Cambridge spy Blunt may have aided Nazis and cost Allied lives
ANTHONY BLUNT, one of the so-called Cambridge Five spy ring, may have betrayed secrets not only to the Soviet Union but to the Nazis, leading to the death of thousands of Allied troops in the Second World War, a new book says.
The MI5 double agent, who was exposed as a Soviet mole in 1979, has been revealed as the possible traitor, codenamed Josephine, who leaked details of the ultimately unsuccessful 1944 attack on Arnhem, known as Operation Market Garden.
The betrayal contributed to the failure of the airborne attempt to seize Dutch bridges and cross the Rhine into Nazi Germany. It resulted in the deaths or capture of thousands of British, American, Canadian and Polish troops.
Blunt, who died at his home in Highgate, north London, in 1983 at the age of 75, was the fourth member of the infamous Cambridge spy ring.
The former Army intelligence officer, who was a distant relative of the late Queen, was often regarded as one of the least treacherous of the Cambridge spies, given that his activities were largely confined to the war years when Moscow was one of the Allies.
However, a new book claims to have unearthed evidence suggesting Blunt may have also been responsible for leaking vital intelligence, warning Hitler of the plan to drop 40,000 Allied troops into the Netherlands on Sept 17 1944 in a bid to hasten the war’s
end. British and American troops met fierce resistance from Panzer divisions and the Allies suffered their last defeat of the war, with more than 17,000 casualties.
In his book, The Traitor of Arnhem, author Robert Verkaik describes how Berlin was aware of Market Garden, thanks to a Dutch double agent called Christiaan Lindemans, who had the codename, King Kong.
However, Verkaik also claims the Nazis had a second source of information about the operation, the largest airborne assault ever undertaken, which came from another spy with the codename Josephine.
As well as halting the Allied advance into Germany and prolonging the war, the failure of the plan also meant Stalin’s Red Army was able to reach Berlin first and meet the Allies further to the east – redrawing the map of post-war Europe and paving the way for the Iron Curtain.
In 1944, Blunt had a pivotal role at the heart of British military intelligence and would have intimate knowledge of the Arnhem attack. Just a year earlier, he had been tasked with tracking down Josephine, meaning he was effectively hunting himself, argues Verkaik.
After spending several years studying the archives, the author is convinced Blunt and the mysterious Josephine are one and the same, insisting he had “the means, the motive and the opportunity”.
He said that while he does not have a “smoking gun” linking Blunt directly, he argues that “he was the only person who could fit the profile of who Josephine had to be”.
Verkaik went on: “What I would go on to discover was that his betrayals had directly and intentionally aided the Nazi war machine and caused the deaths of thousands of soldiers and civilians.”