Harry (Hans) Peter Peter Smollett

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Harry (Hans) Peter Peter Smollett (Smolka)

German: Harry Peter Smolka
Birthdate:
Birthplace: Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Death: November 04, 1980 (68)
Vienna, Vienna, Austria (Multiple Sklerose)
Place of Burial: Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Immediate Family:

Son of Albert Smolka and Vilma Smolka
Husband of Lotte Smolka
Father of Private; Timothy Smolka; Timothy Smolka and Private User

Occupation: Journalist, Fabrikant, Industrieller
Managed by: Barbara Richman
Last Updated:
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Immediate Family

About Harry (Hans) Peter Peter Smollett

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Smollett

arry Peter Smollett, OBE (1912–1980), born Hans Peter Smolka and sometimes continuing to use that name as a nom de plume even after he changed it by deed poll, was a journalist for the Daily Express and later a Central Europe correspondent for The Times.[1] During the Second World War, Smollett became head of the Russian section at Britain's Ministry of Information and was responsible for organising pro-Soviet propaganda. He was later identified as a Soviet agent.

Born in Vienna, he came to Britain in 1933 as an NKVD agent codenamed 'ABO'. Although he changed his name to Smollett on becoming a naturalized British subject in 1938, he returned to using the surname Smolka when he returned to Vienna after the war.[2] According to the Mitrokhin Archive, Smollett had been recruited by Kim Philby.[3]

George Orwell included him on the list of those who "in my opinion are crypto-communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as propagandists"[1] that he gave to the Information Research Department in 1949 as "almost certainly agent of some kind" and "a very slimy person".[4] Timothy Garton Ash stated that Smollett ‘was "almost certainly" the civil servant on whose advice the London publisher Jonathan Cape rejected Orwell's Animal Farm as an unhealthily anti-Soviet text’.[3]

Graham Greene's biographer, Michael Shelden, refers to the inside joke that appears in the film The Third Man (1949), filmed in Vienna. Greene wrote the screenplay and used the name Smolka for a bar because Smolka/Smollett had given uncredited advice on the filming.[5]

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Harry (Hans) Peter Peter Smollett's Timeline

1912
September 17, 1912
Vienna, Vienna, Austria
1980
November 4, 1980
Age 68
Vienna, Vienna, Austria
????
Vienna, Vienna, Austria