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WORK TITLE: Spies in the Congo
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Williams, A. Susan
BIRTHDATE: 1/17/1953
WEBSITE:
CITY: London, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. * http://research.sas.ac.uk/search/fellow/185/dr-susan-williams/ * http://www.thedailybeast.com/contributors/susan-williams.html * http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=36031
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born January 17, 1953.
EDUCATION:Holds B.A., M.A., and Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, historian, and researcher. Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, London, England, senior research fellow. Frequent historical adviser for television and film.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to numerous journals and of chapters to scholarly books.
Colour Bar was adapted as the feature film A United Kingdom, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2016.
SIDELIGHTS
A senior researcher at the University of London’s Institute for Commonwealth Studies, Susan Williams focuses her research on the history of sub-Saharan Africa, espionage and intelligence, the history of the United Nations, and the global impact of nuclear weapons development, among other topics. She is the author of a number of books on these subjects.
The People's King
Williams takes on the thorny subject of royal abdication in her 2003 volume The People’s King: The Betrayal and Abdication of the First Modern Monarch. The monarch in question was Edward VIII of England, who gave up the throne to marry the divorced American Wallis Simpson, creating one of the greatest scandals of the interwar years. Williams presents a new interpretation of this event, contending that the British people were not necessarily opposed to this marriage and were also favorable in their attitudes toward the king. The “betrayal” of the title, as Williams shows, was, as Edward VIII himself thought, the actions of senior government ministers who worked behind his back to make the abdication all but impossible to avoid.
Library Journal contributor Robert C. Jones termed The People’s King a “fast-paced and intelligently written reevaluation of the six intense weeks leading up to Edward’s abdication.” Similarly, a Publishers Weekly reviewer observed, “Royal watchers will perhaps be startled by details of the relationship between the royal family and the state.” Writing in the London Telegraph, Andrew Roberts observed that Williams “suggests that ordinary people in Britain and the Empire were quite ready for Wallis Simpson to be Queen. Huge numbers of people, she argues, simply wanted the King to be happy.”
Colour Bar
In Colour Bar: The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation, Williams narrates a true story of interracial love and marriage in mid-twentieth-century England and Africa. Seretse Khama was the heir to the kingship of Bechuanaland, an African protectorate that England controlled. Khama was sent to England to study law in 1945 and there met and fell in love with a young, white shipping clerk, Ruth Williams. The couple defied convention and were married in 1947 in a civil ceremony. Though Khama’s tribe supported the future chief, his uncle opposed the marriage and managed–with the help of the South African and British governments–to disallow Khama’s return to Africa and accession to his rightful position. This led to a lengthy exile for Khama and his bride, as he fought in vain to be allowed to return to Bechuanaland. Finally, in 1956, with the British government busy dealing with the Suez crisis and after Khama renounced his kingship, he and his family were allowed to return to Africa. Eventually, he was vindicated, elected the first democratic leader of the new nation of Botswana. He ruled over that country for two decades, until his death in 1980.
London Guardian reviewer Melissa Benn felt that Colour Bar–which was adapted as a feature-length movie in 2016–is an “extensively researched and elegantly written account.” Benn further noted: “Williams has done a masterly job in unravelling and chronicling a shameful piece of colonial history, in particular, the twists and turns of the … special inquiry and its political aftermath. … Williams has succeeded in the difficult feat of seamlessly entwining a political and personal story.” Writing in the London Independent, Stephen Howe similarly commented: “The sheer dishonesty and nastiness chronicled in Susan Williams’s wonderful account still startle. Snobbery and sexism were only a little less rampant than racism.”
Who Killed Hammarskjöld?
With Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa, Williams looks at a Cold War mystery–the death of Dag Hammarskjöld, secretary-general of the United Nations. On a peace mission to the Congo in 1961, his plane went down in Northern Rhodesia, and all aboard died. Immediately following the tragedy, rumors began to spread about sabotage and a cover-up. A half century after the death, Williams began her own investigation into the crash, following leads from England and the United States to South Africa, Zambia, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, and France. Her resulting work, which inspired an official investigation, argues that the interests of Western governments, including those of Britain and the United States, would not have been well served by a brokered peace in the Congo. The West, engaged in the Cold War with the Soviet Union and its proxy states, did not want postcolonial governments in Africa to exert actual power. The book also demonstrates the lengths to which white settlers in Rhodesia would go to in order to maintain their white minority rule.
Louise Gray, Malcolm Lewis, and Peter Whittaker, in the New Internationalist, called Who Killed Hammarskjöld? a “scrupulously researched investigation” that “has painstakingly pieced together the available evidence.” Writing in the Spectator, Michela Wrong similarly commented: “Part detective, part archivist, part journalist, Williams schmoozed spies, befriended diplomats and mercenaries and won the trust of Hammarskjöld’s still grieving relatives and UN colleagues to get her tale. She unwinds each thread of the narrative with infinite patience, leading us carefully down the torturous paths of Cold War intrigue. The resulting tale is as gripping as it is exasperating.” Africa Today contributor Guy Martin was also impressed, noting: “In this book, Susan Williams … conducts an exhaustive–and often delicate–investigation into the Secretary-General’s death. On the basis of sensitive and top-secret documentation and materials, she reveals that conflict in the Congo was essentially driven by the determination of an unholy alliance of Western forces.”
Spies in the Congo
In her 2016 volume Spies in the Congo: America’s Atomic Mission in World War II, Williams recounts the Allies’ fevered work in World War II to secure the supplies of uranium in the Belgian Congo and keep them out of Nazi hands. She follows the adventures of a daring engineer named Dock Hogue, who was recruited by America’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and sent off to Leopoldville in 1943 to work with British and Belgian agents. Risking their lives, these agents received little recognition for their work, as Williams notes; her book is partly intended as a corrective to that.
“Williams’s niche but engrossing story offers new insight on intelligence activities in sub-Saharan Africa during WWII,” noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer of Spies in the Congo. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Nicolas van de Walle similarly observed, “Plenty of intrigue livens up the narrative, and Williams also offers a useful discussion of the strategic issues both sides faced.” Likewise, a Kirkus Reviews critic concluded: “The author’s work is chock-full of spies and their fanciful code names as well as insightful accounts of the jealousies between the Americans and British. A fine complement to other accounts of wartime efforts to keep atomic weapons from the Germans.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Africa Today, fall, 2012, review of Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa, p. 122; spring, 2013, Guy Martin, review of Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, p. 163.
Foreign Affairs, January-February, 2017, Nicolas van de Walle, review of Spies in the Congo: America’s Atomic Mission in World War II, p. 178.
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2016, review of Spies in the Congo.
Library Journal, December, 2003, Robert C. Jones, review of The People’s King: The Betrayal and Abdication of the First Modern Monarch, p. 132; June 1, 2016, Matthew Wayman, review of Spies in the Congo, p. 107.
New Internationalist, December, 2011, Louise Gray, Malcolm Lewis, and Peter Whittaker, review of Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, p. 43.
Publishers Weekly, October 20, 2003, review of The People’s King, p. 44; June 6, 2016, review of Spies in the Congo, p. 73.
Spectator, October 29, 2011, Michela Wrong, review of Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, p. 49.
ONLINE
Daily Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com/ (March 6, 2017), author profile.
Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (August 19, 2006), Melissa Benn, review of Colour Bar; (September 17, 2016), Richard Norton-Taylor, review of Spies in the Congo.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, http://www.h-net.org/ (June 1, 2012), Philip Muehlenbeck, review of Who Killed Hammarskjöld?
Independent Online, http://www.independent.co.uk/ (June 1, 2006), Stephen Howe, review of Colour Bar.
New York Journal of Books, http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/ (March 6, 2017), Thomas McClung, review of Spies in the Congo.
Scotsman Online, http://www.scotsman.com/ (July 2, 2016), Vin Arthey, review of Spies in the Congo.
Telegraph Online, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ (August 24, 2003), Andrew Roberts, review of The People’s King.
University of London Web site, http://research.sas.ac.uk/ (March 6, 2017), author profile.
Dr. Susan Williams is a senior fellow in the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her recent books include Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, which triggered a new UN investigation in 2015, and Colour Bar, now a major film entitled A United Kingdom.
Dr Susan Williams
Dr Susan Williams
Contact details
Name:
Dr Susan Williams
Qualifications:
PhD, MA, BA Hons (First Class)
Position/Fellowship type:
Senior Research Fellow
Fellowship term:
to 31-Jul-2018
Institute:
Institute of Commonwealth Studies
Location:
Institute of Commonwealth Studies School of Advanced Study University of London 2nd Floor, South Block, Senate House Malet Street London WC1E 7HU
Email address:
susan.williams@sas.ac.uk
Website:
http://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/index.php?id=172
Research Summary and Profile
Research interests:
Civil Rights, Colonies & Colonization, emigration & immigration, Communications, Communities, Classes, Races, Contemporary History, Cultural memory, Gender studies, Globalization & Development, Human rights, International Relations, Metropolitan history, Modern History , Political Institutions
Regions:
Africa, Europe, North America, United Kingdom
Summary of research interests and expertise:
Dr Williams is a historian with a particular interest in the strands of the past that have been neglected or concealed and in the voices that have not been heard, such as those of the colonised. Her research draws heavily on archives and also a range of other sources, including oral testimonies and media. Her research takes her to many different nations.
Areas of expertise include: the history of sub-Saharan Africa; espionage and intelligence; the history of the United Nations; British, French and Lusophone colonialism and neocolonialism; decolonisation; the Modern Commonwealth; and the global impact of nuclear weapons development.
She is frequently invited to act as a historical advisor to the media (television, radio and print). She also serves as historical consultant to the production of films (see below) and has been advisor to the work of independent and official inquiries (for example see below).
Project summary relevant to Fellowship:
Dr Williams is currently completing a book entitled Spies on the Congo: America’s Atomic Mission in World War II, which looks at espionage in the Belgian Congo during the Second World War, in the context of global power struggles, the European colonial presence in Africa, and the competition for strategic raw materials. The book draws on newly-released official files and will be published in April 2016. Academic contacts established during the research led to the convening in July 2015 of a major international conference at SAS on nuclear politics and the historical record.
In 2015 Pathé UK is making a major film based on Dr Williams’s book Colour Bar (Penguin), about the Founding President of Botswana, Sir Seretse Khama. Filming takes place in Botswana and the UK in October-December 2015. The director is Amma Asante and the screenplay is by Guy Hibbert; Seretse Khama is played by David Oyelowo and Ruth Khama is Rosamund Pike. Dr Williams is serving as historical advisor. The film will be released in 2016.
Film rights to Dr Williams's book Who Killed Hammarskjöld? (Hurst/Oxford University Press), have been optioned; she serves as historical advisor to the producer.
Dr Williams has continued, since the publication of Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, to serve as a historical advisor on a variety of fronts relating to its themes. The book argues the case for a new inquiry into the plane crash that killed UN SG Dag Hammarskjold. It led in 2012 to the independent Hammarskjöld Commission, chaired by Sir Steven Sedley, to which Dr Williams provided historical expertise. On the recommendation of the Commission’s report in 2013, in December 2014 a Resolution was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly, authorising the Secretary General to appoint a UN Panel of Experts to examine the evidence. In June 2015 the UN Panel submitted its report to UN SG Ban Ki Moon, who released it to the public with the statement in July 2015 that ‘further inquiry or investigation would be necessary to finally establish the facts’. The Head of the UN Panel of Experts, Chande Othman, Chief Justice of Tanzania, stated: ‘We must also thank Susan Williams and the Hammarskjold Commission for their efforts in bringing this matter to the attention of the international community.’
Dr Williams collaborates on a number of major events and projects with Dr Mandy Banton, also a Senior Fellow at ICWS. One of these is the editing of a Special Issue of The Round Table, entitled Freedom of Information and the Commonwealth, to be published in December 2015, which looks at the issues emerging from a previous conference they organised at ICWS/SAS in 2012.
Publication Details
Related publications/articles:
Date Details
01-Apr-2016 Book (authored): Spies on the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II
Monographs
Forthcoming from Hurst (UK) and Public Affairs (USA)
10-Dec-2015 Book (edited): Freedom of Information and the Commonwealth
Edited Book
A Special Issue of The Round Table, co-edited by Williams with Dr Mandy Banton (SAS) and Professor Elizabeth Shepherd (UCL) and with an introduction by all three editors
01-Jul-2015 The Vilification of Wallis Simpson
Chapters
In BBC HIstory Magazine edited volume: The Secret Lives of Royal Women
01-Sep-2014 Book (authored): Who Killed Hammarskjold? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa
Monographs
Hardback and Paperback publication by Oxford University Press
01-Jan-2014 Article: Nelson Mandela
Articles
BBC History Magazine: contribution to Ten Photographs that Shook the World
01-Sep-2013 Review of Lise Namikas, Battleground Africa: Cold War in the Congo, 1960–1965
Review
International Affairs, Volume 89, Issue 5
01-Oct-2012 Journal article (authored): Freedom of Information and the Commonwealth
Journal articles
with Mandy Banton, The Round Table, Vol 101, No 05, 471-473, October 2012
01-Jan-2011 Book (authored): Who Killed Hammarskjold? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa
Monographs
C. Hurst and Co in the UK; Jacana in South Africa; Columbia University Press in the USA
01-Jan-2010 Essay (authored): Ways of Seeing Africa
Chapters
Introductory essay to Africa Bibliography 2009, ed. T. Barringer, Edinburgh University Press
01-Jan-2009 Book (edited): The Iconography of Independence: ‘Freedoms at Midnight’
Edited Book
with Robert Holland and T. Barringer. Routledge. Susan wrote the introductory chapter: 'The Midnight Hour'
01-Jan-2006 Book (authored): Colour Bar. The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation
Monographs
Allen Lane/Penguin; paperback 2007. The film rights of the book have been bought and Susan is historical advisor to the making of the forthcoming film
01-Jan-2006 Chapter (authored): 'The Media and the Exile of Seretse Khama: The Bangwato vs the British in Bechuanaland, 1948-1956'
Chapters
In Media and the British Empire, ed. Chandrika Kaul, Palgrave Macmillan
01-Jan-2003 Book (authored): The People's King. The True Story of the Abdication
Monographs
Allen Lane/Penguin. Paperback 2004. Published by Palgrave Macmillan in the USA.
01-Jan-2001 Book (authored): The Children of London: Attendance and Welfare at School 1870-1990
Monographs
with Pat Ivin and Caroline Morse. Institute of Education, University of London
01-Jan-2000 Book (authored): Ladies of Influence. Women of the Elite in Interwar Britain
Monographs
Allen Lane/Penguin, paperback in 2001
01-Jan-2000 Chapter (authored): Historical Research Methods
Chapters
A chapter in Research Methodology: For What? For Whom? eds Mayall, B, et al. Open University Press
Relevant Events
Related events:
Date Details
16-Jul-2015 'Sowing the Whirlwind': Nuclear Politics and the Historical Record
Organiser, with Dr Mandy Banton (SAS) and David Wardrop (United Nations Association Westminster Branch), of a major international conference, with a keynote address by Akiko Mikamo, US-Japan Psychological Services. Other sppeakers included Peter Kuznick (American University, Washington), Matthew Jones (LSE), Andreas Persbo (VERTIC), Bruce Kent (CND), Susan Williams (ICWS/SAS), Walt Patterson (Chatham House/University of Sussex), Knox Chitiyo (Chatham House), Joe Lauria (Wall Street Journal). The conference was accompanied by an exhibition from the ICWS library curated by Christine Anderson.
16-Jul-2015 Conference paper: Blank Pages of History: Congolese uranium and the Manhattan Project
Paper presented at ‘Sowing the Whirlwind’: Nuclear Politics and the Historical Record, a conference held by ICWS/SAS
13-Jun-2015 Speaker in Panel: “Something to Live For, Great Enough to Die For” – Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld Revisited
ACUNS (Academic Council on the United Nations System) at The Hague Institute of Global Justice: The UN at 70
07-May-2015 Portillo's State Secrets, BBC 2 television series on documents held by the UK National Archives
Talking Head in the third episode of this BBC 2 television series, looking at documents held by the UK National Archives
29-Jan-2015 Understanding Namibia - Book Launch
Organiser with Dr Mandy Banton of a seminar to launch a new book by Professor Henning Melber. Speakers were David Simon(Royal Holloway) and Marion Wallace (Africa Curator, The British Library).
23-Oct-2014 Black History Month Book Talk
This public event took place in Leicester City Centre
08-Sep-2014 Colloquium: The United Nations and End of Empire: Revisiting the Role of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold
Organiser with Dr Mandy Banton of a colloquium revisiting themes emerging from a conference held three years earlier on Dag Hammarskjold, the UN and the End of Empire. Speakers were John Y Jones (Voksenasen, Oslo), Henning Melber (Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Uppsala), and Edward Mortimer (All Souls College, Oxford).
10-Jul-2014 Why join the Commonwealth?
Organiser, with Dr Mandy Banton, of a colloquium to address the question 'Why join the Commonwealth', chaired by Stuart Mole and with distinguished speakers: Knox Chitiyo, Jean-Roger Kaseki, Sir Ronald Sanders, and Arif Zaman,
29-May-2014 The Secret Archive: What is the significance of FCO’s ‘Migrated Archives’ and ‘Special Collections’?
Organiser, with Dr Mandy Banton, of a high profile one-day conference, with contributions from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), key actors, distinguished scholars from Africa and Europe, the press (Guardian), and the National Security Archive at George Washington University, Washington DC. It was supported by the ASAUK and Hurst Publishers.
15-Apr-2014 Colloquium (New York): Portrait of a Secretary General
The Century Association of New York: speaker along with Roger Lipsey, biographer, and Andrew Gilmour, Political Director, Executive Office of the Secretary General
24-Feb-2014 Lecture (Oslo): 'Silencing and Lies'
'Silencing and Lies: The death of Hammarskjöld, Congolese uranium, and the annexation of history', lecture given to the Dag Hammarskjöld Programme, Voksenaasen, Oslo, Norway
30-Jan-2014 Congolese Uranium and Nuclear Hegemony
Seminar presentation to Research Fellows, Institute of Commonwealth Studies: 'Congolese Uranium and Nuclear Hegemony: Espionage, Deception, and a Void in History'
14-Jan-2014 Canadian radio feature interview: International Effort To Re-Investigate the Mysterious Circumstances of the death of Former UN Secretary General
Hour long in-depth telephone interview with broadcaster Paul Daniel on Canadian radio: Accessible Media Inc. (AMI)
29-Apr-2013 Presentation relating to Inquiries into the Death of UN SG Dag Hammarskjold
Leiden Law School: Presentation to students, organised by Prof Dr Alex Geert Castermans.
01-Jan-2012 Dag Hammarskjold and the Decolonisation of Africa. Ndola airport, Northern Rhodesia, 17-18 September 1961
Public lecture at the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 19 January 2012
01-Jan-2012 Channel 4 documentary, Edward VIII: The Plot to Topple A King
Focal Talking Head through the programme, screened first in April 2012 and repeated many times
01-Jan-2012 Secrecy and Disclosure: Freedom of Information and the Commonwealt
Organiser with Dr Mandy Banton of a high profile conference of prominent campaigners, practitioners and historians, June 2012
01-Jan-2011 Dag Hammarskjold and the Decolonisation of Africa: Looking through a telescope at Ndola airport, 17-18 September 1961
Invited lecture to the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences, Gothenburg, Sweden, November 2011
01-Jan-2011 Dag Hammarskjold's death and the Decolonisation of Africa
Public lecture at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, November 2011
01-Jan-2011 Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the End of Empire
Convenor with Dr Mandy Banton, of one-day international conference to mark the 50th anniversary of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld's death, 2 September 2001. The conference was organised jointly with the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden, and the United Nations Association of the UK, Westminster Branch. The evening before, a welcoming event was hosted by the Swedish Ambassador, Ms Nicola Clase, at her official Residence in London.
01-Jan-2011 Commonwealth Research Seminar Series
Convenor with Dr Shihan DeSilva at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. This seminar series provides an opportunity for Fellows and Students at ICwS to share and discuss with each other their work in progress on subjects relating to the Commonwealth and its concerns. The spirit is informal and friendly and everyone is welcome, including scholars outside the ICwS community.
01-Jan-2011 Media interview
In connection with the publication of her book Who Killed Hammarskjold, Susan was interviewed on Newshour, BBC World Service.
01-Jan-2010 Commonwealth Research Seminar Series
Convenor with Dr Shihan DeSilva at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. This seminar series provides an opportunity for Fellows and Students at ICwS to share and discuss with each other their work in progress on subjects relating to the Commonwealth and its concerns. The spirit is informal and friendly and everyone is welcome, including scholars outside the ICwS community.
01-Jan-2010 The Empire/Commonwealth between the Wars
This lecture was in a series of public lectures on ‘Empire into Commonwealth, 1910-2010’, to mark the joint centenary of the Round Table journal and the Royal Over-Seas League in London.
01-Jan-2010 The Use of Modern Media to Enrich Research on Twentieth Century Africa
This was a presentation at SOAS to SCOLMA, the UK libraries and archives group on Africa.
01-Jan-2009 Growing up in the Modern Commonwealth
The Address to the Annual Dinner of the Cambridge University Commonwealth Society
01-Jan-2009 Links between British rule in Botswana and Kenya in the Process of Decolonisation
Seminar paper given to the Department of Modern History at the University of St Andrews
01-Jan-2009 Commonwealth Research Seminar Series
Convenor with Dr Shihan DeSilva at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. This seminar series provides an opportunity for Fellows and Students at ICwS to share and discuss with each other their work in progress on subjects relating to the Commonwealth and its concerns. The spirit is informal and friendly and everyone is welcome, including scholars outside the ICwS community.
01-Jan-2008 The Thirties in Colour, BBC4
Susan served as an advisor and Talking Head on this television programme on British imperial history.
01-Jan-2007 'Freedoms at Midnight': The Iconography of Independence
Susan was a convenor with Professor Robert Holland of this one day conference, which looked at Independence Day ‘moments’ in several British colonies – India, Pakistan, Ghana, Guyana and Zimbabwe; it also examined the role of the media, of the monarchy, and of independence anniversaries. This focus was complemented by a comparative dimension, looking at how such junctures – amongst the most important in the twentieth century – were conducted in the French Empire.
01-Jan-2006 Abdication. A Very British Coup, BBC4 documentary
Susan's book The People's King was the basis for this Blakeway/BBC documentary, which highlights the role of the Commonwealth and the Dominions. Susan worked as the historical consultant and is the central Talking Head.
01-Jan-2006 Media interviews
In connection with the publication of the book Colour Bar, Susan was interviewed on radio on the BBC World Service; local UK radio stations; several South African radio stations, national and local; and Australian Broadcasting (ABC). On television, she was interviewed on Botswana television (BTV) and South African television (SABC).
01-Jan-2006 When Britain Backed Apartheid: Seretse Khama and the Harragin Inquiry of 1949
This was a seminar paper given to the Department of History at the University of Botswana
01-Jan-2003 Media interviews
In connection with the publication of her book, The People's King, Susan was interviewed on radio on the Today Programme, BBC Radio 4; Women’s Hour, Radio 4; local UK radio stations; Gyles Brandreth Show, LBC; and CBC Radio. On television, she was interviewed on BBC Newsnight; Channel 4 News; Sky News; BBC News 24; Canadian Broadcasting (CBC); and Russian television.
01-Jan-2003 Historical Advisor to the UK National Archives
Susan served in this capacity for the release of the government documents relating to the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 and its impact on the Commonwealth.
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QUOTE:
plenty of intrigue livens up the narrative, and Williams also offers a useful discussion of the strategic issues both sides faced
Africa
Nicolas van de Walle
Foreign Affairs. 96.1 (January-February 2017): p178.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org
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Full Text:
Spies in the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II
BY SUSAN WILLIAMS. Public Affairs, 2016, 432 pp.
The uranium used to build the first U.S. atomic bombs came from the Shinkolobwe mine in Katanga Province in what was then the Belgian Congo. The mine was attractive because it yielded an especially fine grade of uranium, and it would serve as a main source of material for the U.S. nuclear arms program well into the 1950s. The focus of Williams' engaging book is the challenge posed by transporting thousands of tons of uranium 1,500 miles, by rail and truck, from the mine to the Atlantic coast, and then moving it by ship and airplane to the United States--all in the middle of World War II. After Belgium's defeat and occupation by Germany, the Belgian Congo formally sided with the Allies. But the colony was not without its Nazi sympathizers, particularly when it seemed as though Germany might win the war. So the Americans also had to make sure that the Nazis did not find a way to tap into the area's uranium mines for their own nuclear efforts. The story's main players sometimes seem like stock characters: the handsome young American spy from Idaho; the mean-spirited, racist Belgian colonial official. But plenty of intrigue livens up the narrative, and Williams also offers a useful discussion of the strategic issues both sides faced.
QUOTE:
Williams's niche but engrossing story offers new insight on intelligence activities in sub-Saharan Africa during WWII
Spies in the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II
Publishers Weekly. 263.23 (June 6, 2016): p73.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Full Text:
Spies in the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II
Susan Williams. Public Affairs, $28.99 (400p) ISBN 978-1-61039-654-7
The core in America's first atom bombs came from rich uranium deposits deep inside Belgian Congo, and Williams (Who Killed Hammarskjold?), a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, details the Allied efforts to secure that source of uranium in light of reports that Nazi Germany had begun to develop an atomic weapon. He uses newly released records from American, British, and Belgian archives, including from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Derring-do is in short supply, and the ore shipments proceeded smoothly, but readers will not regret learning about the activities of some of America's least heralded spies. Williams's central figure is Dock Hogue, an engineer with a taste for adventure who was recruited by the OSS and sent to Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in 1943. He and colleagues suffered from heat and disease. They mostly enjoyed working with British agents but held a lower opinion of Belgian officials; many were corrupt, some sympathized with the Nazis, and all treated Africans terribly. As a cover for uranium-based activities, agents were publicly engaged in fighting diamond smuggling. They turned up little uranium smuggling but risked their lives, engaged in a few gun battles, often ruined their health, and received scant recognition. Williams's niche but engrossing story offers new insight on intelligence activities in sub-Saharan Africa during WWII. (Aug.)
QUOTE:
The author's work is chock-full of spies and their fanciful code names as well as insightful accounts of the jealousies between the Americans and British. A fine complement to other accounts of wartime efforts to keep atomic weapons from the Germans
Williams, Susan: SPIES IN THE CONGO
Kirkus Reviews. (June 1, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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Full Text:
Williams, Susan SPIES IN THE CONGO PublicAffairs (Adult Nonfiction) $28.99 8, 9 ISBN: 978-1-61039-654-7
Dogged examination of the official American and British wartime interest in keeping valuable uranium ore from the Belgian Congo out of Nazi hands. Williams (Senior Research Fellow/Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Univ. of London; Who Killed Hammarskold?: The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa, 2012, etc.) offers a dense and engaging work on a key aspect of the Manhattan Project. Once Albert Einstein warned President Franklin Roosevelt of the potential for German scientists to develop an atomic bomb in mid-1939, the Americans seized the sources of the necessary uranium ore. These included mines in Canada and Czechoslovakia, but the richest one was located in the southern Congo province of Katanga. The ore from the Shinkolobwe Mine was exceptionally rich, containing an average of more than 65 percent uranium ore, compared to the negligible quantities from Canadian and American mines. However, in May 1940, the Nazis had overrun Belgium, and while the colony's governor general officially declared support for the Allies, "allegiances in both Belgium and in its colony were far from clear." To foil any attempts by the Nazis to infiltrate the colony and wrest control of the mine, the Americans enlisted the Office of Strategic Services, set up by Roosevelt as the wartime intelligence agency. Top-secret agents--e.g., the able civil engineer Wilbur Owings Hogue--were sent to work alongside Belgian officials to keep the shipments of Congolese ore moving to the port of Matadi and eventually ending in a storehouse on Staten Island. Only a handful of insiders knew of the ultimate use of the ore, and thus a diamond-smuggling operation became the ideal cover for the movement of the uranium. The author's work is chock-full of spies and their fanciful code names as well as insightful accounts of the jealousies between the Americans and British. A fine complement to other accounts of wartime efforts to keep atomic weapons from the Germans--e.g., most recently, Neal Bascomb's The Winter Fortress (2016).
Williams, Susan. Spies in the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II
Matthew Wayman
Library Journal. 141.10 (June 1, 2016): p107.
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Williams, Susan. Spies in the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II. PublicAffairs. Aug. 2016. 400p. notes, bibliog. index. ISBN 9781610396547. $28.99. HIST
This latest work by Williams (Colour Bar) details the efforts of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of the modern CIA, particularly their agents in the Congo during World War II who sought to prevent enemies from acquiring uranium. The most potent uranium known was found in the Congo, averaging 65 percent uranium oxide compared to 0.02 or 0.03 percent from other mines. Under the pretext of preventing the smuggling of industrial-grade diamonds, the agents strove to expose the smuggling of uranium through German operatives and Belgian sympathizers. These efforts led to the intelligence needed to create the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and thus contributed directly to the advent of the nuclear age. One of the drawbacks to the agents' service was that many suffered premature deaths, likely from uranium exposure. While there are numerous books on the Manhattan Project, this is the first to focus on operations related to the origins of the uranium used. VERDICT A well-paced read based on archival documents, this work should appeal to those interested in the history of World War II, special operations, and the origins of the nuclear age.--Matthew Wayman, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., Schuylkill Haven
QUOTE:
scrupulously researched investigation into the Hammarskjold affair has painstakingly pieced together the available evidence
Who Killed Hammarskjold?
Louise Gray, Malcolm Lewis and Peter Whittaker
New Internationalist. .448 (Dec. 2011): p43.
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Just after midnight on Monday 18 Septembcr 1961, the plane carrying Dag Hammarskjold, UN Secretary-General, on a peace mission in the Congo, crashed near Ndola in what was then Northern Rhodesia. Hammarskjold was killed, along with the other 15 passengers and crew and, almost immediately, rumours about sabotage and an official cover-up began to circulate.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Fifty years on, Susan Williams' scrupulously researched investigation into the Hammarskjold affair has painstakingly pieced together the available evidence and gathered testimony from surviving witnesses of the crash. Her book's subtitle, 'The UN, The Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa', encapsulates her conclusions: namely, that the strategie interests of the apartheid regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa and the US, Belgian and British governments were not best served by a successfully brokered peace in the Congo, and Hammarskjold was 'collateral damage' in the calculations of the Cold War.
The picture of Hammarskjold the man that emerges from this fascinating book is that of an idealist who regarded the geopolitical stage as an entirely appropriate setting to enact humane and principled policies. That he paid the ultimate price for this philosophy should only make us wish more fervently for such a character among our present cast of politically and morally diminished 'world leaders'.
**** PW
hurstpub.co.uk
by Susan Williams (Hurst & Company, ISBN 9781849041584)
STAR RATING
***** EXCELLENT
**** VERY GOOD
*** GOOD
** FALR
* POOR
REVIEWS EDITOR:
Vanessa Baird email: vanessab@newint.org
Gray, Louise^Lewis, Malcolm^Whittaker, Peter
QUOTE:
Part detective, part archivist, part journalist, Williams schmoozed spies, befriended diplomats and mercenaries and won the trust of Hammarskjöld's still grieving relatives and UN colleagues to get her tale. She unwinds each thread of the narrative with infinite patience, leading us carefully down the torturous paths of Cold War intrigue.
A good man in Africa
Michela Wrong
Spectator. 316.9557 (Oct. 29, 2011): p49.
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Who Killed Hammarskjöld?
by Susan Williams
Hurst & Co, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 306, ISBN9781849041584
When I was a Reuters trainee, long hours were spent in Fleet Street pubs absorbing the folklore of journalism from seasoned veterans. One popular story concerned the hapless correspondent sent to verify that Dag Hammarskjöld, head of the United Nations, had safely landed at Ndola airport in Northern Rhodesia on his way to talks with separatist Congolese leader Moise Tshombe. A plane landed, the police confirmed it was the UN secretary general, the hack duly filed his story.
Trouble was, the disembarking white man was someone else. Hammarskjold was dead, killed as his DC-6 crashed on nighttime approach to Ndola. Rival reporters, drinking at a nearby hotel, heard the news and rushed to correct their stories. Our man, who had soberly retired to bed, was left looking like an idiot. Moral of the tale: never accept anything on hearsay. Alternatively: never be the first journalist to leave the bar.
Hammarskjöld died 50 years ago, his aircraft bursting into flames after scything through a stretch of forest and careering into an anthill. The sole survivor expired five days later in hospital, his strange testimony dismissed as delirious raving. Despite its tease of a title--you rather expect a definitive answer with a title like that--academic Susan Williams acknowledges that exactly what happened that night remains murky, but rejects the conclusion, reached by a Rhodesian inquiry in 1961, of pilot error. 'His death,' she says, 'was almost certainly the result of a sinister intervention.'
Why would anyone have wanted this aloof, rather spiritual Swedish technocrat dead? The UN leader had allowed himself to become sucked into the Congolese imbroglio. When Tshombe, with Belgium's support, declared the independence of Katanga, Hammarskjöld sent UN forces to prop up Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, disapproving of what he saw as a neocolonial lunge by Congo's former master, bent on retaining access to the country's minerals. In so doing, the UN found itself in an undeclared war against the white settler administration in neighbouring Central African Federation and the French, British, South African and US governments, who regarded Lumumba as a Soviet sympathiser and dangerous maverick.
Part detective, part archivist, part journalist, Williams schmoozed spies, befriended diplomats and mercenaries and won the trust of Hammarskjöld's still grieving relatives and UN colleagues to get her tale. She unwinds each thread of the narrative with infinite patience, leading us carefully down the torturous paths of Cold War intrigue.
The resulting tale is as gripping as it is exasperating. Each time the reader thinks the true explanation has finally been revealed, it turns out that no, this witness is not entirely credible, his testimony clashes with that of others or is fatally undermined by existing evidence. Each theory--a hijacking-gone-wrong, a bomb placed before takeoff, a deliberate shooting-down by a fighter jet, pilot fatigue, a wrong chart--is explored, only for inconsistencies to emerge.
Who to believe? The task is not helped by a tsunami of memoirs penned by the shady characters who flocked to central Africa. Until I read this book I had not fully registered how blabby undercover agents and soldiers of fortune can be. There seems scarcely a mercenary operating in Congo in the 1960s who didn't go on to write their memoirs or call Williams to offer to reveal all. But of course, this makes perfect sense. Buccaneering lifestyles appeal, by definition, to mythmakers and inveterate romantics. Having met quite a few of the breed in Africa, I can attest to the difficulty of distinguishing the genuine Wild Goose from his quacking farmyard imitator.
Williams is both dogged and indefatigable. But in turning her readers into forensic sleuths, her grasp of the big picture suffers. The concerns of that era feel a long way off and modern readers will need to remind themselves constantly just why MI6, the CIA, the Belgian secret services and French commandos who had served in Algeria felt they had a dog in this particular fight.
Towards the end, I found myself chafing at the detail, hungry instead to know more about the ideological convictions and strategic calculations that set Hammarskjöld, his Irish deputy Conor Cruise O'Brien and others at the UN on their high-risk course of geopolitical confrontatation.
Hammarskjold once said:
It is better for the UN to lose the support of
the US because it is faithful to law and principles,
than to survive as an agent whose activities
are geared to political purposes never
avowed or laid down by the major organs of
the UN.
I would have liked to know what UN officials in New York think of such sentiments today, whether they regard Hammarskjöld as dangerously naive or superbly high-minded, and how far UN policy since then has been influenced by the sneaking, terrible suspicion that a former boss paid for such defiance with his life.
Wrong, Michela
QUOTE:
fast-paced and intelligently written reevaluation of the six intense weeks leading up to Edward's abdication
Williams, Susan. The People's King: The Betrayal and Abdication of the First Modern Monarch
Robert C. Jones
Library Journal. 128.20 (Dec. 2003): p132.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Palgrave: St. Martin's. Dec. 2003. c.400p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 1-40396363-0. $26.95. BIOG
In this extensively documented retelling of "the most celebrated love story" of the 1930s, Williams (history, Univ. of London) suggests that despite our "conventional--and unflattering--opinions" about Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, there was strong contemporary support for both Edward as "a fine king" and Wallis Simpson as "a reasonable choice for a wife." Indeed, the "betrayal" in the title reflects Williams's conviction that senior government ministers' tactics, rather than Edward's behavior, made the abdication inevitable. Williams draws on hitherto overlooked or unavailable resources, notably, recently released government records and access in the Royal Archives to "'ten massive boxes, bursting with thousands of letters and telegrams that were sent to Edward during the weeks of the abdication crisis, from people all over Britain." Evidently, she did not want to address charges that Edward was a Nazi sympathiser. Nevertheless, this is a fast-paced and intelligently written reevaluation of the six intense weeks leading up to Edward's abdication. Highly recommended.--Robert C. Jones, formerly with Central Missouri State Univ., Warrensburg
Jones, Robert C.
QUOTE:
Royal watchers will perhaps be startled by details of the relationship between the royal family and the state.
The People's King: The Betrayal and Abdication of the First Modern Monarch
Publishers Weekly. 250.42 (Oct. 20, 2003): p44.
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SUSAN WILLIAMS. Palgrave, $26.95 (288p) ISBN 1-4039-6363-0
Today we are likely to see the i936 abdication of King Edward VIII of Britain as a straightforward case of a king defying the rules of monarchy and accepting the inevitable consequences. Williams, a University of London historian, recreates the key weeks of crisis and effectively argues that the democratically minded king was deliberately ousted by a court and government unwilling to accept a new style of kingship. The king's ill-timed desire to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson was both a symptom of their problem with him and a convenient excuse. An impressive selection of quotations from private letters and journals shows the British people eager to communicate with their king and influence his decisions in regard to the throne. A large number of them clearly were sympathetic to his marrying and still remaining king. It was the higher ranks of society who accepted Simpson as the king's mistress, but not as his wife. Williams makes a strong case that Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin bullied the king into giving up the throne, cynically isolating him, misrepresenting public and official opinion and refusing to allow him to address the country personally until the crisis was over. Quotes dominate the book, lending immediacy but also creating a repetitive structure as each chapter trots out a new round of contemporary opinion. Royal watchers will perhaps be startled by details of the relationship between the royal family and the state. Many will see instructive parallels between Edward's experience and recent concerns about a constitutional crisis over the possible remarriage of the current Prince of Wales. Illus. not seen by PW. (Dec.)
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In this book, Susan Williams, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies of the University of London, conducts an exhaustive--and often delicate--investigation into the Secretary-General's death. On the basis of sensitive and top-secret documentation and materials, she reveals that conflict in the Congo was essentially driven by the determination of an unholy alliance of Western forces
Williams, Susan. 2011. Who Killed Hammarskjold? The UN, The Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa
Guy Martin
Africa Today. 59.3 (Spring 2013): p163.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Indiana University Press
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Williams, Susan. 2011. WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJOLD? THE UN, THE COLD WAR, AND WHITE SUPREMACY IN AFRICA. New York: Columbia University Press. 306 pp. $37.50 (cloth).
One of the unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century is the death of Dag Hammarskjold, the Swedish-born second Secretary-General of the United Nations. On 18 September 1961, Hammarskjold's plane crashed into a dense forest near Ndola, in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (now the Republic of Zambia)--a fatal accident which abruptly ended his mission to bring peace to the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Substantial new evidence has recently come to light to indicate that Western multinational corporations and the governments of Belgium and the United States had been directly involved in the 17 January 1961 murder of Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. The conspiracy surrounding Lumumba's death has been abundantly documented by Ludo De Witte (2001), Colette Braeckman (2002), and Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja (2002).
In this book, Susan Williams, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies of the University of London, conducts an exhaustive--and often delicate--investigation into the Secretary-General's death. On the basis of sensitive and top-secret documentation and materials, she reveals that conflict in the Congo was essentially driven by the determination of an unholy alliance of Western forces, including Great Britain and the white minority leaders in Southern Rhodesia (now the Republic of Zimbabwe) and South Africa, in addition to Belgium and the United States. The rationale is that all the parties involved were absolutely determined to keep political, economic, and financial power out of the hands of the newly independent African governments.
At the heart of the author's expose is Dag Hammarskjold himself, portrayed as a courageous idealist intent upon protecting the newly independent nations from the predatory policies of the Great Powers. The questions that drove Williams's research include the following: "Did any person or group of people, or any organization or political party, have any reason to want Mr. Hammarskjold out of the way? What was the political background to the sudden death of the Secretary-General and the other passengers and crew on that moonlit night in the center of Africa?" (p. 15).
The author's biographical sketch of Dag Hammarskjold reveals a dedicated and selfless Swedish civil servant, a man with absolute integrity, whose concern for the vulnerable and the needy and deep sense of social justice led him to help launch the Swedish welfare state (pp. 19-20). He brought to the UN secretary-generalship his "concept of an independent civil service as the keystone of an effective global order" and a keen advocacy "of [multilateral] 'preventive diplomacy,' as a strategy to influence the political decisions of individual countries" (pp. 18-19). According to Williams, he also brought to his position an "uncompromising commitment to the newly decolonized, less powerful nations" (p. 38) and a firm belief that the Secretary-General should be able to act independently of the wishes and interests of the Great Powers.
As has been abundantly documented elsewhere (see in particular Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002), within days of Congo's independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960, Lumumba, suspected of communist sympathies, faced an array of forces bent on his demise, led by the government of Belgium, and including: the United Kingdom and the United States; the provincial government of Katanga (led by Moise Tshombe); and the white minority regimes of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, which adamantly opposed the movement toward African independence.
Backed by the Belgian government and military, which had intervened one day before, led by the top executives of the Union Miniere du HautKatanga (UMHK) and using Tshombe as a front man, the group known as the "Katanga Lobby" engineered the secession of Katanga on 11 July 1960, and, on 5 September 1960, instructed President Joseph Kasa-Vubu to dismiss Lumumba as Congo's prime minister. These events encouraged Joseph-Desire Mobutu, the head of the military, to take control of the country. Subsequently, he captured and detained Lumumba as he was trying to take refuge in Kasai, and had him and two of his associates severely beaten, tortured, and finally killed on 17 January 1961.
In his efforts to remove the Belgian troops from the Belgian Congo and to end the secession of Katanga, Lumumba had called for UN assistance. As a result, on 14 July 1960, the United Nations adopted Security Council Resolution 143. On 16 July 1960, a 3,500-strong peacekeeping force (later increased to 16,814), known as the Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) arrived on the scene.
The evidence marshaled by Williams shows that the "Katanga Lobby" in general, and the British in particular, distrusted and despised Dag Hammarskjold, whom they suspected of covertly supporting Lumumba against Mobutu, their candidate to take over the Congo's government--which he eventually did, on 24 November 1965. On 25 February 1961, a UN Security Council resolution authorized ONUC to take all necessary measures to restore order in Katanga. In June 1961, Connor Cruise O'Brien, an Irish diplomat, arrived to take his post as ONUC's chief in Katanga. Consequently, in August 1961, UN troops seized control of strategic points in Elisabethville, Katanga's capital. A second UN military offensive, code-named "Operation Morthor," aimed at neutralizing Moise Tshombe's mercenaries and foreign advisers, removing Tshombe from office, and re-establishing the authority of the central government, was launched on 13 September 1960, with three thousand UN troops. On the same day, as the secretary-general arrived for peace talks, the British ambassador demanded that Operation Morthor should immediately be suspended and that Cruise O'Brien should be publicly reprimanded--both of which actions Hammarskjold refused to take.
Finally, with the assistance of the British government, a meeting between Hammarskjold and Tshombe to achieve a ceasefire was arranged; it was scheduled to take place in Ndola, in Northern Rhodesia, on 18 September 1960. The author's research shows that no less than ten strange facts surrounded this planned meeting and the plane crash. First, Tshombe was allowed to go to this meeting without his usual team of Belgian advisers. Second, the press was not allowed within the Ndola airport perimeter (pp. 63-64). Third, Lord Alport, the British high commissioner who was present to welcome Lord Lansdowne, the British under-secretary of state for foreign affairs on the night of 17 September 1960 assumed--wrongly, as it turned out--that Hammarskjold had, at the last minute, rerouted his plane to Elisabethville; hence after the plane had crashed, there was a major delay for the search of the plane, the Albertina, which was eventually found after more than fifteen hours on 18 September 1960 (pp. 68-71). Fourth, the initial search was conducted exclusively by white Rhodesians, who suppressed a lot of evidence; no one else (not even Americans) was allowed in the area of the wreckage (p. 76). Fifth, many concurrent reports by African villagers and charcoal burners, who were in the vicinity of the plane crash and "saw a ball of fire in the sky" followed by "a loud bang" (p. 116), were dismissed as "unreliable," and their testimonies were suppressed purely on racial grounds. Sixth, Harold Julien, the head of security, who had been on board the plane and was found alive with merely a broken ankle, mysteriously died six days later at Ndola hospital (pp. 75-76); before he died, he said that the plane had blown up before it had crashed (p. 230)--a crucial fact, corroborated by some African witnesses, but later expunged from the record. Seventh, on 19 September 1960, the Rhodesian Federal Department of Civil Aviation set up a secret investigation into the technical cause of the crash; it concluded that "the cause of the accident was an error of judgement on the part of the pilot" (p. 89). Eighth, a UN commission of inquiry established in December 1961 "blamed two key sets of circumstances: first, the lack of information surrounding the flight of the Albertina and, second, Lord Alport's insistence that Hammarskjold had decided 'to go elsewhere'" (p. 109). Ninth, a memorandum written by Lord Alport on 8 February 1993 reveals that Hammarskjold, although seriously injured, was still alive and "died shortly after the crash" (p. 111). Tenth, a South African mercenary by the name of John Benjamin Swanepoel claimed that the plane had been forced down, that men had been posted in the bush to wait for it so as to kill the secretary-general, and that he, Swanepoel, had shot Hammarskjold and a guard (pp. 155-156).
Last (but certainly not the least), previously classified South African intelligence documents uncovered by Williams reveal that a plot to blow up the secretary-general's plane on his visit to central Africa code-named Operation Celeste was hatched by his enemies (namely the United Kingdom, the UMHK executives, and the Katangese leaders), with the knowledge and covert support of the British (MI-5) and American (Central Intelligence Agency) intelligence services. According to these documents, the "reason for Hammarskjold's planned removal was that he was 'becoming troublesome'" (p. 194).
It is rather obvious from what precedes that the evidence collected by Williams, in the best tradition of investigative research, points to foul play. If that is indeed the case, then the reasonable question to ask is: why were the Rhodesian officials entrusted with the initial air crash investigation and then the public commission of inquiry? The author is correct to conclude that foul play was responsible for suppressing and belittling evidence that had pointed clearly toward such foul play (p. 230). Her conclusion is rather understated and comes as something of an anticlimax. Thus, she writes that, in her opinion, it was most unlikely that the plane crashed as a result of pilot error (as it was later speculated), adding, "Hammarskjold may have been assassinated; or he might have been killed in a failed hijacking. But whatever the details, his death was almost certainly the result of a sinister intervention" (p. 232). Why is it that after marshaling so much incontrovertible evidence, Williams has not been more assertive and definitive in her conclusions that Hammarskjold was, indeed, the victim of foul play and was, indeed, assassinated because, as his enemies themselves stated, he was "becoming troublesome"? To her credit, one might add that she cites Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, who salutes the fairly recent investigation into the assassination of Patrice Lumumba as a "major step forward" (p. 236; see also Braeckman 2002 and De Witte 2001).
Williams logically argues that "as in the case of Lumumba, there should be further, transparent, public inquiry into the death of Dag Hammarskjold" (p. 236). Many people are wondering whether such an inquiry will ever be conducted, possibly by the UN, to be "the first public inquiry into Hammarskjold's death to take place in the post-colonial [sic] period" (pp. 236-237). At the end of the day, the main lesson to be drawn from this meticulously researched and abundantly documented investigation is that Congo's first prime minister, "Patrice Lumumba[,] and UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold were both killed because they sought to protect the integrity of the Congo and the self-determination of its people--free from the greed and interference of foreign powers" (p. 237).
Guy Martin
Winston-Salem State University
REFERENCES CITED
Braeckman, Colette. 2002. Lumumba: Un Crimed'Etat. Brussels: Editions Aden.
De Witte, Ludo. 2001. The Assassination of Lumumba. London & New York: Verso.
Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges. 2002. The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History. London & New York: Zed Books.
Martin, Guy
Williams, Susan. 2011. Who Killed Hammarskjold?: the U.N., the Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa
Damien Ejigiri
Africa Today. 59.1 (Fall 2012): p122.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Indiana University Press
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu
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Williams, Susan. 2011. WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJOLD?: THE U.N., THE COLD WAR, AND WHITE SUPREMACY IN AFRICA. New York: Columbia University Press. 306 pages.
For several years, many citizens of member countries of the United Nations Organization have believed that the political history of the world body can never be complete until the crucial facts about the death of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold are researched (or investigated) and made known. That is why readers should attach a lot of importance to the 2011 book Who Killed Hammarskjold?: The U.N., The Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa, authored by Susan Williams, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.
Dr. Williams, out of intellectual candor, has termed the episode involving Mr. Hammarskjold's death as a "complex, compelling, and often disturbing, story" (acknowledgements, p. xi). It is underscored in the publication that one of the outstanding mysteries of the twentieth century was the death of Mr. Hammarskjold, whose airplane on 18 September 1961 plunged into a dense forest in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, now known as Zambia. That ended the Swedish diplomat's mission to bring peace to Congo (now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo). Dead aboard the airplane were sixteen passengers, out of which ten were U.N. officials (including Mr. Hammarskjold) and six Swedish-born Transair crew members. These details, as quoted by the author, were contained in the special report on the accident (U.N. document # S/4940/Add.5), published on 19 September 1961. Apart from the book's nineteen chapters, Dr. Williams provides acknowledgements, a list of abbreviations and illustrations, notes, a prologue, an epilogue, sources, a bibliography, and an index.
The author points out that, although the Rhodesian government blamed pilot error, she has reasons to believe otherwise. Consequently, her book shows that the investigation suppressed and dismissed critical evidence. While the chapters do an excellent job of discussing multiple facets of the events and scenarios, the chapter that details disturbing nuances is chapter nineteen, "Secrets and Lies" (pp. 229-237). Claiming that her research has unearthed a considerable amount of new evidence, she adds that there are compelling grounds for arguing that, as in the case of Lumumba, there should be a further, transparent , public inquiry into Hammarskjold's death (p. 236).
Apart from accusations leveled by Dr. Williams, including conspiracy theories, she uses the epilogue (239-241) to catalogue some of the uneasy situations that existed between Mr. Hammarskjold's United Nations and the American President, John F. Kennedy, who also met an untimely death, through his 1963 assassination. The problem, as explained in the epilogue, stemmed from U.S. opposition to the U.N.'s policy in the Congo. For the first time, readers are offered reasons for the seeming disagreement, as the author explains how Mr. Kennedy on 14 March 1962 invited to the Oval Office a U.N. official by the name of Sture Linner, who had left Congo as the U.N.'s official there to return to New York.
Among other details, Dr. Williams writes: "[President Kennedy] told Linner that he wanted to apologize for the pressure that had been put on Dag to implement US policy in the Congo--a pressure which Dag had refused to heed." It is important to learn from this portion of the book that the leader of a major power, in the midst of the Cold War, saw reason to offer an apology of any type. That, indeed, is remarkable. Furthermore, Hammarskjold's efforts have been well documented and hailed in the book.
Toward the end of the epilogue, Dr. Williams writes about Hammarskjold: "Tragically, he was never allowed to reach Ndola and to speak with [Moise] Tshombe. But his mission of peace and self-sacrifice offers a lesson to the world. It exemplifies a goodness and love of humanity to which Hammarskjold though keenly aware of his own failings, consciously and determinedly aspired" (p. 240).
With Who Killed Hammarskjold?: The U.N., the Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa, Dr. Williams has provided a useful and fascinating book, which goes a long way toward answering many of the perplexing queries surrounding Hammarskjold's death.
Damien Ejigiri
Southern University-Baton Rouge
Ejigiri, Damien
A. Susan Williams. Who Killed Hammarskjöld?: The UN, the Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. xxv + 306 pp. $37.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-70320-8; ISBN 978-0-231-80090-7.
Reviewed by Philip Muehlenbeck (The George Washington University)
Published on H-Diplo (June, 2012)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach
During a thirty-five-month period from January 1961 to November 1963 the politics and foreign relations of southern Africa were drastically altered by the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Dag Hammarskjöld, and John F. Kennedy. Aside from Kwame Nkrumah, these three men were at the time arguably the most polarizing figures in Africa, adored by African nationalists and despised by the racist white settlers who dominated the politics of the southern half of the continent. Each of these three men, from separate continents yet all champions for the idea of self-determination in Africa, died violent deaths, the details of which remain shrouded in mystery to this day.
Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish United Nations secretary-general, died in a plane crash near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (renamed Zambia after independence), shortly after midnight on September 18, 1961. Hammarskjöld’s death, although suspicious, has never been officially categorized as a political assassination. Two investigations by the Rhodesian government determined in November 1961 and February 1962 that the crash was an accident caused by pilot error. An inquiry into the matter by the United Nations released in April 1962 resulted in an “open verdict” which stated that the possibility of sabotage “cannot be excluded” but implied that pilot error was the most likely cause of the crash (p. 108).
However, in the course of these and other inquiries a substantial amount of evidence which casts doubt on the crash being an accident was dismissed, suppressed, or was unavailable to past investigators. In Who Killed Hammarskjöld: The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa, Susan Williams, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London, takes a fresh look at the evidence surrounding the crash of the Albertina which carried the UN secretary-general on his fateful flight from Leopoldville to Ndola.
Hammarskjöld’s death occurred in the context of the Congo Crisis (1960-66), in which United Nations troops were sent in July 1960 to end a mutiny amongst the troops of newly independent Congo and to expel Belgian forces which had reentered the former colony ostensibly to protect the lives of Belgian citizens amongst the chaos. In the weeks that followed the mineral rich provinces of Katanga and South Kasai (backed by western European governments and mining interests) seceded from the central government and declared their independence. The Congolese government then turned to the United Nations for assistance in quelling the disorder. However, with UN aid slow-moving and ineffectual, Prime Minister Lumumba turned directly to the superpowers, first being rejected by Washington, then aided by Moscow. This precipitated the onset of the Cold War in Africa as Washington became gravely concerned by the unprecedented nature of the Soviet Union attempting to project its influence far from its own borders. Over the next six months the government politically disintegrated when President Joseph Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba dismissed each other and Lumumba was assassinated at the hands of the Katangan secessionists (with tacit support from the Belgian and United States governments). The Congo thus became the nexus of white African attempts to stem the tide of both the “wind of change” and communism as well as the intersection of decolonization and the Cold War.
In August-September 1961, UN troops launched Operations Rumpunch and Morthor, aimed at ending Katanga’s secession by disarming its troops and arresting both its government officials as well as the foreign mercenaries employed by the rogue state. At this juncture Hammarskjöld decided to personally intervene to attempt to negotiate a ceasefire with Moise Tshombe, the leader of the break-away province. In mid-September 1961, the UN secretary-general was on his way to Ndola to meet Tshombe when the Albertina crashed, taking his life in the process.
Utilizing primary source documents from at least nine countries across three continents, numerous oral history interviews with eye witnesses, and enlisting the help of forensic, ballistic, and medical experts to reexamine the written reports and photographic evidence compiled by the original Rhodesian and UN inquiries into the crash, Williams has authored a fascinating study which is as academic as any international history scholarship and as entertaining as any mystery novel. Her conclusion is that “Hammarskjöld may have been assassinated; or he may have been killed in a failed hijacking. But whatever the details, his death was almost certainly the result of a sinister intervention. It is most unlikely that the Albertina crashed as a result of pilot error, as claimed by the Rhodesian public inquiry of 1961-62 and by a private inquiry for the Swedish government in 1993” (p. 232).
Of particular value to Williams’s research was the unprecedented access she received to the papers of Sir Roy Welensky, held at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies (often referred to as Rhodes House Library). Welensky was prime minister of the Central African Federation (consisting of Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasland) from 1957 to 1963. In his position as prime minister, Welensky received copies of the Rhodesian inquiries into Hammarskjöld’s death. As the first scholar to view the previously classified Rhodesian materials related to the inquiry of the Albertina’s crash, Williams was able to note the enormous amount of suppressed evidence that ran contrary to the inquiry’s conclusion that the crash was due to pilot error, along with other anomalies in the evidence that went unnoted in the published report of the Rhodesian government.
Building from her findings within the Welensky papers as well as other newly uncovered evidence not available to investigators at the time of the accident, Williams notes numerous pieces of unexplained evidence that complicate the official version of events. Clear evidence from pictures of the accident scene or eyewitness accounts, which is not mentioned in the official inquiry reports, include the fact that while 80 percent of the plane’s fuselage was incinerated from the fire from the crash and the bodies of all other passengers were so badly burnt that many were unidentifiable, Hammarskjöld’s body, his briefcase, and his cipher machine were not even singed, let alone burnt. Furthermore, eyewitness reports, including that of Major General Bjorn Egge, a Norwegian national who was the UN’s head of military information in the Congo at the time and saw Hammarskjöld’s body the day after the crash, indicate that there was a round hole in the secretary-general’s forehead, consistent with the look of a bullet hole. Williams had a forensic photography expert view two pictures of Hammarskjöld’s body from the autopsy (which were included in the Welensky papers), who conclusively determined that both pictures had been airbrushed to cover something on the Swedish diplomat’s forehead. No wound to Hammarskjöld’s forehead is mentioned in the summary autopsy report released publicly by Rhodesian authorities. But the autopsy summary does note that bullets were found in the bodies of two of Hammarskjöld’s bodyguards, but improbably dismisses the curious finding by concluding that the heat from the fire of the crash caused munitions on the plane to explode into their corpses. Additionally, while there are photographs showing where every other passenger’s body was found at the crash site, there is no such photograph of Hammarskjöld’s body (only later pictures taken with his body already on a stretcher and in the morgue). Why would investigators take pictures of every body except the plane’s VIP? Other eyewitness accounts note that there was an ace of spades playing card, “the death card,” protruding from Hammarskjöld’s shirt collar. Although this cannot be determined conclusively by the surviving photographic evidence, Williams notes that there is something sticking out of his shirt collar and it appears to indeed be a playing card. Finally, one is left asking why no full autopsy report was released at the time of the accident or is included in the Welensky papers (only a summary of the autopsy findings was released).
Additional evidence from local residents (most of whom were black Africans) was completely dismissed by all white Rhodesian investigators as erroneous. Several witnesses reported having seen a second, smaller aircraft approach the Albertina, followed by a flash of light and a ball of fire prior to the UN secretary-general’s plane crashing into the Northern Rhodesian countryside. This was seemingly confirmed by one of Hammarskjöld’s bodyguards, Harold Julien, who was the sole initial survivor of the crash (he died from his injuries a few days later), who testified from his hospital bed that there was an explosion onboard the plane before it crashed. But Julien’s account was dismissed as “the ramblings of a sick man” by Rhodesian investigators, despite his doctor later remembering that he was in fact “lucid and coherent” at the time (p. 230). In the course of her research Williams also encountered an American intelligence officer stationed in Cyprus and a Swedish flying instructor living in Addis Ababa who corroborate the attack thesis by claiming to have heard short-wave radio correspondence between the attacking plane and collaborators on the ground, and between the air traffic controller at Ndola and another airport, respectively.
Equally troublesome is the reaction of both local British and Rhodesian authorities to the disappearance of Hammarskjöld’s plane. Ndola air traffic control saw the plane flying overhead and granted it permission to land, yet when it failed to do so and radio communication with it was lost, Lord Alport, the British high commissioner to the Central African Federation in Salisbury, who had come to the airport to greet the UN secretary-general, concluded that Hammarskjöld must have decided at the last minute to fly “elsewhere” and ordered for the airport to be closed. It seems against common sense that a plane just given permission to land shortly after midnight would decide to fly elsewhere without notifying air traffic control of that decision, and it is shocking that Lord Alport and others at the airport voiced no concern that radio communication with the plane carrying such a high-profile VIP had been lost. A further suspicious fact is that no audio recording from the flight tower’s air traffic controller on the night of the crash exists. Apparently the audio recording equipment was not working so the air traffic controller instead took notes by hand.
So unconcerned were local officials over Hammarskjöld’s whereabouts that a search effort was not launched until four hours after daybreak, despite the fact that local residents and soldiers reported seeing a great flash of light in the sky at approximately the same time that radio contact with the Albertina was lost. Furthermore, it took fifteen hours for the crash site to be discovered, despite the fact that it lay only eight miles from Ndola airport, along its scheduled flight path. Given that one witness reported seeing paramilitary units near the scene of the crash almost immediately, yet a formal search did not commence until eight to nine hours later, it is plausible that the crash site was staged by those involved in the conspiracy prior to the beginning of the formal search efforts.
Another piece of intriguing evidence was unearthed during the investigations of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which discovered documents from the South African Institute of Maritime Research--which Williams discovered was a front for clandestine activities (including perhaps the 1993 assassination of Chris Hani, the leader of the South African Communist Party and chief of staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe)--which discuss a plot to blow up Hammarskjöld’s plane, code-named “Operation Celeste.” According to these documents (the authentication of which is impossible to determine since they are copies--some argue that they are Soviet forgeries) both the CIA and MI5 had knowledge of and approved of this operation.
If Hammarskjöld was indeed assassinated the obvious next questions are, by whom and why? Williams identifies several governments, companies, and individuals with both the opportunity and motive to assassinate the UN secretary-general. Included in the list of potential culprits are the governments of Rhodesia, Katanga, the United Kingdom, and South Africa; western European business interests (mostly Belgian and French mining companies) that operated in Katanga; foreign mercenaries active in Katanga; and rogue elements of the CIA or MI5. It is quite possible, even likely, that the plot was implemented by some combination of these individuals.
Typically, I am highly skeptical of such “conspiracy theory” history, but Susan Williams has convinced this reviewer that the Albertina exploded before crashing into the ground and that the death of the second secretary-general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld, was not accidental, but rather an orchestrated political assassination by supporters of continued white domination of southern Africa who were opposed to his vocal support of the “wind of change” that had begun blowing through the African continent. I second Williams’s call for a “further, transparent, public inquiry” into Hammarskjöld’s death so that the full truth may be revealed (p. 236). This book should be on the summer reading list of all historians.
QUOTE:
extensively researched and elegantly written account
Williams has done a masterly job in unravelling and chronicling a shameful piece of colonial history, in particular, the twists and turns of the Harragin special inquiry and its political aftermath.
Susan Williams has succeeded in the difficult feat of seamlessly entwining a political and personal story.
The bride wore black
Melissa Benn on Susan William's account of an extraordinary postwar attempt to suppress a mixed-race relationship, Colour Bar
Colour Bar by Susan Williams
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Melissa Benn
Saturday 19 August 2006 12.01 EDT First published on Saturday 19 August 2006 12.01 EDT
Colour Bar: the Triumph of Seretse Khama and his Nation
by Susan Willliams
432pp, Penguin, £25
At the heart of this engaging book is the story of an enduring love affair between a black man and a white woman, which began one summer night in gloomy, rationed postwar Britain. But this was no ordinary man, nor indeed any ordinary woman. He was Seretse Khama, the heir to the kingship of the largest tribe of an African protectorate under British control; she was Ruth Williams, a 23-year-old clerk in a shipping company, and a conservative, with a small and large c.
As Susan Williams shows in this extensively researched and elegantly written account, the love story of Seretse and Ruth defines an era of dying colonial power. Stymied in their relationship at every turn by the British government, in covert alliance with apartheid South Africa, the dignity of Khama and his strong-willed bride came to represent the emerging freedoms and racial tolerance of Africa as a whole.
The young Khama was sent over to London in 1945 to study law by his uncle, the Regent of the Bangwato tribe to which Seretse was heir. Lonely at first in the chill world of Oxford, he moved to London, where he met several other politically minded young Africans; and then Ruth, at a dinner dance, in June 1947. Within months, the couple were engaged.
Almost immediately, the young mixed-race couple faced trouble. They were plagued by racist landlords and casual abuse in the streets. British government officials, family friends and church figures tried to prevent the marriage. Four days after their first attempt to wed in a Kensington Church was blocked by the Bishop of London, Seretse and Ruth were married in a civil ceremony. The bride wore a black suit.
In late 1947, Seretse returned to Bechuanaland to seek ratification of his marriage from his tribe: at an extraordinary tribe assembly, thousands of men stood up in a dramatic show of support for their future Chief. Sadly, the British response was not so sophisticated: under intense pressure from South Africa, which bordered Bechuanaland, and in alliance with Khama's uncle, who violently opposed the marriage, they began to find ways to block the return of Khama to his native country.
Williams has done a masterly job in unravelling and chronicling a shameful piece of colonial history, in particular, the twists and turns of the Harragin special inquiry and its political aftermath. Set up to decide whether Seretse was a fit and proper person to discharge the functions of Chief, the inquiry found in his favour but nonetheless argued that South Africa's opposition to his marriage, and therefore his chieftainship, constituted enough reason to bar Khama from returning to his country.
This "inflammable document" caused Attlee great political difficulty. As he wrote in January 1950, "it is as if we had been obliged to agree to Edward VIII's abdication so as not to annoy the Irish Free State and the United States of America." Khama was summoned to Britain, and was discourteously made to wait through a general election before being informed of his banishment from his homeland and the postponement of any decision about the chieftainship for five years.
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Khama fought a dignified campaign against his painful seven-year exile in Britain. His case became a cause celebre among MPs, left and right, who kept up insistent pressure in Parliament, as well as prominent actors, journalists and churchmen. In early 1952 the then Tory government, hoping to keep Khama as far from Africa as possible, insulted him with the offer of an administrative post in Jamaica. He refused.
The government's eventual capitulation was in large part due the advancing tide of colonial freedom. In late 1956, Alec Douglas Home, the Commonwealth Secretary, persuaded Eden, preoccupied with the impending Suez debacle, of the case for negotiating a return home on condition that he renounce his claims to be chief.
Susan Williams has succeeded in the difficult feat of seamlessly entwining a political and personal story. She conveys the human aspects of her tale, from the pettiness of the white settler population to the distinctive personalities of Ruth and Seretse - she, fiery; he, charmingly even-tempered - just as powerfully as the political ins and outs of this famous case.
The even-handed narrative also cleverly underlines the casual racism, arrogant patronage and incredible hauteur of both Labour and Tory politicians. Writing of his 1950 meeting with the Commonwealth Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, in which he was first informed of his banishment, Seretse Khama was most struck by the politicians' manner: "as unfeeling as if he was asking me to give up smoking, or surrender old school (examination) papers that I had accumulated while at Oxford. I doubt that any man has been asked to give up his birthright in such cold, calculating tones."
Ultimately, though, this is a story of love and redemption. After his return home, Seretse Khama was duly elected first democratic head of the newly created nation state of Botswana, which he ruled for over 20 years before his death from cancer in 1980. Ruth, who adapted remarkably easily to life both in Africa and the political spotlight, took her place as the mother of the nation during Seretse's life and after.
As for Khama himself, he never let anger sour his outlook. "I myself," he said on a 1967 visit to Malawi, "have never been very bitter at all. Bitterness does not pay. Certain things have happened to all of us in the past and it is for us to forget those and look to the future. It is not for our own benefit, but for the benefit of our children and children's children that we ourselves should put this world right."
· Melissa Benn and Clyde Chitty's A Tribute to Caroline Benn: Education and Democracy is published by Continuum
QUOTE:
The sheer dishonesty and nastiness chronicled in Susan Williams's wonderful account still startle. Snobbery and sexism were only a little less rampant than racism.
Colour Bar, by Susan Williams
Love triumphs in African fairy tale
By Stephen Howe 11 years ago0 comments
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London in the late 1940s, and all the clichés are true. It seems always cold and grey. Holes left by bombing still gape in the streets. Austerity and rationing remain in force. Life is a struggle, even for a self-confident young woman called Ruth Williams, with a promising job in the City.
It's hard in different ways for the handful of African students in London, even one so privileged and talented as Seretse Khama. Heir to the throne of the Bangwato people in British-ruled Bechuanaland, he's on his way to becoming the territory's first black barrister. For all the inconveniences of daily life, both young people have good reason to share a pervasive optimism. Their hardest choices can only be between good things. Will Ruth opt to remain a high-flying career woman, or for the conventional marriage and children she also wants? Will Seretse be a traditional ruler, or a modern professional man? Maybe one can have both...
When Ruth and Seretse met in 1947 it seemed to open another dimension of that future promise. They knew life together wouldn't be easy. It would be hard to win her parents' approval. Seretse faced difficulties persuading his uncle, the Bangwato's chief.
Yet their planned marriage surely meshed perfectly with the best hopes of a new, more egalitarian Britain, and an Africa headed fast for self-government. Their backgrounds and characters seemed designed to confound the prejudices of racists in Britain and of Puritan Bangwato elders: apparently, they didn't even sleep together before marriage. Over 30 years later, I asked Lord Hailsham, one of the few Tories to back them, why he had done so. I recall his words exactly: "She was a very respectable girl. Very decent family. If she'd been some cheap little trollop..."
It all turned into a long nightmare for the couple. Such a liaison was unacceptable to the white settlers of southern Africa, and to South Africa's government. Official Britain felt it needed to appease both. So ministers and civil servants tried for years to prevent and then destroy the marriage, using every dirty trick. The sheer dishonesty and nastiness chronicled in Susan Williams's wonderful account still startle. Snobbery and sexism were only a little less rampant than racism.
At the end, Ruth and Seretse's love triumphed, with the help of a brave anti-racist minority in Britain and the overwhelming solidarity of the Bangwato people. In many such late-colonial morality plays there is a depressing second act, where heroes and heroines turn into oppressors or crooks. For the Khamas, and Botswana, this is not so. There is sadness that Seretse lived only to 59, but the wider story remains upbeat.
Ruth remained beloved by and devoted to her adopted people. Botswana has prospered, with high rates of economic growth and one of Africa's few genuine democracies. Alexander McCall Smith's Botswanan detective stories are the latest indication that Botswanans are Britain's favourite Africans. Even if such an image serves only to offset the fear many feel for the rest of the continent, the Tswana have earned it. Williams's book is a tribute not only to a remarkable couple, but to a people whose grace under pressure is hard to match anywhere in the world.
Stephen Howe is a professor of history at Bristol University
Spies in the Congo by Susan Williams review – the race to build the atomic bomb
Both the US and the Nazis desperately needed uranium … This well-researched book has shades of Graham Greene, Conrad, even Indiana Jones
Hiroshima attack Spies in Congo
The atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, 6 August 1945. Photograph: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/EPA
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Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday 17 September 2016 04.00 EDT Last modified on Monday 6 February 2017 09.10 EST
Where did the US get the uranium it needed to build the atom bombs it dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? From a mine somewhere in the US? In Canada? My guess is that not many people know, or have even asked. The answer lies deep in the heart of Africa. It was extracted from the Shinkolobwe mine in then Belgian Congo, owned by Union Minière, part of the mother country’s biggest and wealthiest company, Société Générale de Belgique. Without access to that mine, the atom bomb might never have been built by American scientists during the second world war.
Susan Williams’s last book, Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, prompted the UN to set up a new inquiry into the death – in a plane crash in Northern Rhodesia – of its former secretary general. Her new, meticulously researched book has shades of Graham Greene, a hint of Conrad, even echoes of Indiana Jones.
Using newly opened archives and personal interviews, she describes how the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – forerunner of the CIA – recruited a motley band to ensure the uranium reached the US and did not fall into the hands of Nazi Germany. The group of hand-picked officers included two ornithologists – good training, perhaps, for a spy. They posed as rubber prospectors or investigators of diamond smugglers. The word “uranium” never passed their lips: instead, even in coded telegrams, they referred to “raw material”, “diamonds”, or, simply, “gems”.They were not told why the US was so desperate to secure a regular supply of the high-grade uranium ore. Not even Wilbur Owings Hogue, the OSS station chief in Belgian Congo, described by Williams as “a very clever civil engineer with a self-deprecating sense of humour”, was told.
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Their task was made more difficult and dangerous by pro-German sentiments among some of the Belgian industrialists and colonists in the Congo. Union Minière had already sold significant amounts of uranium ore to Germany. (Williams points to what was happening in Belgium itself, where businesses were dealing with their German occupiers: in 1943 alone, Belgian firms delivered 155 locomotives to Germany.) However, the US had a key ally in Edgar Sengier, head of Union Minière’s New York-based operations, who after the war was awarded the medal for merit, which was then the US government’s highest civilian award.
In Congo, many businessmen were waiting to see who looked like winning the war before committing themselves to the Allies. Senior Belgian officials were themselves involved in diamond smuggling, sometimes in Red Cross parcels, for their personal benefit. There were always doubts about their loyalties; few could be trusted. Using diamond smuggling as cover for their true role remained a potentially fatal strategy for OSS officers. Hogue’s life was threatened more than once, as a result of leaks from a Belgian journalist he recruited as an informer.
Williams contrasts the luxurious living of Congo’s white inhabitants with the brutal treatment of the black population. She describes how, on his first day there, a US code officer was faced with the sight of a Congolese man in ragged shorts, kneeling on the ground, with a Belgian official standing over him with a chicotte – a whip made of leather thongs with a metal end. “Every lash was followed by a scream of agony,” the US officer recorded. “When the prescribed number of lashes had been delivered, the black’s skin from neck to waist was a mass of blood with ribs shining through.” The officer was told it was punishment for stealing a packet of cigarettes from a Belgian.
The moral authority of the struggle against fascism was not applied to the inequalities and injustice in the Congo
Soon after the end of the war, in November 1945, strikers protesting at terrible living and working conditions in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa, capital of Democratic Republic of the Congo) and the port of Matadi (through which much of the uranium was shipped) were killed along with women and children. “The moral authority of the struggle against fascism was not applied to the inequalities and injustice in the Congo,” Williams writes. Workers at the Shinkolobwe mine were not protected at all from radiation.
If I have a quibble about Spies in the Congo it is that, on occasion, dense – albeit rich – detail slows down the pace of what is truly a thriller, in which Williams paints clear and sympathetic pictures of characters thrust into a totally unfamiliar territory.
She opens her book with a letter Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt on 2 August 1939, alerting him to the possibility of constructing a powerful bomb turning uranium into a new and important source of energy. “The most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo,” Einstein wrote.
There is another terrible legacy, aside from the bombs dropped on Japan, at the source of that uranium. Radioactive waste at Shinkolobwe has led to birth defects and cancers. After the collapse of a mineshaft, the UN asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate conditions there. Its study found that 6,000 small-scale miners had been digging for coltan and cobalt: everyone working there was at risk of developing health problems because of high levels of radiation.
“Shinkolobwe has never been commemorated,” the Congolese journalist Oliver Tshinyoka noted last year – the 70th anniversary of the atom bomb attacks on Japan. This book might help to change that.
• Spies in the Congo: the Race for the Ore That Built the Atomic Bomb is published by Hurst. To order a copy for £25 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
Spies in the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II
Image of Spies in the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II
Author(s):
Susan Williams
Release Date:
August 8, 2016
Publisher/Imprint:
PublicAffairs
Pages:
432
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Reviewed by:
Thomas McClung
The Manhattan Project, the so-called American mission to develop an atomic weapon in World War II, was rightly accorded the highest secrecy of any operation of the Federal government, notwithstanding its infiltration and compromise by apparently multiple Soviet agents, according to the book. The ultimate goal and even the various theoretical and other steps in the process were kept secret by those in the know from those who worked on it.
When it came to the vital resource, uranium oxide, necessary to realize the objective much less complete and deploy a successful working weapon, that secrecy and security remained the order of the day. Given that that resource was in Africa, specifically the Belgian Congo and its Shinkolobwe mine, a colony whose mother country was under German occupation, it was just as vital to obtain it for United States use as it was to deny it to the Germans.
Even with much of Africa remote and still relatively unknown to most Americans in the 1940s, there didn’t seem to be any problem recruiting American personnel necessary to staff a station of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) even as these personnel were recruiting “cutouts”—local residents willing to assist in this operation in West Africa without knowing the real reason behind it—in order to accomplish their mission.
Therein lies the basis of the story in question. The American agents trained in every facet of OSS operations from communications to hand to hand combat. Over the course of two years, many were engaged, all while occasionally suffering the debilitating effects of malaria, dysentery, and other illnesses, in the intrigues and machinations of dealing with the Belgian colonial administration, its security apparatus and industrialists, and their possibly dubious loyalty to the Allied cause.
At the same time, it was necessary to avoid blowing one’s cover as a “special assistant” to the American consul, silk and fabric expert, or even an ornithologist and risk becoming persona non grata to the state and being expelled as a foreign agent, notwithstanding any possible lack of wartime neutrality on the part of the colony.
This was evident to the extent that one of the main figures, Wilbur “Dock” Hogue, whose cover was eventually blown, forcing him to leave the country, was the target of three attempts on his life by Belgian operatives while working on an “illicit diamond smuggling” operation.
As it was, diamonds, primarily, were the cover, or euphemism as it were, employed by the these agents as a means of diverting attention from their real goal, essentially monopolizing uranium ore production, purchase, and transportation to the United States. Congolese ore was the finest available in the world at the time, dwarfing the quality of the sources found in the United States and Canada.
Additionally, noted in this story is the history of the Congo prior to the war, the Congolese themselves, their oppression by the Belgians, labor strikes and work stoppages for better pay and conditions and, as a result of mining the uranium ore, the health effects, present and future.
As one would expect in a study of undercover work and espionage, there is considerable use of organizational acronyms, code names, and numbers, and one should be cautioned, and it is occasionally necessary to consult the included list of abbreviations and code words as well as the cast of characters in the table of contents in order to maintain individual separation and avoid confusion over the course of reading.
Extensively researched as a result of the recent declassification of many files, American, British, and Belgian, the book is well written in spite of the caution mentioned above. It contains a section of 42 photographs and illustrations. The three maps show the air and sea transport routes between the United States and West Africa, Africa at the time of the war (including the Belgian Congo’s location) and the overland routes employed to ship the uranium ore.
Given that this story has been little told or covered previously, it is a commendable addition to the literature on the subject. If nothing else, it shows the single minded purpose, if not mania, of the United States to win the race for the bomb once the energy and destructive potential of such technology became apparent.
Unfortunately, American principles of popular self-determination were sacrificed in this effort and not surprisingly, the Congolese people, ultimately pawns in the Cold War, got left behind, a legacy which has continued to the present day.
Book review: Spies in the Congo by Susan Williams Spies in the Congo VIN ARTHEY 15:00Saturday 02 July 2016 0 HAVE YOUR SAY Espionage ensured the USA acquired uranium in the Congo for its atomic bombs and kept it from the Germans, writes Vin Arthey Spies in the Congo by Susan Williams | Hurst Publishers, 352pp, £25 This story about the role of espionage in the creation of the atomic bomb is even more chilling than the better known story of the USA’s failure to detect the communist spies and sympathisers who got the secrets of the bomb to the Soviet Union, and the Soviets’ success in testing their own bomb four years after the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Susan Williams reminds us that without uranium, there would have been no bomb. The United States had access to uranium ore in Canada, rock that contained 0.02 per cent usable uranium oxide, but there was a mine in the Belgian Congo that could yield ore of up to 75 per cent pure uranium. All well and good, but in 1942 intelligence had revealed that the Germans were also on the way to making an atomic bomb, and not only was Germany occupying Belgium but it was discreetly pressurising the colonial government to support the Nazi cause. The Americans needed to prevent Germany getting its hands on any uranium, and to ensure that all usable uranium from the Congolese mine could be transported to the USA. The task was handed to the new Office of Strategic Services, and after early failures it developed a comprehensive scheme to achieve its objectives. Small consignments of uranium were taken from the mine to different ports and airfields across West Africa and conveyed to a holding centre in New York. Then, the OSS kept watch in Africa to ensure that no others were attempting to buy or steal uranium. They did this under the cover of an operation to foil the illicit trade in industrial diamonds which were also needed in weapons manufacture. Outlining the importance of the task and showing the big picture of the operation, Williams takes us into the lives of the tiny group of spies involved, not in hindsight, but within their own experience, awareness and knowledge at the time. The OSS was often not trusted by the US Ambassadors and embassy staff across West Africa, so the intelligence personnel had to hide what they were doing from their own government representatives. They also had to select their “cut-outs” (the agents recruited to do “the watching”) with great care, because political control in the Belgian Congo was balanced amongst civil administrators, industrialists, the security service and the church. The OSS spies had to contend with disease, too, particularly malaria. One survived a bomb attempt on his life and later, like James Bond at his most resourceful, wounded an undercover German officer in a shootout. Spies in the Congo is an espionage classic. Scrupulously researched, it illuminates a barely-known aspect of arguably the most significant event of the 20th century, giving fresh perspectives. Seeing the work of the OSS outside the European theatre of war is an important contribution to knowledge about intelligence strategies. The explanation of complex operations is supported by photographs, maps, a glossary of codewords and a useful “cast of characters”. The “Congo story” takes on new importance, the horrors of the Belgian colonial era merging into the exploitation of the land’s stupendous mineral wealth and then on to the catastrophe that followed independence, and the now failed state. The deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are seen in the context of the short lives of the Congolese workers who mined and handled the uranium, and the guilt that the Congolese now feel about their role in making the weapon that killed so many. An unspoken question remains, however. What if the Germans had acquired uranium from the Congo mine and perfected an atomic bomb which could have been delivered by V1 and V2 rockets?
Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/book-review-spies-in-the-congo-by-susan-williams-1-4165566
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suggests that ordinary people in Britain and the Empire were quite ready for Wallis Simpson to be Queen. Huge numbers of people, she argues, simply wanted the King to be happy.
Did the people want Wallis?
Andrew Roberts reviews The People's King by Susan Williams
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12:01AM BST 24 Aug 2003
Back in January this year the Public Record Office released hundreds of files relating to the Abdication Crisis of 1936, and the historical advisor to this important event was the University of London historian Susan Williams. Having been there, I can attest to her diligence and scholarship on that occasion, and this book is based on the work she has done on that vast labyrinth of documentation.
The book's title - a quote from a letter to the King from a member of the public - was presumably chosen for its conscious reference to Diana, Princess of Wales, and indeed the similarities between Edward VIII and "the People's princess" are striking. Both were seen as unstuffy representatives of a new Zeitgeist, standing up for society's underdogs against a snobbish and hidebound Establishment.
Edward VIII's remark that "Something must be done" for the unemployed, made on a visit to South Wales in November 1936, was a precursor to the Princess of Wales's work for the dispossessed and marginalised. Yet there was always something disgraceful about the King - who had already made up his mind to abdicate when he made that radical and open-ended commitment - writing such a vast blank cheque that he secretly knew he was never going to have to be around to cash.
Just as after Diana's death huge numbers of people wrote to express their sympathy and support, so Edward VIII was deluged during the Abdication Crisis, and Susan Williams has trawled her way through thousands of the letters to extrapolate common themes. She suggests that ordinary people in Britain and the Empire were quite ready for Wallis Simpson to be Queen. Huge numbers of people, she argues, simply wanted the King to be happy.
The major media story back in January was the discovery that Special Branch believed that a car salesman called Guy Trundle was Mrs Simpson's secret lover. But Susan Williams does not accept that he necessarily was: "She found it difficult enough, as she told her aunt, to manage her marriage and the relationship with Edward, and was also caught up in a whirlwind of activities and social occasions which she found exhausting." Sex is something that people often seem to be able to make time for, however. I think the best argument against the relationship having taken place is that Mrs Simpson had an altogether greater catch in mind and wouldn't have wanted to take unnecessary risks.
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Philip Ziegler reviews The People's King 24 Aug 2003
It is a shame that the author did not use any of the information that was unearthed by our newspapers when Trundle's name became public earlier this year, including the testimony of his surviving friends and members of his family. They told us much about his background that would have strengthened her case.
Although Susan Williams's political feel for the Thirties is generally good, it occasionally utterly deserts her, as when she states that "Even without any backing from Germany and Italy, the King of Britain (sic) could have sought absolute rule, as a kind of benevolent despot." Does the author seriously imagine that the Household Division would have surrounded Parliament on Edward VIII's orders, with the Coldstream Guards clearing the Commons chamber of MPs?
Much of the "true story of the abdication" has already been told, principally in Michael Bloch's various works on the period, but it is good to have the newly released Cabinet minutes of the Crisis between hard covers, and much else besides. That this book is written from a point of view very sympathetic to the couple is no bad thing either, although the author did not change my view that the Empire was far better off three years later with George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace than it would have been with King Edward and Queen Wallis.
One long-standing myth - that the Duke of Windsor was a quisling-in-waiting and friend of the Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop - is dealt a firm and welcome blow. As for the duchess, who was recently described in the Guardian as a lover of Ribbentrop's, she only met him twice, both times in large groups and once when Winston Churchill was present (and uncharacteristically silent.)
It is intriguing to think that, since the British state took 67 years to release the secret papers on the 1936 Abdication, some time in January 2064 journalists and historians might be crowding into the Public Record Office to read Special Branch and other reports on the events surrounding the Princess of Wales's death. I hope that when it happens there will be a historical advisor of the skill and sympathy of Susan Williams.