WWII spies faked Jewish passport for Hitler

Associated Press

LONDON — Forgers working for British intelligence during World War II tested their skills by making a counterfeit passport for Adolf Hitler — and stamping it with a J, for Jewish.

The passport was among a number of previously secret documents released Friday by the Public Record Office. Other papers indicated British spies had planned simultaneous executions of senior Nazi military leaders across occupied Europe.

The office didn’t say why the Hitler passport was made. The document was created by the Special Operations Executive, the organization charged with sending spies and saboteurs behind enemy lines. The secret group employed expert forgers — many of them former convicts — to create fake identification for its agents.

The passport was stamped with a red J, which the Nazis used to indicate the bearer was "Jude," German for "Jew."

It includes official German ink stamps and a list of Hitler’s personal details, including place and date of birth, the shape of his face and his hair and eye coloring. Under identification marks, the German text reads "small mustache."

The inside pages bear a visa from the Department of Migration for the Government of Palestine, referring to the historical region that includes modern Israel. The visa states Hitler is "permitted to remain permanently in Palestine as an immigrant."

The Special Operations Executive was founded in 1940 and directed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to "set Europe ablaze" through sabotage, subversion and resistance.

The declassified documents show that Special Operations Executive agents met in London in 1943 to discuss a possible "execution month."

"Preliminary discussions shows that there are considerable possibilities in organizing a widespread ‘execution campaign’ in occupied territories against Gestapo and SS officials," one agent wrote.

"It might be best to declare September or October as the ‘execution month.’ This would be a warning to the Germans as to what to expect during the long dark winter nights," noted the unidentified writer.

The author goes on to write that execution would have to wait until a shipment of silent pistols had been delivered.

October 1943 was eventually chosen as the month for the executions, but the plan was scrapped for fear of German reprisals against civilian populations.

Other forged documents released by the office ranged from a Bulgarian firearms permit to a Croatian fishing license. There is also a forged work pass for the I.G. Farben synthetic chemicals plant at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.