Kim Philby is surely the most famous British spy working for the Soviets in history. For years he held a position in the British secret services while passing all the information that came into his hands to the Russians.
What few people know is that during the Spanish civil war Philby received the red cross of military merit from none other than Generalissimo Franco.
In the early 1930s, the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) decided to penetrate the British secret services through a long-term strategy, and to this end they set their sights on a group of young 'pro-socialist' university intellectuals, who constituted what later became known as 'the Cambridge Circle'. They were Harold Adrian Russel (Kim) Philby, Donald McLean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross.
The think tanks of Russian espionage instructed the members of the Cambridge Circle to infiltrate the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service), the British secret service, predecessor of the famous MI6.
Philby's background didn't help. In 1933 he moved to Vienna to join the communists and socialists who opposed Dollfluss's reactionary pretensions and ended up fleeing Vienna when a hunt was declared against them by the Dollfluss regime, which was of little use, since a few months later Hitler annexed Austria and Dollfluss was assassinated. Philby fled Vienna in time, and to guarantee her lover's departure from the country, Litzzy Friedmann, a Hungarian Jew and Communist, married her, guaranteeing her right to a British passport.
As I said, this background did not make it easy for Philby to gain access to the British secret services, so it occurred to the NKVD that he would have to create a certain reputation as a "non-communist" and They decided that the best way to do it was for him to travel to Spain and cover the events of the Civil War as a freelance journalist from the national side, creating a reputation for being close to the Franco regime.
On these assignments, in December 1937 Philby was traveling in a car with other foreign journalists to cover the Battle of the Ebro when a Republican bomb exploded next to his car. Correspondents from the AP, the Daily Telegraph and the Reuters Agency died, but Philby was fortunate to survive and Franco's propaganda awarded him the military merit medal to obtain the attention and approval of the international press.
His chronicles on the civil war and Franco's own award of a medal facilitated Philby's access to the British secret services and until the defections to Moscow of his McLean colleagues and Burgess put him in the spotlight and was fired from the British secret service in 1951 revealed all the secrets of these and their American allies. Since then he worked as a journalist in the Middle East and ended up also fleeing to Moscow in 1963, shortly before the British arrested him as a Soviet spy.
Whoever wants to know more about the history of Philby and the «Cambridge Circle» can read Robert Littell's book «Young Philby» (not translated into Spanish yet), cited in my reading blog Also recommendable about moles in the English secret services are the books by master John Le Carré "The mole" and "Smiley's people".
I recently got my hands on a BBC series called "Cambridge Spies" which tells the story of the members of the Cambridge Circle. Like any English series, it is well set and historically reliable. Although it is somewhat irregular and lacks a certain narrative rhythm, it is recommended for those who want to delve into the stories and motivations of the English moles.
Image| Kim Philby