Of course there were no ‘highly-placed German agents in England’ but, with Britain’s wartime fortunes at their lowest ebb, it was perhaps better that the Swedes should believe in imaginary German spies rather than the reality of British incompetence.
Patrick Salmon Chief Historian, FCO 1
This essay is based principally on 3 files originating in the Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department (PUSD), and transferred to The National Archives (TNA) in 2013: FO 1093/208, ''C', Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS): Swedish iron ore’ (1940); FO 1093/231, ‘Stockholm: Rickman case’, and FO 1093/232, ‘Sweden: miscellaneous’ (1940). 2 Churchill note, ‘Norway-Iron-Ore Traffic’, CAB 66/4, WP(39)162, 16 Dec.1939, printed in Winston S. Churchill: The Gathering Storm (London, 1949), pp.490-92. 3 The most reliable accounts are in Charles Cruickshank, SOE in Scandinavia (Oxford, 1986); W.J.M. Mackenzie, The Secret History of SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940-1945 (London, 2000); Gill Bennett, Churchill’s Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence (London, 2006); Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949 (London, 2010). The autobiography of Sir Peter Tennant, Britain’s wartime press attaché in Stockholm, Touchlines of War (Hull, 1992) provides further colourful detail. 4 There is a brief reference to this meeting in David Dilks (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan O.M. 1938-1945 (London, 1971), p. 247, where it is described as ‘Quite satisfactory and hopeful.’ Another copy of the record is being released concurrently on a related file from the Cabinet Secretary’s papers, CAB 301/34, ‘Sabotage of Swedish iron exports’. 5 Quoted in Jeffery, MI6, p. 352. 6 Hankey to Jebb, 9 March 1940, FO 1093/232. 7 Jebb to Hankey, 15 March 1940; Jebb minute for Cadogan, 18 March 1940, TNA, FO 1093/232. 8 Cruickshank, SOE in Scandinavia, p. 37. 9 Memorandum of 30 April 1940, , FO 1093/231. 10 Jebb minute of 7 May and letter from Menzies to Jebb of 22 May 1940, FO 1093/231. 11 Cadogan minute, 26 May 1940, FO 1093/231. 12 Mallet to Jebb, 12 May 1940, FO 1093/231. 13 One of these was the émigré journalist Kurt Singer, whose autobiography I Spied and Survived (New York, 1980) understandably makes no mention of the affair. 14 Stockholm telegram No. 197 Most Secret, 1 July 1940, FO 1093/231.
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