Churchill's Iceman_The True Story of Geoffrey Pyke_Genius, Fugitive, Spy

by Henry Hemming

  218 ‘an interesting, or possibly’: Malcolm Cumming to Gilbert Lennox, 27 April 1940, KV 2/3039/19a

  219 ‘on excellent terms . . . propaganda’: 20 May 1940, KV 2/3035/51a

  219 ‘In view of this’: Malcolm Cumming to Gilbert Lennox, 27 April 1939, KV 2/3035/50a

  219 ‘a short man’: Peter Wright with Paul Greengrass, Spycatcher (Australia: William Heinemann), 1987

  220 ‘You see some’ . . . ‘trustworthy’: Watson overheard talking to Pyke, 24 May 1940, KV 2/3038

  221 SIS’s concerns about GP’s undercover work: There are several allusions to this, including Leo Amery’s letter to Frederick Lindemann, 19 July 1940: ‘The secret service branches under the War Office somehow or other think that his investigation would cross their wires. Personally, both the investigation and the kind of people employed would be so entirely different that I cannot imagine that there is any real danger of that happening.’

  221 ‘close to collapse’: Andrew, Defence of the Realm, p. 222

  222 ‘a much persecuted’: Leo Amery to Osbert Peake, 11 July 1940 (mistakenly marked as 11 May 1940)

  222 ‘Depart, I say’: Peter Hennessey, Never Again (London: Vintage), 1993, p. 20

  222 ‘a strange creature’: L. S. Amery, 26 Feb 1948, AMEL 8/66, Churchill Archives Centre

  222–3 ‘the only man’: GP to Osbert Peake, 17 July 1940

  223 Higgins in GP’s notebook: GP Notebook, August 1940

  223 ‘deep gratitude’: Rolf Rünkel to GP, 4 July 1941

  223 GP sends payments to Higgins: Ibid., 10 December 1940

  223 ‘deep sympathy with’: GP to Sidney Kraul, 3 July 1940

  223–4 ‘Pyke is well known’: MI5 to Sidney Kraul, 9 August 1940, KV 2/3039

  225 ‘all those interested’: GP to Rolf Rünkel, 19 July 1941

  225 ‘Higgins all possible’: GP Notebook, 9 Feb 1940

  225 ‘Blonder Hans’: This appears in numerous sources, including the original Gestapo file on Runkel at Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), Amt IV, A2, Bundesarchiv, Berlin

  225 Rünkel recruited by NKVD: Though NKVD personnel files from this period remain classified, the extraneous details about Rünkel’s life up to and during this period suggest that he might have been recruited to the NKVD in the early 1930s. We know from his reaction to Special Branch surveillance in 1941 that he was experienced in picking up a tail, and that he was one of the first Communists to be taken out of Prague in 1938, which attests to his seniority among the many German Communists gathered in Prague at the time. It is also significant that, in spite of this, he was not attached to any Party cell during his time in Britain. Those attached to the NKVD or GRU were customarily instructed to disassociate themselves from Party factions. Looking beyond the war, the lack of an archival trace in the GDR archives is suggestive. In a country where all Party members had voluminous files on them the relative lack of files on Rünkel opens up the strong possibility that the bulk of his papers were taken to the USSR, as happened with those of other employees of the NKVD or GRU.

  226 Rünkel on Gestapo’s list: RSHA, Amt IV, A2, Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt, Bundesarchiv, Berlin

  226 ‘Certain words were missing’: Fred Uhlman, The Making of an Englishman (London: Victor Gollancz, 1960), p. 242

  227 Rünkel might have spied on Koenen: Documents captured in 1946 at Koethen (soon to be GDR) – Abw, 111 F. HELMUT WEHR papers on KOMINTERN Agents from PRAGUE, 10 January 1939. According to report i/28 of Helmut Wehr on 10 January 1939, four men were dispatched to London by the Komintern office in Prague, including Wilhelm Koenen and his secretary Hamann, and each one had a ‘Labour functionary to spy on them in accordance with Komintern instructions’ – one of whom might have been Rünkel, KV 2/2800/278b

  227 ‘banality of evil’: Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (London: Penguin), 1994

  228 ‘in the case of all non-Russian’: Haldane, Truth Will Out, p. 292

  230 ‘the publishing house’: KV 2/2357/60a

  230 MI5 raises no objection to Kamnitzer’s release: KV 2/2883/15a

  230 ‘a fanatical . . . Party work’: W. Younger to Roger Hollis, 23 December 1941, KV 2/2883/26b

  230 MI5 Suspect Rünkel: ‘Information from B2 source ‘M/S’, 22 December 1939, KV 2/2714/6a

  230 ‘is stated to have been’: KV 2/1561/53a

  230 Rünkel member of N-Dienst: B.8.c summary of MOELLER-DOSTALI interrogation at the Oratory Schools, 17 February 1941, KV 2/3364/58x

  230 GP pays Rünkel’s expenses: GP to Bobby Carter, 27 August 1941, Private Collection of Sarah Carter

  231 ‘We know how devotedly’: GP to Rolf Rünkel, 19 July 1941

  231 ‘B[obby] and I’: Deborah Carter, unpublished reminisces, c. 1989

  232 Rünkel pointing out shadows: Author’s correspondence with Thomas Rünkel, 10 September 2012

  232 policeman suspects stronger connection between GP and Rünkel: Cross Reference to extract from Special Branch report re PYKE and RUNKEL’, 22 September 1941, KV 2/3039/30a

  232–3 ‘see to it . . . improved upon’: Source: Ri, 17 November 1941, KV 2/1873/172a

  233 ‘I consider this’: Ibid.

  233 MI5’s libertarian approach’: Hyde, I Believed, 1952, p. 75

  234 ‘complete reliability’: ‘Photostat copy of letter from Pyke to AWS Dept re RUNKEL’, 31 October 1941, KV-2–3039–31a

  234 MI5 notes German communists at the BBC: KV 2/2883/30a

  How to Defeat Nazism

  235 ‘intensely elitist . . . birth’: Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten (London: Fontana), 1986, p. 52

  236 ‘how to do something’: GP to Jon Kimche, 14 January 1945

  237 ‘The Germans had complete’: Ibid.

  237–8 ‘The mathematical physicists’: Ibid.

  238 ‘Note the obvious’: Ibid.

  238–9 Mastery . . . succession’: GP, ‘A Strategic Proposal’, revised version, November 1941

  239 ‘The Assyrians’: Pyke to Liddell Hart, 15 May 1940, and originally in Byron’s ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’, Hebrew Melodies, 1815

  239 ‘how often could an aeroplane’: GP to Jon Kimche, 14 January 1945

  239 ‘Principles of attack’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 7 June 1942

  239 ‘no more an invention’: GP, ‘A Strategic Proposal’

  240 ‘similar to the adaptations’: GP Notebook, December 1941

  240 ‘with relatively slight’: GP, ‘A Strategic Proposal’

  240 ‘Make every one’: Ibid.

  240 ‘Far from wanting’: ‘Commentary by Mr Pyke on C.O.H.Q. Int./28/15.4.42’ S.7.0. North Norway – Large Scale Operation. US National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 165, Entry 21, 390/30/16/4, Box 968, submitted on 15 April 1942 to Louis Mountbatten

  241 ‘military ju-jitsu’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 7 June 1942

  241 ‘Consider the political’: Ibid., 4 June 1942

  241 ‘to make a fool’: GP to Basil Liddell Hart, 15 May 1940

  241 ‘impressed by’: Leo Amery to David Pyke, 11 March 1948, AMEL 2/3/5

  241 Amery’s patience with GP: Leo Amery, The Empire at Bay (London: Hutchinson), 1988, p. 1072

  242 ‘no prospect for Jews’: Leo Amery, 26 Feb 1948, AMEL 8/66

  242 ‘the sort of person’: GP to Sydney Elliott, 13 November 1939

  242 ‘very naturally appealed’: Leo Amery, ‘Recollections of Mr Pyke’, AMEL 2/3/5

  242 ‘I am bothering’: Leo Amery to Walter Monckton, 24 June 1940

  242 ‘it seems to be all’: Walter Monckton to Leo Amery, 24 June 1940

  243 ‘others have thought’: Frederick Lindeman to Walter Monckton, 10 July 1940, Cherwell Papers, G. 465/3

  243 Bourne dismisses snowmobiles: Bourne, ‘Response to the proposals to use sledges driven by air screws and aircraft engines for cross country operations in the Narvik area’, Combined Operations HQ, 15 July 1940

  243 ‘the circumstances he has’: A. V. Alexander to ‘Sydney’, 17 July 1940

 
243 ‘measureless obstructive strength’: Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms (London: Penguin), 1967, p. 135

  243 ‘Unless all my skiing friends’: Leo Amery to Fletcher, 23 July 1940

  243 ‘a quality . . . ends of war’: GP, ‘A Strategic Proposal’

  244 ‘The worse the weather’: Ibid.

  244 ‘You won’t get it done’: GP, Account of conversation with J. D. Bernal, 23 June 1940

  244 ‘The whole country’: GP to Jon Kimche, 14 January 1945

  245 Ray ‘a Communist’: KV 2/3039/102a

  245 ‘perhaps the greatest’: Cyril Ray, ‘Boat People’, Punch, vol. 288, 20 March 1985, p. 51

  245 ‘I heard things about him’: GP to Jon Kimche, 14 January 1945

  245 ‘I feel that, and I think’: GP to Leo Amery, 4 February 1942

  245 the ‘brilliant’ inventor: Michael Harrison, Mulberry: The Return in Triumph (London: W. H. Allen), 1965, p. 141

  246 ‘Many of the descriptions’: Pyke, Draft Profile of Mountbatten for the Evening Standard, September 1943

  247 ‘excite you more’: Quoted in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 112

  247 Mountbatten’s naval ambitions. Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 36

  247 ‘extraordinary drive’: The Duchess of Windsor, The Heart Has Its Reasons (London: Michael Joseph), 1956, p. 206

  248 ‘damned annoyed’: Harrison, Mulberry, p. 15

  248 ‘You fool!’: Mountbatten’s diary, 25 October 1941, quoted in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 156

  248 ‘All the other headquarters’: Churchill quoted by Mountbatten in Harrison, Mulberry, p. 15

  249 ‘When I return’: Louis Mountbatten to GP, 8 February 1942

  249 ‘Major Parks-Smith . . . intellect’: GP to Amery, undated

  249 ‘Like Mephistopheles’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 26 April 1942

  249–50 ‘They knew, only too well’: ‘Pyke on How to Sell Pyke’, GP to Louis Mountbatten, June 1942

  250 ‘what my biographers’: Ibid.

  250 ‘a vast gathering . . . length’: GP to Jon Kimche, 14 January 1945

  250 GP bad at judging audience: Pyke to Bobby Carter, 10 August 1939

  250 ‘bore himself . . . voice’: Cohen, ‘Geoffrey Pyke: Man of Ideas’, p. 246

  251 Japanese rampant in South-East Asia: ‘We do not possess enough naval forces, even leaving the barest minimum for our vital commitments in Home Waters, to meet the Japanese forces already in the Indian Ocean, not to mention those which may be brought against us.’ ‘Draft Reply to General Marshall’, Chiefs of Staff Committee, April 1942, CAB 79/20

  252 ‘handsome and breezy’ Goronwy Rees, A Bundle of Sensations (London: Chatto & Windus), 1960, p. 145

  253 GP’s clothes: Maurice Goldsmith, Sage (London: Hutchinson), 1980, p. 100

  253 ‘unusually expressive’: Cohen, ‘Geoffrey Pyke: Man of Ideas’, p.246

  253 ‘thoughtful and serious’: M. F. Perutz, ‘An Inventor of Supreme Imagination’, Discovery, May 1948

  253 ‘burning eyes’: Peter Quennell, The Wanton Chase (London: Collins), 1980, p. 30

  253 ‘Lord Mountbatten, you need me’: Andrew Brown, J. D. Bernal: The Sage of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2005, p. 209

  253 ‘trying to size you up’: Perutz, ‘An Inventor of Supreme Imagination’

  253 ‘The untidy man’: John Hillary, ‘The Ozzard of Whizz’, Public Opinion, 18 May 1951, pp. 11–12

  254 ‘I must confess’: Harrison, Mulberry, p. 142

  254 ‘a chap with no scientific qualifications’: Goldsmith, Sage, pp. 97–98

  254 ‘genuine affection’: Harrison, Mulberry, p. 39

  254 ‘I fell into the habit’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 6 July 1942

  254 ‘you always rush me’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, undated

  254 ‘as receptive’: GP to Betty Behrens, 23 January 1946

  254 ‘What I’ve done’: Transcript for ‘The Dynamics of Innovation’, part of ‘We Beg to Differ’, BBC, broadcast between 9:40 and 9:55 in between the third and fourth acts of The Marriage of Figaro, 25 September 1947

  254 ‘In face of a new idea’: Ibid.

  255 ‘Suggester of Programmes’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 3 August 1942

  255 ‘be prepared with’: ‘Pyke on How to Sell Pyke’, GP to Louis Mountbatten, June 1942

  255 GP’s salary: Mountbatten Papers, MB1/C209

  255 ‘an extraordinary, wholly unbureaucratic’: Canetti, Party in the Blitz, p. 180

  Pyke Hunt, Part 3

  257 ‘the Comintern remained’: Andrew, Defence of the Realm, p. 190

  257 ‘what a complicated’: KV 2/2799/153b

  258 ‘Professor P. is I think’: ‘Photostat of Minute from Bagot (F2bMJEB) to ADE7, Prof P is Pyke’, 21 January 1942, KV 2/3039/33b

  258 ‘gathering and translating’: Ibid.

  258 ‘large and comprehensive’: Today in the Comintern Archives in Moscow there are more than 407 files under the heading ‘Varga Bureau in Berlin’

  259 ‘doing the same job’: ‘Copy of E.3.(a) report re PYKE’, 31 January 1942, KV-2–3039–34a

  How to Change the Military Mind

  261 Nye supports the scheme: ‘Pyke on How to Sell Pyke’, GP to Louis Mountbatten, June 1942

  261 ‘tactical and strategic’: CAB 79/19, COS (42) 58 (0). 77th Meeting

  262 ‘handsome social chaps’: Quoted in Richard Hough, Mountbatten (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), 1980, p. 148

  262 ‘surrealist whirligig’: Evelyn Waugh, Michael Davie (ed.), The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 1976, p. 524, p. 533

  262 ‘this fish-flesh-fowl company’: Rees, A Bundle of Sensations, p. 143

  263 ‘precaution for . . . progress’: GP, unpublished manuscript, 12 June 1941

  263 ‘how a plane can measure’: GP, 10 March 1942

  263 ‘so does a Squadron Leader’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 1 March 1942

  264 ‘ingenious . . . support’: Appendix ‘B’, minutes of meeting at COHQ in response to Pyke’s ‘Diary of War Ideas’, 27 March 1942

  265 ‘if he couldn’t get us’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, ‘Pyke on How to Sell Pyke’, June 1942

  265 ‘was not as it unfortunately’: ‘Mr Pyke’s Second and Third Thoughts. A Recantation’, 26 March 1942, US National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 165, Entry 22, 390/30/16/4, Box 980

  266 ‘a sign which said “VERBOTEN”’: This idea can almost certainly be traced back to the following line in De Beaufort, Behind the German Veil, p. 25: ‘If the notice “Verboten” appears on any door, passage, lawn, railway train, church, or anything else, then in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand it is unnecessary to take any further safeguards. [. . .] A good, law-abiding, respectable German citizen will not dream of passing through that door, gate, field, or step into that railroad train.’

  268 ‘I can teach anyone’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 15 May 1942

  268 ‘never, NEVER let up’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, ‘There should be more civilians in COHQ’, 13 April 1942

  268 ‘mene, mene . . . first time’: Solly Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords (London: Collins), 1988, pp. 151–152

  268 ‘There is, at present’: GP, ‘New Ideas for the Army’, 1 March 1942

  269 ‘It would be contrary’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, ‘There should be more civilians in COHQ’, 13 April 1942

  269 GP approaches Tizard: Louis Mountbatten to GP, 30 March 1942

  270 ‘beautiful, humorous’: C. P. Snow, ‘Bernal, a Personal Portrait’, The Science of Science (London: Penguin), 1966, p. 19

  270 ‘Three in a bed’: JDB Papers, 0.23.1

  270 ‘the boffin equivalent’: Brown, J. D. Bernal, Kindle location 4700

  270 ‘press things unduly’: J. D. Bernal, The Freedom of Necessity (London: Routledge), 1949, p. 67

  270–1 ‘Department of Wild Talents’: Raleigh Trevelyan, Grand Dukes and Diamonds (London: Secker & Warburg), 1991, p. 369

  271 ‘it is a rea
sonable assumption’: Hough, Mountbatten, p. 148

  271 ‘two favourites’: Based on a conversation between Andrew Brown and Martin Bernal, quoted in Brown, J. D. Bernal, p. 217

  271 ‘Monkey man’: Harold Wernher, World War II: Personal Experiences (London: Worrall & Robey), 1950, p. 16

  271 Bernal and the king’s conversation: C. J. Mackenzie, NRCC/CJM Diary, 1 March 1943

  271 ‘experts, charlatans’: Evelyn Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen (London: Penguin), 1967, p. 44

  272 ‘the largest . . . drawing pins’: GP to Captain Colvin, 18 March 1942

  273 Mountbatten at Chequers: Copy of an appointment book for Churchill’s weekends at Chequers, kept by Inspector George Scott, Churchill’s police escort commander (ref. WCHL 6/43), Churchill Archives Centre

  273 ‘displayed his real qualities’: GP to Jon Kimche, 14 January 1945

  273 ‘one of the greatest’: A. W. Lawrence (ed.), T. E. Lawrence by his Friends (London: Jonathan Cape), 1937, p. 161

  273 unfinished business Norway: James A. Wood, We Move Only Forward (ST Chatarines, Ontario: Vanwell), 2006, p. 20

  273 ‘roll the map’: Winston Churchill, The Hinge of Fate: The Second World War, Vol. 4 (New York: RosettaBooks), 2002, p. 314

  274 ‘they are sure to be’: GP to Louis Mountbatten, 2 April 1942

  274 ‘now at the 59th minute’: Ibid.

  274 ‘a 101% honest’: Ibid.

  275 ‘I doubt if any single’: Memorandum quoted in Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Harper), 1948, p. 519

  275–6 ‘Churchill took this’: Hopkins quoted in Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 526

  276 ‘Rather doubtful’: Alan Brooke, War Diaries: 1939–45 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 2001, p. 236

  276 ‘a snag’: Ibid.

  276 ‘Well, after all’: Bernard Fergusson, The Watery Maze (London: Collins), 1961, p. 150

  276 Marshall leaves with memo: US National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 165, Entry 21, 390/30/16/4, Box 968

  277 ‘It’s only when you see’: Hopkins quoted in Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 529

  277 Hopkins’ underwear: Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 3 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin), 1948–53, p. 22

  277 ‘itching like the devil’: Hopkins to Roosevelt, 11 April 1942, in Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 527