Left and Right? New claims about Soviet spy Anthony Blunt

In a fascinating and provocative article in the Sunday Times (April 28th), Rosamund Urwin discussed the possibility that Anthony Blunt, the ‘fourth man’ in the infamous ‘Cambridge Five’ Soviet spy ring, may have passed secrets to the Nazis in World War Two. Urwin’s article set out and summarised some new findings and a controversial fresh thesis being put forward by Robert Verkaik in his new book The Traitor of Arnhem (published by Headline publishers on May 9th, 2024).

Sir Anthony Blunt (1907-1983), of course, was the art historian and very ‘establishment’ man who became Adviser for the Queen’s Pictures and Drawings, working for years for the Royal Household. But he had also privately confessed in 1964 to having been a Soviet spy. Astonishingly, he was allowed to keep his job as surveyor of the Queen’s pictures. This was something that was not made public until 15 years later, when he was named as a double agent by the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons. His naming led to a major outcry in the press but also saw great efforts by the establishment to cover up the enormity of Blunt’s treason and to engage in damage limitation. While he was stripped of his Knighthood in November, 1979, after his exposure as a traitor, Blunt still emerged from all the scandal and publicity largely unscathed, undoubtedly helped by his close friendship with the Queen. There were allegations that the establishment had closed ranks to protect one of their own and water down the scale of Blunt’s betrayals.

A ‘good chap’

Indeed, in many ways, Blunt had been the epitome of a British establishment man. After graduating from Cambridge University and serving in the British Army for a year, he had joined MI5, the domestic Security Service, in 1940, and rose rapidly up its ranks to become a key Intelligence Officer. However, he had also been recruited as a Soviet spy while at Cambridge, and was part of a group of upper-class spies which became known as the ‘Cambridge Five’, a group which included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby. They all wormed their way into the very heart of the wartime and post-War establishment, helped considerably by their social backgrounds as ‘good chaps’ and loyal patriots. Burgess and Maclean had defected to Russia in 1951, but Philby managed to remain at the heart of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, for another 12 years, until he too fled to the Soviet Union.

As Verkaik notes, while Burgess, Maclean and, in particular, Philby gave many secrets to the Soviet Union which led to the loss, torture and brutal murder of numerous British and other agents, Blunt has often been seen as one of the more harmless of that group. But Verkaik’s research suggests that Blunt was, in reality, arguably one of the ‘most devastatingly treacherous’ of the five. Verkaik’s new study accuses Blunt of being the most likely candidate to be ‘Josephine’, who passed details of the vitally important Allied plan to try to end the war early, Operation Market Garden, to the Germans, but whose identity has never been established.

Operation Market Garden had been planned as the largest airborne operation in military history: 40,000 paratroopers and glider troops were dropped in the Netherlands, tasked with capturing and securing six bridges over the River Rhine, easing the way for Allied tanks to quickly push into Germany. But when the Operation went ahead, British and American forces encountered unexpectedly heavy resistance from the Germans, including from two SS Panzer Divisions. German reinforcements also rapidly flooded in. Bitter fighting ensued, leading to more than 17,000 Allied casualties and to the eventual surrender of many troops that were not able to escape back to Allied lines. The defeat was portrayed memorably in the popular box-office hit A Bridge Too Far (1977), directed by Richard Attenborough.

Somebody, it seemed, had tipped off the Germans about the Operation. While it has long been accepted that a Dutch double-agent, Christiaan Lindemans, was the culprit, it is also known that Berlin had received a second and more accurate briefing about the Operation from a spy code-named ‘Josephine’. This had led to major panic in Allied senior Intelligence ranks, as it was feared the Nazis had managed to infiltrate a deep ‘mole’ at the heart of Allied military planning.

A traitor within

Concern about such a mole had apparently been growing for some time. Blunt, as a highly-regarded and senior member of MI5 (and even seen by some, or so Verkaik contends, as a potential future Director-General of the Security Service), had been given the task of tracking down ‘Josephine’ a year earlier. But – in a supreme twist – he may have been investigating himself! According to Verkaik, Blunt had ‘the means, the motive and the opportunity’ to betray what eventually became Operation Market Garden, and he was ‘the only person who could fit the profile of who Josephine had to be’. While Verkaik is unable to prove conclusively that Blunt was ‘Josephine’, he nevertheless feels the balance of probabilities points to Blunt. It is difficult to know to what extent this new theory holds water, though, and historians have to tread very carefully, but it’s certainly an interesting thesis.

Why would his Soviet controllers have instructed Anthony Blunt to pass the information to the Nazis? Sabotaging Operation Market Garden would have suited Stalin and the USSR, mainly because the Soviet leader did not want the British and Americans to reach Berlin while Russian forces were still engaged in heavy fighting against the Germans on the Eastern Front. Stalin had already drawn up secret plans to create a new ‘Empire’ in Eastern Europe, and a British and American presence in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany would have constituted a possible hindrance to those plans. Moreover, Stalin was determined his forces would reach and capture Berlin before his British and American Allies.

There is much more to the story and I, for one, am very much looking forward to reading the full book by Verkaik. As he notes, by 1944, Blunt, as a top MI5 officer, was even writing Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s security briefings, was liaison officer for intelligence sharing between MI5 and MI6, and had roles in various other top secret committees and operations. Yet he was not only a Soviet spy, but may have given information to the Nazis which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Allied servicemen and women as a result of a prolonged war. Much more research is needed, however, to establish the full truths and untruths of the matter.

The Traitor of Arnhem (2024), by Robert Verkaik, is published by Headline publishers.

Dr. Steven Woodbridge is a Lecturer in History and Politics.

Images: Wikimedia commons.