Kitty's Salon

Sex, Spying and Surveillance in the Third Reich

Nigel Jones

• Publisher: John Blake
• Year: 2023
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789466126
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

There is no book in English about the wartime Berlin 'salon' run by Kitty Schmidt under the secret control of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Final Solution

Salon Kitty was the most notorious brothel in the decadent Berlin of the Weimar Republic - the city of Cabaret. But after the Nazis took power, it became something more dangerous: a spying centre with every room wired for sound, staffed by women agents specially selected by the SS to coax secrets from their VIP clients. Masterminded by Reinhard Heydrich, the spymaster whom Hitler himself called 'the man with the iron heart', the exclusive establishment turned listening post was patronised by the Nazi leaders themselves, not knowing that hidden ears were listening.

One of the last untold stories of the Second World War, Salon Kitty's sensational true history is now revealed by historians Nigel Jones, Urs Brunner and Dr Julia Schrammel. After years of painstaking research and investigation, the story they tell sheds new light on Nazi methods of control and coercion, and the way that they used and abused sex for their own perverse purposes.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Publisher’s Note
• Contents
• Authors’ Foreword
• Chapter One. ‘Fucking for the Führer’ – The birth of Salon Kitty
• Chapter Two. Love for Sale – Sex and prostitution in the Weimar Republic
• Chapter Three. Love Suppressed – The Nazi crackdown on Eros
• Chapter Four. The End of Love – Sex in concentration camps, military brothels and the Lebensborn project
• Chapter Five. The Hypocrites – Sex and the secret lives of the Nazi elite
• Chapter Six. Twisted Love – How the Nazis used real and fake sex scandals to achieve total power
• Chapter Seven. The Rivals – Heydrich, Canaris, and the competing Nazi police and intelligence agencies
• Chapter Eight. Spies in the House of Love – Converting a brothel into a spy centre
• Chapter Nine. On the Trail of Kitty Schmidt – The quest for a woman of mystery
• Chapter Ten. Kitty Schmidt and the Nazis – Survivor, opportunist or collaborator?
• Chapter Eleven. Aftermath – The fate of Kitty Schmidt, her brothel and her family
• Chapter Twelve. Salon Kitsch – The ‘establishment’ in historical literature and on screen
• Conclusion – Researches and results
• Afterword – ‘Is this still a brothel?’
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology
• Brief Biographies – Prominent people in the Third Reich linked with Salon Kitty
• Bibliography
• Index
• Photos