The King’s favourite – Sailor Malan

Sailor Malan interview

Edit: October 2019 – Unfortunately, the original video was made private on youtube, so I had to find another video about Salor Malan.
WW2 will always be my favourite history topic. This is amazing what Sailor Malan had achieved. Many South Africans fought alongside the British during this time. Not just in England, but everywhere! Sailor (not his real name) was a true hero as a WW2 pilot during the Battle of Britain.

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MI5 Chess and the Cold War

I think for anyone not knowing Algebraic Chess, the following will be Greek to them… Morphy Defence, C78 Ruy Lopez,  1. e4    e5, 2. Nf3   Nf6, 3. Bb5   a6,   4. Ba4  Nf6,  5. O-O   b5,   ……29. Qxc2   dxe5…etc.  That was the opening moves of a chess game of Fischer vs Di Camillo played 1956 in Washington D.C. Fischer won. During the WW’s/Cold War, codes were used to send messages and some of the messages were disguised as chess moves! There were also the Code Breakers and many of them were chess champions (employed to break the codes) and some of them just very good chess players. So, if you want to send messages disguised as chess moves, it’s time for you to start knowing about algebraic chess! [haha] I’ve come across this interesting article and want to share it with you. Near to the bottom of the post you can read about Britain’s Code Breakers and how they operated. Last year Bletchley Park was in the news again as the building needed restoration. Bletchley Park is now a museum. Bletchley Park also helped to win WW2 and the launch of the modern computer. Read the Timesonline-link at the bottom of this post.

Intriguing spy postcards with cryptic messages to MI5 chief during Cold War found
23rd July 2009

Top secret postcards containing coded messages sent from a Cold War spy in Germany to an MI5 boss have come to light.

Written in cryptic text based around a series of chess games, they were posted in 1950 to Graham Mitchell, the then deputy director general of MI5.

Found by a member of Mitchell’s household staff – who kept them for more than 50 years – they are expected to fetch £1,000 when sold at auction on Monday.

 Intriguing: Chess was a favourite Russian national pastime and information would often be disguised as chess moves [click on images for a larger view]

Sent from what is thought to be an undercover agent in Frankfurt – a hub of espionage activity at the time as it was well positioned for spying on both the East and West – experts are not sure what side the men were spying for, as Mitchell was suspected of being a secret Soviet agent at the time.

Written on typewriters and dated throughout 1950, each of the messages revolves around chess, with a discussion of various moves and games written out in the text.
Some are addressed to ‘Dear chessfriend Mitchell’, and each contains a series of numbers recognisable as chess moves, used by correspondents to play games at a distance.

One postcard, dated June 16, 1950 said: ‘Without against Dr. Balogh I always have now hard fights in my games.

‘Against Collins I have been fallen into a variation of the Nimzowich-defence who surely should be lost!

‘I shall try to find a new idea for defending. But only a little hope. But all my games go forward in a quick way.

Gordon Thomas, author and expert on the history of MI5 and MI6, said chess moves were a common way of communicating during the Cold War.

He said: ‘Mitchell was head of counter-espionage at MI5 and would have been responsible for recruiting double agents with the aim of getting them into the KGB networks.
‘The Russians in particular favoured using chess as a method of communicating. It was a great national pastime and information would often be disguised as chess moves.

Code: Experts have not worked out the true meaning of the cryptic text

‘There’s even a section about it in the KGB handbook. For example, one move could ascertain what was happening and another could give instructions.
‘Agents would be trained to understand chess moves and Mitchell was quite a good chess player.The chances are that these were instructions or intelligence to a Soviet agent or an informer.
‘Of course they could just be innocent correspondence, but at the height of the Cold War it seems logical Mitchell would have more important things on his mind. We will never really know, but nevertheless it really is an astonishing find.’

Following a series of operation failures Mitchell was put under investigation along with the director general Roger Hollis.

He was even suspected as being in cahoots with the notorious Cambridge Five spies and was named by the now-famous Spycatcher author Peter White as a spy.

No evidence was found against them but Mitchell took early retirement in 1963 as a result of the investigation.

The postcards were delivered to Mitchell’s address in Chobham, Surrey, and were all sent from a Dr. Edmund Adam in Frankfurt.
Heather Cannon, of Barbers Fine Art Auctioneers of Woking, Surrey, said: ‘It was commonly known that Mitchell was investigated on suspicion of being a spy. He was also known to play chess and it seems he had a regular correspondence with Dr Adams.
‘The messages could very well be codes that conveyed secret information between the two. But until they are broken we can never know for sure.
‘They’re certainly a very interesting find and we’re expecting a lot of interest from people who are fascinated by MI5.
‘Anyone interested in spies and codes would be intrigued by them, and perhaps the buyer would be able to spend time trying to crack the mystery.’
Born in 1905, Graham Mitchell was educated at Winchester School and Oxford University before joining MI5 as an expert on fascist organisations.

Source HERE

Bletchley Park – image: Wikipedia

Sir (Philip) Stuart Milner-Barry OBE CB KCVO (20 September 1906 – 25 March 1995) was a British chess player, chess writer, World War II codebreaker and civil servant. He worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, and was head of “Hut 6”, a section responsible for deciphering messages which had been encrypted using the German Enigma machine. He was one of four leading codebreakers at Bletchley to petition the then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill directly for more resources for their work. After the war he worked in the Treasury and later administered the British honours system. In chess, he represented England in international tournaments and lent his name to three opening variations.

He represented England in chess, and played in the international Chess Olympiads of 1937 and 1939. The latter tournament, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, coincided with Britain’s declaration of war on Germany in September 1939. Milner-Barry, with teammates Hugh Alexander (at that time the British chess champion) and Harry Golombek, abandoned the tournament and returned to Britain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Milner-Barry

Image: chesshistory.com

The Codebreakers: Names underlined in red were British Chess Champions or Scottish chess champions and others only very strong chess players.

Bletchley Park, also known as Station X, is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire. Since 1967, Bletchley has been part of Milton Keynes, England.

Although its function was a secret at the time, Bletchley Park was officially known as the ‘GCCS’ (Government Code and Cypher School, which some irreverent people re-interpreted as the ‘Golf Club and Chess Society’). Up to 7000 people worked there at any one time.
Towards the end of the war, when they could be a bit more relaxed about security. Here is a detail from a photograph which appeared in the magazine ‘Chess’ showing participants in a 1944 match between what was called ‘Bletchley Chess Club’ and Oxford University. ‘Bletchley’ won the match 8-4.
During World War II, Bletchley Park was the site of the United Kingdom’s main decryption establishment. Ciphers and codes of several Axis countries were decrypted there, most importantly ciphers generated by the German Enigma and Lorenz machines.

The high-level intelligence produced at Bletchley Park, codenamed Ultra, is credited with having provided crucial assistance to the Allied war effort and with having shortened the war, though Ultra’s precise influence is still studied and debated.

Bletchley Park is now a museum run by the Bletchley Park Trust and is open to the public. The main manor house is also available for functions and is licensed for ceremonies. Part of the fees for hiring the facilities go to the Trust for use in maintaining the museum.

Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, in Warsaw, Poland’s Biuro Szyfrów (Cipher Bureau) revealed its achievements in decrypting German Enigma ciphers to French and British intelligence. The British used this information as the foundation for their own early efforts to decrypt Enigma.

The “first wave” of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) moved to Bletchley Park on 15 August 1939. The main body of GC&CS, including its Naval, Military and Air Sections, was on the house’s ground floor, together with a telephone exchange, a teleprinter room, a kitchen and a dining room. The top floor was allocated to MI6. The prefabricated wooden huts were still being erected, and initially the entire “shooting party” was crowded into the existing house, its stables and cottages. These were too small, so Elmers School, a neighbouring boys’ boarding school, was acquired for the Commercial and Diplomatic Sections.

A wireless room was set up in the mansion’s water tower and given the code name “Station X”, a term now sometimes applied to the codebreaking efforts at Bletchley as a whole. The “X” simply denotes the number “10” in Roman numerals, as this was the tenth such station to be opened. Due to the long radio aerials stretching from the wireless room, the radio station was moved from Bletchley Park to nearby Whaddon to avoid drawing attention to the site.

Listening stations – the Y-stations (such as the ones at Chicksands in Bedfordshire and Beaumanor Hall in Leicestershire, the War Office “Y” Group HQ) – gathered raw signals for processing at Bletchley. Coded messages were taken down by hand and sent to Bletchley on paper by motorcycle couriers or, later, by teleprinter. Bletchley Park is mainly remembered for breaking messages enciphered on the German Enigma cypher machine, but its greatest cryptographic achievement may have been the breaking of the German “Fish” High Command teleprinter cyphers.

The intelligence produced from decrypts at Bletchley was code-named “Ultra”. It contributed greatly to the Allied success in defeating the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic, and to the British naval victories of Battle of Cape Matapan and the Battle of North Cape.

When the United States joined the war Churchill agreed with Roosevelt to pool resources and a number of American cryptographers were posted to Bletchley Park. Whilst the British continued to work on German cyphers, the Americans concentrated on the Japanese ones.

The only direct action that the site experienced was when three bombs, thought to have been intended for Bletchley railway station, were dropped on 20 November 1940 – 21 November 1940. One bomb exploded next to the dispatch riders’ entrance, shifting the whole of Hut 4 (the Naval Intelligence hut) two feet on its base. As the huts stood on brick pillars, workmen just winched it back into position whilst work continued inside.

An outpost of Bletchley Park was set up at Kilindini, Kenya, to break and decipher Japanese codes.[8] With a mixture of skill and good fortune, this was successfully done: the Japanese merchant marine suffered 90 per cent losses by August 1945, a result of decrypts.

After the war, Churchill referred to the Bletchley staff as “My geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_associated_with_Bletchley_Park
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hut_6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Milner-Barry

During WW2 the British set up at Bletchley Park a major organisation whose purpose was to try to crack the sophisticated German codes (i.e. those using the ‘Enigma’ machine). A number of notable academics and mind-gamers were employed, including chess players, mathematicians and crossword-puzzle solvers. They succeeded in their task, and it has been seriously suggested that this single breakthrough shortened the war in Europe by 2 years. The Germans never believed that such a thing was possible. Among the chess-players based at Bletchley park were C.H.O’D (Hugh) Alexander (a British Champion) Stuart Milner-Barry (who gave his name to more than one ‘gambit’ variation) Harry Golombek (distinguished chess-player and author), N A Perkins, and James McRae Aitken (10 times Scottish Champion).

Other people at Bletchley Park included the mathematician Alan Turing (whose theories led to the development of artificial intelligence and computers), politician Roy Jenkins (subsequently a leader of the Labour and Social Democratic parties) and Professor Donald Michie (who later brought chessplayers Danny Kopec and Ivan Bratko to Edinburgh University to research AI techniques using chess).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hut_6

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7524421.stm

Bletchley Park, the codebreaking centre that helped to win the Second World War and launch the modern computer, is in danger of irreparable decay unless the Government steps in to save it, some of the country’s leading computer scientists caution today.

In a letter to The Times, 97 senior experts, mostly professors and heads of department, say that “the ravages of age and a lack of investment” have left the historic site under threat.

One of the unheated wooden huts where the codebreakers worked day and night to turn the tide of the war now looks “like a garden shed that’s been left for 60 years”, according to Sue Black, head of the Department of Information and Software Systems at the University of Westminster and one of the organisers of the letter.

A dirty tarpaulin keeps out the rain, and several of the eight surviving huts have peeling paint and boarded-up windows. [Read on the next link more – the link will open in a new window.]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4387286.ece
The leading British chess masters of World War II all became leading codebreakers for British intelligence.

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Anne Frank

 

On THIS LINK on my blog, you can read more about the Boer War. You will find some Boer War art, poetry and a lengthy entry about the war with many links to other sites too.

Today I was  inspired by Rosalind due to  her post about the concentration camps during the British/Boer-War in the late 1800’s-early 1900’s…I’ve got a book about the concentration camps and it was so sad to read how those people were treated and the circumstances they lived in! My mum has had a relative – Dorie Burger –  that was there and in this book she was also quoted where she mentioned who died again in the camp and how they were rationed on food and that the food wasn’t enough. According to her, many children were still hungry at night and couldn’t sleep due to insufficient food. You just feel like crying when you read the book!

 Rosalind’s post also  immediately  reminded me about the Jews and the holocaust and my  very own first English “story”-book… Anne Frank’s diary… as a birthday present when I was 12. My birthday  is one day before Anne’s birthday – 12th June – and that  made the book – as a child – even more special. I’ve always been interested in War-books, fiction as well as non-fiction. I’ve blogged before about other books written about wars…the Cambodian war… the war in Kosovo…Today, when you see the word “Holocaust”  it usually refers to this time in which the German Army systematically  killed nearly 6 million Jews. People need to learn about the Holocaust and the reasons why it happened.  Some say it never happened at all, but we know it did because there are too many witnesses and survivors who lived to tell the world about those darkest of times. Click HERE to visit the site about Anne Frank  and there’s a link to the museum.

 

This picture was taken on the 10th March 1933…. that means… Monday, 10th March…more than 70 years ago.

 

The movable book case

Anne Frank’s diary made into a musical…

 from the Guardian newspaper:

 

It might not seem the most obvious material for a song-and-dance number, but the Diary of Anne Frank will take centre stage next month when a Spanish musical based on the most famous book about the Holocaust opens in Madrid.

Having been rewritten for films, plays and TV dramas, the story of the Jewish girl hiding out with her family in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam has never before been made as a musical. The Anne Frank Foundation, which jealously guards the rights to the diary – it once turned down Steven Spielberg when he wanted to make a film – has given its support. Jan Erik Dubbelman said: “This production respects the message of tolerance, within the tragedy, that we want to keep alive. Being in Spanish, it can also help to take the message of Anne Frank to Latin America.”The Spanish theatre group behind the musical has visited the tiny flat where Frank hid from the Nazis, seeking inspiration for their characters and performing some of the songs for members of the foundation. Isabella Castillo, a 13-year-old born in Cuba who has been chosen for the lead role, said she had been moved by the visit: “If you’re doing a musical of the family and how they lived and the house and everything, I think it’s very special, and a very important detail, to come to this house.”Frank wrote the diary while she and her family hid in a secret annexe behind a bookcase in a canal-side warehouse. For 25 months, she wrote down her experiences as a teenager – her love-hate relationship with her parents, spats with schoolfriends, crushes on film stars – while in the background the war raged outside. The family was betrayed and arrested in August 1944 and Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945. Her father Otto was the only one to survive, and returned to Amsterdam after the war, where he discovered that her diary had been saved. First published in Dutch in 1947, it went on to be translated into 60 languages and has sold more than 25m copies worldwide.Rafael Alvero, who developed the musical project, said it was the culmination of a decade’s efforts to gain the confidence of the foundation. He said the show would be inspirational, comparing Frank’s life story to a tragic opera.

“When I first came here they [the foundation] had this doubt, about how somebody can do a musical of a story like this,” said Alvero. “The thing we want to do is … through the music, to understand the story better,” he said.

Once the foundation had given its permission, the hunt for actors capable of mixing the sombre nature of the material with the high energy of a musical began. Castillo said she felt honoured to be playing such an important role, and that there were things the two had in common.

The Franks moved from Germany to Holland in 1933, when Anne was four. Castillo’s mother fled from Cuba when Isabella was young, and they lived in hiding in Belize before immigrating to Miami.
Please click HERE for the original article about the musical.

Image: Gardenofpraise

Today if you visit the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp you can see a memorial to Anne Frank and her sister Margot.

This picture shows the streetside view of the building. Otto Frank’s offices were at the front of the building and the hiding place was at the rear.

The hiding place became known as the Secret Annex. It was located at 263 Prinsengracht. The Frank family would occupy two rooms on the first floor. A week later Mr. and Mrs. Van Pels and their son would move into the two rooms on the second floor. From Peter’s tiny room they could access the attic where food was stored. There was a small bathroom on the first floor. Images: gardenofpraise.com

This is what my book looks like…and the next book is a picture book which I’ve bought for my primary y5/6  kids… it’s really an easy book for them to understand Anne’s story.

 

This book is one of  many on my bookshelf  that I still need to finish reading…it’s about a gripping account of how a group of young children who, when forced into isolation by the Nazi occupation of their home town in Czechoslovakia, refused to be silenced and fought back by creating and circulating their own newspaper called Klepy (which means gossip). The “Underground Reporters” chronicles — the lives of the young people who contributed to the newspaper. On the blurb it says: “…They founded a secret newspaper that was to become an inspiration to the Jews of Budejovice, uniting them and giving them something to fight for and be proud of. These young people were the Underground Reporters and this is their story.”

 This book seems to be a great book to read, I’ve just ordered it from Amazon. You can read the review I’ve found on the internet.

 Review from this site:historicalnovelsociety.org/london-conference.htm

No Place for a Lady

Ann Harries

The thrilling and sweeping new novel from the award-winning author of
‘Manly Pursuits’

It is the turn of the twentieth century and war is razing the Boer Republics of South Africa to the ground. Kitchener’s army has intensified its most barbarous campaign: to burn down the homes of thousands of obstinate Boers, forcing a desperate migration to disease-ridden concentration camps. Yet the vastly outnumbered Boers still will not surrender to the British.

In the midst of these horrors is a group of women, each fighting their own battle. Sarah Palmer is an angelically pretty nurse who arrives from England with her madcap friend Louise. Their relationship is threatened when Sarah falls deeply in love with a sick Colonial trooper of humble origin as Louise cannot help but become painfully jealous of her friend’s natural magnetism and beauty. And then arrives the dynamic Englishwoman, Emily Hobhouse, who has come to bring succour to the destitute and dying women and children and to stir the consciences of Britain over the holocaust of the camps.

As their dramas unfold, so too does the history of the war. It was intended to be a quick annexation of the Boer Republics but it turned in to a protracted, savage conflict. Harries shows a depth of knowledge and compassion in her writing; the involvement of the blacks who were promised the vote if they joined the British side, and the injustices and deep inequalities in South Africa which lie at the heart of the story. ‘No Place for a Lady’ is historical fiction at its finest. Ann harries has drawn unforgettable characters and made the period with all its complexities come vividly alive. This is a thrilling, beautifully written, and utterly compelling novel.

Ann Harries was born and educated in Cape Town, where she worked in township schools and community centres. On moving to England she became active in the anti-apartheid movement. The author of the acclaimed Manly Pursuits, she divides her time between the Cotswolds and South Africa.

‘History is ingeniously rewritten in this witty and engaging novel.’

J.M. Coetzee

‘Outstanding…Funny, well observed and beautifully written.’
Sunday Times

‘Brilliantly funny and inventive…Enjoyable and vivid throughout… I haven’t turned any pages faster this year than I have turned these.’
Spectator

‘A hugely ambitious novel that takes on an impressive range of themes, from history, colonialism and racism to science, evolution, sexual repression and betrayal…Both an entertaining read and a richly evocative portrait of that era.’
Observer

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Corrie ten Boom

Cornelia Johanna Arnolda ten Boom, generally known as Corrie ten Boom, (April 15, 1892 – April 15, 1983) was a Dutch Christian Holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during World War II. Ten Boom co-wrote her autobiography, The Hiding Place, which was later made into a movie of the same name. In December, 1967, Ten Boom was honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel.

Read more here ….

And… here to visit the Corrie ten Boom museum….

This is the book I’ve read and would like to read it again, as a chess player mentioned it to me, I’ve thought to read it again!

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

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