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. In order to protect the source, the Foreign Office insisted there should be quotable British evidence of Soviet support for subversion here. MI6 duly organised the forging and ‘discovery’ of a letter from Moscow to British communists containing the (genuine) information revealed by the intercept.
In describing how this morphed into a plan to undermine Anglo-Soviet relations more broadly, as many in MI6 and MI5 doubtless wanted, Willasey-Wilsey diagnoses mission creep rather than calculation – ‘This rings true to anyone who has served in Whitehall where conspiracies are vanishingly rare and cock-ups are legion.’ Although not intended to influence the forthcoming election, the letter was thought to have contributed to Labour’s defeat, with the result that Labour activists ever since have frequently been suspected of malign intent.
From the early 1930s, the British had more than enough knowledge of Nazi intentions to know what was coming
In the ensuing years, de Ropp broadened his reporting to include secret German rearmament, especially that of the Luftwaffe, which became a top priority. Most importantly, he cultivated Alfred Rosenberg, a senior Nazi regarded as a foreign affairs expert, establishing a close relationship lasting into the second world war. Although never one of Hitler’s big beasts like Himmler or Bormann (though important enough to be hanged at Nuremberg), Rosenberg was trusted and protected by Hitler. This in turn protected de Ropp, who was seen as a ‘sympathetic Britisher’, useful for monitoring the strength of appeasers, ‘the British peace party’. He was briefed by MI6, he recorded, to befriend Hitler ‘when he was no more than the leader of a minority, if boisterous, party, and stay with him as his friend if he rose to power’.
They first met in 1931 when Hitler wanted to know what ‘the English think about my movement’. Between then and 1939 they met at least a dozen times, Hitler describing their relationship as a ‘gentlemen’s agreement between two soldiers’ that helped him understand ‘what the English really think’. In 1932 he confessed ‘I can talk peace but mean war’, and in 1934 de Ropp was briefed on Hitler’s Russian invasion strategy, the reporting of which was dismissed by the War Office as ‘a lot of nonsense’. As if anticipating how Putin and Trump appear to view Ukraine now, Hitler described Russia as ‘a mere geographical conceit’.
Of the estimated hundreds of reports from de Ropp over 20 years, only two dozen survive in the National Archives. They show that, alongside other reporting, British governments had more than enough knowledge of Nazi intentions to anticipate what was coming. Why did such reporting not have more effect on policy and the pace of rearmament? Two reasons, Willasey-Wilsey posits. First, he thinks MI6 lacked the tradition and staff – with some exceptions – needed to identify and exploit higher level political intelligence. Second, such reporting was so unwelcome to a political establishment determined on peace that it was ignored before it was acted upon. The bureaucratic context of intelligence, notes Wilsey, always matters and intelligence is only ‘as good as the policy-makers who use, misuse or ignore it’.
It is unusual for accounts such as this to contribute to history rather than repeating or expanding it, but Willasey-Wilsey’s mole-like tunnelling in the National Archives has paid off. He has produced an important and very readable book.
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