Harley Street doc ‘was Nazi sympathiser’ - Wartime files reveal Dr Roger Lester Williams was detained by security services

Published: 12 November 2010
by JOSH LOEB

A RESPECTED Harley Street surgeon was detained by wartime security ser­vices after his colleagues claimed he was a Nazi sympathiser, newly declassified police files have revealed.

Dr Roger Lester Williams, who practised at 49 Harley Street, was accused of having “a strong admiration for the achievements of the Nazi regime” and receiving a “cordial reception” from Nazi officers on one of several visits to Germany before the war.

The report contains ­testimonies of his former colleagues, one of whom claims the doctor “rammed Nazi propaganda down our throats”.

But another colleague thought Dr Williams had been “indiscreet and foolish rather than subversive”.

The file reveals the lengths to which security services went to investigate the private lives of citizens deemed “anti-British”.

Dr Williams’s decision to have an operation in Dusseldorf was noted as suspicious and “a thing no English man would dream of doing”.

The report also notes that he had a “succession of German and Austrian housekeepers” and that relations with at least one of them was “rather more intimate”.

But in a letter written while Dr Williams was detained in Brixton prison, he claimed his present housekeeper was “of anti-Nazi sympathy, for she is officially recognised as a refugee from Nazi aggression”.

He also wrote: “I have never been a member of any political party or organisation in England or abroad and have taken no part in politics. I live a quiet life, devoted to my professional work, and my sympathies are entirely English.”

The report concluded that Dr Williams had been “concerned in acts prejudicial to the public safety” and recommended detention under Regulation 18B of the Defence (General) Regulations 1939.