Donald Maclean (spy) - London in World War II

London in World War II

By this time the Russians had become suspicious of some of their British spies. Elena Modrzhinskaya, a Moscow case officer, examined Philby's file and pointed to certain suspicious circumstances. The London Station was warned that he and others of the Cambridge ring might be British plants.

In 1939 Walter Krivitsky, (born Samuel Ginsberg in Galicia, now Poland) a GRU officer, who had defected after the murder of Leon Trotsky by Soviet agents in Mexico City was interviewed by Dick White and Guy Liddell of MI5. Krivitsky had been head of the GRU network in Western Europe and gave details of 61 agents working in Britain. He did not know their names but described one as being a journalist who had worked for a British newspaper during the Spanish Civil War. Another was described as "a Scotsman of good family, educated at Eton and Oxford, and an idealist who worked for the Russians without payment." These descriptions fitted Kim Philby and Maclean, apart from their education. However, White and Liddell did not follow this up, which suggests that British Intelligence was either aware of or complacent about their activities at this time when Russia was an ally of Nazi Germany. Walter Krivitsky was found dead in the Bellevue Hotel in Washington, D.C. on 10 February 1941. At first it was suggested that Krivitsky had committed suicide. However, some believed that his hiding place had been discovered and he had been murdered by Soviet agents.

Maclean continued to report to Moscow from London and signaled on 16 September 1941 that a uranium bomb might be constructed within two years. This was after Germany had invaded the Soviet Union which was now a British ally. The chemical problems of producing gaseous compounds of uranium and pure uranium metal were studied at the University of Birmingham and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). Dr Philip Baxter at ICI made the first small batch of gaseous uranium hexafluoride for Professor James Chadwick in 1940. ICI received a formal contract later in 1940 to make 3 kg of this vital material. Some of the secret development work was carried out by ICI at Billingham, Northeast England under a government contract with the code name Tube Alloys. Maclean sent Moscow a sixty-page report with the official minutes of the British Cabinet Committee on the Uranium Bomb Project. As a member of the Foreign Office Maclean would not have had access to such papers, so it looks possible that the British Government was trying to impress and encourage Stalin, who at this time was contemplating flight from Moscow, ahead of the Wehrmacht advance on the city.