Anna Wolkoff - World War II

World War II

When Britain went to war against Germany in September, 1939, the Right Club officially disbanded. However, many members went underground and planned ways to aid Germany. Wolkoff, using an intermediary from the Italian Embassy (Assistant Military attache Col. Francesco Marigliano, the Duke del Monte), sent information to Berlin, including suggestions for Joyce's propaganda broadcasts.

However, unknown to Wolkoff, the Right Club had been infiltrated early on by MI5, first by Marjorie Mackie and subsequently by young Belgian mystic Helene De Muncke, and also by Joan Miller, a young, undercover agent who once worked as an office girl for Elizabeth Arden. It is through these three women, controlled by head of MI5 Section B(5)b Maxwell Knight, that MI5 was kept fully informed of, and indeed was able to influence, the activities of the group.

In February 1940, Wolkoff met Tyler Kent, a cipher clerk from the U.S. Embassy who held similar views, and he became a regular visitor to the Right Club. Kent later revealed to Wolkoff and Ramsay some of the documents he was holding in his flat that he had stolen from the embassy, most notably sensitive communications between Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt. On 13 April 1940, Wolkoff went to Kent's flat to borrow some of the documents, in order, as it emerged later, to have them photographed. Although it was subsequently alleged that she sent the copies to Berlin through her Italian embassy cutout, this was never proved.

Her espionage work took a turn when she approached Helene De Muncke and asked her if she could pass a coded letter to William Joyce through her Italian embassy contacts. De Muncke agreed and then showed the letter to her controller Maxwell Knight.