Pretty fascinating, at the Independent UK, "Enemy within: The network of Britons who spied for Hitler during Second World War":
To his circle of fervent recruits, he was “Jack King” – the Gestapo’s man in England. While Britons rallied to war against Hitler in 1940, the masterful Nazi agent toured the country signing up those who could be trusted to show their loyalty to the Fatherland when the time came.Continue reading.
For five years, King evaded detection as he built up a coterie of committed and ruthless British Nazis ranging from provincial engineers, to an astrologer, to a Catholic priest. In return, they provided him with some of the most sensitive secrets of Britain’s war machine, from details of the first jet fighter to the workings of radar countermeasures.
Such was his success that by 1945, King had built up a list of “hundreds” of Britons whose anti-Semitic zeal and desire for a German victory made them potential “fifth columnists” against their own country. His controllers noted that all held “pro-German sentiments or a potential fascist political outlook”. The Third Reich was particularly appreciative of the seven subversives – all but one of them British and led by a “crafty and dangerous” fascist named Marita Perigoe – who formed the inner circle of King’s network of homegrown Nazis.
Along with cash and regular supplies of invisible ink, Berlin sent them Iron Crosses in recognition of their services.
What Marita and her comrades did not know was that rather than working for the Gestapo, they were unwitting servants of Britain’s MI5 and thus the targets of one of the most audacious – and hitherto unknown – deceptions of the Second World War.
The scheme – known variously as the Fifth Column or SR Case – is revealed for the first time today in Security Service files released at the National Archives in Kew, west London.
They detail how Britain managed to dupe – and then contain – an entire class of homegrown traitors throughout the war and beyond. Even more remarkably, the operation relied almost entirely on Jack King, an MI5 desk officer drafted in at short notice to pose as the Gestapo’s British kingpin.
The project ran on similar lines to the famous Double Cross system under which the intelligence services turned German agents and then fed misinformation to the Nazi high command throughout the war on subjects including, crucially, the plans for the D-Day landings.
But while British duplicity has long been recognised as playing a vital role in both shortening and winning the war by misleading the enemy, the willingness of “scores” of Britons to undermine their country and the effectiveness of the Security Service in curtailing their ambitions has, until now, remained unknown...
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