William Reginald Hall

William Reginald Hall

Admiral Sir William Reginald Hall (* 28. June 1870 in Britford , Wiltshire , † 22. October 1943 in London ) was a British naval officer and World War head of the Secret Intelligence Service of the Royal Navy . Due to a nervous eye condition, he was nicknamed "Blinker". With the launch of the Zimmermann telegram in 1917 to the US authorities, he succeeded in an intelligence operation which the latest research regards as decisive for the war, as it caused the USA to enter the world war .

Career

Hall was the son of Sea Captain William Henry Hall, the first director of the British Naval Intelligence Service. William Reginald Hall apparently joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1884 . In 1894 he married Ethel de Wiveslie Abbey. In 1905 he was promoted to sea captain.

Apparently in 1907 Hall took command of the armored cruiser HMS Cornwall , which was used as a training ship . During the trips abroad, Hall carried out military reconnaissance and espionage , including in Kiel , where he inspected shipyards.

In 1913 he became the commandant of the battle cruiser HMS Queen Mary , with which he took part in the naval battle near Heligoland on August 28, 1914 . Due to his poor physical constitution, he had to give up the service at sea and was appointed Director of Naval Intelligence two months later, in October 1914, and was thus head of the British naval intelligence service, which also included the interception department Room 40 . Through this activity he came into close contact with Vernon Kell of MI5 , Mansfield Smith-Cumming of MI6 and Basil Thomas (1861-1939) of the Special Branch of Scotland Yard . Apparently, it came in the fall of 1914 to a collaboration with Thomas when the American yacht Sayonara was manned by naval personnel and tried on a trip along the west coast of Ireland in Irish disloyal information about German submarine - bases to obtain.

Apparently at the end of 1915 in London, Hall interrogated the former commandant of the German auxiliary ship Rubens , first lieutenant at sea in the reserve Carl Christiansen , who, under the legend of a Swedish citizen, had tried to return to Germany from German East Africa but had been intercepted in Cape Town . Christiansen was amazed at Hall's intelligence knowledge, especially that Hall knew he had been in command of the Rubens .

As part of the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916, Room 40 and Hall succeeded in tracking the German auxiliary ship Libau off the Irish coast and tracking down Sir Roger Casement , who had been landed on the west coast of Ireland by SM U 19 . The Libau was provided by HMS Bluebell ; After the auxiliary ship was scuttled, the captured crew were brought to London under Karl Spindler and there was personally interviewed by Hall.

In 1917 Hall was promoted to Rear Admiral. In that year, his group of code breakers ( Nigel de Gray , "Dilly" Knox and William Montgomery ) succeeded in deciphering the Zimmermann telegram and, with its transmission to US authorities, possibly the most successful intelligence operation of the World War. According to Boghardt, it was not the unrestricted German submarine war that led to the USA entering the war, but the Zimmermann telegram. In May 1918 Hall was in the so-called German conspiracy involved (German plot) in Ireland that the arrest of numerous Sinn Féin had -members result.

In January 1919, Hall retired at his own request, as he was running for the Conservative Party for the House of Commons . Until 1929 he was a member of parliament . In 1922 he was promoted out of turn to vice admiral , in 1926 to admiral . Allegedly he was involved in the so-called Zinoviev letter affair in 1924 , which has not yet been fully clarified, but was interpreted as the cause of the Conservative Party's victory in 1924.

After the outbreak of World War II , Hall joined the British Home Guard . He died of natural causes in London in 1943.

literature

• Christopher Andrew , David Dilks (Eds.): The Missing Dimension. Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieths Century. University of Illinois Press et al., Urbana IL et al. 1984, ISBN 0-333-36864-9 .
• Patrick Beesly: Room 40. British naval intelligence 1914-1918. Hamish Hamilton, London 1982, ISBN 0-241-10864-0 .
• Thomas Boghardt: The Zimmermann Telegram. Intelligence, Diplomacy, and America's Entry into World War I. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD 2012, ISBN 978-1-61251-147-4 .
• Carl Christiansen: “Through!” With war material to Lettow-Vorbeck. K Beutel, Stuttgart 1918.
• Hall, Sir William. In: Helmut Roewer , Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl : Lexicon of secret services in the 20th century. Herbig, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2317-9 , p. 188.
• Paul McMahon: British Spies and Irish Rebels. British Intelligence and Ireland, 1916-1945. Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 2008, ISBN 978-1-84383-376-5 .
• David Ramsay: "Blinker" Hall, Spymaster. The Man who Brought America into World War I. Spellmount, Stroud 2008, ISBN 978-1-86227-465-5 .