Hitler’s British Traitors: The Secret History of Spies, Saboteurs and Fifth Columnists

Hitler’s British Traitors is the first authoritativeaccount of a well-kept secret: the British Fifth Column and its activitiesduring the Second World War.Drawing on hundreds of declassifiedofficial files – many of them previously unpublished – Tim Tate uncovers thelargely unknown history of more than 70 British traitors who were convicted,mostly in secret trials, of working to help Nazi Germany win the war, andseveral hundred British Fascists who were interned without trial on evidencethat they were working on behalf of the enemy. Four were condemned to death;two were executed.Thisengrossing book reveals the extraordinary methods adopted by MI5 to uncoverBritish traitors and their German spymasters, as well as two serious wartime plots bywell-connected British fascists to mount a coup d’etat whichwould replace the government with an authoritarian pro-Nazi regime.The book also shows how archaicattitudes to social status and gender in Whitehall and the courts ensured thatjustice was neither fair nor equitable. Aristocratic British pro-Nazisympathizers and collaborators were frequently protected while theless-privileged foot soldiers of the Fifth Column were interned, jailed or evenexecuted for identical crimes.