Security experts praise the Mail for doing a 'national service' by revealing new MI6 chief's granddad was a Nazi spy chief - before the Russians could
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Security experts have praised the Mail for doing a 'national service' by disclosing that the next head of MI6 is the granddaughter of a Nazi spy chief.
Our investigation found incoming Secret Intelligence Service boss Blaise Metreweli is descended from notorious Ukrainian traitor Constantine Dobrowolski.
Known as 'Agent No 30' by Wehrmacht commanders, he had vowed revenge against the Russians after they slaughtered his family and seized his country following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
He requested to be sent to the front when Germany invaded the Soviet Union – and immediately switched sides, initially serving with an SS Panzer division in August 1941.
Then, as the Soviets moved in to 'liberate' Ukraine in 1943, Dobrowolski got safe passage from the Nazis for his wife Barbara and their two-month-old son, also named Constantine, to flee west towards Germany.
While Dobrowolski's fate is unknown, his wife and their son made it to Britain, where she married a new partner, Georgian-born David Metreweli, in Yorkshire in 1947.
Perhaps wanting to suppress their dark family history, his son took his stepfather's surname – a name which passed to his daughter, Blaise Metreweli, who from September will head up the very same intelligence service that was fighting against her grandfather in the Second World War.
The Mail unearthed hundreds of pages of documents held in Germany detailing the extraordinary – and blood-soaked – life and times of Dobrowolski that are worthy of a spy thriller.
They detail how the Soviets put a 50,000-rouble bounty – £200,000 in today's money – on the head of the man they dubbed 'the executioner' and 'a fascist cannibal' .
Dobrowolski boasted to German commanders of 'personally' taking part 'in the extermination of the Jews'.
Professor Anthony Glees, who specialises in intelligence, said the Kremlin likely knew 'from the moment' Blaise Metreweli was appointed about her family's past.
He said: 'It is very important that the Mail told the British nation and that they did not discover it from a Russian source.
'I suspect the moment the Russian intelligence service saw the appointment that they could well have been waiting for their moment to embarrass us.
'What the Mail has done has very much been in our national security interest, and it is to be applauded.'
Giorgi Badridze, former Georgian ambassador to the UK, said: 'It was incredibly important that the story was published by the British media before Russian propaganda could run amok.'
A Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spokesman said: 'Blaise Metreweli neither knew nor met her paternal grandfather.
'Blaise's ancestry is characterised by conflict and division and, as is the case for many with eastern European heritage, only partially understood.
'It is precisely this complex heritage which has contributed to her commitment to prevent conflict and protect the British public from modern threats from today's hostile states, as the next chief of MI6.'
