During the Second World War, the United States benefited greatly
from the espionage collaboration between a well-connected
ex-professor of economics, Erwin Respondek, and his contact at the
U.S. embassy in Berlin, Sam Woods. The intelligence gathered by
Respondek and passed on to the U.S. government included the first
detailed and accurate warning about the Germans' plans to invade
the Soviet Union in 1941. It also included valuable information
about German atomic research, military operations, and secret
weapons. This espionage work--here described for the first
time--forms an intriguing chapter in the history of U.S.
intelligence operations during the war and is distinctive for the
personalities of the principal figures, their web of high-level
connections, and the impact of their achievements.
Among the important revelations of this book, which set it apart
from previous, passing references to this espionage collaboration,
are that Erwin Respondek was one of the United States's most
valuable wartime informants in Hitler's Germany, responsible for
the famed Barbarossa warning sent to the State Department; that
Franz Halder, the German army's chief of staff, was a major source
of Respondek's information on the Germans' invasion plan for the
Soviet Union; that Du Pont and the German chemical firm IG Farben
maintained a secret wartime exchange of scientific findings, up
until 1945; that during 1943 and 1944 the German Armaments Ministry
supported research leading toward the construction of a new kind of
cyclotron; that Sam Woods received from Respondek a tip-off on
Japanese war plans in the Pacific; and that Pope Pius XII was
peripherally involved in the resistance activities of Respondek and
his Berlin-based circle. This book should appeal to students and
scholars interested in Nazi Germany and World War II espionage and
to a wider, nonspecialist audience as well.
General
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