For many, he was known as Jack King, or the Gestapo’s right hand in England. While millions were dying in the war against Hitler and the Nazi Germany in 1940, the secret Nazi spy went around the country, selecting people who he thought could be trusted to serve the Fuhrer when their time came.
Jack King was able to avoid being detected for over five years and to put together a team of British Nazis, including several engineers, an astrologer and a Catholic priest. They often provided the Nazis with information concerning Britain’s war machine, giving away details about Britain’s first jet fighter and on other occasions – the workings of radar countermeasures.
In five years, King became so powerful he had a list of hundreds of British people enlisted in an anti-Semitic organization that ruled against their country and pro a German victory. Apparently, all of those involved shared pro-German ideas and held a “fascist political outlook.”
They would regularly receive supplies of invisible ink and money from Berlin and also Iron Crosses, which were sent to them in recognition of their efforts. But what they weren’t aware of was the fact that they were in fact unwitting servants of MI5 in Britain and the targets of a Second World War scheme, known as Fifth Column or SR Case. Documents revealing information about the scheme have been revealed this week for the first time at the National Archives in Kew, West London, The Independent reports.
According to an MI5 internal report, “about two years ago, the SR case began to extend from its earlier limited sphere into wider fascist-minded groups, the spectacular nature of some of the reports and the vivid light which they threw on the disloyal outlook of so many British subjects naturally created doubts in some quarters as to the validity of the information or at least some of it.”
A letter approved by Lord Victor Rothschild, one of the fifth-column controllers notes the determination of these teams, who seem to so firmly believe in Germany and Adolf Hitler, they would support their ideology to the point where they would ruin their own country.
The leader of this anti-Semitic organization was Marita Perigoe, a woman based in London, but with roots is Sweden and Germany. She married her British husband Bernard, who was a former Communist turned BUF member.
In a report to his superiors, King described Marita Perigoe as a masculine woman, “both in appearance and mentality,” he wrote.
//