After becoming a chartered accountant, an adventurous William Harris-Burland fell in love with Europe, where he spent the 1930s working as an accountant in various capital cities. 

At the outbreak of the war in 1939, he joined Britain’s military intelligence. His experience abroad, ability to speak several languages, extensive contact list and great business acumen shaped his roles in the war.

Harris-Burland’s unique skillset and keen judgement proved invaluable, not only for covert operations across Europe during the war, but also in the post-war efforts when he played a key role in reorganising the German iron and steel industry.

Early life

Harris-Burland was born in Cheshire in 1902. He attended Whitgift Grammar School in Croydon, before joining Harber, Sturges & Fraser as an articled clerk in the City of London in 1921. 

He passed his final ICAEW exam in 1926 and between 1927 and 1939 he worked as an accountant for Whinney, Murray, Baugley and Co in offices across Europe, including London, Hamburg, Berlin, Paris, Warsaw and Bucharest. During that time, he met his wife Stella. They married in 1930 and had three children.

Bucharest, boats and black-market money

In June 1939, Harris-Burland offered his service to the military intelligence and joined an organisation called MI(R). It was a think tank for developing ideas on clandestine warfare in continental Europe which, in 1940, merged into the Special Operations Executive (SOE). 

In August 1939, Harris-Burland arrived in Poland as the paymaster of a British Military Mission, with its aim to stimulate and assist Poland in guerrilla warfare in the event of a German invasion. Not long after Harris-Burland’s arrival Germany invaded Poland and the mission escaped to Bucharest, Romania. 

This was a fortunate escape as Harris-Burland had worked there before the war, so he spoke the language and knew the city well. He used this knowledge and, financed by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), set up the Goeland Shipping Company and became the Managing Director. 

The company bought more than 300 ships on the Danube, which stopped the Germans transporting vast quantities of crude oil from the Romanian oil fields to Germany. Instead, the SOE was able to use those ships for gun running. According to records, this scheme was financed by purchasing Romanian currency on the black markets, which were set at favourable rates against transfers of sterling from London to Palestine.

When, in 1941, the threat of a German invasion into Romania became clear, Harris-Burland arranged for many of the British-controlled barges to be evacuated to Turkey via the Black Sea, in return for a bribe of 100,000 Romanian Lei (£100) per barge.

Harris-Burland was forced to leave the country in early 1941 and moved to the SOE office in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he took over another shipping fleet. He was captured by the Italians in May 1941 and, following an exchange of prisoners, he returned to England.

Heading to Turkey

In 1943 and 1944 he served as Field Commander of SOE’s Romanian sub-section, based in Istanbul, Turkey. As the capital of a neutral country and courted by both sides to enter the war, Istanbul was alive with intrigue and full of secret agents from Germany, Britain and the US. As Section Head Harris-Burrland had to plan covert activities in Romania and transfer agents, finances and resources across the border. 

He managed a team of 40 SOE officers and other civilians, working closely with other British agencies in Istanbul, including the embassy, which entrusted him with shipping work worth £1m, and acted as a suitable cover.

Armistice and SOE liquidation in Romania 

In October 1944 Harris-Burland returned to Romania, which had signed an armistice with the occupying Soviet Union. He took on two roles. His official role was as part of the Allied Control Commission, where he was responsible for transport matters, especially shipping. His second, unofficial, role was the “liquidation” of SOE in Romania. 

The latter was highly complex, and for which he had to produce a detailed reconciliation of funds received and used, including the “balance of the SOE war chest recovered in Romania of 25,000,000 Lei”. He had to arrange for loans and “payments made to anti-axis collaborators” by Romanian businesses to SOE during the war to be repaid. He also ensured that funds provided by SIS to establish the Goeland Company were refunded. The final SOE liquidation report for Romania was submitted to HM Treasury for approval on 1 February 1946.

Recognition and post-war life

Harris-Burland was awarded an OBE for his war service in 1945. The citation describes his, “…exceptional soundness of judgement and tact in dealing with the extremely delicate problems in handling agents travelling secretly between Turkey and enemy occupied Europe”. It concludes: “His ability and devotion to his most unusual duties have been of a very high order.” 

Harris-Burland was taken out of active duty in April 1946, but his love of the continent saw him join the Control Commission for Germany, an organisation set up to direct the reconstruction of its war-torn industry. 

He served as Deputy Controller in the Economic section and Head of the North German Iron and Steel Control, based in Dusseldorf. Following close consultation with union representatives, his lasting achievement was the introduction of worker participation in management known as “co- determination” in 1947, which was later adopted by the newly established Federal Republic of Germany. He remained in Germany until 1953 as the UK Chairman of the Combined Iron and Steel Group and was awarded a CBE for his work in 1953.

After returning to the UK, he became Director of Accounts and Statistics in the British Transport Commission until his retirement in 1967. He died aged 82 on 13 February 1985, a life well lived.

Reflecting on Harris-Burland’s remarkable work, ICAEW President Derek Blair says: “William’s story demonstrates that the ACA was the same international passport 90 years ago that it is today, enabling chartered accountants to facilitate international trade throughout the world. 

“It is fascinating to learn how he used skills developed during peacetime to run a series of front companies and to finance his operations through black-market currency trading. Buying up ships to stop the Germans from transporting oil sounds uncannily contemporary.”