Charles Arnold-Baker was the son of Professor Baron Albrecht Werner von Blumenthal (10 August 1889, Staffelde, by Stettin, Prussia – 28 March 1945, Marburg an der Lahn), of Gross Schloenwitz by Stolp, Pomerania, by his first wife, an English lady, Wilhelmine, née Hainsworth (1883–1978), and stepson of Percival Richard Arnold-Baker.
He was born in the Charité Hospital, Berlin, of which his ancestor Johann Christian Theden had been Surgeon-General, in 1918 and died in 2009,[2][3] having been received into the Roman Catholic Church on his deathbed.
[1] As World War II approached Charles and his brother Werner Gaunt (Richard) took British nationality, and adopted their stepfather's surname, witnessed by Deed poll, and abandoned the use of their first Christian names.
He and his boss, Richard Gatty, were accidentally the first Allied soldiers in Antwerp, where Charles was billeted on the generous hospitality of the Baroness van der Gracht de Rommerswael, having got ahead of the advancing Canadians and arrived in the town while the Germans were still there.
Aided by the competent Belgian Commissaire Bloch, Gatty and he then rounded up the entire German local network of 68 spies, an action for which the Brussels office of MI6, which was headed by Robert Barclay and included Malcolm Muggeridge, claimed the credit, provoking an angry written protest from Gatty to Barclay which said "our job is to tell lies to the enemy.
"[citation needed] Charles then took part in the liberation of Norway, where he captured the complete Gestapo archive which enabled him to arrest fugitive Nazis, including Karl Fritzsch, the Deputy Commandant of Auschwitz.
"[4] He also arrested senior German military figures[dubious – discuss] (King Haakon VII's Medal of Freedom).
In this he was thwarted, and his reports concerning his interrogations of such figures as a high civilian official in the German administration of occupied Russia, von der Ow, who described the anti-communist feelings of much of the population of the western USSR,[5] were buried by his superiors who were, as it later emerged, Soviet spies.
In 1978 he left the NALC to pursue an academic career as a Professor of Arts administration at the City University, London, where he lectured in Law and architecture, a subject on which he had no formal training.
Many quotes and points from the seventh edition of Local Council Administration, written by Arnold-Baker, were used at the start of each of the seven parts of J.K. Rowling's hugely successful first book for adults, The Casual Vacancy.