Might the Somerton Man have been Arnold Deutsch all along? It’s a fascinating possibility, though one for which we currently have far less evidence to work with than I would like. (Though Derek Abbott thinks Deutsch was 4″ too short and had the wrong size hands.)
Hence a few days ago, I decided to try to hunt down Deutsch’s fingerprints: after all, we have reasonable photographic copies of the Somerton Man’s fingerprints (though not the original fingerprint card(s), Derek Abbott believes, while Gordon Cramer doubts whether they’re even genuine).
Who else could I ask about this but well-known spy writer Nigel West (Rupert Allason)? To my very great delight, he quickly responded:-
Having seen Deutsch’s NKVD file in Moscow, I am reasonably sure there is not a record of his fingerprints in Russia. Nor is it likely that his Aliens Registration card with (what was then) Special Branch survives.
Of course, the NKVD file on Deutsch was precisely what I was hoping would contain his fingerprints, so this was a bit of a disappointment. But it is what it is. West’s email continued:-
However, as Deutsch drowned in the Atlantic on 7 November 1942 when the SS Donbass was sunk by a U-boat, it seems a little unlikely that his body would wash up in Australia.
You may already know that Nigel West included this account of Deutsch’s death in several of his books, such as The Historical Dictionary of Sexspionage (p.69) and The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the Russian Archives (p.113), which asserted that “[m]ortally injured, Deutsch died while heroically trying to save the lives of others“.
I also have here Ben Macintyre’s “A Spy Among Friends”, Rufina Philby’s “The Private Life of Kim Philby”, and John Costello and Oleg Tsarev’s “Deadly Illusions – The First Book from the KGB archives”. The last of these recites the same basic story, and refers to DEUTSCH File No. 32826 (as mentioned in Vol. I and Vol. II of RISA), though it is not immediately clear which parts of their account are from the file and which are not.
Of course, we now know that the SS Donbass was sunk by the German destroyer Z-27 (not by a U-Boat) in the Barents Sea (not the Atlantic), and there is no mention of Deutsch anywhere in the lists of the dead. So I think we can reasonably doubt that we have been handed down the whole story.
A sensible question is whether the SS Donbass indeed had any passengers at all. I found a very good page (in Russian) with numerous different accounts of the Donbass’s sinking. One of these accounts (Weiner BA, Soviet maritime transport in the Great Patriotic War. – Moscow: Military Publishing, 1989) asserts that 49 people died that day, whereas the memorial only lists 33 dead: however, this same account claims that the Donbass’s guns managed to land a hit on the destroyer, which seems (from the destroyer’s own logs) to be more Soviet mythology than wartime fact.
Far more persuasive to me is the complete lack of any mention of passengers – or indeed of any practical heroics from anyone who wasn’t a ranking officer on the ship (e.g. Morozov) – in any of the accounts. The final account on the site seems to have been largely taken from Captain Zielke’s account in the SMERSH files: here too passengers are conspicuously absent.
Really, I find myself struggling to link Deutsch with anything here. Have I missed anything important?
You might be struggling mate, but I’m marvelling at your dogged persistence.
Good account Nick and very thorough. To clarify a point, he reason for questioning the Somerton Man fingerprints image obtained by Derek is that there is nothing on the image of the card that is signed or states that it is a South Australian Police document. The notation made identifying the prints as those of the Somerton Man, is actually on a separate piece of paper on which the fingerprint card or paper has been laid for the photograph.
Derek was unsure how fingerprints were transmitted in the 1940s or how fingerprints could be copied if at all. There was a Western Union Desk Fax that was used for the purpose but it relied on the original document be it a photograph or fingerprints so that it would faithfully produce the prints that were sent.
Although invented by Chester Carlson, it was 1948 before photocopier technology was really commercialised so we are left with a set of fingerprints which are not effectively tied to the Somerton Man.
Because of this, I question the provenance of the image until such time as a signed fingerprint card from the SA Police is put forward and if that matches those in the file image that we have all seen then all is well and good.
It would be nice to know how a copy of the prints without certification came into existence.
A Russian, a certain Mr Sherbakov (no first name), was to be included in the Russian delegation at the Lapstone ECAFE conference December 1948 that was held in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney. Mr Sherbakov seems to have arrived in Australia with the delegation, but didn’t show up at the conference.
Australian Archives. “Correspondence, Reports and Statements, 1948-1955, Lapstone” Barcode 438694. page 28.
“Of the fourteen Russians who landed, twelve only have left. Apparently Sherbakov and Miss Bogotyreva are still in Australia. Mr. Brennan never saw Sherbakov during the whole of the conference and was under the impression that he had not come.”
The Lapstone ECAFE conference commenced on the Monday before SM died. Could SM be Sherbakov? Who was Sherbakov?
There is another interesting matter mentioned in this file. It appears that the UK alerted Australia that some documents had gone missing (page 7). This might be tied in with Venona.
Deutsch, he was the little guy – SM, a bigger guy. Where do we get the four inches to fix that?
“Stick him into a pair of high-heeled riding boots.”
Next ..
BD, a fellow by name of Dr. John Burton had a lot to do with the ECAFE meeting, he was Secretary to the Dept of External Affairs and suspected long and hard as being on the ‘other’ side.
His political position was that he, and Evatt , opposed the creation of ASIO. He has been likened to Philby and visited Russia in 1934, aged 19.
http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=4708
Had the cold war begun in 1948, or was everyone on the winning side still best buds? When was ASIO floated first? Who did the aliens in the gumtrees sort of worrying in Aus. in WWII? Never studied modern history. Sorry. Bit vague on this sort of thing.
Diane: ASIO came a little bit after 1948, so it’s very probably a bit of a red herring (ha! did you see the way I slipped that joke in there? Never mind!) within Somerton Man research land. 😉
a better red than dead (floated) herring. Ha..
Vassily Sherbakov – bingo. And he arrived in Adelaide by light aircraft flown by prospers car friend. “Duffield ” sm = Sherbakov
I know how much you factoids hate the whiff of fiction, but seeing as how Nick has Deutsch on the blackboard again – ‘my’ Deutsch btw, although I’m more than happy to share him – I had a thought about what a small person Deutsch was purported to be. Five foot about seven inches.
“Philby described Deutsch as “about 5ft 7in, stout, with blue eyes and light curly hair.” * * “The Philby quote is from his Social Security File in the UK, and is also referenced in “The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5,” By Christopher Andrew.”
Derek Abbott, reddit.
Is that all we have on it, Philby’s word? The slyest of all the foxes.
“Their trade is treachery” Harry Chapman Pincher.
“The security services had been keen to establish the identity of the Ring of Five controller with the code name “Otto”. Philby said that, while “Otto” had never given his true name, he had discovered him to be a man called Arnold Deutsch, a Commintern agent whom he had met in Vienna, when he had been finally recruited by the KGB. Deutsch had come to London in 1934 for so-called post-graduate studies, but he was certainly not “Otto”. Philby said that he had recognised “Otto” after he had seen a photo of Deutsch in the FBI files. A check showed that the FBI files contained no photograph of Deutsch before Philby’s defection. Furthermore, the detailed description of “Otto” later given by Blunt in his confession did not fit Deutsch. As with much else in Philby’s “confession” this was a KGB move to cover the truth.”
B Deveson: touché! Thanks very much for sharing that! 🙂
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more like ‘BINGO!’
Two accounts exist. One that Arnold’s photograph was in FBI files and one that it was in M15 files. Nonetheless, based on all accounts, it’s most likely that Philby remained true to his colours right to his end…BS on anything he wrote or stated about “Arnold”.
Where Nigel found the photo of Arnold would be good to know as he (Arnold) didn’t look at all like his former self…
Nigel West also states that Arnold Deutsch travelled on his own name but there doesn’t seem to be any credible record of such…Apparently, he operated under the name “Stephan Lang” and that makes him much more difficult to track.
misca: maybe he worked in Aus under the name T. Keane
Sherbakov
Old Sherby. And the girls Verco and Denbigh.