THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE CATWALK

With her blonde hair, green eyes and model looks, Gisela Klein had men falling at her feet. No wonder MI6 dismissed repeated warnings and classed her as 'mistress material', not an enemy operative. But as a new book reveals, she was an agent for German military intelligence all along

- By Rory MacLean

IT WAS September 1944, a month after the arrival of the Allies in Paris, but not everyone in the French capital had been liberated. Gisela Klein had been dragged out of a restaurant on the Champs-Elysees and tied to a tree by a group of French Forces of the Interior.

The Fifis, as they were called, had the same power of life or death wielded by the Gestapo only a short time before.

It was the day before her 31st birthday and she was pregnant.

And she was in mortal danger amid what became known as the “epuration sauvage” or “wild purge” — a spontaneous orgy of punishment for collaboration with the Nazis.

Revenge murders, the seizing of politicians and judges and the public humiliation of women who were shorn of their hair or worse, for consorting with the hated Bosches.

In fact, Gisela was a German stay-behind agent — one of a small number of women employed by German Military Intelligence.

Much has been written about the brave women of Britain’s Special Operations Executive who sacrificed so much to the war effort, but there’s almost nothing about their German counterparts.

The true story of Gisela was hidden in archives in Britain, France, Germany, Austria and America. The only reason it can be told now in my new book, A Model Spy, is thanks to her daughter and son who’d known nothing about her past life. They gave access to vital papers and her modelling portfolio which showed why she’d been so successful.

Born in Dusseldorf, Gisela Klein arrived in the UK in 1933 aged 19 to study English at Oxford University.

She always maintained she hated the Nazis and never joined the party, but she was an upper middle class German nationalist with a love of travel and risk.

Her beauty — with green eyes and blonde hair even MI5 described her as “striking” — opened doors wherever she went.