Posted on 11/03/2024 2:09:18 PM PST by Eleutheria5
The art in espionage is the ability to hide in plain sight and the greatest of spies are the ones you never learn about.
This statement rings true in the case of Anthony Blunt.
His life seemed predestined for greatness. A Cambridge graduate with familial ties to the Royal Family, he was the very picture of establishment respectability. His brilliance as a polymath, fluency in multiple languages, and renown as a world-class art historian made him virtually untouchable, and he knew it.
Beneath this veneer of aristocratic refinement lurked a secret that would shake Britain to its very foundations. For decades, Blunt operated as a Soviet spy as a member of the so-called Cambridge Five. His position in MI5 and then within the court of the British Royal family granted him unprecedented access to top secret information at the most critical junctures of World War 2.
It took 34 years before Blunt’s treachery was finally revealed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. As shocking as his betrayal was to the British public, a new hypothesis suggests that he may also have been handing secrets to the Nazis which prolonged the war and cost thousands of Allied lives.
Labelling Anthony Blunt as ‘the most dangerous spy in history’ as some have done may seem hyperbolic, but when considering the information he had access to, and thus the power he held to influence the strategic balance of power, it may indeed be true.
(Excerpt) Read more at encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com ...
He was granted immunity in exchange for a limited confession, and kept all his frills and prestige until Maggie Thatcher outed him. In short, a deep stater.
Tim Walz says “hold my beer.”
If true?
Speaking of Russian spies, recently watched a good Russian series about Richard Sorge, although I was disappointed to learn the series made up the story about his Japanese mistress betraying him, which was not the truth. He wasn’t betrayed by her, but another member of his Tokyo ring.
😉
The link takes me to Boris and Natasha…..
Your link takes me to a picture of Boris and Natasha of “Rocky and Bulwinkle.”
Currently reading Spycatcher by former MI5 official Peter Wright who worked on getting Blunt to spill his guts. It’s an older book.
Don’t make it worse.
It’s Badinov.
A return of Fractured Fairy Tales might almost get me watching TV again after 20+ years.
It would probably be politically incorrect though.
As I am sure you are well aware, movies are such a dicey business for history. I get making things interesting, but so many times they make what they think is a “better” story even though the truth would actually be far better.
Like that U-571 movie. The U-110 or U-505 was real and fascinating.
But they make a fiction movie into a junior Red October, with WWII subs shooting torpedoes at each other, the boarding crew having a firefight with the Germans, etc etc.
The real story was so much better.
The point of Blunt helping the Nazis was to help the Russians by wearing down the US, Britain, and the Nazis. In effect, Stalin preferred to defeat the Nazis and seize Germany for communism. With the French Resistance and Italian also heavily communist, that would permit the Soviets to control post war Europe.
The fairy theme song just went through my head!
We still use terms from that show like “The Wayback Machine” and “Whatsamatta U.”
“Currently reading Spycatcher by former MI5 official Peter Wright ...”
There was a critical review of Spycatcher in the 1993 volume of Studies in Intelligence, which is the in-house journal of the CIA. Interestingly, the 1993 volume is not in the journal’s archive on the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence website.
https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/
Spies are overrated. In the grand scheme of things he made no difference as both the nazis and soviets lost. Our spies only spy on us. They’ll find out the Chicoms are gonna lose too and pigs like Walz will be outed.
Wasn’t there an Agatha Christie episode that David Suchet plays Hercule Poirot and they find out about Blunt’s traitorous acts.
In effect, Stalin preferred to defeat the Nazis and seize Germany for communism.
The last thing Stalin wanted was for the Communists to gain power in Germany without the Soviet Union, that’s why Stalin cooperated with the Nazis to turn in German Communists after the Nazis gained power. He saw an independent Communist Germany as a threat to the Soviet Union’s dominion over the global Communist movement.
I hate it too when they change something to make a movie *better* than the facts or a book.
It NEVER improves it.
His espionage caused the Soviets to win the Baltics and Balkans, because the third front via Norway failed on account of the Nazis expecting it, so the Soviets had a free hand to keep advancing until Berlin, while the allies were caught up in Africa, Southern Italy and Western Europe. This assumes that he was the one who spilled the beans on the Norwegian parachute drop and assault.
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