The history of Nazi espionage in the United States is a fascinating chapter, but less well-known than other dangerous spy games from World War II. It was not the United States that had to endure the invasion and occupation (like most of Europe) or the bombing by the Third Reich (like the United Kingdom), but the German military intelligence services – first with the Abwehr and then under the control of the Germans under the auspices The SS managed to infiltrate the country before and after entering the war at the end of 1941, obtain information and carry out acts of sabotage. Some agents were recruited from the large colony of German immigrants (the largest community of foreign origin in the country, almost 15% of the population), while others were landed from submarines.
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Now German writer Ulla Lenze's The Radio Operator (Salamandra), a magnificent novel that combines intrigue and adventure with an emotional personal and familial story, immerses us like never before in the world of Nazi espionage in the United States. And in the truest sense of the word, from the inside, from the middle of the shadows, because the author largely reconstructs the life of her great-uncle Josef Klein (in the character of the main character of the same name), a working-class immigrant who was one of those Germans Spies, the secret radio operator with the title.
“The Funker”, the fifth novel by Lenze (Mönchengladbach, 50 years), which has already been translated into 12 languages, will be published in Spain on January 18th (translation from German by Carlos Fortes). “It was very interesting and difficult to approach a character like Klein and delve into my family’s history. I had to distance myself from him, I tried to understand it, but not to justify it,” explains the author over a glass of Riesling in Baret, one of Berlin's most popular places, on the panoramic roof of the new Forum Humboldt. Night has fallen over the city, the Unter der Linden traffic lights shine on the way to the Brandenburg Gate, while the clouds swallow the great spire of the Alexanderplatz television tower and the crows caw in their urban roosts. It seems like we're in a spy movie, exactly. Lenze is an attractive woman with a mysterious aura. In addition to Nazis, war, secrets and family, the conversation will also take unforeseen paths, and in a delicate moment the writer's eyes will moisten and a tear will fall on her glass of golden wine.
The 33 German agents of the Duquesne Circle. Josef Klein is second from the left in the third row. D
The real Josef Klein (like his alter ego in the novel) was part of the famous Duquesne Spy Circle, named after its leader, Frederick Fritz Joubert Duquesne, the Duke of the FBI, Colonel of the Abwehr, an amazing figure of Boer origin even served as Theodore Roosevelt's advisor for big games and was accused of having a hand in the death of Lord Kitchener. Among the cell's achievements was the theft in 1937 of plans for the advanced Norden sight to adapt the firing of aerial bombs capable of hitting a barrel of pickles from a height of 20,000 feet, according to the book. The technological development of the American military aviation industry was a primary goal of German military intelligence under the leadership of the astute and ambiguous Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. The Duquesne circle, in which another well-known spymaster of the counterintelligence, Nikolaus Ritter – later boss of the adventurer Lászlo Amásy during his missions in the Libyan desert – moved, was dissolved in 1941 thanks to a double agent and Duquesne and 32 members, including Josef Klein, were arrested.
The other major espionage episode in the United States, which also appears in The Radio Operator, was Operation Pastorius, which brought eight saboteurs transported in submersible boats into the country in June 1942 and which gave rise to the film They came to Blow Upward America. Pastorius (named after the organizer of the first permanent German settlement in the United States in 1683, Germantown, Pennsylvania) was a failure and left a certain image of bumbling Nazi spies in the imagination (it is true that some of them have this image carried). Swimsuits). With German naval caps so that if they were arrested they would not be classified as spies and shot. The agents, with ambitious plans to attack economic targets such as industrial plants, factories, warehouses, railroad tracks and bridges, as well as public squares and Jewish businesses, landed in two shipments, one from U-202 on the New York coast and another from U-584 in Ponte Vedra Beach in Florida. A certain amateurism and the betrayal of two agents led to the entire team of saboteurs falling into the hands of Edward Hoover's FBI. Six of the agents were executed in the electric chair and the two informants were sentenced to prison. A second operation was carried out in November 1944 as part of Operation Elster, when U-1230 landed two SS members of the Reich Security Office on the coast of Maine to collect military intelligence (they were also captured).
Le Carré's sentence resonates in the novel: “Do you know what love is? Anything else you can reveal.”
The radio operator jumps in space and time between New York in 1925 and 1939-1940, the prison on Ellis Island in 1946 and the German city of Neuss (where Josef Klein, the protagonist, comes from and where his brother Carl lives with his family) . ) in 1949, Buenos Aires in the same year (where he meets former Stukas pilot and unredeemed Nazi Hans U. Rudel) and Costa Rica in 1953. The novel follows the life, recruitment and activities of Klein, as well as his progressive involvement, initially casually and involuntarily in the spy network. Lenze transports us to the unusual United States, where the American Nazi Party marches, aesthetically no different from the rallies in Munich or Nuremberg, contrast with the Pepsi or Chevrolet advertisements and the Superman comics and affect everyday life in a democracy. However, through racism, anti-Semitism, segregation and a rise of the extreme right, which laughs at Vox. The novel shows the world of espionage in a realistic and harsh way, but permeated with melancholic existentialism and a touch of romance. He does it in a way that reflects the reflections of John Le Carré: “Spying is not a game of cricket,” “Luck is another name for fate,” or “Do you know what love is?, all that you can still betrayed.”
Photos of Josef Klein and his radio team (and his dog).
A very sad, hopeless novel with spies, conflicting love relationships and broken lives. “Do you think so?” says Lenze. “It came out that way, with the mix of the familiar and the world of espionage. Working with biographical material is very complicated and can be very disturbing. It's sad because Joseph's life isn't a great life, even though he found some peace at the end.
How much of Joseph's character is real and how much is fictional? “It's hard to say, I've taken a lot of liberties, but the Joseph in the novel is still very close to the real one. Like him, he is a poor immigrant, single, with no responsibilities except taking care of his German Shepherd named Princess, trying to create a better life in a foreign country, with no political beliefs, not a fanatic at all, but a man with open minds Ideas that even Thoreau admires. and that arouses pity. Neither a villain nor a hero. Literature and cinema try to pick the extremes, but most people find themselves in the middle. I'm not sure what Joseph did, but he never killed anyone; I think that, like the character, he didn't know for a while what he was doing for the Nazis and for Canaris, the true nature of his work; sent encrypted data without knowing what it meant and then tried to stop. Josef's relationship with the Nazis was very superficial, very similar to that of the book, and had more to do with his technical interest in radio as an amateur radio operator and his Morse code skills than with ideology. There was a technical curiosity (back then radio was like the internet today) and of course the money they paid him. In fact, he was ultimately found not guilty when he was arrested.”
American Nazi party parade in New York in 1939.
In this context, Lenze points out the difficulties that the Nazis had in building their spy network, given the distance that separated the United States from Germany and the fact that the ranks of agents had to be filled with people who were not professionals and were even dangerous amateurs.
He reminds us that people in Germany did not want to deal intensively with this history, partly because of the still existing reluctance to remember National Socialism and also because it was of course not a success. “Hitler's goal was to unleash chaos in the United States with terrorist attacks like the Twin Towers and 9/11, but he underestimated the country's willingness to defend itself against infiltration and overestimated the capacity of its agents,” he says. He agrees that the personality of Canaris, who was secretly opposed to Nazism, played a role in this failure, as can also be seen in his novel. “It is also possible that there is no predisposition to espionage in the nature of the German soul,” she admits, “I am not an expert on this psychological aspect.”
The author points out that she is not a big fan of spy novels, “which have rules that I don't know,” although she appreciates the comparison with Le Carré's. He states that it was a great challenge for him to write The Radio Operator. And he had a spy in the family. “That’s true,” he says with a fleeting smile. “The films – of which there are some very interesting ones about German espionage – helped me with the atmosphere and the descriptions and also with visiting the places in New York where the story takes place.” About the fascinating reconstruction of the city to this one Time he points out that “New York was very interesting, multicultural and tolerant back then, even with the Nazis, but with dark aspects and all the German population who lived a life like in Germany.” its cinemas, its own restaurants and businesses Lenze reminds us in his novel that before the US entered the war, there was even a current of sympathy for Hitler's successful Germany, with influential figures such as the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and many members of the upper class supporting the Nazis.
Admiral Canaris, head of German intelligence.
One of the most interesting characters in the novel is Lauren, Josef's American love interest, intelligent, sensitive, energetic and anti-Nazi, as well as a radio amateur. “It is made up, although in his life in New York there was a woman who visited him in prison and wrote to him.” Lenze leaves it to the reader's opinion whether the reason for his conspiracy is a collusion with the FBI.. .
The period in Joseph's life in which he settled with his brother's family in Neuss in the 1950s after being expelled from the USA serves Lenze as a representation of the post-war period in Germany. “The contrast between Josef and Carl, two brothers who love each other deeply, and their strained relationship illustrate different reactions to German trauma,” he reflects. The novel, he points out, “of course also has to do with German identity and responsibility, and in this sense the reception in Germany was different.” The question of whether and to what extent Josef is guilty is in the foreground . “My parents’ generation attacked and condemned their generation because of their relationship to National Socialism, mine tried to understand what happened to them.”
Ulla Lenze, whose father died in the crash of the small plane he was piloting – a drama that forms the basis for another of his novels, “The Little Rest of Death” -. He did not know his great-uncle Josef, who died in Costa Rica. He unraveled the whole story thanks to his mother (who appears in the novel as Carl's 9-year-old daughter, the girl nicknamed Palomita) and the extensive family correspondence, in which, by the way, there are hints that Josef may have had a platonic one Love affair with his sister-in-law like in the novel. “My mother now suffers from dementia but she had an amazing memory. He helped me and supported me in writing the novel. He was able to attend a reading of the novel with part of the family. It was very exciting.” Then Lenze becomes disturbed and, despite the visible effort to control himself, a tear rolls down his cheek: something completely unexpected in a conversation about Nazi spies, but not in contradiction to Josef Klein's story stands that his great-niece tells.
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