Melita Norwood (1912-June 2005), code-named Hora, worked for the Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in the United Kingdom as an assistant to the president. The position is not high, but you can access a large number of secrets in the association. And this association is the core department of the British atomic bomb research, so she continuously sent the core secrets of the British atomic bomb research to the Soviet Union.
She is the most valuable spy deployed by the KGB in the UK. She has Leninism in mind. For more than 30 years, she has been spying on British intelligence for the Soviet Union. Known as "Red Granny".
She is not surprising in appearance, and the British MI6's reputation is discredited.
Melita Norwood’s father, Alexander, was a well-known socialist in Latvia and was forced to immigrate to the UK. She was actively engaged in leftist activities, translated the works of Lenin and Trotsky into English, and founded a radical newspaper. Father's thoughts deeply influenced Norwood.
In the 1930s, the socialist trend of thought in Britain was unprecedentedly strong. Many young people had a good impression of the Soviet Union and believed that the Soviet political system was the ideal model of the future society. After the congressional arson in Germany and the raids on Communist Party members, the British people moved closer to the Soviet Union emotionally. Some leftists even regarded the Soviet Union as the only nemesis of the fascist "gray plague". Taking this opportunity, the Soviet Union recruited a large number of heavyweight spies in the UK, such as Bergers and Philby in the Cambridge Five, and of course Norwood.
Norwood joined the British Communist Party in her youth. She married Hillary Hillary, a mathematics teacher who was also a member of the British Communist Party. The association is responsible for the coordination of alloy and high-tech research, and is the core department responsible for the design of the atomic bomb in the United Kingdom.
Norwood's position is not high, but she has access to a lot of top-secret information. She will photocopy or take photos of all the documents in her hands.
From 1937 to 1940, Norwood provided a large amount of scientific and technological intelligence to Soviet intelligence personnel.
It is said that Stalin knew more about the process of the British atomic bomb than the British Prime Minister Attlee, and the Soviet Union also succeeded in studying the atomic bomb three years earlier than the United Kingdom. Melita Norwood can be said to have played a big role.
What's interesting is that as a spy, you usually have to be low-key, but this Melita Norwood is not low-key at all, and appears everywhere as a leftist. Regularly subscribe to left-wing newspapers and spread left-wing ideas to neighbors. Britain also began to suspect her and censored her, but no problems were found.
It was the Soviet defector Vasily Mitrokhin who exposed Norwood's identity. This person had worked in the archives of the KGB First General Directorate in charge of foreign intelligence. The British carefully studied Mitrokhin's files and determined that the "Hola" in it was Norwood. In 1999, the thousand-page Mitrokhin Archive: KGB in Europe and the West was published, and the publication of the book caused a sensation in the United Kingdom. Norwood is called "Grandma Red Spy" .
After his identity was revealed, reporters swarmed in, but Norwood appeared very calm and composed. In an interview with the BBC, Norwood did not deny that she had worked with the KGB for 40 years. She said
Since I have done it, I should admit...I am not doing it for money. I hope that through the materials provided, I will help the Soviet Union become a country that can compete with Britain, the United States and Germany.
A reporter asked if she regretted everything she had done, and she simply replied
"Absolutely not."
She still lives in a small house that she borrowed from her husband Hilary 50 years ago. The house is covered with slogans supporting Cuban leader Castro. She told reporters that she admired Stalin and believed that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was a tragedy.
She sadly mentioned her husband's death. The two have been together for 50 years. After Hilary learned of her espionage, although she opposed it, she did not stop it. He respected his wife's beliefs and choices. This affectionate makes Norwood unforgettable forever. She concealed her identity from her only daughter Anne, and Anne did not know all this until the Mitrokhin archives were published.
In October 1999, British Home Secretary Straw stated that Norwood should be tried in court. However, neither the files transcribed by Mitrohin nor the facts admitted by Norwood in an interview can be used as court evidence, and the hope of obtaining conclusive evidence is extremely slim. At the end of the year, the British judiciary announced that 87-year-old Norwood would be exempt from prosecution.
Joan in the film said when facing reporters in her garden
I was accused of leaking information to the Russians in the 1940s and providing them with information on accelerating the production of atomic bombs. I was accused of defrauding colleagues and family at work, but I did not deny it, but I was also accused of treason. I am not a spy. I am not against my motherland. I want Russia to be on an equal footing with the West. I am not a traitor. I hope everyone can have the same beliefs as me, because only then can I avoid the horrors of another world war. I Think if you go back and look at history, you will find that I am right,"
She turned into reality the wish we had been discussing but did not know how to realize: peace
She doesn't need to argue with anyone. For her country, she did do the same thing as other spies: treason. But she was not for money. Seeing the tragic situation of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she was determined not to let her happen again, and all she could do was leak information to the Soviet Union to equalize the two forces. , she single-handedly succeeded in preventing a nuclear bomb explosion at the British and the Soviet Union lasted up to five years of peace. For her country, she is hateful, but for all mankind, she is extremely respectable
On June 2, 2005, the 93-year-old Melita Norwood passed away in her apartment in the southern suburbs of London.
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