Masterman, John Cecil

Date of birth:: January 1891
Date of death:: June 1977
Nationality:: British

Biography

John Cecil Masterman spent five years as a cadet at the Royal Naval Academy Osborne and Dartmouth. Yet in 1908 he decided to drop out. Subsequently he studied modern history at Worcester College, Oxford. At the outbreak of WW1 he was spending a post-graduate year in Germany. This lead to his internement for the duration of the war at Ruhleben camp outside Berlin.
Released after the hostilites he became a popupar history tutor and censor at Christ Church. He was also a keen athlete, competing at Wimbledon as well as playing hockey.
In the 1930's he also began writing.
In June 1940 he was called up and commissioned in the Intelligence Corps and employed as a secretary at the War Office. Shortly afterwards, however, he was seconded to M.I. 5 and appointed Chairman of Twenty Committee - so called because the Roman numeral for twenty - XX - is a double cross. The Double Cross system turned enemy spies into double agents: as a consequence he was closely associated with some of the most important deception plans of the war, including Operation "Mincemeat" - better known as ‘The Man Who Never Was’ incident - namely ‘Major Martin, R.M.’ whose corpse was temporarily stored in Masterman’s London office.
Masterman also had his hand in Operation "Fortitude", orchestrated by a handful of double agents, as a result of which the Germans diverted vital reserves to the Pas de Calais shortly before the Normandy landings in June 1944: in fact two armoured divisions and 19 infantry divisions.

Back at Oxford postwar, he was elected Provost of Worcestershire College in 1946, and remained similarly employed until 1961; he was Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1958-59 and was knighted in the following year.

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