Norman Baillie-Stewart - 1933 Court Martial

1933 Court Martial

In the Spring of 1933, Baillie-Stewart was court-martialled at Chelsea Barracks under the Official Secrets Act for selling military secrets to a foreign power. Due to the fact Britain was not at war, Baillie-Stewart was not in danger of the death penalty, but the ten charges against him carried a maximum sentence of 140 years in jail.

The court was told that Baillie-Stewart's offending had begun in 1931 when he met and fell in love with a German woman while holidaying in Germany, and decided to become a German citizen, writing a letter to the German Consul in London offering his services. Receiving no answer, he travelled to Berlin without permission to take leave, where he telephoned the German Foreign Ministry and demanded to talk to an English speaker. This resulted in him making contact with a Major Mueller under the Brandenburg Gate, where he agreed to spy for Germany.

Using the pretext that he was studying for Staff College examinations, he borrowed from the Aldershot Military Library specifications and photographs of an experimental tank (the Vickers A1E1 Independent) and a new automatic rifle, and notes on the organisation of tank and armoured car units. It was charged that he had sold this material to a German known as "Otto Waldemar Obst", in return for which he received two letters signed "Marie-Luise," one containing ten £5 notes, and the other four £10 notes. Evidence was also produced that he had also made several trips to the Netherlands to meet with his handlers. MI5's files have since shown that Marie-Luise had been merely a figment of his controller's imagination; Major Mueller's covername was Obst (fruit) and Baillie-Stewart's was Poiret (little pear), while Marie-Luise, a type of pear, was used to conceal their correspondence.

He was imprisoned for five years, which he served at the Tower of London, the last British citizen to be imprisoned there.