Hitler's Man in Havana

Hitler's Man in Havana
Author: Thomas D. Schoonover
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2008-09-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813138949

When Heinz Lüning posed as a Jewish refugee to spy for Hitler's Abwehr espionage agency, he thought he had discovered the perfect solution to his most pressing problem: how to avoid being drafted into Hitler's army. Lüning was unsympathetic to Fascist ideology, but the Nazis' tight control over exit visas gave him no chance to escape Germany. He could enter Hitler's army either as a soldier... or a spy. In 1941, he entered the Abwehr academy for spy training and was given the code name "Lumann." Soon after, Lüning began the service in Cuba that led to his ultimate fate of being the only German spy executed in Latin America during World War II. Lüning was not the only spy operating in Cuba at the time. Various Allied spies labored in Havana; the FBI controlled eighteen Special Intelligence Service operatives, and the British counterintelligence section subchief Graham Greene supervised Secret Intelligence Service agents; and Ernest Hemingway's private agents supplied inflated and inaccurate information about submarines and spies to the U.S. ambassador, Spruille Braden. Lüning stumbled into this milieu of heightened suspicion and intrigue. Poorly trained and awkward at his work, he gathered little information worth reporting, was unable to build a working radio and improperly mixed the formulas for his secret inks. Lüning eventually was discovered by British postal censors and unwittingly provided the inspiration for Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. In chronicling Lüning's unlikely trajectory from a troubled life in Germany to a Caribbean firing squad, Thomas D. Schoonover makes brilliant use of untapped documentary sources to reveal the workings of the famed Abwehr and the technical and social aspects of Lüning's spycraft. Using archival sources from three continents, Schoonover offers a narrative rich in atmospheric details to reveal the political upheavals of the time, not only tracking Lüning's activities but also explaining the broader trends in the region and in local counterespionage. Schoonover argues that ambitious Cuban and U.S. officials turned Lüning's capture into a grand victory. For at least five months after Lüning's arrest, U.S. and Cuban leaders -- J. Edgar Hoover, Fulgencio Batista, Nelson Rockefeller, General Manuel Benítez, Ambassador Spruille Braden, and others -- treated Lüning as a dangerous, key figure for a Nazi espionage network in the Gulf-Caribbean. They reworked his image from low-level bumbler to master spy, using his capture for their own political gain. In the sixty years since Lüning's execution, very little has been written about Nazi espionage in Latin America, partly due to the reticence of the U.S. government. Revealing these new historical sources for the first time, Schoonover tells a gripping story of Lüning's life and capture, suggesting that Lüning was everyone's man in Havana but his own.

Hitler's Man in Havana

Hitler's Man in Havana
Author: Thomas Schoonover
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2008-09-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813173027

When Heinz Lüning posed as a Jewish refugee to spy for Hitler’s Abwehr espionage agency, he thought he had discovered the perfect solution to his most pressing problem: how to avoid being drafted into Hitler’s army. Lüning was unsympathetic to Fascist ideology, but the Nazis’ tight control over exit visas gave him no chance to escape Germany. He could enter Hitler’s army either as a soldier . . . or a spy. In 1941, he entered the Abwehr academy for spy training and was given the code name “Lumann.” Soon after, Lüning began the service in Cuba that led to his ultimate fate of being the only German spy executed in Latin America during World War II. Lüning was not the only spy operating in Cuba at the time. Various Allied spies labored in Havana; the FBI controlled eighteen Special Intelligence Service operatives, and the British counterintelligence section subchief Graham Greene supervised Secret Intelligence Service agents; and Ernest Hemingway’s private agents supplied inflated and inaccurate information about submarines and spies to the U.S. ambassador, Spruille Braden. Lüning stumbled into this milieu of heightened suspicion and intrigue. Poorly trained and awkward at his work, he gathered little information worth reporting, was unable to build a working radio and improperly mixed the formulas for his secret inks. Lüning eventually was discovered by British postal censors and unwittingly provided the inspiration for Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. In chronicling Lüning’s unlikely trajectory from a troubled life in Germany to a Caribbean firing squad, Thomas D. Schoonover makes brilliant use of untapped documentary sources to reveal the workings of the famed Abwehr and the technical and social aspects of Lüning’s spycraft. Using archival sources from three continents, Schoonover offers a narrative rich in atmospheric details to reveal the political upheavals of the time, not only tracking Lüning’s activities but also explaining the broader trends in the region and in local counterespionage. Schoonover argues that ambitious Cuban and U.S. officials turned Lüning’s capture into a grand victory. For at least five months after Lüning’s arrest, U.S. and Cuban leaders—J. Edgar Hoover, Fulgencio Batista, Nelson Rockefeller, General Manuel Benítez, Ambassador Spruille Braden, and others—treated Lüning as a dangerous, key figure for a Nazi espionage network in the Gulf-Caribbean. They reworked his image from low-level bumbler to master spy, using his capture for their own political gain. In the sixty years since Lüning’s execution, very little has been written about Nazi espionage in Latin America, partly due to the reticence of the U.S. government. Revealing these new historical sources for the first time, Schoonover tells a gripping story of Lüning’s life and capture, suggesting that Lüning was everyone’s man in Havana but his own.

Dangerous Edges of Graham Greene

Dangerous Edges of Graham Greene
Author: Dermot Gilvary
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2011-11-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1441171959

Informative, broad-ranging, this title sheds new light on the life and literary art of one of the last century's most celebrated authors. The first volume to be authorized by the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust, "Dangerous Edges of Graham Greene" brings together writers, journalists and scholars to investigate as well as to assess Greene's prolific oeuvre and intense personal interests. Here the reader may explore everything from Greene's Vienna at the time of the filming of "The Third Man" to his sometimes fraught relationship with Evelyn Waugh, from Greene's unconventional fictional treatment of women to his "believing skepticism". While Greene often informed friends that "a ruling passion gives to a shelf of novels the unity of a system", critics of his literary art have found it extraordinarily difficult to define the content of this "ruling passion". Perhaps this is because Greene's own character seems so paradoxical, ironic even. Moreover, in believing that sin contains within itself the seeds of saintliness, he consistently loiters on what Robert Browning calls "the dangerous edge of things". In exploring this "dangerous edge", this book covers the full breadth of Greene's life and literary career.

Nazi Intelligence Operations in Non-Occupied Territories

Nazi Intelligence Operations in Non-Occupied Territories
Author: Christopher Vasey
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2016-07-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 147666353X

Drawing heavily on recently declassified sources, this examination of German wartime intelligence services traces the logistical and strategic expansion of the Third Reich's foreign covert operations in World War II. Beginning with the changes introduced to counteract institutional neglect, the author describes attempts to penetrate both neutral and adversarial nations outside territories occupied by the Wehrmacht. The Nazis created covert teams for counterintelligence and penetrating border defenses. Strategies were formed for assembling saboteur divisions in North and South America, while data were gathered on industrial installations to target. American fascist movements of the 1930s are discussed, along with Nazi sabotage missions in the United States and intelligence penetrations and domestic collusion in Latin America.

Postmodern Fiction and the Break-Up of Britain

Postmodern Fiction and the Break-Up of Britain
Author: Hywel Dix
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2011-11-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1441190988

This study explores how British identity has been explored and renegotiated by contemporary writers. It starts by examining the new emphasis on space and place that has emerged in recent cultural analysis, and shows how this spatial emphasis informs different literary texts. Having first analysed a series of novels that draw an implicit parallel between the end of the British Empire and the break-up of the unitary British state, the study explores how contemporary writing in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales contributes to a sense of nationhood in those places, and so contributes to the break-up of Britain symbolically. Dix argues that the break-up of Britain is not limited to political devolution in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is also an imaginary process that can be found occurring on a number of other conceptual coordinates. Feminism, class, regional identities and ethnic communities are all terrains on which different writers carry out a fictional questioning of received notions of Britishness and so contribute in different ways to the break-up of Britain.

British Diplomacy and US Hegemony in Cuba, 1898-1964

British Diplomacy and US Hegemony in Cuba, 1898-1964
Author: Christopher Hull
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137301767

An analysis of Cuba's history from a British diplomatic perspective during the period of US political and economic domination, from 1898 to 1964. It investigates how Britain attempted to protect its trade and other interests in the island, whilst always sensitive to the reactions of its most important ally, the United States.

Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies

Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies
Author: Kristie Macrakis
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2014-03-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300188250

This “engrossing study” of invisible ink reveals 2,000 years of scoundrels, heroes and their ingenious methods for concealing messages (Kirkus). In Prisoners, Lovers, and Spies, Kristie Macrakis uncovers the secret history of invisible ink and the ingenious way everything from lemon juice to Gall-nut extract and even certain bodily fluids have been used to conceal and reveal covert communications. From Ancient Rome to the Cold War, spies have been imprisoned or murdered, adultery unmasked, and battles lost because of faulty or intercepted secret messages. Yet, successfully hidden writing has helped save lives, win battles, and ensure privacy—at times changing the course of history. Macrakis combines a storyteller’s sense of drama with a historian’s respect for evidence in this page-turning history of intrigue and espionage, love and war, magic and secrecy. From Ovid’s advice to use milk for illicit love notes, to John Gerard's dramatic escape from the Tower of London aided by orange juice ink messages, to al-Qaeda’s hidden instructions in pornographic movies, this book charts the evolution of secret messages and their impact on history. An appendix includes kitchen chemistry recipes for readers to try out at home.

Race to Revolution

Race to Revolution
Author: Gerald Horne
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1583674578

The histories of Cuba and the United States are tightly intertwined and have been for at least two centuries. In Race to Revolution, historian Gerald Horne examines a critical relationship between the two countries by tracing out the typically overlooked interconnections among slavery, Jim Crow, and revolution. Slavery was central to the economic and political trajectories of Cuba and the United States, both in terms of each nation’s internal political and economic development and in the interactions between the small Caribbean island and the Colossus of the North. Horne draws a direct link between the black experiences in two very different countries and follows that connection through changing periods of resistance and revolutionary upheaval. Black Cubans were crucial to Cuba’s initial independence, and the relative freedom they achieved helped bring down Jim Crow in the United States, reinforcing radical politics within the black communities of both nations. This in turn helped to create the conditions that gave rise to the Cuban Revolution which, on New Years’ Day in 1959, shook the United States to its core. Based on extensive research in Havana, Madrid, London, and throughout the U.S., Race to Revolution delves deep into the historical record, bringing to life the experiences of slaves and slave traders, abolitionists and sailors, politicians and poor farmers. It illuminates the complex web of interaction and infl uence that shaped the lives of many generations as they struggled over questions of race, property, and political power in both Cuba and the United States.

Hitler's Secret War In South America, 1939–1945

Hitler's Secret War In South America, 1939–1945
Author: Stanley E. Hilton
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1999-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807124369

Published first in Brazil as Suástica sobre o Brasil, this examination of the rise and fall of German espionage in that country spent months on the best-seller list there and generated a national furor as former spies and collaborationists denounced it as a CIA ploy. Here, for the first time, are the colorful stories of such German agents as "Alfredo," probably the most important enemy operative in the Americas; "King," who was decorated for his daring exploits but who carelessly mentioned the real names of his collaborators in secret radio messages; the bumbling Janos Salamon; and the debonair Hans Christian von Kotze, who ultimately betrayed the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence). Eminently readable, Hitler's Secret War in South America resembles, but is not, fiction. It describes in detail the Allies' real battle against the Abwehr, a struggle highlighted by the interception and deciphering of German radio transmissions.

Hitler's Espionage Machine

Hitler's Espionage Machine
Author: Christer Jörgensen
Publisher: Spellmount, Limited Publishers
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN:

An in-depth study of all the varied facets of the Nazi intelligence apparatus ranging from the dreaded Gestapo, the daring Brandenburg battalions through to the SD under the Central Security Service of the Reich.