Dan Snow's History Hit - MI9: The Secret Service for Escape and Evasion

Episode Date: October 3, 2020

Helen Fry joined me on the podcast to talk about the thrilling history of MI9. The WWII organisation engineered the escape of Allied forces from behind enemy lines.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Very happy to say we've got Helen Fry back on the podcast. She has spent years in the National Archives here in the UK looking into overlooked histories of the Second World War. She's now written a history of MI9. It's a secret department of the British government. They were the secret service for escape and evasion. They helped prisoners of war escape from German prisoners of war camp in the Second World War.

She'd been on the podcast before. She talked about the fantastic country house in which German generals were kept prisoner. After they'd surrendered to the British, they were given lots of drink. They were entertained by what appeared to be a British aristocrat with fascist leanings. Not hard to conjure them up. And they had a rather nice time, except all their conversations were being recorded. And it led to serious breakthroughs in the intelligence war. So Helen's previous book, The Wall Survey, is fantastic. This one, MI9, equally good. If you wish to listen to the back

episode of this podcast, or if you want to watch one of our documentaries, we've got countless documentaries on the Second World War, please do so. History Hit TV, it's our new digital history channel. If you use the code POD1, because you're podcast listeners, you get a special introductory offer. POD1, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free, and you get your second month for just one pound a year or a dollar. Now, I don't know about you, but here in the UK, it is raining at the moment.

It's raining cats and dogs. So if I were you, I'd snuggle up at home, stay COVID-free, and watch History Hit for the next few months. You're not going to regret it. In the meantime, everyone, here's Helen Fry. Enjoy. Thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. Thank you for having me, Dan. This is another extraordinary story. I mean, people have heard of MI6, they've heard of MI5. Who are MI9? So MI9 actually was formed in December 39. And their task was to gain intelligence from

prisoners of war, and also to help allied airmen and soldiers to get back from behind enemy lines or to escape from prisoner of war camps. What was the motivation behind setting it up initially? Well, the main motivation, if you think about an airman, to train an airman can take up to three months, incredibly costly. It was estimated at about £15,000 back then. And of course, if airmen are being shot down and captured, we can't train them so quickly. And of course, we needed air superiority over the Luftwaffe,

over the German Air Force. In the First World War, was there this same sense of excitement and daring do and airmen escaping and making it back to Switzerland and things? Why is this something that they thought was going to happen in the coming war? We did have escapers in the First World War. There was a very small organisation, a part of MI1, actually. And that was resurrected and became far more comprehensive in the Second World War and became known as MI9. But MI9 did something very different in the Second World War from the First World War, and that was they gave airmen and soldiers training. They had a couple of secret sites, one of which, interestingly, was in North London in

RAF Highgate. So they had these two to three week training courses before personnel went into action because Norman Crockett who headed MI9 realised that airmen and soldiers it wouldn't necessarily become natural once they've been captured in disorientation stuff that they would think logically about how to evade capture or how to escape I mean the longer they're in a prison of war camp, of course, they can start thinking things through. But the idea is not to get captured if you can help it. So you have these training sessions, which they never had in the First World War. And he developed, Crockett developed this whole idea of escape mindedness. So it's a more developed philosophy than you have a more detailed

structure than the First World War. Why have I not heard of MI9 when everyone talks about MI5 and 6 all the time? Because I think, as I've said and argued in my book, it is really the forgotten secret service of the Second World War. Its files have now been declassified. But I did find it astonishing when Yale asked me to write the book. And then we suddenly kind of sat down afterwards and thought, hang on a minute, this is the first history of MI9 for 40 years. And so I suppose people will be familiar with the brilliant work of Airy Neve. He wrote Saturday at MI9. And then Foote and Langley did their history of MI9. But this was

over 40 years ago ago and before the files had been declassified. And in their works, you get a sense of frustration because Langley in particular says, you know, did we gain any intelligence that made a difference? The files hadn't been declassified. He didn't have access to those. So theirs was an incomplete, but still a brilliant history. What they did do, Neve and Foot and Langley, they gave a comprehensive history of the escape lines. And the MI9 files don't have anything, interestingly, on the escape lines, with the exception,

histories of the escape lines, with the exception of a bit of stuff on the Shelburne Sea, that was the evacuation for the sea escapes. So I think now we've got the benefit of their work and the declassified files. Presumably MI9 was thrown into turmoil by the catastrophic reverses in the summer of 1940 on the continent. I mean, when they were set up, they were presumably expecting there to be more friendly ports around Europe that people could head to rather than just the Wehrmacht occupying virtually the entire continent? Yeah. So in fact, after Dunkirk and the evacuations, which we see as a great success,

and it was, you know, 300,000 Allied personnel evacuated from the beaches. But of course, there were troops still fighting and holding back the German lines. And Arie Neve, I mentioned just now, he was one that was captured around this time, as was Jimmy Langley actually. So there were those still fighting, still holding back the lines and they were not evacuated. Some of them went into hiding and around 5,000 were believed to be in hiding, MI9 estimated, and around 50,000 were not evacuated and ended up in prison of war camps. And the extraordinary part of MI9's legacy is between then and the end of the war, of those around the Dunkirk period, only 300 didn't make it back via escape routes and evasion. It is quite incredible. That's amazing. So describe one or two of those journeys. So all of the escapes could be quite different. Airy Neves,

of course, is the most famous. I also highlight two news stories of British military attaches who made it out of Belgium and Denmark in the chaos of people moving and the armies sweeping across Europe. They got out on their own without the help of MI9. Someone like Airy Neve, he dressed up as a German officer. And this I find incredible because everything in the, he was in Kolditz, believed to be, of course, the camp from which you could never escape. The Germans believed it was impenetrable. First mistake. And of course, it was a challenge. But Neve was the first British officer to escape and successfully get back from Colditz. And he basically walked out of the gates with a Dutch officer in German uniform, which they'd made in the camp. And I think these are the kind of stories in the camps that have been immortalised in some of our best loved films.

So what was MI9 doing? How did it interact with people in camps? And was it giving advice on things like making papers and sewing uniforms and things? Yeah, so eventually, I mean, to start off with, MI9 had no communications with the camps. And this was a problem. And they then devised codes. Code 5 was a particularly basic one that was used. I still don't understand how they work, these codes. They're quite complicated. But letters don't understand how they work, these codes. They're quite complicated. But letters would be sent into the camps, for example, that were coded. They would be ordinary letters, sometimes from real relatives who'd been brought on board, sometimes from fictitious relatives. And a prisoner would know if the letter was coded

by the way the date was written or by the way the supposed relative, for example, had signed off the letter. And so those coded communications were used both ways. Prisoners would smuggle them out to MI9 or just as ordinary letters, but in that would be contained information. And one of the things MI9 did was in those coded letters was to alert the prisoners to particular parcels that they would be getting that would have hidden escape devices in them. So it was used in that kind of way and the prisoners would occasionally send out information, intelligence via the letters as well. And did they, you mentioned escape lines, I mean they would send in sort of like, oh by the way there's a safe house here, you can stay with them, you can get food here, were there sort of detailed itineraries planned out for escapers? No, not at all, because

it is a security issue. So airmen and soldiers, remember I mentioned about the training before they went into action, they're saying, look, you know, if you're ever trapped behind enemy lines, you go into hiding, you can sort of stake out a deserted farmhouse, just watch, see if the men are all fighting, it's just the women at home, for example, and they might be, you know, just suss out if they look to be friendly. But by and large, airmen and soldiers had to wait for the escape lines to contact them. And one of the security things MI9 drummed into them is that you absolutely must not write down the names and addresses of the helpers

or anyone in the chain that's helped them. That did actually happen on one occasion. And of course, the Germans found it and that was the end of that family. So the risks were real. So when we're hearing about these escapers and doing these amazing journeys, I've never heard before that there was a sort of network that was designed to help them through German and occupied territory. Yeah, exactly. And what I also find extraordinary, I mean, it's far reaching. MI9's work is not only in Western Europe, it reaches into the Balkans, Greece, wherever you've got action, prisoners, the Far East as well. And I think, you know, it is a pity that its legacy hasn't been further known, really.

But you're not the only one, Dan, because what's interesting, what I discovered in the writing of the book, was that the helpers that worked on the various escape lines didn't know the name of MI9. All they knew was that they were working for an organisation which they assumed to be in London. And they trusted that organisation. The organisation was sending them funds, it was sending them agents, whatever they needed, but they never knew its name until after the war when there were various reunions. Do you have a favourite escape story? Major General Brummel. Actually, his uniforms were in the National Army Museum. He was nicknamed

Tubby and he was quite kind of, he was too large to go down any of the tunnels. He was nicknamed Tubby and he was quite kind of he was too large to go down any of the tunnels. He was a royal engineer, by the way. And he tries to escape from one of the camps. And the Germans actually he faked his own uniform as a German general. And he very nearly got away with it. He's got two fellow prisoners. And he pretends to be sort of one of the senior German personnel with his alleged prisoners that he's moving. And he gets to the gate, they get through the gate and they're play acting and he's telling off his fellow prisoners for misbehaving, but they've overdone it a bit. But for me, the best part of that was the detail on the uniform because they faked his gun holster with chocolate.

So they made a chocolate mould and they mould it. And from a distance, it looked real. And this is just bonkers. But they got away with it. They got down the hill. And, of course, the chocolate by that point was starting to melt. But the irony was the guard on the gate was so kind of intimidated by this alleged German general that he went back to the commandant and said, oh, you know, I've looked after your VIP.

And the commandant said, I haven't had a VIP today. That's how he got captured. They ran after him and he landed in cold hits. There's also lots of new material in your book about the Vatican, which is interesting, isn't it? I mean, that's been the subject of much, much discussion over the years. What do you make of it? Well, when I was researching for MI9, I was surprised to find these two files in particular, foreign office files, about the involvement of the Vatican in helping MI9. And I've uncovered some substantial stuff, actually, and you should never be surprised I don't think by research but yes Sam Derry an escaper who jumped off a train actually

as he was being moved from Italian prisoner of war camp to Germany he makes it to Rome he's helped by a Catholic Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty and they found the Rome Escape Organisation and they go on to save over 4,000 Allied personnel, so including American personnel as well. And ultimately, when Derry is betrayed, he's hiding just at the side of the Vatican. They smuggle him into the neutral Vatican and he and Hugh of Flachati run the escape lines from within the Vatican. And the Vatican

also was sheltering some prisoners. It's extraordinary, because of course, we always think of the Vatican either as being neutral, or potentially as collaborating. That's not the only revelation in your book, because you've been in the press here in the UK with your discussion around Room 900, is it? And Kim Philby, tell me about that. Yes, I found this file about Room 900 and working through it and fascinated. Room 900 was a top secret part of MI9. And I discovered that this was involved in intelligence gathering. It was also involved in counter espionage. And of course, that's tracking German agents, enemy agents, on a par with the work of MI6.

And then of course I glanced to the bottom of the page to see who'd signed the reports and who's sending them back to London and it's Kim Philby. And of course I suppose it's every historian's dream to discover something like that. But it does shed a new light on really what MI9 was. So what, so MI9 also spying on Britain's other security services? Is that essentially it? What I've concluded in the book is that Room 900 was really part of MI6, because if you look at the personnel who were involved, Claude Dancy, who becomes deputy head of MI6, he's working for MI6 and MI9. Airy Neve, Jimmy Langley were involved with Room 900, both known to have been working for MI9 and MI6. And then you've got Philby, MI6. So he's also

working for MI9. And it is possible to see that this Room 900 was part of MI6 embedded in MI9, perhaps keeping an eye on MI9. Okay, so it's the other way around. So MI6 is spying on MI9. And MI9 is helping people escape, but as you say, it develops like an intelligence role as well. Did that not bring it into conflict with other intelligence organisations? We used to laugh at Nazi Germany for having overlapping intelligence jurisdictions. This feels to me like we're we're straightening into that area ourselves now. Well, the boundaries traditionally between MI9 and MI6 have always been blurred. And that's clear in Neve and Fulton Langley's works. And so I think I've sort of untangled that. I'm not sure that they're as separate as we believe they were. The problem that MI9 had was with organisations like SOE, the Special Operations Executive, because of

course they had people behind enemy lines blowing stuff up, being very noisy, and MI9 and MI6 wanted to operate behind enemy lines very quietly. There was a keenness to keep the escape lines separate, and I think this is where the difference is. The MI6 escape lines and the MI9 escape lines were by and large kept separate. And they did that by giving the role of to Claude Dancy that I mentioned just now. He overran both the escape lines of MI9 and MI6. He tried to keep them separate, but he had an eye on both. But where I think it becomes merged is in the whole intelligence gathering. But where I think it becomes merged is in the whole intelligence gathering.

This is where MI9 is gathering intelligence, actually on a vast scale, about positions of enemy agents operating German safe houses, that kind of thing, in occupied territory. The MI9 files do say that this is the first time, i.e. in the Second World War, that escape work is combined with intelligence. And going back to what you asked me earlier about the First World War, yes, we had escape and evasion in the First World War, but we did not combine it with intelligence gathering. And the MI9 files are very clear that this is a new development in intelligence gathering. We also discovered lots of cool gadgets. I think we love the gadgets, don't we? I'll tell you what my favourite one, it has to be for me the Monopoly board, that household name, we all grew up on

Monopoly, but one of the, it was the knight that had, was lined and he could smuggle ink into these pieces, I think it's great, but yeah, I mean MI9's success story in creating tiny escape devices like the compasses that could be hidden inside ordinary objects like the shaving brush for example every prisoner hopefully would be allowed to keep his shaving kit and as long as he could in his brush unscrew it there's a hidden compass which could help in an escape. But there are lots of gadgets like that that were created by MI9. Oh, I love that. I would love to have a little gadget like that. That'd be great. What about MI9's legacy? Do they still exist?

Well, MI9 was disbanded at the end of the war. We do know that there were sort of stay-behind units in Europe after the war that were not used. We do know because of declassified files that there were escape, a similar organisation during the Korean War. But I think for me, its legacy has been underrepresented. And I think we need to recognise it twofold, really. to recognise it twofold, really. Its contribution in getting, in fact, the files say 35,000 airmen and soldiers back during the wartime in total. I mean, that's an incredible legacy in itself, because then they can fight another day. That's the philosophy. You need them to fight again. And many of them did go back into action. They come back and they're debriefed for intelligence.

So again, I think we need to look at the information which MI9 has gathered and start working that into the wider history of the Second World War, and of course, of the intelligence picture of the war. You've written another book, which changes the way we think about the Second World War. Thank you for all your hard work and research going over all those files. Thank you. Tell us what the book's called. So the book is MI9, A History of the British Secret Service for Escape and Evasion. Thank you very much, Helen Fry. Thanks for coming back on the podcast. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request.

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