Desmond Morton (officer)
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Major Sir Desmond Morton (1891 - 1971) was a British military officer and government official. He played an important role in organizing a response to appeasement of German under Hitler during the period prior to World War II, and provided intelligence information about German re-armament to Winston Churchill while Churchill was out of power. When Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, Morton became his Personal Assistant.
[edit] Career
Morton joined the Royal Artillery in 1911. He saw action in World War I, and was shot in the heart at the Battle of Arras in 1917, but survived and recovered. He served as aide de camp to Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the BEF from 1917 to 1918.
He was seconded to the Foreign Office in 1919 where he was head of the Secret Intelligence Service's Section V, dealing with counter-Bolshevism in the mid 1920's, and was Head of the Industrial Intelligence Centre of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) from 1929 to 1939, responsible for providing intelligence on the plans and capabilities for manufacturing munitions in other countries. From 1930 to 1939 he was also a member of the CID sub-committee on Economic Warfare.
In 1939, he became the Principal Assistant Secretary at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and became Churchill's Personal Assistant in 1940. He served on the Economic Survey Mission to the Middle East in 1949, and served in the Ministry of Civil Aviation from 1950 to 1953.
He was awarded the Military Cross in 1917, and a knighthood in 1945.
[edit] Further reading
- Martin Gilbert, Churchill: Prophet of Truth (William Heinemann, 1976)
- William Manchester, The Last Lion (Little, Brown, 1988)
- Gill Bennett, Churchill's Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence (Routledge, 2006)
