Soviet traitor and Cambridge Five spy ring member Anthony Blunt may also have ... trends now
Soviet traitor and Cambridge Five spy Anthony Blunt may have also passed secrets to the Nazis that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Allied troops, a new book has claimed.
Blunt, who died aged 75 in 1983, privately confessed to being a Soviet spy in 1964 and was publicly exposed 15 years later by Margaret Thatcher.
Now in a bombshell book, titled The Traitor of Arnhem, the British art historian has been accused of being the most likely candidate to be 'Josephine', who provided crucial details of an Allied operation to the Germans, and whose identity has never been revealed.
Halting the infamous Operation Garden Market - an Allied military operation that aimed to outflank the German defences along the Rhine and allow a swift advance into the heart of Germany - would have been attractive to the Russians as Stalin did not want the American and British troops to land in Berlin while his army was still in action on the eastern front.
Tyrant Stalin had plans to take over Eastern Europe.
Anthony Blunt is alleged to have been a spy code-named 'Josephine' who relayed information on Operation Garden Market to the Germans in 1944, according to author Robert Verkaik
Blunt had been recruited by Stalin's security agency, The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs in 1930s
Blunt had joined the British Army and MI5 before taking on a career as an art historian and Queen Elizabeth's curator
A letter signed by Anthony Blunt, part of the life of spies exhibition currently running at the university Library in Cambridge city centre
If accurate, Blunt's actions would have 'contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Allied serviceman and women and countless civilians who perished as a result of a prolonged war,' the author Robert Verkaik wrote in The Sunday Times.
He also chillingly added that the alleged mole could also be blamed for the rapes of at least a million German women by the Russians after they emerged triumphant.
Blunt graduated the prestigious Cambridge University and headed straight into the army before joining the MI5 secret services, in 1940.
At this time, he was already relaying vital information to the Russians.
The spy quickly climbed the ranks and would have been a part of the small group aware of the Operation Market Garden plans in September 1944.
The major operation saw thousands of paratroopers landing in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands to force a route into central Germany.
But the allies came face-to-face with unexpected and heavy resistance in what ended up being their final defeat of the war.
With the failure to capture the bridge over the Rhine in Arnhem the operation fell short of its main objective.
The rescue of the First Airborne Division survivors ended the operation.
US losses totalled 3,996 dead, wounded, or missing, while British and Polish losses were 11,000 to 13,000 dead or wounded and 6,450 captured.
German casualties numbered 7,500 to 10,000.
If accurate, Blunt's actions would have 'contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Allied serviceman and women and countless civilians who perished as a result of a prolonged war,' the author of The Traitor of Arnhem said
In 1951, Burgess (right) and Maclean (left) were exposed as double agents - but after being tipped off by Philby they were able to escape to Moscow
Kim Philby, a member of the Cambridge Five, was head of counter-intelligence for MI6
The five men had been graduates of Trinity College, Cambridge
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