![]() But he also informed his KGB contacts of the details of British and American operations, including Operation Gold, in which a tunnel into East Berlin was used to tap telephone lines used by the Soviet military. In 1955, he was sent by MI6 to work as a case officer in Berlin, where his task was to recruit Soviet officers as double agents. In October 1954, he married MI6 secretary Gillian Allan in St Mark's Church (North Audley Street) in London. įollowing his release in 1953, Blake returned to Britain as a hero, landing at RAF Abingdon. However, in his first ever interview in 1990 with Tom Bower for 'The Confession', a BBC TV documentary, Blake said that he had been tempted towards communism during his Russian course in Cambridge while serving with MI6, and had been finally convinced while reading Karl Marx's Das Kapital during his imprisonment in North Korea. that it would be better for humanity if the Communist system prevailed, that it would put an end to war. It made me feel ashamed of belonging to these overpowering, technically superior countries fighting against what seemed to me defenceless people. Women and children and old people, because the young men were in the army. It was the relentless bombing of small Korean villages by enormous American Flying Fortresses. In an interview, Blake was once asked: "Is there one incident that triggered your decision to effectively change sides?" Blake responded: Īt a secret meeting arranged with his guards, he volunteered to work for the Soviet Union's spy service, the MGB. After seeing the bombing of North Korea, and after reading the works of Karl Marx and others during his three-year detention, he became a communist. As the tide of the war turned, Blake and the others were taken north, first to Pyongyang and then to the Yalu River. After British forces joined the United Nations Command defending the South, Blake and the other British diplomats were taken prisoner. ![]() ![]() The Korean War broke out on 25 June 1950, and Seoul was quickly captured by the advancing Korean People's Army of the North. Under cover as a vice-consul, Blake's mission was to gather intelligence on Communist North Korea, Communist China, and the Soviet Far East. He was posted thereafter to the British legation in Seoul, South Korea, under Vyvyan Holt, arriving on 6 November 1948. In 1947, the Navy sent Blake to study languages, including Russian, at Downing College, Cambridge, where his fellow students included the future foreign policy analyst Michael MccGwire. In 1946, he was posted to Hamburg and put in charge of the interrogation of German U-boat captains. He intended to marry an MI6 secretary, Iris Peake, but her family prevented the marriage because of Blake's Jewish background and the relationship ended. For the rest of the war, Blake was employed in the Dutch Section. Espionage activities Īfter he reached Britain, Blake joined the Royal Navy as a sub-lieutenant before being recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in 1944. In 1943, his mother decided to change the family name from Behar to Blake. There, he was reunited with his mother and his sisters, who had fled at the start of the war. In 1942, he escaped from the Netherlands and travelled to Britain via Spain and Gibraltar, reaching London in January 1943. Behar was interned but released because he was only 17, and joined the Dutch resistance as a courier. In 1940, Germany invaded and quickly defeated the Dutch military. When the Second World War broke out, Behar was back in the Netherlands. In 1991, Blake said that his encounter with Curiel, who was a decade older and already a Marxist, shaped his views in later life. ![]() While in Cairo, he was close to his cousin Henri Curiel, who was later to become a leader of the Communist Democratic Movement for National Liberation in Egypt. He later attended Downing College, Cambridge, to study Russian. The thirteen-year-old Behar was sent to live with a wealthy aunt in Egypt, where he continued his education at the English School in Cairo. The Behars lived a comfortable existence in the Netherlands until Albert's death in 1936. While Albert received the Meritorious Service Medal, he embellished his war service when recounting it to his wife and children, and concealed his Jewish background until his death. His father, Albert Behar, served in the British Army during the First World War. He was named George after George V of the United Kingdom. He was the son of a Protestant Dutch mother, Catherine (née Beijderwellen), and an Egyptian father of Sephardi Jewish origin who was a naturalised British subject. George Blake was born George Behar in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 1922. Blake with his mother upon his return to the UK in 1953
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