Military Service in World War II
During World War II, Trevor-Roper served as an officer in the Radio Security Service of the Secret Intelligence Service, and then on the interception of messages from the German intelligence service, the Abwehr. He came to have a low opinion of the pre-war professional intelligence agents but a higher one of post-1939 recruits like Kim Philby. Trevor-Roper declared in The Philby Affair (1968) that Philby was never in a position to undermine efforts by the Chief of German Military Intelligence Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, to overthrow the Nazi regime and negotiate with the British government.
Read more about this topic: Hugh Trevor-Roper
Famous quotes containing the words military, service, world and/or war:
““My ancestors were all famous for military genius.”
My Lady smiled graciously. “It often runs in families,” she remarked: “just as a love for pastry does.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
A stage, where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier’s sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.”
—Philip Caputo (b. 1941)