The most recent Russian spy scandal, which broke in the United States in late June 2010, revived the public’s interest in the drama of the Cold War espionage, its key participants and their extraordinary life stories. Besides the Cambridge spy ring, Engelbert Broda and Melita Norwood were at the top of the list of the most important Soviet spies in Britain.
Engelbert Broda, Alias Eric – the KGB Best Atomic Spy
Engelbert Broda (1910 – 1983) was a prominent Austrian physical chemist who helped the Soviets to build their atomic bomb by providing them with key information about the British and American top-secret nuclear projects. Born into the well-respected family of a Viennese lawyer, Engelbert Broda had come under the influence of his uncle Georg Wilhelm Pabst, a famous movie director known for his left-wing political convictions, and Egon Schonhof, an ardent communist known as “the lawyer of the proletariat”.
Because of his pro-Communist activities, Broda was arrested twice while he was a student. In 1934, he received his doctorate in chemistry at the University of Vienna and four years later, shortly after Austria became part of the German Greater Reich, he fled to Britain. He was working at the University College London until 1941 when he was offered a job at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. There he started working on the Britain’s most guarded secret – the British nuclear program, code-named Tube Alloys Project. At the time, he was already recruited to the KGB (then NKVD) and was operating under the alias Eric.
By 1948, when Broda returned to Austria, he had passed to the Soviet Union a myriad of secret schemas and documents including the blueprint for the American Manhattan Project’s atomic reactors. No matter that Broda was the Moscow’s best nuclear intelligence source, he demanded no payment for his valuable information.
In a secret KGB report dated August 1943, Eric was described as “the main source of information on work being done on Enormous both in England and the USA”. (Enormous was the KGB codename for the atomic bomb plans). However, the United Kingdom’s Security Service (MI5) suspected that Broda was a communist spy and kept a close watch on his movements, mail and phone but failed to find strong evidence to confirm his involvement in espionage.
Engelbert Broda returned to Austria in April 1948. He died as a celebrated professor of applied physical chemistry at the University of Vienna at the age of 73. His identity was revealed by Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer who left his country in 1990s.
Melita (Letty) Norwood, Alias Hola – 40 Years of Loyal Service to the KGB
Melita (Letty) Norwood (1912 – 2005) is considered to be the “KGB’s longest serving spy in Britain” and another source of valuable intelligence on Britain’s nuclear program. Just like Engelbert Broda, she played a pivotal role in the atomic espionage, and just like him, she rejected any payment for her information. “No, I did it because I believe in it”, she said to Soviet authorities who made her a generous offer when she retired in the late 1970s. Two decades earlier, she was awarded the Order of the Red Banner – a high military decoration of the Soviet Union and a pension of 20 pounds monthly.
Melita Norwood, nee Sirnis, was born into a bi-ethnic family in Pokesdown, Hampshire. Her mother, Gertrude Stedman, was British. Her father, Alexander (Sasha) Sirnis was an ardent Lenin follower of Latvian origin. In the early 1930s, Letty Norwood became a secret Communist Party member and later, in 1937, she was recruited to the KGB (then NKVD). Over a period of 40 years (1932 – 1972) Melita Norwood was a civil servant working for the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association (BNFMRA) which was directly linked to the Tube Alloys Project.
Being a secretary at the BNFMRA, Melita Norwood had access to top secret technological and scientific data, which she passed to Moscow. Hola was considered to be the foremost female spy who had ever served the Soviet Union and the KGB seniors rated her more highly than Kim Philby.
Melita Norwood was married to Hilary Norwood, a mathematician, communist and trade union activist of Russian Jewish origin. His father’s name was Bronislaus Nussbaum but Hilary changed his name to Norwood prior to his marriage. Hola’s identity was revealed by Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1990s. Then she was called the Red Granny.
Sources:
Security Service M15 "Engelbert Broda" mi5.gov.uk Accessed July 2010.
Spies, the Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev,Yale University Press, 2009
The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Penguin Books Ltd, 2000
Rumyana Mokanova - I am a Bulgarian journalist with a Master's Degree in journalism at St Clement of Ohrid University of Sofia and 15-year practice in daily ...
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