The Soviet-Jewish spy chief who recruited Kim Philby and the 'Cambridge Five'
11/10/2023
He recruited Kim Philby and the entire “Cambridge Five” - they supplied the USSR with atomic bomb schemes and Nazi plans. Arnold Deitch himself was long considered a modest “war hero.”
Soon after the end of World War II, the Austrian Communist Party asked to return to the country its communists who remained in the USSR. The Soviets supported the idea - those who were lucky enough not to die during the purges of “German spies” returned to their homeland. Among them was Josephine Deitch, who worked in the USSR as a teacher of foreign languages at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the spring of 1947, she returned to Vienna, and six months later she asked the court to recognize her husband, Arnold Deutsch, as a hero. They say that he, a native of Vienna, died heroically in the fall of 1942 in the fight against fascism during a parachute landing near the village of Möhlersdorf in Lower Austria. The statement was accompanied by the testimony of two witnesses from among the Austrian communist emigrants. They said that during the war they worked as cryptographers - and received a message first about Deitch being sent from the USSR to Austria, and then about his death during the landing.
Arnold Deitch with his daughter
The court granted the widow's request - and soon a memorial plaque appeared on the wall of the house in Vienna where Arnold Deitch lived: “Dr. Arnold Deitch lived in this house. During the reign of the National Socialist regime, he was killed by the SS at the age of 38 in November 1942. He fought for a free democratic Austria, for the peace and happiness of mankind. May people understand the sacrifice he made.”
This sign came in handy when the British intelligence services suddenly became interested in the death of Arnold Deitch. It was 1951 and the British still controlled part of Austria along with the other victorious powers. Josephine Deitch was interrogated, directly trying to find out whether her husband worked for Soviet intelligence. She could not hide her surprise: “Arnold, of course, was an ardent communist and anti-fascist, but certainly not a Soviet spy!” The British learned that this was not true only several decades later.
Arnold Deitch was offered to work for Soviet intelligence on his first visit to Moscow in 1928
Deitch was born into a Jewish family in 1904. His father was a small businessman in Vienna - that’s where the future intelligence officer was born. After studying at the gymnasium, Arnold graduated from a local university, defended his dissertation in chemistry and received a Ph.D. Even during his student years, the young man took an active part in the revolutionary movement, and in 1924 he joined the Austrian Communist Party.
At party meetings, he met Josephine Kramer, who soon became his wife and faithful ally. Apparently, they made the decision to work for Soviet intelligence together after Deitch returned from Moscow in 1928. Arnold was then, as part of the Austrian working delegation, invited to the opening of the All-Union Spartakiad, which was planned to replace the Olympic Games in the USSR. In the stands of the Dynamo stadium, the young Austrian, who was fluent in German, English, French, Italian, Dutch and Russian, was asked to move on to completely different games.
Cambridge Five star Kim Philby
Returning to Vienna, Arnold left his job as a chemical engineer at a textile factory and became an employee of the local International Relations Department of the Comintern. Over the course of several years, the young man fully met the hopes of his handlers. He worked as a liaison in Greece, Germany, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Syria and Palestine: he ensured the secure transfer of classified information and successfully recruited new agents.
Arnold did not allow a single failure. But in December 1931, the Austrian police suspected the entire local Comintern of illegal work. Deitch and his wife left for Moscow. Arnold was hired by the Foreign Department of the OGPU under the pseudonym "Otto". Josephine mastered the work of a radio operator. After completing a crash course in training for illegal intelligence officers, in 1933 the couple went to Paris. However, the base in the French capital was conditional: the couple carried out assignments in Belgium, Holland, Austria and Germany.
Member of the “Cambridge Five” Donald MacLane at the beginning of his career at the British Foreign Office
In Berlin, Deutsch established contact with Gestapo officer Willy Lehmann, one of Stirlitz’s prototypes. Deitch had dozens of such valuable agents throughout Europe. But the most significant and famous achievement of Arnold Deitch was the creation of the “Cambridge Five” - a network of Soviet agents in Great Britain, recruited long before the war from among representatives of the British establishment. According to former CIA director Allen Dulles, it was "the most powerful intelligence group of World War II."
Deitch originally arrived in London in late 1933 to "take a course in psychology". The intelligence officer easily entered the psychology department of a local university - and began to carefully “probe” students at London universities. It is believed that it was Deitch who was the first of all Soviet recruiters to decide to involve students in cooperation - young and ardent people from whom the most loyal agents could be raised. Deutsch and his confidants focused their attention on the anti-fascist youth of Cambridge, Oxford and the University of London.
Cambridge Five member Kim Philby among colleagues
One of Deitch's most capable students was Kim Philby, recruited in 1934. Philby, like most members of the Five, belonged to the British elite: his father was a former adviser to the Colonial Office. Starting as an international journalist and covering the events of the Spanish Civil War for Moscow, in 1940 Philby joined the British intelligence service MI6, where he made a dizzying career. Moreover, he did it both with the help of his father’s connections and with the support of the Soviet secret services, who supplied compromising information on their bosses. Already in 1941, 29-year-old Kim Philby was appointed deputy chief of counterintelligence, and in 1945 - head of the 9th department of British counterintelligence “for the fight against the USSR and communism.” After the end of World War II, Kim Philby was British intelligence resident in Istanbul, and then headed the mission in Washington, where he was responsible for the cooperation of British intelligence services with the CIA and FBI.
Member of the Cambridge Five, counterintelligence officer Anthony Blunt
According to Deitch’s decision, Philby’s company included Donald MacLane and Guy Burgess, who eventually occupied high positions in the British Foreign Ministry, as well as Anthony Blunt, who worked in counterintelligence, and John Cairncross, who served in the British codebreaking service and then coordinated the activities of British intelligence in Yugoslavia. In 1941–1945 alone, the Center received 18 thousand messages from the “Cambridge Five”. They mainly concerned either the state of the German armed forces, or assessments of the USSR by the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. Thus, with the help of the data received from the “five,” the USSR knew about Germany’s attempt to conduct separate peace negotiations with the Americans and the British.
The information received from the “five” helped prepare for the Battle of Kursk and learn about the Nazis’ intentions to use new types of military equipment on the Eastern Front. And of course, the “five” provided the Center with all the correspondence of the British Foreign Office and transcripts of cabinet meetings. In 1941, members of the Five handed over to the USSR details of the work of the Uranium Committee - and this allowed the USSR to begin its own development of atomic weapons. In addition, neither the position of Western countries on issues of post-war settlement nor the NATO bloc being created was a secret to the USSR.
Member of the "Cambridge Five" Guy Burgess at the beginning of his career at the British Foreign Office
We know so much about the merits of this particular “five” only because they were exposed. Nothing is still known about Deitch's other sources of information in Britain - and there were at least twenty of them. “Stalin’s “Oxford moles” must have dug the same passages into the British government as the Cambridge ones,” wrote English historian and intelligence researcher John Costello. “Most of them took the secret of their underground work for Moscow to the grave. But one can only imagine to what official heights they grew and what secrets of the English secret departments they had access to!”
Deutsch himself, who was summoned to Moscow at the end of 1937, did not see all the results of his work. Some historians consider this to be the intrigue of the then London KGB resident. Allegedly, he very “in time” - at the very height of the purges - reported that the British intelligence services were interested in Deitch. Nevertheless, in Moscow no one touched either Deitch or his wife. They were given Soviet citizenship and passports in the names of Stefan Grigorievich and Josephine Lang, completely isolated from all past official contacts - but given work at the Institute of World Economy and World Economy of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Member of the "Cambridge Five" Guy Burgess in the USSR
In parallel with his intelligence activities, Deitch was really interested in science and invention. While still in England, he registered several patents, including a simulator for training pilots, copies of which he sent, including to Moscow. He also developed new methods of radio communication and secret writing, and was involved in improving operational equipment. In particular, he proposed a method of using infrared rays to obtain high-quality photographs in the dark.
However, while working as a research assistant, Deitch inundated intelligence leadership with requests to return him to illegal work. They remembered him after the German attack on the USSR. At first they planned to send Deitch to the USA, but then they decided to send him to pro-fascist Argentina. At the head of the group, Deitch left for Latin America in November 1941, but due to the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States, the initially chosen route through the countries of Southeast Asia became dangerous, and the group returned to Moscow. Then a new route across the North Atlantic was developed - and in November 1942, a tanker with a scout on board entered the waters of the Barents Sea. On November 7, 1942, the ship was attacked and sunk by a German cruiser. The Nazis took part of the team prisoner, the other found peace forever in the icy grave of the Barents Sea. The ship's captain testified about Deitch's death after his release from German captivity.
Cambridge Five member Donald MacLane and his family
Archives containing the circumstances of the intelligence officer’s death were declassified already in post-Soviet times. It is unknown whether Arnold Deitch's wife knew about them, but during the inspection of the British in 1951, Josephine repeated exactly what she had voiced in court - her husband died in German dungeons. Throughout the rest of her life, she never gave any reason to doubt the veracity of her words. This is largely why the memorial plaque commemorating Deutsch’s death in Austria is still on the wall of his house in Vienna. By the way, Josephine herself, after moving to Austria, refused the further cooperation offered to her with the Soviet intelligence services. At least that's what they said themselves.