John Profumo had a long-running affair with a glamorous Nazi spy who may have later tried to blackmail him, according to security service files released today.
Long before the high-society sex scandal in the Swinging Sixties which now bears his name, Profumo met Gisela Winegard, a German model, at Oxford in 1930s and ‘got to know her well’, the previously top secret dossier reveals.
Diplomat’s son Profumo was then an undergraduate studying law at Brasenose College.
Gisela, 16 months older and known by her maiden name Klein, made several visits to this country between 1933 – the year Adolf Hitler made himself absolute ruler of Germany – and 1938.
John Profumo (left) met Gisela Winegard (right), a German model, at Oxford in 1930s
‘On the first occasion, she went to Oxford, ostensibly to learn English, and professed to be anti-Nazi,’ the newly declassified documents say.
Photographs of Gisela in the files portray her as a haughty, Teutonic beauty. Intelligence reports described her as ‘a young woman of striking appearance’ who was ‘known to have made friends with a number of well-known young men in this country’.
Whether or not she was working for German intelligence services when Profumo first met her is not clear.
But National Archive files show she was ordered to leave Britain in 1935 and 1936 for working as a model while on non-working visas, and was reported as being ‘on intimate terms with the German Military Attache in Paris’ in 1938. This led the Home Office to recommend she be barred from entering this country altogether.
She remained in Paris during the occupation of France. There, she was a German intelligence officer’s mistress, having a child with him, and also became close to a German general.
After the Allies liberated Paris in 1944, Gisela was imprisoned along with other German agents and collaborators.
Photographs of Gisela in the secret files portray her as a haughty, Teutonic beauty
Meanwhile Profumo, who was known as Jack, had been commissioned into the Army in 1939 as a second lieutenant. The following year, while still serving, he was elected Tory MP for Kettering in Northamptonshire at the age of 25 – making him the youngest MP at the time. He went on to serve with distinction in the Second World War.
The files show that he remained in touch with Gisela until at least 1950.
In 1942 she wrote to him – the letter was intercepted by MI5 – from Switzerland, where she had apparently gone for modelling work.
She said: ‘Jack darling, I find it very difficult to write this letter as I cannot get used to the idea that I’m free to write to you without a censor’.
She was able to do so because Switzerland remained neutral and unoccupied throughout the war.
She added: ‘Though I’m not nearly as happy as I used to be at 88 Seymour Street [where she had lived in Oxford].’
After her capture during the liberation of Paris she was held in Fresnes Prison but was later transferred to a jail in a basement in Paris’s Rue Suchet – which Edward Winegard was in charge of. He was an American citizen of German origin serving in the US forces.
The files say he obtained her release and shortly afterwards took her to Hamburg where they married. Sometime in 1947-8, while they were living in the south of France, the Winegards fell foul of the American Intelligence Service ‘for having harboured one of the Chiefs of a German spy ring’.
They moved to Tangier in Morocco, where they worked for the ‘Voice of America’ radio station. But in April 1950, she was dismissed from her filing clerk job ‘when it was discovered that she had worked for the Germans during the war and was 100 per cent pro-German’.
Left, Profumo’s relationship with dancer Christine Keeler (right) became the centre of a public scandal
The marriage came under stress – with Edward stating in September 1950 that his wife had left him because he had discovered that ‘she had been receiving endearing letters’ from Profumo. ‘These letters were written on House of Commons notepaper,’ the files, from the National Archives at Kew in South-West London, state.
Profumo had told MI5 about his relationship with Winegard, the archives reveal. A memo states that in 1941 he admitted meeting her in 1936 ‘and got to know her well’.
That was information he gave to one Major J J Astor – who, in a remarkable coincidence, was the younger brother of William, 3rd Viscount Astor. The Astor family home, Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, was where the Profumo scandal would later play out.
A letter containing information from Major Astor in 1945 said: ‘Gisela Klein is described as exceedingly clever, witty and companionable’ and notes that she had spent some time in Cairo and Alexandria where she was ‘said to have known every officer in both places’.
The Major also said his mother, Lady Astor, ‘expressed the opinion that she [Gisela] was a spy’. Profumo lost his seat in the 1945 Labour landslide, but was elected in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1950.
It was in the swimming pool at Cliveden that Profumo first laid eyes on Christine Keeler. Their affair was at the centre of the scandal that took his name. After his affair with dancer Keeler became public, it emerged she was also in a relationship with a Russian military attaché.
Profumo lied about the relationship to Parliament but was forced to quit when the truth emerged. The scandal helped the government. The newly released files reveal that at the height of that scandal in 1963, MI6 sent files to MI5 investigations head Arthur Martin about Profumo and Mrs Winegard.
The 1963 letter discusses a rejected 1951 application by Mrs Winegard, by then reunited with her husband, for a UK visa.
At the time, the authorities believed the Winegards had ‘recently engaged in blackmail activities and now think it possible their intended visit to the UK may be connected with this’. The papers do not say who the target might be. But the visa application listed ‘Jack Profumo, MP for South Cattering (sic)’ as a reference.
Yesterday Richard Dunley, of the National Archives, said the revelation that Profumo was involved with a Nazi spy came as ‘a huge surprise’, thought it was widely known that he was ‘a bit of a ladies’ man’.
‘The things that come out most clearly are the extraordinary parallels between this and the later scandal – the connections with the Astors and Profumo writing to Gisela on Commons notepaper,’ he said. ‘In the later scandal, a note written by Profumo to Keeler on Ministry paper was key and there was a big concern about whether he could be blackmailed because of this letter.’
After the 1963 scandal, Profumo quit politics and devoted himself to charity work, going on to receive the CBE. He died aged 91 in 2006.