Ian Fleming, Mein Kampf and his 1938 Appeasement Letter to the London Times

One thing you might miss in a biography of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming is his interesting letter to the London Times on September 28th 1938, during the Munich Crisis with Nazi Germany. In the Long letter, Fleming reveals he owns a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and has obtained a rare Nazi document dated 1920 which predates Mein Kampf. His house in London 22b Ebury Street, bought from British Fascist Oswald Mosley contained a collection of rare manuscripts, including Mein Kampf and the Nazi document, which Fleming claimed showed Hitler was in earnest.Also in display was Mussolini's 1919 Passport he has acquired in 1937 from honours trafficker Maundy Gregory's collection.
To quote Fleming " It would therefore seem that there will be no peace, no return of prosperity, and no happiness in europe until England and France agree to the fulfillment of Herr Hitler's stated programme in exchange for a binding disarmament pact and the guarantee of the traditional protective alliances of the signatory powers."
Fleming argues to keep morality out of the issue, and if a settlement with Hitler could not be made then it would be" time to turn a reluctant ear either to the dangerous counsels of the slaughterhouse brigade (could he mean Winston Churchill?) or the bemused vapourings of those who long for the day that england is another Holland and out of the fight forever (Isolationists?)"

Fleming was not as a true blue Churchillian as he is portrayed and his many fascist (such as Bobby Canning) and Chamberlainite friends (Sir Joseph Ball) put him centrally in the pro-appeasement camp at the time of Munich, fuelled by frequent trips to Germany and Austria during the period.

Fleming's letter can be found in full in the Times Digital Archive:

The Industrial Welfare Society and Germany

King George VI was deeply interested in matters industrial and became in 1919 Royal Patron of the Boys Welfare Association which was renamed the Industrial Welfare Society. A guest at the annual dinner of the IWS at the Hotel Victoria on December 8th 1937 included Nazi Party member and German diplomat Docktor Eric Kordt who the week before had attended the 500 strong 2nd annual dinner of the Nazi movement the Anglo-German Fellowship at Grosvenor House. What was this leading London Nazi doing at the IWS dinner, yet another Nazi link to the Royals which included Lord Mountbatten's father in Law, Lord Mount Temple as chair of the AGF, Lord Halifax who was George VI's choice of Prime Minister in 1940.

Churchill and the Fascist Plot

Tonight's Channel 4 Documentary "Churchill and the Fascist Plot" does much to put into the public mind the importance of the threat Archibald Ramsay's Right Club posted to Winston Churchill and British National Security in May 1940. It does however leave out the important questions surrounding the role of MI5 Director General Vernon Kell in the Wolkoff affair including his friendship with Anna and her parents. More importantly the role played by MI5's grey eminence Major Sir Joseph Ball who as a key advisor to Neville Chamberlain met with the Right Club leader Ramsay in the Carlton Club annex in June 1939 to hear Ramsay evidence of supposed Judeo-Masonic subversion of the intelligence community, Moscow's role in IRA attacks against Chamberlain and Ball's covert requests to Ramsay to gather evidence harmful to Churchill leading to the Tyler Kent affair.
The role of James McGuirk Hughes, Maxwell Knight and Henry Newnham the editor the Right Club, paper the Truth, all associates of Ball deserve scrutiny. Ball is also cryptically referred to as "Big Man behind the Truth" in the infamous message to William Joyce(Knight's one time agent) in Berlin who became the voice of Germany - Lord Haw Haw.
The Right Club is wrongly portrayed as a bonkers group of anti-semites, yet they had members which included MP's, Dukes and most of the Conservative Party's whips office.
The Right Club were meeting with Oswald Mosley's British Fascists and other far right anti-war groups in preparation to stop Churchill and support Chamberlain's secret backchannels to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy - links which included the Duke of Westminster's Peace Group involving Henry Drummond-Wolff and Joseph Ball and Arthur Bryant.
Good So far as it went but much left out.

Questions about Harry Oakes Death

The Murder of Sir Harry Oakes in 1943 was described by Perry Mason Creator - Erle Stanley Gardner  who reported on the murder trial as the Crime of the Century. It remains the most illusive Cold Case to date. Apparently new evidence has emerged to show that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's fingerprints were identified at the crime scene. It is known that the Duke visited the Crime Scene to see oversee the investigation by the discredited Miami Policemen he invited to frame Oakes's playboy son-in-law. I have brought new evidence that Oakes was part of a pro-appeasement network in London and the US and contributed £10,000 to see British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain re-elected in 1938 in a cash for honours arrangement organised by transatlantic Art Dealer Baron Duveen and Sinister Spy Spin Doctor Sir Joseph Ball.
Marshall Houts, the author, FBI agent, forensic professor and co-creator of TV's Quincy ME suggested in his Kings X book that Mafia involvement was at the heart of the case, according to informers.
Remaining crime scene questions remain:

• Where was the Revolver that Oakes kept by his bedside
• Why did Harold Christie and the Duke of Windsor first report the death as Suicide or Shooting
• What did Bahamian Police Chief Lindop-Erskine believe and why was he transferred to Trinidad to prevent his taking command of the case
• Was Oakes subject to torture by burning while still alive 
• The blood trail on Oakes face show he died face down with blood gushing from a head wound proving the heavy body had been moved by persons capable of lifting the corpulent baronet's corpse.
• What happened to Oakes Fortune, the stories of illicit Gold smuggling and the role of Oakes Hotel on San Salvador.
• Was the bizarre nature of the head wound the result of a clumsy attempt to disguise a shooting.
• How was the Oakes Murder connected with subsequent murder of American Lawyer Betty Renner in 1950    , she supposedly contacted one of Oakes's friends who was a key witness in the trial (Harold Christie - perhaps?) and was found murdered 3 miles from Oakes Westbourne home.
• What of the fate of the murdered witnesses who died from poisoned rum?
• Why was Bahamas Governor Sir George Sandford who died in 1950 a supposed victim of the cover-up - did he pry and die another rumoured poison victim?
• What was the role of Bahamian finance minister/businessman Sir Stafford Sands in the affair, who was friend to Oakes and Jury Foreman in the trial
• Harold Christie remained for most Bahamians the No.1 Suspect in the Oakes Murder - was he the man who dreamt of marrying Lady Oakes by murdering her husband and was he involved in the murder of his personal secretary Dorothy Macksey in May 1962 . Why did our current monarch Queen Elizabeth II feel happy about Knighting such a contraversial figure as Harold Christie in 1964?
• Why did Lord Beaverbrook take such an interest in the affair sponsoring two investigating books by Bocca in 1959 and Leasor in 1983.

Joseph Ball, MI5, Oxford and Balliol College

In 1916, MI5's Joseph Ball was based at Barnet House, Broad Street in Oxford. He wrote to Arthur Smith, Master of Balliol concerning arrangements for Albert Mansbridge to attend a conference at Balliol College on 27th October 1916. The Notes seem to indicate that Ball himself would chair the conference and the notes were written on notepaper of Senior Tutor of St John's College Oxford.
What was Ball's First World War activities in Oxford for MI5?
http://archives.balliol.ox.ac.uk/Modern%20Papers/ALSmith/alsmithletterb.asp

Joseph Ball and Guy Burgess

One particular aspect of the sinister work of MI5's Joseph Ball has been hard to research. His dealings and involvement with the Cambridge Spies - especially Guy Burgess. Many Intelligence writers in their researching of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and then Blunt between 1951 and 1995 have said various things about Ball - suggesting that he was Homosexual, that he sponsored Burgess into MI5 and that he used him for various intelligence related activities  (Burgess's link to Daladier, his Radio work, spying on Heinlein) and that Ball was an active member of the Anglo-German Fellowship and part of a Pro-Nazi circle which included Henry Ford, Henri Deterding, and Basil Zaharoff.
Guy Burgess himself in 1956 told Tom Driberg about his activities with Ball and also named Ball in a list of mostly prominent homosexual aquaintances in reports to Moscow in declassified KGB files from the 1930's.
Ball strongly denied the Burgess allegations in 1956 and his lawyers made Driberg redact much of the material from his book. Because many of the Cambridge Spy writers got many of the biographical details about Ball wrong and wrongly believed Burgess that Ball was a member of the AGF when it was a namesake, I have largely discounted Burgess's claims and the rumours of Ball's homosexuality as Moscow propaganda aimed at discrediting a leading right wing spook. However revisiting Conspiracy of Silence by Penrose and Freeman (1987) I realised that MI5 officer TAR Robertson did corroborate in conversations with Freeman in 1985  in part Burgess's involvement in a clandestine intelligence link from Neville Chamberlain to Eduard Daladier in 1938 which use the St Ermin's Hotel and Burgess's claim to have slept with Daladier's Chef du Cabinet. I now feel that most of what Burgess claimed about Ball including his homosexuality (with the exception about the Anglo-German Fellowship, though Ball may have clandestine involvement) now is more likely to be fact than malicious invention. Given that, Homosexuality is the most likely explanation for Ball's rapid rise, his meeting Burgess and sponsorship of Howard and other homosexuals in MI5 and CRD and links to the pederast Maundy Gregory.

HG Wells Inside Track

As reported earlier, when in June 1946 HG Wells read reports about Mussolini's secret funding of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930's he was so appauled that he wrote a stinging attack questioning whether the British Royal Family had been involved in this funding. His attack a month before his death was the most sensational attack on British monarchy ever made by a senior public figure and was reported around the world. It was quickly belittled as a the ramblings of a great man well past his prime and even saw the once interned traitor Mosley come to the defence of the Monarchy.


Yet what exactly triggered Well's allegations? - The statement in the House of Commons by Labour Home Secretary Chuter Ede outlined a secret bank account used by the BUF to receive funds. Wells may well have received information from his Russian lover Moura Budberg who was suspected by MI5 of being a triple agent  "Russian Mata Hari" and she may have secret information via the Cambridge Spies or her Moscow network. Well's suspicions may have been reinforced by his prior knowledge of the Duke of Windsor's fascist links when he was Prince of Wales and briefly King Edward VIII or the activities of Prince George Duke of Kent and those of Lord Mountbatten and his nefarious friends.
The true key was the activities of Sir Louis Greig (member of the Fascist front January Club) King George VI's key mentor and advisor who had been close to pro-fascist Maundy Gregory and his brother in law AC Scrimgeour who had financed the BUF to the tune of £11,000.
Well's parting shot might have been closer to the mark than many at the time realised.