The UNIQUE AMBASSADOR:
by Roger WeilFROM SWORD & TROWEL 2001 No 1
The life of R C Thomson, the diplomat who saved the Nuremberg
Trials, and became a lone lifeline to numerous post-war Eastern European
churches
What is the connection between the recovery of vital ‘lost’ evidence for the
Nuremberg Trials - including Hitler’s files - and the support of East European pastors and
churches throughout the post-war decades? The answer is a British diplomat named Robert
Currie Thomson, a stirring example of how the Lord can prepare dedicated believers for His
service in very remarkable ways.
Before the Second World War, Thomson was a Foreign Office official
constantly visiting embassies in London and abroad. Naturally he became well acquainted
with foreign diplomats, among them Albrecht Achilles, who was deputy to the German
Ambassador to Britain, von Ribbentrop. In 1938, Ribbentrop was recalled to Berlin to
become Foreign Minister, leaving Achilles in charge. Neither Achilles nor his wife were
Nazis and she, sensing that if war were declared they would soon be recalled to Germany,
decided with her husband’s agreement to go instead to Switzerland for the duration of the
war.
Her husband would not be permitted to support her from Nazi Germany, so
they would have to stockpile funds in London and forward them at regular intervals to
Zurich. But who could do this for them? Achilles thought of his trustworthy friend, R C
Thomson, who agreed to help them in their predicament.
During the closing stages of the war, when Germany was about to surrender,
Achilles managed to get an important message through to Thomson via Switzerland.
Because of the Allied bombing of Berlin and the approach of the Russian armies, the entire
records of the German Foreign Office had been microfilmed and, together with the coffins
of Frederick the Great, and Field Marshall von Hindenburg and his wife, had been removed
from Potsdam for safe keeping in a remote castle in Thuringia.
Thuringia, although at that time in the American sector, was shortly to be
handed over to the Russians. No one knew for certain what the Russians might do if these
treasures were to fall into their hands, and there was a strong probability that they would not
allow access to the documents. Thomson immediately informed his superiors in the Foreign
Office who decided that he was the best person to retrieve them from Thuringia and bring
them safely to the British sector.
He was given the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, briefed on the rudiments of
military etiquette, and sent off with all possible speed to Germany. There, a convoy of
American vehicles was waiting for him and his subordinates to drive them straight to the
castle in Thuringia.
All the articles were safely retrieved and taken quickly to Marburg Castle in
the British zone. Thomson later told this writer that he managed to locate other records
hidden in such places as disused wells.
He also discovered microfilm copies of vital records subsequently destroyed
in Hitler’s private bunker. The Fuehrer’s interpreter had been given strict instructions to
destroy everything there, but, said Thomson, ‘being a good German he microfilmed it
before he did so!’ All this microfilm was then taken by Thomson to Berlin to be examined
and collated by his Special Documentary Unit.
It was this highly detailed material that was of such crucial importance to the
prosecutors assembling evidence at the Nuremberg Trials. Every letter, every signal, every
communication that the Nazi High Command sent to its allies and to their rulers in the
conquered territories through their Foreign Office was recovered and used in evidence.
In recognition of his outstanding role in the recovery of this mine of
information, Thomson was offered the post of British Consul-General in Berlin, but he
declined it, telling me later that his reason for doing so was the degree of entertaining it
would involve, a side of diplomatic life quite foreign to his Christian instincts and
convictions. However, Thomson’s ‘secular’ exploits surely come second to his remarkable
achievements in the service of Christ.
Born in 1886, he was the eldest son of a poor tenant farmer in Corstorphine
near Edinburgh. He appears to have been an exceptionally bright child and was educated at
a local grammar school through the generosity of his uncle. At eighteen he won a civil
service scholarship, and after a short spell with a branch of the Home Office in Edinburgh,
he moved to London in 1906 to take up an appointment at the Foreign Office, where he
served with distinction in many posts until his retirement in 1949.
We know little of his early spiritual impressions, except that he attended
Christian meetings for young men held by Fuller Gooch (a noted ‘undenominational’
evangelist) and from that time became a decided and forthright Christian.
In the days before the First World War the Foreign Office did not commence
work until eleven o’clock in the morning. Thomson discovered that members of staff
received an increment in salary for every foreign language they commanded, and he
therefore took full advantage of the opportunity to take lessons before work, becoming
fluent in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Polish. This ability greatly
prospered his Foreign Office career and he quickly rose to the rank of Chief Translator.
In this capacity he was attached to the diplomatic staff of two important
international treaties, that of Rapallo in 1922, and the more famous Locarno Treaty ratified
in London in 1925. Foreign languages, or rather his ability to master them, played a major
role in his life and career.
Very early in his career he became for a time one of the ‘King’s
Messengers’, whose duties are to carry diplomatic communications to foreign embassies
and to accompany ‘the diplomatic bag’ to and from our embassies abroad. More
importantly, from Thomson’s point of view, such officials hold diplomatic passports giving
them immunity at border-crossings, as well as the aura of diplomatic standing. Frequently
he was able to use these privileges to visit Christian workers by extending his trips in
different parts of Europe.
In the nineteenth century such eminent figures as Lord Radstock, Dr
Baedeker, George Muller and R C Chapman pioneered and supported missionary work in
Europe and Russia. Their labours were carried on by other missionaries whom Thomson
began to visit with help in the 1920s, especially in Slovakia, northern Rumania and Polish
Ukraine.
When he married a Swedish lady in 1919, they moved to a house in Pinner,
where they kept open-house for missionaries on furlough, held regular prayer meetings for
them, and built a meeting room in their garden, where they held services on Brethren or
undenominational lines. Tragically, his wife died in a road accident in 1937.
For twenty years, between the two World Wars, Thomson was constantly in
and out of all the countries of Eastern Europe visiting missionaries. He had been brought up
in a hard school and was no stranger, especially in his youth, to poverty and adversity.
Travel in those areas was often by horse and cart, and conditions in the villages were very
primitive indeed, there being no electricity, gas or running water. When this writer was
invited to accompany him on a visit to Yugoslavia in 1965 he was pointedly asked, ‘Are
you ready to sleep in a haystack? Can you eat stale bread? Can you shave in cold water?’
One of the places Thomson frequently visited was an area about 600 miles
deep by 160 miles wide which is now part of Western Ukraine and White Russia (Belarus).
In 1920 it had been taken from Russia by the Polish Army, and shortly afterwards, without
any prior signal, a glorious and spontaneous work of the Spirit began, described by
Thomson in these words:
‘Little was heard at the time about an outstanding work done by
the Lord between the two Great Wars in a remote region of Europe contiguous to the
frontiers common to the Soviet Union, Poland, Rumania and Czechoslovakia. The
religion of the territories was Orthodox in ritual but Roman Catholic in allegiance.
There were very few evangelical Christians.
‘The movement which the Lord initiated was not a revival, for there was
nothing to revive. It was not a campaign or an effort of man backed by organisation
or propaganda. Big results came from slender causes. People became easily interested
in the things of God.
‘It was not the work of foreign missionaries, although the few workers
who did come from other lands certainly contributed to the notable results. Meetings
were held under all sorts of unfavourable conditions, with large audiences. Numbers
grew rapidly, while meeting places multiplied. People just got saved, and formed
themselves into little communities. There was no excitement or emotion reminiscent
of more stable lands. Things just spread and the number of believers greatly
increased. And thus it was when the Second World War broke out.’
Indigenous Protestant missionaries from the small evangelical church in
Poland and other places also moved into the area to help in the work. One whom I met in
subsequent years said, ‘The Lord wonderfully blessed His Word - it was like sowing and
reaping at the same time!’ A missionary writing to friends in Britain in the 1930s said:
‘I visited three villages where the Gospel has never been preached
before. In each village practically the entire population came to the meetings and
eagerly listened to the Word of God. When preparing to leave, men and women
gathered round me and with tears begged me to tell them more and to come again. In
another village where there is a Gospel witness, fourteen souls were definitely saved
by faith in the Lord Jesus.’
In later years Thomson referred to this sudden and amazing work of grace in
these lands as ‘the overruling providence of God ensuring that a godly seed got absorbed
into Russia when she eventually took these territories back in 1940’. He refers to this in
recounting a visit he made in about 1933 to a missionary in northern Rumania:
‘My objective was a promising spiritual work in the Bucovina, a
province of Rumania inhabited by a number of races. The responsible worker was an
elderly man who was a real pastor and a true father in God to his widely scattered
flock, and the result of his labours was that some seventy little local churches were
established in the Bucovina, the greater part of which was absorbed into the Soviet
Union in 1940. Strangely enough, the remains of the old pioneer lie in Rumania, not
much more than a mile from the new frontier.’
After the successful completion of his mission to retrieve the records of the
German Foreign Office, Thomson stayed on for three years in Germany as head of the
British Documentary Unit. By the time of the German surrender in May 1945 that country
was completely dislocated and facing starvation. Survival was the order of the day.
Thomson became a focal point for thousands of food and clothing parcels, sent out by
Christians in Britain for him to distribute to designated believers and to those he knew to be
in need, Christian refugees and displaced persons whose whereabouts were known to him
personally. His flat became a kind of sorting-office, where he and his helpers sought to
distribute the food, clothing and copies of the Scriptures they received from abroad. He saw
to it that words of spiritual comfort and advice, written by himself, accompanied every
parcel. Many were especially grateful to him for this ministry in their hour of greatest need.
In 1949, when he finally returned to Britain, he felt that his life’s work was
over. He was now retired and aged 64, what was there left to look forward to? ‘I thought it
was the end, but in fact it was just the very beginning!’ he told me in later years. God now
had something really important for him to do for which all his years of experience uniquely
qualified him.
For almost thirty years he had been in touch with the Russian and Border
States Mission. Although their overseas activities had ceased with the outbreak of war in
1939, they were one of the agencies which had been supplying aid parcels to him in
Germany in 1946. In 1949 he joined their committee and took meetings for them in various
parts of the British Isles. With the Russian blockade of Berlin in 1948 the Cold War had
begun in earnest, bringing down an ‘Iron Curtain’ along the borders of all those Eastern
European nations she had liberated and subsequently occupied. Even the most intrepid and
determined Christian visitor, who managed somehow to penetrate into these lands, found
there was little they could do for the believers they met, apart from being a sympathetic
presence and an encouraging reminder that they had friends in the West who cared for them.
But by 1953 Stalin had died to be followed in 1956 by riots in Poland and
rebellion in Hungary. Whereupon Krushchev conceded that satellite nations could now
pursue ‘separate paths to Socialism’. Tourism was then officially recognised as a
convenient device for raising badly needed hard currency. Thus it became acceptable, albeit
slowly and grudgingly, to have Westerners as tourists within the lands of the Communist
bloc.
In 1959 Thomson decided to make a protracted tour of the Soviet Union and
Poland, lasting over a month, to reconnoitre the conditions under which Christians were
then living. His object was by no means a theoretical one, but rather to see if there was any
way by which Christians in the West could now assist the Lord’s work there. The believers
he met in the Soviet Union made it quite clear to him that, due to the political situation, it
would be unwise for them to accept any aid or encouragement from the West. However in
Poland it was a different story. In the autumn of the same year he wrote in the Mission’s
quarterly magazine ‘Slavonia’:
‘This autumn we have gladdening news to impart. A great leap
forward has been taken, with the guidance and help of our heavenly Father. We plan
to send help from time to time to two brethren who are already doing all that is
possible, with large responsibilities, and very inadequate means, to advance the cause
of the Gospel.’
It must be understood that Thomson’s method involved far more than simply
turning up at a local evangelical church in Poland and asking for a list of workers who
would be worthy of support. He always made a point of praying specifically for guidance in
such matters, then he would visit and stay with the unsuspecting family, to assess their
dedication and spirituality. Here are two examples of workers he discovered and
subsequently supported:
(1) ‘A rather dismal street away from the centre of a big town. A
tenement house looking much the worse for wear. At the back, some steps down from
the ground floor, a door whose outline only becomes visible when one gets
accustomed to the absence of light. Inside is a room of moderate size with a curtain
partitioning it from corner to corner so that each half is triangular. Artificial light
practically all day because a high wall comes close to the window; although it screens
off a back yard it also excludes much daylight. A young couple with a baby, all tidily
and neatly dressed. A double bed and a child’s cot, both drawn as far as possible
from the walls, which are visibly very damp. The young father is seeking to study the
Scriptures with a view to widening his preaching ministry. He works in an office.’
(2) ‘Away out in the country. A village some miles from a small town
near the mountains. A lane leading near a small river which after months of rain
seemed to be uncomfortably full. But for a row of flagstones the lane would have been
far more difficult to negotiate on account of formidable pools. A very tiny old
thatched cottage whose doors everywhere force one to bend; the whole set in a large
orchard.
‘One wonders how the house has stood so long, but when inside admires
the sturdiness of construction. Within the miniature domain all is very neat and tidy,
with many evidences of refinement and taste. The occupant must be a student or
scholar, judging from the books. He is a godly man who has stood for the best things
through thick and thin, under all sorts of persecutions and trials.
‘When one speaks with him, one recalls the salt of the earth. He is
known over a wide area as a man to be consulted in all sorts of difficulties, spiritual
and otherwise. As the result of a recent accident he is suffering from a leg broken in
more than one place, yet with his wife he has only a pension of about two shillings per
day on which to live.
‘Fortunately a married daughter with husband and baby share the
home and help to keep things going (the young man earns about a pound a week).
Informal meetings seem to be held continually in that small cottage. A strategic
stronghold in a very needy area.’
He returned to Poland the following year, now aged 74, to seek out more
men worthy of support and encouragement: three more were added to the two previously
discovered. In 1961 he was again in Poland on the same errand. When he reported back to
the Mission in London he said:
‘Two years ago our efforts to serve God in Poland were resumed with a
couple of workers. Results quickly proved that the step was a right one, so last year
three further men were added. This summer we have gone up to twelve.
‘Is this not encouraging, and should we not thank God that we have
such excellent news to communicate? We are now actually helping to support a dozen
native workers, of whom one is a woman, in a land behind the Iron Curtain which
had almost been written off as a mission field. We are enabling these faithful
labourers to go out into the unevangelised villages and distant corners of a land
dominated by the Church of Rome, whose influence has been somewhat curtailed by
recent political changes.
‘To our small and modest Fellowship has been vouchsafed the signal
grace to advance while others are retrenching and retreating. Let us go forward with
humility but with boldness, rejoicing that we can set an example. The missionary-
despatching era is drawing to a close, but we are thankful that it is still possible to
assist workers already on the field. We are assured that we have by no means reached
the limits of possibility.
‘We are constantly meeting people who almost refuse to believe that it is
possible to advance the cause of evangelisation in a country like Poland. To us it
almost seems like a dream that we have been doing so fully for two years. Let us pray
to God that for years ahead we may have the privilege of standing by the brave
Christians who have so long faced such huge difficulties in their work and witness.
May God grant that the time will arrive when material conditions will have improved
and the native church will be so strong that, not only will it not need our help, but
will itself reach out to take the Gospel to lands still unevangelised.’
In 1962 he spent two months travelling constantly and extensively to all
parts of Poland, covering over 4,000 miles, meeting hundreds of believers, and adding
another 17 workers to the 12 already being supported. He had thus found a total of 29
workers in four visits - all this at the age of 76.
The following year, 1963, saw him return to Poland again and the number of
suitable and worthy witnesses to receive the Fellowship’s support rose to no fewer than 70.
But this year also saw him breaking new ground as he visited both Hungary and
Yugoslavia. It should be remembered of course that he was no stranger to any of these lands
having travelled extensively in them between the two World Wars.
In 1964 he again visited Poland but also took in Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Rumania and Yugoslavia. Realising that he could not go on for ever he began to pray
earnestly that the Lord would lead younger men to assist and eventually succeed him in this
ministry. In total ignorance of this, the present writer first met him at church and accepted
an invitation to visit him at his home. The spiritual work I had been involved with for ten
years was about to close down and I had been prayerfully considering what to do next.
After tea the conversation ranged over various topics and I recall mentioning
my present predicament and asking his advice. I was somewhat startled therefore when he
leant forward in his chair and, fixing me with his eye, replied with emphasis, ‘I have been
praying that you would ask me that very thing!’
To my shame I confess at that moment the last thing I wanted to do was to
travel behind the Iron Curtain and visit Christians in Eastern Europe! Thomson, however,
would not let go. Twelve months later I had joined the committee and, to my great surprise,
found my life’s calling. Others also joined us in separate journeys to Eastern Europe.
Thomson wrote -
‘We are inexpressibly cheered to think that younger men are setting
forth on such wholesome expeditions, and enjoying their experiences too. We pray for
a real apostolic succession in this respect.’
It was during this year, 1966, that the unexpected happened. On his eighth
successive visit to Poland he was suddenly summoned to the local police headquarters and
ordered to leave the country within 36 hours; no reason was given. We believe that in at
least one church he had spoken out strongly against the United Evangelical Churches of
Poland joining the ecumenical movement. Thomson was nothing if not forthright in his
opinions and especially in his sermons! Although we cannot speak with absolute certainty,
we do believe that this was the most likely cause of his expulsion.
In this his final year of service to the Lord in Eastern Europe, he made his longest
and most arduous journey spending three months in five countries; all this at 80 years of
age! In the eight years since he resumed his visits behind the Iron Curtain he was personally
helping no fewer than 144 Christian workers; but the number of those with whom he was in
close fellowship must have been numbered in hundreds.
R C Thomson regarded his final years and the development of the work of
the Slav Lands Christian Fellowship as his crowning time of privilege.
R C Thomson’s origins always made him feel somewhat of an outsider in
English middle-class society. Modest by nature, he hated all luxury, pomp and ceremony.
Pride of place, pride of face, and pride of grace aggravated him. He even declined to go to
Buckingham Palace to receive his honours, the MBE and ISO, probably for this reason. His
true affinity was always with the poor and underprivileged, for he knew only too well from
personal experience what it felt like to be in that condition.
The thrift and frugality that he had learned in his earliest years never deserted
him, but he was always very generous to others, in particular to those whose poor
circumstances prevented them from bettering themselves. He personally paid for the
education of the son of a Christian tram-driver and then furthered the boy’s career by
obtaining a post for him in the Foreign Office. He also bought a nice suburban house for the
family of a Christian lorry driver, then living in wretched conditions in the East End of
London, and also sought to help him use it to the glory of God. He tried to help poor
believers so that they could realise their true potential.
He very much disliked being mistaken for an Englishman when travelling
abroad. ‘I’m nothing of the kind,’ he would say vehemently, ‘Haven’t you heard of
Scotland?’ He greatly valued true friendships and was a true and faithful friend to his
intimates. Equipped with a dry sense of humour, without frivolity, he was a serious man, yet
not sombre. He was meticulously honest and efficient in all that he did, a man both of his
word and of the Word.
He was convinced that God had spiritual gifts for all His children and never lost
an opportunity to exhort, in a kindly manner, all he met to consider what contribution they
could make to the cause of Christ.
In the spring of 1967, aged 81, he set forth once more on what was to be his last
journey to the field he had loved so well and had known so intimately for the greater part of
his long life. First on his itinerary was Hungary which he recalled visiting back in 1920
almost 50 years before. He alighted in Budapest but was already unwell. He was taken to
the home of a Christian doctor where he suffered the first of a series of minor cerebral
haemorrhages.
With all possible speed friends from England went out to Budapest and
brought him safely home by car, accompanied by the doctor. He remained for the last four
months of his life at his home in Blackheath. Although he was often extremely confused as
to his immediate surroundings and current events, yet in spiritual matters and in prayer he
was as clear as ever. He enjoyed the fine weather of high summer, sitting in the shade of the
old trees in the large garden that he loved, delighting in its peace and tranquillity.
Finally he suffered a more serious fall and was admitted to hospital where
within a few days, on 25th August, he passed to his eternal reward and the heavenly rest
that remains to the people of God. But the work he began in 1959 still continues today
bearing the title he himself gave it: ‘The Slav Lands Christian Fellowship’. We look back
with thankfulness and affection to our dear ‘Uncle Robert’, who by his example and
prayerfulness, by his grit and determination, persuaded us to follow him even as he
followed Christ, to the lands of Eastern Europe and beyond that to Russia itself.
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