1. Stewart Graham Menzies was born in England in 1890 into a wealthy family as the second son of John Graham Menzies and Susannah West Wilson, daughter of ship-owner Arthur Wilson of Tranby Croft.
24 Facts About Stewart Menzies
1. 2.
Stewart Menzies's grandfather, Graham Menzies, was a whisky distiller who helped establish a cartel and made huge profits.
3.
Stewart Menzies was educated at Eton College, becoming president of the student society Pop, and left in 1909.
4.
Stewart Menzies won prizes for his studies of languages, and was considered an all-around excellent student.
5.
Stewart Menzies was promoted to lieutenant and appointed adjutant by 1913.
6.
Stewart Menzies was wounded at Zandvoorde in October 1914, and fought gallantly in the First Battle of Ypres in November 1914.
7.
Stewart Menzies' regiment was decimated during fighting in 1915, suffering very heavy casualties in the Second Battle of Ypres.
8.
Stewart Menzies was seriously injured in a gas attack in 1915, and was honourably discharged from active combat service.
9.
Stewart Menzies then joined the counterintelligence section of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the British commander.
10.
Stewart Menzies was promoted to brevet major before the end of the war.
11.
Stewart Menzies was a member of the British delegation to the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference.
12.
In 1939, when Admiral Sinclair died, Stewart Menzies was appointed Chief of Secret Intelligence Service.
13.
Stewart Menzies expanded wartime intelligence and counterintelligence departments and supervised codebreaking efforts at Bletchley Park.
14.
Stewart Menzies insisted on wartime control of codebreaking, and this gave him immense power and influence, which he used judiciously.
15.
Stewart Menzies kept Prime Minister Winston Churchill supplied daily with important Ultra decrypts, and the two worked together to ensure that financial resources were devoted toward research and upgrading technology at Bletchley Park, to keep pace with Nazi coding refinements, as well as directing talented workers to the massive effort, which employed nearly 10,000 workers by 1945.
16.
Stewart Menzies has been suspected as being involved with the assassination, on 24 December 1942, of Francois Darlan, the Vichy military commander who defected to the Allies in Algeria.
17.
Stewart Menzies, who was promoted to major-general in January 1944, supported efforts to contact anti-Nazi resistance, including Wilhelm Canaris, the anti-Hitler head of Abwehr, in Germany.
18.
Stewart Menzies coordinated his operations with Special Operations Executive, British Security Coordination, Office of Strategic Services and the Free French Forces.
19.
Stewart Menzies was awarded the Order of the Yugoslav Crown.
20.
Stewart Menzies was sometimes at odds with the Labour governments.
21.
Stewart Menzies had to weather a scandal inside SIS after revelations that SIS officer Kim Philby was a Soviet spy.
22.
Stewart Menzies was already the head of the service when Kim Philby joined in 1941.
23.
Stewart Menzies next married Pamela Thetis Garton, on 13 December 1932, fourth daughter of Rupert Evelyn Beckett by his wife Muriel Helen Florence Paget, daughter of Lord Berkeley Charles Sydney Paget, himself a younger son of the 2nd Marquess of Anglesey.
24.
Anthony Cave Brown reported that Stewart Menzies had a long-standing affair with one of his secretaries, which he ended upon retirement in 1952; the secretary apparently tried to kill herself at that time.