How Hitler's deputy was tipped to ride on the Loch Ness Monster

Martin Bormann was spotted everywhere from Switzerland to Bolivia, to the exasperation of the British security services.

The search inspired a series of increasingly wild headlines, including the claim that he and Hitler were alive and Bormann was plotting a Nazi revival. One official drily speculated it was only a matter of time before he was reported to have been seen riding the Loch Ness monster.

Bormann was private secretary to Hitler and head of the Nazi party chancellery. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg tried him in absentia in October 1946 and sentenced him to death.

Although he was reported to have been killed trying to escape from the Reich chancellery in May 1945, his body was not found until 1972 and it was not until the remains were DNA tested in 1998 that rumours he had survived were put to rest.

British security bosses were sufficiently convinced of his death by the late 1940s to take reported sightings with a pinch of salt.

The MI5 files released at the National Archive in Kew show Bormann was variously described as living in Bolivia, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and the Middle East and in prison or having defected to the Russians.

An official description of him stated that he was assuming various disguises including a thick beard, facial scars and – when in Gottingen, in Lower Saxony, Germany – wore traditional Bavarian clothing, including halter braces and a Tyrolean hat.

The constant stream of news reports and sightings from agents out in the field left some in MI5 rather frustrated.

In response to a story in the Evening Standard in 1947, one official wrote to another: "I should tell you that it is the ambition of every newspaper reporter who steps upon German soil to discover the whereabouts of Martin Bormann, or, should this prove impossible, at least 'discover' some evidence which would justify his writing a story on this subject."

Rumours of his survival first reached the secret service in October 1946, when a Brigadier Shoesmith claimed he had received "reliable reports" that Bormann was living in Switzerland. But the following month, an SS officer claimed to have seen him in Germany and in December a Stockholm paper reported he was in Malmo in Sweden the previous April before going to South America.

Special Branch officer Perera in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, asked in 1947 for an up-to-date photograph of Bormann so that he could identify him should the Nazi cross his path.

One MI5 officer, Courtney Young, wrote to a colleague: "Is it possible to tell Perera that Bormann is quite definitely dead and that he need not fuss any further, or is it worth complying with his request in his penultimate paragraph?"

A Miss Gunn replies: "It might be broken to him gently that the late but peripatetic Herr Bormann is being seen in Switzerland (the most persistent locale), Bolivia, Italy, Norway and Brazil – in the last country, sitting in state on a high mountain beside his pallid Fuhrer.

"The Press is doubtless waiting to break the silly season scoop: that he has been seen riding the Loch Ness monster. That ought to fetch some dollars. Or something."

Film director bugged by MI5

MI5 COLLECTED information about actress Zo Wanamaker's family for years after they fled to the UK to escape the anti-communist witch-hunts of McCarthyism in their native United States.

Mr Wanamaker told friends he wanted to stay in Britain because of greater tolerance towards Communism and said that personal freedom had disappeared in the US.

But what he may not have known was that MI5 was keeping a file – released for the first time yesterday – that included his conversations, associations and even his theatrical projects and sharing the information with the US Embassy.

And in the event of a national emergency Mr Wanamaker would have found himself behind bars. His file notes that he should be interred to prevent a security threat and recommends his wife, Charlotte, should have restrictions placed on her movements.

British intelligence agents picked up rumours that the Wanamakers were expected by the Communist Party in the UK in about April 1951.

As his daughter Zo recently discovered when she read his FBI file as part of the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? family history programme the actor and director was due be called to give evidence to the US Senate committee investigating communist activity.

The MI5 file contains copies of personal letters sent by Mr Wanamaker, bugged telephone conversations and even a transcript of a private meeting he held with other figures from the film world.

Chocolates from Russia with love, but no soft centres

A CONTROVERSIAL left-wing newspaper – which later became the Sun – was funded by a respected publisher who spent his early career smuggling Bolshevik diamonds into Britain hidden inside chocolate creams, secret files have revealed.

As a younger man, Francis Meynell was director of the radical newspaper the Daily Herald, editor of the Communist, a conscientious objector and suspected of being part of a plot to undermine the morale of the British Army. The Daily Herald was relaunched as the Sun in 1964.

In 1920 George Lansbury, owner of the Daily Herald, which was often short of capital, accepted a subsidy from the Soviet government.

The MI5 file – released today at the National Archives at Kew – shows that by December of that year, the security services had learned that Meynell was getting Soviet assets into the country. At first, cash was hard to come by for the Soviets and diamonds from the collection of the recently murdered Tsar were the easiest form of currency.

A letter in Meynell's file states: "When the Bolshevik diamonds were brought into England, they were brought by Francis Meynell concealed in chocolates. I understand that at Stockholm he purchased a box of chocolates, extracted the cream contents and filled them in with diamonds."

Meynell himself boasted of an occasion when "I talked with Secret Service agents with diamonds rattling rather uncomfortably against my teeth".