12-02-2025
Lt Col Anthony Le Tissier, last British governor of Spandau prison in Berlin
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Le Tissier, who has died aged 92, had an adventurous career with the Royal Military Police (RMP) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and was the last British governor of Spandau prison.
In 1981, Le Tissier was working for the FCO in Berlin and took over a triple role as British Resident, British governor of Spandau prison and British allied liaison and protocol officer. The prison was in the British sector of Berlin but it was operated by the Four-Power Authorities to house the Nazi war criminals sentenced to imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials. The governors took it in turns to act as chairman for a month but decisions had to be agreed by all four.
Rudolf Hess had been the only prisoner there for 14 years. Le Tissier was able to improve his conditions by providing a hospital bed and replacing the narrow spiral staircase with a lift so that the man had easier access to the garden and his Portacabin summer house.
In August 1987 Hess committed suicide in the Portacabin by strangling himself with the loose end of an electric light wire while his warder was outside. Attempts to revive him failed. This occurred in a month when an American governor was chairman, but Le Tissier took the lead in making arrangements for the body to be handed over to Hess's son.
The prison was demolished to prevent it becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. Hess's death sparked a number of accusations and conspiracy theories. In an attempt to put these to rest, in 1994, with the discreet approval of the Foreign Office, Le Tissier published a book, Farewell to Spandau.
Anthony Hedley Le Tissier was born in Guernsey on February 6 1932. Always known as Tony, as a boy he visited the great battleships Hood and Nelson when they were moored off the island and, in 1937, he saw the airship Hindenburg moving westwards on its ill-fated flight to New Jersey.
In June 1940, after the fall of France, he and his younger brother Owen, together with more than 1,800 other children, were evacuated to Weymouth, Dorset, by steamer. After being joined by their mother, who was pregnant, and her two daughters, they were billeted on a family at St Helens, Lancashire.
His father had a substantial business growing tomatoes. It was the height of the season and he was determined to harvest his crop before leaving. He stayed too long, however, and was interned when the Germans occupied the island at the end of the month.
At one stage during the war, he was arrested by the German military police, and spent three months in Jersey prison followed by six months in Caen prison for illegal slaughter of cattle and distribution of meat. He returned on crutches, weak from malnutrition, and never fully recovered his health.
Le Tissier was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey. As a member of the Junior Training Corps, he wore a battledress, learnt to drill with rifles and read maps. He left school aged 17 and worked for several years as an accountant for British American Tobacco.
In March 1954 he enlisted as a regular soldier in the Intelligence Corps at Maresfield Camp, Sussex. After promotion to sergeant, he was posted to Segamat near Johor in Malaya, during the Emergency. The Corps was part of the British force deployed to defeat the communist terrorists (CTs) and support the government.
Le Tissier assisted the military intelligence officer in interpreting intelligence so that it could be exploited by army patrols and ambushes. On one occasion, he was walking up a track to a village accompanied by a detective chief inspector (DCI) from Special Branch. There was a clump of bushes on the skyline and suddenly he felt the hairs rise up on the back of his neck.
'There was no cover,' he said afterwards. 'I was in a very exposed position. I was sure that I was being aimed at.' Fortunately nothing happened, but several years later the DCI wrote to him to say that he had met a CT who told him he had had a Bren gun aimed at the two men from the bushes but he had seen a tiger behind them and decided not to fire.
Le Tissier returned to England in 1956. He attended OCTU at Eaton Hall, Cheshire, the next year and, after the four-month course, he was granted a short-service commission in the RMP.
After postings to Cyprus and Lisburn, Northern Ireland, followed by a move to the Special Investigation Branch (SIB) at New Scotland Yard, in early 1964 he returned to Cyprus to take over the SIB. There was increasing lawlessness and violence between the Cypriot and Turkish communities and the UN Peacekeeping Force was set up by the Security Council.
Postings to Dortmund, Helmstedt and Herford, West Germany, were interspersed with a year in Edinburgh. At Dortmund, he was involved in investigating and prosecuting crimes including murder, rape and 'hit and run' motoring offences.
He returned to Lisburn in September 1971 as Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal 1st Regiment RMP. After Bloody Sunday on January 30 1972, he was tasked with checking hundreds of reports from soldiers who had been deployed in Derry that day. He was awarded an MBE in 1974.
His reorganisation of the legal affairs department in Northern Ireland earned him accolades from several generals as well as the Chief Crown Prosecutor. In October 2002 he was summoned to the tribunal set up by the Saville Inquiry to report his findings and give evidence.
He was posted to Berlin in 1976 as Assistant Provost Marshal in the rank of lieutenant colonel, but after a year he resigned from the Army and joined the FCO as a chief superintendent at the Public Safety Office.
He finally retired in 1991, but for the next seven years he remained in Berlin. He began organising and running battlefield tours for soldiers still serving and for British, American and German veterans of the Second World War, organising visits to the Seelow Heights and former top secret Soviet installations servicing Warsaw Pact forward command bunkers.
One of the houses he explored had been specially adapted by the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, for debriefing defectors from the West. It had 40 cameras and 60 microphones concealed in the building. The tours later included excursions to France, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy and Poland.
Over the years, he published 19 books and became an internationally recognised military historian. He also acted as a consultant in the making of several films. After returning to England, he lived in Frome and Lymington before settling in Salisbury.
In 1958 he married Jeanne (Jo) Moffat. She died in 2019 and he is survived by two sons and a daughter.
Lt Col Tony Le Tissier, born February 6 1932, died December 27 2024
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
