The British Fifth Column
The British Fifth Column
On May 20, a group led by Charles Maxwell-Knight raided the flat of Tyler G. Kent, a code and cipher clerk in the United States Embassy. Herschel V. Johnson, the Counsellor, agreed to the waiving of Kent's diplomatic immunity, being assured that any proceedings would be in camera. Waiver was confirmed by Ambassador Joseph Kennedy and, after the arrest, by the State Department. Since his arrival on October 5, 1939, Kent had been strongly suspected of espionage; the Stockholm police had reported to Military Intelligence Section 5 on Ludwig Mathias, a naturalised Swede of German extraction thought to be a Gestapo agent. This chapter focuses on the trial of Kent and the existence of a Fifth Column, that is, a number of individuals who were, with some element of organisation, clandestinely assisting the enemy, in Britain. So far as the British Union was concerned, the number of their members involved in this Fifth Column was tiny.
Keywords: Charles Maxwell-Knight, Tyler G. Kent, United States, Britain, Herschel V. Johnson, espionage, Fifth Column, British Union, Ludwig Mathias, Joseph Kennedy
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .