As World War II progressed, Westminster’s Department EH became officially delegated to invent and spread many myths and rumours.

This was a small sub-section of MI6. Some of their ruses were so clever and innovative that even the Joint Intelligence Committee took many seriously.

One of the specialities of the Ministry of Information was to publish fake refugee memoirs. The Diary of a Dutch Boy Refugee by the fictitious Dirk van der Heide was baloney. Likewise, films such as The Foreman Went to France and Went the Day Well?

Mainstream media and publishing houses continued to peddle ludicrous German and British stereotypes.

Several of the fictional books published as fact during 1940 and 1941 were officially inspired tall tales. These included Through the Dark Night by Daily Sketch correspondent James Lansdale Hodson. These have all been recycled since 1945 and added with further embellishments.

Other correspondents solicited to churn out propaganda included Douglas Williams (The New Contemptibles 1940) and Bernard Gray (War Reporter 1941). Another was van Kleffens, The Rape of the Netherlands.

From such literary gentlemen came the stories of German paratroopers dressed as nuns, priests, nurses, and women. Newspapers picked up these cock and bull stories and peddled them daily.

Much of what is read today as ‘confessions’ or ‘revelations’ has its origins in the torture chambers of post-war Europe.

Often, atrocities read about are quoted from former Axis servicemen being tortured, deprived of food or threats being made against their families if they did not write or speak as required.

In Britain, a former Czech resistance fighter, Edward Spiro, wrote a series of less-than-reliable books on intelligence matters under the pseudonym E. H Cookridge.

The first of these, Secrets of the British Secret Service, was published in 1947. It was nonsense from the first page to the last.

Today, there is concern over summary imprisonment without trial at Guantanamo Bay, at bases throughout the world and of course in British prisons such as Belmarsh Prison.

In 1940, Churchill desperately sought an excuse to round up thousands of those he considered enemy aliens. Many were of German or Italian extraction who had made their home in the UK. In some cases, they were second or third generation, and many had served in the British armed forces.

Assisting the government in justifying mass arrests without trial was one of the most notorious spinners of fifth column nonsense; Sir Neville Bland, the British Minister to the Dutch Government in The Hague.

James Hayward, the noted dissembler of wartime myths, described Bland’s report as ‘a thousand-word fantasy.’

 He added that some in the know credit Bland with importing the worst of the paratroop and fifth column myths into Britain.

He later disclosed that these tactics were used to ‘justify the mass internment of male aliens, which the Home Secretary, under Churchill’s direction, had ordered on May 13^th 1940.’

QUOTABLE QUOTES: The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, told the editor of the Manchester Guardian that it was just as well that the real nature of war was not revealed.

‘If the people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But, of course, they don’t know and they can’t know. The correspondents don’t write, and the censorship would not pass the truth.’

‘I strive not to throw Europe into this criminal adventure. But the States, even the British Crown, are not the masters of their destiny. Powers that elude us are promoting in Great Britain, as in other countries, special interests and an aberrant idealism.’ – Stanley Baldwin, British Prime Minister 1924-1929 and 1935-1937. You can share this story on social media:

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