by Jimmy Burns
p. 216 In Spain, the Knights of St George: See Denis Smyth, Diplomacy and Strategy of Survival: British Policy and Franco’s Spain, 1940–41 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 222–5. Also David Messenger, Against the Grain: Special Operations Executive in Spain, 1941–45 (Intelligence & National Security, vol. 20, no. 1 (March 2005)), pp. 173–90, and Mark Seaman (ed.), Special Operations Executive: New Instrument of War (Routledge, 2006), p. 65.
p. 216 arrangements for Press Section: FO 371 26834 NA.
p. 217 merchants bankers: Burns, Use of Memory, p. 88.
p. 217 Guy Fawkes College: See Boyle, The Climate of Treason, p. 205.
p. 217 There had been very short visits: Burns, Use of Memory, p. 115.
p. 218 twin-tracked policy: For background, see Messenger, Against the Grain, and Seaman, Special Operations Executive. Ambassador Hoare insisted on keeping a tight control both on SOE’s operations in Gibraltar and in Spain. PREM 3 405/6, 4/21/2A, 3 405/6 NA.
p. 218 quiet Peninsula: For Ambassador Hoare’s summary of the case for non-military intervention in Spain, see Hoare, Ambassador on Special Mission, p. 122.
p. 219 Father D’Arcy flew: Sire, D’Arcy, p. 121.
p. 219 lower echelons of British intelligence: Charles R. Gallagher, Vatican Secret Diplomacy (London: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 5 and 142, who quotes the philosopher and historian Isaiah Berlin on his time serving in the British embassy in Washington during the Second World War. Berlin provided Churchill with a weekly summary of American opinion which was said to be the prime minister’s favourite reading. According to Berlin, the British wanted to harness the power of the American Catholic political bloc, because American Catholics were ‘better organised’ than any other religious body in the US. Hurley liaised with, among others, Robert Wilberforce, chief religious propagandist for the British Information Services – the US arm of the MoI – and, through him, with MI6.
For its part, the US State Department, anxious to win over the Catholics in America, most of whom had Irish, Italian or German roots and were ‘hardly sympathetic’ to Britain, to Roosevelt’s pro-war policy, fed him with anti-Axis propaganda material. ‘The very basis of our faith is challenged by the orgies of extermination that are going on among the Jews of Europe.’ Quoted by Michael Walsh in ‘Bishop’s Private War’, Tablet, 20 December 2008.
p. 220 The British have a large organisation: Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, p. 74.
p. 221 I doubted whether anyone: Philby, My Silent War, p. 56.
p. 221 Beevor was posted to Portugal: The father of historian Antony Beevor described his recruitment thus in his overview of SOE wartime operations: ‘I had no previous knowledge of secret activities, but had the advantage of legal training and practice, which at least develops discretion, analytical thinking and care in the use of words.’ He had three weeks’ training which included ‘studying the chances of the Iberian Peninsula being invaded by the Germans’ and being exposed to ‘some of the latest techniques in demolitions and small arms’. Beevor had some involvement in Spain where the ambassador Sir Samuel Hoare ‘was opposed to any secret activity which might provoke Franco to join the Axis’ although not opposed to ‘secret activities of which he knew and approved’. He was tasked with liaising closely with Captain Hillgarth and two Madrid-based SOE officers who handled the movement of special operations personnel going into or coming out of Gibraltar through Spain. In Portugal, his operations were infiltrated by the Portuguese secret police, as were those of MI6. See J. G. Beevor, SOE (London: Bodley Head, 1981), pp. 30–43. See also Neville Wylie, ‘Special Operations’ (Journal of Contemporary History vol. 56, no. 3, 2001), pp. 441–56.
Beevor’s account is generally positive, suggesting that, despite challenging operational conditions, he succeeded in carving out a niche for SOE in Portugal and went some way to insuring Britain against a German invasion of Portugal. In the end he was let down by a combination of bad luck, the indiscretions of some of his agents and the Foreign Office’s inability to show a united front in his defence against expulsion. Wyle nevertheless concludes that Beevor’s unmasking in early 1942 was ‘the worst incident of its kind to afflict SOE stations in neutral Europe’, while judging the Foreign Office’s reluctance to authorise SOE operations to have been in Britain’s best interests.
p. 222 the German was snatched by an SOE team: author’s correspondence with Anthony Beevor.
p. 222 a British diplomatic bag: CO 967/68 NA.
p. 223 It is difficult to write nice things: Philby, My Silent War, p. 57.
p. 223 prescription for propaganda: For an insider’s account of US policy towards Spain during this period, see John Emmet Hughes, Report from Spain (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1947).
p. 224 The Spain that I had come into: Burns, Use of Memory, p. 106.
p. 224 Plans for an Allied occupation: Smyth, Diplomacy, pp. 232–7.
p. 224 Thunderbird november eight two am: Hughes, Report, p. 263.
p. 225 an attitude of unconcern: Hoare, Ambassador on Special Mission, p. 177.
p. 225 Hayes rung Jordana: ‘The ambassador (Hayes) was received by a Foreign Minister (Jordana) in bathrobe, pajamas, and a state of fear-worn nerves.’ Franco could not be immediately reached because he was on a hunting trip so that for another half-hour Jordana ‘pattered in his slippers up and down the floor, struggling with his worst fears of imminent disaster’. Finally the ambassador allowed Jordana to see Roosevelt’s message. ‘Poor Jordana smiled happily, sank bank in his chair, and sighed with relief, “Ah! Spain is not involved.”’ Hughes, Report, p. 264.
In his published diaries, Jordana records simply that he went to see Franco in the country palace of El Pardo, outside Madrid, spent until four in the morning with the Generalísimo before returning to his office and ‘giving orders’. A footnote by the sympathetic editor of the diary, Jordana’s diplomat son Rafael, clarifies that the minister talked as a fellow soldier to the country’s senior generals and impressed upon them the need to ‘remain calm. Francisco Gomez-Jordana Souza, Milicia y Diplomacia (Burgos: Dossoles, 2002).
p. 226 The role of the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris: According to documents in the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich cited by a recent Canaris biographer, the landings had been accurately predicted by the Abwehr. Indeed, it would have been surprising if the agency’s station in Algeciras had failed to note the build-up of Allied vessels. However, the intelligence was overruled by Ribbentrop who relied on information provided by the rival Foreign Ministry Intelligence Department inside the German embassy in Madrid. The view from the embassy, presumably based on disinformation provided by the Allies, was that the Allied landing would not take place before the end of 1943. Richard Bassett, Hitler’s Spy Chief (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), pp. 247–8.
Bassett makes an interesting case that British intelligence, through the MI6’s Sir Stewart Menzies, was trying as early as December 1940 to exploit the possibilities raised by Canaris’s growing opposition to Hitler. Separately, the Catholic writer John Cummings, a relation of whom worked closely with the German admiral, suggests that from 1938 onwards Canaris protected the ‘respectable’ – non-Communist – German resistance at the highest possible level. According to Cummings, the German spy chief was party to efforts at the Vatican from 1939 to obtain approval for an alternative German regime and ‘later played a dangerous double game by negotiating with the British’. Correspondence with the author. See also Cummings, Butler’s Lives, p. 118.
The view formed by the well-informed British military attaché in wartime Madrid, Brigadier Wyndham Torr, was that Canaris was a ‘loyal German, opposed to Hitler and to his tyranny and methods of conducting the war, which he was convinced, from the outset, would result in German’s ultimate defeat’.
In a revealing letter to Samuel Hoare, years after the war was over, Torr suggested that Canaris was used as a pawn by the British. ‘We tapped C. [Canaris] without his knowing it and he never kno
wingly or willingly, worked for us directly, but often did so, knowingly indirectly, in order to further his beliefs.’ A more severe judgement has been made by one of Hitler’s best recent biographers, Ian Kershaw, who labels Canaris a ‘professional obfuscator’. Quoted by Tony Barber, ‘The Enemy Within’, Financial Times Magazine, 16 April 2005.
p. 226 Well, here we are: Gilbert, Churchill, p. 733.
p. 227 long road to tread: Ibid., p. 734.
p. 228 all eyes and ears: Hayes, Wartime Mission, p. 95.
10: Deception
p. 229 Only years later: Detailed research of Operation Mincemeat, including interviews with some of the unwitting participants, and discovery of relevant documents, was carried out by local historian Jesus Ramirez Copeiro. British government documents include WO 106/5921, WO 208/3163. For the insider’s classic account see Ewen Montagu, The Man Who Never Was (London: Evans, 1953). Mincemeat, wrote intelligence officer Hugh Trevor-Roper in his introduction to Montagu’s Beyond Top Secret (London: Peter Davies, 1977), was the ‘most spectacular single episode in the history of deception’.
p. 229 the highly secretive interservice XX Committee: Sir John Masterman’s internal memorandum written in 1945 and first published as The Double Cross System (London: Yale University Press, 1992) described the basic idea of the deception policy during 1943 up to the beginning of the winter as ‘containing the maximum enemy forces in Western Europe and the Mediterranean area and thus discourage their transfer to the Russian front’, p. 133.
p. 230 carefully vetted individuals: Membership of the committee included representatives from the War Office, Naval Intelligence Division (NID), Air Ministry Intelligence, MI6 and MI5 which provided the chairman and the secretary. Masterman, The Double Cross System, p. 62.
p. 230 most secret sources: The Director of Naval Intelligence, John Godfrey, had acceded to a demand from Sir Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, that the whole work of deciphering should be put under the control of MI6. Wireless signals, having been intercepted at various special receiving stations, were sent by teleprinter to Bletchley Park where they were deciphered and distributed on a very restricted ‘need to know basis’ to named persons. The ‘product’ was known as ‘Special Intelligence’ and deciphered messages or documents about the subject were marked ‘Most Secret U’, the letter U standing for Ultra. Later, when the Americans pointed out that the word ‘most’ could mean ‘almost’, this was altered to ‘Top Secret U’. Montagu, Beyond Top Secret, p. 32.
p. 230 Major Martin’s identity: The status of an officer in the Royal Marines allowed NID to exercise control over the communications involved in Mincemeat, although Martin wore a battledress ‘as no normal uniform could be made to fit exactly’. The difficulty of obtaining underclothes, owing to the system of coupon rationing, was overcome by a gift of thick underwear from the wardrobe of the late Warden of New College, Oxford. Ibid., p. 137.
p. 230 A colonel in the marines: Author’s interview with Patricia Davies.
p. 230 Detailing the Allied plans: The fictitious document included a cover letter from Admiral Mountbatten to Admiral Cunningham, the naval chief in the Mediterranean, to explain why Major Martin was travelling. The main deception letter was intended to give the impression that Sicily was not the next target of the Allies and that there were two other operations being mounted in the Mediterranean, indicating that landings were likely in Greece and Sardinia. Masterman, The Double Cross System, p. 138.
p. 230 Ewan [Montagu] handed me the big brown envelope: author’s interview with Patricia Davies.
p. 231 There we were in 1942: Montagu, The Man Who Never Was, p. 25.
p. 232 The Gibraltar-born Lieutenant Commander Gómez-Beare: Information provided to the author by Gómez-Beare family.
p. 233 a local German agent: One of the most active Second World War spies in Huelva was Adolph Clauss, son of the German consul. He was briefly detained on behalf of the Allies by the Spanish at the end of the war but was subsequently released. Information provided to the author by the Clauss family. See also Ramilla, España y los Enigmas Nazis, p. 149, and Copeiro del Vilar, Huelva, pp. 307, 424.
p. 234 The two cooperated on the basis of mutual trust: Burns, Use of Memory, p.114
p. 234 a young Spanish doctor: Eduardo Fernández Contioso conducted the autopsy together with his father, Eduardo Fernández del Torno. The young Eduardo had only just returned to Huelva from his honeymoon. Information provided to the author by the Contioso family.
p. 234 Franco wept: Preston, Franco, p. 404.
p. 235 Hayes pointed out: Ibid.
p. 235 secret meeting with a member of the Spanish royal family: FO 954/27 NA.
p. 235 German counter-moves: Ibid.
p. 236 On 27 July 1943 Hoare wrote to Eden: FO 371/34788 NA.
p. 236 reaction in Spain to Mussolini’s fall: Ibid.
p. 236 I had cast a good bit of bread: Hayes, Wartime Mission, p. 163.
p. 237 lunch at the Garrick: The Garrick Club has its roots ‘deep in the need of actors, artists, and writers for a venue, a private place, for informal exchanges of view’, writes its biographer Richard Hough, in The Ace of Clubs (London: André Deutsch, 1986). Since its first informal meeting of actors and nobles in 1831 the Garrick – named after the great eighteenth-century English actor David Garrick – had taken pride in the conviviality, intellectual calibre and informed gossip of its membership, which set it apart from the stuffiness, insularity and occasional prejudice of the other London gentlemen’s clubs.
TB was proposed for membership by the actor and author Robert Speaight, part of his network of artistic friends who used to gather in his Chelsea house during the 1930s. Speaight was well connected with friends and relatives extending across government service. TB’s candidacy was seconded by Rupert Hart-Davis, the influential and successful publisher, and approved by a committee chaired by the Catholic peer and Law Lord Lord Russell of Kilowen, and Daniel Macmillan, another leading publisher and brother of the Tory politician and future prime minister Harold Macmillan.
p. 237 Burns had enticed the poverty-stricken Nadal: Rafael Martinez Nadal, Antonio Torres y la Politica Española del Foreign Office (Madrid: Casariego, 1989), p. 97.
p. 239 I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: Ibid., p. 98. Despite Nadal’s shock and anger, the academic agreed to further meetings with Burns. They included lunch at Martinez, the popular Spanish restaurant in Swallow Street, off Piccadilly Circus, where TB urged Nadal to focus his broadcasts on what he claimed was a turning tide in the war, and the Allied fightback. Ibid., p. 124.
p. 240 Nadal’s circle of friends: Ibid., pp. 22–3.
p. 240 Enriqueta who introduced Blunt and Tomás to each other: Author’s interview with Enriqueta Harris. See also Carter, Anthony Blunt, p. 94.
p. 240 an English translation of a book of Lorca verses: Published as Poems of Federico García Lorca (London: The Dolphin Press, 1939).
p. 242 It is not that we want Spain: Quoted in Nadal, Antonio Torres, p. 36.
p. 242 the notes of an out-of-tune flute: Ibid., pp. 50–51.
p. 243 I try and forget all that: Author’s interview with Enriqueta Harris.
p. 244 the journalist John Marks was encouraged: The Cambridge-educated Marks was the BBC’s Spanish programme organiser until January 1942, after which he was posted to Madrid as the Times correspondent. Throughout the war Marks maintained close links with the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Information, who valued this fluent Spanish speaker as an astute observer of the local political scene. Marks was both fond of and knowledgeable about Spanish culture, enjoying eating, drinking, women and bulls. During the war Marks became a close friend of TB, and served him as an informal ‘agent’.
p. 245 During the summer of 1943: FO371/34766, FO 371/34764, FO/34765 NA; Hayes, Wartime Mission, p. 149; Preston, Franco, p. 495. The pressures on Nadal built up throughout 1943, partly due to TB’s personal intervention. See Nadal, Antonio Torres, p. 142. TB’s enemies in MI5 saw his insi
stence on Nadal’s eventual dismissal as one of the crowning episodes of Samuel Hoare’s ‘appeasement policy’. See MI5 file, KV 2/2823.
p. 245 a new national state-run newsreel called No Do: For a critical Spanish analysis of how Francoist propaganda focused on conveying a sense of political, social and cultural normality, see Pedro Montoliu, Madrid en la Posguerra (Madrid: Silex, 2005), pp. 284–9. For a UK perspective on how Spanish wartime propaganda was viewed within the Spanish film division at the Ministry of Information, see MoI files INF 1/572/; INF 1/574; INF 1/594; INF 1/596 NA.
p. 246 One of the most interesting: Ibid.
p. 246 Fox, as you know: Ibid.
p. 247 The press attaché in Spain: Ibid.
p. 247 Under the guise of a national Spanish and neutral enterprise: Ibid.
p. 247 There was considerable contemporaneous: Hayes, Wartime Mission, p. 149.