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The Dresden Dolls - Missed Me |
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I was in the bathroom and started reading this really cool article in my step dad's Bathroom Reader.
International Man of Mystery
Although he's not a household name, historians call William Stephenson the "single most important man in the war to defeat Hitler's Third Reich."
But he was reclusive. Never one to seek the public eye, Stephenson preferred to remain behind the scenes and let others take the glory. For this reason, many of the details of his life remain shrouded, and history books tend to contradict each other about his role. The following are factual [probably], agreed-upon [mostly] accounts of his life and work.
Early Years On January 11, 1896, William Samuel Clouston Stanger [changed to Stephenson a few years later] was born in the bleak prairie town of Winnipeg, Manitoba. From an early age, it was apparent to all around him that he was no ordinary child. He taught himself Morse code, commercial cyrptography [the system of sending coded telegrams], and demonstrated a photographic memory. Stephenson's school principal described him as a boy with a "strong sense of duty and high powers of concentration."
The First World War
In August 1914, following the outbreak of WWI, that sense of duty prompted him to enlist with the Royal Canadian Engineers, who shipped him off to France. There, Stephenson was injured in a gas attack, and sent to England as an invalid labeled "disabled for life." But within a year he recovered and, although unfit to return to the trenches, he was equally unwilling to settle for a desk job.
So, Stephenson joined the Royal Flying Corps, returned to France, and became one of World War I's most decorated fighter pilots, shooting down 26 enemy planes.
In 1918 Sergeant Stephenson's luck seemingly ran out when he was accidentally shot down by his own side in hostile territory. He was captured and sent to Holzminden Camp in Germany. But instead of letting imprisonment break him, the opportunistic young man turned it into a business venture: he stole items from the guards and traded them to other POWs in return for favors.
One of the items Stephenson lifted was a hand-held can opener. After determining that it had only been patented in Germany, Austria, and Turkey, he escaped from the prison camp--with the can opener-- and by 1919 was back home in Winnipeg, where he patented the can opener, calling it Kleen Kut. The twin-handled, clamp-style manual can opener is still in use today.
In 1922 he invented a device that improved the way photographs were sent over telephone lines [this device would later lead to the invention of the television]. Stephenson patented the wireless photography process and became a millionaire before he was 30.
The Making of A Spy
Although he never planned to work in military intelligence, all of Stephenson's experiences pushed him in that direction. While teaching math and science at the University of Manitoba in the early 1920s, he was approached by a top-ranking British officer and invited to heap up a team of cyrptanalysts--people who analyze codes. Stephenson immediately left for England.
During his 19-year stay, he became friends with many powerful and influential people, including the authors George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, the nabob of Bhopal, the Aga Khan, and actress Greta Garbo. But Stephenson's most important friendship was with Winston Churchill, a Conservative member of Parliament who was not in the good graces of the ruling Labor Party. Churchill and Stephenson shared an interest in technology and espionage; and both feared the rise of Nazi Germany.
Chatting With The Enemy
Stephenson's first dealings with the Nazis came in 1934 when an aircraft built by a company in which Stephenson was an investor, General Aircraft, won the King's Cup air race, the premier flying event of the 1930s. The plane caught the attention of some German military officials, who started a dialogue with Stephenson. To the Germans, Stephenson was nothing more than a rich private citizen. But Stephenson took the opportunity to listen in on the Nazis.
What he learned terrified him: the Germans, with Chancellor Adolf Hitler in charge, were building military aircraft at an alarming rate--positioning themselves for something big...really big. Stephenson reported his findings to Churchill, who in turn reported them to British prime minister Neville Chamberlain. The warnings were ignored at first, but when Stephenson's claims were later verified, England began to prepare for war. Those reports also put Churchill back in favor with Parliament, paving the way for his historic reign as prime minister.
And always forward-thinking, Stephenson made a bold recommendation, one that would have changed history but was rejected by the British foreign secretary, Lord Halifax. He proposed that British agents assassinate Hitler while they still had the chance. Halifax didn't see what Stephenson saw--he preferred to take a diplomatic approach.
The Second World War
As predicted, Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Churchill was elected prime minister the following year, and one of his first acts was to appoint Stephenson chief for the British Secret Service [SIS] in New York City. Why New York? Because in 1940, that's where Stephenson saw the greatest need. Britain's ambassador had reported that 9 out of 10 Americans were determined to keep the United States out of the way. The Britons needed the Americans, so Stephenson used covert tactics to change their minds.
--He furnished the media with bulletins and prepared scripts that spoke of Hitler's brutality.
--He worked to break up the American isolationist groups that had been growing in numbers since the first world war. One such group, led by Senator Gerald Nye, held a rally in Boston in September 1941. Thousands of pamphlets created by Stephenson's organization were handed out, accusing Nye of being a German sympathizer
--After a speech by another isolationist, Congressman Hamilton Fish, Fish received a card that said "Der Fuhrer thanks you for your loyalty," and was secretly photographed while holding it. The photographs were then handed out to his supporters.
--An isolationist rally was to be held at Madison Square Garden, but Stephenson printed up hundreds of phony tickets with the wrong date to ensure a low turnout.
Intrepid and Camp X
If all that didn't change the Americans' minds, the invasion of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 surely did. With war declared, both Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt knew that solid intelligence would by key to winning the war. To that end, they assigned Stephenson the job that he had unknowingly been preparing for his entire life: spy trainer.
Under the code name "Intrepid" and the cover "Passport Control Officer," Stephenson ran Camp X, a secret facility somewhere near Toronto, Ontario. Camp X was a top-secret training ground where operatives were taught unconventional warfare techniques: how to kill with their bare hands; make lethal weapons out of household items; and blow up industrial installations. Others were trained in lock picking, safe blowing, infiltration, explosives, listening devices, and Stephenson's favorite, codes and ciphers.
Once their training was complete, agents were flown into occupied Europe on "moon planes" [plywood aircraft painted dull black to be nearly invisible at night], to conduct sabotage and spy operations. It was a perilous assignment--many agents did not return alive. But they were able to perform some of the war's most crucial covert missions, including the murder of Reinhard Heydrich, the brutal German commander who ruled Czechoslovakia.
Enigma
But nothing Stephenson did was more important to the Allied war effort than his assistance in cracking the "Enigma" code, Germany's primary method of transmitting secret messages. An Enigma machine looked like an ordinary typewriter; an operator would type a message, then an internal set of rotors would translate the message into code. This code would be transmitted to another operator, who would use a corresponding Enigma machine to decipher it. Because the Nazis believed that Enigma was impossible to crack, they made widespread use of it, and Stephenson saw this reliance as their greatess weakness. Crack Enigma and the Germans would be helpless. When Polish agents stole an Enigma machine from a German convoy, they sent it straight to Intrepid at Camp X.
Enter Cynthia
Stephenson teamed up with Elizabeth Thorpe, a beautiful agent who went by the code name "Cynthia." To crack Enigma, they needed to intercept a coded message and then see that same message after it came out of an Enigma machine. So Stephenson instructed Thorpe to seduce some high-ranking diplomats who had received messages. Through a combination of guile and feminine prowess, Thorpe acquired a set of codebooks from her unsuspecting lovers. These codebooks unlocked the secrets of Enigma and helped turn the war against Germany in favor of the Allies.
Stephenson and his agents had many other covert successes during the war, including rescuing Niels Bohr, a leading atomic researcher in German-occupied Denmark. Had the Germans gotten to Bohr, they may have had the A-bomb first. But thanks to the rescue, Bohr was able to work on the Manhattan Project and help the U.S. build the weapon that would end the war.
Intrepid's Legacy
For his efforts, Stephenson received a knighthood from the British and the Presidential Medal of Merit from the Americans [the first non-American to be given one]. Ironically, he did not receive recognition from his native Canada until Prime Minister Joe Clark presented him with the Companion of the Order of Canada in 1980. Sir William died in Bermuda in 1989 at 93, outside of the public eye, just the way he liked it.
But Interpid's legacy goes deeper. An aide to the chief of British Naval Intelligence during WWII, a young man named Ian Fleming, had the opportunity to observe Intrepid in action and was very taken with him. After the war, they became friends. While both were living in Jamaica, Stephenson would recount spy tales to his friend. That's when Fleming started writing a book about a spy called James Bond. Many of Agent 007's characteristics--his suaveness, brilliance, and slight cockiness--were lifted straight from Stephenson. In fact, Fleming described his secret agent as a "highly romanticized version of the true spy--and Bill Stephenson was the real thing."
SO AWESOME
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