PM ' s German cash
Sir: Before Mr Heath decides that to do with the FVS Foundation award, it would be well for him to consider these facts.
(1) Although the Times of December 11 carried the extraordinary news that the founder of FVS had forgotten what the initials stood for, the Financial Times of December 8 asserted that the German Embassy stated that they mean Freiherr vom Stein. The latter was a Prussian politician of the Napoleonic period who was associated with such proto-Nazis as the anti-semitic Jahn, and who did as much as most to set Germany's course for Bismarck and Hitler.
(2) The Sunday Times of December 12 carried an interview with Alfred Toepfer, the founder of FVS, who stated that he had been arrested by the Gestapo, then released through the intervention of Canaris, and "this way I became an officer running German counter-insurgency in Holland and Paris . . . and later was put in charge of safeguarding war supplies against sabotage in Czechoslovakia." Toepfer was kept in solitary confinement by the British Army for two years partly on this account, and says that he was worse treated than by the Gestapo.
It is further stated that Pompidou was formerly his financial adviser, and that he has huge trade links with the East bloc. Counter insurgency was usually an SS, or specifically Gestapo, function. I think, on reflection, that the best solution would be that Mr Heath accept this, and the other, prizes, and betake himself to that wonderful world of Europe where these mysterious figures who flit between the world of Hitler and of the Soviets so easily lurk, and leave the people of this country to their muddled old-fashioned ideas of loyalty, democracy etc.... G. J. A. Stern 6 Eton Court, Shepherds Hill, London N6
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