in Australia. Foley … helped Paul Rosbaud send his Jewish wife, Hilde, and their only daughter, Angela, to the safety of the UK..
London, Saturday September 22 2007Campaigners demand recognition for Austrian who exposed Nazi nuclear plans Spy left out in the cold: how MI6 buried heroic exploits of agent ‘Griffin’by Owen BowcottThe GuardianTHE mystery of how one of Britain’s longest-serving and best-placed spies smuggled scientific documents about Hitler’s nuclear weapons programme out of Nazi Germany are concealed, it is alleged, within the secret service’s archives.David Irving comments:THE more that one hears about
these Germans who were Jews or had Jewish wives, and spied or committed treason for the enemy — in England we too have only to think of Klaus Fuchs, or the Krogers (Cohens), or “George Blake” (real name still unknown) — the more intelligible becomes Adolf Hitler’s cruel rationale in ordering them all quarantined during World War II, in the national security interest, and urging all his coalition partners (e.g. Admiral Miklos Horthy) to do the same.
The case of Paul Rosbaud is particularly poignant, as he was widely trusted and respected by the German scientific community. Here is a passage from my memoirs, my 1965 interview with Professor Otto Hahn, who had discovered atomic fission in December 1938 (and is referred to in this article).I CURIOUSLY asked him when he had made the actual discovery. “Oh, that would have been January 1939, nicht wahr?” I politely corrected him.
He and the chemist Fritz Strassmann had published their scientific paper
on January 9, 1939, which would surely indicate some date in the preceding months for the laboratory experiment. What counts is the first scientist to get his discovery into print. “I remember,” he agreed. “When we finished the paper I phoned Rosbaud.” Dr. Paul Rosbaud, the editor of the German scientific journal Naturwissenschaften, was a close friend.He came hurrying round that same evening.
The two chemists had completed their paper, claiming proof that the uranium nucleus had “burst asunder,” only minutes earlier. “I told him to chuck out somebody else’s paper to make room.” He grinned at the memory. Several others were working along the same lines as he, Enrico Fermi for one.
The next edition of the journal was already in proof, but Rosbaud ordered the Hahn&endash;Strassmann paper set up in type at once bearing that day’s date as its date of receipt — December 22, 1938. “It was the solstice,” I concluded my chapter in The Virus House.
“The world’s winter had begun.”Cherie Booth QC, the former prime minister’s wife, appeared in court yesterday in an attempt to rescue the reputation of Paul Rosbaud – reputedly the longest-serving and best-placed spy working for Britain during the second world war – from oblivion.In a test case that could force the service to disclose more of its archives, Ms Booth argued that the heroic role of Rosbaud, who died in 1963, should be widely appreciated, and accused the intelligence service of
resisting the culture of open government.Yesterday’s hearing, at the offices of an employment tribunal in central London, was the culmination of years of campaigning by Vincent Frank-Steiner, the nephew of the Austrian-born secret agent who was a trained physicist.Although hundreds of MI5 and GCHQ files have been released to the National Archives at Kew, none has been intentionally handed over by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) – commonly known as MI6.Ms Booth was representing the
surviving Rosbaud family in their application to the investigatory powers tribunal, a body established in 2000 to inquire into complaints of alleged misconduct by the intelligence services – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.Three years ago documents were published detailing the extraordinary acts of espionage and bravery carried out by Major Frank Foley, right, the MI6 station chief in Berlin in the run-up to the war.Foley used his official position as passport control officer in the embassy to save thousands
of Jews from the death camps [Website comment: The embassy was closed in September 1939; there were no death camps at that time]. He helped Paul Rosbaud send his Jewish wife, Hilde, and their only daughter, Angela, to the safety of the UK. But Rosbaud, who worked as a scientific journalist, insisted on remaining in Germany to fight Hitler’s regime from within.BORN in Graz in 1896, he served in the Austrian army during the first world war.
Rosbaud’s experience of being captured by British forces, and his appreciation of their civility, created an enduring impression.After completing a doctoral thesis in Germany, his skill and personal charm enabled him to gain access to Germany’s leading physicists – including those attempting to build an atomic bomb.Foley appreciated the privileged position he occupied within the Nazi scientific community and recruited him as a British agent.
Codenamed Griffin, he soon began providing London with detailed information on Hitler’s weapons programme.
One of his first coups, in January 1939, was to publish in his scientific journal, Naturwissenschaften, work on nuclear fission by the physicist Otto Hahn [Website comment: See panel at right]Its publication alerted the international physics community and encouraged Albert Einstein to write to President Roosevelt warning that the Germans had begun a nuclear programme.Rosbaud is also believed to have supplied British intelligence with information about V2 rocket bombs and confirmation that Nazi
efforts to construct an atom bomb had been unsuccessful. Much of his information was smuggled out through Norwegian and French resistance networks. Coded messages were sent using numerical references to pages, lines and words in commonly available textbooks.Three weeks after the end of the war he was brought back to Britain and began a new life: founding Pergamon Press, scientific publishers, with Robert Maxwell.A biography of Rosbaud was published in 1986 but it raised fresh questions.
How, for example, could he have escaped the attentions of the Gestapo for so long? And why did the British apparently not inform the Americans that the Nazis’ nuclear programme had failed?A film about Major Foley’s (left) exploits is due to go into production next year. There is one fleeting reference to Rosbaud in an official history of MI6 which mentions a “well-placed writer for a German scientific journal who was in touch with the SIS from spring 1942”.
The true extent of his espionage, however, remains a mystery.A letter from MI6 responding to Dr Frank-Steiner’s initial request, said: “It is not SIS practice to confirm or deny whether a person who is alleged to have been an agent of SIS was in fact an agent, as such a practice would be damaging to the work of SIS.”Ms Booth described the claim that Britain’s foreign relations would be damaged by disclosure as “fanciful”. She said: “Parliament intended there should be scrutiny.
The way [MI6 is] approaching this case shows that have not adjusted to the new world where they are accountable to third parties for their decisions. SIS has disclosed its 19th-century archives. So there’s clearly some flexibility.
We do not accept that rules that are applicable to the government are not applicable to [MI6].”The court heard that a 1992 statement from the lord chancellor appeared to impose a blanket ban on release of the service’s files.Jonathan Crow QC, for MI6, said there “had to be necessity to make the disclosure” of files in the national interest, “otherwise it would turn SIS into an information bureau”.The release of 19th-century archives, he said, had been permitted because they predated the
formation of MI6 in 1909.The hearing will continue at a later date.Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited The traditional enemies of Free Speech The origins of anti Semitism Mrs Foley’s diary solves the mystery of Hess