Secret papers say beautiful ballerina spy may have led to wartime defeat

The documents claim that a former ballerina known as Marina Lee infiltrated the headquarters of the Allied taskforce sent to liberate Norway and stole their battle plans.

However the papers, released to the National Archives in Kew, appear to show that a three-year hunt by MI5 after the war ended in failure.

The defeat of the Anglo-French counter-invasion force sent to Norway to eject the Germans was a devastating setback for the Allied cause.

It led to the collapse of Neville Chamberlain's Conservative-led government and his replacement as Prime Minister by Winston Churchill at the head of a coalition administration.

Then in January 1942, Gerth Van Wijk, a captured German agent, recounted what he admitted was an "astonishing story" told to him by another agent.

He described how the German commander holding the key Norwegian port of Narvik, General Eduard Dietl, was facing defeat by British forces under General Sir Claude Auchinleck.

He said the German Secret Service sent a woman to Auchinleck's headquarters at Tromso. She was Russian by birth, but travelling under a Swedish passport, and she successfully got hold of the battle plans.

Van Wijk said: "With these details in hand Dietl was able to rearrange his defence and to defeat Auchinleck."

At first, the agent was not prepared to tell Van Wijk the name of the woman involved. A few days later, however, the German spy told Van Wijk that she was Marina Lee, a Russian ballerina with the maiden name Marina Alexievna who had married a Norwegian.

MI5 were intrigued when other sources named a spy named Lee and backed the account. After the war other German intelligence officers told French interrogators of a Russian ballerina who knew Stalin and who moved to Norway where she spied for the Germans.

They said the Gestapo later sent her to Madrid to spy on Allied

officers.

The French report ends with a physical description – "slim, very blond (natural), blue grey eyes, very pretty legs".

MI5 feared she would spy for the Russians but Lee never did reappear and the claims were never put to the test.