Max Mosley, the motor racing chief and son of the wartime British fascist leader, sat in silence yesterday as the High Court was played a tape of him at a sex party, yelling in German while an “Aryan” woman pleaded for mercy.

Mr Mosley, who is suing the News of the World for invading his privacy, insisted that he was the last person to find Nazi role-play erotic because it brought back memories of his parents, Sir Oswald and Lady Diana Mosley.

He said he had been taking counter-surveillance precautions after being tipped off that there was a plot to discredit him, but was unaware that one of the women at his sadomasochism party had smuggled in a video camera on behalf of the Sunday newspaper.

Mr Mosley is claiming maximum and exemplary damages from the News of the World for spying on the secret basement sex flat he had provided to a dominatrix in return for her arranging group fantasy sessions for him involving beating and whipping.

Whatever revs Max Mosley's engines is none of our business

There may be reasons for removing the president of the FIA from office - but his private life is not one of them

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His case relies on disproving the newspaper’s suggestion that there was a Third Reich theme to the gathering, which featured in the newspaper’s front-page article under the headline “Formula 1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers”.

Mr Mosley, 68, a former barrister who was once secretary of the Oxford Union, spent much of the day in bad-tempered sparring with the News of the World’s counsel about the perceived fascist nature of the fantasies.

Just before the case was adjourned for the day, the newspaper’s counsel, Mark Warby, QC, produced an audio disc of a recording made by Mr Mosley of another orgy a few weeks before the one featured in the article.

Mr Mosley and a woman were heard shouting in German, giving orders and making threats. A woman’s English voice was clearly heard begging: “But we are the Aryan race, blondes.”

Mr Mosley said under cross-examination: “It wouldn’t immediately spring to my mind that that had anything to do with Nazism.”

Mr Warby said: “Oh, come on. How many political movements have put at the centre of their ideology the superiority of the Aryan race?”

Mr Mosley replied: “That would definitely be the Nazi period. But the fact that somebody mentions Aryan, it doesn’t follow ipso facto.”

Mr Mosley’s counsel, James Price, QC, said it was outrageous for the newspaper to have suggested that his client, the president of FIA, the governing body of international motor racing, had been mocking the treatment of Jews in Nazi death camps.

Mr Mosley said: “I can think of few things more unerotic than Nazi role-play. Also it has associations for me in various other ways which would make it even less interesting. I’ve all my life had hanging over me my antecedents, my parents. I wouldn’t consider my parents to be Nazi but there’s obviously a link.”

Mr Warby challenged the claimaint: “We have uniforms, we have striped prison outfits, we have violence, we have scenes of humiliation. The prisoners are being treated in a humiliating way by dominant characters in military uniforms. Mention two periods of German history which this might conjure up to an ordinary person.”

Mr Mosley said: “We were not trying to recall a historical scene. We were trying to act a modern prison scene. I can’t name you any period of German history. I’ve never seen any German wearing a mid-thigh camouflage. It’s just nonsense.”

Mr Mosley had paid £35,000 to set up the dominatrix in a Chelsea Embankment flat, the court was told. Mr Justice Eady sat stony-faced as he heard that the woman was known for arranging bondage sessions involving a man dressed in a judge’s gown and several girls.

Mr Mosley said that a few weeks before the set-up, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the former Scotland Yard chief, had warned him that there was a plot to discredit him. The News of the World article was the first his family had known of his predilections.

“My wife and I had been married for 48 years and together for more than 50 years . . . We met as teenagers and she never knew of this aspect of my life so that headline in the newspaper was completely totally devastating for her and there is nothing I can say that could ever repair that.”

Under cross-examination, he said: “I don’t believe anyone who was a sensible modern adult would honestly believe these activities to be sick.”

He accepted that, as a trustee of the FIA, he had a formal duty to avoid any appearance of improper behaviour.

The Japanese, Canadian and Catalan motoring organisations which were members of his federation had all expressed disquiet about his sexual behaviour. “The Germans took a dim view as well,” Mr Warby said.

The hearing continues.

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