The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [248]
SIS activities in Greece in the early months of the war showed the same mixture of political, military, economic and special operations work as elsewhere in the Balkans. In February 1940 the Athens head of station complained that he had so many demands for economic information that it was jeopardising, ‘from our point of view’, more important armed forces work. Among the latter were increasing calls for information about Italy, which, having invaded Albania the previous spring, was threatening further advances in the region. He worked on a scheme to establish agents in the Dodecanese Islands (who would report back through Turkey), and in April 1940 London signalled Athens, Belgrade and Malta urging them to send ‘additional tip and run agents’ to Italian Adriatic ports, to watch for ‘the assembly of transports or troops for an expeditionary force’. The Athens station, meanwhile, also built up productive relations with the Greek security police, who began to supply SIS with increasing amounts of information about German activities in the country. After the Italians came into the war in June 1940, and rightly anticipating that they might attack Greece (as happened at the end of October), evacuation and stay-behind plans were prepared. In London, Bowlby noted the possibility of locating a station in neutral Turkey ‘opposite the Dodecanese’, and also that agents in Corfu, Patras, Crete, Salonika and Samos had been provided with wireless sets.
In order to boost the naval work in Greece an additional officer was sent to Athens in May 1940, and, although there was a personality clash with the head of station (so much so that Menzies complained the situation was ‘most unsatisfactory, and retards our primary objective, which is to make every effort to win the war’), by September the British naval attaché in Athens reported that the new man (who had good sources in Greek naval circles) was getting ‘much valuable information’ and was ‘of great assistance to me’. Following the Greeks’ spirited and successful response to the Italian invasion of October 1940, there were well-founded concerns that Germany might come to the Italians’ aid. In a review of ‘German offensive plans’ prepared for the Foreign Office at the end of December 1940 Malcolm Woollcombe reported ‘on very good authority’ (possibly A.54, the Czechoslovak agent Paul Thümmel) that the Germans were contemplating an attack on Greece at the beginning of March 1941 ‘via Bulgaria’, and that ‘German troops would also pass through Yugoslavia, with or without that country’s permission’. Information ‘from a most secret and very reliable source’ (signals intelligence) confirmed the concentration of German military and air units in Romania to secure the oilfields; in addition, judging by their disposition, ‘it appears probable that the operation aims southward across the Bulgarian frontier’. This proved to be a pretty accurate prediction, although opinion was divided in London as to whether the Germans were also planning to invade Turkey. The attack, when it came on 5 April 1941, was directed against Yugoslavia and Greece.6 Twelve days later Yugoslavia capitulated and Greece had fallen by the first week of May.
SIS in Turkey
SIS had a modest presence in Turkey at the start of the war. Based in Istanbul, the SIS representative, Arthur Whittall, had an assistant, a secretary, two messengers and twenty-four agents on the books. Over the next two years the situation was transformed as Istanbul became one of the great espionage entrepôts of the war. Although neutral, the Turks were well disposed towards the Allies and, especially fearing Italian ambitions in the region, concluded a treaty with Britain and France in late September 1939, promising mutual assistance in the event of aggression by another European power against any of the signatories. This brought practical benefits for SIS: first, enhanced co-operation (initiated by the Turks)