Agents portrayed Hitler as gay Jewish eunuch: Secret files show Special Operations distributed crude propaganda in Morocco. Stephen Ward reports

SECRET wartime files released yesterday reveal the depths of the dirty war fought against Hitler.

Special Operations in London sent out to Gibraltar for distribution in Morocco boxed sets of gramophone records in Arabic making lewd suggestions about Hitler's anatomy.

Normally, such files only hint at the contents of such material, but in this case the records are translated into English and transcribed almost verbatim.

A po-faced official on the staff of Lord Gort, the Governor of Gibraltar, says side one 'records the story of an Arab caravan journeying to Marrakech'. He bemoans the stagnation of trade in Morocco, and blames Hitler and the fact that British ships are detained in Moroccan ports. But by side two the official is becoming upset. 'It states that Hitler cannot marry and that he hates both Jews and Arabs with a 'fiery hatred' and explains the reason.

'Hitler is a bastard - presumably of Jewish blood - and his original name was Schicklegruber. Some 30 years ago he was but a humble house-painter when one day he was painting the ceiling of a synagogue and fell and damaged one of his testicles]'

The doctor, trained by an Arab, is a former violinist used to giving encores, so when he is applauded for taking off the first testicle, he repeats the performance.

The second story has Hitler being visited in his bedroom by Mrs Goebbels, who is shocked to find the Fuhrer has gone to the front to have sex with his generals. The official says in his report to Lord Gort that the Arabs would be likely to be impressed rather than shocked by such behaviour.

Lord Gort, however, is clearly shocked. In a letter on 28 March 1942 marked 'secret and personal' to Sir Frank Nelson, head of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in London. 'I feel sure that you, like me, find it difficult to believe that smutty stories of an unusually dirty hue really form the most effective type of propaganda to further the British cause among the inhabitants of Morocco. Speaking with vile contempt of the Head of State invites similar treatment and surely we do not wish to encourage retaliatory propaganda?'

The Special Operations Executive files were originally closed indefinitely, but have been cleared after screening at the request of historians, under William Waldegrave's open government initiative and are being released region by region. A handful were withheld for security reasons.

Other files released yesterday reveal that Britain limited training of Jewish guerrillas in Palestine, although they were effective against the Germans, because Britain was against the formation of an independent Israel.

By June 1942, British agents had trained and armed 400 Jewish men.

A memo by the SOE controller of the Palestine section said on 23 June 1942 of the Jewish agents: 'They try and identify themselves solely with the war effort but continually try to promote their own parochial nationalist aspirations at the expense of the services required of them.'