Kim Philby

Born Harold A. R. Philby in 1912 in Albama, India.

His family was very well off, his father being St. John Philby, a famous explorer and adventurer who was assigned to India as an assistant commissioner for the Punjab. The best man at St. John's wedding in 1910 was Bernard Montgomery who would ultimately become the most famous British general of World War II. Harold was given the nickname Kim by his father, after the spy hero of a Rudyard Kipling novel.

Graduated from Westminster before entering Trinity College at Cambridge in 1929 where he studied history, While in school he was recruited by Soviet intelligence, as were his friends Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. He worked as an NKVD agent, traveling on vacations to France, Austria, Germany and other areas of Europe that he thought were ready for revolution. He related his evaluation to his Soviet handler. While in Germany, he took part in open hostilities against Nazi Brown shirts, working alongside of the Communists. He later helped set up a front organization, the World Peace Congress. Graduated from Trinity in 1933.

Traveled to Vienna, Austria in 1934 and married Alice Friedman, also a communist. Was sent to Spain where he worked as a correspondent for the London General Press new agency, covering the Spanish Civil War. He worked under the guise of being a supporter of Generalissimo Francisco Franco and as well as being against the communist cause. He became associated with the ring wing Anglo-German Fellowship organization, which was sympathetic to Nazi causes. As such, because of his pro-Fascist persona, he was welcomed into Franco party headquarters and followed Franco from city to city as he moved. Philby obtained information from Falangist officers and reported this back to his Soviet contacts. Left Spain in 1939 and separated from Friedman, in part to disassociate from her known pro-communist stance.