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.

British Intelligence in the Second World War: Volume 4, Security and Counter-Intelligence

British Intelligence in the Second World War: Volume 4, Security and Counter-Intelligence
Author: F. H. Hinsley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 432
Release: 1990-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521394093

The first three volumes of the series dealt with the influence of intelligence on strategy and operations. Volume 4 analyzes the contribution made by intelligence to the work of the authorities responsible for countering the threats of subversion, sabotage and intelligence gathering by the enemy in the United Kingdom and British territories overseas, and neutral countries. It describes the evolution of the security intelligence agencies between the wars and the security situation in September 1939. This volume reviews the arguments about security policy regarding enemy aliens, Fascists and Communists in the winter of 1939-1940 and during the Fifth Column panic in the summer of 1940. It describes how the security system, still at that time inadequately organized and poorly informed, was developed into an efficient machine and how, with invaluable help from signals intelligence and other sources and by the skillful use of double agents, the operation of the enemy intelligence services were effectively countered. In conclusion, it notes the consistent subservience of the Communist Party to the interests of the USSR and the likely threat to British security.

Into the Lion's Mouth

Into the Lion's Mouth
Author: Larry Loftis
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2022-12-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0593473973

International bestseller! James Bond has nothing on Dusko Popov. A double agent for the Abwehr, MI5 and MI6, and the FBI during World War II, Popov seduced numerous women, spoke five languages, and was a crack shot, all while maintaining his cover as a Yugoslavian diplomat… On a cool August evening in 1941, a Serbian playboy created a stir at Casino Estoril in Portugal by throwing down an outrageously large baccarat bet to humiliate his opponent. The Serbian was a British double agent, and the money―which he had just stolen from the Germans―belonged to the British. From the sideline, watching with intent interest, was none other than Ian Fleming… The Serbian was Dusko Popov. As a youngster, he was expelled from his London prep school. Years later, he would be arrested and banished from Germany for making derogatory statements about the Third Reich. When World War II ensued, the playboy became a spy, eventually serving three dangerous masters: the Abwehr, MI5 and MI6, and the FBI. On August 10, 1941, the Germans sent Popov to the United States to construct a spy network and gather information on Pearl Harbor. He successfully made contact with the FBI in an attempt to warn the country, but J. Edgar Hoover blew his cover. Later, MI5 desperately needed Popov to deceive the Abwehr about the D-Day invasion, but they assured him that a return to the German Secret Service Headquarters in Lisbon would result in torture and execution. He went anyway... Into the Lion’s Mouth is a globe-trotting account of a man’s entanglement with espionage, murder, assassins, and lovers―including enemy spies and a Hollywood starlet. It is a story of subterfuge, seduction, patriotism, and cold-blooded courage. It is the story of Dusko Popov―the inspiration for James Bond.

Advances in Soil Erosion Research

Advances in Soil Erosion Research
Author: Lei Wang
Publisher: Scientific Research Publishing, Inc. USA
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2023-02-20
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1649975759

This book systematically introduces the current situation and development trend of soil erosion research, and systematically analyzes the factors that cause soil erosion, their action processes, and impact factors. The main contents include soil erosion types and soil erosion forms, hydraulic erosion, wind erosion, gravity erosion, mixed erosion, freeze-thaw erosion and glacier erosion, chemical erosion, soil erosion investigation and evaluation, soil erosion monitoring and prediction, soil erosion prevention and control, etc. It is hoped that through the publication of this book, readers will have a better understanding of soil erosion research and its importance, and it will be helpful for the demonstration and promotion of soil erosion research and prevention and control technology in China.