
Stewart Menzies (30 January 1890 – 29 May 1968) was Chief of MI6 from 1939 to 1952, succeeding Hugh Sinclair and preceding John Sinclair.
Biography[]
Stewart Menzies was born in London, England in 1890, a nephew of Liberal Party MP Robert Stewart Menzies. He was educated at Eton before serving as a lieutenant in the British Army's Grenadier Guards during World War I; he was wounded at the First Battle of Ypres in 1914 and gassed in 1915. He went on to serve in the counterintelligence section of Field Marshal Douglas Haig's headquarters, and he was breveted a major before the war's end. Following the end of war, he joined the MI6 and attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 before forging the 1924 "Zinoviev Letter" to accuse the Labour Party of being Soviet puppets. Menzies progressed to serve as Chief of MI6 from 1939 to 1952, greatly expanding the service during World War II and breaking Nazi Germany's Enigma coding system; he was also suspected of involvement in the assassination of the French collaborationist Francois Darlan in 1942. After the war, Menzies reorganized MI6 for the Cold War, and he was outwitted by the Soviet mole Kim Philby, who became a high-ranking infiltrator in MI6. He retired to Wiltshire in 1952 and died in 1968.