Peter Calvocoressi

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Peter Calvocoressi , actually Peter John Ambrose Calvocoressi , (born November 17, 1912 in Karachi , † February 5, 2010 in Dorset , England ) was a barrister , publicist, university professor, author and human rights activist. During World War II he was an Intelligence Officer at Bletchley Park .

He has worked for the Royal Institute of International Affairs , the International Institute for Strategic Studies , Amnesty International and the UN Sub-Committee on Discrimination and Minorities , a UN think tank .

Life

The Calvocoressi family came to Great Britain in February 1913 with their three-month-old son Peter from Karachi in what was then India and settled in Liverpool , where the father founded the Ralli Brothers Ltd. represented. The family lived in England within a cosmopolitan scene that included many Greeks. He grew up bilingual, and the family language was French. He spent the school holidays with his family in Greece and Italy. From 1926 to 1931 he attended Eton College as a King's scholar (scholarship holder) and then moved to Balliol College at Oxford University , where he studied German and modern history. His tutors included the historian Vivian Hunter Galbraith (1889–1976) and Sir Lewis Namier . He completed his studies with top marks and was considering a career in the Foreign Office. Anthony Eden advised him against it, however, because he had no chance of a career because of his father's origins from France. After his admission as a barrister , he worked as a lawyer until the outbreak of war. In 1939 he joined the Royal Air Force , but was soon assigned to the Government Communications Headquarters in Bletchley Park. He spent most of World War II there as an RAF Intelligence Officer .

Top Secret Ultra

Hut 3 in Bletchley Park

The Code and Cypher School was located in Bletchley Park . There several working groups were busy "cracking" the military codes of the war opponents Germany, Japan and the other Axis powers. The task of the Hut 3 was to decode the radio messages of the Luftwaffe that were sent via Enigma machines. The working group initially consisted of only four senior officers, including the literary scholar FL Lucas, a fellow at Kings College in Cambridge. Calvocoressi, who spoke English, German, French and Italian fluently, was assigned to this group and became Head of Air Section . Calvocoressi's task was to translate the decoded messages, to interpret them, to assess their meaning and importance and to decide to whom the decoded texts would be sent. Most important information went straight to Churchill . 580 men and women worked there in the wedding of Hut 3, including 21 Americans since mid-1943.

Calvocoressi owned a spacious 18th century house near Bletchley Park, where he also housed English and American colleagues, preferably those who played a musical instrument.

After the end of the war, employees of the group wrote a report in which they described in detail the consequences of the decryption for the German Wehrmacht, the RAF and the course of the war. The report was classified as Top Secret Ultra and remained unpublished. Calvoceressi describes this time in his book Top Secret Ultra , using this report as a source. His participation in Enigma decryption became public for the first time with his book published in 1980.

Nuremberg Trials

In the summer of 1945 he - still an officer in the service of the RAF - became an unofficial member of the staff of the American chief prosecutor in Nuremberg , Robert H. Jackson , through the mediation of the American Colonel Telford Taylor , whom he had met in Bletchley Park . Calvocoressi had court experience from his time as a barrister, he spoke excellent German, knew the organization and background of the German army and warfare, was well informed about the actions of the SS before and during the war and was subsequently accredited with all four main prosecutors . From 1946 to 1947 he worked out reports on the German military and the various Nazi organizations, sifted through the files and prepared them for the indictments. Taylor sent him and three other employees to Washington, where they supervised the archiving of the files requisitioned in Germany for months. These files formed the basis for charges relating to war crimes in Norway and the Balkans. In August 1946 he himself appeared before the court and cross-examined German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt .

Author, publicist, university professor

After the war he left the army, tried several jobs and wrote books. In 1949 he received an offer from the Royal Institute of International Affairs . The think tank , which resided in Chatham House , was founded by Arnold J. Toynbee . Toynbee entrusted him with the publication of the Survey of International Affairs , a yearbook that would give an overview of the world events of the year. By working on the survey , Carvocoressi acquired a precise, elegant and fast spelling.

In 1954 he joined the management of Chatto & Windus , which had published his book on the Nuremberg Trials, and the Hogarth Press . In the 50s and 60s he repeatedly took over public offices: He became a member and later chairman of the Africa Bureau founded by David N. Aston , which campaigned for the decolonization of Africa and against apartheid in South Africa. From 1962 to 1971 he was a member of the United Nations sub-committee on the prevention of discrimination and protection of minorities . In the late 1960s, when Amnesty International threatened to break up over internal disputes, he was a successful mediator. In 1965 he gave up his publishing activities. In 1966 he was appointed reader in international relations at the University of Sussex . In 1972 he went to Penguin Books as Editorial Director , but resigned from his position in 1976 because of a disagreement with owner Pearson Longman .

family

The Calvocoressi were one of the families who were evicted from the island of Chios after the 1822 massacre . Peter's father Pantias Calvocoressi (1874–1965) worked as a businessman for the Ralli Brothers group in New York, India and England. In 1924 he gave up his French citizenship and accepted the British. His mother was Irene Ambrose Ralli (1882-1937), a member of the extensive Ralli family that owned the international Ralli Brothers . Ion Calvocoressi was his cousin.

Calvocoressi was married since 1938 to Barbara Dorothy (Francis) Henley (1915-2005), a daughter of Francis Robert Eden, 6th. Lord Henley . With her he had two sons, Paul Peter and David Sebastian. His wife died in 2005 and he was second married to Rachel Scott the following year. Calvocoressi died in Dorset at the age of 97 and was buried in Salisbury Cemetery .

Honors

Works (selection)

Calvocoressi wrote 20 books, most of them on contemporary history, his autobiography and the reference work Who's Who in the Bible, which has been published several times and has been translated into several languages .

From 1947 to 1953 he was editor and lead author of the Survey of International Affairs .

  • World Politics Since 1945 . Edinburgh: Pearson Ed. 1968.
The first edition was followed by 9 further editions, the last in 2009, each time expanded to include the latest events and developments. The book is considered to be the best overview of contemporary history since the end of World War II.
  • The British experiment. 1945-1975 . Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, London 1978. ISBN 0-14-022098-4 .
  • Freedom to publish. A report on obstacles to freedom in publishing . Almquist & Wiksell, Copenhagen 1980, ISBN 91-22-00361-4 .
  • Independent Africa and the World . Longman, London 1985, ISBN 0-582-29654-4 .
  • Threading my way . Duckworth, London 1994, ISBN 0-7156-2627-2 (autobiography).
  • Nuremberg . The facts, the law and the consequences . Chattoo & Windus, London 1947.
  • Top secret ultra . Baldwin Publ., Cleobury Mortimer 2001, ISBN 0-947712-41-0 (reprinted from London 1980 edition).
  • Total was. Causes and courses of the 2nd World War . 2nd Edition. Viking Press, Harmondsworth 1989, ISBN 0-670-80311-1 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d The Independent. February 20, 2010.
  2. ↑ Jackson: Bletchley Park, Part 7, The Huts and Blocks: Huts 3, 4, 6 and 8
  3. ^ The Secret War of Hut 3. In: The Bletchley Series. Ed. John Jackson.
  4. ^ John Q. Barrett: Peter Calvocoressi (1912-2010), Nuremberg Prosecutor. 2010.
  5. ^ The Telegraph. February 5, 2010. Obituary
  6. ^ The Guardian. February 8, 2010.
  7. ^ The Spectator. March 15, 1955.
  8. ^ Agelastos Family Genealogy
  9. ↑ Lawrence D. Freedman In: Foreign Affairs. May / June 2009.


personal data
SURNAME Calvocoressi, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Calvocoressi, Peter John Ambrose (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and former Bletchley Park associate
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Karachi
DATE OF DEATH February 5, 2010
Place of death England