James Bond, 007, the most famous British Secret Service agent to ever walk the surface of
the fictional earth.
He has been portrayed by icons of manliness such as Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Roger
Moore.
Bond came to life in the twelve novels written by Ian Fleming, whose last words after a life
of heavy drinking and smoking were directed to the ambulance drivers: “I am sorry to
trouble you chaps.
I don’t know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the road these days”.
Could we expect anything less from the man that invented James Bond?
James Bond was based on multiple men Fleming heard about or met during World War II.
I am not able to do all of them justice in this video, though every story is fascinating
in its own right.
I want to talk about Sidney Reilly, secret agent employed by the British and Japanese,
with some rumours about a German and Russian allegiance.
Not only was James Bond inspired by his adventures, but his life, of which the line between truth
and fiction was very thin, was immortalized in the 1983 series Reilly, Ace of Spies.
Let’s delve into the life of one of the “greatest spies in history”.
-intro-
Much of what has been written by or about Sidney Reilly is a myth.
It has been claimed that Reilly “wielded more power, authority and influence than any
other spy,” was an expert assassin by “stabbing, shooting and throttling,” and possessed
“eleven passports and a wife to go with each”.
Early Life
Born in 1874 Reilly, whose real name was Sigmund Rosenblum, was the only son of a rich Russian
Jewish father.
In 1893 he left for Brazil where he befriended British Army Officers in the Amazon.
He saved their lives from hostile natives and was rewarded with a British passport by
British Major Fothergill.
But: the Tsarist police, the Okhrana, has kept records on Reilly and these claim that
he arrived in London in 1895, from France, after he had to flee having robbed two Italian
anarchists of revolutionary funds.
This uncertainty is going to continue throughout this entire video, research on Sidney Reilly
was..
Difficult to put it mildly because books and articles written about him said something
different about every detail of his life.
Somewhere at the end of the 19th century, he emigrated to London and he changed his
name to Sidney Reilly.
In 1896 he was recommended to British Intelligence in London, due to his knowledge of languages,
he became a paid informant for William Melville, superintendent of Scotland Yard’s special
branch.
Reilly began an affair with Margaret Thomas in 1897.
Margaret was married to a wealthy but already ill husband, Reilly probably realized that
if he were to have a relationship with Margaret he would be financially set for life.
In 1898 Margaret’s husband changed his will and appointed Margaret as the executrix.
Less than two weeks later, he was found dead in his hotel room.
Fortunately, Dr. T.W. Andrew showed up and certified his death as generic influenza,
ensuring the people involved that there was no need for an inquest.
Dr. Andrew matched Reilly’s description and records indicate there was no one by the
name of Dr. T.W. Andrew in Great Britain during these years.
Four months later Reilly and Margaret married and the marriage provided Reilly with wealth
(800,000 pounds) and a new identity as well - William Melville helped him along the way
and stayed close to him.
Russia
Reilly moved to Port Arthur (in Manchuria), which was the headquarters of the Russian
Far Eastern Fleet, working at a timber sales company.
There are conflicting sources on whether he provided the Naval Intelligence Division with
intelligence on the Russian Far Eastern Fleet during his years in Port Arthur.
In 1904 the Russo-Japanese war broke out, and Reilly returned to London, having learned
several languages during his time in the far east.
Pretty dull and not what you would expect from the man that inspired James Bond.
There is another plausible account of Reilly’s story that has been confirmed by multiple
scholars.
Reilly and Margaret travelled to St. Petersburg in 1899 using a forged British passport provided
by William Melville.
The Japanese General Akashi Motojiro, who had been roaming as a military attaché for
Japan throughout Europe, had been recruiting spies in multiple countries.
He approached Reilly in St. Petersburg to work for the Japanese Secret Intelligence
Services.
Reilly had to estimate the strength of the Russian army and fund Russian revolutionaries
against the Tsarist regime.
Russo-Japanese relations were at a low point which would culminate in the Russo-Japanese
war from 1904-1905.
Reilly became a spy for both the British and the Japanese... simultaneously.
Lockhart describes how Reilly travelled to the Caucasus before going to Port Arthur,
in order to compile a report on the resources Russia could extract from the area.
Russia and Britain had been fighting for influence over Afghanistan and the surrounding territories.
The British paid him for his intel and Reilly continued his travels to Port Arthur.
Port Arthur and the Russo-Japanese War
Reilly was present in Port Arthur taking on the role of a timber company owner.
He stayed there for 4 years, making a small fortune as war profiteer by selling food/medicine/coal
along with his business partner.
In January 1904 Reilly and a Chinese colleague stole the Port Arthur harbour defence plans
and passed them to the Japanese Navy.
Japan launched a surprise attack in February 1904 on Port Arthur being able to circumnavigate
the mine defense system with the defence plans.
The Russo-Japanese war had begun.
It was not long before Reilly was the main suspect by Russian intelligence, and he fled
to Japan to be rewarded (handsomely) and he left for France shortly after, arriving in
February 1905.
D’Arcy Affair
Petroleum was beginning to replace coal as the main fuel source for the Royal Navy.
William Knox D’Arcy founded the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, obtained valuable concessions
from the King of Persia and was negotiation similar concessions from the Ottoman Empire.
The French de Rothschilds attempted to buy these oil rights, and the English wanted to
prevent this by buying the rights themselves.
Reilly located D’Arcy on his Yacht in Southern France, snuck on, disguised as a Priest, and
convinced D’Arcy to sell the oil rights to the British instead of the de Rothschilds.
Intelligence on the expanding German Fleet
In 1905 Reilly used a fake certificate from Roorkee University in India in order to attend
Trinity College, Cambridge.
After two or three years he left Cambridge without a degree.
This did not deter him from inventing a different postgraduate career, namely a doctorate from
Heidelberg.
British Intelligence did not have a lot of information when it came to the war machine
Germany was building up.
I have elaborated upon the German domestic sentiment in my video about the Wilhelmine
Period leading up to World War I.
This also covers the expansion of the German military fleet and what the repercussions
in the international sphere were.
In 1909 Reilly, assuming the fake identity Karl Hahn started his job in a German shipyard.
He managed to steal the schematics of the German plant where German ships were built,
killing the foreman during his mission, and mailed the schematics back to England.
World War I
The first 2.5 years of the first World War, Reilly spent in the United States generating
a profit in the munitions business he was engaged in.
When the United States entered the war in April 1917, Reilly was prohibited from selling
ammunition to the Germans.
To make matters… worse… the Russian Revolution in October 1917 meant that the Russians were
no longer buying ammunition.
Down on his luck, Reilly decided to work for British Intelligence again.
He approached Norman Thwaites, head of the MI1 station in New York.
Thwaites was fond of Reilly’s work and recommended him to visit Toronto.
Here, Reilly volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps of Canada.
During a mission in Germany, wearing a German uniform, he attended a meeting of the German
military command for which he would later receive the Military Cross.
In 1918 Reilly was now officially working as a staff Case Officer in His Majesty’s
Secret Intelligence Service (the SIS).
He was sent to Russia where he had to gather intelligence on the situation in Russia, which
had fallen into an all-out civil war between the Bolsheviks and the Whites.
(Not the Russian civil war between Reds and Whites, but the Finnish one is briefly mentioned
in my video about Mannerheim).
Reilly arrived in Russia in April 1918.
Alexander Grammatikov, an Okhrana agent, was his go-to person.
He arranged that Reilly met people that introduced him in Bolshevist circles.
Assassinating Lenin & Trotsky
Robert Lockhart, who would in 1932 publish the book “Memoirs of a Secret Agent”,
undertook a sensitive diplomatic mission to the Soviet Union, being the first British
diplomat the enter the newly established union.
When it became clear the Soviets did not want to re-open the eastern front, Lockhart and
Reilly sought to eliminate the entire Bolshevik government.
They contacted anti-Bolsheviks such as Boris Savinkov and Maximilian Filonenko.
They funded their armed militias with SIS funds.
Anti-Bolshevists were sent to the British Captain Francis Cromie and his assistant Mr
Constatine.
A Turkish merchant… that was actually Reilly.
With the aid of anti-bolshevik forces, the British agents hoped to seize the entire party
top at a Bolshevik meeting.
But: assassinating Lenin and Trotsky, they reasoned, would eradicate Bolshevism and thus
became the top priority.
A full-fledged coup against the Soviet regime.
Reilly worked tirelessly recruiting anti-Bolshevists, bribing the guards of the Kremlin and gathering
intelligence on top Soviet officials.
The coup, they planned, would occur in the first week of September.
The 30th of August ruined the plans that Reilly and Cromie had been working on.
Leonid Kannegisser assassinated the head of the Petrograd Cheka, Moisei Uritsky.
On the same day, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, attempted
to assassinate Lenin.
Though severely wounded, Lenin survived.
The result was a massive crackdown on anyone that was so much as suspected of bolstering
anti-Bolshevist sympathies.
The Cheka conducted a campaign referred to as the “Red Terror”.
Besides executions numbering in the thousands, the Cheka used undercover agents to arrest
key conspirators, vital to Reilly’s plan.
The Cheka raided the British consulate, Captain Cromie heroically defended himself with just
a revolver against the Cheka agents, who eventually killed him and mutilated his body.
Not before he had burned vital correspondence surrounding the conspirators though.
Reilly was identified by Soviet officials as bearing the main responsibility for the
conspiracy and hunted throughout the Soviet Union.
He managed to evade his captors and fled through the Baltic, Finland and Sweden to London.
Reilly was sentenced to death in absentia in December 1918, a month after he had fled.
Operation Trust
Due to the coups, conspiracies and revolutionary activities in Russia, the Cheka decided to
set up an operation, “The Trust” where they would lure anti-Bolshevik sympathizers
under the pretence of plotting a coup against the Soviet Regime… an… elaborate counter-espionage
operation.
The reality was that the key members of the Trust were Cheka agents and that the anti-Bolsheviks
lured in would never see the light of day again.
In 1925 Reilly was lured into the Soviet Union by undercover agents.
Reilly travelled to Finland, where he met with supposed anti-Bolsheviks.
Toivo Vähä, who fought for the Finnish Red Guards during the Finnish civil war, took
Reilly over the border and handed him over to Soviet intelligence officers.
Locked up and interrogated daily, Reilly kept a diary where he analysed and documented the
interrogation techniques of his Soviet guards.
Mystery surrounds his death, with some claiming that he survived or defected.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, records show that he was executed in November 1925
in a forest close to Moscow.
The end of one of the best and most legendary spies the world has ever seen.