SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP? BRITAIN AND THE US IN 1940

The American Spy, Fifth Columnists, Anti-Semitism and the Churchill Roosevelt Correspondence

Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940 Norman Moss, Houghton Mifflin; Reprint edition (9 Nov. 2004)

Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms: The Spyhunter, the Fashion Designer & the Man From Moscow, Paul Willetts; Constable (1 Oct. 2015).

The ‘special relationship’ between the US and Great Britain is supposed to have reached its zenith in 1940, in the form of the correspondence between Roosevelt and Churchill. Both of these books deal with this period and both deal with the content of this correspondence, there however the similarities end, for both books could not be more different.

Moss takes a cold clinical look at the transatlantic relationship during the nineteen weeks between the fall of France and the cancellation of Operation Sea Lion, the Germans planned invasion of southern England. He shines a light on US collusion with British covert activities, activities seeking to undermine the isolationists, and on Roosevelt’s determination to circumnavigate Congress in providing support for Great Britain. He also highlights the shifting mood of US opinion as Britain stood up to the Blitz and the threat of invasion.  That said seeking to maintain Britain’s continuing fight against Nazi Germany was no simple act of unconditional generosity based on shared values, a common heritage and language, (those these helped), these decisions rested upon a hard headed calculation that it was in the US interest that Britain continued to resist. Better the frontline over London than Washington DC, better still that the Royal Navy remained as a barrier between the Americas and Europe. Even given these factors Washington drove a hard bargain over Lend Lease[1] and the transfer of 50 ageing destroyers, the States getting by far and away the better part of the deal. This is not to deny that there was very real sentiment engaged in supporting democratic Britain over Nazi Germany, nor to downplay the importance of Roosevelt’s actions, for without US support there is a strong probability that Britain could not have survived in 1940. However the US government was only doing what all governments do, putting the interests of its own people first.[2] I have no reason to believe had the situation been reversed the British Government would have behaved any differently.

Moss provides a much more nuanced account of the so called special relationship than is usually presented, this gives considerably more credit to Churchill than Roosevelt. Churchill, who was deeply and passionately committed to the British Empire,[3] was prepared to bargain away, do whatever it took to defeat Nazi Germany. For as Moss points out Churchill knew the bases for destroyers deal was a rotten one from Britain’s perspective, only the destroyers might be just make the difference between Britain surviving the winter of 1940/41 or going under.

[Jock] Ramsay Founder of
The Right Club

Willetts’ book is by far the more gripping of the two, though, written in the style of a spy thriller, academic history it is not. He often writes as if he had access to peoples inner thought processes, their moods and unspoken motivations, territory that any serious historian would not enter. That said the book, perhaps most closely resembling a docudrama, provides a sharp and revealing picture of a strata of British society in 1940, which is not often spotlighted. Mr Willets has lifted up a stone to reveal an entomological rag bag of Fascists, pro-Nazi’s, anti-Semites, spies and fifth columnists, misfits, sociopaths, narcissist’s, criminal chancer's and wannabe Fuhrer’s. Mosley’s Blackshirts of course feature, along with much more murky and dangerous groups such as The Right Club, The Link and The Nordic League.  The Three central characters are Max Knight,* the intelligence officer whose responsibility it is to track subversive fascist activity, Anna Wolkoff a virulently anti-Semitic White Russian, and Tyler Kent a code room operative from the American Embassy. It is Kent around whom the story centres. Having got into the habit of providing secret material to the Soviets whilst serving in Moscow Kent continued to take copies of top secret cables from the London code room and sell them to the Russians.

It would be difficult to imagine a more truly despicable character than Kent, a man who does not appear to have had any redeeming qualities. A vain, arrogant, self-important, duplicitous, sociopathic womaniser, who lacked any sense of morality. He sold secrets to the Russians and gave them freely to his Nazi sympathising fifth columnist friends.

Kent After his Arrest

What makes this tale so alarming, and of course interesting, is that amongst the briefcase loads of documents he was taking out of the embassy were copies of the Churchill Roosevelt correspondence. Had the fact that Roosevelt was in secret communication with Churchill, and that he had been offering promises of support to the British Prime Minister, been revealed in the US at the time it could have seriously changed the course of the war. As Moss points out in ‘Nineteen Weeks’ Roosevelt’s dealing with Churchill were so sensitive that any revelation of their existence could have derailed Roosevelt’s re-election and seen a much more isolationist incumbent in the White House. Thus for a period in 1940 this odious little creep had the whole course of the Second World War in his hands. That the information did not find its way into the Hearst Press was largely a combination of luck, Kent’s vanity and lack of any purpose in his life beyond flirting with fascism, making money and living the high life. We may assume that once the cables had leaked to the US press this life would surely have been brought to a close?

Wolkoff presents a prime example of an able and intelligent woman completely corroded by

Anna Wolkoff

antisemitism. Deeply embittered by the loss of her privileged life in the Russian aristocracy she pins the blame on the Jews, indeed pins the blame for everything she perceives to be wrong in the world in general and her own life in particular on ‘the Jews.’ Her own family, itself rotted by antisemitism providing no corrective, whilst needless to say nobody in the circles in which she moves provided any challenge to these views. This was a crowd who all look forward to a Nazi victory, the execution of Churchill and persecution of Jews. Wolkoff herself managed a covert illegal correspondence with William Joyce, [Lord Haw Haw], feeding him titbits of local information for inclusion in his broadcasts.

 The most sinister figure amongst this cohort is, is to give him his full name, Captain Archibald Henry Maule [Jock] Ramsay, one of a significant group of aristocratic pro Nazi’s, Unionist MP for Peebles and Southern Midlothian, founder of The Right Club and a rabid anti-Semite. He seems to have enjoyed fantasising about being driven down the mall alongside Himmler after a German victory, when he would appointed Gauleiter of Scotland.

After Tyler’s arrest the whole of Ramsay’s fifth column group began to collapse. Ramsay himself became the only British MP to be interned under Defence Regulation 18B. Wolkoff was arrested and tried and found guilty, other members of the group were interned. However, given that Britain was facing an existential threat, a far greater threat than that posed by ISIS [Daesh], what is most striking is the leniency with which the group were treated. None were charged with treason and almost all were released after a couple of year’s internment. Given the treatment they would have meted out to their own opponents, Ramsay seemed particular fond of the idea of hanging people from lamp posts, this speaks volumes for the innately civilised character of Britain in 1940.[4] Most continental states would surely have had Ramsay shot as a traitor.

‘Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms,’ is a fascinating read and read alongside ‘Nineteen Weeks’, highlights the extremely perilous position that Britain was in in 1940.[5]

*There is a minor sub-plot to this tale concerning William Joyce, not fully explored by Willets:-

‘In August 1939, just before the outbreak of war, Joyce renewed his British Passport for another year and dissolved his National Socialist League. On 1 September 1939, two days before war was declared, Special Branch detectives went to arrest Joyce at his Earl's Court home. However, they found that William Joyce and his wife had left for Germany on 26 August. Joyce's sister claimed that a MI5 agent had tipped off Joyce that he was about to be arrested.’ http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/william_joyce.htm

Willets claims that Joyce was indeed tipped off by an MI5 agent and that that agent was none other than Max Knight. He argues that the rationale for this move was that Joyce had previously done some work for Knight and that his presence in Germany could be useful. This is all Willets has to say on a matter that if revealed would have destroyed Max Knight’s career.

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[1] In 1945 The Americans, suspicious of the newly elected Labour Government, pulled the plug on financial support for the Atlee administration behaving more like a hostile power than a friendly one, particularly as Britain was also incurring the burden of being an occupying power in western Germany.

[2] And in a democratic age that is precisely what the electorate expect. Though the Isolationists belief that Britain’s defeat would have no consequence for the US is one of the greatest instances of intellectual vacuity in the 20^th century.

[3] Seemingly oblivious to the incongruity, let alone hypocrisy, of fighting for democracy whilst subjugating the populations of great swathes of the planet. 

[4] Of course aristocratic string pulling and the establishment looking after ‘its own,’ played a part. Working class fascists could expect rougher treatment.

[5] The greatest danger not being an attempted German invasion, though of course this was a primary concern, but mass starvation creating a situation in which Britain would be forced to sue for peace.