World War II: Marina Lee Nazi Spy - Fall of Norway to Nazi Germany British MI5 Files

World War II: Marina Lee Nazi Spy - Fall of Norway to Nazi Germany British MI5 Files

39 pages of British Intelligence MI5 files covering Marina Lee who was spying for Germany. The files date from 1941 to 1960.

Marina Lee, also known as Marina Lie (1902-976) was a ballerina and Nazi spy during World War II. The MI5 received information that Lee stole battle plans from the British Expeditionary Forces in Norway, which led to the fall of Norway to Nazi Germany in 1940.

Lee was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia then fled in 1917 when her parents were killed by the Bolsheviks. Lee, trained as a ballerina, settled in Scandinavia and married a Norwegian communist.

Lee is believed to have started working for Nazi Germany as early as 1937.

Lee used a Red Cross uniform in order to infiltrate the headquarters of the British Expeditionary Forces in Norway and gained access to plans drawn up by British commander Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck. German commander General Eduard Dietl, who was holding the Norwegian port of Narvik, was reportedly considering a withdrawal, but the disclosure of these details meant his forces could block the Auchinleck plan. British, French and Norwegian troops were later forced to withdraw from German controlled Norway.

Lee's activity was recognized when German spies posing as meteorologists were captured by the Royal Navy on an Arctic island. One spy, Hans von Finckenstein, revealed Lee's identity and the key role that German intelligence believed she had played at Narvik. At least two more captured Germans later confirmed Finckenstein's revelations.

An MI5 agent wrote in a memo, "Finckenstein told me yesterday the following astonishing story. I do not know whether it is true... To know the plans of attack by Auchinleck, the German Secret Service, sent to Auchinleck’s headquarters at Tromso or there in the neighbourhood a woman, Russian by birth, but travelling then under a Swedish passport, beautiful, married, or divorced, who was successful to get hold of the details of the plan de campaign of Auchinleck, and then came back. With these details in hand Diehl was able to rearrange his defence and to defeat Auchinleck."

This information lead to an alert being issued to police and border guards that her arrival in Britain should be reported to MI5 immediately. The last time MI5 knew of her where about was when they spotted her at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid, Spain in 1948, travelling under a Polish passport.

Her MI5 dossier speculates that after the war she may have been working for the KGB. Despite the fate of her parents in the Soviet Union, she was said to have been a friend of Joseph Stalin and senior figures in the Kremlin. A notation says, that she is "just the type to transfer her allegiance once they have had a taste of the game."

The MI5 closed her file in 1960. Lee is widely believed to have died in Barcelona in 1976.