Joachim “Jochen” Benemann:
Leader of the Hitlerjugend in the UK, Nazi, Communist, Member of the Danish Resistance, or Spy?
Author: Philip and Pascale Lafeber
Associated house: 28 Polstead Road
Table of Contents
Introduction
On 22nd July 1952, Barbara Cecilia Benemann (née Davies) became the owner of 28 Polstead Road. Her husband, Joachim “Jochen” Benemann, was German, a polyglot and a man who had led an eventful life and was already very well known to MI5. The security service had been keeping a detailed file on him since his arrival in the UK in the 1930s, and when he moved into Polstead Road at the height of the Cold War, they instructed the Oxford Police to monitor him and report on his activities.
Joachim Benemann 1911-1939
Joachim Benemann was born in Hamburg in 1911 into a cultured, intellectual family that lived in Finkenkrug, a village west of Berlin. His father, Gerhard Benemann, was a bookseller and founder of a publishing house, and his mother, Maria Benemann (née Dobler), was a writer of memoirs describing the cultural and artistic circles in Germany before World War I.
In the 1930s, Benemann visited and worked in various countries across Europe. He also became heavily involved in the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) international outreach, visiting England several times and setting up joint Anglo-German Youth clubs at schools across the UK, including Harrow, Rugby, Oundle, and Bryanston.
When he arrived in Britain in 1937 to live in London, MI5 was immediately on his case and noted that he was well educated, articulate, and claimed to be studying English at University College, London. His stated purpose of study was, however, considered a cover story. He was suspected of trying to build Nazi youth networks within Britain.
Whilst in London, he helped organise cycling tours across the UK involving German youth groups. British security services identified seven such groups, each of 20 young men in their late teens or early twenties, and suspected these trips were a cover for intelligence gathering.
In May 1937 the Daily Herald printed an article about “spyclists” (The mystery of Hitler’s ‘spyclists’ – War History) that mentioned Joachim Benemann and reported that the advice from the Nazi Cycling Association to members travelling abroad was “Get into your head all landmarks like steeples and towers and all fords and bridges and acquaint yourself with them in such a way that you will be able to recognise them at night.” Police across Britain were instructed to quietly monitor the routes of these groups, which included Oxford, Cambridge and London. In the end, there was never any definitive proof of espionage.
In November 1937, Joachim Benemann met Baden-Powell, then Head of the Boy Scouts, at the London German Embassy; both had been invited by von Ribbentrop, the German Ambassador. There, they discussed ways to link the Hitler Youth movement and the Boy Scouts. Nothing came of the meeting, however, as their core values differed too much. As a matter of fact, the British Government later instructed Baden-Powell to refuse an invitation to meet Hitler in person.
Benemann remained all this time under close observation as MI5 continued to see him as a trusted Nazi youth organiser, operating, not just as a participant, but also as a hub figure in the grey zone between cultural diplomacy, political influence, and possible intelligence scouting. His possible involvement with espionage was also reported in an intriguing anonymous letter sent to Scotland Yard in November 1937 (see below).
Joachim Benemann: 1939-1950
Benemann returned to Germany in 1939 to complete his Doctorate and was prevented from returning to the UK by the onset of the war. His wartime record is somewhat sparse.
He seemingly spent most of his time in occupied Denmark promoting youth groups as a Stammführer in the Hitlerjugend. The Gestapo arrested him in Denmark in 1944 as he was attempting to escape to England via Sweden. He was imprisoned in Berlin, although he was soon sent to a hospital due to ill-health.
In 1947, he went through a denazification tribunal in Hamburg and returned to the UK the following year, got married, and in 1952 moved to Polstead Road. In 1953, he applied for British naturalisation and used his well-placed contacts from the 1930s within the British establishment to promote his case at the highest levels.
The declassified MI5 file (shown below) reveals what Benemann claimed when questioned: namely that he had been very close to the Communist Party while working as a journalist in Moscow in the early 1930s, that he had only become a member of the Nazi Party in 1938 in order to continue promoting his youth groups, and that during the war in Denmark he had worked with the Danish Resistance.
The MI5 file supports his claim of communist links, as only a persona grata could work in Moscow in the 1930s, and witnesses from the Danish Resistance confirm that, since 1942, he had indeed been passing information to the communist-based Resistance in Denmark.
There remained, however, throughout the Cold War years of the 1950s, the uncertainty that Benemann might be a “man who shifts his loyalties according to the needs and interests of the moment”, or the more sinister interpretation “that he became a communist about the time of his visit to Moscow in the 1930s and remained one throughout his subsequent career”.
His reliability thus in question, the recommendation from the security service was clear: “it would be imprudent to consider him free from security risk”. His application for British naturalisation was refused, despite Police surveillance reports from his time living at Polstead Road showing nothing untoward.
Joachim Benemann: MI5 report (12-9-54)
The report shown here came from the UK National Archives reference 3/3273, and it is dated (at the end, rather faintly) 12/9/54. The document ends with a final note that “The application has been refused.” The report was provided in five images, so it is quite long. The text is not easily readable, but it can be read on enlargement or download.
Joachim Benemann: 1950-1960
Little is known about Joachim Benemann after the 1950s. Dr Philip Bull, Professor of History at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, who has done research on the subject, has kindly provided the information on Benemann’s time at Oxford:
- Joachim Benemann married Barbara Cecilia Davies in 1950, and from then on, until they bought the Polstead Road house, they lived in the house she had inherited from her parents in Market Drayton in Shropshire. It is likely that the sale of that house enabled her to buy the Oxford property in 1952.
- Between 1953 and 1955, Benemann held a 2-year Missionary Studentship of £450 per annum granted jointly by the Cambridge Mission to Delhi and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to enable him to write a thesis at Oriel College for a Bachelor of Literature degree. This was todue of his intention to take up a lectureship in English and Religious Philosophy at St Stephen’s College, Delhi.
- The position in Delhi was conditional on his being naturalised as a British citizen. And although this was to elude him in the end, the years 1953 and 1954 were preoccupied by his struggle to obtain British Nationality. This experience proved so stressful that he admitted himself to Warneford Hospital for 4 months in late 1954 and early 1955.
- Despite all this he completed his thesis, ‘Inspirational Words: a comparison of some eastern and Christian concepts and practices’, B.Litt thesis, University of Oxford, 1956, also available at the Bodleian, Shelf mark: MS.M.Litt.d.552.
- When he and Barbara left Oxford, which must have been after 1959, as they were still living in Polstead Road, they moved to Topsham in Devon, where they bought a house that they lived in until they entered care homes in old age.
For his work from 1948 to the 1960s, there is some mention of him as a Mitarbeiter der Goethe-Institute, in cultural and academic contexts related to Germany. It is not known what work Joachim Benemann was involved in afterwards.
After Oxford: no resolution
Joachim Benemann died at the age of 95 in Exmouth, Devon, on 12th February 2007 and his wife, Barbara, at 104 on 24th November 2011. The real role he played in life remains a mystery – Nazi, Communist, Member of the Danish Resistance, or Spy? Or a bit of all of these in turn?
