Cracks in the Kremlin Wall

William Edward Crankshaw (3 January 1909 - 30 November 1984), was a British writer, author, translator and commentator; best known for his work on Soviet affairs and the Gestapo (Secret State Police) of Nazi Germany.

He was born in Woodford, Essex, England and educated in the Nonconformist public school, Bishop’s Stortford College in Hertfordshire. He worked as a journalist for a few months at The Times.

In the 1930s he lived in Vienna, Austria, teaching English and learning German. He witnessed Adolf Hitler’s Austro-German union in 1938. In 1940 he was contacted by the Secret Intelligence Service on account of his knowledge of German and during WWII served as a ‘Y’ (Signals Intelligence) officer in the British Army.

From 1941-1943 he was assigned to the British Military Mission in Moscow, 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 in December 1942, the British ‘Y’ Board recalled Crankshaw to London in February 1943. In May he was assigned to Bletchley Park, where he served as a liaison officer on matters pertaining to Russia.

From 1947-1968 he worked for the British Sunday newspaper The Observer, specialising in Soviet affairs. He obtained a transcript of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s secret denunciation of Stalin in 1956, a newspaper sensation.

He authored some 40 books on Austrian and Russian history, including Vienna: The Image of a Culture in Decline (1938), Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny (1956), Khrushchev’s Russia (1959), The New Cold War: Moscow v. Pekin (1963), and The Fall of the House of Hapsburg (1969).

He died in 1984 in Hawkhurst, Kent aged 75.