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Spy For Nazi Germany

GESTAPO: German Secret Police

In what was almost his first official act, Adolf Hitler, after becoming the chancellor of Germany in 1933, established a secret police force, the Gestapo (a contraction of the German words for "secret state police") to assure the control of the country by the Nazi Party. Though originally designed as an internal police force, the Gestapo soon became an effective and dreaded counterintelligence agency.

On April 26, 1933, Hermann Goering, Hitler's right-hand adviser, officially established the Gestapo as a secret police force in Prussia to replace the old Prussian political police known as Department IA. Goering's original designation for this force was the Secret Police Office, in German the Geheimes Polizei Amt, or GPA, but this was too similar to the GPU of the Soviet Union. A postal employee then making up a franking stamp for this new force, suggested that Goering call the new organization the Geheime Staatspolizei, the Secret State Police, or, in abbreviated form, the Gestapo.

The most frightening thing about the Gestapo was, that as a secret state police force, it operated above the law. Goering used the Gestapo as his personal terror weapon, deploying this force of sadistic thugs to enforce his own decrees, meting out beatings, torture, and murder at will. The Gestapo was originally made up of Germany's worst social elements, police officers who had been dismissed for brutality, army officers who had been dismissed for gross misconduct.

These agents had deep histories of persecuting those condemned by the Nazis — Jews, Catholics, or liberal politicians. Many of the Gestapo's early-day members came from the gutter ranks of the SA, Ernst Roehm's Brown Shirts or stormtroopers. They were blackmailers, extortionists, pimps, homosexuals, rapists, most with long criminal records. These were the men Goering wanted, asked for, and got.

Goering appointed Heinrich Himmler as deputy chief of the Prussian Secret Police in April 1934. This placed the Gestapo under Himmler's direct command. He expanded the Gestapo's responsibilities as the police arm of the equally dreaded SS, Himmler's own creation. (The SS was a sinister and mysterious organization that came to control all police and counterintelligence agencies in Germany, as well as provide the elite army divisions that spearheaded Hitler's invasions and military operations. The Gestapo and the SS were identical in the kind of personnel both employed: fanatical Nazis whose allegiance was only to Adolf Hitler.)

Himmler insisted that the Gestapo, like the SS, have a completely free hand. To that end, in 1935, he pressured the Prussian Supreme Court to rule that the Gestapo's orders and actions were not subject to judicial control. The Third Reich made this official on February 10, 1936, when it decreed that the Gestapo was placed above all laws of the land.

Further, civil liberties in Germany were suspended by a notorious Nazi law instituted on February 28, 1933. Under this edict, the Gestapo operated at will. Its agents did as they pleased, arresting and imprisoning whomever they chose or for whatever reason. Anyone daring to ask questions about a person picked up by the Gestapo (many of whom simply vanished) were told that the suspect had been placed in the status of Shutzhaft, or "protective custody," a catchall phrase for any charge the Gestapo later cared to invent.

Himmler himself was named as chief of all secret police in Germany in June 1936, operating under the Ministry of the Interior. In addition to using the Gestapo to hunt out Allied spies, political malcontents and members of the Black Orchestra (the German underground working against Hitler), Himmler used Gestapo agents to create dossiers on German leaders Himmler disliked or vied with in the reach for more and more power. It was the Gestapo that proved, under Himmler's direction, that Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, a member of the army's high command and Hitler's Minister of Defense, had married a prostitute, and, having violated Nazi rules, was dismissed from his important post.

The white-haired, 60-year-old Blomberg, an early- day Hitler supporter, was disliked by Himmler who thought he had too much power, so the history of Blomberg's wife, Erna Gruhn, was unearthed by the Gestapo to prove her a common whore. The woman was a typist in Blomberg's office at the time he met her and he had no knowledge of the fact that her mother had operated a brothel. Josef Meisinger, a Gestapo agent and one of Himmler's henchmen, admitted before his execution as a war criminal in Poland in 1947, that Blomberg's wife had no record as a prostitute and he used her mother's background to blacken the young woman's name so that Blomberg would be disgraced and dismissed.

Next came General Werner von Fritsch, commander-in-chief of the Germany Army, the top soldier of the land, whom Himmler knew hated the Nazis and was constantly making contemptuous remarks about him, Goering, Goebbels, and others. In January 1938, the Gestapo produced a dossier that stated that Fritsch, a lifelong bachelor, was a homosexual and had had relations with a number of male prostitutes. This was supported by the statements of a Hans Schmidt, a degenerate blackmailer who preyed upon homosexuals in Berlin. Fritsch vehemently denied the charges, which were cause for dismissal, but the ever bold Himmler brought Schmidt in front of Fritsch and Hitler at the Chancellory Building.

Schmidt shuffled in front of Hitler, gave Fritsch a glance, then said that he had seen Fritsch meet with a notorious male prostitute named "Bavarian Joe" in the Potsdam railroad station in Berlin and had witnessed homosexual acts between the pair in the men's room. Schmidt then went on to say that Fritsch had been paying him blackmail money for years until he, Schmidt, was sent to prison for another offense. Fritsch could not believe his ears. He was too incensed to answer the charges. Hitler interpreted Fritsch's silence to signify his guilt. He asked for Fritsch's resignation. The general refused, demanding to be tried under military law.

While awaiting trial, Fritsch, unlike almost all victims of the Gestapo, had at his disposal the means through which to prove his innocence. Army intelligence, working with certain officials with the Ministry of Justice not yet then under the control of Himmler and his Gestapo, discovered that Schmidt had, indeed, been blackmailing a homosexual officer, but not Fritsch. His victim had been a captain of cavalry, Rittmeister von Frisch. The Gestapo knew this but when it arrested Schmidt, its officials, including Himmler, ordered Schmidt to point his finger at the wrong man, at Fritsch.

Army officials were then able to take control of not only Schmidt but of Frisch who had also been arrested and detained by the Gestapo. The army kept these two under lock and key to await the military tribunal, confident that Himmler and the Gestapo would finally be shown up for what they were, blackmailers. Himmler and the Gestapo were compromised as was Hitler. The Army vowed that if Fritsch did not receive a fair trial, it would seize the government and throw out the dictator. (Had it done so, the world might have been spared World War II and its awful devastation.)

The Army never got the chance. Hitler realized his dilemma. Fritsch, if brought to trial, would be exonerated and he, along with the Gestapo, Himmler, and Reinhard Heydrich of the SD, who had also prepared fake files in the Fritsch case, would be in disgrace and could lose power. To extricate himself from the mire of the Gestapo's blundering, Hitler simply announced on February 4, 1938, he was assuming command of all the armed forces of Germany. As the head of state, he had the legal right to assume that command.

Fritsch, and sixteen other senior generals, the only real opposition to Hitler left in Germany at that time, were relieved of their commands, and forty-four other high-ranking officers who had shown little enthusiasm for the Nazis were transferred to minor positions. In the end, the Gestapo and Himmler had won, but only through the heavy-handed tactics of Adolf Hitler, the only person in Germany exercising power over them.

Dr. Hjalmar Schact, Hitler's Minister of Economics, was a ruthless autocrat, a usurous banker and a declared foe of Himmler who dared to tell the Gestapo chief that he and his secret police had "better stay out of my way." Gestapo agents were immediately sent to bug Schact's home and offices with hidden microphones. Agents then recorded Schact's every word, especially anything critical of the Third Reich or Hitler's cronies, and this was then placed before Hitler, year after year, until the Fuhrer finally dismissed Schact.

The Gestapo was Himmler's secret police force, which also functioned as an arm of the SS in that it made arrests and detained persons before the SS determined the fate of that person. The Gestapo conducted widespread counterintelligence. Since anyone advocating the political overthrow of the Nazi Party was considered a criminal, espionage and civil crime could be interpreted by the Gestapo as one in the same charge.

Himmler's Gestapo spies operated throughout Germany and in the countries the Nazis occupied. They were fairly efficient in tracking down Allied agents and breaking up underground cells and resistance groups, yet their duties were so widespread that the same counterespionage agents were kept busy hunting down shopkeepers, factory workers and civil servants who casually complained about the government. They assumed the role of a "thought police," chasing disgruntled citizens instead of foreign agents and thus their energies were debilitated, their aims distorted and their overall counterintelligence awash with the trivial and inconsequential. The art and science of espionage was replaced by obsessive witchhunting.

The Gestapo, like its perverse parent, the SS, collapsed with the fall of the Third Reich in 1945. Its chief, Himmler, was captured but to avoid conviction as a war criminal (which he certainly was), committed suicide by swallowing poison. The image of the Gestapo to this day is twin to that of Hitler and his ruthless, maniacal gang, sinister and all things evil.

Tyler Gatewood Kent

Born in Mukden, Manchuria, to an American diplomat of considerable wealth, Tyler Kent enjoyed a carefree youth. He traveled widely with his family and was privately tutored until entering the exclusive St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1927. He went on to Princeton, graduating in 1932 with a degree in history. Through his father's connections, Kent joined the American diplomatic service and was sent to Moscow in 1933.

After serving six years in Russia, Kent took a position in the American Embassy in London, working as a code clerk. As World War II loomed, Kent met an attractive Russian emigre, Anna Wolkoff, whose parents operated a tearoom in South Kensington. Enamored of Wolkoff, he began attending her political discussion groups and soon endorsed her fanatical anti-Semitic views.

Anna Wolkoff was the daughter of one-time Czarist Russian Admiral Nicholas Wolkoff, who fled Russia with his family when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Romanov dynasty in 1917. The couple opened an innocuous tearoom where their daughter began holding political meetings twenty years later. Anna Wolkoff had adopted the views of right-wing leaders, such as Captain Archibald H. M. Ramsey.

The 29-year-old Kent was not only politically captivated by the 38-year-old Wolkoff but was emotionally involved with her. She drummed into him her beliefs that Hitler was correct in branding all Jews as enemies of any civilized country and that the impending war was really "the Jew's war." By the time Kent met her, Wolkoff had already attracted the attention of MI5 whose agents kept her under surveillance.

Wolkoff had long since dropped the pose of political agitator. She actively sought intelligence information from employees in the British War Office, one of whom being Joan Miller. After hearing of this request, Miller went to MI5 and was asked to provide doctored information to Wolkoff while infiltrating her discussion group and to obtain information on Ramsay and other right-wingers who supported Hitler.

Meanwhile, Wolkoff easily convinced Tyler Kent to obtain secret information from the U.S. Embassy in London, which she passed along to Nazi agents. Kent delivered all cables between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. These ultra-secret communications, which demonstrated Roosevelt's support of England against Germany, despite the fact that America was then neutral, were delivered by the Italian Embassy to the German Ambassador in Rome, Hans Mackensen.

Learning that Mackensen and subsequently Hitler himself were reading the highly secret Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence, MI5 approached Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, revealing their findings. Kennedy waived diplomatic immunity for Kent and a squad of agents from Special Branch, accompanied by an observer from the Embassy, raided Kent's apartment in Gloucester Place on May 20,1940. Kent was caught by surprise before he could dispose of many Embassy documents he had stolen.

Arrested, Kent and Wolkoff were placed on trial. Kent by that time had been fired from the American diplomatic service by Kennedy. He was convicted after the stolen U.S. documents were placed in evidence. Kent was sentenced to seven years in prison. Wolkoff was confronted by the testimony of Joan Miller and was convicted and sent to prison for ten years. Before leaving the dock, Wolkoff screamed that she would kill Joan Miller when released. At war's end, Kent was released but immediately deported to the U.S. where he soon disappeared.

Jay Robert Nash. Spies: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Dirty Tricks and Double Dealing from Biblical Times to Today. M. Evans and Company, Inc., New York. 1997.

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