Arnold Genrikhovich Deutsch

Арнольд Генрихович Дейч
Soviet Union state institutions Marxism–Leninism Soviet Union Austria (Jewish) 1904.5.21.–1942.11.7. ✕ Killed at sea

Austrian-born Soviet illegal who recruited Kim Philby and built the Cambridge spy ring

In London in 1934 Deutsch told his new recruit Philby to become, to all appearances, a conventional member of the very class he opposed: to cut his communist ties and pose as a Nazi sympathiser.

Born to a Jewish family in Vienna, he joined the Austrian Communist Party in 1924 and took a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Vienna in 1928. After working for the Comintern's liaison service he became an illegal of Soviet foreign intelligence. He entered Britain in 1934 under cover of postgraduate study at the University of London and, by recruiting promising students before their careers began, brought in Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. He was recalled in 1937 but survived the purge, and is reported to have died on 7 November 1942 when the tanker Donbass, carrying him to a posting abroad, was sunk by a German destroyer in the Norwegian Sea.

Also known as: Stefan Lange

Activities and affiliations

Career Timeline

How did a Viennese chemist become an illegal?

Deutsch was born on 21 May 1904. Russian sources say he was born in Vienna to a Jewish family from Slovakia, while English sources give either Vienna or what became Czechoslovakia. The cinema magnate Oscar Deutsch, owner of the Odeon chain, was his cousin. He joined the Austrian Communist Party in 1924, the year he entered the University of Vienna, and took a doctorate in chemistry in July 1928 at the age of 24. Interested also in philosophy and psychology, he was involved in Wilhelm Reich's sex-pol movement and ran a publishing house that issued Reich's books.

After university he and his wife Josefine became couriers for the Comintern's International Liaison Department, and in 1932 he moved to Soviet foreign intelligence. Trained in Moscow from January 1933, he was given the name Stefan Lange and the code name Stefan.

Why was his way of recruiting new?

Deutsch entered Britain in 1934 under his own name, since his degrees had to be genuine and he could use his cousin Oscar as a referee. He studied psychology at the University of London and lived in the Isokon building in Hampstead.

What was new was that he did not try to buy people already in high office but went first for radical students at the leading universities. As he reported to his superiors, communist students were many and constantly turning over as they graduated, so choices could be made without notice. Give them a new, non-communist political face, and once they reached high office their leftism would pass as a youthful fancy.

In summer 1934, introduced by Edith Suschitzky, he personally recruited Kim Philby in Regent's Park in London, and that year he also brought in Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. He is said to have gathered some twenty agents in Britain, and from April 1936 he worked under Theodore Maly. He also served as contact for Percy Glading, who ran the Woolwich Arsenal spy ring.

How did he die after surviving the purge?

In September 1937 Deutsch returned to Moscow. He survived while colleagues were shot, but was given no work for eleven months. In 1938 he and his wife received Soviet citizenship, and from 1939 he worked at the Institute of World Economy.

In November 1941 he was appointed illegal resident and set out by way of Iran, but Japan's entry into the war forced him back. In 1942 the tanker Donbass carrying him took the North Atlantic route, and on 7 November it was sunk in the Norwegian Sea by the German destroyer Z-27. According to the captain, he fought like a gun crewman at the bow gun until shrapnel broke his legs, and then the sea took him.

This account of his end came late. Other stories circulated in the West, including that the Nazis caught and shot him, and his destination is given as Argentina in Russian sources and New York in a study citing KGB files.