MI6’s historical archive suffered disastrous weeding on grounds of space from the 1920s onwards. One of many mysteries was the identity of a 1930s/40s agent referred to cryptically in surviving papers as ‘C’s German source’ (C being the chief of MI6). Now, as a result of indefatigable research, Tim Willasey-Wilsey has established who the man was who almost uniquely reported on the thinking of Hitler’s pre-war inner circle. In the course of this the author may also have resolved the origin of the notorious Zinoviev Letter, believed by many in the Labour party to have lost them the 1924 general election.
William Sylvester de Ropp, a baron usually known as Bill de Ropp, was a Lithuanian Balt, born in 1886. He qualified for both German and Russian nationality, married an Englishwoman, became naturalised British and could pass as Russian, German, French or British. He fought in the British Army during the first world war until discharged with chronic conjunctivitis, after which he joined the Directorate of Air Intelligence and oversaw prisoner of war interrogations.
On 30 April 1919 he became an MI6 agent, having offered his services to Stewart Menzies who went on to become C during the second world war. Under journalistic and banking cover he reported on Soviet Russia and Germany. In the affair of the Zinoviev Letter he played two roles, passing himself off as both the mysterious General Korniyev and as Captain Black. Using information unavailable to Gill Bennett in her masterly 2018 examination of the affair, Willasey-Wilsey demonstrates that it began as a Home Office request to use intercept intelligence to sow dissension between Moscow and the British Communist party.
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