He then gave a picture of monolithic international Communism, as it was at the time:
‘In this country the number of Communists is fortunately very few, and it may be that a great number of those people who support the Communist movement believe, as the prisoner at one time apparently believed, misguidedly if sincerely, that that movement is seeking to build a new world. What they don’t realize is that it is to be a world dominated by a single power and that the supporters of Communism, indoctrinated with the Communist belief, must become traitors to their own country in the interests — or what they are told are the interests — of the international Communist movement.
‘My Lord, it is because of these facts that this brilliant scientist, as he is, now undoubtedly disillusioned and ashamed, came to place this country and himself in this terrible position.’
Sir Hartley went through Fuchs’s career in some detail, illustrating it with readings from the confession he made to Skardon, in particular his explanation of why he went to the Russians in the first place, of how he divided his mind into two compartments, the ‘controlled schizophrenia’, and his doubts during the past years. Sir Hartley pointed out in conclusion that Fuchs had made the confession voluntarily while he was a free man, and since then had given the authorities all the help he could. (Those parts of the confession that were not read out in court were classified by the British authorities, although it is difficult to see why. They remained classified, along with other official papers concerning Fuchs, even when most official documents of that time were released to the public in 1980 under the thirty-year rule.)[20]
Skardon was called as the only defence witness. Curtis-Bennett got him to confirm that until Fuchs confessed there was no evidence on which he could be prosecuted, and that he had acted on his own initiative in making the confession.
Curtis-Bennett, in his defence speech, began by recalling the desperate political background of Fuchs’s youth in Germany, leading up to the burning of the Reichstag. ‘This scientist, this scholarly man, read the news in the newspaper on the train the morning after it happened,’ he said. ‘He went underground, scarcely saving his own life, and came to this country in 1933 for the purpose of continuing his studies in order to fit himself out to be a scientist to help in the rebuilding of a Communist Germany, not to throw atom bombs at anybody, but to study physics… He pursued his peaceful studies, and had not the war come, he may have been a candidate for a Nobel Prize or a membership of the Royal Society rather than for gaol.’
Curtis-Bennett was apparently inadequately briefed, for he then said that Fuchs had never pretended that he was not a Communist. Lord Goddard pulled him up on this. ‘1 don’t know whether you are suggesting that that was known to the authorities,’ Goddard said.
Curtis-Bennett: ‘I don’t know, but he made no secret of the fact.’
Goddard: ‘I don’t suppose he proclaimed himself as a Communist when naturalized or taken into Harwell, or when he went to the USA.’
Curtis-Bennett: if I am wrong, the Attorney-General will correct me. It was on his records in this country at the Home Office that he was a member of the German Communist Party.’
Sir Hartley intervened: it was realized when he was examined by the Enemy Aliens Tribunal at the beginning of the war that he was a refugee from Nazi persecution because in Germany he had been a Communist. All the investigations at that time and since have not shown that he had any association whatever with British members of the Communist Party.’ (Actually, there is no record that any official body in Britain knew that he was a Communist in Germany.)
Curtis-Bennett went on to say that anyone who knew anything about Communism would know that a Communist coming into possession of valuable information would always put his allegiance to Communism above all else. Then, of Fuchs:
‘He had a sort of sieve in his mind about the information he would or would not give, and in count one, 1943—’
Lord Goddard interrupted him: ‘I have read this statement with very great care more than once. I cannot understand this metaphysical philosophy or whatever you like to call it. I am not concerned with it. I am concerned that this man gave away secrets of vital importance to this country. He stands before me as a sane man, and not relying on the disease of schizophrenia or anything else.’
Curtis-Bennett: ‘If Your Lordship does not think that the state of mind a man acts under is relative to sentence—’
Lord Goddard: ‘A man in this state of mind is one of the most dangerous that this country could have within its shores.’
Curtis-Bennett battled on against Lord Goddard’s philistinism:
‘I have to endeavour to put before Your Lordship this man as he is, knowing that Your Lordship is not going to visit him savagely but justly, both in the interests of the state and in the interests of this man, and I can only try to explain what Your Lordship has said you fail to understand. Though I fail in the end, I can do no more, but do it I must.
‘There was acting in his mind a sieve whereby, with regard to the first count, he would only tell things he found out himself. He is a scientist, a pencil-and-paper man, and it is good to hear the Attorney-General say that it is not in his power to make an atom bomb and hand it over to the Russians, to give away a mighty secret of that sort. In 1943, he gave information about what he himself knew out of his own head. I am not going to confuse this case with long medical terms. He is not mad. He is sane. But he is a human being, and that is what I am trying to explain.’
He went on to say that this sieve in Fuchs’s mind opened up to let a lot of information through during the time that Russia was fighting as an ally of Britain, when the first three of the four offences were committed, and closed up later. ‘It would be difficult to see how, in 1943 and 1945, when America was helping our Russian ally, that information given to Russia would be prejudicial to the state… The change of political alignments is not the business of scientists, for scientists are not always politically wise. Their minds move along straight lines without the flexibility that some others have.’
This was his lawyer’s defence, not Fuchs’s own. Fuchs would probably not have admitted, let alone claimed, that he was a simple scientist lost in the complexities of changing international alignments. Also, unlike Nunn May, he never said in his defence that he helped Russia because Russia was an ally of Britain and America; his first loyalty was to Russia because he was a Communist.
Curtis-Bennett concluded by pointing out that Fuchs had confessed of his own free will. ‘There you have this man being logical, in my submission. Having decided to tell everything, he tells everything, makes it about as bad for himself as he can, and provides the whole of the case against him in this court. There is not one piece of evidence produced in this case which is not the result of the written and oral statements he made to. Mr Skardon in December and January.’
There was no further evidence and no other witnesses. Lord Goddard then asked Fuchs whether he had anything to say. Fuchs sat impassively, wearing a brown suit with pens and pencils protruding from his top jacket pocket. Now he rose and spoke for the only time during his hearings, very softly, almost murmuring.
‘My Lord, I have committed certain crimes for which I am charged, and I expect sentence. I have also committed some other crimes which are not crimes in the eyes of the law — crimes against my friends — and when I asked my counsel to put certain facts before you, I did not do it because I wanted to lighten my sentence. I did it in order to atone for those other crimes.
20
I obtained a copy of the full confession from the FBI files in Washington DC, and used it as source material. It is reprinted in the Appendix. This is the first time it has been published in Britain. — NM