- 02 Jul 2008 22:07
#1577009
Even before the Second World War, the famous Englishmen who spied for Russia – Burgess, Maclean, Philby, and Blunt - all became supporters of the Soviet Union from seeing the rot in British democracy. Kim Philby wrote … “the real turning point in my thinking came with the demoralization and rout of the Labour Party in 1931. It seemed incredible that the party should be so helpless against the reserve of strength which reaction could mobilize in a time of crisisâ€. (Kim Philby, My Silent War, NY, 2002, p.xxx)
Not surprisingly, therefore, but falsified now, Russia was treated badly throughout the Second World War. The Russian contribution to victory in the Second World War was immense – much larger than the contribution of the USA which joined the war effort two years after it had begun. In Western countries the population, however, is invited to believe the USA, in fact, “won†the war.
Paranoid in many ways, Stalin insisted the Allies refused to open a Second Front so that Russian strength would drain away in endless, destructive battles against the Nazis. In truth, Russia carried the burden of the war, lost something like 25 million lives, and suffered enormous destruction. It was – constantly – a betrayed ally whose demands after the war were resisted strongly, whatever we may think of Soviet Communism, especially under Stalin.
Staggering as it may seem now, while Russia alone was the major fighting front against the Nazis, the British broke the key Nazi military secret code (as early as 1941) and kept the fact from the Russians. As Miranda Carter reports in her book about Anthony Blunt: “For the rest of the war, information relevant to the Soviets – particularly on German troop manoeuvres … was disguised, or even withheld….â€
One of Blunt’s leaks to the Soviets was to inform them of an intended German assault upon Kurst (information being kept from the Russians by the British). Blunt’s spy information saved thousands of lives of our “Russian alliesâ€. Miranda Carter admits that some of the English believed “we ought to be giving much more to Russiaâ€. (Anthony Blunt, London, MacMillan, 2001, p.276)
Then, of course, the whole development of the atomic bomb was kept secret from the major ally taking the brunt of the Second World War. The “spies†who were feeding atomic information to Russia were, in fact, feeding information to a major ally suffering enormous military and civilian losses. Rare are the writers who will grant the ambiguity and contradiction of having a major ally denied the fundamental support an alliance is meant to provide.
Blunt, for one, probably stopped spying for the Russians after the Second World War. Indeed, much of the intelligence passed by the Cambridge Five helped prop the Russians up during the Second World War in the second front that helped bleed the Nazis dry.
For most of the war Blunt remained in charge of one of the most sensitive of all MI5's operations – the interception of the diplomatic bags of the neutral embassies in London. The pouches were intercepted and collected under Blunt's supervision then carefully slit open: their documents were copied and the stitches reinserted and dyed to match the worn side before the pouches were sent on their way. Blunt, on his own admission, must therefore have passed a great deal of extremely valuable information to Moscow that would have facilitated Stalin's strategy in taking over eastern Europe and making a grab at the Balkans. But Major Blunt's most infamous hour came in the spring and autumn of 1944, when he was transferred to General Eisenhower's SHAEF headquarters to liaise with military intelligence. His involvement with the D-Day deception plans meant that Stalin was almost certainly informed well in advance of the secret that Roosevelt and Churchill were at great pains to keep from the Soviet leader – the time and place of the Normandy invasion. Stalin must have decided that it was not in Russia's military interests to inform Berlin of the vital secret which could have turned D-Day into the Allies' biggest defeat of the war. He needed the opening of the Second Front to draw off German reserves and accelerate the Red Army's advance westwards.
Perhaps a little of Stalin’s paranoia may have had a sound basis.
Not surprisingly, therefore, but falsified now, Russia was treated badly throughout the Second World War. The Russian contribution to victory in the Second World War was immense – much larger than the contribution of the USA which joined the war effort two years after it had begun. In Western countries the population, however, is invited to believe the USA, in fact, “won†the war.
Paranoid in many ways, Stalin insisted the Allies refused to open a Second Front so that Russian strength would drain away in endless, destructive battles against the Nazis. In truth, Russia carried the burden of the war, lost something like 25 million lives, and suffered enormous destruction. It was – constantly – a betrayed ally whose demands after the war were resisted strongly, whatever we may think of Soviet Communism, especially under Stalin.
Staggering as it may seem now, while Russia alone was the major fighting front against the Nazis, the British broke the key Nazi military secret code (as early as 1941) and kept the fact from the Russians. As Miranda Carter reports in her book about Anthony Blunt: “For the rest of the war, information relevant to the Soviets – particularly on German troop manoeuvres … was disguised, or even withheld….â€
One of Blunt’s leaks to the Soviets was to inform them of an intended German assault upon Kurst (information being kept from the Russians by the British). Blunt’s spy information saved thousands of lives of our “Russian alliesâ€. Miranda Carter admits that some of the English believed “we ought to be giving much more to Russiaâ€. (Anthony Blunt, London, MacMillan, 2001, p.276)
Then, of course, the whole development of the atomic bomb was kept secret from the major ally taking the brunt of the Second World War. The “spies†who were feeding atomic information to Russia were, in fact, feeding information to a major ally suffering enormous military and civilian losses. Rare are the writers who will grant the ambiguity and contradiction of having a major ally denied the fundamental support an alliance is meant to provide.
Blunt, for one, probably stopped spying for the Russians after the Second World War. Indeed, much of the intelligence passed by the Cambridge Five helped prop the Russians up during the Second World War in the second front that helped bleed the Nazis dry.
For most of the war Blunt remained in charge of one of the most sensitive of all MI5's operations – the interception of the diplomatic bags of the neutral embassies in London. The pouches were intercepted and collected under Blunt's supervision then carefully slit open: their documents were copied and the stitches reinserted and dyed to match the worn side before the pouches were sent on their way. Blunt, on his own admission, must therefore have passed a great deal of extremely valuable information to Moscow that would have facilitated Stalin's strategy in taking over eastern Europe and making a grab at the Balkans. But Major Blunt's most infamous hour came in the spring and autumn of 1944, when he was transferred to General Eisenhower's SHAEF headquarters to liaise with military intelligence. His involvement with the D-Day deception plans meant that Stalin was almost certainly informed well in advance of the secret that Roosevelt and Churchill were at great pains to keep from the Soviet leader – the time and place of the Normandy invasion. Stalin must have decided that it was not in Russia's military interests to inform Berlin of the vital secret which could have turned D-Day into the Allies' biggest defeat of the war. He needed the opening of the Second Front to draw off German reserves and accelerate the Red Army's advance westwards.
Perhaps a little of Stalin’s paranoia may have had a sound basis.
Last edited by Tonic on 03 Jul 2008 02:12, edited 1 time in total.
It was Truman, since the Soviet Union was one of the big geo-political winners of WWII, and was (correctly) seen as a threat to America's and her allies' interests across the world.
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