Nazi Sex Spies

True Stories of Seduction, Subterfuge and State Secrets

Al Cimino

• Publisher: Arcturus
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781789509540
• eBook ISBN: 9781839405143
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

All is fair in love and war. At least the Nazis thought so. They deployed sex like any other weapon in the service of the Third Reich. Al Camino examines many shocking cases, where brothels were hotbeds of bugging and blackmail, and pillow talk could topple nations. Cases include:
• The bugging of Salon Kitty, a high-class brothel in Berlin which was taken over by the SS.
• Nazi spy Lilly Stein, a 'good-looking nymphomaniac' who slept with US men in order to blackmail them.
• Princess Stephanie Julianne von Hohenlohe, who used her intimate relationship with Lord Rothermere to get the British newspaper Daily Mail to support the Nazis in the 1930s Full of intrigue and surprise, Nazi Sex Spies presents a fascinating history of a little-known aspect of World War II.

Chapter 1

Salon Kitty

Hitler’s spymaster Walter Schellenberg and his boss Reinhard Heydrich were two of the most notorious Nazi officials. As head of the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD – the Reich Intelligence Service – SS-Obersturmführer Schellenberg was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials, while SS-Gruppenführer Heydrich was one of the architects of the Holocaust. He was the infamous head of the Reich Main Security Office that controlled the Gestapo, the SS Intelligence Service and the Criminal Police, and was deputy head of the SS under Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.

The two men had a complex relationship. In 1931, Heydrich had married the cool Nordic beauty Lina von Osten. She had cultural aspirations. The intellectual Schellenberg gave Lina the entrée into cultivated society that she craved and the three of them went to concerts and the theatre together. While Heydrich was flagrantly unfaithful to his spouse with numerous mistresses and prostitutes, Schellenberg became Lina’s discreet lover.

They would spend the afternoon or evening playing bridge in what Heydrich called the ‘dear intimacy of the family circle’ where he would enact ‘the part of the devoted husband’. However, according to Schellenberg: ‘The very next evening I would get a telephone call from him – his voice now assuming a suggestive leer – saying, “This evening we must go out together – in mufti. We’ll have dinner somewhere and then ‘go places’.”’

Reinhard Heydrich played the part of the devoted husband, but he was unfaithful to his wife with numerous mistresses and prostitutes and regularly visited Kitty Schmidt’s brothel.

heydrich's brainwave

Heydrich was already a patron of the establishment then known as Pension Kitty. The madam of this high-class brothel, Kitty Schmidt, kept four or five prostitutes on the premises. Clients could also select a partner from a number of photographic albums, then have their choice for the evening summoned by taxi.

‘During dinner his conversation would become obscene,’ said Schellenberg. ‘He would try to make me drunk as we prowled from bar to bar, but I always excused myself on the grounds of not feeling quite up to the mark, and he never succeeded.’

It seems that Schellenberg strove to be faithful to his mistress, Heydrich’s wife, a compliment he extended to neither of his own wives. The first he divorced after one year in 1939. He married again shortly after, though this union was not much more successful.

In 1939, Heydrich was investigating the source of a high-level leak that threatened to give the Allies advanced warning of Germany’s plan to attack through the Ardennes to take Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Any strengthening of the defences at this vulnerable point could prove disastrous to the invasion.

During one of his evening peregrinations with Schellenberg, Heydrich came up with the idea of infiltrating a brothel patronized by officers, government officials and other high-flyers, where pretty women and alcohol might loosen an informer’s tongue. Schellenberg was ordered to put this plan into action. As a result, he took on an unusual assignment.

The SS – Schutzstaffel or ‘Protection Squad’ – with their black uniforms designed by Hugo Boss, started out as Hitler’s bodyguard and went on to become a murderous state within a state. But they had little experience of running brothels. Fortunately, someone who did had already fallen into Schellenberg’s hands – it was Kitty Schmidt.

Pension Schmidt in Giesebrechtstrasse in Charlottenburg, a wealthy part of Berlin, became Salon Kitty. It was Heydrich’s idea to take over this high-class brothel and install listening devices. He himself made a number of ‘inspection tours’ to the site, during which the microphones were discreetly turned off.

the madam

Born Katherina Zammit in a working-class district of Berlin in 1882, Kitty changed her name to Schmidt, quit her job as a hairdresser’s assistant and became a prostitute. She did well and was seen at the opera and out dining in fashionable restaurants. A brief marriage resulted in the birth of a daughter.

In 1922, at the age of 40, she opened her first brothel. On the advice of wealthy clients, she banked her profits in London, escaping the worst effects of hyperinflation under the Weimar Republic and the Depression. The mass unemployment that swept through Germany during the 1920s made it easy to recruit to her establishment and, as an expert in her trade, Kitty trained her girls well.

After a couple of changes of address, Pension Kitty settled in a large house at 11 Giesebrechtstrasse in the affluent Charlottenburg district where it became the most successful whorehouse in Berlin. Kitty took little interest when Hitler came to power in 1933 and business continued as usual, although several of her Jewish friends left for London. She visited them and they managed her financial affairs there as she continued sending large sums of money to England from Germany.

By 1937, the Nazi authorities began to crack down on money being transferred out of the country and Kitty resorted to sending girls on errands to London with cash sewn into their corsets. Although not interested in politics, she learned about the worsening situation from her clients and in March 1939 decided to quit the country.

Her flight was hastened by a visit from the police, who wanted to use her brothel as a front for the surveillance of her clientele. But the telegrams she had sent making arrangements for her trip were intercepted at the post office and she was arrested at the Dutch border. After two weeks in a police cell, she was handed over to the SS and taken to Schellenberg’s office. He pointed out that she had illegally procured foreign currency, sent money out of the country and helped Jews escape. At the very least she was looking at a long stretch in a concentration camp. To avoid that fate, she agreed to do anything Schellenberg wanted and was forced to sign a secrecy agreement.

Kitty was released and returned to Giesebrechtstrasse on 14 July 1939, eight weeks before the outbreak of World War II. On 27 July, Schellenberg put his top-secret operation into action. He would take over Pension Kitty and transform it into Berlin’s most notorious brothel – Salon Kitty.

bugging the whorehouse

Untersturmführer Karl Schwarz was put in charge of the day-to-day running of Operation Salon Kitty and he and Schellenberg visited Giesebrechtstrasse to inspect the premises. Schellenberg then bought the building through an apparently innocuous businessman and brought in an architect to supervise alterations. The place was closed down for ten days, ostensibly for renovation, while microphones were concealed behind double walls. The wires were run down to the basement where a listening station was installed with recording equipment using wax discs.

Next, the Nazis had to recruit reliable girls. On 16 November 1939, senior SS and police officers received a top-secret memo requesting: ‘Frauen und Mädchen, die intelligent, mehrsprachig, nationalistisch gesinnt und ferner mannstoll sind ’ – ‘Women and girls, who are intelligent, multilingual, nationalistically minded and furthermore man-crazy.’ This was unproductive, so Schellenberg approached Arthur Nebe, the chief of police. For many years Nebe had worked in the vice squad so he knew a great number of working girls.

‘From all the great cities of Europe, he recruited the most highly qualified and cultivated ladies of the demi-monde,’ said Schellenberg, ‘and I regret to say that quite a few ladies from the upper crust of German society were willing to serve their country in this manner.’

The selection board consisted of psychologists and psychiatrists, doctors, university lecturers and interpreters. The recruits had to be single, self-supporting with few family ties, between the ages of 20 and 30, and loyal to National Socialism. Initially 20 were selected and inducted into the SS, where they were required to swear a vow of secrecy along with an oath of allegiance to Hitler. Then they were sent to the cadet school at Ordensburg for training, where they received lectures on contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, hairdressing, cosmetics, social etiquette and the art of conversation, and were taught marksmanship, unarmed combat, first aid, foreign languages and the recognition of uniforms. There were also courses on intelligence techniques, including coding and de-coding. All the instruction was delivered within the framework of Nazi ideology and the Party’s take on wartime economics.

'i come from rothenburg'

Back in Berlin, the girls were not told that the bedrooms they would be working in were bugged. Instead they were told to make a written report after every encounter with a subject of interest. That way, their reliability could be assessed.

New photo albums were produced showing the recruits in provocative poses. Special customers sent by the SS were given a password. If a client said, ‘I come from Rothenburg’, they were shown the books so that they could take their pick of (what they believed to be) the best on offer. Word of this specialist service was circulated in diplomatic and other official circles.

The SS kept the newly re-opened Salon Kitty well supplied with food and liquor, despite wartime shortages. In early April 1940, the intelligence operation was put to the test. The guinea pig was Obersturmführer Wolfgang Reichert, who had distinguished himself in Poland with the Waffen-SS. Schwarz had met him at a social function and tipped him off about Salon Kitty, telling him to say that he was from Rothenburg.

When Reichert did so, he was shown the albums and made his selection; the girl was phoned and arrived soon after. Schwarz was on hand in the basement to overhear their conversation. Reichert let slip that he was being posted to Flensburg on the Danish border. On 9 April, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.

Soon after, the Italian ambassador and a senior official of the German foreign office were recorded in Salon Kitty’s drawing room discussing Count Gian Galeazzo Ciano, Italy’s foreign minister and son-in-law of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was visiting Berlin and might be interested in visiting the Salon. After attending meetings with Hitler, Himmler and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Ciano visited Salon Kitty and was recorded criticizing Hitler. Clearly Salon Kitty was going to be an invaluable source of intelligence – or at least counterintelligence. On 20 April – Hitler’s birthday – Schellenberg was promoted to Sturmbannführer (major).

The operation was expanded with two dozen SS men listening in around the clock. They were forbidden to discuss anything they overheard. The girls were forbidden to contact one another outside Salon Kitty. They were given a medical examination once a week and a briefing once a month. They were also given additional training in languages and Nazi policy, and the contents of their reports were compared to the recordings for discrepancies. The girls knew, if they put a foot wrong, they faced dire consequences as they were privy to top-secret information.

Heydrich continued making his visits, insisting on the listening equipment being turned off when he was present. In his memoirs, Schellenberg records: ‘After one such inspection he sent for me and accused me of failing to comply with his directive. He had, he said, already complained to Himmler about it. The Reichsführer was extremely annoyed and wanted me to submit a written explanation. I at once sensed that Heydrich was hatching a plot against me – possibly because he suspected me of conducting an illicit affair with his wife. He declined to accept my explanation that the apparatus could not be switched off that evening because the electric cables were being transferred, whereas Himmler at once pronounced himself satisfied.’

Heydrich ordered Schellenberg to move the listening post to SD headquarters in Prinz Albrechtstrasse where he had his office. This led to a shocking breach of security.

ljubo kolchev

Another visitor to Salon Kitty was British agent Roger Wilson, who had infiltrated Nazi Germany as a deputy press attaché at the Romanian embassy. He usually went under the name of Ljubo Kolchev, borrowed from a Romanian refugee in exile in London, but at Salon Kitty he used the grander alias Baron von Itty. On his initial visits as a regular client his suspicions were aroused when he noticed that the girls were all remarkable linguists and well-versed in current affairs. He then observed that new cables were being laid in the street outside as the listening post in the basement was being moved on Heydrich’s orders. Wilson reported back to London and was told to continue his investigation to see what else he could discover.

In order to dig deeper, Wilson decided to get close to one of the girls and began to favour a young woman named Brigitta. Under her gentle prompting he admitted he was not really a baron and that his real name was Ljubo Kolchev. The SS quickly checked this out and found that Kolchev’s diplomatic credentials were registered with the German foreign ministry. The Romanian ambassador was contacted and he vouched for his deputy press attaché. Summoned by t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction • The Blonde Battalion
• Chapter 1 • Salon Kitty
• Chapter 2 • Hitler's Princess Spy
• Chapter 3 • Secrets of the Russian Tea Room
• Chapter 4 • Some Sort of Kink
• Chapter 5 • A Marriage of Convenience
• Chapter 6 • The Beautiful Spy
• Chapter 7 • The Exotic Dancer
• Chapter 8 • Il Duce's Darling
• Chapter 9 • The Peach of Pearl Harbor
• Chapter 10 • The Ambassador's Daughter
• Chapter 11 • The Danish Columnist
• Chapter 12 • The German Mata Hari
• Chapter 13 • The Spanish Affair
• Chapter 14 • The Viennese Prostitute
• Chapter 15 • The High School Spy
• Chapter 16 • Swastika Swishery
• Chapter 17 • Pussy Cat
• Chapter 18 • Blonde Poison
• Chapter 19 • Nazi Chic
• Chapter 20 • The Spy Who Would Be Queen
• Bibliography
• List of Illustrations
• Copyright