By Thomas Riegler

“In 1951 and 1955 Philby was investigated as ‘the third man’ after the defection of the first two members of the Cambridge Five. As journalist Gordon Corera puts it: ‘By a strange quirk of fate, the title of Graham Greene’s screenplay was now applied to the man, unbeknown to anyone, may have helped inspire it.’“

New Perspectives on the Spy Story behind “The Third Man”

The Third Man celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024. This generated a lot of renewed attention and interest in the film classic, its visual style, and cultural legacy. What was absent from this revaluation however was the film’s significance in Cold War intelligence history. The present article summarizes what has emerged on this subject since the publication of my article The Spy Story behind The Third Man (2020).¹ It also presents some new findings that substantiate the claim that the film’s story is linked to the spy case of Kim Philby.

Real Spies Pulled Off The Third Man

We know from various publications that already during the film’s conception phase, former and active spies collaborated in pulling off The Third Man: Whether it be the producer Alexander Korda, the author of the novel and screenplay, Graham Greene, or the production assistant Elizabeth Montagu, a former Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative.

What is also well established is the fact that productions like The Third Man were used as a cover for espionage operations. Korda in particular had offered the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS aka MI6) an opportunity to use the European offices of his London Film Productions as a cover for the activities of agents from as early as the mid-1930s. Korda was a close friend of Colonel Claude Dansey, who handled the private Z network that aided the underfunded SIS. For example, in early 1937 agent Z18, Andrew King, was dispatched to London Film’s Vienna office and slipped out in February 1938, when he judged (correctly) that a takeover by Nazi Germany was imminent. Like King, Agent Z3 John Cordington joined SIS when war broke out, but worked at London Films after 1945 and even handled the paperwork for Greene’s first Vienna research trip for The Third Man.²

In 1946, Dansey even joined Korda’s newly acquired company British Lion. Although he died the following year, Korda’s connection with intelligence continued – but as Charles Drazin has pointed out: ‘It is difficult to state with any certainty what assistance Alex [Korda] provided from 1945 onwards.’³ Generally, the 1948 shooting location of The Third Man in Vienna ‘was a convenient way to use up foreign currency that he was unable to remit home under post-war restrictions, but also provided cover for his intelligence friends. As one of the flashpoints in a new and rapidly developing confrontation between East and West, Vienna was a popular destination for spies, and London Films was perfectly set up to organize their efficient deployment.’⁴ There is a statement from a contemporary witness working at the set of The Third Man that implies such deceptive maneuvers really took place. Audio engineer Jack Davies remembered that once a stranger turned up, who was obviously not from the industry and disappeared just as quickly as he had arrived.⁵

Did the Filming Provide Cover for a British Spying Operation?

Recently, German author Karina Urbach has taken up this topic. She is convinced that the film crew of The Third Man included intelligence officers in disguise – mainly because occasional filming in the Soviet controlled sector offered opportunities for in- and exfiltration of agents or maybe even for tunneling operations that targeted Soviet communications.

In 2024, Urbach published her research in the form of a novel (Das Haus am Gordon Place). In a piece for the German weekly Der Spiegel, she elaborated on the subject: ‘It is still not known what kind of operation they carried out during the filming in autumn 1948. But Greene and Reed deliberately included scenes in the script that had to be filmed in the Soviet zone. Montagu went to great lengths to obtain filming permits for them. The film team was able to film in the Soviet sector and lay cables there.’

In an interview, Urbach was more precise, about what operational purposes the filming might have concealed: ‘There are many indications that the film crew were carrying out an operation in the Soviet zone on behalf of MI6 during filming. It is still not known exactly what was going on, but it is possible that they were tapping into cables for further interception tunnels or that they were smuggling people out of the Russian-occupied districts of Vienna. As a matter of principle, the foreign intelligence service MI6 does not release files. However, we know that the Western secret services were very afraid of the Soviet occupiers’ further plans, especially as Stalin had ordered the blockade of Berlin in June, 1948. The fear was that Vienna could also be cut off and end up communist. They wanted to prevent this at all costs and therefore sent the most creative MI6 people to Austria.’⁶

Urbach also places director Reed in the spy lot behind The Third Man. What is certain, is that Reed was intimately familiar with intelligence, politics, and war. His wartime effort resulted in the docudrama The Way Ahead (1944) and he worked with an US-colleague to produce The True Glory (1945). ⁷ Also, Reed’s Night Train to Munich (1940), about a British intelligence officer infiltrating Nazi Germany on a rescue mission, is considered a superior example of the early wartime British spy film. In addition, it was noted already in 1948, that Reed encountered ‘no difficulty […] in getting permission from all the four powers in control of Vienna to stage much of the shooting in that city’.⁸

The chronological context is indeed crucial. During the late 1940s, Vienna was an espionage hot spot – especially against the background of the Berlin Blockade and the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. What made the situation in Vienna itself special was the fact that it was divided from 1945-1955 into four occupation sectors and one international sector. That made the city a particularly fertile ground for espionage, because the loose coexistence of the sectors facilitated a great deal of exchange and communication between East and West.

Former CIA agent Tennent H. Bagley recalled that Vienna was one of the few places where a defector could quickly get from the East to the West by simply moving from one house to a neighboring property. In this undeclared shadow war, however, the Soviet side outnumbered the Western allies three to one. It abducted, kidnapped and murdered as if on its own territory.⁹ In 1948, when The Third Man was filmed, kidnappings reached an especially high point, with three people a day being abducted by Soviet agents and their accomplices from the criminal underworld.¹⁰ However, US intelligence and their allies also did not shy away from seizing targets in the Soviet sector of Vienna.¹¹

Suzanne Fesq, an employee of the Allied Control Commission, later recalled that people did not even feel safe even within their own four walls. At any time – day or night – a knock on the door could mean danger and misfortune. Many of those who were deported were never heard from again and those who were lucky enough to escape remained silent about their experiences.¹² The sequence of chases in The Third Man captures this terrifying atmosphere very realistically.

British Spy Tunnels in Postwar Vienna

Concerning the tunneling operations, drawing a direct connection to The Third Man remains speculative at best. Vienna was indeed the launchpad for complex and ambitious operations that became the model for an even bigger and better known joint US-British endeavor in West-Berlin undertaken in 1954/55 (Operation Gold).

The forerunner was Operation Silver, a collective term for several individual projects initiated by SIS station chief Peter Lunn. Three tunnels were dug in Vienna from 1948/49, labelled Conflict, Lord and Sugar.

It is said that in the summer or autumn of 1948, an Austrian official had given the British an explosive tip: A telephone cable ran under Aspangstrasse in Vienna’s Landstrasse district, carrying most of the Soviet military telephone traffic as well as the international lines to Prague, Budapest, Sofia and Bucharest.

Opposite the now demolished Aspang railway station was a row of storage and demolition buildings with large cellars. Three of these were seized. From the cellar of the center building, six soldiers led by an officer of the Royal Engineers then dug the first tunnel. It was ‘only’ three to four meters long and ran one and a half meter below the pavement.¹³

To the outside world, the listening post was disguised as a British Railway Transport Office (RTO) warehouse. Three men worked around the clock in two- or three-hour shifts in the tunnel, which was called ‘Smokey Joe’s’ because of the unfiltered air mixture of cigarette smoke, cellar damp and vapors.¹⁴ That is why Lunn told a new arrival: ‘So now you’re in Vienna you think it’s going to be all wine, women and song. Well, let me tell you, old boy, it’s all beer, bitches and broadcasting.’¹⁵

When a call was heard, the recording device was activated and the conversation was recorded on wax cylinders. These were then flown from Vienna to London three times a week in special barrels. There, the recordings were listened to and transcribed by a special SIS department (Section Y). This involved a mix of 50 to 60 Russian emigrants, Polish army officers in exile and locals who knew the language. The insights gained from this were incorporated into a regular bulletin on the Red Army’s order of battle in Austria. The information was eventually shared with the CIA, which therefore covered 75 per cent of the costs of the espionage operation.¹⁶

For the Field Security Service (FSS) personnel on duty in ‘Smokey Joe’s’, it was a boring job. None of the soldiers spoke Russian. If a conversation sounded like it, they pressed the record button. God only knows how many mistakes were made, recalled one of those involved. The only welcome diversion was eavesdropping on the female switchboard operators talking about their love lives with their colleagues in Eastern Europe between 01.00 and 03.00 in the morning.¹⁷

In 1951, Conflict was terminated after the Soviets stopped using the cable. The other two Viennese tunnels are said to have been compromised by British double agent George Blake just as he had betrayed Operation Gold, which was then exposed publicly in 1956.¹⁸

So far, there is not any archival evidence to support Urbach’s thesis, that the production of The Third Man had a particular role in Operation Silver. All three tunnels were dug inside or on the outskirts of the British sector. Nevertheless, there may have been even more such projects.

What did Greene Know about Philby?

From my point of view and laid out in the article The Spy Story behind the Third Man, the most promising lead remains the personal connection between Greene and his former superior at SIS, Kim Philby, and their mutual acquaintance with Austrian born newspaper correspondent Peter Smolka. The latter had first arrived in Britain in 1930, obtained British naturalization and changed his name to Harry Peter Smollett-Smolka.¹⁹ On 3 September 1939, Smolka took up a job at the Ministry of Information (MOI) and was promoted to head the Anglo-Soviet liaison section in 1941.²⁰

Smolka knew a lot about Philby. They came across for the first time in Vienna in 1933/34, when the then young Cambridge student Philby had visited Vienna and met his first wife, the Comintern activist Alice (Lizzy) Friedmann. They both witnessed the repression of the Austrian workers movement in the short, but brutal civil war in February 1934. That experience set Philby on the path to become the perhaps most successful double agent of the Cold War.²¹

Philby later told Russian journalist Genrikh Borovik that he had met Smolka in Vienna: ‘Whether he was a Communist or not, I do not know. He seemed to be, judging from his theoretical views – we had chatted more than once. But from the point of view of his own lifestyle, his love of comfort, I would not consider him a Communist.’²² The link was probably closer than Philby was ready to admit. Smolka’s wife Lotte had been a close friend of Lizzy in Vienna.²³ Smolka himself said in an interview with MI5 in 1961, he knew Lizzy ‘as a child of a very young age’: ‘She was a lower middle class Jewish girl, and, we were friendly with them.’²⁴ Later Smolka would introduce Lizzy to German exile Georg Honigmann, whom he had provided a job to at the Exchange Telegraph in 1938. Honigmann married Lizzy in 1947, one year after she had finally divorced Philby. Together they went to East Berlin, where they parted in 1956.²⁵

Furthermore, Smolka and Philby had even entered into a business relationship together. It happened shortly after Philby had returned with Lizzy to London, where he was quickly recruited by Soviet intelligence on or about July 14, 1934.²⁶ A few weeks later, on November 15, 1934, Smolka contacted the Home Office and asked for permission to form ‘… with a British colleague of mine, Mr. H. A. R. Philby, of 18 Acol Road, London N.W., a small company under the name ‘London Continental News Ltd. …’.²⁷ At the beginning of 1935, Smolka was informed that there were no objections to this.²⁸ This was approved on 19 November, 1934.²⁹ The newly formed press agency was supposed to collect news from Central and Eastern Europe, which were then sold to the Exchange Telegraph, which Smolka himself would join in 1938. Smolka held 98 percent of the shares in London Continental News, Philby held two percent.³⁰ The firm existed till 31 November, 1938. Three balance sheets showed net profits of £8, £13 and £19 after providing £188, £325 and £795 for director’s renumeration. A report from 1938 stated, “Smolka and Philby are the directors, but the latter is merely a nominal partner and the sums quoted as director‘s fees have been drawn by Smolka.”³¹ It was determined that London Continental News ‘never actually functioned’.³² Alternatively, it could have been just another cover maneuver to provide for Philby, who was at that time still struggling to find his way into the establishment.

During Smolka’s 1961 interrogation with MI5, he commented on short-lived London Continental News: ‘I thought I was going to send stories to the Continent, but it didn’t go very far. […], I started it in order to supply news to the Exchange Telegraph – and to have a sort of framework for it.’ Smolka said he had wanted to have Philby on board as ‘an English director’: ‘I asked him if he would join, he did, and he took no interest in it whatsoever.’ When Smolka was asked how it was then that he came to tie up with Philby in this news agency, Smolka replied: ‘I didn’t know many people and I said to him one day…. Forming this little company to provide the Exchange Telegraph with news from the continent – do you mind? He said, ‘I don’t mind’ and that was all, I hardly ever talked to him about it, […].’

Smolka claimed to have ‘lost all contact’ with Philby in 1940 or 1941. He carefully stuck to Philby’s cover story and offered nothing that might have incriminated him: ‘I had the impression that he did not like to meet quite frankly… I have a feeling that he was rather anti-Jewish. […] My interpretation of it was, that he was, had been and is now, as you know, very left wing and he was not at all left wing.’³³

Smolka was of course so discreet because both he and Philby would have lost, if one of them had opened up on the other. In 1939, Philby had recruited Smolka for Soviet intelligence under the codename ‘ABO’.³⁴ At one stage, Philby had to leave London for work for an extended period and did not want to lose contact with his source. Therefore, he introduced Smolka to his colleague Guy Burgess and told the latter that he had recruited the man on his own initiative. Burgess immediately raised this with the Soviet controller, who then severely reprimanded Philby. Supposedly, he dropped all relations with Smolka.³⁵ However, as Yuri Modin, one of Philby’s handlers remembered, Smolka ‘kept up an intermittent relationship with the Cambridge group.’³⁶

Smolka returned to Vienna in June 1945 and became a Central Europe correspondent for The Times and the Daily Express.³⁷ In early 1948 he had a visitor at his villa at Vienna’s Jagdschlossgasse no. 27 (today Seelosgasse). It was Graham Greene. He probably already knew Smolka from a short period of time in 1940/41, when both Greene and Smolka worked at the MOI.³⁸ According to Drazin the meeting started dinnertime on February 17, 1948 and lasted into the early hours of the morning. Philby and Smolka were ‘possibly the only two people west of the Iron Curtain who knew that Philby was a traitor.’³⁹ When Greene had arrived in Vienna weeks before, he joked to Montagu ‘he didn’t know what he was going to write, he hadn’t the faintest idea’. She had helped to spark off ideas and was keen that Greene would meet Smolka.⁴⁰

A Further Confidant Revealed?

What exactly he contributed to The Third Man remains unclear. Siegfried Beer is of the opinion, that Smolka ‘provided several, if not most, of the main ideals and scenarios for Green’s film script.’⁴¹ In any case, Smolka was contractually promised 210 pounds on July 24, 1948 – for services such as ‘giving advice in the film script’ and providing assistance in Vienna in connection with the production.⁴² He accepted the agreement and, in his reply to London Film representative Tristam Owen, dated September 21, 1948, Smolka specified that the sum should be transferred to his account at the Westminster Bank, which he used as a British citizen for his payments in Great Britain.⁴³

We also do not know if the subject of Philby came up between Greene and Smolka, but it is a likely possibility. ‘Greene always knew much more about Philby’s game than he revealed’, biographer Anthony Cave Brown noted.⁴⁴ According to him, Greene ‘certainly knew of Philby’s communist past’.⁴⁵

Recently, Oliver Buckton has summarized what secrets one man knew about the other and what the far-reaching implications for the story of The Third Man can be: ‘Greene knew about Philby’s marriage to and subsequent divorce from Lizzy, […]. He also knew of Philby’s abrupt change to right-wing radical politics, which would have seemed a suspicious change of ideology to one familiar with Philby’s communist background. Thus, it is likely that Philby was the inspiration for the corrupt traitor Harry Lime who, as did Philby, shuttles between the British and Soviet powers according to his self-interest. […] The question who knew exactly what and when about Philby’s role as a double agent is an intriguing one that perhaps will never be resolved.’⁴⁶

There might have been another knowledgeable person present at the crucial meeting. In 1951, British intelligence took notice that a fellow Communist was staying at Smolka’s address. What they did not know was that this Georg Knepler had been Philby’s first point of contact in Vienna in 1933, where he had organized a network for German workers fleeing Nazi persecution. For accommodation, Knepler had recommended Philby a trusted comrade residing at Latschkagasse 9. It was Lizzy Friedmann.⁴⁷ In his written “confession” of 1963, which was declassified in January 2025, Philby acknowledged this role of Knepler. When traveling to Vienna in September 1933 Philby had first contacted an official of the Workers‘ International Relief in Paris, who gave him a letter for Knepler – at that time head of the Austrian Committee for the Relief of German Workers, an organisation devoted to aid political refugees from Nazi Germany: “I asked Knepler if he could advise me with regard to cheap accommodation, and he put me in touch with Lizzy Friedmann, who had a spare room available. I promptly moved in. We soon began living together, and were subsequently married.”⁴⁸ In 1934, Knepler had emigrated to Britain and returned to Austria in March 1946. Since then he and his wife ‘appear to have lived’ at Smolka’s villa.⁴⁹ When the latter was questioned again by MI5 in May 1968 – this time in Vienna – the subject of Knepler played a big role: “S.[smolka] said he had known Knepler well in 1932 and had kept in touch since. Knepler was a Communist. S. did not know that he had been active in any particular sphere. Knepler stayed in S.‘s house in Vienna after the war for a year or two; he had also been a friend of Lizy’s [Lizzy].”⁵⁰ Knepler, a musicologist by training, had moved on to East-Berlin by 1949, where he founded the German University for Music (Deutsche Hochschule für Musik).

In the end, there is no definitive proof, but it all boils down to this. In 1951 and 1955 Philby was investigated as ‘the third man’ after the defection of the first two members of the Cambridge Five. As journalist Gordon Corera puts it: ‘By a strange quirk of fate, the title of Graham Greene’s screenplay was now applied to the man, unbeknown to anyone, may have helped inspire it.’⁵¹

Further Reading

Full Article from The Journal of Austrian-American History: The Spy Story Behind The Third Man (2020)

Author Biography

Thomas Riegler (Ph.D.), born 1977, studied history and politics at Vienna and Edinburgh Universities. He has published on a wide range of topics, including terrorism, film studies, and intelligence history – for example: Austria’s Secret Services. From The Third Man to the BVT-scandal (2019, in German) and The Vienna Spy Circle. Kim Philby, Austrian emigrees and Soviet intelligence (2024, in German).

__________

References

(1) Among new publications dealing with The Third Man are: Anne-Marie Scholz, Preaching to the Unconverted: The Third Man (1949) as Historical Resource for Exploring the Topic of Americans in Vienna, 1945–1955, in: Journal of Austrian-American History (2021) 5 (2): 157–179, John Walsh, The Third Man: The Official Story of the Film (London 2024), Oliver Buckton, Counterfeit Spies. How World War II Intelligence Operations Shaped Cold War Spy Fiction (Lanham 2024).

(2) Brigitte Timmermann, Frederick Baker, Der dritte Mann: Auf den Spuren eines Filmklassikers (Wien 2002), 88.

(3) Charles Drazin, Korda: Britain’s Movie Mogul (London 2011), 214-218.

(4) Ibid., 318.

(5) Timmermann, Baker, Mann, 85-86.

(6) Georg Markus, Der erste, der zweite und der dritte Mann: Spione in Wien, Kurier, 17.3.2024.

(7) Paul Frazier, The Cold War on Film (New York 2024).

(8) Carol Reed starts in Vienna, Film Industry, September 9, 1948.

(9) Tennent H. Bagley, Spy Wars. Moles, Mysteries, and deadly Games (New Haven 2007), 33-34.

(10) Gordon Corera, The Art of Betrayal. Life and Death in the British Secret Service (London 2011), 35.

(11) James V. Milano, Patrick Brogan, Soldiers, Spies and the Rat Line. America’s Undeclared War against the Soviets (Dulles 2000), 173.

(12) Stephen Dorril, MI6 – Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (New
York 2000) 120.

(13) David Stafford, Spies Beneath Berlin (London 2002), 30-31.

(14) Ibid., 32.

(15) Steve Vogel, George Blake, The Berlin Tunnel and the Greatest Conspiracy of the Cold War (London 2019), 100.

(16) Michael Smith, The Real Special Relationship. The True Story of how the British and US Secret Services work together (London 2022), 223.

(17) Stafford, Spies, 30-31.

(18) Smokey Joe’s – Operation Conflict, militaryintelligencemuseum.org/smokey-joes#:~:text=Smokey%20Joe’s%20%2D%20Operation%20Conflict,French%2C%20American%20and%20British%20zones.

(19) Smollett-Smolka, Harry P., in: The National Archives (TNA), KV 2/4169.

(20) Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (London 1991), 333-334.

(21) Oleg Zarew, John Costello, Der Superagent. Der Mann, der Stalin erpresste (Wien 1993), 214.

(22) Genrikh Borovik, The Philby Files. The Secret Life of the Master Spy – KGB Archives Revealed (London 1994), 137.

(23) Barbara Honigmann, Georg (München 2019), 67.

(24) Interrogation, 2.10.1961, in: TNA, KV2/4170, 318a.

(25) Honigmann, Georg, 67-71.

(26) Anthony Cave Brown, Treason in the Blood: H. St. John Philby, Kim Philby, and the Spy Case of the Century (Boston 1994), 167.

(27) Harry Peter Smolka – Austrian, in: TNA, KV 2/4169, 217a.

(28) Copy of part of serial 121b, PF. 39,680, Smolka, in: TNA, KV 2/4723, 4z.

(29) Harry Peter Smolka – Austrian, in: TNA, KV 2/4169, 217a.

(30) Charmian Brinson, ‘Nothing short of a scandal’? Harry Peter Smolka and the British Ministry of Information, Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies, No. 1/2016, 63-75, 65.

(31) Extract from serial 220d, PF. 39,680 (Smolka), in: TNA, KV 2/4723, 3z.

(32) Smollett Smolka, Harry Peter, in: TNA, KV 2/4169, 189a.

(33) Interrogation, 2.10.1961, in: TNA, KV2/4170, 318a.

(34) Christopher Andrew, Wassili Mitrochin, Das Schwarzbuch des KGB. Moskaus Kampf gegen den Westen, (München 2001), 127.

(35) Borovik, Files, 138.

(36) Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends (London 1994), 104.

(37) Brinson, ‘Nothing short of a scandal’?, 72.

(38) Siegfried Beer, Fim in context: The Third Man, History Today, May 2001, 45-51, 49.

(39) Charles Drazin, In Search of The Third Man (London 2004), 150.

(40) Ibid., 7.

(41) Beer, Man, 49.

(42) London Film to Smolka, 24.7.1948, archive author.

(43) Smolka concluded with a question: ‘By the way, what is the true position about ‘The Third Man’? Is he coming to Vienna this autumn and do you want me to have anything to do with him? I would be glad of a little advance notice of your intentions so as to be able to reserve time for him in my winter programs.’ Smolka to Tristam Owen, 21.9.1948, archive author.

(44) Brown, Treason, 583.

(45) Ibid., 330.

(46) Buckton, Spies, 83.

(47) Thomas Riegler, Der Wiener Spionagezirkel. Kim Philby, österreichische Emigranten und der sowjetische Geheimdienst (Wien 2024), 68.

(48) Document 3, 11.1.1963, in: TNA, KV 2/4737.

(49) Subject Smollett-Smolka Harry P., Knepler Georg, 11.12.1951, in: TNA, KV 2/4169.

(50)Extract, 20.6.1968, in: TNA, KV2/4665, 125b.

(51) Corera, Art, 274-275.