Stewart Menzies

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Major General Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, KCB, KCMG, DSO, MC (pronounced "mingis", with a hard 'g') (30 January 1890 – 29 May 1968) was Chief of MI6, British Secret Intelligence Service, during and after World War II.

Born in London into a wealthy family, Menzies was reputed to be the illegitimate son of the future King Edward VII.^[1] He was educated at Eton College, where he became president of the student society Pop, and graduated in 1909. He excelled at hunting and cross country running.^[2]. He then joined the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and later the Life Guards (British Army).

During World War I he served in France, was seriously injured in a gas attack in 1915 and was honorably discharged. He joined the counterintelligence section of Field Marshall Douglas Haig, and in late 1917 reported to high British leadership that Haig was fudging intelligence estimates, which soon led to Haig's removal. This whistle-blowing was apparently done very discreetly. Following the end of the war, he entered MI6 (later SIS) and became a deputy of its director-general Hugh Sinclair.^[3]

In 1924, Menzies was allegedly involved — alongside Sidney Reilly^[4] and Desmond Morton^[5] — in the forging of The Zinoviev Letter.^[4] This forgery is considered to have been instrumental in the Conservative Party's victory in the United Kingdom general election of 1924, which ended the country's first Labour government.^[6]

In 1939, when Admiral Sinclair died, Menzies was appointed Chief of SIS. He expanded wartime intelligence and counterintelligence departments and supervised codebreaking efforts at Bletchley Park. By being responsible for distributing ULTRA material to other arms of the British government, Menzies was able to achieve a position of some power within the British government, which he used shamelessly to aggrandize the power of MI6^{[citation needed]}. Before World War Two, the SIS had been a relatively minor and despised branch of the British government. The chief reason for this was the SIS's consistent inability to produce any useful intelligence. By distributing the ULTRA material collected by the Government Code & Cypher School, for the first time, MI6 became an important branch of the government.

He also supported efforts to contact anti-Nazi resistance, including Wilhelm Canaris, the anti-Nazi head of Abwehr, in Germany but failed to convince Winston Churchill. He also coordinated operations with SOE (although he reputedly considered them "amateurs"), BSC, OSS and the Free French Forces.

After the war, Menzies reorganized the SIS for the Cold War. He absorbed most of SOE. He was sometimes at odds with the Labour governments. He also had to weather a scandal inside SIS after revelations that SIS officers Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and, eventually, Kim Philby, were actually Soviet spies.

Menzies resigned in 1952, a major-general, and retired to rural Gloucestershire. Often described as master spy chief, in fact Menzies was a master at bureaucratic warfare^{[citation needed]}. Through competent at espionage, his real forte was bureaucratic intrigue.

[edit] Personal life

Menzies was son of John Graham Menzies^[7]. According to biographies, his grandfather was a whisky distiller who established a cartel and made huge profits. His parents became friends of King Edward VII, who was rumoured to be Menzies' real father. Menzies was educated at Eton school where his achievements were in sports, and he never went to a university. His social and possibly quasi-royal connections helped him gain his job in intelligence.^[8]

His first marriage was in 1918 to Lady Avice Ela Muriel Sackville, younger daughter of Gilbert George Reginald Sackville, 8th Earl De La Warr and Lady Muriel Agnes Brassey, daughter of the 1st Earl Brassey. They were divorced in 1931, when she left him for another man. His second wife was an invalid for many years, suffering from depression, but she bore him his only child, a daughter, Fiona, in 1937. His third marriage was in 1952 (as her fourth husband) to Audrey Clara Lilian Latham (b. 1899), formerly wife of Sir Henry Birkin, 2nd Bt. (and two other men), and daughter of Sir Thomas Paul Latham, 1st Bt..^[9]; according to Follett, she decided to live separately shortly after their marriage. By his third marriage, he had two stepdaughters Pamela Buxton (later wife of Lord Buxton of Alsa) and Sara Hanbury. Follett also reports that Menzies had a long-standing affair with one of his secretaries, which he ended upon retirement (and presumably re-marriage) in 1952.^[10]. Menzies died 29 May 1968.

[edit] Source notes

[edit] Bibliography

• Anthony Cave Brown, "C": The Secret Life of Sir Stewart Menzies, Spymaster to Winston Churchill (Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987) ISBN 0-02-517390-1
• Ken Follett, "The Oldest Boy of British Intelligence" The New York Times, 27 December 1987. 3 pages review of Brown's biography and Mahl's book.
• Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44, (Brassey's Inc., 1999) ISBN 10: 1574882236

Military offices
Preceded by Sir Hugh Sinclair	Head of SIS 1939–1952	Succeeded by Sir John Sinclair