Did the Queen keep mum as she heard how father helped to trick the Nazis?
MI5 boss relates role of George VI in D-day ruse in in which Her Majesty may have played a part herself
WHEN George VI joined senior Allied commanders at an oil storage complex in Dover in 1944, it appeared – to all the right people – to be another moraleboosting exercise to help win the Second World War.
In fact, it was a crucial part of an MI5 trick to pass “misinformation” to the watching Nazis.
The Queen, who visited MI5 to pass on the thanks of a nation for the unsung work of Britain’s intelligence services yesterday, was told about her father’s role in helping to buy troops valuable time by convincing the Germans that D-day landings would happen in Calais or Norway.
Occasionally reported to have played a part in the strategy herself, the Queen gave nothing away, acknowledging the extraordinary story without a hint of how much she had known.
During a visit to the MI5 headquarters at Thames House in central London, she met staff and praised officers for the “tireless work you do to keep our country safe”.
She was given a tour of the agency’s private museum by Sir Andrew Parker, its director general.
The Royal family has a close connection with the security agencies. The Prince of Wales has been patron of the intelligence services since 2011, while the Duke of Cambridge spent a week working with MI5 officers last year.
But modern members of the family still have some way to go to match the contribution of their forebears, with George VI playing a central role in Second World War intelligence.
Sir Andrew told the Queen how her father agreed to a series of diversionary “royal visits” reported by the press, with extra “intelligence” passed to Germany via spies and used to inform Nazi military strategy.
One saw the Queen’s father join senior Allied commanders at a large fake oil storage complex, built by Shepperton studios, near Dover for the purpose. MI5 files note that officers “can’t say if King was told about the network of agents, but he knew about some the disinformation strategy which the visits played into”.
The files add: “A classified report from the MI5 architect of the ‘Double Cross’ network, written in summer 1945 we understand was still in the King’s dispatch box at the time of his death seven years later.”
Sir Andrew described the MI5 operation to deceive the true location of the Allied assault on Europe on June 6 1944 as the “the most important thing MI5 has done” since the agency was formed in 1909. The Queen added: “And very successfully too.”
Neither Buckingham Palace nor MI5 could confirm whether the Queen already knew of her family’s contribution at the time.
At the time of the D-day landings, the then Princess Elizabeth was 18 and had undertaken several visits to troops with her parents. A report in The Daily Telegraph on May 20, 1944 told how the royal trio had reviewed airborne troops at “an RAF station somewhere in England”, detailing the extraordinary air power and skill of parachute troops.
Yesterday, the Queen told MI5 staff: “I would like to take my visit here today as an opportunity to thank you all for the tireless work you do to keep our country safe. I am always struck by the remarkable resolve with which you carry out your vital role.
“There will no doubt continue to be significant threats and challenges ahead. But, on each of my visits to MI5, I have been impressed by the way that you have adapted to the changing threats to our nation.
“Whether responding to the threats from the Nazis or the Cold War, domestic terrorism or the cyber sphere, you have always demonstrated the utmost commitment to your motto Regnum Defende [defence of the realm].
“Because of the nature of your work, it is without public recognition, so it is on behalf of the country that I say to you all, thank you.”