World War Two
Published 22 Feb 2025In their struggle to defeat German and Japanese espionage efforts, the Allied intelligence agencies of the KGB, CIA, MI6 and DGSE are all transformed into modern, global, espionage forces. But even as East and West work together to defeat the Axis, they are fighting the first underground battles of a new Cold War against one another.
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February 23, 2025
How WW2 Changed Espionage Forever
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May 2, 2024
When Malcolm Muggeridge investigated P.G. Wodehouse for MI6
Alan Ashworth explains the circumstances under which the great P.G. Wodehouse became the subject of an MI6 (Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service) treason investigation near the end of the Second World War:
P.G. Wodehouse, circa 1904.
The American Legion Weekly, 24 October, 1919 via Wikimedia Commons.
[Malcolm Muggeridge:] “I first made Wodehouse’s acquaintance in circumstances which might have been expected to shake even his equanimity. This was in Paris just after the withdrawal of the German occupation forces. As Wodehouse well understood, the matter of his five broadcasts from Berlin would now have to be explained; and in the atmosphere of hysteria that war inevitably generates, the consequences might be very serious indeed. It would have been natural for him to be shaken, pale, nervous; on the contrary I found him calm and cheerful. I thought then, and think now more forcibly than ever, that this was due not so much to a clear conscience as to a state of innocence which mysteriously has survived in him.”
Muggeridge explains that he was attached to an MI6 contingent and a colleague “mentioned to me casually that he had received a short list of so-called traitors who cases needed to be investigated, one of the names being PG Wodehouse”. Muggeridge readily agreed to take on the case, “partly out of curiosity and partly from a feeling that no one who had made as elegant and original a contribution to the general gaiety of living should be allowed to get caught up in the larger buffooneries of war”. He duly visited Wodehouse at his hotel that same evening and the author described what had happened to him from the collapse in 1940 of France, where he was living with his wife Ethel, to his internment at a former lunatic asylum in Tost, Poland.
“The normal wartime procedure is to release civilian internees when they are sixty. Wodehouse was released some months before his sixtieth birthday as a result of well-meant representations by American friends – some resident in Berlin, America not being then at war with Germany. He made for Berlin, where his wife was awaiting him. The Berlin representative of the Columbia Broadcasting System asked him if he would like to broadcast to his American readers about his internment and foolishly he agreed, not realising the broadcasts would have to go over the German network and were bound to be exploited in the interest of Nazi propaganda.” [Here are German transcripts of the offending items.]
Muggeridge goes on: “It has been alleged that there was a bargain whereby Wodehouse agreed to broadcast in return for being released from Tost. This has frequently been denied and is, in fact, quite untrue but nonetheless still widely believed.”
Wodehouse came under virulent attack, particularly from Cassandra, the Daily Mirror columnist William Connor, who denounced him as a traitor to his country. Public libraries banned his books. Wodehouse wrote to the Home Secretary admitting he had been “criminally foolish” but said the broadcasts were “purely comic” and designed to show Americans a group of interned Englishmen keeping up their spirits. But the damage was done and the stigma stuck. After the war he spent the rest of his life in America.
In words that resonate half a century after their publication, Muggeridge says: “Lies, particularly in an age of mass communication, have much greater staying power than the truth.
“In the broadcasts there is not one phrase or word which can possibly be regarded as treasonable. Ironically enough, they were subsequently used at an American political warfare school as an example of how anti-German propaganda could subtly be put across by a skilful writer in the form of seemingly innocuous, light-hearted descriptive material. The fact is that Wodehouse is ill-fitted to live in an age of ideological conflict. He just does not react to human beings in that sort of way and never seems to hate anyone – not even old friends who turned on him. Of the various indignities heaped upon him at the time of his disgrace, the only one he really grieved over was being expunged from some alleged roll of honour at his old school, Dulwich.”
[…]
Muggeridge records that, when the war ended, the Wodehouses left France for America. “Ethel has been back to England several times but Wodehouse never, though he is always theoretically planning to come. I doubt if he ever will [he didn’t, dying in 1975 at the age of 93]. His attitude is like that of a man who has parted, in painful circumstances, from someone he loves and whom he both longs for and dreads to see again.”
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July 28, 2022
The Posh Brits Betraying Their Country – WW2 – Spies & Ties 20
World War Two
Published 27 Jul 2022Being allies does little to discourage Moscow from recruiting double agents in the British establishment. The most famous of them all, Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five, penetrate deep into MI5, MI6, and Bletchley Park. With friends like the NKVD, who needs enemies?
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April 30, 2022
God Help These British Agents – WW2 – Spies & Ties 16
World War Two
Published 28 Apr 2022We’ve seen it time and time again in this war. Supposed Allies arguing with each other instead of fighting the enemy. But when SOE and MI6 begin vying for leadership of Britain’s secret war, it’s more than cross words. Now there are lives at stake.
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February 10, 2022
MI6’s Secret War – WW2 – Spies & Ties 13
World War Two
Published 9 Feb 2022Britain’s MI6 is caught off guard when war breaks out. As the Germans advance across Western Europe MI6’s networks collapse, and Britain becomes almost blind. MI6 have their secret weapons at Bletchley Park but they now face a painful struggle to rebuild their eyes in Europe.
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May 15, 2012
Conducting espionage operations in the age of the internet
Shashank Joshi in the Telegraph on the good and bad news coming out of the recently foiled “underwear bomber” incident:
This week began with news of a remarkable intelligence coup. It has ended in ignominy, and a reminder that the pathological leakiness of the American bureaucracy has consequences for counterterrorism.
According to the Associated Press (AP), the CIA foiled an audacious plot by Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to attack an aircraft using an upgraded version of the underwear bomb that failed three years ago. The AP had, apparently, shown great responsibility in delaying publication for days at the request of the White House.
Then, the story grew both muddier and more remarkable still. The would-be bomber was in fact a mole. He was a British national of Saudi Arabian origin, recruited by MI5 in Europe and later run, with Saudi Arabia, by MI6. This is a testament to the unimaginable courage of the agent in question, and the ingenuity of British intelligence.
But the emergence of this story, with a blow-by-blow account of operational detail, is the result of reckless, impetuous leaking that could cost lives and compromise operations in the future.
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December 9, 2011
Praise for Britain’s MI6
It’s the rough equivalent to the US Central Intelligence Agency, but it rarely gets public attention. Strategy Page has a thumbnail sketch of the organization as it gets a brief mention in the British press for its operations against Libya:
MI6 is less than one tenth the size of the CIA (in manpower) and has a budget that’s even smaller. But the CIA is by no means ten times as effective as MI6. For all its size and resources, the CIA cannot, or often will not, do things that MI6 will. Part of this has to do with MI6s greater experience and need to make do with less. But a lot of it has to do with different styles of operation. Both organizations are in the overseas espionage business, but both go about their business in quite different ways, and with often quite different results.
A large part of the difference can be traced to the fact that MI6 has always had a healthier relationship with its diplomats. CIA agents operating overseas often operate out of the local US embassy. Their cover is a diplomatic passport indicating they work for the State Department. But from the beginning, the diplomats were hostile to this sort of thing (British diplomats were not.) So CIA people were forced to use diplomatic passports indicating they were part of the Foreign Service Reserve instead of just Foreign Service. For those in the know, and that means just about everyone, it was easy to find out who the CIA guys were.
MI6 has a degree of legal cover for its operations that the CIA could only envy. Under the Intelligence Services Act of 1994, MI6 officers have immunity from prosecution for crimes committed outside Great Britain. The Criminal Justice Bill of 1998 makes it illegal for any organization in Great Britain to conspire to commit offenses abroad, but Crown agents have immunity. Which means, in effect, that yes, Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service really is licensed to kill.
[. . .]
Another advantage of MI6 is that they have a number of SAS commandos trained to work with MI6 and are always available for any MI6 needs. This commando organization is called Increment and is used for assassinations, sabotage or other dangerous jobs (like arresting war criminals in the Balkans.) In addition, every station chief has a direct line to SAS headquarters and a good working relationship with the commandos.
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