How homegrown fascists’ plans to let Hitler take over Britain were foiled by an undercover MI5 spy A British agent posing as a Gestapo chief thwarted a network of Nazi traitors

When in January 1946 two British citizens received Nazi medals during a secret ceremony in London, they had no reason to disbelieve that they were receiving tokens of gratitude from the rump of Hitler’s fascist state for their wartime service.

In reality, the bronze Iron Cross medals presented to Marita Perigoe and Hans Kohout some seven months after the surrender of Nazi Germany were handed over by an undercover MI5 officer posing as a Gestapo spy in one of the most audacious and successful counter-espionage operations of the Second World War.

The MI5 agent was known to his recruits as Jack King but was in reality Eric Roberts, a father-of-three from the comfortable Surrey suburb of Epsom posing as a bank clerk whose job was to identify and corral the coterie of ordinary Britons willing to betray their country for the Nazi cause.

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The medal ceremony, which was part of MI5’s efforts to continue the “Jack King” network and thwart any post-war resurgence of British Nazism, is revealed in one of two new books exploring the so-called “Fifth Column” of homegrown fascists that threatened Britain during the war.

Hitler’s British traitors

The books – “Agent Jack” by journalist Robert Hutton and “Hitler’s British Traitors” by documentary film maker Tim Tate – catalogue the hitherto largely unrecognised enthusiasm of a small but determined minority in British society – from a Catholic priest to politicians – to work to achieve a Nazi takeover of the United Kingdom.

One of the things we tend hold on to in this country as a national narrative is our goodness and rectitude in the Second World War – these documents challenge that Tim Tate

Recently-released wartime files examined by Mr Tate at the National Archives in Kew, west London, reveal how MI5 was aware of the existence of three plots by British Nazi sympathisers – one led by Conservative MP Archibald Maule Ramsay and another by former Labour MP John Beckett – to overthrow the British government and replace it with a puppet regime if and when Hitler began an invasion of Great Britain.

Beckett, who along with Maule Ramsay was interned for much of the war, established links with Hastings Russell, the Duke of Bedford, and suggested that the aristocrat should be prime minister in a puppet government should Hitler invade, with Oswald Mosley as his deputy.

The third plot, organised by a respected composer and conductor called Leigh Vaughan-Henry, included an attempt to order £250,000 of Lee Enfield rifles and was claimed by MI5 agents who penetrated the conspiracy to involve 18 separate cells spread across the country.

Fifth Column

The extent of the threat posed by the plots is hard to gauge given that Hitler never attempted an invasion and the conspirators were firmly under the gaze of the Security Service.

But the existence of the conspiracies was just one part of a wider reservoir of Nazi sympathisers actively seeking to undermine Britain’s war effort with activities including tracking shipping movements and obtaining details of secret weapons programmes.

Mr Tate said: “One of the things we tend hold on to in this country as a national narrative is our goodness and rectitude in the Second World War – it has been woven into our cultural warp and weft. What these documents do is challenge that.

“The evidence clearly shows a Fifth Column – comprised not of immigrants or refugees, many of whom were interned unfairly, but of British citizens. Many of those were ardent fascists; all willingly betrayed their country in the hope and anticipation of a German victory.”

Undercover spies

Among those British nationals were Perigoe and Kohout, two “star” agents of the 500-strong network organised by Roberts under the supervision of Victor Rothschild, the banking heir who joined MI5 in 1940.

Perigoe, of German-Swedish origin and the estranged wife of a prominent British fascist, was regarded by Roberts as one his most adept operators, helping him to find new recruits and providing material that included secret designs from Rolls Royce, makers of the Spitfire’s Merlin engine.

Kohout, who had lived in Britain for a decade at the outbreak of war and took British citizenship in 1936, proved particularly effective, passing secrets to his “Gestapo” handler that included details of the Mosquito aircraft and the chaff technology used to confuse German radar.

Kohout was arguably Germany’s most effective spy in Britain during the war Robert Hutton

Most alarmingly of all, Kohout tipped off Roberts about the existence of the Oxfordshire mansion that housed Britain’s greatest wartime secret – Bletchley Park, home to the “Ultra” project which cracked Germany’s wartime codes.

The Nazi told Roberts that he knew Bletchley Park was an important government facility, prompting MI5 to issue a stern order that Kohout was never to go near it.

Mr Hutton said that the extraordinary success of the “Jack King” operation lay in the fact that hundreds of would-be Nazi spies, some of them highly effective, had been comprehensively duped into giving information bound for Berlin directly to the British intelligence service.

Mr Hutton said: “Kohout was arguably Germany’s most effective spy in Britain during the war. His tragedy is that none of his reports went further than MI5 headquarters.”

Post-war operation

The question remains of why the scale of the treachery exposed by Eric Roberts and other operations against homegrown Nazis conducted by MI5 has remained unknown.

A total of 70 traitors were put on trial during the war, representing only a fraction of the total uncovered by the Security Service and featuring none of the aristocrats and other Establishment figures known to have been in extensive contact with the fifth columnists.

One part of the reason is that MI5 saw an advantage in continuing its Eric Roberts subterfuge after the war, reasoning that it had penetrated Britain’s fascist movement so comprehensively that it could now detect any further threat to national security at an early stage.

The medals presented to Perigoe and Kohout by Roberts, possibly in the basement of an antiques shop in London’s Marylebone which MI5 set up as Jack King’s Gestapo outpost, were designed to persuade the two Nazis that all was not lost. Perigoe was so pleased with her award that she told Roberts she would keep hers in the stuffing of her armchair.

The stunt was the brainchild of Lord Rothschild, who asked if the Royal Mint Refinery – owned by his family – could make copies of German medals.

Mr Hutton said: “It’s quite possible [Perigoe and Kohout] were given genuine medals. But the records do suggest that having spent the war as fake German spies, Perigoe and Kohout finished it receiving Nazi medals that were forged by the world’s most famous Jewish bank.”