Invisible Army "C"

By Gerald Clarke

In the official records he had no title, position or office: he did not exist. But in fact Winston Churchill's spymaster, Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, deserves as much credit for the Allied victory in World War II as most of the generals who won the battles. His amassed information formed the invisible army that marched into Germany with Eisenhower, Montgomery and Patton. It is past time for this engrossing if overlong biography of the war's most mysterious player.

Born in 1890, Menzies was one of the golden boys of the British aristocracy. His family was rich and well placed, and he progressed comfortably along one of the courses marked out for England's future leaders: Eton, the Life Guards (whose duty it was to protect the sovereign), riding to hounds with the most exalted men in the realm.

Assigned to military intelligence in World War I, Menzies discovered that he enjoyed wielding power from the shadows, and he did not need or want public acclaim. Even his three wives knew only that he had some connection to the government. Between the wars he was deputy to "C," as the head of the SIS (Britain's version of the CIA) is titled. In 1939 he was appointed "C" himself, moving into an office that was connected to his living quarters by a hidden door and passageway.

His main contribution -- and it was immense -- was the protection of the biggest secret of the war: the fact that the British, with the help of the Poles, had broken the German code; they could read Hitler's mail. The information gathered through the Ultra secret helped the R.A.F., for example, defeat the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain and enabled Montgomery to overpower Rommel in the North African desert.

Menzies' final years -- he retired in 1952 -- were clouded by his failure to realize that the Soviets had penetrated SIS and were reading his own mail. "Only people with foreign names commit treason," he once said, and he was unwilling to believe that a fellow golden boy like Kim Philby could betray Crown and country and the establishment that had been so good to both of them.