Security Service release

Renegades

Ralph Baden Devonport Powell (KV 2/2075-2076)

This reconstituted file on the nephew of Lord Baden Powell, Ralph Powell, begins in 1942 following the interception by the censor of a letter from his mother, Maud Woodhouse, to a contact in America, where she expressed concerns that as he had been released from internment by the Germans, her son must be working for them. Powell had married a German in 1938 and was living in The Netherlands when it was invaded in 1940. From the first volume of this file (KV 2/2075, covering 1942-1945) it appears that Powell accepted work as a translator for the German foreign ministry, and later broadcast for the German radio service, first from Berlin, then Luxembourg. As the war drew to a close, the Security Service investigator William Skardon visited the offices of Radio Luxembourg, where he found schedules, accounts records and broadcast recordings as he searched for information about Powell's activities. Transcripts of the broadcasts, along with copies of the seized documents and other material, such as interrogation reports of meetings with Mrs Woodhouse, with escaped PoWs who had been in contact with Powell, and with Powell himself and his wife after he was arrested in May 1945, and copies of Powell's passport application form, are included on the file. The file also includes a detailed Security Service report of the case.

The second file (KV 2/2076, covering 1945-1947) gives details of the Director of Public Prosecutions' response to the case. It was decided not to seek Powell's removal to the UK in order to prosecute, and he was to be released so long as it was agreed that he was not a military threat – but if he ever sought to return to the UK, he was to be warned that the case would be re-opened.