Edward Crankshaw (3 January 1909 – 30 November 1984) was a British writer, author, translator and commentator; best known for his work on

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

affairs and the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

(Secret State Police) of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

Biography

William Edward Crankshaw was born in the suburban town of Woodford, Essex, on 3 January 1909 to Arthur Edward Crankshaw (1876–1965) and Amy Beatrice Crankshaw (1879–1962). He had one sibling, a younger brother Geoffrey Crankshaw (1912–2009) a noted critic of English music. Edward Crankshaw was educated in the

Nonconformist Nonconformity or nonconformism may refer to: Culture and society * Insubordination, the act of willfully disobeying an order of one's superior *Dissent, a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or entity ** ...

public school

Bishop's Stortford College Bishop's Stortford College is a independent day and boarding school in the English public school tradition for more than 1,200 pupils aged 4–18, situated in a campus on the edge of the market town of Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, Englan ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. He started working as a journalist for a few months at ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

''. In the 1930s he lived in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

, teaching English and learning German. He witnessed

Adolf Hitler's Adolf (also spelt Adolph or Adolphe, Adolfo and when Latinised Adolphus) is a given name used in German-speaking countries, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Flanders, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Latin America and to a lesser extent in vari ...

Austro-German union in 1938, and predicted the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

while living there. In 1940 Crankshaw was contacted by the

Secret Intelligence Service The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

because of his knowledge of German. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he served as a "Y" (

Signals Intelligence Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ( ...

) officer in the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

. From 1941 to 1943 he was assigned to the British Military Mission in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

, where he served initially as an Army "Y" specialist and later as the accredited representative of the British "Y" services, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Following a breakdown in "Y" cooperation with the

Soviet General Staff The General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (russian: Генеральный штаб Вооружённых сил Российской Федерации, General'nyy shtab Vooruzhonnykh sil Rossiyskoy Federatsii) is the mil ...

in December 1942, the British "Y" Board recalled Crankshaw to London in February 1943. In May he was assigned to

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...

, where he served as a liaison officer on matters pertaining to

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

. From 1947 to 1968 he worked for the British

Sunday newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'', specialising in

affairs. He obtained a transcript of Soviet leader

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

's secret denunciation of Stalin in 1956, a newspaper sensation. While a junior reporter, Crankshaw had been summoned by

Guy Burgess Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 ...

of the

Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * Unit ...

to be criticised for being "too soft towards Russia"; after Burgess was unmasked as one of the

Cambridge Five The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for ...

spies (for the Soviet Union), and fled to

, Crankshaw met him there several times, though he did not report on Burgess for ''The Observer'', and ended up liking the spy. Crankshaw died on 30 November 1984 in

Hawkhurst Hawkhurst is village and civil parish in the borough of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England. The village is located close to the border with East Sussex, around south-east of Royal Tunbridge Wells and within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Nat ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

. Crankshaw wrote around 40 books on Austrian (''Vienna''; ''Vienna, the Image of a Culture in Decline''; ''Fall of the House of Habsburg''; ''Gestapo. Instrument of Tyranny''; ''Maria Theresa''; ''Bismarck''; ''The Habsburgs: a dynasty''...) and Russian subjects (''Britain and Russia''; ''Putting up with the Russians''; ''Tolstoy: The making of a novelist''; ''Russia without Stalin''; ''The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825–1917''; ''Khrushchev: A Career''; introduction, commentary and notes to ''Khrushchev Remembers''; ''The New Cold War, Moscow vs. Pekin''; preface to

Grigory Klimov Grigory Klimov (born 10 April 1933) is a Soviet racewalker. He competed in the men's 50 kilometres walk at the 1956 Summer Olympics and the 1960 Summer Olympics The 1960 Summer Olympics ( it, Giochi Olimpici estivi del 1960), officially know ...

's ''The Terror Machine'').

References and notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crankshaw, Edward 1909 births 1984 deaths British Army officers Military personnel from Essex British male journalists 20th-century British writers People from Essex People educated at Bishop's Stortford College British Army personnel of World War II The Observer people Historians of Russia Bletchley Park people 20th-century British historians 20th-century British male writers