusive ELLI over whose identity many commentators have puzzled. (The lesser-known subtitle of Deacon’s book is The Bizarre Story of Hollis, Liddell and Mountbatten.) Yet this is a position with which West is clearly not in sympathy, as is shown by his repeated encomia to Liddell’s performance. The Editors at the ODNB should have shown much more caution in allowing such a book to be listed as an authoritative source without qualification. Lastly, a fact that Deacon did not acknowledge when his book was published in 1989, West had himself been a researcher for Richard Deacon, as West explains in a short chapter in Hayek: A Collaborative Biography, edited by Robert Leeson, and published in 2018. Here he declares that Deacon was ‘exceptionally well-informed’, but he finesses the controversy over Liddell completely. Somewhere, he should have explained in more detail what lay behind his research role, and surely should have done more to clarify how his source contributed to his summarization of Liddell’s life, and why and where he, West, diverged from Deacon’s conclusions.

Something else with which West does not deal is Liddell’s supposed relationship with one of the first women members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Joyce Whyte. David Mure, in The Last Temptation, had hinted at this lady’s identity, but not named her, giving her the codename ‘Alice’. In With My Little Eye, however, Richard Deacon went much further, providing us with the following insight (which can be found in a pagenote on p 194 of Misdefending the Realm): “In the early 1920s, when Liddell was working at Scotland Yard, supposed to be keeping a watch on communists, his mistress was Miss Joyce Wallace Whyte of Trinity College, Cambridge, and at that time one of the first women members of the Cambridge Communist Party. In 1927 she married Sir Cuthbert Ackroyd, who later became Lord Mayor of London.” For what it is worth, Deacon has Whyte’s family living in Chislehurst, Kent: Mure indicates that the influential lady lived nearby, in Sidcup.

It is not as if Liddell were outshone by his colleagues, however. To an extent, he was unlucky: unfortunate that there was another ‘able’ candidate available in White when a preference for an insider existed, and perhaps unfairly done by, from a historical standpoint, when the even less impressive Hollis succeeded White later. A survey of other candidates and successes does not depict a parade of standouts. Jasper Harker was regarded by all (maybe unjustly) as ineffectual, but was allowed to languish as Deputy Director-General for years. Dick White was not intellectually sharper than Liddell, but was likewise impressionable, and equally bamboozled. He managed the politics better, however, had broader experience, and was more decisive. Hollis was certainly less distinguished than Liddell in every way. Petrie was an excellent administrator, and occasionally showed signs of imaginative leadership, sharpening up MI5’s mission, but he was not a career intelligence officer. Sillitoe did not earn the respect of his subordinates, and had a hazy idea of what counter-intelligence was. Liddell’s equivalent in SIS, Valentine Vivian, comes across as something of a buffoon, clueless about the tasks that were confronting him, and how he should go about them, and Vivian’s arch-enemy within SIS, Claude Dansey (whose highly unusual behavior may perhaps be partially explained by his being involved, in 1893, in a scandalous affair with Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, and Robbie Ross), was regarded as poisonous by most who encountered him. Kim Philby outwitted them all. (If his head had been screwed on the right way, he would have made an excellent Director-General.) So, with a track-record of being only a mediocre man-manager, it should come as no surprise that the very decent and intellectually curious Liddell should have been rejected for the task of leading Britain’s Security Service. The tragedy was that MI5 had no process for identifying and developing interior talent.

When Liddell resigned, he was appointed security adviser to the Atomic Energy Commission, an irony in that AERE Harwell was the place where Fuchs had worked until his investigation by Henry Arnold, the adviser at the time. The introduction to Liddell’s Diaries at the National Archives suggests that he was in fact quite fortunate to gain this post, considering his links to Burgess, Rothschild and Philby. (The inclusion of Rothschild in these dubious links is quite impish on the behalf of the authorities.) Liddell died five years later. The verdict on him should be that he was an honest, intelligent and imaginative officer who did not have the guts or insight to come to grips with the real challenges of ‘Defending the Realm’, or to promote a vision of his own. He was betrayed – by Calypso, by Blunt, Burgess and Philby, by White, and maybe by Petrie. In a way, he was betrayed by his bosses, who did not give him the guidance or tutoring for him to execute a stronger mandate. But he was also soft – and thus open to manipulation. Not a real leader of men, nor an effective manager. By no means a ‘Spymaster’, but certainly not a Soviet supermole either.

What it boils down to is that, as with so many of these intelligence matters, you cannot trust the authorised histories. You cannot trust the memoirists. You cannot trust the experts. You cannot always trust the archives. And you cannot even trust the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which is sometimes less reliable than Wikipedia. All you can trust is coldspur, whose ‘relentless curiosity and Smileyesque doggedness blow away the clouds of obfuscation that bedevil the world of intelligence’ [Clive James, attrib.].

In summary, we are left with the following paradoxical chain of events:

  • During the 1970s and 1980s, Nigel West performs research for Richard Deacon.
  • In 1987, West publishes Molehunt, where he describes Liddell as ‘a brilliantly intuitive intelligence officer’.
  • In 1989, Deacon publishes The Greatest Treason, which claims Guy Liddell was a Soviet mole.
  • In 2004, West writes a biographical entry for Liddell in the ODNB, which praises him, but carelessly misrepresents his achievements, and lists The Greatest Treason as one of the few sources.
  • In 2005, West edits the Liddell Diaries, and provides a glowing Introduction for his subject.
  • In 2015, West provides a chapter to a book on Hayek, praises Deacon for his knowledge, but debunks him for relying on two dubious sources. He does not mention Liddell.
  • In 2018, West writes a new book on Liddell, which generally endorses the writer’s previous positive opinion of him, but rejects the opportunity to provide a re-assessment of Liddell’s career, merely concluding that Liddell, despite being’ the consummate professional’, had been ‘betrayed’ by Burgess, Blunt and Philby. West lists in his bibliography two other books by Deacon (including the pulped British Connection), but ignores The Greatest Treason.

So, Nigel, my friend, where do you stand? Why would you claim, on the one hand, that Liddell was a brilliant counter-espionage officer while on the other pointing your readers towards Richard Deacon, who thought he was a communist mole?  What do you say next?

This month’s Commonplace entries can be found here.

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