Finding the Secret Soviet Spy...

as we close out our series on the infamous cambridge five we need to round out the last two men of the five each of whom have smaller stories compared to mclean burgess or philby so let's learn about the soviet spy who managed art for the queen as well as a relatively famous literature scholar in addition we'll also talk a little bit about potential secret members who it has been speculated were part of the cambridge six or seven or eight i'm your host david and this is the cold war so we're going to begin with one member of the cambridge 5 you might already be familiar with if you've watched the netflix original series the crown anthony blunt was an art historian who worked as a spy for the soviet union during the second world war however the knowledge of his participation wouldn't become public knowledge until the 1970s being a bright math scholar at cambridge on a scholarship blunt fell in a secret discussion group known as the apostles they kept it under wraps because it was both a refuge for what they believed and who they were members of the group were marxists but also many were gay during a time when homosexuality was a high crime there is no better way to make people feel persecuted and alienated from their society than well persecuting them and alienating them from society this group is actually suspected of being one of the places which the nkvd sought to recruit new spies as part of an official cambridge delegation blunt visited the soviet union in 1933 and sometime over the next two years he was recruited into nkbd service according to blunt himself he was recruited by guy hotmess burgess who we covered in the third episode in this series he of course was a soviet spy who worked in a british foreign service however the exact year he was recruited is still debated and different biographies of him disagree what we do know is that burgess recruited him by introducing him to a mysterious soviet agent by the name of arnold deutsch the same arnold deutsch from our previous video on kim philby blunt joined the british military shortly after graduating right after the invasion of poland within a year he had been recruited into mi5 the british domestic counterintelligence service the main documents blunt leaked out to moscow involved decoded nazi transcripts of vermont movements the uk had cracked the enigma code the notoriously tough german encryption system and the soviets wanted that information the task force which cracked the enigma code was project ultra and how it functioned was confined to an absolutely minimal number of people to prevent knowledge of the leak becoming known to the germans while blunt was not part of the secret core of this program he was responsible for recruiting soviet double agent john karen cross who we'll talk about in a moment who was part of project ultra's inner circle and blunt may have even served as his intermediary to the soviets after the war blunt's work in the circles of power was cut back significantly his first job after the war though was the surveyor of the king's pictures think of it as the personal curator and man responsible for the king's collection of art he no longer heard more than the odd rumor from colleagues to send to his contacts in moscow which he too stopped when his colleagues defected in 1951. reports now surfaced that the nkvd suspected he might be a triple agent and didn't want to keep working with him anyway he came under scrutiny after the defections of his colleagues philby and burgess reports show that he might have been the person who informed donald mclean that the british government was onto him blunt was nervous after this but nothing ever came for him he served quietly as a former soviet spy collecting and curating art for the royal family for 12 years and then one of blunt's recruits an american named michael strait reported him in 1963 to mi5 he confessed to it in april the next year he gave up several other spy's names in return for his service to the nkvd being kept a secret however one person was told about this his boss queen elizabeth ii who held an icy relationship with him ever since for another decade he worked unaffected by his confession this is until a fictionalized account of the story was to be published in 1979 though not using his real name blunt tried to investigate getting a copy before release but he was unsuccessful however not only was this attempt unsuccessful his attempts were leaked to a current events magazine which published that the spy in the novel was indeed the keeper of the queen's pictures margaret thatcher eager to use this for political gain exposed his secret in november of the same year it was a massive scandal blunt was repeatedly harassed by journalists looking to speak with him queen elizabeth took away his knighthood and he lost many of his official honors diminished and defeated he died of a heart attack just four years later the last of our spies the infamous fifth of the cambridge five wasn't discovered until the 1990s his name was john karen cross a literary scholar and civil servant as well as a double agent to the soviet union coming from a large scottish family karen cross went to cambridge as a student of french and german at cambridge although he did run in the same circles as the other members of the five his upbringing was less refined and so he didn't fit in with them karen cross wouldn't be recruited until several years after their time at cambridge he entered into the foreign service in 1936 and met a communist from cambridge named james klugman klugman introduced karen cross to soviet agents who recruited him to join into anti-fascist work his opportunity to do some work would occur in 1940 when during the second world war he was promoted to the secretary for a high-ranking politician lord hanke lord henke was the chancellor of the duchy of lancaster which may seem like just another british title until you realize that the office holds the duty to administer the personal lands of the british monarch it was in this position he learned about the uk's secret attempt to develop an atomic weapon some historians believe that karen cross was responsible for passing along this information to moscow later in the war karen cross would serve as a german translator where he would secretly relay decrypted communiques from the reich along to moscow he also likely informed them on key troop movements on the eastern front which helped the red army including a famous case where in 1943 he sent plans that the german army was planning to conduct a significant tank offensive which the soviets were then able to prepare for that ended up being the battle of kursk by the way in 1945 he then began to work for the treasury where again he might have sent the soviets key documents about early plans to make what would eventually go on to become nato that's the military alliance the western capitalist states would develop to counter the eastern bloc's power his spying career though would end in 1951 again with the defections of don mclean and guy burgess to the ussr while he was not discovered he agreed to resign from civil service and went on to become a literary scholar after moving to the united states later in 1964 when kim philby defected karen cross was interrogated again at which point he confessed to espionage we don't know what he gave up in his confession but the british government decided against pressing charges it wasn't until tell-all books by former nkvd officers came out in the early 1990s after the fall of the soviet union that he'd publicly be named as a member of the cambridge five in response he quickly returned to the uk to write his memoirs titled the enigma spy in 1995 karen cross suffered a stroke and died the book came out two years later okay so now you've heard of the cambridge five but as i hinted at in the introduction all those minutes ago what about the cambridge six seven eight maybe nine there are a few figures who for one reason or another came close to the fab five long enough to draw suspicion that they too were soviet spies but nothing has ever been confirmed for example classic's scholar andrew sidnum fire gao was suggested to be the spymaster of the whole group according to the memoirs of brian sewell a friend of anthony blunt it would be tantalizing to think that there might be another member an important one we do not know of however this allegation has since been refuted by better historical accounts of the group speaking of anthony blunt when he named names in 1964 after confessing to spycraft one person he pointed the finger at was a man named leonard henry long an intelligence officer in section 14 a special office for studying german intelligence long did indeed send documents to blunt during the war but nothing original and in a minor capacity hardly worth induction into the famous ring next on our list is guy little an officer in mi5 he often lost out on promotions based on suspicions that he was a spy and was often accused of being a member of the ring but it seems little was just a tad naive and had an unlucky choice in friends he might have given over lots of secrets and been friends with a lot of spies but it seems he had no idea what he was doing now last but most definitely not least is baron rothschild initially before karen cross was outed as the fifth member of the five a book by the name of the fifth man was written by roland perry naming him as the fifth member his connection was that he owned the house where anthony blunt and guy burgess lived during the war but later the methods used to uncover this fact were called out for being sloppy the cold war was fought on a million fronts in many ways the game of intelligence gathering and spycraft played as big if not a more significant role in the struggle between the superpowers than boots on the ground conflict these men were some of the most impactful in their job during the whole period and gave the soviets key clues which helped them not only in the second world war but in the tensest years of the early cold war period or would you consider them great spies as they all eventually got outed what stands out for many about the five was their motivations for becoming spies in the first place unlike many of those in the west who were later found out to be spies the five didn't do what they did for money or influence but rather out of ideological conviction they believed in the system they passed information to it's also fascinating to note that the five were protected by their privileged upbringings by means of their birth and their education these men were granted access to the most secret of secrets and even when under suspicion or even after confessing their treasonous actions they were protected and allowed to continue to operate and live their lives i can only speculate if that would have been the case had they been born to more humble means food for thought anyway the five will always go down in history as a part of the war of information between east and west in the mid-20th century and really who doesn't love a good spy story we hope you've enjoyed today's final episode in this series to make sure you don't miss all of our future episodes please make sure you're subscribed to the channel and have forgiven the bell button we can be reached via email at thecoldwar channel gmail.com and we're active on facebook and instagram at thecoldwar tv if you enjoy our work your financial support would be greatly appreciated via www.patreon.com the cold war or through youtube membership this is the cold war channel and don't forget the trouble with the cold war is that it doesn't take too long before it becomes heated

Channel: The Cold War

Views: 55,192

Keywords: cambridge five, Taiwan strait crisis, Stalin, Cold War, josip broz tito, soviet union, stalin documentary, kings and generals, operation unthinkable, the cold war, soviet, world war II, USSR, US, America, capitalism, us, un, reconstruction, pows, hungary, vietnam, marshal plan, stalin, france, nato, united states, uk, malenkov, khrushchev, eisenhower, suez crisis, warsaw pact, east germany, maclean, spy, sino-soviet split, cuba, castro, batista, fidel, revolution, nuclear disaster, cia, nsa, spain, franco

Id: cGLrU10rihc

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020