I realised soon after the House of Intrigue commenced that I had seen the film before. A dramatic creation out of a true event of World War II when German intelligence achieved a significant and substantial success over the allies as a consequence of which some fifty allied agents were dropped over Holland and immediately arrested. What is horrible and a damning indictment of the British authorities which has never been adequately explained is that the British Special Operations Executive, the SOE, continued to send Dutch intelligence agents back into their homeland despite knowing that something was not right
What happened is that German counter intelligence captured the first agents and then for the greater part of the war in Europe communicated with the SOE headquarters in London using the code system which meant they were able to apprehend agents as they were sent together with supplies and information. Major Herman Giskes of the Abwhr controlled the system which was named Operation North Pole - Unternehmen Nordpol or Englandpsiel.
What is inexcusable is that the head of codes at the SOE, Leo Marks stated that he had become suspicious of the situation because the messages were sent without mistakes and which were planned as security checks. In others words the British authorities had forethought the likelihood that agents would be caught and their code for messages broken when tortured, and therefore decided that the message would be full of mistakes pre arranged mistakes. Because of his suspicions Leo sent an indecipherable message which an ordinary agent would not be able to translate and therefore concluded that the system had become compromised. From the information available it is not stated to whom Marks reported his discovery, how far up the chain of command the information went and the time table when his concerns were being reported. No action was taken and it was Major Fiske who revealed the deception as the war ended.
This was bad enough but in 1943 two Dutch agents managed to escape from captivity and returned to the UK where they advised that the operation was compromised but they were not believed, arrested for counter espionage. I do not know what happened to them. In the film one agent escapes and is charged with being a counter spy and sentenced to death as a consequence of further action by the head of the Operation, called Colonel Bernes in the film
Confirmation that they had been telling the truth only came when Major Giskes sent a messages to the SOE in such a manner to leave in no doubt that German intelligence was North Pole.
To the SOE section chiefs Messrs Blunt, Bingham and Successors Ltd. You are trying to make business in the Netherlands without our assistance. We think this is unfair in view of our long and successful cooperation as your sole agent. But never mind whenever you will come to pay a visit to the Continent you may be assured that you will be received with the same care and result as all those who you have sent us before. So Long”
Both the Major and Leo Marks published books about their respective roles after the War with the Major London Calling North Pole and Mark’s - Between Silk and Cyanide, A Code maker’s Story, written in 1998 and presumably with the approval of the authorities some fifty years after the events themselves. According to Wikipedia the failure was not an intentional political or strategic military decision as the allies did not want the enemy to know they knew Germans security had taken over the operation so they could provide a mixture of accurate and misleading information to draw attention away from more significant allied plans and actions.
The allegation is that there was rivalry between British and Dutch intelligences and between the Secret Intelligence Service “C” and the SOE which had been created out of “C” and that any admissions of failure would weaken their respective positions. There were similar problems between the Army, Navy and Airforce which only appear to have been resolves over recent decades with the establishment of one head of all services within the UK, although one suspects that such divisions and rivalries continue to exist in NATO as well as within the service arms as lower levels..
At the end of the War Major Giskes was held in Camp 20 Iserlohn when he was interrogated by the war Hero Captain Robert Maxwell MC, the colourful and larger than life owner of the Daily Mirror and head of he Pergamon Press whose headquarters was at Headington Hall Oxford which I used to pass when walking into the City from Ruskin during my first year and where if I had not been engaged in a practical social work placement I would have joined the group of students he employed to help win his first Parliamentary seat. Among his many international interests, he was Chairman of the Commonwealth Games held in Edinburgh and which I attended on the spur of the moment and was allocated a ticket to sit behind her Majesty Queen Elizabeth with only a few rows held empty between us.
What happened to the captured Dutch agents is also not stated and this brings me nicely onto the film.
Understandably it is not a story which the British want publicised and the film is Italian made and released in the USA in 1959 with Kurt Jurgens playing a Colonel Bernes and Dawn Adams the Dutch agent, Mary, who plays the girl friend of an agent who escaped and returned to the UK only to be charged with treason and sentenced to death. The films suggests that the German intelligence framed the boyfriend as a traitor by releasing five captured allies with the information that the boyfriend had turned traitor. To make the frame authentic Jurgens accompanies the men into Spain where they are passed over to Mary for their return to London. Mary spends an evening with the Colonel and he becomes romantically interested in her.
Following the conviction and sentencing of the boyfriend Mary bullies her superiors into sending her to Holland to try and prove his innocence. She insists that no one in Holland is advised of her arrival. She narrowly escapes capture when her first point of contact turns out to be a German security agent. She then contacts the head of Dutch intelligence who is portrayed as a lecherous man who is prepared to identify the members of the underground in exchange for the release of his young brother. He also provides information on the allied landing at Arnhem in order to gain the release of the relative and then betrays Mary to the Colonel who only finds out that she is known to him when he arrests her at Ballet where it was arranged for her to meet the Dutch contact who organising the radio contact with London.
In part because of their evening together but mainly because the captured agents are taken out of his custody on orders from Berlin and he deposed from his position, he provides Mary with safe conduct back to the border to get back to the UK and to save her boyfriend. The film suggests that the Colonel is a humane man loyal to his country but opposed to Nazi methods and is himself arrested as a consequence. The films also suggests that the captured agents which he protected are to be taken to be killed.
Branding the head of Dutch intelligence in this way is unusual without some foundation. Research so far suggests that there were four separate underground resistance movements in Holland which built up slowly during the war in addition to the Communist led movement which is thought to have been greater that the rest put together. So far I have established that the Parachute Regiment making the Arnhem landings had received inadequate intelligence about the strength of German forces but the Invasion command was aware of the location of the Panzers but did nor disclose the information to them. I also have a memory of at least one other film in which the existence of a traitor within the resistance and involving the Arnhem battle is featured. There is also the film The Black Book which does cover traitors with the resistance movement and back market profiteering. I then found out that a Dutch resistance worker had changed sides and betrayed information about the allied landing at Arnhem but the article suggests that the German HQ discounted the information. The man in question committed suicide while his trial after the World War ended.
After such serious historical concerns I will admit to have devoted time to keeping one eye on the film, Sahara while I played Luxor on Sunday night. Sahara has the distinction of being one of the great Hollywood loses makers of all time. It cost 160 million US dollars and lost over 105 although this was then lowered to 78.3 million when accounted on the basis of total estimated income of £202.9 against total expenditure of 281.2 the latter figures include distribution and publicity costs as well as production and became available to the public because of a lawsuit in the US.
The film has a ludicrous plot which the actors do not take seriously from start to finish and is in the manner of the Indiana Jones series. Even the appearance of Penelope Cruz in a leading role fails to raises the standard beyond that of a Saturday Children’s show adventure.
The story is a weird one in that it features a mock up of the Confederate States Ship Texas and all ironclad twin propelled ramming ship with armaments which historically was completed and launched in 1865 but was captured intact when the city of Richmond fell and was formerly taken into the US Navy but saw no service and was eventually sold to private company in 1867. The film pretends that the Texas was used by the Confederacy to escape the blockade by taking prisoner President Abraham Lincoln together with Confederate gold coin and documentation and crossed the Atlantic until grounded in a branch of the river Niger where natives realising the vessel contained gold, blockaded it, starving to death the President and Crew. Whereas the 1992 novel by Clive Kessler concentrated on the story, the film becomes all action with few breathtaking interludes.
In the process of securing the Treasure the adventurers become involved with Penelope Cruz, a World Health Organisation Doctor who is investigating the spread of illness which is eventually tracked down to polluting nuclear waste. The most spectacular construction in the film is not the Texas and the all solar panel disposal unit in the middle of the dessert. This developed a problem which caused the waste to buried underground seeping into an underground river which pollutes the water supply bringing the disease and death.
The secret plant is provided by an international corporation, of course, with the connivance of a corrupt military run government and much of the action centres on the efforts of the regime to capture the adventurers in extended Bond like sequences. In a scene reminiscent of several Bond films the adventurers manage to prevent the head of the corporation from blowing up the secret facility in order to remove evidence of their activities and responsibility for the contamination. In the final scene the adventures become surrounded in the Texas as government forces surround them and just when the end is sight the forces surrender for no apparent reason until the heroes emerge to discover the surrounding hills covered by local warriors reminiscent of the film Zulu. They are able to continue their adventures supported by the treasure. However the financial failure meant that no sequel was ever made.
Last night I watched the Butterfly Effect 2 which is an unrelated follow up film to the Butterfly Effect. While the first was covered by the critics there is only one review of the second and this refused to load which suggests it may have been withdrawn by the author. Both films, and I understand also the third which is also unrelated to the previous two, are about time travel.
The main subjects have blackouts caused by situations of intense stress and this enables them to return to before a previous situation of disaster. In the first film while in therapy and reading his diaries from an earlier time the hero finds that he is able to relive previous experience in such ways that he is able to alter what happened. However what happens never works out as intended.
In the second the hero is a successful young man about to get engaged who becomes involved in a fatal road accident in which his fiancée and two friends are killed but he survives. When he returns he tries to change what happened but on each occasion the outcomes are always different. Part of the reason why the second film bombed is that it played with format of the first and the main character is not likable. It with him dying rather than his friends or girl friend and she has their child who she has named after him.
All the films are based on chaos theory with the Butterfly concept that even the fluttering of the wings of a butterfly in one place at one time can have consequence which leads to events occurring half way around the world and therefore time travelling back to change outcomes in a particular way will never be successful. I do not pretend to understand chaos theory but believe that all events have a history of complex causation which can be unravelled in retrospect depending on the level and extent of information available. This is the principle upon which all science is based in that given the same set of steps, interactions and interventions the outcome will always be the same or substantially similar, I thought the first film was watchable although the storyline had several weaknesses. I thought the second film was awful and will avoid the third if it comes to screen. When it comes to sci fiction one of the best first films of a Theatre and TV series was The Planet of Ares which was shown on terrestrial TV yesterday afternoon and will be written about later.
What happened is that German counter intelligence captured the first agents and then for the greater part of the war in Europe communicated with the SOE headquarters in London using the code system which meant they were able to apprehend agents as they were sent together with supplies and information. Major Herman Giskes of the Abwhr controlled the system which was named Operation North Pole - Unternehmen Nordpol or Englandpsiel.
What is inexcusable is that the head of codes at the SOE, Leo Marks stated that he had become suspicious of the situation because the messages were sent without mistakes and which were planned as security checks. In others words the British authorities had forethought the likelihood that agents would be caught and their code for messages broken when tortured, and therefore decided that the message would be full of mistakes pre arranged mistakes. Because of his suspicions Leo sent an indecipherable message which an ordinary agent would not be able to translate and therefore concluded that the system had become compromised. From the information available it is not stated to whom Marks reported his discovery, how far up the chain of command the information went and the time table when his concerns were being reported. No action was taken and it was Major Fiske who revealed the deception as the war ended.
This was bad enough but in 1943 two Dutch agents managed to escape from captivity and returned to the UK where they advised that the operation was compromised but they were not believed, arrested for counter espionage. I do not know what happened to them. In the film one agent escapes and is charged with being a counter spy and sentenced to death as a consequence of further action by the head of the Operation, called Colonel Bernes in the film
Confirmation that they had been telling the truth only came when Major Giskes sent a messages to the SOE in such a manner to leave in no doubt that German intelligence was North Pole.
To the SOE section chiefs Messrs Blunt, Bingham and Successors Ltd. You are trying to make business in the Netherlands without our assistance. We think this is unfair in view of our long and successful cooperation as your sole agent. But never mind whenever you will come to pay a visit to the Continent you may be assured that you will be received with the same care and result as all those who you have sent us before. So Long”
Both the Major and Leo Marks published books about their respective roles after the War with the Major London Calling North Pole and Mark’s - Between Silk and Cyanide, A Code maker’s Story, written in 1998 and presumably with the approval of the authorities some fifty years after the events themselves. According to Wikipedia the failure was not an intentional political or strategic military decision as the allies did not want the enemy to know they knew Germans security had taken over the operation so they could provide a mixture of accurate and misleading information to draw attention away from more significant allied plans and actions.
The allegation is that there was rivalry between British and Dutch intelligences and between the Secret Intelligence Service “C” and the SOE which had been created out of “C” and that any admissions of failure would weaken their respective positions. There were similar problems between the Army, Navy and Airforce which only appear to have been resolves over recent decades with the establishment of one head of all services within the UK, although one suspects that such divisions and rivalries continue to exist in NATO as well as within the service arms as lower levels..
At the end of the War Major Giskes was held in Camp 20 Iserlohn when he was interrogated by the war Hero Captain Robert Maxwell MC, the colourful and larger than life owner of the Daily Mirror and head of he Pergamon Press whose headquarters was at Headington Hall Oxford which I used to pass when walking into the City from Ruskin during my first year and where if I had not been engaged in a practical social work placement I would have joined the group of students he employed to help win his first Parliamentary seat. Among his many international interests, he was Chairman of the Commonwealth Games held in Edinburgh and which I attended on the spur of the moment and was allocated a ticket to sit behind her Majesty Queen Elizabeth with only a few rows held empty between us.
What happened to the captured Dutch agents is also not stated and this brings me nicely onto the film.
Understandably it is not a story which the British want publicised and the film is Italian made and released in the USA in 1959 with Kurt Jurgens playing a Colonel Bernes and Dawn Adams the Dutch agent, Mary, who plays the girl friend of an agent who escaped and returned to the UK only to be charged with treason and sentenced to death. The films suggests that the German intelligence framed the boyfriend as a traitor by releasing five captured allies with the information that the boyfriend had turned traitor. To make the frame authentic Jurgens accompanies the men into Spain where they are passed over to Mary for their return to London. Mary spends an evening with the Colonel and he becomes romantically interested in her.
Following the conviction and sentencing of the boyfriend Mary bullies her superiors into sending her to Holland to try and prove his innocence. She insists that no one in Holland is advised of her arrival. She narrowly escapes capture when her first point of contact turns out to be a German security agent. She then contacts the head of Dutch intelligence who is portrayed as a lecherous man who is prepared to identify the members of the underground in exchange for the release of his young brother. He also provides information on the allied landing at Arnhem in order to gain the release of the relative and then betrays Mary to the Colonel who only finds out that she is known to him when he arrests her at Ballet where it was arranged for her to meet the Dutch contact who organising the radio contact with London.
In part because of their evening together but mainly because the captured agents are taken out of his custody on orders from Berlin and he deposed from his position, he provides Mary with safe conduct back to the border to get back to the UK and to save her boyfriend. The film suggests that the Colonel is a humane man loyal to his country but opposed to Nazi methods and is himself arrested as a consequence. The films also suggests that the captured agents which he protected are to be taken to be killed.
Branding the head of Dutch intelligence in this way is unusual without some foundation. Research so far suggests that there were four separate underground resistance movements in Holland which built up slowly during the war in addition to the Communist led movement which is thought to have been greater that the rest put together. So far I have established that the Parachute Regiment making the Arnhem landings had received inadequate intelligence about the strength of German forces but the Invasion command was aware of the location of the Panzers but did nor disclose the information to them. I also have a memory of at least one other film in which the existence of a traitor within the resistance and involving the Arnhem battle is featured. There is also the film The Black Book which does cover traitors with the resistance movement and back market profiteering. I then found out that a Dutch resistance worker had changed sides and betrayed information about the allied landing at Arnhem but the article suggests that the German HQ discounted the information. The man in question committed suicide while his trial after the World War ended.
After such serious historical concerns I will admit to have devoted time to keeping one eye on the film, Sahara while I played Luxor on Sunday night. Sahara has the distinction of being one of the great Hollywood loses makers of all time. It cost 160 million US dollars and lost over 105 although this was then lowered to 78.3 million when accounted on the basis of total estimated income of £202.9 against total expenditure of 281.2 the latter figures include distribution and publicity costs as well as production and became available to the public because of a lawsuit in the US.
The film has a ludicrous plot which the actors do not take seriously from start to finish and is in the manner of the Indiana Jones series. Even the appearance of Penelope Cruz in a leading role fails to raises the standard beyond that of a Saturday Children’s show adventure.
The story is a weird one in that it features a mock up of the Confederate States Ship Texas and all ironclad twin propelled ramming ship with armaments which historically was completed and launched in 1865 but was captured intact when the city of Richmond fell and was formerly taken into the US Navy but saw no service and was eventually sold to private company in 1867. The film pretends that the Texas was used by the Confederacy to escape the blockade by taking prisoner President Abraham Lincoln together with Confederate gold coin and documentation and crossed the Atlantic until grounded in a branch of the river Niger where natives realising the vessel contained gold, blockaded it, starving to death the President and Crew. Whereas the 1992 novel by Clive Kessler concentrated on the story, the film becomes all action with few breathtaking interludes.
In the process of securing the Treasure the adventurers become involved with Penelope Cruz, a World Health Organisation Doctor who is investigating the spread of illness which is eventually tracked down to polluting nuclear waste. The most spectacular construction in the film is not the Texas and the all solar panel disposal unit in the middle of the dessert. This developed a problem which caused the waste to buried underground seeping into an underground river which pollutes the water supply bringing the disease and death.
The secret plant is provided by an international corporation, of course, with the connivance of a corrupt military run government and much of the action centres on the efforts of the regime to capture the adventurers in extended Bond like sequences. In a scene reminiscent of several Bond films the adventurers manage to prevent the head of the corporation from blowing up the secret facility in order to remove evidence of their activities and responsibility for the contamination. In the final scene the adventures become surrounded in the Texas as government forces surround them and just when the end is sight the forces surrender for no apparent reason until the heroes emerge to discover the surrounding hills covered by local warriors reminiscent of the film Zulu. They are able to continue their adventures supported by the treasure. However the financial failure meant that no sequel was ever made.
Last night I watched the Butterfly Effect 2 which is an unrelated follow up film to the Butterfly Effect. While the first was covered by the critics there is only one review of the second and this refused to load which suggests it may have been withdrawn by the author. Both films, and I understand also the third which is also unrelated to the previous two, are about time travel.
The main subjects have blackouts caused by situations of intense stress and this enables them to return to before a previous situation of disaster. In the first film while in therapy and reading his diaries from an earlier time the hero finds that he is able to relive previous experience in such ways that he is able to alter what happened. However what happens never works out as intended.
In the second the hero is a successful young man about to get engaged who becomes involved in a fatal road accident in which his fiancée and two friends are killed but he survives. When he returns he tries to change what happened but on each occasion the outcomes are always different. Part of the reason why the second film bombed is that it played with format of the first and the main character is not likable. It with him dying rather than his friends or girl friend and she has their child who she has named after him.
All the films are based on chaos theory with the Butterfly concept that even the fluttering of the wings of a butterfly in one place at one time can have consequence which leads to events occurring half way around the world and therefore time travelling back to change outcomes in a particular way will never be successful. I do not pretend to understand chaos theory but believe that all events have a history of complex causation which can be unravelled in retrospect depending on the level and extent of information available. This is the principle upon which all science is based in that given the same set of steps, interactions and interventions the outcome will always be the same or substantially similar, I thought the first film was watchable although the storyline had several weaknesses. I thought the second film was awful and will avoid the third if it comes to screen. When it comes to sci fiction one of the best first films of a Theatre and TV series was The Planet of Ares which was shown on terrestrial TV yesterday afternoon and will be written about later.
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