British Traitor Theodore Schurch: Fascist Spy Among Allied Prisoners of War
Spies & Intelligence in WWII [collection]
•
11m
10 July 1940. As the Battle of Britain begins and Nazi Germany launches a massive aerial assault against the United Kingdom, most Britons stand firm in defiance. Yet not all follow this path. Among those who choose betrayal is Theodore Schurch, a British soldier drawn to fascist ideology long before the war.
A former member of the British Union of Fascists, Schurch serves in the British Army in Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa. Captured at Tobruk in 1942, he begins cooperating with Italian intelligence and soon proves valuable to the enemy.
Operating under a false identity, he moves between prisoner-of-war camps across North Africa and Italy, gaining the trust of Allied officers and passing military information to Axis intelligence services, including the German Abwehr and the SS security service.
This documentary follows the story of a man who betrayed his own comrades and became one of the most notorious traitors in British history—paying the ultimate price for his crimes.
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