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MI9
MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a highly secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. During World War II it had two principal tasks: (1) assisting in the escape of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) held by the Axis countries, especially Nazi Germany; and (2) helping Allied military personnel, especially downed airmen, evade capture after they were shot down or trapped behind enemy lines in Axis-occupied countries. During World War II, about 35,000 Allied military personnel, many helped by MI9, escaped POW camps or evaded capture and made their way to Allied or neutral countries after being trapped behind enemy lines. The best-known activity of MI9 was creating and supporting escape and evasion lines, especially in France and Belgium, which helped 5,000 downed British, American and other Allied airmen evade capture and return to duty. The usual routes of escape from occupied Europe were either south to Switzerland or to souther ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Escape And Evasion Lines (World War II)
Escape and evasion lines in World War II helped people escape European countries occupied by Nazi Germany. The focus of most escape lines in Western Europe was assisting British and American airmen shot down over occupied Europe to evade capture and escape to neutral Spain or Sweden from where they could return to the United Kingdom. A distinction is sometimes made between "escapers" (soldiers and airmen who had been captured by the Germans and escaped) and "evaders" (soldiers and airmen in enemy territory who evaded capture). Most of those helped by escape lines were evaders. Some escape and evasion lines such as the Shelbourne or Burgundy Lines were created by the Allies specifically to assist their soldiers and airmen stranded in German-occupied territory. Others were the product of a combination of allied military personnel and local citizens in occupied territory, such as the Pat O'Leary Line. Some escape lines were created and operated by civilians as grass-roots efforts to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Airey Neave
Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave, (;) (23 January 1916 – 30 March 1979) was a British soldier, lawyer and Member of Parliament (MP) from 1953 until his assassination in 1979. During World War II he was the first British prisoner-of-war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of w ... to succeed in escaping from Oflag IV-C at Colditz Castle, and later worked for MI9. After the war he served with the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg trials. He later became Conservative Party (UK), Conservative MP for Abingdon (UK Parliament constituency), Abingdon. Neave was assassinated in a car bomb attack at the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons. The Irish National Liberation Army claimed responsibility. Early life Neave was the son of Sheffield Ai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Langley
Lieutenant-Colonel James Maydon Langley (12 March 1916 – 10 April 1983) was an officer in the British Army, who served during World War II. Wounded and captured at the battle of Dunkirk in mid-1940, he later returned to Britain and served in MI9. Biography Langley was born in Wolverhampton, the son of Francis Oswald Langley (1884–1947), a stipendiary magistrate, recorder and chancellor. He was educated at Uppingham School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Having served as a cadet under officer in the Uppingham School Contingent of the Junior Division of the Officers' Training Corps, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards (Supplementary Reserve) on 4 July 1936, and promoted to lieutenant on 4 July 1939. Langley was mobilised on 24 August 1939 to serve in the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, part of the 7th Infantry Brigade (Guards) of the 3rd Infantry Division, then commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Lionel Bootle-Wilbraham, in the British Expedition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MI19
MI19 was a section of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, part of the War Office. During the Second World War it was responsible for obtaining information from enemy prisoners of war. It was originally created in December 1940 as MI9a, a sub-section of MI9. A year later, in December 1941, it became an independent organisation, though still closely associated with its parent. MI19 had Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centres (CSDIC) at Beaconsfield, Wilton Park, and Latimer, as well as a number overseas. Beginning in 1940, MI19 recorded conversations between German officers held comfortably at Trent Park in North London; many important secrets were learned from that effort. MI19 operated an interrogation centre in Kensington Palace Gardens, London, commanded by Lt. Col. Alexander Scotland OBE, known as the "London Cage". It was a subject of persistent reports of torture by the prisoners confined there, which included war crimes suspects from the SS an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Directorate Of Military Intelligence (United Kingdom)
The Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) was a department of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, British War Office. Over its lifetime the Directorate underwent a number of organisational changes, absorbing and shedding sections over time. History The first instance of an organisation which would later become the DMI was the Department of Topography & Statistics, formed by Major Thomas Best Jervis, late of the Bombay Engineer Corps, in 1854 in the early stages of the Crimean War. In 1873 the Intelligence Branch was created within the Quartermaster General's Department with an initial staff of seven officers. Initially the Intelligence Branch was solely concerned with collecting intelligence, but under the leadership of Henry Brackenbury, a protege of influential Adjutant-General Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley, Lord Wolseley, it was increasingly concerned with planning. However despite these steps towards a nascent general staff, the Intelligence ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its purpose was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe (and later, also in occupied Southeast Asia) against the Axis powers, and to aid local resistance movements. Few people were aware of SOE's existence. Those who were part of it or liaised with it were sometimes referred to as the "Baker Street Irregulars", after the location of its London headquarters. It was also known as "Churchill's Secret Army" or the "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare". Its various branches, and sometimes the organisation as a whole, were concealed for security purposes behind names such as the "Joint Technical Board" or the "Inter-Service Research Bureau", or fictitious branches of the Air Ministry, Admiralty or War Office. SOE operated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northumberland Avenue
Northumberland Avenue is a street in the City of Westminster, Central London, running from Trafalgar Square in the west to the Thames Embankment in the east. The road was built on the site of Northumberland House, the London home of the House of Percy, Percy family, the Duke of Northumberland, Dukes of Northumberland between 1874 and 1876, and on part of the parallel Northumberland Street, London, Northumberland Street. When built, the street was designed for luxury accommodation, including the seven-storey Grand Hotel, the Victoria and the Metropole. The Playhouse Theatre opened in 1882 and become a significant venue in London. From the 1930s onwards, hotels disappeared from Northumberland Avenue and were replaced by offices used by departments of the British Government, including the War Office and Air Ministry, later the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence. The street has been commemorated in the ''Sherlock Holmes'' novels including ''The Hound of the B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Warfare Executive
During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of countries occupied or allied with Nazi Germany. History The Executive was formed in August 1941, reporting to the Foreign Office. The staff came mostly from SO1, which had been until then the propaganda arm of the Special Operations Executive. The organisation was governed by a committee initially comprising Anthony Eden, (Foreign Secretary), Brendan Bracken, (Minister of Information) and Hugh Dalton, (Minister of Economic Warfare), together with officials Rex Leeper, Dallas Brooks and Robert Bruce Lockhart as chairman (and later Director General). Roundell Palmer (the future 3rd Earl of Selbourne) later replaced Dalton when he was moved to become President of the Board of Trade. Ivone Kirkpatrick, an advisor to the BBC and formerly a diplomat in Berlin, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Dansey
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Claude Edward Marjoribanks Dansey, KCMG (10 September 1876 – 11 June 1947), also known as Colonel Z, Haywood, Uncle Claude, and codenamed Z, was the assistant chief of the Secret Intelligence Service known as ACSS, of the British intelligence agency commonly known as MI6, and a member of the London Controlling Section. He began his career in intelligence in 1900, and remained active until his death. Early life Dansey was born in 1876 at 14 Cromwell Place, Kensington, the second of nine children and eldest son of Captain (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Edward Mashiter Dansey, an officer in the 1st Life Guards, and his wife, the Hon. Eleanor Dansey, daughter of Robert Gifford, 2nd Baron Gifford.M. R. D. Foot"Dansey, Sir Claude Edward Marjoribanks" ''The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (online ed., Oxford University Press, 2008). Retrieved 24 July 2021. He attended Wellington College until 1891, and then a private school in Bruges. At the age of 17 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east and Hertfordshire to the east. Buckinghamshire is one of the Home Counties, the counties of England that surround Greater London. Towns such as High Wycombe, Amersham, Chesham and the Chalfonts in the east and southeast of the county are parts of the London commuter belt, forming some of the most densely populated parts of the county, with some even being served by the London Underground. Development in this region is restricted by the Metropolitan Green Belt. The county's largest settlement and only city is Milton Keynes in the northeast, which with the surrounding area is administered by Milton Keynes City Council as a unitary authority separately to the rest of Buckinghamshire. The remainder of the county is administered by Buck ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beaconsfield
Beaconsfield ( ) is a market town and civil parish within the unitary authority of Buckinghamshire, England, west-northwest of central London and south-southeast of Aylesbury. Three other towns are within : Gerrards Cross, Amersham and High Wycombe. The town is adjacent to the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and has a wide area of Georgian, neo-Georgian and Tudor revival high street architecture, known as the Old Town. It is known for the first model village in the world and the National Film and Television School. Beaconsfield was named 'Britain's richest town' (based on an average house price of £684,474) by ''The Daily Telegraph'' in 2008. In 2011 the post town had the highest proportion in the UK of £1 million-plus homes for sale (at 47%, compared to 3.5% nationally). In 2011, Burkes Road was named as the second most expensive road in the country outside London. History and description The parish comprises Beaconsfield town and land mainly given o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilton Park
Wilton Park is an executive agency of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office providing a global forum for strategic discussion. Based since 1951 at Wiston House in Sussex, it organises over 70 dialogues a year in the UK and overseas, bringing together leading representatives from the worlds of politics, business, academia, diplomacy, civil society and media. In 2021, Wilton Park celebrated its 75th Anniversary. History Wilton Park was founded 12 January 1946 by Heinz Koeppler as part of an initiative inspired by Winston Churchill, who in 1944 called for Britain to help establish a democracy in Germany after the Second World War. It takes its name from the Wilton Park Estate, near Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire: between January 1946 and June 1948 more than 4,000 Germans attended re-education classes to discuss democratic processes with visiting political figures and intellectuals. In 1991 Wilton Park became an Executive Agency to 'give it more operational autonomy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
