SEE ALSO: https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-crown-season-three-was-queens-art.html
Cambridge Five
The
Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed
information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the
1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever
prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly,
from the 1950s onwards. The general public first became aware of the conspiracy
after the sudden flight of Donald Maclean (cryptonym: Homer) and Guy Burgess
(cryptonym: Hicks) to the Soviet Union in 1951. Suspicion immediately fell on
Harold "Kim" Philby (cryptonyms: Sonny, Stanley), who eventually fled
the country in 1963. Following Philby's flight, British intelligence obtained
confessions from Anthony Blunt (cryptonyms: Tony, Johnson) and then John Cairncross
(cryptonym: Liszt), who have come to be seen as the last two of a group of
five. Their involvement was kept secret for many years: until 1979 for Blunt,
and 1990 for Cairncross. The moniker Cambridge Four evolved to become the
Cambridge Five after Cairncross was added.
The term
"Cambridge" refers to the recruitment of the group during their
education at the University of Cambridge in the 1930s. Debate surrounds the
exact timing of their recruitment by Soviet intelligence. Blunt claimed that
they were not recruited as agents until after they had graduated. A Fellow of
Trinity College, Blunt was several years older than Burgess, Maclean, and
Philby; he acted as a talent-spotter and recruiter.
All of the
five were convinced that the Marxism–Leninism of Soviet Communism was the best
available political system, and especially the best defence against the rise of
fascism. All pursued successful careers in branches of the British government.
They passed large amounts of intelligence to the Soviet Union, so much so that
the KGB became suspicious that at least some of it was false. Perhaps as
important as the intelligence they passed was the demoralizing effect to the
British Establishment of their slow unmasking, and the mistrust in British
security this caused in the United States.
Many others
have also been accused of membership in the Cambridge ring. Blunt and Burgess
were both members of the Cambridge Apostles, an exclusive secret society at
Cambridge University. Other Apostles accused of having spied for the Soviets
include Michael Straight and Guy Liddell.
Membership
The
following five supplied intelligence to the Soviets under their controller Yuri
Modin who later defected to the West. Modin said that Moscow did not really
trust the Cambridge double agents during WWII. The KGB had difficulty believing
that the men would have access to top secret documents; they were particularly
suspicious of Philby, wondering how he could have become an agent given his
Communist past. One report later stated that "About half the documents the
British spies sent to Moscow were never even read" due to the paranoia.[3]
Nonetheless, the Soviets accepted a great deal of secret information, 1,771
documents from Blunt, 4,605 from Burgess, 4,593 from MacLean and 5,832 from Cairncross,
during 1941 to 1945.
Donald
Maclean and Guy Burgess
Donald
Maclean was a British diplomat who was a spy for the Soviet Union during World
War II and early on into the Cold War. Maclean studied at the University of
Cambridge in the early 1930s where he met Guy Burgess. Burgess was also a
British diplomat who spied for the Soviet Union in World War II and early on
into the Cold War. They both disagreed with the idea of capitalism. Later they
were both recruited by Soviet intelligence operatives and became undercover
agents for the Soviet Union. Maclean began delivering information to the Soviet
intelligence operatives as a member of the British Foreign Office in 1934. Soon
after, Burgess also began supplying information to the Soviet Union in 1936
from his position as a BBC correspondent up until 1938, then as an active
member of MI6 intelligence continued to supply classified information up until
1941, and then finally as a member of the British Foreign Office up until 1944.
Maclean and
Burgess were soon known as the "hopeless drunks" due to the fact that
they had a hard time keeping their secret occupations to themselves. It is said
that one time, while highly intoxicated, Burgess risked exposing his second
identity. He was leaving a pub where he accidentally dropped one of the secret
files he had taken from the Foreign Office. Maclean was also known to have
loose lips and said to have leaked information about his secret duties to his
brother and close friends. Although they struggled to keep secrets, that did
not stop them from delivering information. It is said that Burgess handed over
about 389 top secret documents to the KGB within the early part of 1945 along
with an additional 168 documents in December of 1949.
All five
were active during World War II. Philby, when he was posted in the British
embassy in Washington, DC, after the war, learned that US and British
intelligence were searching for a British embassy mole (cryptonym Homer) who
was passing information to the Soviet Union, relying on material uncovered by
the Venona project.
Philby
learned one of the suspects was Maclean. Realizing he had to act fast, he
ordered Burgess, who was also on the embassy staff and living with Philby, to
warn Maclean in England, where he was serving in the Foreign Office
headquarters. Burgess was recalled from the United States due to "bad
behaviour" and upon reaching London, warned Maclean.
In early
summer 1951, Burgess and Maclean made international headlines by disappearing.
(They had taken a ship from Southampton to St. Malo, France, a train to Paris,
and a flight to Moscow.) Their whereabouts were unclear for some time and the
suspicion that they had defected to the Soviet Union turned out to be correct;
that did not become public knowledge until 1956 when the two appeared at a
press conference in Moscow. A warrant was not issued for their arrest until
1962.
It was
obvious they had been tipped off, and Philby quickly became the prime suspect
due to his close relation with Burgess. Though Burgess was not supposed to
defect at the same time as Maclean, he went along. It has been claimed that the
KGB ordered Burgess to go to Moscow. This move damaged Philby's reputation,
with many speculating that had it not occurred, Philby could have climbed even
higher in the Secret Intelligence Service.
Between
1934 and 1951 Maclean passed numerous secrets to Moscow. The lack of detection
was due to the refusal of the Secret Service to listen to warnings from the US,
"even after the FBI had established that an agent code-named Homer had
been operating inside the British embassy in Washington during the war",
according to a review of MacLean's biography (in 2018) by author Roland
Philipps.
In 2019,
Russia honoured Burgess and Maclean in a ceremony; a plaque was attached to the
building where they had lived in the 50s. The head of the SVR foreign
intelligence service, praised the duo on social media for "having supplied
Soviet intelligence with the most important information for more than 20 years,
[making] a significant contribution to the victory over fascism, the protection
of our strategic interests and ensuring the safety of our country".
A book
review in The Guardian of Andrew Lownie's biography of Guy Burgess included
this conclusion: "[leaving] us all the more astonished that such a smelly,
scruffy, lying, gabby, promiscuous, drunken slob could penetrate the heart of
the establishment without anyone apparently noticing that he was also a Soviet
masterspy".
Stalin's
Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess is a biography of Burgess that argues that
he, of all the members of the Cambridge Five, was perhaps the most influential.
Harold
"Kim" Philby
Harold
"Kim" Philby was a senior officer in Britain's Secret Intelligence
Service, known as MI6, who began his work for the Soviet Union as a spy in
1934. He went on to serve the KGB for 54 years. He was known for passing more
than 900 British documents over to the KGB. He served as a double agent.
Investigation
of Philby found several suspicious matters but nothing for which he could be
prosecuted. Nevertheless, he was forced to resign from MI6. In 1955 he was
named in the press, with questions also raised in the House of Commons, as
chief suspect for "the Third Man" and he called a press conference to
deny the allegation. That same year, Philby was ruled out as a suspect when
British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan cleared him of all charges.
In the
later 1950s, Philby left the secret service and began working as a journalist
in the Middle East; both The Economist and The Observer provided his employment
there. MI6 then re-employed him at around the same time, to provide reports
from that region.
In 1961,
defector Anatoliy Golitsyn provided information which pointed to Philby. An MI6
officer and friend of Philby from his earlier MI6 days, John Nicholas Rede
Elliott, was sent in 1963 to interview him in Beirut and reported that Philby
seemed to know he was coming (indicating the presence of yet another mole).
Nonetheless, Philby allegedly confessed to Elliott.
Shortly
afterwards, apparently fearing he might be abducted in Lebanon, Philby defected
to the Soviet Union under cover of night, aboard a Soviet freighter. For the
first seven years in Moscow, he was under virtual house arrest since the
Soviets were concerned that he might defect to the West. According to an
article in The New York Times, he was given no rank nor an office. In fact, "for
the most part, Philby was frozen out, his suggestions ignored" ... This
ruined his life".[15] After his death, however, Philby was awarded a
number of medals by the Soviets.
Anthony
Blunt
Anthony
Blunt was a former Surveyor of the King's Pictures and later Queen's Pictures
for the royal art collection. He served as an MI5 member and supplied secret
information to the KGB, while also providing warnings to fellow agents of
certain counterintelligence that could potentially endanger them.
In 1964,
MI5 received information from the American Michael Whitney Straight pointing to
Blunt's espionage; the two had known each other at Cambridge some thirty years
before and Blunt had tried to recruit Straight as a spy. Straight, who
initially agreed, changed his mind afterwards.
Blunt was
interrogated by MI5 and confessed in exchange for immunity from prosecution. As
he was—by 1964—without access to classified information, he had secretly been
granted immunity by the Attorney General, in exchange for revealing everything
he knew. Peter Wright, one of Blunt's interrogators, describes in his book
Spycatcher how Blunt was evasive and only made admissions grudgingly, when
confronted with the undeniable.
By 1979,
Blunt was publicly accused of being a Soviet agent by investigative journalist
Andrew Boyle, in his book Climate of Treason. In November 1979, Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher admitted to the House of Commons that Blunt had confessed to
being a Soviet spy fifteen years previously.
The term
"Five" began to be used in 1961, when KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn
named Maclean and Burgess as part of a "Ring of Five", with Philby a
'probable' third, alongside two other agents whom he did not know.
Of all the
information provided by Golitsyn, the only item that was ever independently
confirmed was the Soviet affiliation of John Vassall. Vassall was a relatively
low-ranking spy who some researchers[who?] believe may have been sacrificed to
protect a more senior one.
At the time
of Golitsyn's defection, Philby had already been accused in the press and was
living in Beirut, Lebanon, a country with no extradition agreement with
Britain. Select members of MI5 and MI6 already knew Philby to be a spy from
Venona project decryptions. Golitsyn also provided other information, such as
the claim that Harold Wilson (then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) was a
KGB agent.
Golitsyn's
reliability remains a controversial subject and as such, there is little
certainty of the number of agents he assigned to the Cambridge spy ring. To add
to the confusion, when Blunt finally confessed, he named several other
people[who?] as having been recruited by him.
Blunt wrote
his memoirs but insisted they not be released until 25 years after his death.
They were made public by the British Museum in 2009. The manuscript indicated
that he regretted having passed information to the Soviets because of the way
it eventually affected his life, that he believed that the government would
never reveal his treachery and that he had dismissed suicide as "cowardly".[18]
Christopher Andrew felt that the regret was shallow, and that he found an
"unwillingness to acknowledge the evil he had served in spying for
Stalin".
John
Cairncross
John
Cairncross was known as a British literary scholar until he was later
identified as a Soviet atomic spy. While a civil servant in the Foreign Office,
he was recruited in 1937 by James Klugmann to become a Soviet spy. He moved to
the Treasury in 1938 but transferred once again to the Cabinet office in 1940
where he served as the private secretary of Sir Maurice Hankey, the Chancellor
of the Duchy of Lancaster at that time. In May 1942, he transferred to the
British cryptanalysis agency, the Government Code and Cypher School, at
Bletchley Park and then, in 1943, to MI6. Following World War II, it is said
that Cairncross leaked information regarding the new NATO alliance to the
Soviets.
On the
basis of the information provided by Golitsyn, speculations raged on for many
years as to the identity of the "Fifth Man". The journalistic
popularity of this phrase owes something to the unrelated novels The Third Man
and The Tenth Man, written by Graham Greene who, coincidentally, worked with
Philby and Cairncross during the Second World War.
Cairncross
confessed to having been a spy for the Soviets, in a 1964 meeting with MI6 that
was kept secret for some years. He was given immunity from prosecution.
The public
became aware of his treachery in December 1979, however, when Cairncross made a
public confession to journalist Barrie Penrose. The news was widely publicized
leading many to surmise that he was in fact the "fifth man"; that was
confirmed in 1989 by KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky who had defected to Britain.
His
designation as the fifth man was also confirmed in former KGB agent Yuri
Modin's book published in 1994: My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean,
Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross.
Cairncross
is not always deemed to have been part of the 'Ring of Five'. Though a student
at the University of Cambridge, he only knew Blunt, who was by then teaching
modern languages. By 1934, when Cairncross arrived at Cambridge, the other
three members of the ring had already graduated.
The most important
agent talent spotted by Blunt was the Fifth Man, the Trinity undergraduate John
Cairncross. Together with Philby, Burgess, Blunt and Maclean, he is remembered
by the Center (Moscow KGB Headquarters) as one of the Magnificent Five, the
ablest group of foreign agents in KGB history. Though Cairncross is the last of
the five to be publicly identified, he successfully penetrated a greater
variety of the corridors of power and intelligence than any of the other four.
— Christopher
Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB, The Inside Story. "Chapter 6: Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five from Cambridge (1930–39)"
This
reference suggests the KGB itself recognized Cairncross as the fifth man (found
by Gordievsky while doing research on the history of the KGB).
A few
sources, however, believe that the "fifth man" was Victor Rothschild,
3rd Baron Rothschild. In his book The Fifth Man, Roland Perry asserts this
claim. After the book was published, former KGB controller Yuri Modin denied
ever having named Rothschild as "any kind of Soviet agent". Modin's
own book's title clarifies the name of all five of the Cambridge spy group: My
Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross by
Their KGB Controller. Since Rothschild had died prior to publication of the
Perry book, the family was unable to start a libel action.
In a 1991
interview with The Mail on Sunday, Cairncross explained how he had forwarded
information to Moscow during WWII and boasted that it "helped the Soviets
to win that battle (the Battle of Kursk) against the Germans". Cairncross
did not view himself as one of the Cambridge Five, insisting that the
information he sent to Moscow was not harmful to Britain and that he had
remained loyal to his homeland. Unlike many other spies, he was never charged
for passing information to Moscow.
Attempted
coverup
For unknown
reasons, Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home was not advised of Anthony Blunt's
spying, although the Queen and Home Secretary Henry Brooke were informed. It
was only in November 1979 that then-PM Margaret Thatcher formally advised
Parliament of Blunt's treachery and the immunity deal that had been arranged 15
years earlier.
A 2015
article in The Guardian discussed "400 top-secret documents which have
been released at the National Archives" and indicated that MI5 and MI6 had
worked diligently to prevent information about the five from being disclosed,
"to the British public and even to the US government".[30] A 2016
review of a new book about Burgess added that "more than 20% of files
relating to the spies, most of whom defected more than 50 years ago, remain
closed". In conclusion, the review stated that "the Foreign Office,
MI6 and MI5 all have an interest in covering up, to protect themselves from huge
embarrassment" and that "more taxpayers' money is spent by Whitehall
officials in the futile attempt to keep the files under lock and key for
ever".
Under the
30-year rule, the 400 documents should have been made available years earlier.
It was particularly surprising that 20 per cent of the information was redacted
or not released. A news item at the time stated that "it is clear the full
story of the Cambridge Spies has not yet emerged". A summary of the
documents indicated that they showed that "inaction and incompetence on
the part of the authorities enabled Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to make
their escape to Moscow".
Additional
secret files were finally released to the National Archives in 2020. They
indicated that the government had intentionally conducted a campaign to keep
Kim Philby's spying confidential "to minimise political
embarrassment" and prevented the publication of his memoirs according to a
report by The Guardian. Nonetheless, the information was publicized in 1967
when Philby granted an interview to journalist Murray Sayle of The Times.
Philby confirmed that he had worked for the KGB and that "his purpose in
life was to destroy imperialism". This revelation raised concerns that
Blunt's spying would also be revealed to the public.
Alleged
additional members
Some
researchers believe the spy ring had more than five, or different, members.
Several of the following have been alleged to be possible Soviet spies:
Baron
Rothschild was named by Roland Perry in his book The Fifth Man. According to
Spycatcher, Rothschild had been friendly with Burgess as an undergraduate, and
had originally owned the lease on a house off Welbeck Street, No. 5 Bentinck
Street, where Blunt and Burgess both lived during the war. This was supposedly
confirmed by Yuri Modin, the alleged controller of the five, who—according to
Perry—had claimed Cairncross was never part of the group. However in reviewing
Perry's book, commentator Sheila Kerr pointed out that as soon as the book came
out, Modin denied Perry's version of their discussions (having already stated
that the fifth man was Cairncross), and concluded that "Perry's case
against Rothschild is unconvincing because of dubious sources and slack
methods".
Leonard
Henry (Leo) Long was accused by Blunt in 1964. Blunt claimed to have recruited
Long to the Communist cause while Blunt was tutor at Cambridge. Long served as
an intelligence officer with MI14 from 1940 to 1945, and later with the British
element of the Allied Control Commission in Occupied Germany from 1945–1952.
Long passed analyses but not original material relating to the Eastern Front to
Blunt. Blunt also was associated with other Cambridge persons subsequently
involved in espionage (Michael Straight, Peter Ashby, Brian Symon) but they are
generally considered as minor figures as compared to the "Cambridge
Five".
Guy Liddell
was an MI5 officer and nearly rose to become director of the service but was
passed over because of rumours he was a double agent; he took early retirement
from MI5 in 1953 after he was investigated for his personal links to Kim
Philby. He was accused of having been the "fifth man" by Goronwy Rees
as part of Rees' confession in 1979. The academic consensus is that he was
naïve in his friendships rather than a spy.
Andrew Gow:
in his memoirs published in 2012, Brian Sewell suggested that Gow was the
"fifth man" and spy master of the group. This suggestion was
subsequently refuted by Anthony Powell.
Wilfrid
Basil Mann: Mann had been accused on several occasions of being the "fifth
man," based on rumored former work at the Embassy and the resemblance
between his name and the "Basil" of Boyle's codename. In his memoirs,
Mann argued using contemporary correspondence, publications, and verified
passport entries that he was incapable of having worked with Donald Maclean in
the British Embassy. As part of his hiring at the Bureau of Standards, Mann
underwent intense security screening and received a top-level "Q"
clearance from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
In popular
culture
Books
Tinker
Tailor Soldier Spy (New York 1974). John le Carré's novelisation of his experiences
of the revelations in the 1950s and the 1960s which exposed the Cambridge Five
traitors.
A Perfect
Spy, by John Le Carré (New York 1986). Events in the life of the character
Magnus Pym are partly based upon the life and career of Kim Philby.
From Russia
With Love by Ian Fleming contains several references to Burgess and Maclean
while Soviet characters discuss then-contemporary espionage related scandals.
In Chapter 11, James Bond himself says that what is needed in the atomic age is
the 'intellectual spy', before mentioning the treacherous pair directly, though
admits to only doing so in order to annoy a superior.
The
Untouchable by John Banville. The character Victor Maskell seems to be a
combination of Anthony Blunt and poet Louis MacNeice.
In Alan Moore's
graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, there
appears a Cambridge Five analogue consisting of the Famous Five from Greyfriars
School, including Harry Wharton, who became Big Brother; Bob Kim Cherry (named
after Kim Philby), who was also known as Harry Lime and subsequently M or
Mother; Francis Alexander Waverly (possibly formerly known as Frank Nugent);
and Sir John Night (possibly formerly known as John Bull).
The Fourth
Protocol, a novel by Frederick Forsyth uses a fictionalised Kim Philby as a
central character, who conspires to smuggle a portable nuclear weapon into
Britain.
Burgess,
Maclean and Philby appear in the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures novel
Endgame dealing with their defection to Russia.
The
Innocent, a novel by Ian McEwan, involves a spy tunnel which the Soviets
discover but do not initially expose, similar to the Philby tunnel.
Philby
appears in The Other Woman of the Gabriel Allon series by novelist Daniel Silva
The plot of
Charles Cumming's 2011 novel, The Trinity Six, is built on the premise that
there was a sixth spy and that his existence is being covered up by MI6.
Television
The Hour
(BBC TV series)
Dennis
Potter's television play Traitor (1971) is a spy drama television film that
features a central character called Adrian Harris (John Le Mesurier) being
interviewed in his Moscow flat by western newspaper reporters, eager to get the
story on his defection. Harris appears to be a composite of Philby, Burgess and
Maclean. Potter later returned to similar territory with Blade on the Feather
(1980), inspired by the unmasking of Anthony Blunt, although in this drama the
protagonist Jason Cavendish (Donald Pleasence) is clearly modeled after Philby.
Philby is later name-checked as the sports reporter on The Daily Telegraph in
Potter's Lipstick on Your Collar (1993), and appears to be giving inside tips
on horse-races to officials at the War Office.
The Channel
4 education show KNTV features a character called Burgess MacPhilbin, who
provides information for teenagers in the form of a spy dossier.
Philby,
Burgess and Maclean was a 1977 Granada Television drama-documentary for
ITV,[45][46] re-broadcast on BBC Four in 2007, with Derek Jacobi as Burgess.
Tinker
Tailor Soldier Spy, 1979 miniseries adaptation of John le Carré's novel
An
Englishman Abroad, 1983 dramatization of Burgess in Russia by Alan Bennett
Blunt: the
Fourth Man, 1987 television drama with Anthony Hopkins as Guy Burgess and Ian
Richardson as Anthony Blunt.
Cambridge
Spies, 2003 BBC drama with Toby Stephens as Kim Philby, Tom Hollander as Guy
Burgess, Rupert Penry-Jones as Donald Maclean, Samuel West as Anthony Blunt,
and Alastair Galbraith as John Cairncross.
Samuel West
reprises his role as Anthony Blunt from Cambridge Spies in The Crown in 2019,
in the season three episode titled "Olding".
Film
The Jigsaw
Man, 1983 film starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. Caine plays a
character named Philip Kimberley who returns to England after his defection.
Another
Country, 1984 adaptation of the play by Julian Mitchell
A Different
Loyalty, 2004 film directed by Marek Kanievska, is inspired by Kim Philby's
affair and subsequent marriage to Eleanor Brewer, as well as events leading up
to his defection.
Tinker
Tailor Soldier Spy, 2011 adaptation of John le Carré's novel
The
Imitation Game, 2014 biopic of Alan Turing, includes Allen Leech as John
Cairncross; Burgess and Maclean are mentioned in passing.
Theatre
A Question
of Attribution, 1988 dramatization of Blunt's term as Keeper of the Queen's
Pictures; and The Old Country 1977 play about a fictional Philby-esque spy in
exile, both by Alan Bennett
Another
Country, 1981 play loosely based on Guy Burgess' life by Julian Mitchell
In 2009,
Michael Dobbs wrote a short play, Turning Point, for a series of live broadcast
TV plays on Sky Arts channel. Based on a 1938 meeting between a young Guy
Burgess and Winston Churchill, the play sees Burgess urging Churchill to fight
the appeasement policy of the British government. In the live broadcast,
Burgess was played by Benedict Cumberbatch.
Kim Philby
appears as one of the central antagonists in William F. Buckley's 2004 novel
Last Call for Blackford Oakes.
Alan
Bennett’s play Single Spies centres around Burgess and Blunt.
Music
"Philby",
a 1979 composition from Irish blues-rock musician Rory Gallagher and his album
Top Priority
*Includes
pictures
*Includes
online resources and a bibliography for further reading
The spy
novel emerged from the intrigues of the mid-20th century for good reason. The
war with the Third Reich involved an unseen cloak and dagger struggle between
the participants, but beyond that, an even larger and longer contest took place
in the shadows.
Communism
gained its first major foothold in statehood with the success of the Russian
Revolution at the end of World War I, a success bizarrely assisted by the
massive funding provided to the revolutionaries by some Western businessmen.
Armand Hammer’s father Julius, for instance, gave the new Soviet Union $50,000
in gold to back their new currency. In exchange he received asbestos mining and
oil concessions, plus a pencil manufacturing monopoly in the USSR lasting until
the Stalin era.
Soviet
Russia followed a philosophy demanding international, global revolution –
which, in practice, often resembled conquest by any means available, direct or
indirect. While the Soviets never hesitated to use naked force when it seemed
advisable, or when compelled to it by outside attack, they made intensive use
of covert operations – spying, assassination, bribery, infiltration of
governments and educational systems, the deployment of agents provocateur and
“agitprop” – in an effort to weaken other nations from within or possibly cause
takeover by a friendly revolutionary regime.
Soviet
agents operated in all European countries and others, but their main efforts
naturally focused on the strongest potential rivals – Germany, the United
States, and Great Britain. Intelligent, persistent, and ruthless, the Soviets
succeeded in recruiting a considerable number of agents, including men from the
British ruling class.
Their
activities enabled the Soviets to capture and execute hundreds, if not
thousands, of the opponents of their regime along with numbers of British
agents. The men responsible for this unprecedented leaking of life-or-death
information would enter history as the Cambridge Five – though in fact, they
may have been only the core of a much larger group.
The
Cambridge Five: The History and Legacy of the Notorious Soviet Spy Ring in
Britain during World War II and the Cold War chronicles the war’s most infamous
spy ring and its activities. Along with pictures of important people, places,
and events, you will learn about the Cambridge Five like never before.
