The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - Dennis Wheatley in World War II: a supplement

Bevan and Bauer fly to Russia to liaise with the Soviets over Bodyguard...

U.S. Colonel Bill Baumer

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A page from Bill Baumer’s unpublished diary of the trip

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The ‘footprint’ of the Bevan andBaumer trip to Moscow in the National Archives

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The work of the London Controlling Section was not entirely done from their desks, and sometimes liaison in other countries was necessary.

One of Derrick Morley’s principal jobs was to fly to neutral countries to brief the British Ambassadors on what was expected of them in terms of assisting to promote various stories - and they would not always be told that the stories they were told were not genuine - and to travel to these Ambassadors, according to DW, Morley had to lie for many hours, half-frozen, in the bomb bay of an aircraft.

For Operation Bodyguard however, the Chiefs of Staff decided that Bevan himself should go to Moscow to enlist the Russian’s help in drawing Axis forces away from the Normandy beaches at the time of the D-Day landings, and in January 1944 he did so, accompanied by his U.S. colleague Colonel William. H. (‘Bill’) Baumer.

Baumer kept a diary, and he must have given DW excerpts to help him with his History, because a portion of this unpublished, and at the time highly sensitive document, was found in DW’s papers.

The account is highly readable and entertaining, but while being so, it graphically illustrates both the dangers and the discomfort of the trip.

To read the relevant portion in full,click here.

In the event, the Russians exceeded Allied expectations, and rather than merely feint an offensive against Finland, they attacked it with ten Divisions.

There was some debate in the London Controlling Section about what Bevan had asked them; whether he had told them how the Allies carried out their deceptions using minimal resources and relying on subterfuge, or whether he had kept things simple and uncomplicated, and not given the game away about how the Allies operated, and simply asked for a full-scale military operation. DW was unsure which was the truth of the matter, as you can read here.