Papa Spy

by Jimmy Burns

  p. 248 a growing discontent: FO 954/27 NA.

  p. 248 information supplied to him by Burns: The names of the informants listed by Hoare included Cardinal Pedro Segura, the Cardinal Archbishop of Seville, who maintained close relations with TB’s assistant Bernard Malley. Other ‘agents’ of influence mentioned were General Manuel Matallana (an anti-communist Spanish Civil War officer who had fought for the Republic against Franco, before surrendering his troops), the writer José Martínez Ruiz Azorín and Gregorio Marañón, the prominent doctor and man of letters and TB’s future father-in-law.

  p. 248 ‘I am glad’, replied Roosevelt: Quoted in Hayes, Wartime Mission, p. 163.

  p. 249 Hoare returned to the subject of Nadal: FO 954/27 NA.

  p. 249 Churchill delivered a speech: For the speech and the criticism it sparked see Wigg, Churchill and Spain, pp. 151–2. Also Preston, Franco, p. 513: ‘Churchill’s speech was a hostage to fortune from which Franco was to squeeze the last ounce of benefit both domestically and internationally.’

  11: To Love in Madrid

  p. 251 a letter from Sir Malcolm Robertson: Ronald Howard, In Search of my Father (London: William Kimber, 1981).

  p. 251 the Americans had been expanding their presence: The possibility of a German occupation of Spain was viewed as a major strategic danger by the Allies, particularly in the months following the North African campaign of 1942 when supply lines were stretched. OSS agents began to arrive in Lisbon and Madrid in April 1942 under State Department cover. In the Spanish capital, the counter-intelligence section X-2 worked out of the offices of the US oil mission. Elizabeth P. McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998), pp. 168–9. See also Martín de Pozuelo and Ellakuria, La Guerra Ignorada, pp. 31–2. The US propaganda push, along similar lines to the British, is described in Hayes, Wartime Mission, p. 76.

  p. 252 At the time Starkie was a Catholic professor: In the weeks preceding the outbreak of war, Starkie was visited in Dublin by Churchill’s closest friend, the newspaper magnate and future Minister of Information Brendan Bracken. While in the Irish capital, Bracken stayed under an assumed name at the Jury’s Hotel and had secret conversations with Starkie. See Charles Edward Lysaght, Brendan Bracken (London: Allen Lane, 1979). The contact was presumably not unconnected to the Anglophile professor’s recruitment to government service. Bracken may also have been sounding out Starkie’s views on Irish attitudes towards the imminent war with Germany.

  p. 252 For how could official Spain: Burns, Use of Memory, p. 102.

  p. 252 Walter wanted to do anything to help the Allied cause: Author’s interview with Alma Starkie.

  p. 252 The horses belonged to the Spanish army: Ibid.

  p. 252 The poor people of Madrid: Ibid.

  p. 253 The Starkies allowed their own large flat: Ibid. Starkie was part of a large Madrid-based organisation that the Allies used to help smuggle POWs and some 30,000 Jews through Spain and Portugal. The daughter of a Spanish doctor, who worked for the British and helped in the escape route, has written an account of this operation. See Patricia Martínez de Vicente, Embassy y La Inteligencia de Mambru (Velecio, 2003) and interview in The Times, 3/12/2003.

  p. 254 the crew crouched or suspended: Burns, Use of Memory, p. 103.

  p. 255 Ought we to tell him: Howard, In Search of My Father.

  p. 256 It proved, indeed, to be a gala affair: Hayes, Wartime Mission, p. 97.

  p. 256 Brendan Bracken, the MoI chief, and Anthony Eden: Howard, In Search of My Father.

  p. 256 Mr Leslie Howard is going to Spain: FO NA.

  p. 257 It is very important just now: Ibid.

  p. 257 He was very polite: Author’s interview with Olive Stock.

  p. 257 One of those he was scheduled: In El Vuelo de Ibis (Madrid: Facta, 2009) the Spanish author José Rey Ximénez claims he was told the ‘full story’ of Howard’s visit to Madrid when he interviewed Conchita Montenegro. Once dubbed the Spanish Greta Garbo because of her seductive sensuality, Montenegro, a one-time lover of the Spanish Hollywood director Edgar Neville, allegedly also had an affair with Howard whom she met, as a young actress, while filming Never the Twain Shall Meet in 1931. Montenegro later married Ricardo Giménez-Arnau, who was in charge of foreign relations for the Falange party.

  Rey Ximénez claimed that Howard was sent to Madrid with a ‘special message for Franco’ which he delivered personally. ‘Thanks to Howard, at least in theory, Spain was persuaded to stay out of the war,’ the Spanish author alleged. Guardian, 6/10/2008.

  p. 258 he was keen to briefly rekindle an old flame in Montenegro: Burns family archive

  p. 258 one of several German agents that tracked Howard: The information about Gloria von Furstenberg was provided to the author during an interview with Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones.

  Such was Howard’s reputation as a philanderer that his visit to Spain fuelled Madrid gossip about his alleged ‘affairs’. Another German aristocratic agent he allegedly got involved with was the ravishing Colombian-born Countess Mechtild von Podewils. Rey Ximénez, El Vuelo del Ibis.

  p. 258 the pure white shoulderless tube of a dress: Aline, Countess of Romanones, The Spy Wore Red, p. 234.

  p. 259 this charming English export: Howard, In Search of My Father.

  p. 260 Long-term membership of the Garrick Club: Howard was elected to the Garrick along with James Makepeace Thackeray, the grandson of the great nineteenth-century novelist W. M. Thackeray, in 1933. It was a controversial year for the club, with the Committee exercising its right of veto on a range of new applicants. Of the many portraits and sculptures of famous actors that adorn the club today, Howard’s hangs in one of the club’s most convivial locations – the members’ bar. Hough, The Ace of Clubs, pp. 42 and 144.

  p. 260 the most unashamedly patriotic and propagandist: On the importance of representations of nationhood and heroism in Second World War films, see review of The Death of Colonel Blimp by Sarah Knight in Journal of Film Studies (Institute of Film & TV Studies, University of Nottingham, Issue 6, 2006). For the collaboration between the government and the British film industry in propaganda, see also Chapman, The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda 1939–45.

  p. 261 There were no consequences: Gilbert, Churchill, p. 747.

  p. 261 We have been rather anxious: Ibid., p. 747.

  p. 262 it was not the prime minister but Howard: British intelligence’s suspicions about Kuno Weltzien, the German agent thought responsible for providing the information that led to the shooting down of Leslie Howard’s plane, are in an MI5 KV2 file. NA.

  p. 262 the manifest: Details collated by Howard’s son, Ronald.

  p. 263 It is just possible: Ibid.

  p. 263 Stow died: Author’s interview with Geoffrey’s son, Michael Stow.

  p. 263 The Herrenvolk are not hard to recognise: Quoted by Ronald Howard.

  p. 263 to some he apologised: Ibid.

  p. 264 After the wild nightmare: Letter from Howard to TB from Burns Family Archive.

  p. 265 Burns sent a message to the MOI: INF file 1/572 NA.

  p. 265 how best to limit the sale of Spanish wolfram: See Wigg, Churchill and Spain pp. 121–7.

  p. 265 I enjoyed meeting Marañón: FO 370 NA.

  p. 266 intellectually, one of the best minds: FO 954/27 NA.

  p. 266 Marañón became disillusioned: For a detailed analysis of how developments in the Civil War impacted on Marañón, see ‘La Guerra de Marañón’, research paper by Antonio Lopez Vega (Madrid: Fundación Marañón, 2006). On the restrictions Marañón initially found on returning from exile, see the elliptical account – written when Franco was still in power – of his first authorised biographer, Marino Gomez-Santos, Vida de Marañón (Madrid: I. B. Tauris, 1971), p. 382.

  p. 266 one of the public men mainly responsible for King Alfonso’s downfall: FO 954/27 NA.

  p. 267 Marañón is back: Burns, Use of Memory, p. 107.

  p. 269 empty apart for her presence: Ibid., p. 108.


  p. 269 Mabel’s early memories: Based on Mabel Burns’s conversations with the author.

  p. 271 If I am not out of here in one hour: Ibid.

  12: Marriage

  p. 273 Mabel found Warrington-Strong: Author’s conversations with Mabel Burns.

  p. 274 Steadfastly he gazed: BFA.

  p. 275 contact with Franco’s representative: Gomez-Santos, Vida de Marañón, p. 350.

  p. 275 Mabel dressed up as a gypsy: Source material held in BFA.

  p. 275 amiable businessman named Oscar Schindler: Ibid.

  p. 276 I have always been at the service of my country: Gregorio Marañón, Obras Completas, vol. 2 (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1966), pp. 353–5.

  p. 276 I never tire of saying: Ibid., pp. 351–2.

  p. 276 well-drilled exhibition of Nazi loyalty: BFA. The Cap Arcona was built and conceived in the mid-1920s for service between North America and Argentina, a route ‘every bit as prestigious as the better remembered North American run’ (quoted in www.garemaritime.com). She sunk on 3 May 1945 in the Baltic Sea, four days after Hitler’s suicide and four days before Germany’s unconditional surrender after being attacked by the RAF. British pilots were targeting fleeing Nazis who were believed to be on their way to Norway. The ship was transporting thousands of inmates from the Neuengamme concentration camp along with their SS guards. About five thousand of those on board perished, of which the majority were prisoners. For a detailed account see Benjamin Jacobs and Eugene Pool, The 100 Years Secret (Connecticut, US: The Lyons Press, 2002).

  p. 277 The only thing that matters: Author’s conversations with Mabel Burns.

  p. 277 She dreamed of becoming a Cambridge undergraduate: Ibid. Mabel Burns left no record of which college she applied to. In subsequent correspondence with the author, her suggestion of anti-Franco bias in the university has been questioned by one Cambridge historian, Dr Peter Martland: ‘In 1938, there were certainly communists like Maurice Dobb (the Marxian economics lecturer) but the place still reeked of the old Tory right.’

  p. 278 I like England and I like English men: Mabel Burns’s diary, BFA.

  p. 278 As the years passed: Extensive enquiries made by the author failed to shed light on Nelly Hess’s fate.

  p. 279 People are beginning to make contact with the soldiers: Paris diary entries quoted in Gomez-Santos, Vida de Marañón, p. 374.

  p. 280 The years I lived in Paris: Ibid., p. 375.

  p. 280 the summons Maranon received one day: Ibid., p. 375. Marañón refers, without identifying him by name, to a ‘German governor, a well-known Gestapo chief. Hans Josef Keiffer was the Nazi counter-intelligence chief in Paris at the time. His seemingly civilised treatment of Marañón was deceptive, the behaviour of a ruthless senior Gestapo officer who used his charm to befriend his victims and extract information. British agents held at the Paris Gestapo headquarters in Avenue Foch were ‘fed and nurtured and generally encouraged to feel “at home”’, writes Sarah Helm in A Life in Secrets (London: Abacus, 2007), p. 331. Kieffer’s employees, with his approval, took charge of torture at a Gestapo detention centre in the Place des Etas-Unis, and subsequent executions. When the war ended, Kieffer tried to exonerate himself by claiming he never ‘knew’ about the torture of those he had befriended – but he was directly implicated in the execution of British soldiers and hanged for crimes against humanity at Wuppertal. Ibid. See also war crimes case file WO 235 NA.

  p. 281 It was only long after the war: Author’s conversations with Mabel Burns.

  p. 281 The only German she befriended: Ibid. p. 282 His name was Clemente Pelaez: Ibid. While Mabel was not short of suitors among the young Francoist civil war veterans her brother Gregorio had fought alongside, it was Pelaez who most persistently courted her.

  p. 283 Miranda told Burns to stop the car: Burns, Use of Memory, p. 109.

  p. 283 dressed in the traditional Andalusian country clothes: Burns family archive.

  p. 284 We were going to be married: Ibid., p. 109.

  p. 285 there was the wildest possible gambling in this commodity: Templewood papers XIII.

  p. 285 It is well, therefore, to reconsider our position: Hoare, Ambassador on Special Mission,

  p. 248. The ambassador’s policy towards Spain remained pragmatic. Hoare considered the absence of an effective opposition to the Franco regime alongside his perception that Franco could not be trusted as an ally. He argued against a total economic embargo because of the risk of social upheaval and the ensuing ‘general confusion’ being exploited by the Nazis. Policy, he concluded, should remain focused on non-intervention and countering any non-neutral pro-Axis acts by the regime.

  p. 286 Spain, however much she may need it, is not ready: FO 954/27 NA.

  p. 287 the whole of Madrid: Unidentified journalist’s diary, BFA.

  p. 289 her face hidden beneath a veil: Author’s conversations with Mabel Burns.

  p. 291 shutting down the spy networks: Hoare, Ambassador on Special Mission, p. 268.

  p. 292 SD officers with the haziest notions: Bassett, Hitler’s Spy Chief, p. 282.

  p. 293 the links between the Abwehr in Madrid and their agents in Britain: Benton, The ISOS Years, p. 407. According to its chief architect, ‘the basic idea of the deception policy during 1943 and up to the beginning of the winter was to contain the maximum enemy forces in Western Europe and the Mediterranean area and thus discourage their transfer to the Russian front’, Masterman, The Double Cross System, p. 133.

  p. 293 a Spaniard called Juan Pujol: As one of its more objective chroniclers warns readers, a ‘miasma of falsehood, deception and deceit’ surrounds the case of Juan Pujol, alias Garbo. Mark Seaman’s introduction to MI5’s official summary prepared by Pujol’s case officer Tomás Harris (London: Public Record Office, 2000), p. 2. The summary conflicts on several points with Pujol’s own memoirs written decades earlier: Juan Pujol and Nigel West, Garbo (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985). Other material relevant to the Garbo case is MI5 files KV2 series numbers 39, 40, 42, 63, 64, 66 and 69. NA. A recent biographer concludes that Pujol may have initially entered the spy game for purely mercenary reasons – he approached the Germans first. His subsequent activities suggest he was motivated by a mixture of idealism, adventurousness and opportunism but contributed to the defeat of Nazism although the full facts of his story are likely for ever to remain a mystery. Javier Juarez, Juan Pujol el espia que derroto a Hitler (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2004), p. 413.

  p. 294 a network of bogus sub-agents: Pujol and his handler Harris expanded a network across the UK military and government machinery from the RAF to the BBC. Agents’ included a drunken RAF officer in Glasgow, an anti-Communist War Office linguist and a Gibraltarian waiter whom Garbo claimed had been working for him for some time and was ‘one hundred per cent loyal to the German cause’. KV2/41 NA.

  According to one UK intelligence estimate, by the end of the war Garbo had registered at least fourteen ‘agents’ and eleven official ‘contacts’, all notional. Benton, The ISOS Years, p. 375.

  p. 294 deceiving Germans about Operation Torch: As part of the deception, Pujol removed one of his ‘agents’ from Liverpool before the Germans could deploy him, and reported on Allied convoys after the landings had taken place. KV2/41 NA.

  p. 294 main contribution to the Allied victory: Pujol’s role in the success of Operation Overlord was widely celebrated on the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day in June 2004. Garbo was described as the Allies’ ‘top double agent’ by the BBC which also acknowledged that the story surrounding the Spaniard was ‘almost beyond belief (press pack issued by BBC, 14/5/2004). The deception included the fictitious First US Army Group (FUSAG), the ‘existence’ of which led the Germans to hold back seven of their divisions in the Pas de Calais, pointlessly, for two weeks after D-Day.

  p. 294 the V1 and V2 bombs: For an account of the damage wrought by the bombs and the mishandled information provided to the public by the government, see Maureen Waller, London, 1945 (London: John Murray, 200
5).

  p. 295 arrested on suspicion: Juarez, Juan Pujol, pp. 349–50.

  p. 295 struggle between MI6 and MI5: The rivalry within Whitehall over who should control Pujol and in what way appears to have been most marked in the early stages. It has been noted by official historians of British intelligence in the Second World War – see Michael Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 4 (London: HMSO, 1990), p. 16, and F. H. Himsley and C. A. G. Simkins, p. 113, both cited by Mark Seaman in his introduction to the Harris ‘summary’.

  The most fluid intelligence cooperation on the Garbo case appears to have passed through the personal friendship between Harris at MI5 and Kim Philby at MI6. As far as our department was concerned, Philby made all the major decisions (on Garbo)’, Desmond Bristow of MI6’s Section V’s Iberian section told the spy catcher Peter Wright. See Bristow, A Game of Moles, p. 264.

  p. 295 the Ministry of Informations Spanish section: One of the notional ‘agents’ Pujol claimed as a friend was given the code symbol J (3). The alleged ‘high-ranking official’ was never named. However, Harris claims that a careful examination of the information provided by J (3) and a check on the movements of Billy McCann, the head of the section, while in Spain, would have led the Germans to the conclusion that J (3) and McCann were one and the same. Harris describes the character as ‘certainly the most important of all Garbo’s contacts’. J (3) was represented as increasingly indiscreet, with Pujol telling his German handler that he had first befriended him while working as a part-time employee at the MoI. Harris claimed that McCann was told ‘in confidence’ about Garbo’s deception although there is no separate verification of this. Pujol also created a fictitious agent at the MoI, primarily with the aim of using him as a source of deception material. The ‘agent’ was an unnamed employee at the MoI in charge of censorship. KV2/41 NA.

  13: Liberation

  p. 297 José Félix Lequerica: Elsewhere described as ‘intensely ambitious, quite unprincipled, and a highly skilled operator in high places’. His mother was from the Urquijo family, one of the Spanish banking dynasties, aiding his status as one of the prominent members of the Basque financial and industrial establishment which had helped finance Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Wigg, Churchill and Spain, p. 160.