Soviet traitor and Cambridge Five spy Anthony Blunt may also have passed secrets to the Nazis that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Allied troops, a new book claims.
Blunt, who died aged 75 in 1983, privately confessed to being a Soviet spy in 1964 and was publicly exposed 15 years later by Margaret Thatcher.
Now, in an explosive book, titled The Traitor of Arnhem, the British art historian has been accused of being the most likely candidate to be ‘Josephine’, who provided crucial details of an Allied operation to the Germans, and whose identity has never been revealed. been revealed. .
Stopping the infamous Operation Garden Market (an Allied military operation that aimed to outflank German defenses along the Rhine and allow a rapid advance into the heart of Germany) would have been attractive to the Russians, as Stalin did not want troops Americans and British landed in Berlin while their army was still in action on the Eastern Front.
The tyrant Stalin had plans to take over Eastern Europe.
Anthony Blunt is alleged to have been a spy codenamed ‘Josephine’ who passed information about Operation Garden Market to the Germans in 1944, according to author Robert Verkaik.
Blunt had been recruited by Stalin’s security agency, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, in the 1930s.
Blunt had joined the British Army and MI5 before embarking on a career as an art historian and curator to Queen Elizabeth.
A letter signed by Anthony Blunt, part of the Life of Spies exhibition currently on display at the university library in Cambridge city centre.
If accurate, Blunt’s actions would have “contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Allied servicemen and women and countless civilians who perished as a result of a protracted war,” author Robert Verkaik wrote in Sunday weather.
He also chillingly added that the alleged mole could also be blamed for the rapes of at least a million German women by the Russians after they emerged triumphant.
Blunt graduated from the prestigious Cambridge University and went straight into the army before joining the MI5 secret services in 1940.
By this time, he was already transmitting vital information to the Russians.
The spy quickly rose through the ranks and would have been part of the small group aware of the plans for Operation Market Garden in September 1944.
In the major operation, thousands of paratroopers landed in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands to force a route into central Germany.
But the Allies found themselves face to face with strong and unexpected resistance in what ended up being their final defeat of the war.
Failing to capture the Rhine bridge at Arnhem, the operation fell short of its primary objective.
The rescue of the survivors of the First Airborne Division ended the operation.
American losses amounted to 3,996 killed, wounded or missing, while British and Polish losses were 11,000 to 13,000 killed or wounded and 6,450 captured.
German casualties numbered between 7,500 and 10,000.
If accurate, Blunt’s actions would have “contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Allied servicemen and women and countless civilians who perished as a result of a protracted war,” the author of The Traitor of Arnhem said.
In 1951, Burgess (right) and Maclean (left) were exposed as double agents, but after being tipped off by Philby, they were able to escape to Moscow.
Kim Philby, member of the Cambridge Five, was head of counterintelligence at MI6
All five men were graduates of Trinity College, Cambridge.
It is already known that a Dutch double agent, Christiaan Lindemans, passed information about the operation to the Germans, but Berlin received a second, more concise report from a spy with the code name “Josephine.”
In his book, Verkaik alleges that Blunt, who a year earlier had been tasked with locating ‘Josephine’, had ultimately been investigating himself.
“Blunt had the means, the motive and the opportunity,” the author said, claiming that the spy was the only person who fit the profile of the mysterious mole.
At the time, British intelligence and military planners panicked, fearing that the Nazis had a mole in the midst of their ruthless war effort.
According to Verkaik, one MI5 officer had even cited the “Josephine” reports as “the best illicit intelligence obtained by the enemy” the country had ever seen.
A year before the devastating Operation Garden Market, MI5 had revealed that the German spy behind the elaborate ‘Josephine’ disguise was the lawyer Karl Heinz Kraemer, whose reports were read by Hitler himself.
Verkaik admitted that he could not fully prove his theory that Blunt was ‘Josephine’, but said that “this is based more on the balance of probabilities than beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Blunt was known as the fourth member of the Cambridge Five, a network of Cambridge University-educated spies who worked for the British government and smuggled intelligence to the KGB.
Blunt’s confession had surprised the Royal Family and the British secret services, but it was silenced and the former professor was offered immunity if he admitted his role.
The agreement reached by the British Home Office and MI5 was so secret that even the Prime Minister at the time, Alec Douglas-Home, was unaware of the information.
Documents from the National Archives show that Douglas-Home learned of Blunt’s betrayal in November 1979, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher exposed Blunt in the House of Commons.
Blunt had been recruited by Stalin’s security agency, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, in the 1930s, and then joined the British Army and MI5 before embarking on a career as an art historian and Queen’s Curator. Isabel.
He was stripped of his knighthood and lived in seclusion in London until his death from a heart attack.
Who were the Cambridge Five? The Soviet double agents who shook the British establishment
The ‘Cambridge Five’ spy scandal shook the establishment by revealing Soviet double agents at the heart of many of Britain’s most important institutions.
Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt met at Cambridge University, where Blunt was an academic and the other three were undergraduates.
The older man recruited the students to the Soviet cause before World War II, and they remained devoted to the USSR even after the start of the Cold War.
Donald Maclean (left) and Kim Philby (right) were also members of the infamous Cambridge Five spy network.
Philby was head of counterintelligence at MI6, while Maclean was a Foreign Office official and Burgess worked for the BBC.
Blunt was the most eminent of all, as director of the Courtauld Institute and keeper of the royal family’s art collection.
In 1951, Burgess and Maclean were exposed as double agents, but after being tipped off by Philby, they were able to escape to Moscow.
Despite the suspicions surrounding Philby, he avoided detection until 1963, when he too defected to the USSR.
Blunt escaped exposure for even longer: it was not until 1979, when Margaret Thatcher named him a suspect in the House of Commons, that he confessed to his treason and was stripped of his titles.
The “fifth man” of the spy network has never been definitively identified, but was named as John Cairncross by KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky.
The story of the unlikely traitors has been dramatized several times, including in John le Carré’s classic book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and a 2003 BBC series titled Cambridge Spies.
Anthony Blunt (left), the keeper of the royal family’s art collection, was exposed as the fourth member of the Cambridge spy network in 1979. The fifth member was never formally identified, although Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky named the Former British intelligence officer John Cairncross. (right) as final link