Nightingales and Nitroglycerine: The Secret War of Eric Maschwitz

Before the Second World War, Eric Maschwitz was the Director of Variety at the BBC, a scriptwriter for films like Goodbye Mr Chips (1939), and the lyricist of the nostalgic classic These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You).  But Eric Maschwitz led a surprising double life for much of the war.  During the summer of 1940, Second Lieutenant Maschwitz was posted to Beverley by MI6 Section D to recruit civilians in the East Riding of Yorkshire. These men and women would be the saboteurs leading the resistance if the Germans were to invade the British Isles.  Many would later form the core of the Auxiliary Units (a topic that has been covered brilliantly by Andy Chatterton’s Britain’s Secret Defences – I recommend reading).¹ A month before, whilst in London, he had launched a successful West End show and written the lyrics for A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.  After the war, he would be appointed Head of TV Light Entertainment at the BBC, where he would be instrumental in giving Doctor Who the green light.²  His list of achievements in the world of entertainment is extraordinary, so perhaps it shouldn’t be that surprising that his intelligence work during the war reads like a film script, too.  I’ve been reading his autobiography, No Chip On My Shoulder.³ But let’s rewind to see how he ended up carrying nitroglycerine around Hull.

At the outbreak of war, the 38-year-old Maschwitz, being a patriotic sort of chap, volunteered with the recruiting office of each of the three services.  And was promptly rejected by all three.  He turned to his personal contacts and wrote a letter to an Admiral, whom he vaguely suspected was involved in Naval Intelligence.  On hearing nothing back, dejected but still wanting to do something of value to the war effort, he applied for a job with Postal Censorship in Liverpool.  His knowledge of French and German stood him in good stead, and he began working in the Parcels Section.⁴ This work involved opening packages intercepted en route to Axis countries to see whether they contained anything of interest.  It was not a particularly exciting job, he writes:

He had almost forgotten the letter to the Admiral when, several months later, in January 1940, Maschwitz was approached by British Intelligence.  He had passed the background checks (his time at Cambridge had served him well), and he was recruited to work on “Operation Letter Bags” at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool.  Tantalisingly, he does not divulge any details of this ‘ingenious’ operation, but it was something he could do whilst working in Postal Censorship.  I warn you, this is a deep rabbit hole, but if you want to explore forgery and philately, and more about this operation, you may want to read this article by Sergeant Major Herbert A. Friedman:

Things started to get really interesting when Maschwitz was told to report to the Secret Intelligence Service Section D (for Destruction) under Major Laurence Grand in London.  He was still a civilian at this time and posted to the St Ermin’s hotel, St James.  Here, the former BBC Director of Variety worked alongside people who came from a range of backgrounds pre-war - advertising agents, racing drivers, entrepreneurs – but collectively they worked on projects to disrupt the enemy.  These “ranged from blowing up German shipping to simple forgery.”⁶ He admired Major Grand (or ‘D’ as he was known) and marvelled at the way “ideas for confounding the enemy poured from his fertile brain.”

Maschwitz had a pretty fertile brain too, and during this period he worked round the clock, with a day shift at D Section followed by an evening shift working in the West End.  Remarkably, he produced, secured financing for, and scripted a new London Revue, New Faces, in his spare time.  The show opened at the Comedy Theatre (now the Harold Pinter Theatre) on 11 April 1940 and featured Judy Campbell for the first time singing that nostalgic classic, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. 

The New Faces show also happened to be an important break for a young Charles Hawtrey, who would become an instantly recognisable character in Carry On movies. The show (and Nightingale song, of course) was a runaway West End success, but there was no time for Maschwitz to rest on his laurels.

The Phoney War was coming to an end with the German breakthrough in May 1940, and the gloves were off at Section D.  Maschwitz was sent on an explosives and demolition course at a ‘secret’ establishment in Hertfordshire.⁷  Here, he learned to blow up railway tracks, prime fuses, and handle extremely volatile chemicals.  The fact that one of the instructors had had half his jaw blown away did not inspire Maschwitz with confidence! He had attended the course; he was now a demolitions expert.  As the British Expeditionary Force started to gather on the beaches of Dunkirk in late May 1940, there was a plan to send demolition experts, like Maschwitz, to France to destroy any vehicles and supplies left behind.⁸  So that he would not be shot as a spy if captured by the Germans, he was made a Second-Lieutenant and handed a uniform – he was no longer a civilian and was now answerable to the War Office. Events moved too quickly with Calais close to falling, and the mission had to be abandoned. But Major Grand had other plans for Section D.

With a demoralised, broken British Army and expecting an imminent German invasion of Britain, Maschwitz was sent to the East Riding of Yorkshire to recruit saboteurs among the civilian population in the coastal areas. He was to work as a civilian without any written instructions and was responsible to a Regional Commissioner of the Home Defence Scheme.⁹  His source of civilian recruits was recommendations from the Chief Constable, who provided Maschwitz with a list of local people who had the right skills and, above all, kept schtum. Maschwitz describes his work during the summer of 1940¹⁰:

Unfortunately, ever mindful of divulging information that might be used by a future enemy, not to mention the Official Secrets Act, his 1957 autobiography says little more about this intriguing episode.  As the concerns of a German invasion diminished and the increasing War Office alarm at the hidden arms caches that were springing up all over the country in the hands of quietly ruthless civilians, Maschwitz had to say goodbye to his ‘private maquis’.  He writes, “I have often wondered since what happened to the ‘toys’ we left with them!”

The war was just getting started for Maschwitz, and I cannot do all of his roles justice in a single post, but here’s a taster of what happened next.  After Section D, he moved into Army Welfare, where he used his BBC knowledge to set up the Overseas Recording Broadcast Service (ORBS) and run radio stations for the Forces.  He was periodically pulled back into Intelligence by Grand and others, working for SOE in New York for a while during 1941-2.  During this assignment, he had to improvise, destroying secret documents on board a neutral ship bound for Lisbon when it was stopped by a German U-Boat for inspection.  After a stint in the Political Warfare Executive at Woburn Abbey, by 1944, Maschwitz was a Lt-Colonel and oversaw the Leaflets Section of the Psychological Warfare Branch at SHAEF.  The leaflets were designed to persuade the Axis troops to surrender and were written in a range of languages.  You can see more about the leaflets used in Normandy in this clip:

Film: IWM (S15 54)

When D Day was postponed due to bad weather, Maschwitz writes about a consequence of this decision that is rarely mentioned – what happened to people who had been printing the leaflets that were to be dropped on Normandy the day of the invasion:¹¹

Later in Normandy, working as the Leaflets liaison officer to 21 Army Group, he was approached to join SHAEF’s Film Unit, along with Carol Reed, Peter Ustinov, and a host of other unlikely characters in uniform.  Carol Reed asked Maschwitz to be the scriptwriter for the official film of Operation Overlord, The True Glory.  You can watch the film here:

By late 1944, Maschwitz was back with Army Welfare, responsible for radio broadcasts for the 21 Army Group as it advanced through Belgium and Holland.  As well as pioneering the use of mobile field radio transmitters and requisitioning transmitter masts in newly liberated areas, he established the British Forces Network at the Musikhalle in Hamburg.

From being rejected by all three Services in 1939, Lt-Colonel Maschwitz ended up scripting the film that would commemorate the largest military operation in history and establishing a broadcast centre for the forces in Germany.  A strange and wholly remarkable war!