Jonathan Thomas (00:01)
All right, here we go. Welcome to the Anglotopia podcast, where we explore the fascinating stories of British history, culture, and travel. I'm your host, Jonathan Thomas. And today we're joined by Robert Verkaik, award winning journalist and author of The Traitor of Arnhem, the untold story of World War II's greatest betrayal and the moment that changed history forever.

We'll be delving into the hidden espionage that shaped the fate of Operation Market Garden, uncovering the shocking role of double agents like Christian Lindemans and Anthony Blunt, and exploring how Soviet intelligence infiltrated the heart of the Allied war effort. We'll also discuss Robert's research journey, his personal connection to the story, and the newly released archives that reveal the full scale of this wartime betrayal. Welcome, Robert.

Robert (00:47)
Thank you Jonathan, great to be on Angloto.

Jonathan Thomas (00:52)
Excellent, we're glad to have you. So what initially drew you to this story and how did you first come across the hidden details of this betrayal?

Robert (01:01)
Well, it's a family link actually. That's what first drew me in. I've got a distant relative who was in Holland during the Second World War. In fact, he was a resistance fighter. name was Eddie Verkaik. And he was just an ordinary guy, really. He worked for a shipping clerk and he was a local chess champion. But when the Germans invaded, he joined the resistance.

a small communist cell actually, and he did his very best to try and take the war to the Germans. He was in Nijmegen on the day of Market Garden, and so that's what drew me in to the whole Market Garden. And then from there, I worked out the betrayal theory.

Jonathan Thomas (01:58)
Fascinating. I wish I had a personal connection to to World War two like that Now can you you talk in the book a lot about Anthony blunt? and can you give us some background for those who may not be familiar with who he was and How he was one of the biggest traitors in history

Robert (02:18)
Yeah, Anthony Blunt was one of the famous Cambridge Five, the establishment, very privileged British graduates from Cambridge University were recruited by Russian intelligence in the 1930s. Blunt's background was his family was connected to the royal family actually was his mother was cousin of the Queen's mother and

his father was a clergyman, but well to do clergy and Blum was extraordinarily clever. was a genius really. He was a natural mathematician. He was a natural linguist and he won scholarships to Cambridge. He was also homosexual and that sort of played a part in some of

the recruitment that he was involved in and some of his friends he made in Cambridge like Guy Burgess who was also recruited by the Russians. After the war, during the war Blount was a senior officer with the Domestic Security Service, MI5, and he had extraordinary influence and access to British war secrets. But after the war,

He was rewarded for his work and was given the job of Keeper of the King's Pictures, Surveyor of the King's Pictures. he went on, lived, he was still working for the Russians even while he was doing that job in the 1950s really. He wasn't doing quite as much but he was still keeping the other spies in contact with the Russian handlers and...

He lived an exalted privileged life in the palace, working with the Queen's pictures. He was a favourite of the Queen's mother, but he didn't actually, he wasn't actually exposed as a spy. His treachery wasn't known to the British public until 1979 when Market Thatcher outed him in House of Commons. And after that he was a spent force.

and he died three years, I think four years later, mostly through abuse of alcohol. But he lived a pretty charmed life most of his time.

Jonathan Thomas (04:59)
Fans of Anglotopia may recall that there's an episode of the crown that covers sort of his downfall.

Robert (05:07)
It wasn't the

Jonathan Thomas (05:09)
So now that we have sort of the people background, can you give us some background on Operation Market Garden, which is considered one of the biggest failures of the World War II Allied Strategy?

Robert (05:26)
Yeah, I think if we're talking about Market Garden, then we have to start really with D-Day, because it was born out of the success of D-Day. And we also have to understand exactly what the military position was on the continent at the time. So we're talking about June 1944, after we'd landed on the beaches of Normandy. And the Russians, I bring the Russians into this because there's a real sort geopolitical

focused to the whole of the betrayal and it's really Soviet driven. So we need to know what the Soviets were up to at the time of Normandy. And they were outside Warsaw really, just waiting for the Germans to massacre the Poles so they didn't have to do it themselves.

But they were also, Stalin was very keen on winning the war in terms of his occupation of Eastern Europe. So he wanted an awful lot of Eastern Europe and he thought that getting to Berlin and securing parts of Eastern Europe before the Western Allies got there was his main goal because the Germans were basically beaten.

But time was of the essence. So when we landed in Normandy, at first it looked like it was going to be a sort of replay of 1918. looked like we were going to be bogged down in Normandy because we took quite a long time getting out of the bocage. once we had, then everything changed. Because once we'd broken out of Normandy,

and trapped the Germans in the fillet's pocket. we were racing, certainly the British and Canadian forces were racing towards the Dutch border. The whole military battlefield landscape changed. And it meant that we were now in driving seat. It looked like we were gonna get to Berlin. We were advancing quicker than the Germans could retreat. And all it was gonna take was one...

one major operation and our operation was Market Garden and Market Garden was dreamt up by our most successful, the British most successful General Bernard Montgomery and his idea was that by landing 40,000 glider troop and paratroopers in occupied Holland and securing key bridges over the Rhine

and then using his armoured forces to drive over the bridges into the Ruhr, around the defensive Siegfried line and then on to Berlin, we would win the war before Christmas. The plan was extraordinarily appealing to Churchill who understood, more than Roosevelt, understood the threat posed by the Soviets because now it was clear that the Cold War had really started before the end of the...

the Second World War. mean, I think it started at Normandy really, when the race was on for Berlin and the spoils of war were at stake and the Russians wanted as much as they could possibly get. So Market Garden was going to be the way British and Americans completed the war, defeated the Germans.

and got to Berlin. But it was a daring, risky operation that ended in failure. It ended in failure because there many reasons. There were military reasons and were intelligence reasons. The military reasons were that the plan, as I said, was extraordinarily risky, there were things that we did that

Perhaps in hindsight we wouldn't have done. example, landed eight miles from the drop zone, eight miles from Arnhem, which meant that by the time we landed and gathered our forces together and marched on, the Germans were able to mount a fairly stiff resistance. The radios didn't work. We didn't have enough airplanes to drop everyone at the same time. The British and the American generals

showed some caution when perhaps they needed to be a bit more aggressive in terms of taking the advantage. And the operation very nearly succeeded. The British First Airborne Division actually captured Arnhem Bridge, but the remainder of the force was held just outside Nijmegen and never made it to

to complete the operation. So it was a finely balanced operation, nearly succeeded, it was always going to be risky. But there was another element to the operation, which I say was critical, and that was that it was betrayed. The Germans had intelligence, knowledge of the operation and the two spies or

Yeah, two spies who gave them knowledge of operation, Market Garden. One was called Christian Lindemans, who was a Dutch resistance fighter like my relative Eddie, who was working for the British but was working for the Germans, but really working for the Russians. And someone called

someone called Agent Josephine and I argue in the book that Josephine who delivered the full battle plan to the German intelligence the day before Operation Market Garden was in fact Anthony Blunt. That was him. And I try and prove that by saying that he was the only one who had the means.

the opportunity and the wherewithal to deliver that sort of intelligence at that time. he appears when I was researching the betrayals with these two betrayals. He kept featuring in the archives. It was always blunt. Everywhere you look, there was blunt investigating Josephine or the spymaster is supposed to be running Josephine.

covering up for Josephine and generally trying to explain away Josephine. So that's the sort of thrust and thesis of the book.

Jonathan Thomas (13:02)
So you argue in the book that Market Garden was doomed from the start. And in your research, what was some of the shocking revelations you uncovered that were just like, whoa.

Robert (13:17)
I think the shocking stuff really is the cover-up, think, because we hadn't... Until you read the archives, no one was aware that there was a second betrayal. So everyone knew about the first betrayal. The first betrayal was through a Dutch agent, as they say, called Christian Lindemans, who was this sort of larger-than-life figure. He was cool. He was...

He worked for the British, as I said, he was called King Kong because he was so enormous and he had such awesome, he was a rowing, awesome rowing strength. But was also a bit of a psychopath and he would shoot first and ask questions later. He was a dangerous, ruthless man to know, but he was the, he's the betrayer that

Everyone knows about people have written books about him before the Dutch are still obsessed with his role in Market Garden, his betrayal and his closeness to Prince Bernard, was a member of Royal Family, Dutch Royal Family and the leader of the Dutch forces in Europe. So people know about him. This is the thing. So I was writing his story with my

with my relative Eddie Verkaik because they kind of knew each other and Eddie was the one who betrayed him to the British in the end. But no one really knew about the second betrayal. As I say, on the 16th of September, the eve of Market Garden, 1944, the full battle plan was delivered to the Germans and...

no one seems to investigate it. So if you look at the files, you'll see that there's a reluctance to investigate it. There's a willingness to dismiss it as something that was of no consequence. And it's only in that there's only in 1970s, in the 1970s, don't know exactly when but MI5 decided that they would investigate it for no reason. There's no obvious reason apart from the fact that

Anthony Blunt was about to be exposed as a spy. it's at this point MI5 decided to 30 years after the after the war, decide to conduct an inquiry into Josephine and Market Garden. And although Anthony Blunt is mentioned in the inquiry, and the papers 500 500

papers, pages of documents. he's in it all over. But at no point does the inquiry mention the fact that Anthony Blunt was a Russian agent. They treat him as if he was an ordinary military officer working for the British security service. He's not treated as someone who was working for the Russians against the British.

I think is extraordinary and kind of tells you everything you need to know about why the whole operation and the betrayal theory has never been properly explored because it was extraordinarily embarrassing for the British and particularly for their relationship with the Americans and the Dutch because if they'd found out that Blunt had not only

There was not only a Cambridge spy ring, but there was also an agent who had delivered documents not just to the Russians, but ultimately to the Germans and therefore cost the lives of not just thousands of British, but also American soldiers and thousands of Dutch citizens who starved, who were starved to death in the aftermath of Arnhem. That is an extraordinary amount of blood on Blunt's hands.

Jonathan Thomas (17:43)
Yeah, and I could see how, how they, the willful blindness of just, know, we don't see this because blunt was one of us. He was, you know, he had this storied career and intelligence and nobody wants to, nobody wants to be embarrassed by not seeing what was in plain sight for so long.

Robert (18:05)
Yeah, I think that's exactly what happened and they'd hoped it all went away and it kind of did really. But we had a release in Britain, National Archives in Kew released more material about the spies and this is probably the biggest release of material about the Cambridge group ever. And this was only January, so a few weeks ago, January the 14th. And in that release...

Jonathan Thomas (18:31)
wow.

Robert (18:35)
and some of this is going to be in my revised edition which is going to be published in March, includes more agents who were working with Blunt and the Russians to betray Arnon, including Guy Burgess who was obviously another one of the Cambridge Five and very close to Blunt and he was trying to get

because just before Arnhem there were a lot of Dutch intelligence, pilots in Britain and he, if you look at the MI5 files you can see conversations that he was having with the Dutch soldiers, fliers, intelligence officers where he's trying to find out what Operation Market Garden is all about and we didn't, we certainly didn't know

that and it's only although he was though were there were office British officers who did was suspicious no one actually rumbled him and the files also show there was another unknown Cambridge spy perhaps a six man who actually was working for the Russian military attaché in London and he didn't even and he he he was probably more influential than blunt in terms of

the Arnon intelligence. Although you can see how blunt was instrumental in getting it to the right people. It was this sixth man who

was working for a special forces unit who was sent in to Arnhem ahead of the rest of the forces and it was he who I think gave Blunt and the Russians the key intelligence. But so you can read about him in the paperback edition because these files just had enough time to sneak him into the book.

Jonathan Thomas (20:49)
There's always new history to uncover, right? So, okay. There's web upon web upon web of loyalty here. And the Russians are our allies. We're both fighting the Germans. Why would the Soviets want Market Garden to fail? Why would they want to pass, get this information passed to the Germans?

Robert (20:51)
Really it.

As I say, we're really talking about the military and geopolitical picture 1944. Stalin is already looking towards the end of the war and he's looking at the spoils of war. all he wants to do is get to Berlin and perhaps further. he had ambitions to go as far as he possibly could and then drop the Iron Curtain. But Market Garden and...

The collapse of the German front in Normandy meant that it was only a very remote chance that the Red Army was going to get there before the British and Americans. And so it was vital that he made sure that Arnhem did not succeed. Because think about it, if Arnhem had succeeded, we would have been a couple of hundred miles from Berlin.

while he and the rest of his Red Army were many more probably double the distance and we would have been in Berlin before the Russians we would have even we might have even pushed the Iron Curtain further back to the borders of of Ukraine I mean Stalin was you know he was a a strategist and he understood much more than anybody else the bigger picture perhaps

Perhaps, and so did Churchill. And Market Garden was going to settle the terms of the end of the Second World War.

Jonathan Thomas (22:59)
So we were fighting the Soviets and didn't even realize it.

Robert (23:03)
We didn't, we woke up to it very late. We woke up to it just after the war. What is surprising is that during the war, British intelligence, they so trusted the Russians that we didn't have a single spy in Russia. Whereas the Russians had dozens in, we don't even know how many, there were certainly far more than the Cambridge Five.

and they had penetrated the heart of British establishment, senior echelons of the military and the political classes. They knew everything sometimes before Churchill did, especially with Blunt because Blunt was the one who was in charge of writing reports on MI5, monthly updates on

what am I ever up to and handing them to Churchill. That was his job. Of course he gave them to Stalin before. So Stalin knew what we were thinking before Churchill had even thought it.

Jonathan Thomas (24:18)
I love it. Now I'm really curious about this Lindemann character because I forgive my English I've not heard of him before so how does his story compare to the other double or triple agents of the war like Kim Philby and Richard Sorge?

Robert (24:38)
Yeah, Lindemann is not temperamentally is not much of a Kim Philby. mean, Philby was a bit of an atheist. He was a British aristocrat really. And Sorge, the same German, know, well to do German. And they were placed high up in the

well in the Japanese embassy in Tokyo was Serge and obviously Philby was in London, part of MI6, the foreign secret agency. they were professional spies, professional intelligence officers if you like, whereas Lindemans was much roarer. He was

He was a brute of a man, really. As I said, he was a bit of a psychopath. he shot first, asked questions later. He had lots of... He was a womanizer, was Rotterdam playboy, He happened to... started by working for the highest bidder. But gathered lots of war loot along the way.

setting up escape lines, ferrying rich Dutch people down the lines back to Britain, and also feeding the British with intelligence before he switched sides, before he started working for the Germans after his brother and his lover were arrested by the Germans. In March 1944, he went over to the head of the German intelligence and said,

If you release my brother and girlfriend, I'll work for you. The Germans couldn't believe their luck. This was March 1944. Very few people were switching sides in March 1944 when the war had already basically won. No one really doubted the outcome. Lindemann's turned up and

Jonathan Thomas (26:52)
Right.

Robert (27:07)
offered his services and as a result he betrayed 267 Dutch, French, Belgian, British agents. He had no qualms about that. He might have even betrayed his own girlfriend. There's evidence that he was the one who provided the intelligence that allowed the Gestapo to find her in the first place. So he was pretty ruthless, but it turns out if you read the archives in Amsterdam

and in America actually, there's American archives, military archives, Maryland have got files on it. You can see that he was ultimately working for the Russians and even when he was captured in late 1944 and then held in a Dutch by the Dutch in 1946, he still thinks the Russians are gonna

help him escape from prison. He still thinks they're going to bust him out because his girlfriend ends up taking a job with the Russian embassy in the Hague. And you can see how his mind works. But to answer your question, how do you compare him to Philby and Serge? He's a very different kind of agent. Although the secrets he delivered might have been just as

just as helpful to the Russians as the ones that Fulbian said.

Jonathan Thomas (28:44)
One of the major figures in your book is Soviet spymaster Ivan Chichev. How much influence did Stalin's intelligence operations have over the outcome of

Robert (28:57)
Yeah, Ivan Chichev was the head of the spy station, really. He was running a lot of the operations, along with the military attache and some subordinates. So it was an industry, really. The Russian spy network was a sophisticated industry, something that we really didn't understand and overlooked.

And what they did in London, they did in all the other capitals of the world. In Stockholm, where the actual Market Garden Intelligence ended up was where Tchaev had been head of station before he came to London. The Russian intelligence network, the NKVD was

was reached just about every part of british society and as i said right went right to the heart of the of the the government machinery of government and jev was one of the ring masters although always answering always answering to to Moscow

Jonathan Thomas (30:24)
So now it's very clear that the Cambridge Five played a role in the downfall of Market Garden. Were they working purely for the Soviets or did they have other motivations?

Robert (30:39)
That's a very good question because the Russians certainly at one point thought, suspected them, they couldn't believe they were who they said they were. Think of it from Moscow's perspective, is a five well-connected British gentleman who decided to change sides and start spying.

betraying their country. In terms of Russian thinking and the ideology and the communist Bolshevik ideology, they didn't fit the pattern. Most of the Russian spies tended to be members of the proletariat.

They didn't understand why people like Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt would give up very good careers in British politics and government and throw their lot in with the Russians. weren't convinced. They were so unconvinced that they sent a team of Russian

spies themselves to London during the war to follow the Cambridge Five around to make sure they weren't really working for well ultimately for the British but that didn't really they didn't really establish anything so it wasn't so for some time during the war the the Cambridge Five weren't really weren't really taken seriously it was only

when the intelligence started to pay off. talking about D-Day, Belon delivered the whole Operation Overlord plan to his Russian handlers. The Russians knew, Stalin knew about D-Day when Churchill did, when Roosevelt did.

You know, we're talking about a very sophisticated spy network and Chichev was just part of it. the Cambridge Five were perhaps too good to be true to start off with, but became absolutely crucial to Stalin's war plans.

Jonathan Thomas (33:30)
couldn't believe their luck. It's also very cynical of the Soviets because they're like, know, this idea that these British aristocrats couldn't support the Soviets on principle alone, like there had to be some kind of devious intent there. It's typical Soviet thinking.

Robert (33:31)
very good.

Jonathan Thomas (33:55)
So, you reference newly released archives in your book. What was the most critical piece of declassified intelligence or evidence that changed your understanding of the whole operation?

Robert (33:55)
day.

Well, there were lots of documents that I read that helped to sort of paint the picture of the betrayal. As I said, some of the documents were Amsterdam, some of them were in The Hague, some of them were in Q. Some of them were in Washington. But I think that the document that...

that kind of was a sort of light bulb moment was this document written by a British MI5 and MI6 officer. She'd worked in both agencies during the war and her name was Pat McCollum, who's also the surname of the director general of MI5, but no relation, I'm sure.

So she, and she, she was the one who decided, or was asked to, let's face it, she must have been asked to, to draw up a report, an inquiry into how Agent Josephine had come into possession of the complete battle plan for Market Garden. in the report that she wrote, she sets out exactly what.

Josephine had got her his hands on and it was it was in indeed in detail the the description of the all the units used in the battle so this was the this was the American 101st in a band of brothers unit division airborne division it was the 82nd airborne division and the British

First Airborne Division. So these were all identified and not only that but their targets during Operation Market Garden were also identified. So bridges around Eindhoven, Nijmegen and on. These were all detailed in this leaked plan of the battle. But not only that, it said exactly when.

these airborne forces were to land in Holland and where the drop zones were. And this was, for me anyway, an extraordinary moment and I couldn't quite understand why Pat McCullen didn't quite see it like that. She was very happy to describe it as, dear, this is

This is just a mystery isn't it? What could have possibly happened? How did the Germans get hold of it? Who was Josephine? MI6 were convinced that Josephine was a mole working from London. But if you read the report, you get the feeling that Josephine wasn't anybody at all. that it was just all extraordinary luck that Josephine had managed to leak what

what was the detailed battle plans. So for me it was that report that, and because it just turned up without, there was no introduction to it, it just turned up with no, there was no announcement and it just turned up in the archives in 2003 I think it was. So, you know, very long time after it'd be, after the war, after Arnhem and quite a long time.

after she'd actually written it.

Jonathan Thomas (38:13)
So it's a kind of a fun research question then. How do you authors and researchers find out about these documents as they're released? Or do people camp out at the archives and wait for new documents to be released?

Robert (38:31)
Well, you in the old days, was, you did have, it was a very sort of painstaking investigation or piece of research because yet it was all hard, it was all hard copy. So you sometimes just, you know, you were looking for a needle in a haystack in terms of what you want. But since digitalization has completely transformed the whole research experience.

It means that you can look for research papers or documents or secret minutes or whatever by using the search engines. And you will find things that will link to your area of interest, which you would have never have found maybe 20, 30 years ago. And that's the new experience. And the thing is...

They're being digitalized so quickly that historians and historical researchers can't get them quick enough. There's almost too much material these days and it's kind of blinding you to getting to the sort kernel of what you're trying to uncover. But it's great. It's a wonderful time to be a researcher.

Jonathan Thomas (40:00)
Well, one wonders what secrets are buried in plain sight in the deluge of information that comes out.

Robert (40:08)
Well

put, I think that's exactly what's happening.

Jonathan Thomas (40:13)
There might be a strategy there. So, some overlap with my next question, but much of your book takes place in the shadows of history. How difficult was it to piece together these events when so many intelligence files were deliberately obscured after the war?

Robert (40:15)
Yeah, yes, yeah.

I think you have to be a sort of, you begin by being a policeman, you? So you just capture as much evidence you possibly can. Then you sort of lay it out and then you become a sort of lawyer, really. You sort of take the evidence and you follow it and you see and you argue.

knowing the motives of the individuals and the governments involved, you then pursue it to its nth degree and you try and mould it and see how it would fit into a political agenda or pattern. And then you end up ultimately being a judge. You have to decide on the weight of the evidence which way your judgment call will go.

With Market Garden, I followed the evident, evidential trail. I didn't really know where it was going. I was writing about my relative who happened to be a member of the resistance in the Second World War in Holland. He'd been shot by the Germans when he thought the Germans were surrendering to him, they shot him down in cold blood. It was a good story, but the evidential trail, and if you're curious,

The evidential trail can take you absolutely anywhere. A load of rabbit holes you can dive into and wish you hadn't. But with this book, it was really a case of taking these evidential trails, establishing what was interesting, what was new. And then you have to come up with some sort of explanation.

once you've gathered all the evidence and as I said made the judgment call and you have to establish a narrative and an explanation for how these files tell you what they're telling you and try and find out why they're telling you what they're telling you or what they're not sometimes what they're not telling you what they're as you say why would you obscure this piece of information what's the advantage what's the motive for hiding

a document or a minute that seems innocent enough.

Jonathan Thomas (43:08)
It sounds like a fascinating puzzle.

Robert (43:11)
It's a puzzle. It is a

puzzle.

Jonathan Thomas (43:14)
So Market Garden was famously depicted in the film A Bridge Too Far. Does your new research challenge any of the conventional wisdoms or myths about the operation?

Robert (43:26)
I think it's a good film actually. mean, it does cover the major events. I mean, it's obviously in Hollywood style. I mean, and the film depicts the arrival of the German 2nd Panzer Division. two Panzer units were used

by the Germans that ultimately defeat the 1st Airborne Division and General Gavin's American 82nd Division. the surprise that the British and Americans experienced when they discovered that they landed on top of these two battle-hardened Panzer Divisions was...

was well covered in the film, I thought. But I guess what the film doesn't do is it doesn't talk about Lindemans. It talks about the intelligence problem, which was that some of the Dutch intelligence, some of the intelligence and resistance was actually very good. And if they'd listened to it, they might have had second thoughts about Arnhem.

But there's a reason for that. And I think partly the reason is that people like Lindemans, who had ended up working for the Germans and a whole other intelligence catastrophe that I'm sure we haven't got time to go into, but just before Operation Market Garden, all the British and Dutch agents who were sent into

into Hollywood were captured because of an intelligence cock-up really. So the film talks about the failure to recognise the significance of the intelligence. The reason that is because they don't really trust the Dutch because they think they're infiltrated and already working for the Germans. But my book talks about more about why there was an intelligence failure and

these two betrayals because the book doesn't mention either, sorry, the film doesn't mention either of the the betrayals. The book mentions Lindemans but not to any significant degree but no one's no one's touched on Anthony Blunt.

Jonathan Thomas (46:02)
on that.

Well, it's interesting that, you know, there's this huge set piece battle with thousands and thousands of men. And yet there's this whole other silent battle occurring that where these soldiers are almost a pawn in a different game and they don't even realize it. And it's an even bigger game that Stalin is moving chess pieces.

Robert (46:37)
Yeah, that's why he was so good at fighting the Cold War, I think. He was ruthless and the Second World War was just a warm-up for the very Cold War.

Jonathan Thomas (46:54)
So did you find any evidence that Churchill or any other allied leaders suspected treachery but ignored it for political reasons?

Robert (47:02)
No, I couldn't, I didn't find anything that showed that Churchill knew about Lunt or knew about any Cambridge Five betrayal. mean, in fact, it's extraordinary how, and this is the problem when you have an intelligence service that recruits from a certain class.

you know, an old boy's network, if you like. And therefore, when one of them or several of them turn out to be double agents, it becomes impossible for them to recognize them because they're ones of their own and they don't, never, they never suspect their own of being traitors. So it wasn't even when Burgess and McDonnell McLean defected to Moscow in 1951.

Philby and Blunt were still, although questions were raised about them, they were still at liberty. They were still working in some form or other for the intelligence services because the people investigating them were their old mates who they'd been working with during the war. And so I think...

That's why it was impossible for anyone, including Churchill. And, you know, Churchill relied on his intelligence advisors. they never, ever suspected, I think, that the intelligence problem went to the heart of the British establishment. In fact, were, Churchill was more worried about the French and de Gaulle and the communists among de Gaulle's entourage than he was about British spies.

Jonathan Thomas (48:59)
So we kind of touched on this earlier in our discussion, but so if Operation Martin Garden had succeeded, how do you think the timeline at World War II would have changed? And would we have beaten the Allies to Berlin? How would the Cold War have been different? Or would it have happened at all?

Robert (49:17)
Yeah, well I think you can begin by saying that if we got to Berlin first, obviously, then the geopolitical landscape would have been changed. The whole geography post-war Europe would have been very different and the Russians would have been pushed further back. And there might have been an Iron Curtain, but it might have been

much further east and there might not have been such a huge Soviet empire. There may not have even been a Cold War. May not have been Bay of Pigs, if you like, if you want to extrapolate. And certainly wouldn't have been a Putin trying to emulate Stalin and invade his neighbor. I don't think, you know, this...

Patriotic War would have been, the great Russian Patriotic War would been framed in very different terms.

the politics of today would have been different. But I think if you go right back to Market Garden, and although the Americans were reluctant to get to Berlin before the Russians anyway, certainly Churchill wanted to push on. But even in 1945, after we crossed the Rhine and were heading, supposedly, for Berlin, Patent and Montgomery,

and Churchill came up with a plan to land even more using even more troops and market garden and an airborne and an airborne capture of Berlin. It was going to be, you know, a huge air landing on the German capital. And it would have, it would have put us right in the driving seat and Patton, who was not a great fan of Montgomery's and they unlikely

They unlikely comrades in this operation. But it was going to happen. But Market Garden had kind of persuaded them that it was too risky. If it went wrong, more British American soldiers would lose their lives. And Roosevelt was very dubious about the idea of

putting American soldiers in harm's way or exposing them to the Russian front line. He didn't want them to confront the Red Army because he thought he understood Stalin. He thought he'd come to an agreement. He didn't understand that the Cold War was already being fought and the Russians already had plans for the occupation of Germany.

Austria, the Balkans. He thought he could do a deal. So the capture of Berlin by an airborne invasion, or an airborne operation, never took place. And one of the reasons that is because of how disastrous Arnhem had proved.

Jonathan Thomas (52:46)
Very interesting. So for my final question, if readers take one lesson from your book, what would you hope it would be?

Robert (52:59)
I would hope that a reader of the book would discover that the intelligence war is just as fascinating as the battlefields. I think that the jeopardy and the scheming of the double agents and the spymasters and

the influence this has over the military planners and the way that the way that the operations like Market Garden are undermined by by traders is is just an interesting story is in the operation like Normandy or the big stage.

battles of the Second World War. think the intelligence war was infinitely more fascinating.

Jonathan Thomas (54:03)
They're much smaller, but with bigger ramifications. They're much more personal stories than a big set piece battle. you've converted me. think I'm going to have to buy more books about spies. My wallet's already quivering.

Robert (54:13)
No, no, no.

Hahaha

Jonathan Thomas (54:22)
So well, thank you for joining us on the Anglotopia podcast, Robert. The book is called The Traitor of Arnhem and it's now available from Booksellers everywhere. We will put a link in the show notes. If you enjoyed the Anglotopia podcast, please don't forget to subscribe, leave a comment or hit the like button. See you next time. Thank you, Robert.

Robert (54:41)
Cheers, Jonathan.