Jona Baron von Ustinov was a German journalist and diplomat who worked for MI5 during the time of the Nazi regime.
Background
He was the son of Baron Plato von Ustinov and father of the actor Sir Peter Ustinov. Ustinov was born Jonah Freiherr von Ustinow in Jaffa, Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, the son of Plato von Ustinov, a former Russian officer and naturalised citizen of the Kingdom of Württemberg, who had married Magdalena Hall, then living in Jaffa, the daughter of the Ethiopian court-lady Katharina Hall, also known as Welette-Iyesus and her husband Moritz Hall, a Jewish-born convert to Protestantism, cannon-caster of Negus Tewodros II of Ethiopia and missionary of Saint Chrischona Pilgrim Mission in Ethiopia, and later in Jaffa.
Education
Jonah von Ustinov disliked his first name and chose the nickname "Klop" ("Bedbug" in Russian), by which he was known to his friends and relatives for the rest of his life.
Career
Magdalena and Plato von Ustinov had five children, Jonah being the eldest. He studied at Grenoble University in France and worked at University of Berlin before moving to London. In World War I he was conscripted into the German Army and served in the Army Air Service unit Flieger-Abteilung (Artillerie) 250.
He was awarded the Württembergian Military Merit Order for his services.
After the war Ustinov worked for Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau, the first German news agency, in Amsterdam. The Ustinovs returned to London where Klop became a press officer for the German Embassy.
Their son Peter was born on 16 April 1921. Due to his political opinions Ustinov got into problems with the new Nazi government almost immediately.
In 1935 the conflict culminated when Ustinov refused to prove that he was not of Jewish descent ("Ariernachweis").
As a result, he lost his job and chose to become a British citizen, thus avoiding internment or deportation later during the war. Meanwhile, he had begun working for the British intelligence service MI5 and hosted secret meetings of senior British and German officials at his London home. Notable among these guests were the diplomat Robert Vansittart and Winston Churchill (then out of power).
Another was Wolfgang zu Putlitz, a First Secretary of the German Embassy in London who provided detailed information about German rearmament.
lieutenant was, alleged Peter Wright, "priceless intelligence, possibly the most important human-source intelligence Britain received in the prewar period". He also tried to convince the British government of a more robust attitude towards Nazi Germany.
Seven months before the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, he was able to acquire the German plans. He later regretted that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain could not bring himself to take any action.
Ustinov died on 1 December 1962 in Eastleach, Gloucestershire from a massive heart attack.
Politics
This peripatetic life engendered in Ustinov a cosmopolitan attitude that made him averse to any kind of nationalism.