A Model Spy
John Rory Maclean

A Model Spy is the compelling true story of Gisela Klein one of Germany’s best kept secret weapons. A woman of brains, beauty and charm, who befriended everyone from members of the British Royal household to the man who could have been the President of the United States of America.

 A self-professed “anti-Nazi” and a networker of genius, she was the first steady girlfriend of the serial philanderer and later disgraced British member of Parliament Jack Profumo. She was also an intelligence asset for Germany in the 1930’s who camouflaged her link to Adolf Hitler’s second in command, Herman Goering.

  She wasn’t a full time spy, the green-eyed, blond-haired Gisela had a glittering career as an international model in London, Paris and New York. She modelled for the top German designer to the women of the Nazi elite, including Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun. Gisela Klein was at the heart of Nazi plans to use fashion as a weapon of culture and a source of hard currency for the armaments Hitler needed.

In 1935 the MP Nancy Astor told people her beautiful guest, brought by Jack Profumo to Cliveden, was a spy. That didn’t seem to bother Jack too much and the pair would be in touch during the Second World War and after.

In 1938 MI5 tried to arrest her in London but she escaped into the arms of Joe Kennedy Junior as he and his father, the US Ambassador to Britain, pushed for America’s isolation from the coming conflict and believed Britain would lose to Germany. Joe would even warn her about a British bombing raid which endangered her in her Dusseldorf home. Only in 1944, as the allies fought their way towards Germany, would the Bletchley Park codebreakers provide clear evidence of her shrouded role for German military intelligence, the Abwehr.

Pregnant and in hiding in war torn Paris as the allies advance she is abandoned by her German spy lover as he attempts to swop sides. Left at the mercy of the vengeful French she plays the only card she has left.

A Model Spy discovers vital evidence of Gisela Klein’s espionage role unknown to British and French intelligence as they hunted her. With the help of her family, and her photographs and documents the book follows the highly mobile Fraulein Klein during a hectic double life in the turbulent 1930’s and through the Second World War.