THE WALLS HAVE EARS
Copyright © 2019 Helen Fry
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to
the Secret Listeners
who fled Hitler and worked for British intelligence
and
to the memory of
Thomas Joseph Kendrick
MI6 spymaster
‘In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be protected by a bodyguard of lies.’
Sir Winston Churchill
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Prologue Decades of Silence
1 The Tower of London
2 M Room Operations
3 Trent Park
4 Prized Prisoners, Idle Chatter
5 The Spider
6 Battle of the Generals
7 Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
8 Secret Listeners
9 Rocket Science
10 ‘Our Guests’
11 Saga of the Generals
12 War Crimes and the Holocaust
13 Breaking the German Will to Resist
14 British Intelligence, POWs and War Crimes Trials
15 Always Listening
Epilogue Secrets to the Grave
Appendix of Intelligence Staff
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Plates
1. The Tower of London.
2. Inside the Salt Tower at the Tower of London.
3. Trent Park at Cockfosters, North London.
4. Colonel Thomas Joseph Kendrick. Courtesy of Barbara Lloyd.
5. A commercial 88A pressure microphone made by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
6. The microphone from RCA’s 88A.
7. Catherine Townshend. Courtesy of Jennifer Jestin and Loftus Jestin.
8. General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim arriving at Trent Park in May 1943. National Army Museum London.
9. German generals walk in the grounds of Trent Park.
10. ‘Lord Aberfeldy’. Courtesy of Elizabeth Cameron.
11. German generals at Trent Park, November 1943. Courtesy of Barbara Lloyd.
12. Samuel Denys Felkin. Courtesy of Anne Walton.
13. A secret listener using special equipment.
14. The M Room area as it looks today in the basement at Trent Park.
15. Ernst Lederer. Courtesy of Helen Lederer.
16. An aerial view of Latimer House. Courtesy of Ken Walsh.
17. An aerial view of ‘the spider’ at the rear of the Latimer estate.
18. Intelligence Officers with Kendrick, outside Latimer House. Courtesy of Ken Walsh.
19. The Naval Intelligence team outside Latimer House. Courtesy of Derek Nudd.
20. U-Boat officer, reconstruction at Latimer House. Courtesy of Jonathan Fry.
21. Block D at Bletchley Park. Andy Stagg / Courtesy of Bletchley Park Trust.
22. Female intelligence staff. Courtesy of Elizabeth Bruegger.
23. Non-commissioned officers working across Kendrick’s sites. Courtesy of Paul Douglas.
24. German Jewish secret listeners.
a. Freddie Benson. Courtesy of Richard Benson and Andrew Benson.
b. George Pulay. Courtesy of Jessica Pulay.
c. Fritz Lustig. Courtesy of Robin Lustig and Stephen Lustig.
d. Eric Mark. Courtesy of Eric Mark.
25. The White House, Wilton Park. Courtesy of Fritz Lustig.
26. Heimwarth Jestin. Courtesy of Loftus Jestin and Jennifer Jestin.
27. Émigré women and secret listeners. Courtesy of Richard Benson and Andrew Benson.
28. The launch of a German V-2 rocket. Ullstein bild / Getty Images.
29. Peenemünde, site of Hitler’s secret weapon programme of V-1 and V-2 rockets. Keyston-France / Gamma-Rapho / Getty Images.
30. An example transcript of a bugged conversation from Trent Park.
31. Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. Central Press / Hulton Archive / Getty Images.
In the text
The Tower of London in the Second World War.
Circuit diagram for a microphone.
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to Heather McCallum, the Managing Director at Yale and commissioning editor, for publishing this book and for her enthusiasm and support. My sincere thanks to Marika Lysandrou and Rachael Lonsdale at Yale for their meticulous edits, patience and work on the manuscript that has enhanced the story, along with my copy editor Eve Leckey. I am equally grateful to my agent Andrew Lownie for his immense support throughout.
My profound thanks to two very special veteran secret listeners, Eric Mark and the late Fritz Lustig (1919–2018), without whom this book could not have been written. We embarked on a journey that led to the three of us appearing live on the BBC’s The One Show in January 2013. I was able to interview Fritz’s wife, Susan, many times before she passed away in 2013. I also interviewed secret listeners Peter Hart and Paul Douglas. My thanks to veteran former intelligence officer, Cynthia Turner (née Crew), now residing in Australia, for her memories.
This book could not have been written without the help over several years of the grandchildren of Colonel Thomas Joseph Kendrick (Secret Intelligence Service spymaster and commanding officer): my sincere thanks to his granddaughter Barbara Lloyd and her brother, the late Ken Walsh. Much appreciation, too, to Kendrick’s great-granddaughters Anne Marie Thorpe and Christina Sutch. Huge thanks to Derek Nudd (grandson of Commander Burton Cope) for providing information from his own naval intelligence research and sharing his transcripts of the diary of naval interrogator Bernard Trench. Also to Anne Walton (daughter of Samuel Denys Felkin).
My gratitude to the following people for providing information and photographs: Lesley Allocca and son Michael Allocca, Dudley Lambert Bennett and son Otto Bennett, Andrew Benson, Richard Benson, David Birnbaum, Professor Hugo de Burgh, Robert Chester, Richard Deveson, Tom Deveson, Liz Driscoll, Andrea Evers, Arthur Fleiss, Dr John Francken, Adam Ganz, Barbara Horwitz, Caroline Jestin, Jennifer Jestin and Loftus Jestin, Andrew Leach, Helen Lederer, Peter Leslie, Roger Lloyd-Pack, the late Robin Lustig, Stephen Lustig, Melanie McFadyean, Stella MacKinnon, Alasdair Macleod, Anne Mark, Miriam Mark, Roger Marshall, Nigel Morgan, Ernest Newhouse, Peter Oppenheimer, Veronica Pettifer, Jessica Pulay, John Ross, Trixy Tilsiter, Sir Michael Tugendhat, Tom Tugendhat, Mimia Umney-Gray, David Wilson. My thanks to Alexia Dobinson who has typed up original reports and interviews.
A huge amount of support has been given by Mark Birdsall and Deborah McDonald of Eye Spy Intelligence Magazine – my thanks to them, and also to Iain Standen (CEO of Bletchley Park), Sarah Paterson and Kay Heather at the Imperial War Museum, Mark Scoble, Nigel Parker, Dick Smith, Neil Fearn, Mark Lubienski, David King, Steve Mallinson, Peter Quinn; Phil Tomaselli for his expertise from MI5, Secret Intelligence Services and
Foreign Office sources; Fred Judge and Joyce Hutton at the Military Intelligence Museum (Chicksands); Tom Drysdale, archivist at HM Tower of London; and Colonel John Starling and Norman Brown of the Royal Pioneer Corps Association.
This research has led to a special friendship with producer Rebecca Hayman, whom Fritz Lustig and I first met during the filming for the documentary, Spying on Hitler’s Army (Channel 4 and PBS). Most poignantly, it was Rebecca who recorded Fritz Lustig’s last public interview, with Sir David Jason in the grounds of Trent Park (Cockfosters, North London) in 2017, for the TV series David Jason’s Secret Service.
Having written the wartime history of MI9/MI19’s bugging operation and the biography of Thomas Kendrick (Spymaster), I became involved in the campaign in 2015 to save Trent Park as a museum to the secret listeners, and subsequently as deputy chair and a trustee of the Trent Park Museum Trust. The trust is indebted to Mr Tony Pidgley (Chairman of Berkeley Homes) and his Board who have generously given over the ground floor and basement of the mansion for this purpose.
Thanks to my dedicated family for their loyal and practical support over the years. A special commendation goes to my eldest son who accompanied me on several trips to the National Archives in 2010. He worked methodically and carefully through the transcripts of conversations from Trent Park, Latimer House and Wilton Park.
I have been incredibly privileged and honoured to have worked on this story for two documentaries with Sir David Jason OBE, for ITV’s Britain’s Secret Homes (filmed at Latimer House in Buckinghamshire), and Channel 4’s David Jason’s Secret Service (October Films, 2017). Sir David is inspirational, enjoys a good discussion on spies, and has huge respect for the men and women who worked at the M Room sites. His particular hero is the wartime spymaster himself: Thomas Joseph Kendrick. The favourite drink of Kendrick’s colleagues – especially the Naval Intelligence team – was the exotic cocktail ‘pink gin’. So, may we raise a glass of pink gin to the nation’s hitherto unsung hero, Thomas Kendrick, as we picture him on the terrace of one of his secret sites with Ian Fleming’s own spies of the Naval Intelligence . . .
Abbreviations
Air Intelligence (internal section)
ATS
Auxiliary Territorial Service
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
CSDIC
Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre
DDMI
Deputy Director of Military Intelligence
DMI
Director of Military Intelligence
ETOUSA
European Theater of Operations, United States Army
FANY
First Aid Nursing Yeomanry
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
FIU
Forward Interrogation Unit
GR
General Report
GRGG
General Report, German Generals
GRX
General Report, POWs of different services
HUMINT
Human Intelligence
JIC
Joint Intelligence Committee
NCO
Non-Commissioned Officer
NID
Naval Intelligence Division
OKW
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
OSS
Office of Strategic Services
PID
Political Intelligence Department
POW
prisoner of war
PWE
Political Warfare Executive
PWIS
Prisoner of War Interrogation Section
RASC
Royal Army Service Corps
RCA
RMLI
Royal Marine Light Infantry
RNVR
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve
SD
Sicherheitsdienst
SHAEF
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force
SIR
Special Interrogation Report
SIS
Secret Intelligence Service
SOE
Special Operations Executive
SR
Special Report
SRA
Special Report, Air Force POWs
SRGG
Special Report, German Generals and senior officers
SRM
Special Report, Army POWs
SRN
Special Report, Naval POWs
SRX
Special Report, POWs of different services
SS
Schutzstaffel
USAAF
United States Army Air Force
WAAF
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
W/T
wireless transmissions
PROLOGUE
Decades of Silence
Paratrooper: I was very amused yesterday when they [interrogation officers] showed me a drawing of the sloping ramp rocket projector.
Infantry soldier: That doesn’t convey anything at all. I’ve no idea how big it really is.
Paratrooper: The track along which the projectile travels was tiny, just as the projectile was. You know these heavy trench mortars, these grenades with a long wing (??) . . . a projectile just like that! How I laughed . . . I was quite helpless with laughter. The sloping ramp looks similar but . . . quite different . . . They know nothing about it, which is a relief to me.
11 March 1943. In a cell at Latimer House in Buckinghamshire, two German soldiers, a lower-rank infantry officer captured in Tunisia the previous year, and a paratrooper captured in Algeria a few months before, are discussing the interrogations they have undergone. The previous day, British agents had hauled the paratrooper into an interrogation room and shown him a sketch of some rocket launch ramps.1 He had given nothing away and was now boasting about it. As he told his cellmate, the British had got the dimensions of the projectile and its track entirely wrong, and, thankfully, knew absolutely nothing of Germany’s launch ramp designs. What’s more, the interrogating officers had tried in vain to soften him up to make him talk. They were unbelievably stupid.
What the prisoners did not suspect was that behind the walls of their cell a team of secret listeners were recording, transcribing and interpreting every word. That these two prisoners had been brought together in the one room was no accident, and the interrogations which had been so inadequate were not what they seemed. Above all, their boastful conversations were not private. The captured soldiers had unwittingly handed over another piece of vital information to MI6, playing their part in an elaborate hoax, a brilliantly conceived and spectacularly successful strategy to extract information from German prisoners of war.
The recording of prisoners’ private conversations following an interrogation was one part of an enormous clandestine operation run by one man: Thomas Joseph Kendrick. When war was declared on 3 September 1939, Kendrick already had three decades of experience in espionage and running spy networks across Europe for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6).2 His eventful career was veiled in total secrecy and would not have appeared out of place in the gritty world of a John Le Carré novel.
Kendrick was both soldier and spy, having served Britain in intelligence since the age of twenty-one at the end of the Boer War, into the 1910s in South Africa, and again during the First World War in France. He had been formally on the payroll of SIS since 1923.3 In 1925, he was posted to Vienna as the British Passport Officer – a cover for his SIS intelligence work.4 He oversaw spy networks across Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Italy and handled a number of double agents.5 Kendrick was the ideal spymaster – quick-witted, gregarious, cultured and a gifted pianist who charmed his way through Austrian high society and gathered useful contacts for his spy network.6 Like a spider, he spun his fine web in every discreet corner of Europe and stole secrets for his country. With an old-fashioned sense of humour,
he could amuse a room full of guests and regularly entertained in his Viennese apartment. Gregarious, yes – but he was also discreet, trained in the art of human espionage and able to think on his feet.
Within hours of Hitler’s annexation of Austria on 12 March 1938, termed ‘the Anschluss’, the British Passport Office was inundated with hundreds of Jews seeking exit from Austria. Kendrick struggled to run his spy networks and send intelligence back to MI6 chief Hugh ‘Quex’ Sinclair in London because he and his staff were working up to twelve hours a day to save the country’s Jews and political opponents of the Nazi regime. Foreign Office reports credit them with saving between 175 and 200 Jews a day, something for which they have yet to be fully recognised.7 Kendrick forged documents to enable the country’s Jews to emigrate, even if they did not qualify, and stamped and approved their papers, including applications that were not complete.8
Adolf Eichmann, who later masterminded the Final Solution, had been dispatched to Vienna with orders from the Führer to rid Austria of its Jews by actively assisting their emigration. Eichmann turned to Kendrick as the British Passport Officer who could aid his plan. He struck a deal with Kendrick in which a thousand Jews were given illegal visas to enter Palestine without the knowledge of the British authorities.9 Palestine was a thorny issue for the British, with strict quotas at the time. Kendrick was acting on humanitarian grounds but was reprimanded when the Foreign Office discovered his actions over Palestine.10