The Walls Have Ears

by Helen Fry

  Kendrick became the ‘Oskar Schindler’ of Vienna. As he struggled amidst the catastrophe facing the Jewish population, the Gestapo (Secret Police under Himmler) were looking for the ‘elusive Englishman’ whom they knew was SIS’s man in Vienna.11 In August 1938, Kendrick’s luck ran out. He was betrayed by one of his own agents, Tucek, who was acting as a double agent.12

  On 17 August 1938, the Gestapo arrested Kendrick as he and his wife tried to cross the border at the town of Freilassing in the Alps.13 He was taken back to Vienna and interrogated at Gestapo headquarters in the Hotel Metropole. Over four days, he was forced to undergo eight-hour interrogations with no break.14

  Kendrick survived, but he was expelled from the country for spying – an allegation which he and the British government always denied.15 After his release on Saturday 20 August, Kendrick was immediately smuggled out of Austria in the consulate general’s car and taken to Budapest before the German authorities changed their mind. From Budapest, he took a flight to Prague, then Rotterdam and on to Croydon airport. Back on British soil, he was promptly whisked off to the Foreign Office for a debriefing and disappeared from the public eye.

  In September 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, in an attempt to avoid war. Sinclair knew that war was inevitable – all intelligence pointed to it.16 It was not a matter of if, but when. With pragmatic foresight, he purchased Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire from his own private funds. Here, a dedicated team of mathematicians and cryptologists would break the seemingly unbreakable German Enigma codes, enabling the encrypted messages between Hitler and his commanders to be read.17 This provided vital intelligence that impacted on the war and shortened it by at least two years.18

  Kendrick arrived at MI6 headquarters at 54 Broadway to a flurry of activity and entered the nondescript grey building, a dingy warren of corridors with several floors of offices. Sinclair had an important task for him. Kendrick was an old master at running a complex bureaucratic system; he could draw on his experience in dealing with German prisoners in the First World War and on his knowledge of Nazi Germany during the 1930s. His brief would not change – he was still to spy on Nazi Germany, but this time from within Britain’s borders.

  The M Room operation (M stood for miked) was an early and ingenious brainwave by British intelligence. In January 1939, with war looming and the invasion of Czechoslovakia on the horizon, the intelligence branches of the War Office, Admiralty and Air Ministry agreed to open a unit to record the unguarded conversations of unsuspecting prisoners in their cells.19 This unit would fall under the remit of human intelligence (HUMINT) and initially came under the auspices of MI1, the forerunner of MI6.20 Sinclair recognised enemy prisoners of war as one of the most valuable sources of intelligence, but the challenge was how to obtain information from them when they would be reluctant to give anything away during interrogation, especially in the early part of the war when victory could go either way.21 The British needed information on a vast range of subjects, such as enemy operations and battle plans, Axis military capability and rearmament programmes, new weapon capability and technological developments in relation to aircraft and U-boats, details of encrypted codes and communications between Hitler’s armed forces and the Abwehr (Secret Service), and crucially any plans in the pipeline to invade Britain. If early intelligence could be gained, it would feed into warfare planning and strategy on air, land and sea, enabling the Allies to stay one step ahead. It would also allow British scientists to develop counter-measures to new German technology, and corroborate the intelligence coming out of other top secret sites, like Bletchley Park.

  To succeed, the new unit needed a skilled commander-in-chief who was fluent in German, had an intimate knowledge of the German Wehrmacht, was acquainted with Germany’s rearmament programme in the 1930s, and understood human beings in all their complexity. Kendrick was the perfect candidate. He knew how to court high society – diplomatic, social, intellectual and cultural – but was not a diplomat. Sinclair had also seen in Kendrick a man who could steer British intelligence through the minefield of human egos and the eccentric, stuffy demands of heads of departments with an efficiency and subtle skill that would produce results.

  Kendrick had already been through one world war with Germany. Yet, in spite of that, and his experiences at the hands of the Gestapo in 1938, he bore no hatred for Germany or the German people.22 His wife Norah was the daughter of a prominent German businessman and some of her family were still living in Germany during the Second World War.23 Kendrick was not willing to sanction unorthodox methods or torture at his secret sites. He was a pragmatist whose sole aim was to find clever ways of getting his prisoners to spill the beans.

  In January 1939, Kendrick began the arrangements for a bugging operation located in a special compound within the Tower of London24 – designed to spring into action within twenty-four hours of the outbreak of war.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Tower of London

  The upholding of the Munich Agreement did not last. The invasion of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939 brought Britain closer to conflict. Chamberlain issued an ultimatum that if Germany invaded Poland, Britain would declare war.

  In May of that year, just a few months before the outbreak of war, MI1(a) and MI5 had liaised over accommodating prisoners of war in the Tower of London.1 Guidelines for their interrogation by Naval Intelligence had already been prepared,2 and Kendrick had liaised closely with Ian Fleming of the Naval Intelligence Division at the Admiralty. Fleming had selected the Naval Intelligence team that would work at Kendrick’s secret wartime site.3 Kendrick had also authorised a team of specialist engineers to enter the Tower of London and ‘wire it for sound’4 and liaised with the Post Office to supply listening apparatus. To maintain absolute secrecy, the engineers who installed it were required to sign the Official Secrets Act, as did all personnel who worked in the M Room. Anyone who broke the silence could face up to 14 years’ imprisonment.

  The day that German forces invaded Poland, on 1 September 1939, Kendrick (then in the rank of major) opened his clandestine unit at the Tower of London. Within the historic walls of this iconic fortress that had seen the deaths of royals, traitors and spies, Kendrick launched a bugging operation against the enemy on British soil that combined all three services of army, air force and navy. Their joint cooperation would be carefully masterminded and choreographed by Kendrick himself, in a delicate balancing act that made each service feel it was in control.

  Joining Kendrick in the Tower were Flight Lieutenant (later Group Captain) Samuel Denys Felkin, Squadron Leader Edmund Pollock and three captains of the Intelligence Corps: William Rose, G. Buxton and J.B. Carson.5 Arriving within a fortnight were Major Arthur Richard (Dick) Rawlinson, in charge of interrogation of enemy prisoners,6 Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Frederic Trench (RMLI), Lieutenant Commander Edward Croghan (RNVR), and army Captains Charles Corner and Leslie Parkin.7 Trench already had a pre-war history in intelligence as a naval spy, recruited by Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first head of SIS.8

  Edmund Pollock had been a British businessman and hotelier in Vienna before his arrest by the Gestapo on 13 March 1938. His hotel confiscated and business assets frozen by the Nazis, Kendrick, who was a personal friend, managed to secure his release and escape out of the country through diplomatic channels.9 Pollock, an ex-officer of the Royal Air Force, had been decorated with a First World War Military Cross. At the Tower of London, Pollock was initially placed in charge of the Air Intelligence section AI1(K), to be succeeded within weeks by Denys Felkin who would serve in that role until the end of the war.10

  Denys Felkin (b.1894) had also lived in Vienna, was a close friend of Kendrick and had worked for him as an agent during the 1930s.11 From 1914–15, Felkin had served in the Artists’ Rifles and at the end of the First World War he had become a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. Once the hostilities were over, he was posted to the Reparations Committee in Berlin where he acquired fl
uency in German and worked alongside the British diplomat and economist Sir Andrew McFadyean. In 1931 while in Paris, Felkin met American socialite Charlotte Warner Burchard, the cousin of Princess Henry XXXIII of Reuss.12 They married in Paris in December that year. In 1934, the Felkins moved to Vienna where Denys became manager of the Ideale Radiator Gesellschaft. His posting was believed to be a guise for intelligence work because he had no technological training relevant to the company.13 He used the work to travel and monitor the rise of the Nazi regime in neighbouring Germany. Then, still pre-war, he was transferred to Paris as manager of the Paris Radiator Company – again believed to be a cover for (unknown) intelligence work.

  Charles Corner and Arthur Rawlinson had served in the First World War – Corner with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and Rawlinson with the West Surrey Regiment. The latter had transferred to intelligence duties in France from 1917 to 1918 with MI1(a), the section of military intelligence that dealt with prisoners of war.14 In the inter-war period, Rawlinson had had a career as a screenwriter and worked on the script for the British film, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). At the outbreak of the Second World War, Corner and Rawlinson were both called up to an emergency commission and posted to MI1(H). Soon after his time at the Tower of London, Rawlinson became deputy director of Military Intelligence (Prisoners of War) and later head of MI19.15

  Leslie Parkin was a charismatic character who fitted well into the world of espionage, especially the wartime bugging operation. Born in 1893, he was a fine pianist who had taken lessons with Russian-born concert pianist, Benno Moiseiwitsch. Liz Driscoll has vivid memories of her uncle:

  He spoke several languages (German, French and Persian) with an intimate knowledge of Persia, Poland, Russia, Belgium, Holland and Germany from the 1920s and 30s. I remember him as a kind, entertaining, generous and talented uncle who loved animals and children, drank south-African sherry and who was a wonderful pianist.16

  Parkin had served on special duties in the First World War, and worked in Germany as general manager for the Eastern Telegraph Company in Hamburg in the 1930s. He and two other businessmen were expelled from Germany in April 1939 in reprisal for the British expulsion of secret Nazi police agents. It is probable that the Nazis had also suspected him of spying. Parkin was an expert in telegraphy and technology, proving indispensable for the technological side of the M Room. His knowledge of Nazi Germany meant that he could interrogate or befriend the prisoners.17

  Lieutenant Richard Pennell (RNVR) conducted interrogations at the Tower from late October 1939. He had originally joined the Royal Naval Reserve as a Midshipman in January 1931 and attained promotion to Lieutenant in 1935. At the Tower, he aided Trench in carrying out interrogations for the Naval Intelligence section, designated as NID 11 by the Admiralty, and later NID 1 (P/W).18 Pennell eventually moved to other naval intelligence operations; in July 1942 he saw action in the Channel and in October of that year took part in Operation Jubilee (the Dieppe Raid).19 Promoted to Lieutenant Commander in 1943, he went on to command HMS Tartar and the escort destroyer HMS Quantock.20

  Although initially small, the unit was a highly sophisticated and exceptionally well organised operation. It would soon be expanded by Kendrick and continued to run for the duration of the war. Around him was a dedicated team of men and women, some of whom he had known from his pre-war days in Vienna, whilst others had served with him in intelligence in the First World War. Between 1939 and 1942, Kendrick’s team of secret listeners were British-born men who were fluent in German. At their work stations, they recorded the prisoners’ conversations but by 1943, the information coming out of the M Rooms across Kendrick’s three bugging sites (Trent Park, Latimer House and Wilton Park) was highly technical and the German dialects so hard to understand that British secret listeners struggled to decipher and transcribe the recordings properly. Kendrick needed native German speakers to monitor the thirty bugged rooms at each of the sites.21 He turned to the companies of the British army’s Pioneer Corps where several thousand German-speaking émigrés, mostly Jewish refugees, were serving and ‘digging for victory’.22 They had fled Nazi Germany and Austria prior to the outbreak of war and wanted to fight Hitler but, instead of being stationed on the front line, had been placed in a labour corps of the British army. Their chance to play a more direct role came in 1943 as Kendrick sought to recruit 101 of them for ‘special duties’. They became an extraordinary team who were deeply loyal to him. Secret listener George Pulay and his family already owed their lives to Kendrick for getting them out of Vienna.23

  Having signed the Official Secrets Act, ex-refugee secret listeners, like Fritz Lustig, remained silent for over sixty years and never talked about their work in the M Room. During their time as secret listeners, they did not set eyes on a single German prisoner of war, yet they came as close as possible to them behind the walls of the M Room.24 They eavesdropped on over 10,000 German POWs, from U-boat crew, to Luftwaffe pilots and army officers to high-ranking generals and Field Marshals. The prisoners were captured in many theatres of war, from North Africa, Italy, Greece and France to Belgium and Holland. They included German pilots shot down over the English skies and U-boat crews pulled from the freezing waters around Britain.25

  THE WALLS HAVE EARS

  A special section of the guards was responsible for bringing prisoners in and out of the Tower. They had no idea of the clandestine side of the operation and asked no questions. The daily administration of the special compound, initially known as the Prisoners of War Collecting Centre in London, came under the jurisdiction of commandant Captain Count Anthony Denis Rodolph Fane de Salis, an officer of the Guards who was based in Martin Tower on the north side of the complex.26 De Salis (b.1897) was from an old aristocratic family, the son of British diplomat and landowner the 7th Count de Salis; he was a regular in the army during the First World War, commissioned Lieutenant on 1 March 1918, and given a special appointment from 1 June 1920 to 8 January 1921.27

  Security at the Tower was increased and no civilian was permitted in the compound unless in possession of a special pass signed by de Salis or the adjutant.28 An extensive part of the Tower was given over for the prisoners’ special interrogation and holding quarters: the Old Hospital Block (for prisoners who had to be segregated), four rooms in the Salt Tower, three rooms in Broad Arrow Tower, the small Warden’s room at the middle Drawbridge, store rooms in the Moat near Wharf Guard (Nos.1–11), the first floor of F. Block’s No.3 barrack room (for other ranks of staff), and the ground floor company store as their Mess Room.29 The second floor of F. Block was reserved for prisoners as follows: No.4 barrack room to house 30 German officers, No.5 barrack room for 45 prisoners of other ranks, and No.6 barrack room as the prisoners’ Mess Room, No.3 Sergeants’ room was used for stores and No.4 Sergeants’ room for Quartermaster Sergeant officer John D. Hodges, and the Wharf Guardroom and Detention Room for use by the guards only. A shelter was constructed outside the entrance to the barrack rooms for use as a kitchen until the construction of a cookhouse had been completed. Cooking was undertaken by two Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) women. The special compound could hold up to 120 prisoners at any one time.

  Prisoners were exercised in the dry moat between St Thomas’s Tower and the Well Tower. In wet weather when the moat was too damp, they were taken to the wharf front near the Byward Tower and to a point opposite the Cradle Tower.30 Procedures were in place to deal with any prisoners who escaped, including the immediate ringing of the bell to the Warders’ Hall in Byward Tower. In the event of a fire in the prisoners’ quarters, the detainees were to be assembled under strong guard in the Salt Tower. In the event of an air raid warning, ‘prisoners will remain in their quarters. Sentries will be doubled. Every precaution will be taken to ensure that the prisoners do not attempt to expose a light’.31

  Prisoners brought into the Tower were swiftly interrogated. A number of softening techniques were used to encourage them to give away their intelligence.32 After interrogation,
the prisoner was taken back to his room which he shared with one or two other prisoners. The British interrogators were frequently seen by them as incompetent or stupid for conducting a ‘phoney’ interrogation,33 with the result that prisoners went back to their room and talked to their cellmate about what they had not told the interrogator – unaware that the rooms were fitted with bugging devices.34 The tiny microphones were hidden in the fireplaces and light fittings, and wired back to listening apparatus in another room, the M Room, which housed the listeners who were recording the prisoners’ conversations.35 Information about the number of listeners at the Tower is not given, nor are details about the technical equipment used and who supplied it.

  In his wartime diary, Guy Liddell (MI5’s director of counter-espionage) wrote on 12 September 1939 that Kendrick was ‘kicking his heels at the Tower of London while waiting for the arrival of German prisoners of war. I suggested that we might perhaps pool our resources with SIS in the matter of the interrogation of prisoners, of whom there are over 200’.36 Kendrick was not kicking his heels for long.

  THE FIRST GERMAN PRISONERS

  The first prisoners arrived at the Tower on 17 September 1939: forty-three officers and other ranks were brought from U-39 which had been sunk off north-west Ireland on 14 September after an attempt to sink the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal.37 The first enemy U-boat to be sunk in the war,38 all the crew of U-39 survived, including its captain Lieutenant Commander Gerhard Glattes and Chief Quartermaster Peter Aussen. A nominal register of all the crew was compiled by Captain de Salis.39 On 20 September, they were interrogated at the Tower by Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Frederic Trench and Lieutenant Commander Edward Croghan.40 Very little information was achieved from these interrogations because the captain ‘had had opportunity to impress upon his crew the importance of reticence’.41 The interrogations were completed a week later on 27 November.