Churchill's Secret War

by Denniston, Robin

  Eden replied on the 22nd: ‘Stalin is keen to bring Turkey in, but thinks it can be done on the cheap’. On 15 November the FO expressed doubts about the likely consequences of interesting the Turks in the Dodecanese venture. Sargent minuted to Eden that Turkey should not come into the affair, but Churchill continued to pressurise Eden: ‘Put the squeeze on Turkey. If they jib the Russians will get them.’ On 24 November Eden and Ismay had met Numan at Cairo. Eden

  . . . dwelt on the advantages that would be derived from Turkey’s entry into the war . . . It may well hasten the process of disintegration in Germany and among her satellites . . . By all this argument the Turkish delegation was unmoved . . . considering what was happening under their eyes in the Aegean, the Turks can hardly be blamed for their caution . . .78

  The prize was Turkey. ‘If we could gain Turkey it would be possible . . . to dominate the Black Sea with submarines and light naval forces and to give a right hand to Russia.’ Ismay observed that: ‘. . . recent events in the Aegean had evidently done nothing to erase their [Turkish] fears of the German power to take reprisals, or increase their confidence in our ability to protect them’.79 On the same day Oshima distributed his nine-page overview updating not only his colleagues in Tokyo, Madrid, Lisbon, Ankara, Rome, Moscow and elsewhere but also Churchill and Eden, the British Foreign Office, and the Wilhelmstrasse and von Ribbentrop.

  Later in November a key talk between Menemencioğlu and Vinogradov took place about the postwar settlement of the Straits.80 At Tehran on 28 November Churchill asked:

  How could we persuade Turkey to come into the war? . . . What would be the effect on Bulgaria who owed a profound debt to Russia for rescuing her in former days from the Turkish yoke?

  Stalin asked:

  How many Anglo-American troops would have to be allotted if Turkey came into the war? . . . [He thought] it would be a mistake to send part of our forces to Turkey and elsewhere and part to Southern France.

  He added that ‘the entry of Turkey into the war . . . was relatively unimportant’. Churchill reverted the discussion later to Turkey.81 But Stalin was interested only in ‘Overlord’ and possibly the South of France.82 Meanwhile Roosevelt was briefing his chiefs of staff about UK policy towards Turkey.83 The president ended by saying ‘he did not have the conscience to urge the Turks to go into the war’. Molotov reversed his policy and agreed.

  From now on Turkey-related BJs continue to appear regularly till VJ-Day (as we shall see) and the FO and MOD continued to adjust their policies and practices in the eastern Mediterranean in the light of the intercepts from and to Ankara.

  Turkey had been high on the agenda for the conferences at Moscow, Tehran and Cairo. Eden and the FO played the Turkey hand as energetically as they knew how, but failed to dislodge the Turks from their deeply held positions and their diplomatic deafness. The airwaves had little to say about what was going on at the conferences; but diplomatic comments on them followed shortly afterwards as Oshima’s report to Tokyo of 4 February 1944 comprehensively attests.84 The Tehran summit had been quickly followed by the two Cairo summits, at the first of which I·nönü stalled. Hugessen told the FO on 3 December that I·nönü was the key to the whole Turkish manoeuvre:

  He is taking some risk in coming to Cairo and it is surprising that he is able to carry a reluctant Parliament with him . . . I think he could bring the country along in a short time.

  Menemencioğlu commented on the absence of the Russians from Cairo; his reconstruction was that ‘the Soviets were pressing for a second front which the Americans could not yet provide, and the entry of Turkey into the war was to be their compensation’.85 Although Roosevelt saw I·nönü alone on 6 December to press Turkey to come in ‘if she did not want to find herself alone after the war’, I·nönü may have known that Roosevelt did not have the conscience, as he said, to force her in. I·nönü’s achievement at Cairo was to postpone the date of Turkey’s entry. Churchill was flattered to be kissed goodbye by I·nönü but Eden remarked sulkily that ‘that was not much for fifteen hours’ argument’.86

  Eden records that on 1 December, ‘the question of inducing Turkey into the war was our first (Anglo-Russian) topic’. He then reported to the Big Three on his Cairo conversations with the Turks. Churchill said, ‘I would be satisfied with a strained neutrality from Turkey . . . Turkey should come into the war on the side of the allies by the end of the year.’87 The Turks had reluctantly assembled in Cairo, following their discussions with Eden of early November, and Churchill wrote to the COS on the action needed if Turkey ‘came in on our side’. To Eden he wrote that:

  Angora must be left under no delusions that failure to comply when request is made on 15 February [1944] meant the virtual end of the alliance, and that making impossible demands is only another way of saying no.

  He dismissed as nonsense the possibility that Germany would or could undertake a separate invasion of Turkey.88

  On 13 December Churchill ordered Eden to instruct Hugessen to ‘put the screw hard’ on Ankara. He was to say that if the Turco-British military talks failed to produce results this time, Britain would not support Turkey after the war: ‘The Turks must be made to see that with the development of aerial warfare the Dardanelles no longer held a crucial importance and that they were not indispensable.’ The Turks took not a blind bit of notice.

  On 15 December Churchill and the FO learnt that Menemencioğlu told the Turkish ambassador in Berlin the cabinet had decided not to accept the proposals made by the Allies in Cairo ‘but this decision should be applied very leniently and everything possible should be done to preserve the Anglo/Turkish alliance intact’.89 On the same day they read that Kurihara had learnt from von Papen that though Menemencioğlu had told him in spite of Allied requests for Turkey to enter the war, he’d refused because ‘participation was not necessarily in the Allies’ interests’.90 Von Papen’s telegram to Hitler was summarised.91 Eden, Churchill and Roosevelt all spoke with different voices. Britain would not enforce sanctions against Turkey. ‘C’ sent this intercept via Gore-Brown to ‘Spencer’ (Churchill) to be destroyed after reading.92

  On 16 December von Papen reported to Berlin on pressure on Turkey in Cairo, mainly Russian, therefore the Allies would send reinforcements through the Straits, so a Russian attack on the Southern Front would not begin until then (which was intelligent strategic thinking).93 The same day Oshima reported that Churchill had threatened Turkey in Cairo, Roosevelt was placatory, and von Papen asked would the UK use sanctions against Turkey? ‘Not even Britain was strong enough to make an enemy of Turkey, and USA would have no part of it.’ Ribbentrop said if Turkey guaranteed air bases to Allies then ‘Turkey had entered the war’.94

  With so much open diplomacy the intercepts could throw little new light on matters. Oshima continued to report, including a twelve-page intercept describing his visit to the front. A copy of this was flown to Roosevelt. In Ankara the Turkish foreign ministry informed their ambassador in Berlin that ‘Turkey will not accept the Cairo proposals’ but they also wished to preserve the Turco-British alliance intact. Kurihara learned from von Papen that Turkey would not join the war, and that Roosevelt had extracted a promise from Stalin that the Soviet Union would fight Japan after victory in Europe. He also reported that government circles in Ankara believed the USSR would declare war against Japan when the second front took place in the west. The UK would not enforce sanctions against Turkey.95 Months were to elapse before I·nönü replaced Numan Menemencioğlu, stopped shipping chromite to Germany and eventually joined the Allies. On 21 December Oshima reported: ‘at Cairo Turkey had to go to war, Turkey said no’,96 but on 23 December Churchill said he ‘was resigned to Turkish neutrality’. Oshima remained in spate throughout the Christmas period.

  The Dodecanese and the conferences passed from Churchill’s priority list and he reluctantly confronted the greater demands of ‘Overlord’, for which Boniface and Dedip were to continue to provide vital information. But this belongs to a different
phase of his war leadership than that which is the subject of this book. The year ended for Churchill’s staff on 30 December with Ismay, Hollis and ‘C’ writing about ‘master’ (Churchill) now taking an interest in plans for ‘Overlord’. ‘Master rather buoyant at the moment but quite open to reason.’ Churchill suggested a ‘kind of reverse Dunkirk – small boats landing infantry then proper assault troops . . . I know this sounds impracticable but he is likely to harp on it until it is proved to him to be so.’97

  This chapter shows the effect on Churchill’s mind of signals intelligence, both Enigma/Fish and Dedip, in his final attempt to breach Turkish neutrality and create a diversion which would pin down German divisions in Greece rather than being seconded to the Western or Eastern Fronts. It also shows the limitations of signals intelligence unbacked by a strong coherent strategy, insufficiently flexible Allied leadership in Combined Operations, and growing rifts in the postwar goals of the USA, the USSR and the UK.

  In Chapter 1 mention was made of two events – one disastrous and one ludicrous, on both of which new light could be thrown by Dedip. This chapter has given some account of the disaster, of Churchill’s crucial part in it, as well as the use of Boniface and Dedip by all levels of British command in attempting to respond appropriately to the daring improvisation of the Germans. The ludicrous event is the subject of the chapter that follows.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cicero, Dulles and Philby: 1943–44

  It was a strange kind of colloquy with the great ones of the world, whose names turned up in the documents: Roosevelt, Hopkins, Churchill, Eden, Stalin, Molotov . . .

  Eleysa Basna, I Was Cicero, p. 72.

  Introduction

  A sharp reminder of the importance of the Moscow, Cairo and Tehran Conferences to Turkey is provided by the care which the minutes recording them, or diplomatic reactions thereto, were studied not only in Ankara but also in Berlin. In Ankara the leadership relied as always on its ambassadorial reports – especially those from Moscow. But in Berlin supposedly vital documents, some bearing on the conferences, had arrived by a circuitous route which it is the aim of this chapter to unravel. The chapter also seeks to validate the claim that a study of wartime diplomatic intercepts from September 1943 till March 1944 can throw new light on what has universally been acknowledged to have been the most bizarre spy coup of the Second World War.

  A new appreciation of FO attitudes and approach to neutrals – pre-eminently Turkey – is attainable from a study of what the Ankara-based BJs have to say about the course of the war; and this in turn opens up further diplomatic secrets when applied to the following attempt to chart the progress round Europe of the FO papers communicated to the British ambassador to Turkey, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen. Since selections of these papers were routinely stolen from the ambassador’s safe, photographed by his valet, sold to the Abwehr chief in Ankara, re-enciphered and transmitted to Berlin, a further dimension of diplomatic activity – this time German – can be added to the picture.

  And finally, since a further selection of these were stolen from the German foreign ministry by one of its senior executives and presented to the American consulate in Berne (after having been turned down by the British) whence they were yet again re-enciphered (in the American diplomatic cipher) before transmission to both Washington and London, it is possible to complete the circle of excitement, mystification, horror, disgust and office politicking which ensued, after their final assessment by the department responsible for their original sourcing, in the offices of GCCS’s diplomatic cryptographic department in Berkeley Street, MI6 in Ryder Street and Broadway Buildings, and the FO in Whitehall.

  In reviewing the primary and voluminous secondary literature of what came to be called Operation ‘Cicero’ many questions arise. What was the valet (Basna) photographing? What did the Germans think of it and how did they use it? How did some of the material get to Allen Dulles in Washington; and to MI6, in the person of Kim Philby, in London? What did the Americans think of it? How did GCCS assess it? What was the real importance, if any, of the material to the conduct of the war by both sides, and in particular how did it affect Turkey’s determination to stay neutral?

  This chapter also looks at what would have happened had not the British ambassador in Ankara’s valet done what he did in 1943 and 1944. In particular, what would have been the Russian, American and neutrals’ view of such diplomatic ineptness? The answer put forward here is, ‘very little’.

  Historiography

  The great spy coup was first revealed to the world as early as 1947 with the publication throughout the world of Ludwig Moyzisch’s Operation Cicero. This achieved world fame and became the basis of a film, starring James Mason, called Five Fingers. But Moyzisch, who in 1943 was the head of the Ankara branch of the foreign intelligence branch of the German SD, itself a branch of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt – RSHA V1 – was not the only participant in the story to commit his part in it to paper. In the following years Walter Schellenberg, the charming young brigadier in charge of the whole SD foreign intelligence bureau in Berlin, published the results of his postwar interrogation, while in Ankara Hugessen’s valet Eleysa Basna himself, as well as the German ambassador Franz von Papen and the British ambassador all published memoirs, though the latter failed to mention his problems with his valet.1 ‘A period of some difficulty followed’ was how he described what his colleagues thought was the greatest breach of FO security prior to the Burgess and Maclean affair.2

  Before the release of DIR the unpublished primary sources relating to Cicero were non-existent in the PRO, since the affair led to a comprehensive weeding of files containing any reference to this episode in FO history, though two files, FO371 44066 and 44067 carry references to the subsequent security mission to Ankara which failed to find anything amiss at the embassy, for the good reason that there was nothing amiss there, the theft of papers being perpetrated at the ambassadorial residence some way away.3 There may still be files in the German and Turkish archives. But the BJs dated autumn 1943 and spring 1944 constitute a vital new primary source, which corroborate the descriptions by Moyzisch, Basna, and von Papen of the content of the documents photographed by Basna. Some of these DIR documents are identical with certain of those which were sold to Moyzisch in Ankara, and then transmitted to Berlin for evaluation and use by Kaltenbrunner, Hitler, Goebbels and Ribbentrop. Some of these were subsequently purloined from the Wilhelmstrasse by Fritz Kolbe, who took them in conditions of great secrecy and danger, to the American consulate in Berne. Here Allen Dulles, realising their importance to his masters in Washington, had them laboriously re-enciphered and sent in batches there as well as to London – to spread an encryptographic load which would otherwise have been insupportable. In London they were variously assessed by Philby and his superior Dansey in MI6. They were finally validated by GCCS (diplomatic) whence some of them may even have originated.

  Fortunately, as we have seen, four leading participants and three minor players published memoirs. These have been derided in some official quarters as partial, lying, self-serving and based on no corroborative evidence. Though this is likely in the case of von Papen and Schellenberg, on trial for their lives, Basna’s story which appeared in 1961, ten years after Moyzisch’s, stands up well to renewed scrutiny in the light of the release of Churchill’s BJs. Moyzisch’s book ends with an epilogue by von Papen, the formidable and complex diplomat who at one stage of the war was widely thought to be a candidate to replace Ribbentrop as German foreign minister. Von Papen was later acquitted of war crimes but served a prison sentence for lesser offences under German law. Historians have labelled him a congenital liar and hate-figure, for no better reason, apparently, than that he was in no position to answer back. Actually the part he played in keeping Turkey out of the Allied camp was crucial to Hitler’s strategy in the eastern Mediterranean, and his account of the Cicero period in Ankara is believable, and is corroborated by BJs. The intense mutual dislike between him and Ribbent
rop is there for all to see. The three minor players were Allen Dulles, Kim Philby and Nicholas Elliott.4

  There are many references to Cicero in the secondary literature, both popular and academic, of espionage in the Second World War. Of the former, Nigel West has probed the story most recently, and of the latter David Kahn has used German archives microfilmed after the war for National Archives in Washington. Anthony Cave Brown writes of Cicero in his monumental life of ‘C’ as well as in his Bodyguard of Lies.5 The most widely respected academic historian of secret intelligence, apart from Prof Christopher Andrew and Sir Harry Hinsley himself, is Prof Bradley Smith, who wrote about Cicero in his The Shadow Warriors.6 The official historian of British secret intelligence in the Second World War had to rely on a secretary with a good memory for the answer to the question what was Basna photographing? But it is now possible for researchers in DIR/C to identify secret documents, in some cases already correctly cited and reproduced by Basna in the early 1960s, as well as by Papen and Moyzisch. Though as an exercise in rehabilitating old sources this will be of some comfort to the descendants of Basna, von Papen and Moyzisch, for the historian of secret intelligence, little if anything is changed by the release of the BJs.7

  This summary of the Cicero historiography in the light of BJs in 1943 and 1944 raises the question whether ‘the greatest spy coup of the war’ is a justifiable description of the tissue of muddle and mixed motives which surrounded the FO documents at the centre of the story.

  What Basna was Photographing

  Having reviewed the Cicero historiography it is now comparatively simple to answer the question posed at the beginning of this chapter: what was Basna photographing? Reference has been made earlier to the reliance of the official historian on the memory of a former secretary to answer this question. This was Maria Moltenkeller, the translator of Cicero’s material in Berlin: