Sidney Reilly

[peterhof]

Even the most eloquent wordsmith will find it difficult to adequately describe the extraordinary life and times of Sidney Reilly - “The Ace of Spies.” Wikipedia cautions:

“The origins, identities, and activities of Sidney George Reilly have befuddled researchers and intelligence agencies for more than a century; hence, much of his purported life and many of his notorious exploits should be cautiously examined. Reilly himself told several versions of his origins to confuse and mislead investigators.”

Given this, I thought I would present a few highlights from the Wikipedia biography which are not particularly controversial. Reilly’s most significant efforts came during the course of World War 1 which cumulated in a daring effort to destabilize and overthrow the Bolshevik government in Russia. Since the Bolsheviks were empowered by a brilliant bit of political warfare conducted by the Wilhelmine government in the course of the Great War, Reilly’s amazing career is an appropriate topic for the WW1 forum.

Wikipedia:

“The endeavour to depose the Bolshevik Government and assassinate Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is considered by biographers to be Reilly's most daring scheme. The Lockhart Plot, or more accurately the Reilly Plot, has sparked debate over the years: Did the Allies launch a clandestine operation to overthrow the Bolsheviks? If so, did the Cheka uncover the plot at the eleventh hour or had they unmasked the conspirators from the outset? Some historians have suggested that the Cheka orchestrated the conspiracy from beginning to end and possibly that Reilly was a Bolshevik agent provocateur.

In May 1918, Robert Bruce Lockhart (BBC 2011), an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service, and Reilly repeatedly met with Boris Savinkov, head of the counter-revolutionary Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom (UDMF). Savinkov had been Deputy War Minister in the Provisional Government of Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky, and a key opponent of the Bolsheviks. A former Social Revolutionary Party member, Savinkov had formed the UDMF consisting of several thousand Russian fighters. Lockhart and Reilly then contacted anti-Bolshevik groups linked to Savinkov and supported these factions with SIS funds. They also liaised with the intelligence operatives of the French and U.S. consuls in Moscow.

In June, disillusioned members of the Latvian Riflemen began appearing in anti-Bolshevik circles in Petrograd and were eventually directed to Captain Cromie, a British naval attaché, and Mr. Constantine, a Turkish merchant who was actually Reilly. As Latvians were deemed the Praetorian Guard of the Bolsheviks and entrusted with the security of the Kremlin, Reilly believed their participation in the pending coup to be vital and arranged their meeting with Lockhart at the British mission in Moscow. At this stage, Reilly planned a coup against the Bolshevik government and drew up a list of Soviet military leaders ready to assume responsibilities on the fall of the Bolshevik government.

While the coup was prepared, an Allied force landed on August 4, 1918, at Arkhangelsk, Russia, beginning a famous military expedition dubbed Operation Archangel. Its objective was to prevent the German Empire from obtaining Allied military supplies stored in the region. In retaliation for this incursion, the Bolsheviks raided the British diplomatic mission on August 5, disrupting a meeting Reilly had arranged between the anti-Bolshevik Latvians, UDMF officials, and Lockhart.

On 17 August, Reilly conducted meetings between Latvian regimental leaders and liaised with Captain George Hill, another British agent operating in Russia. They agreed the coup would occur the first week of September during a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars and the Moscow Soviet at the Bolshoi Theatre. However, on the eve of the coup, unexpected events thwarted the operation. On 30 August, a military cadet shot and killed Moisei Uritsky, head of the Petrograd Cheka. On the same day, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, shot and wounded Lenin as he left a meeting at the Michelson factory in Moscow.

These events were used by the Cheka to implicate any malcontents in a grand conspiracy that warranted a full-scale campaign: the 'Red Terror'. Thousands of political opponents were seized and executed. Using lists supplied by undercover agents, the Cheka arrested those involved in Reilly's pending coup. They raided the British Embassy in Petrograd and killed Cromie, Reilly's accomplice, who put up an armed resistance. Lockhart was arrested, but later released in exchange for Litvinov, a diplomat who had been arrested in London in a reprisal. Elizaveta Otten, Reilly's chief courier, was arrested as well as his other mistress Olga Starzheskaya. Another courier, Maria Fride, with papers she carried for Reilly, was arrested at Otten's flat.

On 3 September, the aborted coup was sensationalised by the Russian press. Reilly was identified as a leader, and a dragnet ensued. The Cheka raided his assumed refuge, but Reilly avoided capture and met with Captain Hill. Hill proposed that Reilly escape Russia via Ukraine using their network of British agents for safe houses and assistance. Reilly instead chose a shorter, more dangerous route north to Finland. With the Cheka closing in, Reilly, carrying a Baltic German passport, posed as a legation secretary and departed Moscow in a railway car reserved for the German Embassy. In Kronstadt, Reilly sailed by ship to Helsinki and reached Stockholm. He arrived in London on 8 November.

The day before Reilly and Hill met with Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming ("C") in London for their debriefing, the Russian Izvestia newspaper reported that both Reilly and Lockhart had been sentenced to death in absentia by a Revolutionary Tribunal for their roles in the attempted coup of the Bolshevik government. Their sentence was to be carried out immediately should either of them be apprehended on Soviet soil. This sentence would later be served on Reilly when he was caught by the OGPU in 1925. Within a week of their debriefing, the British Secret Intelligence Service and the Foreign Office again sent Reilly and Hill to Russia under the cover of British trade delegates. Their assignment was to uncover information about the Black Sea coast needed for the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.”

After this harrowing assignment, Reilly returned to the Soviet Union yet again. This time in an effort to unseat Stalin which proved fatal. Wikipedia states:

“In September 1925, undercover agents of the OGPU, the intelligence successor of the Cheka, lured Reilly to Bolshevik Russia, ostensibly to meet the supposed anti-Communist organization The Trust—in reality, an OGPU deception existing under the code name Operation Trust. At the Russian border, Reilly was introduced to undercover OGPU agents posing as senior Trust representatives from Moscow.

After Reilly crossed the Finnish border, the Soviets captured, transported, and interrogated him at Lubyanka Prison. On arrival, Reilly was taken to the office of Roman Pilar, a Soviet official who the previous year had arrested and ordered the execution of Boris Savinkov, a close friend of Reilly. Pilar reminded Reilly that he had been sentenced to death by a 1918 Soviet tribunal for his participation in a counter-revolutionary plot against the Bolshevik government.

While Reilly was being interrogated, the Soviets publicly claimed that he had been shot trying to cross the Finnish border. Historians debate whether Reilly was tortured while in OGPU custody. Cook contends that Reilly was not tortured other than psychologically by mock execution scenarios designed to shake the resolve of prisoners. During OGPU interrogation, Reilly maintained his charade of being a British subject born in Clonmel, Ireland, and would not reveal any intelligence matters.

While facing such daily interrogation, Reilly kept a diary in his cell of tiny handwritten notes on cigarette papers which he hid in the plasterwork of a cell wall. While his Soviet captors were interrogating Reilly, Reilly in turn was analysing and documenting their techniques. The diary was a detailed record of OGPU interrogation techniques, and Reilly was understandably confident that such unique documentation would, if he escaped, be of interest to the British SIS. After Reilly's death, Soviet guards discovered the diary in Reilly's cell, and photographic enhancements were made by OGPU technicians.

According to British intelligence documents released in 2000, Reilly was executed in a forest near Moscow on Wednesday November 5, 1925. According to eyewitness Boris Gudz, the execution of Sidney Reilly was supervised by an OGPU officer, Grigory Feduleev; another OGPU officer, George Syroezhkin, fired the final shot into Reilly's chest. Gudz also confirmed that the order to kill Reilly came from Stalin directly.”

About later fictional portrayals of Sidney Reilly, Wikipedia tells us:

“In 1983, a television mini-series, Reilly: Ace of Spies, dramatised the historical adventures of Reilly. The programme won the 1984 BAFTA TV Award. Reilly was portrayed by actor Sam Neill. Leo McKern portrayed Sir Basil Zaharoff. The series was based on Robin Bruce Lockhart's book, Ace of Spies, which was adapted by Troy Kennedy Martin.

In Ian Fleming, The Man Behind James Bond by Andrew Lycett, Sidney Reilly is listed as an inspiration for James Bond. Reilly's friend, former diplomat and journalist Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, was a close acquaintance of Ian Fleming for many years and recounted to Fleming many of Reilly's espionage adventures. Lockhart had worked with Reilly in Russia in 1918, where they became embroiled in an SIS-backed plot to overthrow Lenin's Bolshevik government. Within five years of his disappearance in Soviet Russia in 1925, the press had turned Reilly into a household name, lauding him as a master spy and recounting his many espionage adventures. Fleming had therefore long been aware of Reilly's mythical reputation and had listened to Lockhart's recollections. Like Fleming's fictional creation, Reilly was multi-lingual, fascinated by the Far East, fond of fine living, and a compulsive gambler.”

The imposition of Communism in Russia was by far the most momentous consequence of the Great War. Somewhere in the world there should be a monument to acknowledge, commemorate, and celebrate the uncommon courage of Sidney Reilly in the fight against Communism (not to mention dispelling the lingering odor of the Cambridge five). Perhaps the approaching millennial commemoration of the Great War will be the occasion to finally erect a lasting memorial to the extraordinary courage of the man whose tireless efforts altered the course of history and almost prevented World War 2.

[ljadw]

Reilly was an inspiration for James Bond : we know enough .

But,even if he succeeded,he would not have prevented WWII:the outbreak of WWII was caused by a quarrel between Germany and Poland,which resulted in a German attack on Poland . The nature of the regime in Russia was irrelevant for the utbreak of WWII .

[peterhof]

It was the subterranean political subversion by the Comintern, organized by Lenin, which triggered the rise of National Socialist reaction in the form of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and a handful of lesser "lights." This is what led to WW2.

[J. Duncan]

The best book on Sidney Reilly is probably "Trust No One" by Richard B. Spence. This book utilizes all previously published works as well as further research from Soviet archives. The original eyewitness accounts of Bruce H. W. Lockhart
"British Agent" and George F. Hill "Go Spy the Land" are very interesting too. There is also the good book by Soviet scholar and biographer of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, with many pages devoted to the exploits of Sidney Reilly, Robert Service's "Spies and Commissars".

[peterhof]

The best book on Sidney Reilly is probably "Trust No One" by Richard B. Spence. This book utilizes all previously published works as well as further research from Soviet archives. The original eyewitness accounts of Bruce H. W. Lockhart
"British Agent" and George F. Hill "Go Spy the Land" are very interesting too. There is also the good book by Soviet scholar and biographer of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, with many pages devoted to the exploits of Sidney Reilly, Robert Service's "Spies and Commissars".

Yes. The award-winning series "Reilly: Ace of Spies" is also available from Amazon.com in multiple formats - including 4 DVD's - for $24.68.

[Terry Duncan]

It was the subterranean political subversion by the Comintern, organized by Lenin, which triggered the rise of National Socialist reaction in the form of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and a handful of lesser "lights." This is what led to WW2.

So how do you account for the first Fascist government being in place long before Lenin was in control of Russia? Hitler wishing to expand German territory at the expense of the 'lesser' Slav people had far more to do with race than it did with Communism.

[phylo_roadking]

It was the subterranean political subversion by the Comintern, organized by Lenin, which triggered the rise of National Socialist reaction in the form of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and a handful of lesser "lights." This is what led to WW2.

So how do you account for the first Fascist government being in place long before Lenin was in control of Russia? Hitler wishing to expand German territory at the expense of the 'lesser' Slav people had far more to do with race than it did with Communism.

....not to mention that fact that Comintern instructed the KPD to work with the NSDAP in the late 1920s/eary 1930s?

[peterhof]

It was the subterranean political subversion by the Comintern, organized by Lenin, which triggered the rise of National Socialist reaction in the form of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and a handful of lesser "lights." This is what led to WW2.

So how do you account for the first Fascist government being in place long before Lenin was in control of Russia?

What Fascist government would that be?

Hitler wishing to expand German territory at the expense of the 'lesser' Slav people had far more to do with race than it did with Communism.

True. But Hitler also said (at his sedition trial) that he wanted to be "the destroyer of Boshevism."

[peterhof]

It was the subterranean political subversion by the Comintern, organized by Lenin, which triggered the rise of National Socialist reaction in the form of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and a handful of lesser "lights." This is what led to WW2.

....not to mention that fact that Comintern instructed the KPD to work with the NSDAP in the late 1920s/eary 1930s?

Unknownst to Hitler, the Nazi Party was about to profit from an extraordinary order issued by Joseph Stalin in the middle of January, 1931, which provided for “United Action of the Communist Party and the Hitler movement to accelerate the disintegration of the crumbling democratic bloc which governs Germany.” This was a harbinger of the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact and has never been satisfactorily explained except, perhaps, by Stalin’s well-known admiration for Hitler.

Astonished by this entirely unexpected turn of events, veteran Comintern agent Richard Krebs (Jan Veltin) wrote:

“Those who objected were threatened by expulsion from the [Communist] Party. Discipline forbade the rank and file to discuss the issue. From then on, in spite of the steadily increasing fierceness of their guerrilla warfare, the Communist Party and the Hitler movement joined forces to slash the throat of an already tottering democracy. It was a weird alliance, never officially proclaimed by the Red or Brown bureaucracy, but a grim fact all the same.” (Out of the Night, Jan Veltin)

[Terry Duncan]

Isn't Veltin just a little bit unreliable as a source given his history? Surely if the claims are entirely correct, there should be somebody or some source that would be better to quote?

[phylo_roadking]

Terry, there's actually a lot of evidence; Dimitry Manuilski, a high ranking Soviet Comintern functionary in charge of German affairs, addressed a Comintern meeting on December 15th 1931, said...

The chief enemy is not Hitler, the chief enemy is the system of Severing (Social-Democrat Interior Minister of Prussia, V.), Brüning (Reich Chancellor), Hindenburg (Reich President). With Hitler's help will we first destroy the Social-Democratic Party apparatus as well as the Brüning state apparatus. In the present phase of the development of the German revolution Hitler unmistakenably is our ally.

...from Konrad Löw's "Warum fasziniert der Kommunismus? Eine systematische Untersuchung" Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft/Deutscher Insituts-Verlag, Cologne 1983

KPD party chief Ernst Thälmann said in October 1932 at the start of the first Berlin-wide public transport strike...

"When strikes are being organized in firms and companies, it is absolutely essential and desirable that Nazis are invited to take part in the Strike Committees."

See Heinz August Winkler's "Der Weg in die Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930-1933" Dietz Verlag, Bonn 1990)

From a Münchener Post editorial on March 6th 1933, the day after the election on the 5th...

Had it not been for the KPD, Hitler would never have become Reich Chancellor nor would he have triumphed on March 5. The leadership of this party installed the hatred of Social-Democrats into the hearts of millions of workers, and this very hatred now caused them to flee to the brown ranks of the swastica. Many Communists who on Saturday were still wearing the Soviet star as they were walking, manifested themselves as crack new Nazis on election day.

There had even been hard, paramilitary/terrorist cooperation between the NSDAP and the KPD during the 1920s occupation of the Rhineland after a Leo Schlageter, supposedly an NSDAP member, was executed by the French and became a martyr for BOTH parties! Karl Radek's eulogy for Schlageter in March 1923 included -

All the time I had before my eyes the corpse of the German Fascist, our class enemy, condemned and shot by French imperialism. The fate of this German nationalist martyr should not be passed over by us in silence, or with a contemptuous phrase. Schlageter, a courageous soldier of the counter-revolution, deserves honest and manly esteem from us, soldiers of the revolution... Schlageter is dead ... At his grave his comrades vowed to carry on his work.

Who they WERE both mostly fighting on the streets of Depression Germany were the Red Banner faction of one of the other Socialist fronts IIRC, and the Social Deomcrats

[Terry Duncan]

Hi Phylo,

I am aware such things happened, I am just curious as to why Peter would cite someone of quite such questionable reputation when there are other sources available?

[ljadw]

Valtin (Krebs) was an impostor,"Out of the night" has been described as a huge literary hoax,and the judgement of The Board of Immigration Appeals was:"On the record before us,it appears he has been completely untrustworthy and amoral".

Source ? Google : Jan Valtin .

For the rest : there is nothing special on the occasional cooperation between KPD and NSDAP:Richelieu collaborated with the Sultan against the Habsburgers,US capitalists were doing business with the SU ,the Zentrum party was voting yes to the Ermächtigungsgesetz,the SU was collaborating with the Apartheidsregime to maintain high diamant prices.

What some people refuse to understand is that for the communists all non-communist leftwingers were traitors,renegades,who should be exterminated

[J. Duncan]

For a good book on the relations between Nazis and Communists in Germany and the strange decisions from Moscow (Stalin) on the dynamics of their relations see Ruth Fischer's "Stalin and German Communism" (first published in 1948).

http://books.google.com/books?id=6iFkgD ... er&f=false

*We should probably get back to "Sidney Reilly", as this is the topic of the thread.
Service mentions some scheme by Reilly to kidnap the Bolshevik leaders and parade them through the streets naked in order to humiliate them publicly. I think Lockhart mentions this in his book "British Agent"...a strange proposal indeed. What was Reilly hoping to accomplish with this? Lenin was being accused of treason (because of Brest-Litovsk and the ceding of much territory to German control) and he was also accused (with Trotsky) of being in the pay of the German high command (Lenin was spreading pacifist propaganda amongst the Russian troops at the front.). Lenin was willing to suffer a humiliation such as this in order to hold on to power (however small the actual territory he controlled became). The events of this period were unbelievable and the ruthlessness and tenacity of the Bolsheviks in holding on to what they had were incredible. They were fighting a civil war, the interventionists and Czech legion, starvation and disease, as well as the encroachment of of the German army. Despite all this, they even had time to start their social revolution within, experimenting with new social forms and non-capitalist economic plans.
We often discuss Hitler's fight against enormous odds (he lost) whereas Lenin fought almost the same (or worse) set of circumstances and won! Reilly was in the thick of it. It is very fascinating history.

[peterhof]

Valtin (Krebs) was an impostor,"Out of the night" has been described as a huge literary hoax,and the judgement of The Board of Immigration Appeals was:"On the record before us,it appears he has been completely untrustworthy and amoral".

Source ? Google : Jan Valtin .

For the rest : there is nothing special on the occasional cooperation between KPD and NSDAP:Richelieu collaborated with the Sultan against the Habsburgers,US capitalists were doing business with the SU ,the Zentrum party was voting yes to the Ermächtigungsgesetz,the SU was collaborating with the Apartheidsregime to maintain high diamant prices.

What some people refuse to understand is that for the communists all non-communist leftwingers were traitors,renegades,who should be exterminated

Wikipedia states:

Krebs became active in the Communist movement as a boy, when his father was involved in the naval mutiny that heralded the German Revolution of 1918–19. In 1923, he saw action in the failed Communist insurgency in Hamburg. Sometime after this he joined the German Communist Party, but was later expelled.

In 1926, Krebs entered the United States illegally and settled in California. He spent 38 months in San Quentin State Prison for attempting to murder a merchant navy seaman during a brawl, then was deported to Germany in 1929. He worked as a seaman until 1934, when he was arrested and tortured, and acted as a witness for persecution in a trial that brought to the conviction of a fellow German seaman accused of treason.

In 1938, the settled in the United States once again - this time under his most famous alias, Jan Valtin - where he published the highly publicized autobiography Out of the Night. In the book he described in detail the actions he supposedly had carried on as a secret agent of the Soviet GPU. The 1926 attempted murder was described by Krebs/Valtin as a GPU operation. The book received great critical acclaim. A 1940 review for the Saturday Review of Literature reads: "No other books more clearly reveals the aid which Stalin gave to Hitler before he won power".[1] As a result, he Valtin/Krebs was invited to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee as regards Soviet secret activities in Europe.

Valtin/Krebs married again, before 1941, to Abigail Harris, an American. In November 1942, Krebs was also indicted as a Gestapo agent. He was arrested in December 1942 and found innocent in May 1943. The Los Angeles court record revealed that the 1926 crime had no political purpose. This event marked the end of Krebs/Valtin's career as a "Soviet expert". The New York Mirror said about his book Out of the Night: "In effect, the decision means he perpetrated a huge literary hoax."[2]

The New York Mirror was mistaken. The Los Angeles court decision meant no such thing and there is no reason to consider his book "a huge literary hoax." Valtin/Krebs entered the United States illegally in 1926 on an official KPD mission to carry out an assassination as he explains in his book. Krebs operated under a number of guises and aliases and, like Sidney Reilly, it is difficult if not impossible to establish the facts.

The Reichstag gridlock was accomplished by the highly unusual cooperation between the Communists and the National Socialists and obliged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. At the time, it was hoped that surrounding Hitler with Departments controlled by Conservatives would limit his scope of action, but this arrangement was abruptly ended by the Reichstag fire.