In the autumn of 1933, Philby travelled to Vienna, ostensibly to improve his German before applying to join the Foreign Office – in reality to witness, and if possible take part in, the battle between left and right then under way in the Austrian capital. Engelbert Dollfuss, Austria’s extreme right-wing dictator, had already suspended the constitution and outlawed strikes and demonstrations in his efforts to suppress the socialist movement. A full-scale conflict was imminent, and the situation, as Philby put it, was ‘at a crisis point’. Philby made his way to the address provided by Gibarti, and introduced himself to its occupants, Israel and Gisella Kohlman, and their daughter Alice – with whom he promptly fell in love. Alice, known as Litzi, was twenty-three, dark-haired, Jewish, vivacious, direct to the point of bluntness, and newly divorced, having married at eighteen. When Philby met Litzi, he was still a virgin and a political naif; she swiftly attended to both deficiencies. Litzi was a fully committed revolutionary and, according to one contemporary, a ‘tremendous little sexpot’.
Litzi was active in the Viennese communist underground, and in contact with Soviet intelligence. She had spent two weeks in prison for subversive activities. Philby was instantly besotted. They made love in the snow. (‘Actually quite warm, once you get used to it,’ he recalled to a later girlfriend.) Philby had been in Austria for only a few weeks, when Dollfuss moved to crush the Leftists, arresting socialist leaders, banning trades unions and catapulting Austria into a brief but vicious civil war. Philby and Litzi plunged into the fray on behalf of the Revolutionary Socialists, the short-lived alliance of socialists and communists, passing messages, drafting leaflets, and helping to smuggle wanted men and women out of the country. The left was crushed in four days; 1,500 people were arrested, and the socialist leaders were executed. Litzi was on the wanted list, and the police were closing in, but Philby’s British passport would offer her protection: on 24 February 1934, he married Litzi in Vienna Town Hall. This was more than just a marriage made in Marxism; as Mrs Philby she could flee with her new husband to the safety of Britain. Litzi, or ‘Lizzy’ as he called her, may be the only woman to whom Philby remained both ideologically and sexually faithful. ‘Even though the basis of our relationship was political to some extent, I truly loved her and she loved me.’
A few weeks later, the newlyweds arrived in London, where they lodged with Philby’s mother. Conventional Dora Philby, desperate to keep up appearances despite a perennial shortage of money, was not best pleased to find her son married to a foreign communist. She regarded his politics as another passing adolescent phase, like acne. ‘I do hope Kim gets a job to get him off this bloody communism,’ Mrs Philby wrote to her husband in Saudi Arabia. ‘He’s not quite extreme yet, but may become so.’ St John was unconcerned by his son’s radicalism. ‘Excess can always be toned down afterwards,’ he declared.
Just a few weeks after his return from Vienna, Philby sat on a bench in Regent’s Park, waiting to meet a ‘man of decisive importance’ who, Litzi had promised, would change his life. When Philby had asked her who he was, and what made him so important, she clammed up.
Out of the June sunshine appeared a short, stout man in his early thirties with curly fair hair and intelligent eyes. He spoke English with a strong East European accent, and introduced himself as ‘Otto’. Philby never forgot their first conversation. Otto spoke about art and music, his love of Paris and his dislike of London. This, Philby reflected, was a ‘man of considerable cultural background’. Philby was entranced: ‘He was a marvellous man. Simply marvellous. I felt that immediately. The first thing you noticed about him were his eyes. He looked at you as if nothing more important in life than you and talking to you existed at that moment.’ That was a quality many found in Philby too. Gradually, their conversation drifted towards politics, and then the works of Marx and Lenin, which Otto seemed to know by heart. Philby, in turn, described his political experiences in Cambridge, his activities in Vienna, and his wish to join the Communist Party. They spoke in euphemisms, with Otto hinting that he could put ‘important and interesting work’ in Philby’s direction. As with most espionage relationships, this one began not with politics, but with friendship. ‘I trusted him from the start,’ wrote Philby. ‘It was an amazing conversation.’ They agreed to meet again.
Otto’s real name, which Philby would not learn for decades, was Arnold Deutsch. He was the chief recruiter for Soviet intelligence in Britain, the principal architect of what would later become known as the Cambridge Spy Ring. Born of Czech Jewish parents, Arnold and his family had moved to Austria when he was a child. Prodigiously clever, he emerged from Vienna University after just five years with a doctorate in chemistry, a fervent commitment to communism, and a passionate interest in sex. His first career was as publisher and publicist for the German sexologist Wilhelm Reich – the ‘prophet of the better orgasm’ who sought to bring sexual enlightenment to the prudish Viennese as part of the ‘sex-pol’ (sexual politics) movement, which equated sexual repression with fascist authoritarianism. Reich developed the radical, though slightly implausible, theory that ‘a poor man’s sexual performance led him to fascism’. While promoting Reich’s idea that better sex makes better revolutionaries, Deutsch was also secretly working for Soviet intelligence, having undergone a training course in Moscow. The Gestapo arrested Deutsch briefly in 1933; the anti-pornography section of the Vienna police were also on his trail, on account of his sex-pol activities. A year later, he arrived in Britain, to begin a postgraduate degree in Phonetics and Psychology at University College London, while working as a spy-recruiter. Deutsch had relatives in the UK, notably his wealthy cousin Oscar, the founder of the Odeon cinema chain, which was said to stand for ‘Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation’. One Deutsch was doing well out of British capitalism; the other was hellbent on destroying it.
Deutsch was an ‘illegal’, espionage parlance for a spy operating without diplomatic status. His mission was to recruit radical students at the best universities (using his academic work as cover), who might later rise to positions of power and influence. Deutsch was on the hunt for long-term, deep-cover, ideological spies who could blend invisibly into the British establishment – for Soviet intelligence was playing a long game, laying down seed corn that could be harvested many years hence, or left dormant for ever. It was a simple, brilliant, durable strategy of the sort that only a state committed to permanent world revolution could have initiated. It would prove staggeringly successful.
Philby’s introduction to Deutsch appears to have been arranged by Edith Tudor-Hart, an Austrian communist friend of Litzi’s. Born Edith Suschitzky, the daughter of a wealthy Viennese publisher, Edith married an English doctor and fellow communist named Alexander Tudor-Hart, and moved to England in 1930, where she worked as a photographer and part-time talent-scout for the NKVD, under the remarkably unimaginative codename ‘Edith’. She had been under MI5 surveillance since 1931 but not, fatefully, on the day she led Philby to meet Deutsch in Regent’s Park.
Philby was just the sort of recruit Deutsch was looking for. He was ambitious, well connected and devoted to the cause, but unobtrusively: unlike others, Philby had never made his radical views obvious. He sought a career in diplomacy, journalism or the civil service, all excellent perches for a spy. Deutsch was also under the impression that St John Philby was an agent of British intelligence, with access to important secret material.