Re: Hobsbawm --> Kim Philby, & Frank Ryan

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 20 Sep 2002 12:30:36 +0100 Mark Jones
<markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> At 20/09/2002 09:52, you wrote:
> >Mark's mention of Kim Philby reminded me of a conversation I had
> with
> >Carl Geiser who was the 15th Internationale Brigade commissar for
> the
> >MacPaps captured by Italian fascists on April 1, 1938.
>
> Philby went to Spain as I think the Times or telegraph's loudly
> pro-Franco
> correspondent; that was the first cover the NKGB gave him. There are
> lots
> of storiesabout that period of his life, and lots of lies and smears
>
> too.

And interestingly enough, General Franco personally presented Philby with

a medal when he learned that Philby was the sole survivor
of a car full of journalists that was destroyed by an artillery shell.
So I guess getting a medal from Franco did Philby's career
no harm, and indeed was probably beneficial to it.  That
incident also demonstrated Philby's physical courage
under fire, which no doubt made a very favorable
impression on the British Establishment.
Philby was also during that time a member of the
Anglo-German Fellowship, which was very much
pro-Nazi.

>But the NKGB was right: making him violently pro-Franco
> immediately
> made Philby highly acceptable to the British establishment and MI6;
> it made
> him one of them, a regular guy. They couldn't wait to recruit him.
> Hmmm.

The fact that during his undergraduate days at Cambridge,
Philby had very much been a leftwing activist apparently
caused little alarm to his superiors, since it was not
uncommon for young men of good breeding, to "sow their
oats" as leftwing activists, only to become good Tories
upon graduation.

Jim F.

>
> Mark
>
>

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