Anthony Cave Brown: “C” The Secret Life of Sir Stewart Menzies, Spymaster to Winston Churchill. NY: Macmillan, 1987. 830 pp. Ill.
Introduction
Anthony Cave Brown has provided a deeply-researched biography of Sir Stewart Menzies, the head of British Intelligence for nearly two decades beginning in 1933. He covers not just Menziesʼ career in the espionage business but also his family background, education, and military service. As a member of the privileged set, he was predestined for success, though how far he went was conditioned in part by the circumstance that he managed to survive the slaughter of the First World War. Cave Brown also provides glimpses of his private life, though these are much more restricted in scope. Evidently he expects some readers to start with Chapter 4, the Battle of Britain, so for their sake he partially rehashes Menziesʼ career up to then, the subject of the previous two hundred pages. In this review, I will follow his lead and concentrate on the war against Nazi Germany and also on Kim Philby.
Anglo-German Relations
Among Neville Chamberlainʼs many shortcomings was his inability to imagine even the possibility of an alliance with the U.S.S.R. Cave Brown summarizes the rationale for his policy of appeasement: “… under no circumstances was there to be any agreement, written or spoken, with the Soviet Union. She remained the enemy. A second but no less important aspect of the policy was that under no circumstances should England fight Germany again. Since there was little or no prospect of an Anglo-American front to restrain Hitler, a way other than war must be found without embrangling British policy with that of Russia, which in the short and the long terms was hostile to British interests” (p. 187). Chamberlain rebuffed Stalinʼs offer of Anglo-Russian rapprochement because he still hoped to prompt Hitler to look East for Lebensraum. When the British government reestablished counter-espionage as part of SIS in the late ʼ30s, its operations were directed not against Germany but Russia. Chamberlain utterly failed to anticipate the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939. Surely this also should be counted in the tally against Menzies, his chief of intelligence.
The best that can be said about appeasement is that while it failed to satiate Hitler, it did lead to one significant accomplishment: The twelve months won at Munich in Sept. 1938 gave London the time it needed to introduce the Spitfire into service (p. 193). That, alas, is the only nugget of gold to be found amid all the dross of this policy.
Even a month after the outbreak of the war in Sept. 1939, Chamberlain “did not intend to fight the Germans, but to overthrow Hitler and make peace with the German General Staff…” (p. 212). “… Chamberlain was prepared to end World War II between Germany and England only forty-one days after it had started. Then, according to the internal Sicherheitsdienst account of events, the British agents stated that the Chamberlain government intended to develop ‘a European League of States under the leadership of England and with a front against the progressive bolshevism'” (p. 215).This assertion is bolstered by a quotation from Lord Cadoganʼs diaries, indicating his support for such a scheme as late as mid-November 1939.
Regarding the attempt to kill Hitler with a bomb in the Bürgerbräukeller, Nov. 9, 1939: “It is generally conceded […] that it was set by the Sicherheitsdienst to give the German government the public excuse it felt it needed to justify large-scale action against the Jews, the Dutch, the Belgians, and the Danes, to say nothing of the SIS” (p. 219). On the contrary, it is generally agreed that the attempted assassination was planned and carried out by Georg Elser, a German carpenter who risked his life to prevent the coming war. In any event, Cave Brown links this bombing to the kidnapping of Captain Payne Best and Major Stevens at their conspiratorial meeting in the Netherlands with would-be anti-Nazi members of the SD the day after the explosion. The implication is that Himmlerʼs analysis was correct: Hitler had left the event early not because he was lucky but because he was forewarned. Under torture, Stevens and to some extent Best spilled all they knew, thus compromising SIS activity in Europe.
British-American Relations in WWII
When it came to espionage, “…the Americans were quite prepared to learn from the British but were not prepared to be taught by them” (p. 108). The Yanks were certainly the junior partners in this relationship at the beginning of the war, though by its end the positions were already well on their way to being reversed, chiefly due to economic and military realities.
Cave Brown throws some light on British covert efforts to entice America into the war: “… in the spring of 1940 the New York Herald Tribune, which the State Department believed had been purchased or otherwise brought under the control of the British government, began to reflect the British viewpoint in exceedingly well informed terms. […] This, so far as is known, was the first direct British political warfare attack on the ‘hearts and minds’ of the American people” (p. 261). Well, the first in this particular war.
American history would have been quite different had Roosevelt died in office when Henry Wallace was still vice president instead of Truman. The British saw this too, and were so horrified by the prospect that they intrigued to get Wallace off the ticket in 1944. With the help of conservative Democrats, their efforts were successful. William Stephenson, the highly effective head of British Security Coordination in the U.S., observed: “I came to regard Wallace as a menace and I took action to ensure that the White House was aware that the British government would view with concern Wallaceʼs appearance on the ticket at the 1944 presidential elections” (p. 478). Incidentally, Menzies had been among those who opposed Stephensonʼs appointment to this sensitive post.
Ultra
Probably Menziesʼ greatest single contribution to the war effort was that he fully realized the importance of keeping secret the information that the German code had been broken. To this end, he was prepared to sacrifice not only his own reputation but the lives of British and Allied soldiers. “The defense of Ultra became ‘C’ʼs most important task of the war, and in the end he became a prisoner of the secret, for he could not reveal it even in his own defense” (p. 456). And again: “If ‘C’ was making himself few friends over his powerful and unrelenting defense of Ultra – one of the reasons why he never became a beloved or popular figure in World War II history or mythology – the secret Ultra nevertheless remained secure….” (p. 467).
So stringent was the imperative to maintain security that it appears Churchill, Menzies and Claude Dansey, assistant chief of the SIS, deliberately sacrificed between 400-1500 mainly French resistance fighters to support the deception that the Allies were planning to land in Northern France in August or autumn of 1943, thus distracting the Germans from that yearʼs main target, Italy. This plot almost failed because an officer (code name: Prosper), expected to confess under pressure, remained steadfast. Fortunately, another British officer did break, whereupon both he and Prosper were shot by the Nazis. Churchill allowed all this to happen in order to fool the enemy, Menzies to weaken a rival British organization (SOE), and Dansey because it appealed to his sense of himself as being bloody-minded. In the end the devious feint was in vain – the Germans were not fooled, a failure which did nothing to change British minds or behavior (pp. 508-513). In the cause of protecting Ultra, the Prime Minister not only let convoys be attacked, it seems that some bombing raids were carried out whose hidden purpose was to kill British prisoners of war in German captivity because they knew too much (p. 638). These sordid incidents show the lengths the British were prepared to go to in defense of Ultra.
“Churchill told King George VI in Menziesʼs presence that ‘it was thanks to Ultra that we won the war.’ […] Without Ultra England could not have defeated the German air force in the Battle of Britain, the first major setback suffered by Hitler, and more certainly the Allies could not have won the Battle of the Atlantic [….] Therefore, the cardinal factor in the Atlantic war was Ultra. That enabled the Allies to assemble the necessary power at the right place and time. Since “C” was director and then director-general of Bletchley, he warranted permanent regard for his direction of that extraordinary establishment, just as he was finally responsible for anything that went wrong there” (pp. 671-672).
Another way that Ultra helped lead to victory was its psychological impact, as enemy morale took a beating. “By the eve of D-Day, therefore, the command of the German army in France was not merely riddled with defeatism – it was inefficient to a point that strongly suggested treachery” (p. 589). And again: “D-Day would not have succeeded without preparatory deception and German defeatism in the West” (p. 592).
On the other hand, overreliance on this secret contributed to one of the near-disasters on the Western Front. I had always heard that one reason the Battle of the Bulge – here called the Ardennes Offensive – met with initial success was that Hitler had come to suspect that his wireless communications were less than secure, and ordered all directives be issued by hand and sent by courier. As Cave Brown tells it, while the Germans did tighten their security, there was still sufficient indication of the coming attack that it should have come as no surprise. One officer, Col. “Monk” Dickson, played a strange role in this affair. He issued the most prescient estimate of the German intention to launch a concentrated blow, after which – he went on leave to Paris! After eight pages of buildup, the battle itself is dispatched with a single paragraph (Bastogne goes unmentioned). In the end, because the intel did not come from Ultra/Enigma, it was not taken with sufficient urgency.
Cryptographic information gave Menzies a huge advantage over the foe, something that was augmented by the arrogant German conviction that their code could not be broken (Rommel being one of the few who distrusted it). And yet even when Hitlerʼs moves were known in advance, victory still came only after a hard-fought affair.
Marginal Topics
Cave Brown presents so much new information on wartime France that he could have written a book about that topic alone. He details the double game played by Vichy security pretending to help the Germans while really being in league with “C.” For his part, Menzies went to great lengths to extract Gen. Henri Giraud so he could lead French armed forces in North Africa during Operation Torch, only to be disappointed when the general refused any position less than total command of the operation. “Giroud was not quite the great and gallant French soldier that everyone had thought. At that crucial hour he proved to be no more than just another French general concerned only with his own reputation, career, and pension” (p. 440). Readers should be grateful for the passages about the resistance in unoccupied France and Tunisia, for otherwise the contributions of these brave fighters would at best have received less prominent coverage.
Counterbalancing this, some disasters go unmentioned. The reader will look in vain in these 830 pages for any mention of the raid on Dieppe in 1942 or the Dodecanese campaign of 1943, two Allied failures in which faulty intelligence must have played some role. As for the post-war era, one could write an entire book about the 1951 overthrow of Iranian premier Mossadegh and its consequences. Here he is called “Mussadeq, prime minister of Persia,” and two pages are devoted to his ouster in a coup staged by MI6 and the CIA, concluding with this gem: “And if there were several misadventures along the way, the operation succeeded, although Britain lost her overlordship in Iran to the United States” (p. 714).
One of the odd things about this book is its treatment of Menziesʼ private life. His second wife, Pamela Garton, appears unexpectedly, going completely unmentioned until the moment of their wedding – not a word is lost on how they met (p. 161). Much later, her death is dealt with as part of a curious paragraph, whose final sentence (“If [William Harding] Jackson did send a private warning to “C” about Philby” etc.) is totally unrelated to her passing (p. 704). It seems clear that the first part of the paragraph has been awkwardly inserted to wrap up a loose end. One suspects that the author knows more about this topic than he was allowed to say.
On Philby
Since Kim Philby would be the subject of Cave Brownʼs next book (Treason in the Blood, 1994, reviewed elsewhere at this site), he deserves special attention. It is now known that Philby started working for the Soviets in the 1930s. All the evidence points to Menzies having realized this truth later rather than sooner – the reason for this being the social dimension (something Cave Brown overlooks). Philby was a gentleman with the proper accent and pedigree. For someone such as Menzies, it was unthinkable that Philby could betray both country and class.
Cave Brown, who knows full well that Philby was guilty, would dearly like to assert that Menzies also figured out Philby was a Soviet spy, but for higher reasons of state posted him to Washington anyway. The evidence, alas, shows that Menzies sent him because he believed what he was predisposed to believe: that such a man couldnʼt possibly be working for the other side. Later he maintained an enigmatic silence about the matter so as to leave a kernel of doubt, however small, in the mind not just of his biographer but also in that of his counterpart in Moscow. Likewise when other interviewees clam up about Philby, Cave Brown takes this as evidence that they know – but cannot say – that Menzies was manipulating him. About the best defense Cave Brown can mount is to suggest that Menzies was not fooled by Philby, he just consistently behaved that way.
One strength of this biography lies in the circumstance that the author was able to interview not just its subject but other surviving eye-witnesses. For example Felix Cowgill, Philbyʼs one-time superior at MI6: “What I think about ‘ Kim’ is beyond words & that he was seriously considered as the ‘top’ is absurd as we all knew his weakness for drink. But one could not have thought him to have been an out & out traitor” (p. 730).
Cave Brown claims that James Angleton figured out the truth about Philby by 1945, his source being – Angleton himself! While not impossible, this assertion is both unlikely and self-serving. Surely it is no coincidence that Angleton is portrayed here as the only one Philby did not fool. Indeed, according to Cave Brown, it was not Angleton who was manipulated by Philby, but the other way around. Cave Brownʼs other sources for all things relating to Angleton appear to be CIA insiders who also got their information from Angleton, like William R. Corson. In his book The Armies of Ignorance, he claims that Philby, Maclean and Burgess were fed disinformation (p. 743). The hypothesis that those who claim to have seen through Philby all along were simply covering their asses apparently does not occur to Cave Brown.
“When I asked Angleton whether Philby had stopped his self-destructive drinking, Angleton replied: ‘Yes, he stopped it from the moment he arrived in Moscow.’ He claimed also to be able to get a message to Philby ‘whenever the need arose'” (p. 745). At least as relates to drinking, this claim is ludicrous, as anyone who knows of Philbyʼs behavior is aware. Cave Brown is so inclined to exculpate Angleton, and by extension Menzies, that he grasps at straws. To be fair, he does include a quotation from the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir Patrick Reilly, who said Menzies was “deeply and emotionally committed” to belief in Philbyʼs innocence (p. 745).
Summary
Not only has Cave Brown read the relevant literature, he has interviewed or corresponded with many of the surviving eyewitnesses. Such sources are irreplaceable. He has uncovered many details to be found nowhere else, though some of it is unsourced or poorly sourced. Except with regard to Menziesʼ marriage, he has evidently decided to omit little of the information he unearthed, no matter how distantly relevant to his primary topic. The result is a volume that is both exhaustive and exhausting.
The bookʼs final words propose this as an epitaph: “At a desperate time in world history he was the right man at in the right place at the right time.” But on Cave Brownʼs own evidence this should be modified to read: He was the best man available at that place and time.
Errata
Cave Brown should have read through his manuscript one final time to eliminate the loose ends, awkward repetitions, clumsy interpolations and stylistic infelicities. The Secret Life of Sir Stewart Menzies is not so much poorly written as poorly edited (no editor at Macmillan is credited). Likely the text was simply too long for the author to do a proper final review of it.
Letʼs begin with the shaky English. On more than one occasion, the author is quite capable of saying the opposite of what he means.
“As a consequence of this new scandal, it seemed improbable that neither Susannah [Graham Menzies] nor anyone around her would ever be accepted at court.” -> it seemed probable… (p. 26)
“Not even the regius professor of modern history at Oxford, Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, felt no need to confer credit upon Dansey where credit was not due.” -> felt any need… (p. 126)
Speaking of the flotilla that hunted the Graf Spee, Cave Brown says: “… the force amounted to more than […] one and a half cruisers” when he clearly means “no more than…” (p. 237).
“A close friend of the duke and duchess of Windsor […], Churchill warned Westminster against treasonable or defeatist utterances [….]” – This sentence says that Churchill was a close friend of the Windsors, but what the author really means is that the duke of Westminster was their friend. (p. 271)
“Already totally excluded from Ultra and from all cryptanalytical activity by presidential order, “C” was authorized etc.” –> President Roosevelt could not possibly issue an order excluding “C” from Ultra, which was British; what Cave Brown means is that “C” was excluded not from Ultra but from Magic, which was American (p. 464).
“Aware of Rommelʼs continuing suspicions, both “C” and Rommel began to play an increasingly complex game, the former to conceal his intentions, the latter to deflect Rommelʼs suspicions…” -> “former” and “latter” are reversed (p. 466)
At other times Cave Brown drops words or makes mistakes in grammar or spelling. Here are the most egregious examples.
“Hitler had Canaris hung in the last days of the war…” -> hanged (p. 6).
“The walls […] were covered with the portraits of […] men and the Indian princess through whom they ruled” -> princes (p. 33).
“The first evidence that SOEʼs networks might have been seriously compromised to the point where they might be a danger to the security of Overlord reached “C” in the week of July 1943…” -> in the third week of July 1943 (p. 551)
“… General [James Franklin] Bell had been inconvenienced while the matter of the driverʼs credentials were being sorted out.” -> was being sorted out (p. 630)
Angleton “managed to affect an association between etc.” -> to effect (p. 702)
Cave Brown should join the admittedly large crowd of native speakers of English who would be better off avoiding “whom” (pp. 213, 285, 361).
Technical flubs
In Chapter 3, section 2, “The Prince and Mrs. Simpson,” endnote 7 is followed by two endnotes numbered 10 and 11, both relating to the reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936 (p. 184). While they might have existed in some earlier draft, they did not survive the final cut.
On the next page, Cave Brown implies that after abdication the Duke of Windsor was warned not to remain in Austria as the Anschluss was about to take place. This could only have been because the British SIS had advance word. As a result, the Duke hurriedly left for France. Once again an attribution involving the Windsors is muddled, with the endnotes coming in this order: 7, 10, 11, 8, 9, 10, 11 (pp. 185-186). The first endnotes 10 and 11 simply donʼt exist.
Similarly in section 5 of this same chapter, “The Venlo Incident,” the two endnotes that follow 37 are 45, then 47, after which we get endnote 38 (pp. 219, 221). None of these phantom notes are to be found in the back of the book.
Needless Repetition
While it is acceptable to repeat words for emphasis, Cave Brown does so inadvertently or out of absent-mindedness.
The strategic deception plan code-named “Starkey” is introduced on one page and again on the next (pp. 503, 504).
Menziesʼ deputy, Claude Dansey is introduced twice, first on pp. 125-127, then again on pp. 228-230. Later his name is misspelled “Damsey” (p. 537).
“Leopold elected to remain in his country, despite a telephone call from “C” to the king of the Belgians, Leopold III, in which “C” reminded Leopold that etc.” (p. 253)
“As for Papen, at about the same time a patrol from the U.S. 194th Glider Infantry Regiment arrested von Papen…” (p. 663)
The author repeats words not just in the same sentence but in the same line: “Knowing the man as I did, however, it seemed illogical, however, that mere logic could dictate “Cʼs” epitaph.” (p. 743).
Chronology is sometimes flouted for no good reason. It is jarring to read (on p. 256) about Churchill wondering what to do if France surrendered, when details of that surrender were already given two pages earlier.
“… in January 1945, a familiar figure, [Alexander von] Neurath, the German consul in Lugano, reemerged on December 16…” (p. 653)
“Although Menzies may have seen the manuscript – a copy was certainly shown to Cowgill – Philbyʼs book, My Silent War, was not published until after ‘Cʼs’ death” on May 28, 1968 (p. 731). Yet on the next page we are told that Menzies wrote a letter to Cowgill following publication of Philbyʼs memoir in which he complained that “it should never have been allowed,” which would certainly seem to suggest that the book had been published in time for him to read it (p. 732).
Cave Brownʼs grasp of German is deficient. The correct name of the nineteenth-century patriotic song is “Die Wacht am Rhein” – Cave Brown calls it “De wacht am Rhein” (p.73). Hitlerʼs advisor on British affairs (and later Foreign Minister) is called both “Von” and “von” Ribbentrop on the same page – the lowercase form is correct (p.179). He writes “Albrechstr.” for “Albrechtstr.” (p. 220); likewise Prinzalbrechstrasse for Prinzalbrechtstrasse (p. 611) – it’s like spelling Albert without the “t”. There is no town called Straussbourg near Berlin, though there is a Strausberg (p. 539). Hitlerʼs headquarters in East Prussia was near Rastenburg, not Rastenberg (p. 585). Ernst Jünger, a fairly well-known writer, at least in Germany, makes a brief appearance as “Juenger, the philosopher” – clearly Cave Brown has no idea who he is (p. 590). He refers to “… the long German march toward weltmarcht” -> weltmacht without “r” (p. 668); “das tasenjahrige reich” -> tausendjährige (p. 668); “Fruelingserwachen” -> Fruehlingserwachen with “h” (p. 792).
His French is suspect too, as he quotes Talleyrand: “Traihson et une question du date.” -> Trahison est une question de date (p. 673).
Errata related to Philby
Cave Brown claims Kim Philby was recruited to the Soviet cause by one Samuel Borisovich Cahan, identified as “the chief Soviet secret agent in London,” and about whom not another word is spoken (p. 173). His name is omitted from the index.
Philbyʼs first wife was a young Austrian woman named Litzi Friedmann. Cave Brown (p. 709) quotes James “Jack” Easton, who slightly misspells both her first name (“Lizzi”) and her last (“Friedman”). Cave Brown identifies her as Philbyʼs landlady in Vienna, when in truth she was his landladyʼs daughter (p. 174). If Philby himself had made mistakes such as this, he would never have been so successful in his career.
“… the case against Philby dissolved into what James Angleton accurately culled as [sic] a ‘wilderness of mirrors.'” Cave Brown picked up this striking phrase in his interview with Angleton, seemingly unaware that the Yale-educated spy chief is here quoting a well-known verse from T. S. Eliotʼs “Gerontion” (p. 711).
Cave Brown translates the words on the flag draped over Philbyʼs coffin in Moscow as “Workers of all Countries Unite!” – oblivious to the fact that this as a famous quotation from the Communist Manifesto (1848), “Workers of the World, Unite!” While one could say it amounts to the same thing, would it be acceptable to quote Churchill as having said, “We shall fight on the coastal areas”? (p. 727)
While some of these mistakes may be minor, they are so numerous one begins to think our author is by nature rather careless, or else was in such a rush to get this book printed that he skipped the final revision.
Note: The NY Times review of this book was written by Ken Follett (Dec. 27, 1987).
© Hamilton Beck
hamiltonbeck 