MI5 papers: Fuhrer's obscenity provoked Britain

MI5 papers: How secret service goaded Chamberlain, tried to bribe Irish nationalist's gay lover - and recruited birds

MI5 DELIBERATELY provoked Neville Chamberlain into taking a harder line against Nazi Germany by revealing that Adolf Hitler had derided the Prime Minister with a "schoolboyish obscenity," accoding to newly released MI5 files. They show that Chamberlain was so infuriated he brought forward the introduction of conscription.

The story is revealed in the Security Service's internal history from 1909 to 1945, released yesterday by the Public Record Office in Kew.

It reveals MI5's growing frustration with Chamberlain in the run-up to the Munich crisis of 1938. MI5 pushed Chamberlain to take a stronger line with Hitler by disclosing that the Fuhrer respected only men prepared to stand up to him and thought the Prime Minister was weak. "The Fuhrer was very fond of making jokes about `umbrella pacifism', of the once imposing `British World Empire' and referred to Mr Chamberlain in terms of schoolboyish obscenity."

Several First World War files have also been released,including those covering the activities of the glamorous spy Mata Hari and the Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement, both executed for helping Germany.

British agents plotted to entice Casement's 24-year-old gay lover into betraying him. Mansfeldt de Cardonnel Findlay, the ambassador to Norway, wrote an undertaking to pay Adler Christiansen, pounds 5,000 in return for the capture of Casement as he plotted an uprising in Ireland with German help in 1915. The documents proved for the first time the claims that were denied by the British Government of the day. Christiansen was a double agent and news of the plot, which was never carried out, was quickly leaked to the press.

The files also tell the story of Hitler's deputy, Rudolph Hess, who flew to Britain in 1941 during a bizarre and unauthorised attempt to negotiate a peace deal between Britain and Germany. MI5 considered using a "truth drug" on him to force him to disclose Nazi secrets.

The British were not impressed with Hess although a War Office official did write to MI5 with a suggestion for "the picking of whatever brains that gentleman may still possess".

The files give detailed accounts of MI5's greatest Second World War coup - the double-cross system. Most Germans agents sent into Britain fell into the hands of MI5. One by one they were "turned" and persuaded to feed false information back.

The centrepiece of the double-cross system was the agent codenamed Garbo. Hewas a Spaniard whose real name was Juan Pujol Garcia.

For the D-Day landings in 1944 the Allies wanted to fool the Germans into thinking the main point of the invasion was the Pas-de-Calais. The Garbo ring was a key part of the D-Day deception plan.

The Germans did not discover Garbo's treachery. The MI5 files show that after D-Day, "Himmler ... expressed his appreciation of the work carried out by the Garbo organisation".