Thomas Kendrick

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Thomas Joseph Kendrick (code name Colonel Wallace) (born November 26, 1881 in Cape Town , † 1972) was a British intelligence service. Kendrick was, among other things, head of the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, on the European continent in the 1930s. He should not be confused with Thomas Kendrick (1895–1979), the director of the British Museum of the same name .

Life and activity

Kendrick grew up in South Africa and took part in the Boer War. During the First World War he was used as a field intelligence officer.

From December 1925 to August 1938 Kendrick acted as head of the main base ( station chief ) of the SIS on the European continent. This was in Vienna , where it existed within the British consulate - disguised as an employee of the passport department there.

On August 17, 1938, a few months after Austria was annexed to the German Reich in March 1938, Kendrick was arrested by the SD for espionage while on a trip to Freilassing and taken to the Hotel Metropol , the headquarters of the SS and Gestapo in Vienna. After intervention by the British Foreign Office, he was released on August 20 and expelled from Austria. German daily newspapers such as the Berliner Tageblatt , the Berliner Börsenzeitung and the national newspaper in Essen reported in large format about the arrest of the spying diplomat and his expulsion from Germany, so that international newspapers subsequently also reported on the incident.

The news network built by Kendrick collapsed as a result of his arrest and departure.

In the months leading up to his arrest, Kendrick et al. a. came into contact with the later organizer of the mass deportations of European Jews to the National Socialist extermination camps , Adolf Eichmann , who at the time was responsible for the organization of the emigration of German and Austrian Jews to Palestine and with Kendrick in negotiations regarding the emigration of Austrian Jews to the British-administered territory: In his capacity as - in personal union with his intelligence activities - the head of the passport control officer of the British consulate (Passport Control Officer), Kendrick, together with his employees, presented a large number of Austrian Jews in the summer of 1938 - estimates amount to around 10,000 people - issued entry permits to Palestine, which enabled them to escape from the Nazi regime. A more recent biography has therefore called him "Vienna's Oskar Schindler" (Vienna's Oscar Schindler).

During the Second World War , Kendrick organized a unit that wiretapped German prisoners of war in secretly specially equipped accommodation, so-called M-Rooms (miked rooms), in order to obtain information that was potentially important for the war effort. He was also given the task of monitoring Rudolf Hess , who was imprisoned in Great Britain, with microphones from 1941 onwards.

In the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin placed Kendrick on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles, would automatically and primarily be arrested by SS Special Commands in the spring of 1940 should.

On May 23, 1947, Kendrick's acceptance into the Legion of Merit was announced. In 1948 he retired.

Kendrick was buried in the Municipal Cemetery in Weybridge, Surrey, where his wife Norah, who died in 1977, rests.

literature

  • Ladislas Farago: Burn After Reading: The Espionage History of World War II , 2012.
  • Helen Fry: Spymaster: The Secret Life of Kendrick 2014.

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See e.g. B. Captain Thomas Kendrick is Ordered to Leave Germany after Accusation of Espionage "in: Lawrence Journal World of August 20, 1938 .
  2. ^ Rainer F. Schmidt: Rudolf Heß. Errand of a fool? The flight to Great Britain on May 10, 1941 1997, p. 233.
  3. ^ Entry on Kendrick in the special wanted list GB at the Imperial War Museum in London
personal data
SURNAME Kendrick, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kendrick, Thomas Joseph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British intelligence officer
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Cape Town
DATE OF DEATH 1972