Churchill's Iceman

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Churchill's Iceman Page 45

by Henry Hemming


  278–9 ‘I have a feeling that perhaps’: ‘The Meeting with General Marshall’, GP to Louis Mountbatten, 9 April 1942

  279–80 ‘For not far off’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 26 April 1942

  280 ‘Whatever may happen’: Ibid.

  Pyke Hunt, Part 4

  281 ‘hush-hush . . . secrecy’: Nigel West, Mask (London: Routledge), 2006, p. 226

  281 ‘channel through which’: ‘Photostat copy of S. B. report re German Organisations in this country’, 23 February 1942, KV 2/3039/38a

  281 ‘came near to being’: Hyde, I Believed, p. 203

  281 ‘so many leading Czech’: ‘Special Branch on CRTF, 28 January 1940, KV 2/2715/19b

  281 ‘the rulers . . . for little’: Hyde, I Believed, p. 204

  282 ‘the men concerned’: Sunday Dispatch, 8 February 1942; the following week the same point was made in more detail: ‘Refugees welcome the exposure of the “Free German” trick’, Sunday Dispatch, 15 February 1942

  282 ‘said to be in charge’: ‘Photostat copy of Special Branch report re. German Organisations in this country’, 23 February 1942, KV 2/3039/38a

  283 ‘it is not essential’: GP, ‘Let Raid Shelters be Probed in Public’, Reynolds News, 21 May 1939

  283 GP’s articles on chalk shelters: GP, Reynolds News, 22 December 1940, 29 December 1940, 12 January 1941, 27 April 1941

  283 piece in academic journal: E. J. Buckatzsch, Institute of Statistics, Oxford, 17 May 1941, bulletin vol 3, no. 7

  283 ‘played straight into the hands’: GP Notebook, 5 May 1941

  283–4 ‘everything to it’: Hyde, I Believed, p. 94

  284 GP pushes anti-appeasement book: GP Notebook, July 1940

  284 GP pushes Meusel book: Incidentally, Allen Lane told GP that if he could write an account of sending his pollsters into Nazi Germany he’d publish it ‘like a shot’. GP Notebook, August 1940; ‘anti-war’ SIS report CX/12650/5274/V, 9 April 1940, KV 2/1872/87a; ‘Chief of Communist Party’ Captain Derbyshire to V. Vivian, 22 April 1940

  284 GP campaigns for interned refugees: The CPGB also ran a campaign pushing for the release of anti-fascists interned as Enemy Aliens with Tommy Bell writing articles on this and helping to put together a book called Morrison’s Prisoners. At the same time GP pitched a piece to Kingsley Martin at The New Statesman and Nation railing against the internment of enemy aliens such as Higgins. Martin felt it was ‘too violent’ and might do his cause ‘more harm than good’. GP Notebook, 17 August 1940

  284–5 ‘a most brilliant move’: GP Diary, 24 August 1939

  285 ‘transformed the whole’: Nares Craig, Memoirs of a Thirties Dissident, online memoir accessed on 9 April 2012 at http://www.narescraig.co.uk/memoirs/index.html#TOC. Craig does not appear in P’s notebook until April 1940, and his sight of this flat may have been as late as that

  285 Myers gives GP money: ‘I shd like you to meet him and some day when all this is over I think Iris (and you) will be satisfied that the money I gave him were well spent.’ Myers to Bayard James, intercepted, passed to MI5, 4 July 1942. KV 2/3039

  285 ‘also paid Pyke’s personal bills’: ‘E.7. note (Source Kaspar) re PYKE and MYERS’, 4 August 1942, KV-2–3039–75a

  286 ‘railings from not just’: GP Notebook, 6 July 1940

  286 ‘a moment at which’: George Orwell, ‘Our Opportunity’, The Left News, No. 55, January 1941

  287 ‘I dare say the London gutters’: George Orwell, ‘My Country Right or Left’, Books v. Cigarettes (London: Penguin), 2008, p. 48

  287 ‘an attempt to get away’: Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1994, p. 247

  287 Bagot writes to Hunter: ‘F2b note to B6 asking for observation to be kept on Geoffrey Pyke’, 15 March 1942, KV 2/3039/36a

  288 ‘tall, thin-bearded’: Quennell, The Wanton Chase, p. 29

  289 ‘looking as unlike’: ‘B.6 report on the operations of the section during the war 1939’, 1 March 1945, KV 4/443

  290 ‘lost to observation’: ‘B.6. report further to 37a re Geoffrey PYKE’, 27 March 1942, KV 2/3039/38a

  290 GP seen having lunch with woman: Ibid.

  290–1 ‘Age 38, 5'10''’: KV 2/3039/38a

  291 Fuchs and Kuczynski: Robert Chadwell Williams, Klaus Fuchs (London: Harvard University Press), 1987, p. 33

  291 Kuczynski supplies intelligence for sister: David Burke, The Spy Who Came in from the Co-op (Woodbridge: Boydell Press), 2008, p. 110

  291 ‘intellectually of the first’: GP Notebook, 26 July 1939

  291 ‘I found our conversation’: GP to Jürgen Kuczynski, 9 October 1939, Kuc2–1-P1402–P1413_0007

  291 Myers sends money: Myers sent JK £100 with a view to sending another £100, 8 May 1940, KV 2/1872/86b

  292 ‘rabid Communist . . . refugees’: B4b Minute, 22 November 1939, KV 2/1871/37

  292 ‘a direct agent’: ‘M/S report on an interview with EICHLER’, 20 Feb 1940, KV 2/1871/69b

  292 ‘a very good stroke’: Ibid.

  292 £200,000: KV 2/1873/185a

  292 petitioners for Kuczynski’s release: Lilian Bowes Lyon to Marguerite Kuczynski: ‘I have rung up a friend of mine who is going to get in touch if possible, through an influential friend of his, with Sir Robert Vansittart. I won’t go into details but both these people are well known to your husband and great admirers of his anti-Hitler work.’ The ‘influential friend’ was probably Pyke. 26 January 1940, KV 2/1871/63a

  292–3 MI5 reports on Kuczynski: Source: Hi, ‘Report No. 38 re. Free German League of Culture’, 25 February 1941, KV 2/1872/128x

  293 GP’s 1927 passport application: Milicent Bagot, ‘Note re Geoffrey PYKE’, 8 April 1942, KV 2/3039/45a

  293 ‘not always proved’: Milicent Bagot to Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Special Branch, ‘Letter to S. B. re PYKE’s career’, 19 April 1942, KV 2/3039/53a

  293 ‘possibly a knave’: Milicent Bagot, MI5 Internal Minute, 7 April 1942

  294 Mountbatten reads the Week: Cockburn, I, Claud, 1967, p. 158

  294 Mountbatten believes GP has security clearance: Letter from Combined Operations to Lt-Col Clarke of MI14 says that Pyke ‘has already been vouched for by many people in responsible positions, but I am arranging double check with M.I.5, just to make sure.’ In handwriting after that: ‘This has now been done and is alright’. 28 March 1942

  How to Succeed in America

  295 Wedderburn’s health: A. M. Greenwood, ‘E. A. M. Wedderburn’, Climbers’ Club Journal, 1945–1946, F. A. Pullinger (ed.), (London: The Climbers’ Club), Vol. 8, no. 1, no. 71, 1946, pp. 72–74

  296 ‘intelligence . . . integrity’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, c. June 1942

  296 ‘preferably from the Royal’: Louis Mountbatten to John Dill, 24 April 42, DEFE 2/883

  296 ‘War Office par excellence’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 19 May 1942

  296 ‘“Staff College” par excellence’: Ibid., 11 May 1942

  296 ‘may shorten the war’: Ibid., 4 June 1942

  297 ‘bomb rack’: John Cohen, ‘Geoffrey Pyke: Man of Action’, New Scientist, 30 July 1981, p. 303

  297 ‘slightly deaf’: GP to John Knox, 7 July 1942

  297 letters of introduction to Hopkins: Louis Mountbatten to Harry Hopkins, 24 April 1942, DEFE 2/883

  297 ‘adequate cover’: Louis Mountbatten to William Stephenson, 24 April 1942

  297 ‘The great importance’: Louis Mountbatten to Knox, 24 April 1942, DEFE 2/883

  298 ‘all the officers’: Dwight D. Eisenhower to Louis Mountbatten, 19 April 1942, The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: The War Years, Alfred D. Chandler ed., (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press), 1970, p. 274

  298 ‘very odd-looking individual’: George C. Marshall, quoted in Robert Adleman and George Walton, The Devil’s Brigade (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press), 2004, p. 2

  298 ‘No one, except Hitler’: GP to Jon Kimche, 14 January 1945

  298 ‘spoke badly’: GP to Louis Mountbatte
n, 29 April 1942, DEFE 2/883

  299 ‘the idea is too simple’: Ibid.

  299 ‘a working committee’: Dwight D. Eisenhower to Louis Mountbatten, 19 April 1942, The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, p. 274

  299 ‘Things had to happen’: Vannevar Bush, Pieces of the Action (London: Cassell), 1970, p. 126

  299 ‘Because of the American’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, undated

  299 ‘we may be ready’: Ibid., 2 May 1942

  300 GP finds heat ‘trying’: Pyke later heard this from ‘a third party’, almost certainly Wedderburn, GP to Louis Mountbatten, 21 May 1942

  300 ‘little more than’: E. A. M. Wedderburn, 3 May 42, DEFE 2/884

  300 Burgess needs repairing: Ibid.

  301 ‘design, develop, build’: Development of Weasel, 1 July 42, US National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the OSRD, NC-138, Entry 1, Office of the Chairman, NDRC, and the Office of the Director, OSRD: General Records, 1940–1947, Box 55

  301 ‘I wish to submit’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 12 May 1942

  302 ‘I am sure Duncan’: Ibid., 21 May 1942

  302 ‘Duncan not only’: Ibid., 19 May 1942

  302 ‘in fact so contra-suggestible’: Ibid., 15 May 1942

  302 ‘due to rigidity of intellect’: Ibid., 19 May 1942

  302 ‘both the extreme cunning’: GP to J. D. Bernal, 22 May 1942

  302 resignation letter: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 11 May 1942

  302 ‘Once a civilian’: Louis Mountbatten to John Knox, 20 May 1942

  303 ‘Pyke’s grievance’: John Knox to Louis Mountbatten, 12 May 1942

  303 ‘smooth out differences’: Louis Mountbatten to John Knox, 13 May 1942

  303 ‘during three and a half’: DEFE 2/883

  303 ‘anxious and distressed’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 16 May 1942

  303 ‘If irritation and impatience’: Ibid., 19 May 1942

  304 Duncan runs amok: GP to J. D. Bernal, 22 May 1942

  304 ‘good enough’: Nigel Duncan to E. A. M. Wedderburn, 16 May 1942

  304 Duncan approves OSRD’s proposal: Palmer Putnam to Hartley Rowe, 18 May 1942

  304 ‘by the early fall’: US National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 165, Entry 21, 390/30/16/4, Box 968

  304 ‘very active . . . winter’: From OSRD Confidential History, US National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 227/NC-138/Entry 106/Box 8, Chapter 4

  305 ‘The Americans are remarkable’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 19 May 1942

  305 GP resigns again: John Knox to Louis Mountbatten, 16 May 1942, DEFE 2/883

  305 Churchill asks for report: ‘The Prime Minister has asked Lord Cherwell to keep him informed of the progress of Pyke’s scheme.’ Louis Mountbatten to Robert Neville, 21 May 1942

  305 ‘I’ve made no mistakes’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 21 May 1942

  305 ‘tame lunatic’: John Knox to Louis Mountbatten, 21 May 1942

  306 ‘At last understand’: Louis Mountbatten to John Knox, 26 May 1942

  306 Duncan ordered back to London: Mountbatten checked with General Nye that Duncan’s military career would not suffer as a result. Louis Mountbatten to Archie Nye, 26 May 1942

  306 ‘Pyke is now my sole’: Louis Mountbatten to John Knox, 26 May 1942

  306 ‘sympathetic support’: Ibid.

  306 ‘In spite of’: Louis Mountbatten to GP, 28 May 1942

  306 details of missing papers: E. A. M. Wedderburn, ‘Note on Missing Papers’, 18 May 1942

  306 ‘vanished into thin air’: E. A. M. Wedderburn to Nigel Duncan, 16 May 1942

  306 ‘he will be dealing’: N. T. P. Cooper to First Canadian Army, 3 June 1942

  307 Operations Division report on Plough: Robert T. Frederick, ‘Memorandum on Plough Project for the Chief of Staff’, June 1942

  307 ‘I can’t sign that report’: Adleman and Walton, The Devil’s Brigade, p. 29

  307 ‘animated discussion’: Ibid., p. 30

  307 ‘(a) failed to ensure’: Louis Mountbatten, ‘MEMORANDUM BY CHIEF OF COMBINED OPERATIONS ON THE SNOW PLOUGH SCHEME’. Undated.

  307 ‘just like a schoolboy’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 7 June 1942

  308 ‘charming, moderately sincere’: Ibid.

  308 ‘If I may say so’: Ibid.

  308 ‘probably the most’: Hough, Mountbatten, pp. 152–3

  309 Mountbatten on Time magazine: It went on sale on 8 June 1942 bearing the legend: ‘Mountbatten of the Commandos: His boys in blackface will see the day of wrath.’

  309 ‘in the event of things’: Louis Mountbatten to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 15 June 1942, FDR, Harry Hopkins Papers, Container 194

  309 ‘ready to follow up’: Ibid.

  310 Frederick in charge of Plough: Robert T. Frederick to Robert D. Burhans, 10 September 1942, quoted in Wood, We Move Only Forward, p. 26

  310 ‘I was shocked’: Ibid.

  310 ‘carried the rating’: Adleman and Walton, The Devil’s Brigade, p. 33

  310 ‘embrace your defects’: ‘Pyke on How to Sell Pyke’, GP to Louis Mountbatten, June 1942

  310 ‘Warwick the Kingmaker’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 21 June 1942

  311 ‘a battery of press’: 11 June 1942, Guy Liddell, Nigel West (ed.), The Guy Liddell Diaries, Vol. 1 (Abingdon: Routledge), 2005

  311 ‘What the hell’: This was Major-General J. C. Murchie, Canadian Vice-Chief of the General Staff, Adleman and Walton, The Devil’s Brigade, p. 35

  312 a joint American-Canadian force: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 16 June 1942

  312 ‘experienced cold-weather’: Robert T. Frederick to Robert D. Burhans, 10 September 1946, quoted in Wood, We Move Only Forward, p. 27

  312 ‘The son of a bitch’: Adleman and Walton, The Devil’s Brigade, p. 38

  313 ‘an instance of Churchill’s’: Bush, Pieces of the Action, pp. 126–7

  313 ‘lots of ideas . . . judgement’: Vannevar Bush, Atlantic Monthly, March 1965

  314 ‘working through channels’: Ibid.

  314 ‘has a contempt’: Bush, Pieces of the Action, p. 121

  314 ‘I judge that’: Vannevar Bush to Raymond Moses, 3 June 1942

  315 ‘it is fortunate’: Ibid.

  315 ‘now sitting pretty’: ‘Notes on Certain Phases of the Development of Weasel (With excerpts from the Project Log)’, 13 July 1942, US National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the OSRD, NC-138, Entry 1, Office of the Chairman, NDRC, and the Office of the Director, OSRD: General Records, 1940–1947, Box 55

  315 ‘be frank both with’: GP to John Knox, 7 July 1942

  316 ‘the organisational level’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 21 June 1942

  316 ‘appreciation of the treatment’: Ibid., 7 June 1942

  316 ‘It meant a Caste War’: Ibid., 3 August 1942

  316 ‘in this big, husky’: Thomas Parrish, To Keep the British Isles Afloat: FDR’s Men in Churchill’s London, 1941 (New York: Smithsonian), 2009, p. 233

  317 ‘with complete frankness’: GP, ‘Interview with Mr Oscar Cox, Assistant Solicitor General: Director under Mr Stettinius of Lend-Lease’, 23 June 1942

  317 ‘amazing’: OSC Daily Calendar, 24 June 1042, FDR, Cox Papers, Box 143

  317 ‘I am doing this’: GP to Isidor Lubin, 24 June 1942

  317 ‘you realise, I hope’: GP to Oscar Cox, 24 June 1942, DEFE 2/884

  318 ‘an unusually gifted’: Eugene Rostow to Bob Bryce, 31 March 1943

  318 ‘Pyke could not write’: George W. Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern (London: W.W. Norton), 1982, p. 25

  318 Stimson’s feelings towards British: Louis Mountbatten to GP, 25 July 1942

  318–9 Bush gives Stimson reports on GP: Bush, Pieces of the Action, p. 128

  319 ‘seriously upsetting’: E. A. M. Wedderburn, Notes on a conversation with Knox, 1 July 1942

  319 ‘the Weasel business’: Daily Calendar, 2 July 1942, FDR, Cox Papers, Box 143

  319 ‘It is very, very difficult’: GP to Lo
uis Mountbatten, 30 June 1942

  320 ‘I am anxious to know’: Winston Churchill to Harry Hopkins, 7 July 1942, Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram no. T.960

  320 ‘Putnam must go’: Eugene Rostow and George Ball to Oscar Cox, ‘Memorandum to be read prior to seeing Lubin and Hopkins’, 8 July 1942

  320 ‘the red herring’: ‘MEMORANDUM PREPARED BY LEND-LEASE ADMINISTRATION’, 3 July 1942

  321 ‘with the impression’: ‘Note on Conversation with Captain Knox, R. N., C. O. L. O., in his office on 20 June, 1942’

  321 ‘that damned old woman’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 19 June 1942

  321 ‘caused so much amusement’: Louis Mountbatten to GP, 23 June 1942

  321 ‘Most of the people’: Ibid., ‘Phillips, on “How Not to Sell Pyke”’, 6 July 1942

  321 ‘I have not gone deeply’: John Dill to Louis Mountbatten, 17 July 1942

  321 ‘you don’t sack me’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 20 July 1942

  321 ‘It has been made’: Louis Mountbatten to GP, 23 July 1942

  322 ‘I know both of them’: Ibid., 25 July 1942

  322 ‘to avoid entangling’: Ibid.

  322 ‘the unspeakable misery’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 3 August 1942

  322 ‘This is your usual’: Ibid.

  322–3 ‘trappers, guides’: E. A. M. Wedderburn, ‘Notes on Conversation with Lt Col. Frederick’, 25 June 1942

  323 ‘possibly bring back’: Undated memorandum, US National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 165, Entry 22, 390/30/16/4, Box 980

  Pyke Hunt, Part 5

  324 ‘PYKE is said’: ‘Kaspar’, 10 May 1942, KV 2/2883/39a

  324 ‘It would seem that Pyke’: Roger Fulford to Major Bacon, MI5 Internal Minute 68, 29 June 1942

  325 ‘We have only just started’: Major Bacon to Roger Fulford, MI5 Internal Minute 69, 6 July 1942

  325 ‘Our records gave no’: Milicent Bagot to Roger Fulford, MI5 Internal Minute 71, 9 July 1942

  325 ‘I hear it’s amazing’: ‘Extract from Y.2127 re PYKE Geoffrey’, 15 September 1942, KV 2/3039/76b

  325 ‘was unhappy . . . escort’: Canetti, Party in the Blitz, p. 181

  326 ‘every section of the wartime’: Andrew, Defence of the Realm, p. 366

 

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