{"id":339,"date":"2022-05-15T17:28:42","date_gmt":"2022-05-15T17:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/?p=339"},"modified":"2023-03-30T21:20:01","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T21:20:01","slug":"hitler-was-jewish-the-predictable-roots-of-a-kremlin-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/hitler-was-jewish-the-predictable-roots-of-a-kremlin-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"40 Years of Lies \u2013 how the same propagandist defamed Adolf Hitler in the &#8217;30s and David Irving in the &#8217;60s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>On May 1st 2022 during an interview on Italian television, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov \u2013 in yet another desperate attempt to justify Kremlin aggression \u2013 reached for one of the craziest lies of 20th century propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/2022\/05\/02\/who-was-stepan-bandera-and-how-does-his-history-help-explain-the-present-crisis-peter-rushton-reports-from-london-and-washingtons-secret-files\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">As explained elsewhere on this site, Putin&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine and its accompanying rhetoric are rooted in his KGB past and the complex Ukrainian resistance to Stalinism.<\/a> Hence his insistence that Russia is fighting &#8220;nazis&#8221; and &#8220;Banderites&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Lavrov \u2013 and for Putin&#8217;s motley crew of apologists across Europe and the USA \u2013 a conspiracy theory must be invented to explain why Ukraine (a nation that Russian propaganda and Russia&#8217;s fundamental self-image has to insist is composed of &#8216;nazis&#8217;) has a Jewish president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fortunately for Lavrov, a conspiracy theory was pre-cooked and ready to serve: <em>Adolf Hitler was Jewish<\/em>. (A few days later Putin jumped back into line with Israel and dissociated himself from Lavrov&#8217;s remarks, but different versions of the lie continue to circulate among an army of crank propagandists, including many on the so-called dissident or populist &#8216;right&#8217;, who serve Moscow&#8217;s interests.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ukraine War: Israel says Lavrov&#039;s Hitler remarks &#039;unforgivable&#039;\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TFop3d3lB4w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In the UK this crackpot notion is most closely associated with David Icke, an author so weird that it&#8217;s difficult to discern whether he deliberately lies for profit, or merely grabs the most sensational fable he can find because he is temperamentally attracted to fantasy &#8216;history&#8217; and incapable of research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the origin of the &#8216;Hitler was a Jew&#8217; lie is far more interesting than the tedious Icke or the predictable dishonesty of Putin&#8217;s lackeys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To understand the origin of this lie we must look back to Jewish and Catholic &#8216;anti-nazi&#8217; propaganda of the early 1930s, and then move on to examine British establishment propaganda against the historian David Irving in the late 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My article was researched over many weeks in the UK National Archives, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heritageanddestiny.com\/publications\/journal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">first published during 2020 in two parts in <em>Heritage and Destiny<\/em> magazine<\/a>. Since then it has been given added relevance by Lavrov&#8217;s resurrection of the Hitler\/Jew lie, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/may\/14\/secret-british-black-propaganda-campaign-targeted-cold-war-enemies-information-research-department\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">this weekend&#8217;s <em>Observer<\/em> preview of a forthcoming book about Britain&#8217;s propaganda agency IRD by Professor Rory Cormac<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Irving-with-Churchill-Tommy-gun.jpeg?resize=512%2C512&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-342\" width=\"512\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Irving-with-Churchill-Tommy-gun.jpeg?resize=1024%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Irving-with-Churchill-Tommy-gun.jpeg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Irving-with-Churchill-Tommy-gun.jpeg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Irving-with-Churchill-Tommy-gun.jpeg?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Irving-with-Churchill-Tommy-gun.jpeg?w=1413&amp;ssl=1 1413w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em><strong>David Irving<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Recently opened secret files document how official British propagandists plotted against the controversial historian David Irving during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their anti-Irving campaign was discussed at the highest levels of Whitehall\u2019s most secret departments, all the way up to Prime Minister Harold Wilson. We can now reveal that one of the main overseas contacts of Whitehall propagandists in this anti-Irving campaign was also behind a propaganda lie against Adolf Hitler \u2013 concocted in 1932 \u2013 that still gets recycled to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In May 1968, twenty-three years after Adolf Hitler\u2019s death, the world order imposed after national socialism\u2019s defeat seemed under serious threat for the first time. With students rioting in Paris, the \u2018Prague Spring\u2019 challenging Soviet rule, and the Vietcong daring to strike into Saigon, political establishments were threatened East and West, communist and capitalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Would the world be turned upside down?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two senior Whitehall warriors \u2013 Peter Wright of the Security Service MI5 and Hans Welser of the Foreign Office\u2019s secret propaganda outfit IRD (Information Research Department) \u2013 discussed their latest concern. For several years Wright had been leading a top-level investigation into the secret world\u2019s worst nightmare, the possibility that MI5\u2019s own chief was a Soviet mole. But that wasn\u2019t his main worry at this meeting. He wanted to quiz Welser about a young British historian, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fpp.co.uk\/online\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">David Irving<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Peter-Wright-with-Turnbull.jpeg?resize=525%2C296&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-343\" width=\"525\" height=\"296\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Peter-Wright-with-Turnbull.jpeg?w=700&amp;ssl=1 700w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Peter-Wright-with-Turnbull.jpeg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 525px) 100vw, 525px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Peter Wright of MI5 was one of the senior officers of the British secret state who plotted against David Irving. Wright later became world-famous for his unauthorised memoir <\/em>Spycatcher<em>: he is seen (above right) with his lawyer Malcolm Turnbull (later Prime Minister of Australia).<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>30-year-old Irving had been threatening to resurrect an awkward, long buried story \u2013 the death of Poland\u2019s wartime leader General Sikorski in what was officially termed an accidental plane crash on 4th July 1943. Welser volunteered to bring in \u201ca very old friend\u201d to help with MI5\u2019s Irving problem \u2013 a Swiss-based novelist and journalist called Hans Habe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The IRD propagandist Welser assured MI5: \u201cI have no hesitation whatsoever about his discretion\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>So who was the \u201cdiscreet\u201d Hans Habe, this \u201cvery old friend\u201d of British propagandists?<\/strong>  Before returning to the Irving story, we have to turn the clock back another 36 years. It\u2019s presidential election week in Germany, March 1932. There are four candidates:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>84-year-old Gen. Paul von Hindenburg<\/em>, a Prussian aristocrat who has been President since 1925, still widely respected as Army commander in the First World War;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Adolf Hitler<\/em>, approaching his 43rd birthday, leader of the National Socialist Party that had grown rapidly at the 1930 parliamentary elections to become the second largest in the Reichstag;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Ernst Th\u00e4lmann<\/em>, almost 46 and leader of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party, with core support from about 10% of German voters though shunned by non-Communist leftists and liberals (who in this election are backing Hindenburg);<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>and <em>Theodor Duesterberg<\/em>, 56-year-old middle-class Prussian and leader of the <em>Stahlhelm<\/em> (\u2018steel helmet\u2019), a nationalist paramilitary force linked to the national-conservative DNVP, once briefly allied to Hitler\u2019s national-socialists but now rivals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hitler-1932-campaign-poster.jpeg?resize=375%2C538&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-344\" width=\"375\" height=\"538\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hitler-1932-campaign-poster.jpeg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hitler-1932-campaign-poster.jpeg?resize=209%2C300&amp;ssl=1 209w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 375px) 100vw, 375px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em><strong>A Hitler presidential campaign poster from 1932: the slogan reads \u201cWe shall take the fate of the nation in our hands!\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>When Hindenburg was first elected President seven years earlier, he had the support of most German conservatives (otherwise divided among various parties and factions) \u2013 but about 60% of those who supported the old General in 1925 now back Hitler and his NSDAP. Though his personal standing among older voters, and an unstable coalition of reactionaries, liberals and socialists desperate to stop Hitler, will be enough for the aged President to win re-election, he can\u2019t go on for ever \u2013 and it\u2019s obvious that post-Hindenburg Germany will see a showdown between Adolf Hitler and the Communists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Only one thing can stop Hitler in the medium term: if he can be discredited among some of his own supporters, splitting the National Socialist Party. Significantly, Hitler and his propaganda chief Josef Goebbels had finally discredited their nationalist rival Duesterberg during the 1932 campaign by revealing that Duesterberg\u2019s own grandfather had been born Jewish and had converted to Protestantism way back in 1818.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s little doubt that Duesterberg was himself sincerely anti-Jewish, and was unaware of this aspect of his own ancestry until it was revealed during the campaign. The effect was that most of Duesterberg\u2019s remaining support went over to Hitler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the key facts of German political life in the spring of 1932 were these: sections of the right as well as the left were desperate to discredit Adolf Hitler, and recent events had already proved that the best way to discredit an \u2018antisemitic\u2019 leader was to hint that he might be part-Jewish himself. In Duesterberg\u2019s case this happened to be true; but if the truth doesn\u2019t fit, a lie can serve.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hitler-parents-grave-683x1024-1.jpeg?resize=342%2C512&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-345\" width=\"342\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hitler-parents-grave-683x1024-1.jpeg?w=683&amp;ssl=1 683w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hitler-parents-grave-683x1024-1.jpeg?resize=200%2C300&amp;ssl=1 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 342px) 100vw, 342px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em><strong>The grave of Hitler\u2019s parents: lies and half-truths about his ancestry were concocted by hostile propagandists, beginning in 1932.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>A week before polling day in the presidential election\u2019s first round, one of Vienna\u2019s main weekly papers carried the huge block headline: \u201cHitler\u2019s Name is Schu\u0308cklgruber\u201d (<em>sic<\/em>), revealing for the first time that the NSDAP leader\u2019s father had only adopted the surname Hitler (and become legitimate) when aged 39.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The author of this sensational story was a 21-year-old Hungarian Jew, J\u00e1nos B\u00e9kessy (sometimes spelled Bekessi), whose father had converted to Christianity and moved to Vienna to publish a daily tabloid newspaper, becoming infamous as a blackmailer. J\u00e1nos B\u00e9kessy later changed his name to Hans Habe, and 36 years after his Hitler \u2018expos\u00e9\u2019 he was the very man to whom British propagandists turned when MI5 asked for help in dealing with the troublesome historian David Irving.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hitler\u2019s opponents imported tens of thousands of copies of the paper carrying B\u00e9kessy\u2019s first story, and (as all first-rate propaganda stories do) it triggered a wave of imitators, many adding their own \u2018spin\u2019. By the eve of poll, a Bavarian Catholic paper had joined in, sarcastically hinting that \u201cthe talkative Adolf Hitler is so silent about his ancestors and about how far back his family name goes\u201d. After two rounds of voting, Hindenburg defeated Hitler by 19.4m to 13.4m votes \u2013 but Hitler\u2019s NSDAP became the largest party in the Reichstag at the July 1932 parliamentary election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of Hindenburg\u2019s inner circle \u2013 the younger aristocratic general Kurt von Schleicher \u2013 was main instigator of a scheme to sideline Hitler by constructing a strange cross-factional alliance of conservative reactionaries, \u2018moderate\u2019 socialists, and \u2018radical\u2019 rivals within Hitler\u2019s own party. The latter included Gregor Strasser, the party\u2019s former national organiser and former publisher of the main party newspaper, and Ernst R\u00f6hm, head of the SA \u2018stormtroopers\u2019 who had carried the fight to the Communists on German streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Schleicher was defeated by a rival faction. Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, but still faced powerful opponents not only on the left but (more importantly) on the reactionary right and even potentially from radicals within his own party. Most important of all, Hitler\u2019s central aim of re-uniting the Germanic peoples by incorporating Austria within the Reich was bitterly opposed by Catholic reactionaries in Vienna \u2013 many of whom were sincerely anti-Jewish as well as \u2018anti-Nazi\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Habe-Bekessi-768x768-1.jpeg?resize=384%2C384&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-347\" width=\"384\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Habe-Bekessi-768x768-1.jpeg?w=768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Habe-Bekessi-768x768-1.jpeg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Habe-Bekessi-768x768-1.jpeg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Anti-Hitler Jewish propagandist J\u00e1nos B\u00e9kessy (above) \u2013 later known as Hans Habe \u2013 was the original author of tales that are still propagated today by conspiracist cranks including David Icke.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>It was in this context that J\u00e1nos B\u00e9kessy (not yet calling himself Hans Habe, and by now editor of the <em>Austrian Evening News<\/em>) published a whole series of increasingly lurid stories during July 1933, now openly stating that there was not only illegitimacy but Jewish blood in Hitler\u2019s ancestry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>B\u00e9kessy\u2019s headlines included \u2018Awesome Traces of the Hitler Jews in Vienna\u2019 and \u2018Hitler\u2019s Jewishness Officially Confirmed!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of B\u00e9kessy\u2019s fables \u2013 the wholly baseless suggestion that the Fu\u0308hrer\u2019s grandmother was a Jewess from Polna named Klara Hitler \u2013 was picked up by Hitler\u2019s first biographer Konrad Heiden in 1936, and occasionally gets repeated by later writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, was there any grain of truth in this farrago? The canard about Adolf Hitler\u2019s Jewish ancestry stems from the fact that his father was born illegitimate as Alois Schicklgruber, only adopting the name Hitler as part of his legitimation in 1876 when he was already 39 years old, though this was thirteen years before Adolf Hitler\u2019s birth. There\u2019s nothing especially suspicious or unusual about illegitimacy in one\u2019s family background, but it\u2019s understandable that Hitler later found it embarrassing and for this reason alone would have discouraged research or publicity concerning his ancestry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another mildly embarrassing feature of his family history was that Adolf Hitler\u2019s own mother was already several months pregnant when she and his father were married. This child later died in infancy, as did two other older siblings of Adolf Hitler, as well as his 5-year-old younger brother. But nothing here indicates secret Jewish ancestry; neither was there anything unusual in the 19th century about variant spellings of surnames.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adolf Hitler\u2019s parents grew up as near neighbours in a village called Spital, close to what is now the Austrian-Czech border. (In those days Bohemia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.) They were distant relatives \u2013 probably first cousins once removed \u2013 again not unusual in small towns and villages, then or now, though often sniggered about by more sophisticated folk.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Alois-703x1024-1.jpeg?resize=352%2C512&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-348\" width=\"352\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Alois-703x1024-1.jpeg?w=703&amp;ssl=1 703w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Alois-703x1024-1.jpeg?resize=206%2C300&amp;ssl=1 206w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 352px) 100vw, 352px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Adolf Hitler\u2019s father Alois, whose complicated family background provided ammunition for conspiracists and propagandist liars.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Though we will never know for certain, the legitimation process in 1876 was very likely for tax purposes, since Alois Schicklgruber\u2019s foster-father was a reasonably wealthy farmer who knew that Alois would have to pay less tax on his inheritance once legally recognised as a blood relative. Perhaps the foster father (who spelled his name Hu\u0308ttler) was also Alois\u2019s true father; or perhaps as stated on the legal forms, it was Hu\u0308ttler\u2019s elder and deceased brother, a much poorer miller\u2019s assistant who spelled his name Hiedler. On the official notary\u2019s forms, Alois Schicklgruber ended up with his new surname spelled Hitler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What we still don\u2019t know for certain is the identity of Alois Schicklgruber\u2019s biological father (i.e. Adolf Hitler\u2019s paternal grandfather), though it seems very likely it was one of the Hiedler\/Hu\u0308ttler brothers. One fable often repeated is that Alois\u2019s true father was a Jewish merchant from Graz in whose house Alois\u2019s mother Marie Anna Schicklgruber had been employed as a maid, but there is not the slightest evidence that she ever left the rural Waldviertel region \u2013 certainly not to travel more than 150 miles to Graz, let alone work there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The crank conspiracy theorist David Icke has publicised a particularly extreme fringe version of this story, in which the Graz merchant is named as a member of the Rothschild family. Throwing that name around helps sell books and attracts attention online, but doesn\u2019t change the basic fact that (even if we ignore the extreme unlikelihood of Frau\u0308lein Schicklgruber ever having been in Graz) there were no Jewish households in Graz \u2013 let alone Rothschild households \u2013 at the relevant time. Jews were not allowed to settle in Graz or the wider Styria region until 1849.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While awaiting trial and execution at Nuremberg, the former governor general of Poland and \u2018war criminal\u2019 Hans Frank published a version of this story, naming the merchant as Frankenberger (though historians have since established that there was no Frankenberger family in Graz \u2013 even a gentile one \u2013 during the 1830s). We can only guess at Frank\u2019s motives for concocting this tale, which was obviously based on the earlier propaganda line spun by J\u00e1nos B\u00e9kessy\/Habe during 1932-33.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However it might be significant that by the time Hans Frank was writing his memoirs, the renamed Hans Habe was setting up a series of eighteen official newspapers across the US occupied zone of Germany in partnership with a German-Jewish journalist Hans Wallenberg, who like Habe had served with the US Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The blackmailer\u2019s son had flourished in exile during the 1930s and the war years. The second and third of his eventual six wives were Hungarian light-bulb heiress Erika Levy and American cereal heiress Eleanor Post Hutton. The US President\u2019s wife Eleanor Roosevelt was godmother to Habe\u2019s son by this third marriage. By 1944 Habe was an instructor at the US Psychological Warfare Division\u2019s Camp Sharpe, based on the old Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg. A year later he was putting the lessons into practice across US-occupied Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Within a few years the Second World War had morphed into the Cold War, with some of the same propagandists involved, but here the documentary record becomes patchy, with many official records still unavailable.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hans-Welser-768x904-1.jpeg?resize=384%2C452&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-349\" width=\"384\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hans-Welser-768x904-1.jpeg?w=768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hans-Welser-768x904-1.jpeg?resize=255%2C300&amp;ssl=1 255w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em><strong>Hans Welser, Swiss-born British propagandist who first worked on secret rumour campaigns during the Second World War; by the 1960s and 1970s Welser was a senior officer of the secret British agency IRD.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>What we do now know is that Hans Habe, who settled in Ascona close to the Swiss-Italian border in 1953, had become a trusted friend of Hans Welser, a young British propagandist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welser was originally from Geneva but became engaged to an Englishwoman in 1939, aged 23. Papers about his naturalisation as a British citizen are set to remain secret until 2077, but we know he was recruited to British intelligence by a senior wartime figure, Leslie Sheridan, with whom Welser had an unusual and lifelong association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sheridan was a prewar journalist turned barrister who became head of the press\/propaganda section for Section D of MI6 as the Second World War approached. Section D eventually grew into the Special Operations Executive, with Sheridan and his wife Adelaide among its most senior officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the Foreign Office created a secret propaganda unit to fight the Cold War against Stalin in 1948, this new \u2018Information Research Department\u2019 was staffed by wartime veterans of MI6, SOE and its spin-off PWE \u2013 including the Sheridans and Welser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By 1961 Sheridan was assistant head of IRD, and the following year he literally swapped wives with his colleague Welser: still in a senior role herself at IRD until retiring in 1970, Adelaide Sheridan was now Mrs Welser. These personal details are important, because the department\u2019s link with Hans Habe was evidently personal rather than a matter of office routine: the Sheridans, the Welsers and Habe shared some of the innermost secrets of the Second World War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Having previously served Austrian and German conservatives, then the Americans, in their propaganda war against Adolf Hitler, Hans Habe became a secret servant of IRD. His ancestral loyalties were never abandoned: in 1965 as \u2018Holocaust\u2019 history was becoming more widely promoted, Habe wrote a fictionalised account of the 1938 Evian Conference, which he had attended as a journalist. Under the title <em>The Mission<\/em>, this described the failed attempt at Evian to find countries willing to accept German Jewish emigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the late \u201960s, Habe shared British propagandists\u2019 concern that Soviet intelligence might try to exploit aspects of Second World War history that embarrassed the West. Newly released documents indicate that David Irving and his German associate Rolf Hochhuth were seen in this light.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Leslie-Sheridan.jpeg?resize=311%2C498&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-350\" width=\"311\" height=\"498\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Leslie-Sheridan.jpeg?w=621&amp;ssl=1 621w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Leslie-Sheridan.jpeg?resize=187%2C300&amp;ssl=1 187w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 311px) 100vw, 311px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Leslie Sheridan, a senior officer of wartime \u2018dirty tricks\u2019 agency SOE, was among the founders of postwar propaganda agency IRD.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>We already knew fragments of this story from two documents (one from Wilson\u2019s Downing Street, another from the Air Ministry) that were released in time for Irving to include an appendix to his <em>Churchill\u2019s War, Vol. II<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fpp.co.uk\/History\/Sikorski\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">plus updates on his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The difference now is that we have a substantial block of files from IRD itself, which has become the latest of Britain\u2019s secret organisations to open at least some of its archive to researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A main reason for the British secret state\u2019s extreme interest in David Irving at the end of the 1960s was his investigation into the death of Gen. W\u0142adys\u0142aw Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish Government-in-Exile. Poland had been swiftly defeated in 1939 and its territory divided between Germany and the Soviet Union. Sikorski and other fugitive military and political figures formed a government in exile, first in Paris, then escaping again to a new base in London (at the Rubens Hotel near Buckingham Palace) in May 1940.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the short-lived \u2018Nazi-Soviet Pact\u2019 collapsed in the summer of 1941, Sikorski and his fellow Polish exiles were left in a difficult position. Their British host Winston Churchill swiftly declared Stalin\u2019s Soviet Union an ally. Though the invasion of Polish territory was officially the reason for Britain and France declaring war on Germany in 1939, they had always chosen to ignore the parallel Red Army invasion. To attack Poland from the West was a <em>casus belli<\/em>, to attack from the East was (like the Soviet attack on Finland) not a serious concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sikorski (unlike some more resolutely anti-communist colleagues) accepted diplomatic reality: though continuing to resist Soviet plans for postwar seizure of previously Polish territory, he broadly accepted Churchill\u2019s line that the priority was to defeat Germany. However this face-saving formula collapsed in mid-April 1943 when German authorities released clear proof that the Soviets were responsible for the butchery of 22,000 Polish officers and intellectual leaders, buried in the Katyn Forest and other locations during April-May 1940. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.heritageanddestiny.com\/publications\/journal\/hd-back-issues-1-40\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">See my review of the film <em>Katyn<\/em> in <em>Heritage and Destiny<\/em> Issue 39.<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The official British line was once again to ignore Stalin\u2019s crimes, but this time Sikorski refused to go along with convenient lies and evasions. Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations were broken off at the end of April 1943, though both countries remained allies of the British Empire in its war against Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"493\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Sikorski-Churchill.jpeg?resize=500%2C493&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-352\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Sikorski-Churchill.jpeg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Sikorski-Churchill.jpeg?resize=300%2C296&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Polish exile leader Gen. W\u0142adys\u0142aw Sikorski (above right) with Winston Churchill and the PM\u2019s wife Clementine.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>It was against this exceptionally tense background that Sikorski travelled to the Middle East at the end of May 1943, visiting Polish forces based in the region. For obvious geographical reasons, many fugitive Poles had made their way to French or British-controlled territory in the Middle East after their defeat in 1939. These included not only soldiers and airmen, but a significant group of secret warriors including most famously <a href=\"https:\/\/www.english-heritage.org.uk\/visit\/blue-plaques\/granville-christine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the SOE recruit \u2018Christine Granville\u2019 (Krystyna Skarbek)<\/a>. Bitter factional divisions among these Poles were evident both in the Middle East and in London, and Sikorski hoped to settle some of these problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During his return journey, Sikorski\u2019s plane stopped in Gibraltar. Soon after taking off again on 4th July 1943, the plane crashed into the sea. Sikorski and (apparently) all on board \u2013 except for the pilot \u2013 were killed. The sixteen victims included Sikorski\u2019s daughter, his chief of staff, and two Conservative MPs, Victor Cazalet and John Whiteley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>David Irving wasn\u2019t the first to question whether Sikorski\u2019s death was accident or murder \u2013 the accusation was (perhaps predictably) made within hours on a Berlin radio broadcast, and the German newspaper <em>V\u00f6lkischer Beobachter<\/em> carried the headline \u201cThe Last Victim of Katyn! Sikorski murdered by London\u201d \u2013 but he was the first to produce an entire book examining the mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Accident: The Death of General Sikorski<\/em> was published by William Kimber in 1967, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fpp.co.uk\/books\/Accident\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">is available from Irving\u2019s website www.fpp.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Irving had investigated the Sikorski case at the request of German playwright Rolf Hochhuth. Their friendship was unusual, since Irving had been associated with \u2018right-wing\u2019 politics since his student days, whereas Hochhuth was very much a man of the left. In 1962 Hochhuth became famous for his first play <em>Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel<\/em> translated into English as <em>The Representative \u2013 A Christian Tragedy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Irving-Accident-684x1024-1.jpeg?resize=342%2C512&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-353\" width=\"342\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Irving-Accident-684x1024-1.jpeg?w=684&amp;ssl=1 684w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Irving-Accident-684x1024-1.jpeg?resize=200%2C300&amp;ssl=1 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 342px) 100vw, 342px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The play implied that wartime Pope Pius XII turned a blind eye to the \u2018Holocaust\u2019 of European Jewry, and focuses on the alleged effort by SS officer Kurt Gerstein to inform the world (via the Vatican) about the mass murder of Jews. (Gerstein was an SS specialist in disinfestation methods used to protect concentration camps against the threat of typhus, spread by lice. Zyklon-B was the standard method of destroying lice, though in \u2018Holocaust\u2019 mythology it is claimed to have been used to poison Jews in homicidal \u2018gas chambers\u2019. <a href=\"http:\/\/vho.org\/GB\/Journals\/JHR\/8\/1\/Roques5-23.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Inconsistencies in Gerstein\u2019s story were explored in a doctoral dissertation by French revisionist Henri Roques.<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hochhuth was certainly not a \u2018Holocaust denier\u2019 \u2013 if anything his first play was at the opposite extreme, seeking to tar the Vatican with a \u2018Holocaust\u2019 stain. For that matter Irving had not yet written about the \u2018Holocaust\u2019, or particularly about Jews, though Jewish extremists had discerned \u2018anti-semitism\u2019 in his work, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fpp.co.uk\/docs\/people\/Gable\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">leading young communist Gerry Gable (now editor of <em>Searchlight<\/em>) and a fellow criminal to con their way into Irving\u2019s flat in November 1963, seeking to steal documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite their differences, Irving and Hochhuth became friends after first meeting in January 1965 at the offices of Irving\u2019s German publisher. They shared a common interest (though from opposing political standpoints) in exposing hypocrisies that already suffused Western orthodoxy about the Second World War, an orthodoxy that was increasingly enshrined almost as a religion rather than normal, evidence-based history.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hochhuth-Irving.jpeg?resize=413%2C389&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-354\" width=\"413\" height=\"389\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hochhuth-Irving.jpeg?w=550&amp;ssl=1 550w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hochhuth-Irving.jpeg?resize=300%2C283&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 413px) 100vw, 413px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>A young David Irving (above left) with Rolf Hochhuth<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>In 1967 Hochhuth completed a second, even more controversial play \u2013 <em>Soldaten: Nekrolog auf Genf<\/em> (translated into English as <em>Soldiers \u2013 An Obituary for Geneva<\/em>). His intention was to mark the centenary of the First Geneva Convention, which was the first of many attempts to establish international law regulating the conduct of modern warfare, and while Hochhuth\u2019s earlier target had been the Pope, this time he had an even more sanctified icon in his sights \u2013 Winston Churchill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The new play portrayed Churchill and his main scientific adviser Prof. Frederick Lindemann (later Lord Cherwell) in a negative light relating to the British strategic bombing of German towns and cities that had deliberately targeted civilians, most infamously in the February 1945 destruction of Dresden. No doubt because of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fpp.co.uk\/books\/Dresden\/Dresden_1995.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Irving\u2019s famous book on this subject<\/a>, Hochhuth asked for his help in researching the second central topic of his new play \u2013 the suggestion that Churchill had ordered Sikorski\u2019s murder so as to preserve the alliance with Stalin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was no small matter \u2013 aided by his earlier success, Hochhuth had managed to attract London\u2019s National Theatre to stage the premiere of <em>Soldiers<\/em>. This promised to be a dramatic, political and diplomatic sensation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the help of secret files released at the start of 2020, which I examined just in time before the National Archives went into Covid-19 lockdown, we can trace the progress of Whitehall\u2019s panic reaction to this Hochhuth-Irving enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hochhuth had visited the Polish Institute at Princes Gate, near Kensington Palace, during the summer of 1966. The Institute was run by leading anti-communist Poles, including old colleagues of Sikorski such as the exile government\u2019s defence minister Gen. Kukiel. It housed many of the exile government\u2019s papers, including the report of a Polish commission of inquiry into the Gibraltar crash. Unlike the parallel British enquiry, this Polish investigation refused to rule out sabotage and pointed out lapses in security at the airfield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the end of December 1966 Gen. Kukiel contacted the formidable Miss Sophie Teichfeld, half-Polish head of the Foreign Office research department dealing with Polish affairs, to warn her (a) that Hochhuth had borrowed certain material from the Institute which he hadn\u2019t returned, and (b) that someone from the National Theatre had now telephoned the Institute, confidentially checking on allegations that Hochhuth was making in his draft of the new play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gen. Kukiel was now panicking, and hoped that the British authorities would be able to intervene to halt the play\u2019s production.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Kukiel.jpeg?resize=321%2C420&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-355\" width=\"321\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Kukiel.jpeg?w=428&amp;ssl=1 428w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Kukiel.jpeg?resize=229%2C300&amp;ssl=1 229w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 321px) 100vw, 321px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Gen. Marian Kukiel, Sikorski\u2019s defence minister in the wartime exile government, was director of the Polish Institute in Kensington where David Irving and Rolf Hochhuth researched the Sikorski \u2018accident\u2019.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>During January 1967 senior civil servants (including Robin Cecil, who had been assistant to MI6 chief Sir Stewart Menzies at the time of Sikorski\u2019s death) discussed how to handle the case and agreed it would be counter-productive to approach the National Theatre directly. Its literary manager Kenneth Tynan was, Cecil warned, a notoriously \u201c\u2018anti-establishment\u2019 figure, who would be only too happy to twist the tail of the Foreign Office. Moreover, he would be almost certain to ensure that our approach, however discreetly it was made, attracted publicity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On matters of this kind the NT\u2019s director Sir Laurence Olivier would be loyal to Tynan who at the time, in the words of his Oxford contemporary Paul Johnson, \u201cprobably had more influence than anyone else in world theatre\u201d. If anyone were to be contacted, Cecil suggested it should be Sir Ashley Clarke, a retired diplomat who had handled several secret intelligence liaison roles during the war and was now a member of the National Theatre board, as well as chairman of the Royal Academy of Dancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cecil wrote this minute on 4th January. Five days later Sir Ashley and his colleagues, notably board chairman Lord Chandos (the former Oliver Lyttelton who had been in Churchill\u2019s cabinet at the time of the Sikorski crash) held a meeting where they effectively decided to go over the heads of Tynan and Olivier, cancelling the proposed production. Since they had only seen two-thirds of the script, Olivier persuaded the board to delay a final decision for a few months until Hochhuth completed his text, but this did nothing to change the board\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They told the press: \u201cA play which imputes the murder of Gen. Sikorski to Sir Winston Churchill at the instigation of Lord Cherwell is not a suitable play for the National Theatre. An imputation of this kind could not have the cachet of the National Theatre upon it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interviewed by his old newspaper <em>The Observer<\/em>, Tynan was reluctant to give away Hochhuth\u2019s conclusions, but said <em>Soldiers<\/em> had two subjects:<br>\u201cThe chief of these is the whole question of area-bombing \u2013 not just the Dresden raid \u2013 the deliberate bombing of civilians, which was begun by this country. And the other is connected with the death of Sikorski. So it\u2019s a play about an individual death on the one hand and a large number of indiscriminate killings on the other. Both are thought by the author to have been engaged in for the greater good \u2013 the defeat of Hitler. The question he raises is whether the British were justified, and whether such actions would be justified in the world situation now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hochhuth has consistently maintained that he \u201cknew\u201d the British murdered Sikorski, because a veteran MI6 officer had confessed to him, but he said that he had sealed this confession in a Swiss bank vault from which it would not be released for fifty years. We still don\u2019t know the identity of Hochhuth\u2019s informant. However, based on what I know from other Polish and British sources a likely culprit is Moses Shapiro, alias Edward Szarkiewicz, alias Edward Dunlop, a counter-intelligence officer who had carried out special missions (including murder) for the British naval intelligence chief in Istanbul, Vladimir Wolfson, and the head of British intelligence in the Middle East, Brig. Raymund Maunsell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Szarkiewicz almost certainly could not have carried out the Gibraltar sabotage personally, but is likely to have been Hochhuth&#8217;s anonymous informant, either telling the truth about his role as MI6 conspirator or as part of a mischievious agenda.)<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Vladimir-Wolfson.jpeg?resize=273%2C446&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-356\" width=\"273\" height=\"446\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Vladimir-Wolfson.jpeg?w=546&amp;ssl=1 546w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Vladimir-Wolfson.jpeg?resize=184%2C300&amp;ssl=1 184w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 273px) 100vw, 273px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em><strong>Vladimir Wolfson, British naval intelligence chief in Istanbul, for whom Polish-Jewish agent Moses Shapiro (alias Edward Szarkiewicz<\/strong><\/em>) <em><strong>carried out assassination missions.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The full story of intrigue within the Polish exile government (which also included early versions of \u2018Holocaust\u2019 propaganda, and a plot to assassinate Rudolf Hess) will be explored at greater length as part of a forthcoming book. This article however is concerned not directly with events in 1943, but with the British propaganda response to Irving in (and after) 1967.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Banned by the National Theatre, Hochhuth tried to interest other London theatres, meanwhile arranging for the play to be premiered in Berlin in October 1967. Behind the scenes Lord Chandos and fellow survivors of Churchill\u2019s wartime inner circle plotted to discredit the entire project. In classic fashion, they seem to have recruited a \u2018deniable\u2019 asset, someone who could be portrayed as entirely independent and acting on his own perhaps eccentric initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>The second half of this article was published in <\/em>Heritage and Destiny<em> Issue 97 and detailed the operation to rescue Churchill\u2019s reputation in the late \u201960s and early \u201970s, including manipulation of libel actions by IRD\u2019s secret servants. One of the main characters in the saga, German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, died just after Issue 96 went to press.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Carlos-Thompson-and-Lana-Turner.jpeg?resize=270%2C338&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-358\" width=\"270\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Carlos-Thompson-and-Lana-Turner.jpeg?w=540&amp;ssl=1 540w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Carlos-Thompson-and-Lana-Turner.jpeg?resize=240%2C300&amp;ssl=1 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Carlos Thompson, an Argentine bit-part actor, acted as an undercover agent to undermine David Irving\u2019s work on the Sikorski case. Thompson is seen above left with Lana Turner in one of his few Hollywood films, <\/em>Flame and the Flesh<em> (1954).<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>In response to David Irving\u2019s revelations about the mysterious death of exiled Polish leader Gen. Sikorski, relatives and former colleagues of Winston Churchill worked with an undercover agent, seeking to discredit the British historian and his German collaborator, playwright Rolf Hochhuth, whose controversial play <em>Soldiers<\/em> had portrayed Churchill as having ordered Sikorski\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This pro-Churchill undercover agent was Carlos Thompson, a bit-part actor from Argentina married to the much better known actress Lilli Palmer. Born in Germany and of partly Jewish origin, Lilli Palmer had previously been married to the British film star Rex Harrison. She and Thompson were social acquaintances of many stage and screen luminaries, including Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quayle \u2013 who just happened to have been a military aide to Gen. Noel Mason-Macfarlane, British Governor of Gibraltar at the time of Sikorski\u2019s fatal crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thompson soon became \u2013 like Hans Habe \u2013 a secret contact of the Foreign Office IRD (Information Research Department) propaganda officer Hans Welser, though he was regarded by some more orthodox diplomats as (at best) eccentric and unreliable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first trace of Thompson in Foreign Office files is in the autumn of 1967. First he turned up in Belgrade, with a letter of introduction from Olivier and seeking British Embassy help to contact Milovan Djilas, the famous Yugoslav communist partisan leader who was now a dissident. Djilas had written some years earlier about a wartime conversation with Stalin, in which the latter had asked him to pass on a warning to Djilas\u2019s colleague Tito (later Yugoslav dictator) that the British might kill him, as they had supposedly killed Sikorski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few weeks later Thompson turned up at the Foreign Office, with strings pulled for him at the highest level. Former Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd telephoned the head of the Diplomatic Service, asking him to meet Thompson the same day for discussions about the Hochhuth play. Senior British mandarins do not normally make time at short notice to meet bit-part Argentine actors, but they do if a former Foreign Secretary has asked them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(It might be significant that Lloyd himself, at the time of the Sikorski crash, was a staff officer touring the Mediterranean on a high level mission, passing through Gibraltar on his way to Algiers. Lloyd is most infamous as Foreign Secretary for having negotiated the secret \u2018S\u00e8vres Protocol\u2019 in 1956 with the French and Israelis, so as to provide a false pretext for the disastrous Suez intervention.)<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Tynan-Olivier.jpeg?resize=390%2C260&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-359\" width=\"390\" height=\"260\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Tynan-Olivier.jpeg?w=780&amp;ssl=1 780w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Tynan-Olivier.jpeg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Tynan-Olivier.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 390px) 100vw, 390px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Kenneth Tynan (above left with Sir Laurence Olivier) was then the most influential figure in world theatre, but his wish to stage Hochhuth\u2019s controversial play about Sikorski was overruled by influential pro-Churchill establishment figures.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Thompson claimed that during the previous winter Olivier had consulted him about the play, which he had not been keen to produce \u201cbut was virtually blackmailed\u201d into doing so by Tynan. Thompson had acted as interpreter during a meeting in the summer at Olivier\u2019s house, involving Hochhuth, Olivier and Tynan. He claimed that he had become suspicious of Hochhuth around this time and had decided to launch a one-man covert mission to expose him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At some stage Thompson had been recruited semi-officially by veterans of the Churchill era political-military-intelligence world. Though the exact course of events is far from clear, he pretended to be assisting Hochhuth and Irving, sometimes secretly recording their conversations, while actually collaborating with Churchill\u2019s military intelligence chief Gen. Frederick Beaumont-Nesbitt and Joan Bright Astley, organiser of the Secret Intelligence Centre in Churchill\u2019s Cabinet War Rooms \u2013 on whom Ian Fleming based his \u2018Miss Moneypenny\u2019 character in the James Bond novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Soon after the play\u2019s Berlin premiere, the Foreign Office liaised with MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, discussing the theory being pushed by Thompson that Hochhuth was \u201cconsciously or unconsciously an East European agent\u201d and that \u201c<em>Soldiers<\/em> is a vast conspiracy to damage the West\u201d, involving any or all of Hochhuth, Irving, and the play\u2019s translator David MacDonald (co-founder of the Glasgow Citizens\u2019 Theatre).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The head of the Foreign Office, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, who himself had a wartime intelligence liaison role in Washington at the time of the Sikorski crash, took the unusual step of intervening in his department\u2019s correspondence with MI5 to harden the departmental line:<br>\u201cHaving now seen Messrs Hochhuth, Tynan and (especially) Irving on the television, I feel that there is something nasty and a bit sinister behind this whole business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Irving\u2019s book <em>Accident<\/em> was published to coincide with the Berlin production of Hochhuth\u2019s play, but publisher William Kimber insisted on making unauthorised alterations to the text: Irving placed an announcement in <em>The Times<\/em> dissociating himself from these passages in the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arguably an even greater problem for Irving in the long term was the nature of his collaboration with Hochhuth \u2013 not so much because of Hochhuth\u2019s left-wing politics as because the roles of dramatist and historian are so different. Hochhuth allowed himself license to present definite conclusions for which there was insufficient evidence, whereas Irving confined himself to raising questions and presenting such evidence as he could acquire.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hochhuth-Soldiers.jpeg?resize=354%2C512&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-360\" width=\"354\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hochhuth-Soldiers.jpeg?resize=707%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 707w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hochhuth-Soldiers.jpeg?resize=207%2C300&amp;ssl=1 207w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hochhuth-Soldiers.jpeg?resize=768%2C1112&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Hochhuth-Soldiers.jpeg?w=881&amp;ssl=1 881w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 354px) 100vw, 354px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Official suspicions of a Soviet dirty tricks operation were no doubt hardened when Hochhuth managed to secure a production of the English-language version of <em>Soldiers<\/em>, first in Toronto, then on Broadway, then in Dublin, and eventually in December 1968 at London\u2019s New Theatre (now the Noel Coward Theatre) on St Martin\u2019s Lane. The producer was young half-Jewish impresario Michael White, who specialised in putting on \u2018scandalous\u2019 work, famously working with Tynan on the controversial erotic revue <em>Oh! Calcutta!<\/em> and later producing <em>The Rocky Horror Show<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Richard Burton had wanted to play Churchill in <em>Soldiers<\/em> and be Tynan\u2019s co-director. However his wife Elizabeth Taylor insisted Burton should have nothing to do with the production: her godfather Victor Cazalet, a Tory MP and homosexual socialite, had been one of Sikorski\u2019s fellow passengers who died in the Gibraltar crash. In 1974 soon after the collapse of his marriage to Taylor, Burton did get to play Churchill in a television drama, and made outspoken attacks on the former PM in several articles and interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Within days of the London production of <em>Soldiers<\/em>, and having discussed the Irving-Hochhuth problem with MI5, Hans Welser of IRD went to Switzerland to meet with his old friend Hans Habe, later reporting back that: \u201cHans thought that there was no doubt that Hochhuth was being used by somebody and incidentally was raring to go ahead and tear him to pieces. I did not pursue but if ever we want to have a go, here is an outlet in the person of a well-known German writer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The British state and the Churchill family did want to \u201chave a go\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not content with having prevented the National Theatre from staging the play, Lord Chandos resumed his attack in a private letter to the head of the Diplomatic Service. Now Chandos was asking about one of the continuing mysteries of Sikorski\u2019s plane crash \u2013 a suggestion that there had been highly secret bags of papers on board that the Foreign Office had been anxious to recover from the wreckage. A minute by Christopher Ewart-Biggs (later murdered by the IRA), Foreign Office adviser to the Chief of MI6, suggested that there had indeed been an SOE bag on board and that \u201csteps were taken to recover it\u201d, though official sources later retracted and denied this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ewart-Biggs added that someone whose name is censored from the archived document \u2013 but who was almost certainly either retiring MI6 Chief Sir Dick White or his successor Sir John Rennie \u2013 was \u201ctaking a (benevolent) interest in his activities against Hochhuth and Irving\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A tightly-knit circle of veteran Churchill aides had also mobilised, organising a joint letter to <em>The Times<\/em> denouncing Hochhuth and Irving. These included John Peck, Churchill\u2019s private secretary and later head of IRD; Sir Desmond Morton, the former MI6 officer who had leaked secrets to Churchill during his 1930s \u2018wilderness years\u2019 and later became his closest adviser on intelligence matters; and Sir Charles \u2018Peter\u2019 Portal, Chief of the Air Staff for most of the Second World War.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Churchill-staff.jpeg?resize=413%2C564&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-361\" width=\"413\" height=\"564\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Churchill-staff.jpeg?w=550&amp;ssl=1 550w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Churchill-staff.jpeg?resize=219%2C300&amp;ssl=1 219w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 413px) 100vw, 413px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Winston Churchill with members of his wartime staff, many of whom held senior roles in late 1960s Britain and worked closely together to undermine David Irving\u2019s investigations.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Sir Dick White \u2013 the only man ever to have been in charge of both MI5 and MI6 (at different times) and then Whitehall\u2019s Intelligence Coordinator, at the very apex of the secret state \u2013 had already reported to the head of the Civil Service that there were \u201csome fairly tricky angles\u201d to the Hochhuth-Irving saga. On 9th January 1969 he held a meeting with MI5\u2019s Peter Wright and Lord Rothschild (long since officially retired from the secret world, but who had been responsible for counter-sabotage work with MI5 during the war years). Senior MI6 officer Brian Stewart (father of future MP and Conservative leadership candidate Rory Stewart) was present as secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rothschild remembered that two frogmen with long experience of highly secret work \u2013 Bill Bailey and Lionel \u2018Buster\u2019 Crabb \u2013 had been involved in the salvage operation, diving down to Sikorski\u2019s wrecked plane. Gossip in theatrical circles about these frogmen\u2019s role had already reached the Foreign Office, via Carlos Thompson. Meanwhile Prime Minister Harold Wilson was asked about the affair in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Again this was almost certainly an \u2018inspired\u2019 or planted parliamentary question \u2013 a frequently used device when a secret department wants to get some story (true or false) into the public domain. Significantly the question was put by Woodrow Wyatt, a Labour backbencher who had close links to IRD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his secret report to the Prime Minister, Sir Dick White described Irving as \u201ca young and prolific British historian, with known Fascist leanings. He has published other books on the war which are critical of British leadership and tend to show the Germans in a good light.\u201d However he admitted that Irving \u201chas clearly done a good deal of research among people involved in the Gibraltar arrangements and the Court of Enquiry and among United States and Polish<em> \u00e9migr\u00e9<\/em> archives. It is clear from the book that Irving had access to a copy of the record of the Court of Enquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Sir-Dick-White.jpeg?resize=255%2C358&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-362\" width=\"255\" height=\"358\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Sir-Dick-White.jpeg?w=340&amp;ssl=1 340w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Sir-Dick-White.jpeg?resize=214%2C300&amp;ssl=1 214w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 255px) 100vw, 255px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em><strong>Sir Dick White<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Sir Dick continued: \u201cIt should also be recorded that a KGB defector alleged two or three years ago that Sikorski was murdered by the NKVD [<em>Soviet intelligence, later known as the KGB<\/em>]. The defector has not, however, been willing to enlarge on this claim or to produce any supporting evidence. If his information were true it would mean that the Russians would be operating from a position of strength because they would know exactly what had happened at Gibraltar. (This defector report is extremely delicate and no mention or hint of it should be made publicly.) The close association between Hochhuth and the right-wing Irving could be explained by a temporary coincidence of interests between opposing political extremes. Alternatively, it has been suggested that their interests are purely commercial. We have no firm knowledge how the association began except that Irving has said publicly that he met Hochhuth in Hamburg the day Churchill died. The best guess is that it started in Germany, where both men are known to have spent a lot of time researching, especially in German archives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He assured the Prime Minister that a detailed search of British official records had shown no \u201cevidence, however tenuous, that we might in some way have envisaged or planned Gen. Sikorski\u2019s death\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was, however, one highly significant exception to this search. \u201cSOE files, which are incomplete and unreliably ordered, have not been examined; but Gen. Gubbins, who was Head of SOE and very close to the Poles, has been consulted and said he is certain that there were no SOE proposals to assassinate him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>In other words the very department most likely to have carried out an operation of this kind \u2013 the Special Operations Executive (SOE) \u2013 was the only department whose records had not been examined for Sir Dick\u2019s enquiry!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Bickham-Sweet-Escott.jpeg?resize=303%2C386&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-363\" width=\"303\" height=\"386\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Bickham-Sweet-Escott.jpeg?w=404&amp;ssl=1 404w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Bickham-Sweet-Escott.jpeg?resize=235%2C300&amp;ssl=1 235w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 303px) 100vw, 303px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em><strong>Bickham Sweet-Escott<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>A very senior SOE officer, Bickham Sweet-Escott, had been implicated by Hochhuth, based partly on a handwritten entry in the desk diary of Gen. Mason-Macfarlane, discovered by Irving. On the very day of Sikorski\u2019s fatal crash, Mason-Macfarlane appeared to have noted an appointment with a \u201cSweet Escot\u201d [sic]. Irving knew that just seven months earlier SOE had been responsible for the assassination in Algiers of Vichy France\u2019s Prime Minister, Admiral Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Darlan. On checking Sweet-Escott\u2019s recently published memoir <em>Baker Street Irregular<\/em>, Irving discovered that he had travelled to Algiers in early July 1943, and it seemed likely he had flown via Gibraltar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, Sweet-Escott consistently denied this and denied ever having met Mason-Macfarlane, let alone having anything to do with Sikorski\u2019s death. Irving knew his evidence would be insufficient to defend a libel action. Indeed Sweet-Escott went on to sue Hochhuth, his publisher, and leading German publications including <em>Die Welt<\/em> and <em>Der Spiegel<\/em> who had been unwise enough to repeat Hochhuth\u2019s explicit charge of his involvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nevertheless the apparent handwritten reference to Sweet-Escott in the Governor\u2019s diary remains unexplained, and it is extraordinary that the one organisation whose records were not examined in Sir Dick White\u2019s enquiry was SOE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>We now know that Sweet-Escott was part of the AD Directorate, a small group of officers near the top of SOE about whom I have acquired extensive knowledge from public and private sources. Sweet-Escott was assigned the symbol AD\/1, while AD\/4 was Leslie Sheridan, the propaganda chief whose star recruits Hans Welser and Hans Habe were (a quarter-century later) at the centre of the campaign against Irving and Hochhuth.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sir Dick White\u2019s report to the Prime Minister concluded by repeating earlier recommendations that there should be absolutely no official response to the Hochhuth-Irving allegations. Instead, Whitehall should continue its approach of giving \u201ca limited amount of strictly unattributable help and encouragement to those whom we know to have been anxious to defend Mr Churchill, notably his grandson, Mr Winston Churchill; his wartime \u2018secret circle\u2019; and an Argentine author, Mr Carlos Thompson, who started off by collaborating with Hochhuth but who is about to publish a book disproving his allegations and charging him with being a Communist agent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Safely at arm\u2019s length from the government and its secret agencies, various apparently independent individuals would continue defending Churchill and in some cases bringing legal actions against Hochhuth or Irving or their producers\/publishers.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Habe-book-signing.jpeg?resize=512%2C501&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-364\" width=\"512\" height=\"501\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Habe-book-signing.jpeg?w=1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Habe-book-signing.jpeg?resize=300%2C293&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Habe-book-signing.jpeg?resize=768%2C751&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Pre-war anti-Hitler propagandist J\u00e1nos B\u00e9kessy became post-war anti-Irving propagandist Hans Habe<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>On 3rd February 1969 one of these \u2018independent\u2019 individuals launched an attack on Hochhuth in a Swiss newspaper \u2013 Hans Habe, who by now was collaborating closely with his fellow IRD contact Carlos Thompson. In this article he revealed that Thompson had completed a book, <em>The Assassination of Winston Churchill<\/em>, and had entrusted Habe with the manuscript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Hochhuth retaliated by suing Habe (successfully) in the Swiss courts, and Irving sued Thompson in the London courts, Welser and IRD were in close touch with both defendants. The latest documents show that Welser liaised with the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6 about these libel cases, though there are several names and paragraphs censored from the published files. Welser wrote to MI5\u2019s Peter Wright in March 1970:<br>\u201cAs you know, Hans Habe lost when Hochhuth sued him for slander. I hope the same will not happen in the Irving\/Thompson case. Some time ago you said that there was some evidence of KGB involvement in <em>The Soldiers<\/em>. I do not know what this is, but am naturally wondering whether, if this can be sorted out from the point of view of security, the information would be of any assistance to Carlos?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A truly extraordinary letter for one secret official to write to another about a libel action! (Again there are sections redacted from the published version.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A month later the Foreign Office Assistant Under-Secretary Norman Reddaway \u2013 who had co-founded IRD back in 1948-9 \u2013 wrote to IRD\u2019s head Kenneth Crook in even more explicit terms, having met Carlos Thompson the previous evening. Given the vagaries of the libel courts, Thompson was (Reddaway said) \u201crunning great risks for the cause\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe did not press for help, though moral support would obviously be welcome to him. Since, off his own bat, he has been conducting a classic IRD exercise for the last two years, he should certainly count on at least this.<br>\u201cI think IRD should keep in touch with him and generally help him in his labours. \u2026He is taking on single handed some of the star (witting or unwitting) performers in the Communist propaganda team.<br>\u201cMr T is in much the same relationship with these \u2018disinformers\u2019 as was Mr Woodrow Wyatt in the late 1950s with leading Communists in the trade unions in this country. By discreetly helping Mr Wyatt at that time IRD made a major contribution towards breaking the Communist hold on a key Union. If IRD can similarly be available for help and facilities for Mr T it will be effort well spent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A senior Foreign Office official was here recommending that IRD \u2013 a secret arm of the British government \u2013 should \u201cdiscreetly\u201d help the defendant in a libel action to \u201ctake on\u201d David Irving.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Norman-Reddaway-and-Jean-Reddaway.jpeg?resize=320%2C480&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-365\" width=\"320\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Norman-Reddaway-and-Jean-Reddaway.jpeg?w=427&amp;ssl=1 427w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Norman-Reddaway-and-Jean-Reddaway.jpeg?resize=200%2C300&amp;ssl=1 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em><strong>IRD and Foreign Office propaganda chief Norman Reddaway (seen here with his wife Jean) recommended that the British secret state should intervene against David Irving in a libel case.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Understandably, other senior officials were nervous of such involvement, suggesting that in any case Thompson had \u201cplenty of money for this sort of thing\u201d, and that it was important to avoid senior Foreign Office personnel appearing in court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the libel actions involved the Czech pilot of Sikorski\u2019s plane, RAF Flt Lt Eduard Prchal, who was sole survivor of the 1943 crash. Prchal was well known among fellow crew for refusing to wear his cumbersome \u2018Mae West\u2019 lifejacket, but on this one occasion \u2013 having inexplicably flown his plane straight into the sea very soon after take-off \u2013 he was fished out of the water wearing his \u2018Mae West\u2019. Among those who refused to accept the RAF\u2019s official exoneration of Prchal was the chief of the Polish military mission in Gibraltar, Lt Ludwik Lubienski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a 2003 interview Lubienski\u2019s daughter, actress Rula Lenska, said she suspected her father \u201cwas buried keeping a big secret in his heart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(In 2014 the 92-year-old Bill Walker, who as a young RAF Leading Aircraftsman in 1943 was billeted at the Gibraltar airfield, wrote up his memories of the crash. His theory was that badly loaded baggage aboard Sikorski\u2019s plane had blocked the elevator controls \u2013 during the crash this obstruction had then been thrown clear, so had not been evident to investigators.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hans Welser at IRD continued his close involvement with Thompson\u2019s case. At the end of April 1970 he approached IRD and Foreign Office colleagues for help in tracking down a bank account that Irving allegedly held in Washington. Given exchange control laws at the time, Welser wondered whether this account might even be illegal. However his colleague\u2019s reply emphasised caution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI have consulted our friends on this [<em>in this context \u2018our friends\u2019 means MI6<\/em>] and explained the background but they are rather reluctant to approach the Bank of England on this \u2026and they think it most unlikely that Irving\u2019s US bank account is illegal, and that it is better not to make further enquiries about it which might prejudice other lines which they are already pursuing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thompson was convinced that Irving was being financed by \u201cGerman Nazis\u201d who had helped him avoid bankruptcy over another court case where he had been the defendant, losing a libel action brought by a retired naval officer against his book <em>The Destruction of Convoy PQ17<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welser however wondered whether such funds were \u201cnot of Russian rather than Nazi origin\u201d. At some earlier stage while he was playing a double game, Thompson had \u201cforged introductory letters from David Irving to Gu\u0308nsche, the SS Warrant Officer who carried Hitler\u2019s dead body out of the bunker and burnt it. Armed with these forged letters, Mr Thompson saw Gu\u0308nsche in the hope of finding out whether the Nazis were behind Irving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This ploy had failed, but Thompson still hoped it could be used against Irving. If Otto Gu\u0308nsche, who had been Hitler\u2019s personal adjutant, tipped off Irving about the attempted forgery, this in itself might be used to discredit Irving in court by establishing a \u201cnazi connection\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welser reiterated that Thompson \u201cis doing much of our work for us and deserves our support\u201d. A note on the same file from Reddaway asked: \u201cWhat has come from the Security Service\u2019s [MI5\u2019s] effort to watch Irving? Or have they not exerted themselves?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Murray Simons, the Foreign Office liaison with MI5 and MI6, replied: \u201cThe Security Service assure me that they have put in some extra work on Irving. The person responsible is at present off strength \u2013 but their representative who will attend the meeting on 18 May will be able to say exactly what has been discovered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In May 1970, with the libel case still pending (Irving eventually dropped the case, largely for financial reasons, in January 1972), Welser went so far as to suggest that IRD should push for publication of a German edition of Thompson\u2019s anti-Irving book: \u201cIt has occurred to me that it would be useful to cause one to be published, if the means for doing so are available to our German colleagues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During 1971 the IRD files show disagreement between Welser and another senior officer John Tyrer, who argued: \u201cIrving is, as we have always maintained, an old-fashioned pro-Nazi and not at all pro-Communist. It is surely apparent that Irving\u2019s apparent liaison with Hochhuth over <em>The Soldiers<\/em> was opportunist, not ideological; Irving can resist no opportunity to denigrate the wartime allies and especially Churchill, from a pro-Nazi position (he is also, unfortunately, a very able historian). Disinformation does not, I think, come into it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tyrer thought the better propaganda ploy would simply be to embarrass the Russians, by drawing attention to their having \u201cpublished a book by a fascist author\u201d. However Welser insisted that \u201con present information\u201d he believed Irving to be \u201cworking in the Communist interest as well, consciously or not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Gordon-Brook-Shepherd.jpeg?resize=334%2C462&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-366\" width=\"334\" height=\"462\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Gordon Brook-Shepherd, <\/em>Telegraph<em> journalist and anti-Irving informant utilised by the secret state<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>In April 1973 Gordon Brook-Shepherd of the <em>Telegraph<\/em> \u2013 a long-term contact of IRD and MI6 \u2013 tipped off Welser about a forthcoming Irving biography of Hitler. This was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fpp.co.uk\/books\/Hitler\/1977\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the book that was eventually published as <em>Hitler\u2019s War<\/em><\/a>, and which Irving\u2019s publisher was offering to Fleet Street for serial rights. Again some parts of the document are censored, but it is clear that IRD consulted GCHQ over whether a D-Notice could be obtained to ban sections of Irving\u2019s book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most recent IRD documents about Irving date from the end of 1973 and early 1974, when Norman Reddaway supplied a non-attributable background briefing about Irving to Heinz Koeppler, founder and warden of Wilton Park, an institution originally created in 1946 to \u201cre-educate\u201d German prisoners-of-war, and later dedicated to promoting \u201cdemocratic\u201d values and Anglo-German relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These latest papers very briefly touch on the aspect of Irving\u2019s <em>Hitler\u2019s War<\/em> book that was to prove most controversial and defines Irving\u2019s public image to this day \u2013 his argument that Adolf Hitler had known nothing of any plan for the mass murder of Jews, let alone ordered it. No doubt there are further IRD papers (and other British government files) dating from the mid-1970s and later, pertaining to Irving and other \u2018Holocaust\u2019 revisionists, but they are not yet public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(The only available official British documents dealing in any substance with revisionism are discussed in part of my series on race law, see <em>Heritage and Destiny<\/em> Issue 95.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>IRD was closed down by Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen in 1977. Its style of propaganda, inherited from SOE and PWE during the Second World War, had become too risky and discreditable when Soviet counter-propagandists were able to leak details about IRD to an increasingly sceptical and radically anti-establishment Western media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, official propaganda continues in other, varied and subtle forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Irving\u2019s main IRD enemy Hans Welser died in 1996. John Tyrer stayed on in other propaganda-related roles at the Foreign Office after IRD\u2019s demise, not finally retiring until 1990; he died in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hans Habe died in 1977, while Carlos Thompson committed suicide in 1990.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Victor-Rothschild.jpeg?resize=365%2C512&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-372\" width=\"365\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Victor-Rothschild.jpeg?resize=729%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 729w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Victor-Rothschild.jpeg?resize=214%2C300&amp;ssl=1 214w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Victor-Rothschild.jpeg?resize=768%2C1079&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Victor-Rothschild.jpeg?w=989&amp;ssl=1 989w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 365px) 100vw, 365px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong><em>Lord Rothschild (Victor Rothschild) \u2013 heir to the notorious financial dynasty \u2013 held various roles in Britain&#8217;s security and intelligence bureaucracy, but never dispelled suspicions that he had at some point been a Soviet agent. <\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>More than a decade after their top-level, anti-Irving meetings, the retired MI5 officers Victor Rothschild and Peter Wright reunited in a secret deal with journalist Chapman Pincher, setting in motion a chain of events in the early 1980s that led to Wright\u2019s notorious banned memoirs <em>Spycatcher<\/em>. The dubious loyalties involved in Rothschild\u2019s intelligence and security career remain one of the great mysteries of espionage history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On 13th May 2020 (days after Part 1 of this article was published) Rolf Hochhuth died at his home in Berlin aged 89. The international press carried many obituaries, but very few made much mention of the Sikorski affair, instead concentrating on his earlier play <em>Der Stellvertreter<\/em> (\u2018The Representative\u2019) addressing the Vatican\u2019s alleged knowledge of the supposed wartime murder of six million Jews in the \u2018Holocaust\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is presumably for this service to \u2018Holocaust history\u2019 that the German government paid tribute to the \u201ciconoclastic\u201d playwright, saying he had \u201cnever ducked a confrontation\u201d while \u201cloving provocations and remaining true to himself\u201d. Similarly the Central Council of German Jews called Hochhuth a \u201ccourageous taboobreaker\u201d who had \u201ctouched off an overdue debate in Germany\u201d about the Vatican\u2019s role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile conservative Catholic journals took the opposite line, with headlines such as \u201cMan Who Smeared Wartime Pope Dies\u201d. Just before Covid-19 disrupted academic facilities worldwide, the Vatican Archives began collaborating with a select team of \u2018independent\u2019 scholars aiming to resolve controversy over Pope Pius XII\u2019s wartime role.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/robertfaurisson.blogspot.com\/2006\/05\/preface-to-pope-pius-xiis-revisionism.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Pope-Pius-Faurisson.jpeg?resize=350%2C454&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-367\" width=\"350\" height=\"454\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>All seem determined to ignore the conclusions of the late Prof. Robert Faurisson, who wrote in <em>Pope Pius XII\u2019s Revisionism<\/em>: \u201cFor those who wish to do so, the only way to rehabilitate the memory of the \u2018maligned Pope\u2019 is to speak the language of verifiable truth, historical exactitude or, quite simply, the facts.\u201d \u2013 see <a href=\"https:\/\/robertfaurisson.blogspot.com\/2006\/05\/preface-to-pope-pius-xiis-revisionism.html\">the article at Robert Faurisson&#8217;s blog<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>David Irving celebrated his 82nd birthday just as Britain entered lockdown on 24th March 2020. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irvingbooks.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">In 2021 he published Volume I of his long-awaited biography <em>True Himmler<\/em><\/a> (recently reviewed by Steven Frost in Issue 105 of <em>Heritage and Destiny<\/em>) and will soon publish Volume III of <em>Churchill\u2019s War<\/em>, in addition to working on his own memoirs. No doubt Whitehall\u2019s propaganda warriors will be securing early copies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This blog explores previously hidden themes of Real History, based on detailed research in UK archives including recently released documents from the intelligence services. <a href=\"https:\/\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/donations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">To assist Peter Rushton&#8217;s work and forthcoming book, please click here for ways to donate. This type of work is very time-consuming: research and book production cannot be done without your financial support.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On May 1st 2022 during an interview on Italian television, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov \u2013 in yet another desperate attempt to justify Kremlin aggression \u2013 reached for one of the craziest lies of 20th century propaganda. As explained elsewhere on this site, Putin&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine and its accompanying rhetoric are rooted in his<a href=\"https:\/\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/hitler-was-jewish-the-predictable-roots-of-a-kremlin-lie\/\" class=\"theme-more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;40 Years of Lies \u2013 how the same propagandist defamed Adolf Hitler in the &#8217;30s and David Irving in the &#8217;60s&#8221;<\/span> <svg class=\"svg-icon\" aria-hidden=\"true\" role=\"img\" focusable=\"false\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" viewBox=\"0 0 16 16\"><path fill=\"currentColor\" d=\"M1 8a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h11.793l-3.147-3.146a.5.5 0 0 1 .708-.708l4 4a.5.5 0 0 1 0 .708l-4 4a.5.5 0 0 1-.708-.708L13.293 8.5H1.5A.5.5 0 0 1 1 8z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,60,83,89,67],"tags":[102,100,97,101,45,90,93,94,70,92,95,98,72,71,47,99,96,91],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adolf-hitler","category-british-intelligence-services","category-cold-war","category-david-irving","category-propaganda","tag-bickham-sweet-escott","tag-buster-crabb","tag-carlos-thompson","tag-colin-gubbins","tag-dresden","tag-information-research-department","tag-ird","tag-katyn","tag-mi6","tag-poland","tag-rolf-hochhuth","tag-sir-dick-white","tag-soe","tag-special-operations-executive","tag-terror-bombing","tag-victor-rothschild","tag-winston-churchill","tag-wladyslaw-sikorski"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>40 Years of Lies \u2013 how the same propagandist defamed Adolf Hitler in the &#039;30s and David Irving in the &#039;60s - Real History<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/hitler-was-jewish-the-predictable-roots-of-a-kremlin-lie\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"40 Years of Lies \u2013 how the same propagandist defamed Adolf Hitler in the &#039;30s and David Irving in the &#039;60s - Real History\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On May 1st 2022 during an interview on Italian television, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov \u2013 in yet another desperate attempt to justify Kremlin aggression \u2013 reached for one of the craziest lies of 20th century propaganda. 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