Nazi-obsessed Moors murderer Ian Brady became so good at speaking German behind bars that he was tipped to land a job as a translator if he was released.
Newly declassified files have revealed the Glasgow-born serial killer received language lessons from a senior university professor while in jail.
He was also visited behind bars by future prime minister James Callaghan, then the Home Secretary.
Brady, who died in 2017, aged 79, was given German tuition after expressing admiration for Hitler and praising the Nazis’ “efficiency”.
The new records show how prison governors praised his intelligence and hoped the classes would end with him leading a “healthy normal life in society”.
After he was jailed in 1966 for torturing and killing five children with partner Myra Hindley, Brady told a prison chaplain that his crimes were no different to massacres being carried out by US troops in Vietnam.
A welfare officer noted: “He spoke of his interest in the German language, then on Hitler’s use of oratory and referred to his recordings of these, giving a bleak, cracked grin.”
Governors believed they could harness his obsession to allow him to lead a new life should he ever be released.
Two years later, the chief education officer at Durham prison said he was excelling in his German classes.
He wrote: “If Brady continues to come along well in his German I see no reason why he should not make a living one day as an interpreter or translator.
“The tuition given to Brady has given a new interest to him in life, begun to pull him out of himself and started him on the long, hard road to a healthy normal life in society.”
Some prisoners complained Brady was getting “special treatment” but authorities continued the classes as they had “toned up his general personality and assisted the prison staff considerably in trying to socialise him”.
Brady also passed courses in English literature, maths and psychology and was encouraged to pursue a university degree.
The papers reveal the killer, who strangled his victims with string and buried them on Saddleworth Moor, was given lessons in knot-tying while in jail by a young female therapist who became infatuated with him.
They had to be separated because of fears their bond was becoming “unprofessional”.
Brady lived out the rest of his life behind bars.
