According to a new book, British traitor Anthony Blunt passed on secrets to the Nazis which caused thousands of Allied forces to be killed during Operation Market Garden in 1944
British traitor Anthony Blunt could have passed secrets to the Nazis killing thousands of Allied troops, it has been claimed.
According to a new book, Blunt – already known to be a double agent for the Soviets as part of the Cambridge Five spy ring from the 1930s to the 1950s – was also a spy for the Nazis. Author Robert Verkaik claims Blunt was the mysterious spook codenamed Josephine whose identity has never been revealed.
Josephine is blamed for giving details of the plan for Allied forces to push into northern Germany via the Netherlands in 1944, dubbed Operation Market Garden. When the Allies parachuted in ready to begin the operation, they met unexpected heavy resistance. Verkaik argues that as a result of Blunt’s actions, the defeat “contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Allied servicemen and women and countless civilians who perished as a result of a prolonged war”. Blunt – who worked as a Cambridge don and joined the British Army before being hired by MI5 in 1940, a mysterious spook codenamed “Josephine”.
The claim forms part of a new book Blunt was Josephone who gave details of a vital Allied operation to the Germans and whose identity has never been revealed. Thwarting Operation Market Garden would have suited the Russians because Stalin did not want the Americans and British to arrive in Berlin while his troops were still fighting on the eastern front as he had plans to dominate Eastern Europe.
Author Robert Verkaik wrote that the actions Verkaik said they could also be blamed for the rapes of at least a million German women by the Russians after their victory. After graduating from Cambridge and serving in the Army, Blunt joined the domestic intelligence agency MI5 in 1940. He was already feeding information to the Russians.
He rapidly rose up the ranks and would have been one of a small group aware of the plans for Market Garden in September 1944, which involved dropping thousands of paratroopers and glider troops into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands to forge a route into Germany. Allied soldiers met unexpectedly heavy resistance in what was their final defeat of the war.