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 By Sanchia Berg
Secret MI5 files released today reveal how the British government protected the man responsible for killing scores of their own secret agents.
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A portrait of German officer Horst Kopkow.
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He remained a proud Nazi.
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His army personnel documents.
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Another page of his armypersonnel documentsnow on display.
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It’s clear from the notes on Horst Kopkow’s recently released files that British intelligence were thrilled to have such a useful Nazi fall into their hands.
A high ranking Gestapo officer, Kopkow was responsible for combating parachute agents right across Europe. He had detailed information about Soviet spy rings, and even in summer 1945, just weeks after VE day, this was of great interest. He volunteered details of “Russian plots against British interests” in newly liberated territories. One interrogator was concerned about his motives, writing… “Is Kopkow deliberately trying to throw suspicion between the English and Russians or is he genuinely telling matter of facts “(sic).
He concluded that Kopkow was probably telling the truth. And the Gestapo officer appears to have been given a remarkably easy ride, dictating his statements to his own secretary in prison. In the period covered by the files, 1945—6, Kopkow was barely challenged about the fate of SOE agents….yet this was a key part of his responsibilities.
War crimes investigators believed Kopkow should answer for his actions. Files uncovered by the researcher Stephen Tyas show that in 1948 the War Crimes Group Europe, a British investigation unit, wrote to the “London Cage” where German prisoners of war were being held. They wanted to contact Kopkow. Lieutenant Colonel Scotland wrote back, saying that Kopkow HAD come to London, but had died of respiratory disease a few days later.
He had in fact been given a new identity, and a new life in Germany. That’s where Robert Marshall, then researching a TV documentary, found him in 1986. Kopkow would not agree to be filmed, but spoke for several hours about his past. Marshall recalled:
And he ranted and ranted and at one point said the British had scoured their prisons for low life and forced them to parachute into France and so killing them off was basically doing the British a service. And this staggered us our jaws dropped because we knew a lot of the British veterans and they certainly weren't as described by Horst Kopkow.
Horst Kopkow appears to have died in 1996. He is the most senior Nazi to have been protected by the British… that we know of. It’s only now that intelligence files from this era are being released.
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