From the Kaiser to the Führer: Inside the World of Lothar Witzke

Summary

SpyCast Episode Summary

Episode Title: From the Kaiser to the Führer: Inside the World of Lothar Witzke
Date: April 28, 2026
Host: Dr. Mark Stout (filling in for Sascha Ingber)
Guests: Robert Hornick & Paul Friedland (Authors of "Citizen of the Lives and Lies of Lothar Witzke")

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dr. Mark Stout talks with Robert Hornick and Paul Friedland about their new book exploring the infamous German spy Lothar Witzke. The conversation charts Witzke’s career from World War I sabotage in the United States, his near execution, later involvement with the Nazi Party and Abwehr, to his mysterious death in the Cold War era. Drawing on rare archival material and help from Witzke’s descendants, the authors share both thrilling and sobering insights into a life lived at the cutting edge of espionage and moral ambiguity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Genesis of the Book & Source Challenges

• Origin of the Project:

  • The authors initially planned to write about presidential pardons but shifted focus after being fascinated by Witzke’s story ([01:20]).
  • Quote: “We read about Witzka and found him particularly interesting and gradually realized we were more interested in writing a book about him than about presidential pardons.” — Hornick ([01:20])

• Archival Challenges:

  • Major sources included U.S.-German arbitration documents, and Witzke’s personal letters.
  • Records in Germany were fragmented due to war and neglect ([03:08]).
  • The involvement of Witzke’s grandchildren was pivotal—they provided photographs and family correspondence ([03:36]).

2. Witzke’s Early Espionage: World War I in America

• Context:
  • The U.S. was officially neutral until 1917 but sold arms to Germany’s enemies, triggering German sabotage campaigns ([04:00]).
• Witzke’s Role:
  • Focused on maritime reconnaissance in San Francisco and courier work ([05:14]).
  • Recruited from the local German expat community after “jumping ship” as a sailor ([05:58]).
• The Black Tom Explosion (July 1916):
  • German agents blew up a munitions depot in New Jersey; explosion damaged the Statue of Liberty’s torch ([06:55]).
  • Quote: “The explosion shattered all the windows from the Bowery to Manhattan. Its reverberations were felt as far away as Philadelphia.” — Friedland ([07:11])
  • Roosevelt’s later policy toward Japanese Americans was shaped in part by fears of further incidents like Black Tom ([08:23]).

3. The Black Tom Mystery—Did Witzke Do It?

• Historical Controversy:
  • The U.S. was convinced Witzke was responsible, but the authors’ research introduces doubt ([10:15]).
  • Key alibi evidence places him in San Francisco during the explosion, and he had a tendency to boast about unproven exploits ([10:53]).
• Legal/Analytical Approach:
  • The authors’ arbitration/law backgrounds informed their weighing of evidence ([12:07]).
  • Quote: “It was more the kinds of lawyers we were...that kind of training was appropriate for examining the evidence in this case.” — Hornick ([12:07])

4. Witzke’s Capture and Trial

• Capture:
  • Betrayed by a Polish-Jewish double agent; arrested in Nogales, Arizona while attempting to stir up unrest among Irish-Americans and U.S. soldiers ([13:37], [14:21]).
  • Nogales compared to Cold War Berlin for its divided, spy-rich environment ([15:18]).
• Arrest Details:
  • U.S. intelligence had his photos in advance; arrested as soon as he crossed the border ([16:41]).
• Trial & Imprisonment:
  • Tried by military tribunal and sentenced to hang ([19:21]).
  • Sentence commuted to life by President Wilson (after delays and doubts about fairness) ([19:58]).
  • Eventually pardoned by President Coolidge, after much confusion—even Coolidge was unaware at first that the pardon had happened ([20:24]).
  • Moment: Coolidge’s reported irritation on discovering the pardon was already made ([20:53]).

5. Post-War Years, Nazi Affiliation, and Abwehr Service

• Return to Germany:
  • Time of chaos—hyperinflation, political violence, nationalist vs. communist street clashes ([22:49]).
  • Embraced nationalist politics and later the Nazi Party (1932, before Hitler’s rise) ([24:51]).
• Nazi Party & Opportunism:
  • Quote: “Nazi ideology probably did not much interest him, but it also didn’t offend him. Nazi atrocities later, there’s no evidence that they bothered him either.” — Friedland ([25:37])
• Abwehr Operations:
  • Ran espionage and sabotage missions (including smuggling explosives into the UK).
  • Described as cool under pressure; famous story about hiding explosives “in plain sight” ([26:31]):
    • “That’s an old trick. What you don’t want them to hide, you hide in plain sight.” — Witzke (anecdote paraphrased by Friedland) ([26:31])

6. The Cold War, Post-War Business, and Mysterious Death

• Transition to Civilian Life:
  • Imprisoned by the British for a year, then became a wealthy corporate executive with ambiguous intelligence contacts ([27:51]).
  • Potential British or Stasi ties hinted but not definitively proven ([28:20]).
• Death (1962):
  • On the first day of retirement, Witzke told his family, “Now I’m going to do the greatest feat yet,” then died under suspicious circumstances ([29:19]).
  • Years later, a former East German claimed he was killed in a “honey trap” by a Stasi agent, punished for double-crossing Stasi and the British ([29:19]).
  • Quote: “Within a few hours, he was dead. The Hamburg police investigated, told his wife, sorry, he died of a sudden heart attack. They told his daughter something else.” — Friedland ([29:19])

7. The Enigma of Lothar Witzke

• Personality & Motivations:
  • Early years display innocence, adventure, and patriotism; later, cynicism, self-reliance, and opportunism ([31:22]).
  • Fluent in several languages; talented at making his way in any circumstance.
  • Womanizer—his personal life as complicated as his professional one ([24:26]).
  • Cynicism deepened by betrayals, prison, and postwar German chaos ([32:47]).
  • “For Witzka, self reliance was what he had learned over the course of his life.” — Friedland ([33:00])
• Larger Significance:
  • Not “particularly anti-Semitic” by contemporary standards but remained untroubled by Nazi excesses ([25:37]).
  • Life story as a microcosm of the tumult, betrayals, and shifting allegiances of early-to-mid 20th century Europe.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Black Tom:
  “The explosion shattered all the windows from the Bowery to Manhattan. Its reverberations were felt as far away as Philadelphia. It damaged the torch of the Statue of Liberty.” — Friedland ([07:11])

• On Legal/Investigative Approach:
  “It was more the kinds of lawyers we were...that kind of training was appropriate for examining the evidence in this case.” — Hornick ([12:07])

• On Nazi Affiliation:
  “Nazi ideology probably did not much interest him, but it also didn’t offend him. Nazi atrocities later, there’s no evidence that they bothered him either.” — Friedland ([25:37])

• On Life Philosophy:
  “A man does not bend his knee.” — Witzke (as relayed by Friedland) ([33:00])

• On His Final Day:
  “Now I’m going to do the greatest feat yet.” — Witzke (final words, relayed by Friedland) ([29:19])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:20] – The book’s origin and source challenges
• [03:36] – Assistance from Witzke’s descendants
• [06:55] – The Black Tom explosion explained
• [10:15] – Doubting the consensus on Witzke’s guilt
• [12:07] – How legal background shaped the book
• [14:21] – Witzke’s mission in the U.S.; stirring unrest
• [17:15] – Arrest in Nogales
• [19:00] – The incriminating “spy letter” and its cryptanalysis
• [19:21] – Trial, sentencing, and commutation
• [20:53] – Calvin Coolidge “unknowingly” pardons Witzke
• [22:49] – Witzke’s return to a chaotic post-war Germany
• [24:51] – Joining the Nazi Party (1932)
• [26:31] – Hiding explosives “in plain sight” anecdote
• [27:51] – Postwar career and ambiguous intelligence ties
• [29:19] – Suspicious death and claims of a Stasi “honey trap”
• [31:22] – Discussing Witzke’s personality and psychological evolution
• [33:00] – Witzke’s self-reliance and cynicism

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Final Thoughts

Hornick and Friedland’s in-depth legal and historical research illuminate a shadowy, complex figure who managed to survive—and sometimes thrive—on every side of 20th-century Europe’s cataclysms. Lothar Witzke emerges as both a captivating antihero and a cipher; his actions and motivations, often ambiguous, echo the often-blurred lines of loyalty, survival, and opportunism in the dark heart of espionage.

Recommended for listeners fascinated by World War I/II, espionage history, legal thrillers, and morally ambiguous lives.

Transcript

[A]

You're listening to the Cyberwire Network, powered by N2K. Welcome to Spycast, the official podcast of the International spy Museum. I'm Dr. Mark Stout filling in for Sascha Ingber today, and we're stepping into the hidden world of spies shaping events around the world. One of the more notorious German spies of the 20th century, Lothar Witzke, lived a life of intrigue, from escaping the death penalty in the First World War to joining the Nazi Party in the second. It's a story that Robert Hornik and Paul Friedland stumbled on by chance. With help from Witzke's grandchildren and mining through archives, these lawyers pieced together Witzke's story, sifting the fact from the fiction and figuring out what made this infamous figure ticket. Citizen of the the Lives and Lies of Lothar Witzka is out now. Paul Friedland, Robert Hornick, welcome to Spycast to talk about your new book, Lotar Witzka, AKA Pablo Waberski. The subject of your book hasn't really been a household name for over a century now. So I'm curious how you heard about him and what the genesis of this really excellent book project is. Maybe we can start with Robert.

[B]

Sure. We originally intended to write a book about presidential pardons. And in putting together a list of interesting people who had received pardons, we read about Witzka and found him particularly interesting and gradually realized we were more interested in writing a book about him than about presidential pardons. So we were off.

[A]

Sounds good. As everybody who's written intelligence history knows, you usually don't have all the sources that you would want to really tell the story and answer all the questions that you might want to answer. Because of the nature of the business, intelligence is pretty much definitionally secret. There's not often a lot of paper trail. And then when in your case, you're looking at something that happened 100 or more years ago, things get lost, things get destroyed. So can you tell us a little bit about the sources that you were able to bring to bear in writing this really, actually quite fulsome book?

[B]

The sources were primarily documentary, and we had one good source of documents, which was the transcripts and evidence submitted in an arbitration in the 1920s and 30s between the United States and Germany.

[A]

The Mixed Claims Commission.

[B]

The Mixed Claims Commission. And it was the place where we started. And among other things, we found hundreds of letters Witzka had written as a young man. And those documents led us to look for others, including in Germany. And that was much harder to find in Germany because They had been destroyed in war and through lack of care.

[A]

What kind of archival repositories did you mine in Germany?

[B]

There were government archives in Berlin, for example, that we used. There were military archives in various places. We had a specialist in doing military research help us look in those. And we got a little bit here, a little bit there, and that was how it worked.

[A]

And I think you had some help from his family, his descendants as well.

[C]

It changed our book writing process. So we tracked down his grandchildren, and you never know in advance whether they're going to be defensive about the past of a notorious spy, saboteur. And Nazi. And Nazi, or whether they're going to be enthusiastic. And it was the latter. And they were happy to cooperate with our book. They gave us critical information, including photographs and other family correspondence.

[A]

So your book starts out basically, in essence, in the World War I era. So World War I, of course, starts in August 1914 in Europe, but the United States doesn't join the war until much later. Initially, it's neutral, but American neutrality didn't look especially neutral from the German point of view because we were busily selling munitions to the British, the French, the Russians, the enemies of Germany. And so, as you explore substantially in your book, there's a sabotage campaign by Germans here in the United States to try and blow up munitions and sabotage ships carrying them and that sort of thing. And at the time, the US didn't have much in the way of a security or intelligence setup. So Vitzke's time as a German agent. An agent of German intelligence starts during that period of neutrality when operating in the US Is actually fairly easy, but it ends after the United States enters the war. If I recall correctly, he's arrested in February 1918, you know, when the US Intelligence and Security system is going gangbusters. So can you summarize a little bit of his work in the secret world during the period of American neutrality before we declare war on Germany in April 1917?

[B]

Well, he was retained to do maritime reconnaissance, and his early months of being a spy was doing just that, particularly in San Francisco, but elsewhere on the West Coast. And he also acted as a courier to deliver various documents for officials in San Francisco to other places in the United States, but the focus was maritime reconnaissance, and that's what he did.

[A]

How did he happen to get into this business? Can you tell us a little bit about his background? What kind of. What kind of person was he that he seemed appealing to German intelligence?

[B]

He had been a sailor and had been on a vessel that had sailed From Germany to Mexico to Australia, back to Chile, where it put up during the war in Valparaiso. And he got restless and jumped ship and took an American vessel up the coast to San Francisco. And it was in San Francisco, at one of the gathering places of the German community, that he met the head of German intelligence. And they got along very well. And he was hired and it was off and running.

[A]

So probably the most significant instance of German sabotage in the United states came in July 30, 1916. Do you want to tell us what Black Tom was and why it was important? A very strange name. I never understood where the name came from, but we needn't dwell on that. Tell us about Black Tom.

[C]

So America, as you mentioned, for the first three years of the war, was neutral. But American munitions companies were busy selling munitions to France, Great Britain and Russia. The three enemies of Germany and Germany decided to try to do something about that. And they organized a ring of undercover German agents in America. All American munitions manufactured in the country were transported by rail to a railway terminus on the New Jersey side of the Hudson river near the Statue of Liberty. And that slip of land was called Black Tom because it had been formally owned in the 19th century by a former slave. And all munitions were kept at the Black Tom railway terminus until they could be loaded on outbound ships. The German undercover agent's mission was to try to interdict munitions going across the Atlantic. And they naturally took notice of Black Tom and they decided to detonate it. And at 2 in the morning on Saturday, July 30, they did exactly that. The explosion shattered all the windows from the Bowery to Manhattan. Its reverberations were felt as far away as Philadelphia. It damaged the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

[A]

That was one of the things I thought was particularly interesting as you discussed this. I had never realized that the torch had been open. It was a place that tourists could climb up to until that day, not since then.

[C]

And it's never been reopened. And it was front page news of the young New Yorkers who was affected by it was a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he became later president. During World War II, after Pearl harbor, his administration infamously ordered the interning for the duration of the war of all Japanese Americans on the west coast without evidence against them, without due process. And to try to justify that unjustifiable decision, he commented to his assistant secretary of War, we don't want any more Black Toms. So it's not known today. It was notorious for that generation of Americans. And in the wake of the explosion, the Americans naturally investigated who was responsible, and they came over time to decide that two German undercover agents had rowed on a boat from the Manhattan side of the Hudson river to the New Jersey side to the railway terminus and had detonated the explosion. And the Americans concluded that the man rowing the boat was Lotarvitzka.

[A]

But they weren't aware of that immediately. I assume. They came to that conclusion, I imagine, after he was arrested in 1918.

[C]

I can't say yes or no to that. It was a gradual unfolding. The key was testimony or articles written by the double agent, a Polish Jew who penetrated the German spy cell in Mexico City and told American intelligence about him, leading to his arrest.

[A]

So was in fact Lotar Witzka, the perpetrator of the Black Tom explosion. You discuss this extensively in your book, and I thought it was particularly fascinating.

[C]

This is the major controversy in question about Lotar Witzka's life. The Americans were convinced that he was responsible. The consensus of historians is that he was. We assumed for most of the writing of our book that the consensus was correct.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

And that he was in fact, responsible. But the more we probed, the more we came to doubt it. And we ultimately have a conclusion that challenges the consensus.

[D]

The

[C]

core evidence are documents that place him in San Francisco at the time of the Black Tom explosion. And while there is testimony by this Polish Jewish double agent who recounted how Witzka had told him that he had been on a rowboat and detonated Black Tom, there is doubt about it. There's no physical evidence of places on the East Coast. And Witzke had some history of false boasting about acts of sabotage. So it's not a black and white. It's not 100 0. There are strong arguments that he did it, and we believe stronger arguments that he didn't do it. And we set this out in our book.

[A]

So this might be a good time to ask, how did being lawyers affect the way you approached this book? Particularly here in this discussion of whether or not he did Black Tom? I really see a weighing of evidence and a discussion of weighing evidence. I see it in other places, too, but particularly strongly here. That screams lawyers to me. So tell us a little bit about how your profession approached the way this book came out.

[B]

Well, you're exactly right to pick up on that point. It was more the kinds of lawyers we were. We were arbitration specialists and were involved in that kind of litigation, and that kind of training was appropriate for examining the evidence in this case. And I would say that was the primary motive for ending up looking at the evidence and concluding that it didn't prove what people thought it did.

[C]

The particular reason why our training mattered here is that much, although not all, of the evidence for and against his responsibility for Black Tom is in the voluminous records and transcripts of an interstate arbitration between the US and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s about responsibility for Black Tom.

[A]

So in a sense, you're following in their footsteps. But they concluded that he was responsible for Black Tom.

[C]

They didn't conclude one way or the other about it.

[A]

Excellent, excellent.

[C]

They concluded the German agents were, but not that Witzka was one way or the other.

[A]

Okay, so Witzka is gonna end up arrested by the Americans here, but that's the culmination of a trip northward across Mexico. Give us sort of the story of, like, why he went on this journey from Mexico up to the United States that would end so badly for him.

[B]

His boss, Kurt Yanka, was in Mexico City and had asked Witzka and two other German agents, Mr. Altendorf. And he was an American double agent

[A]

working for both sides, which Janke didn't know, obviously.

[B]

Right. And there was also a British double agent that traveled with them, and they went north together and alerted the Americans that they were coming to Nogales, and the Americans were ready for them when Witzka crossed the border into Nogales, and they arrested him immediately.

[A]

And what were they planning on doing when they got to the United States? What did Yanka order them to do specifically?

[B]

Witzke's job was to try and stir up trouble in America. He was focused on, for example, the Irish community, trying to get them riled up against the Americans so they could make trouble. There was an American military base nearby, and he was trying to recruit some soldiers from that base to rebel against the US that kind of thing.

[A]

Basically trying to weaken the United States, which is now at war with Germany, through spinning up domestic unrest.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And the Irish Americans, I assume they thought might be a fruitful target population because they had long standing gripes against the British, our allies.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Witzke ends up arrested in January 1918 in Nogales, Arizona. What kind of city was that? You make a very interesting comparison in your book to an iconic Cold War city.

[B]

Yes. It appeared to us in reading about it that it was kind of the Berlin of its time. And it was a freewheeling city with lots of spies running around. And the Americans also had an intelligence operation headquartered there.

[A]

But it was also a divided city, too. Like Berlin was during the Cold War.

[B]

It was divided, in this case, between Mexico and the United States.

[A]

If I recall, you know, one side of the street in Nogales, you could be in Mexico, and on the other side of the street, you were in the United States. Yes.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Was there any kind of barrier, or were people just wandering back and forth across the border? Which would be wonderful if you're a spy, it seems to me, and trying to. To infiltrate the United States, this would be like falling off a log. Is that what Nogales was like?

[B]

It wasn't quite that free. There was a barrier, there was a fence. And you did have to get questioned at the border before you crossed it.

[A]

I can't imagine that was too onerous a process. So Vitzke comes to Nogales, escorted, as it were, by not one, but two spies, one for the Americans, one for the British, which just boggles my mind. And he enters into Nogales and he's immediately snatched. Can you tell me, tell us about his arrest.

[B]

The Polish double agent had alerted his superiors in Nogales that Witzka was coming, and he had taken some photographs and sent those ahead so that the Americans would recognize Witzka when he crossed the border. So there was plenty of foreknowledge and awareness he was coming, and they were waiting for him with guns and multiple people, and he didn't get far.

[A]

Welcome to the United States. And then he was immediately arrested once he was fully in the U.S. he'd

[B]

been allowed in the U.S. the day before, so he'd actually been there the evening before and crossed back over to his hotel in Mexico. And it was the following morning that he was arrested when he crossed.

[A]

So they clapped the handcuffs on this guy. What happens next?

[B]

There was a lot of questioning of him. He later in life alleged that he'd been tortured. We don't know if he was. It's possible he was, but there was definitely an intense several weeks of questioning. He was then sent to Fort Sam Houston in Texas, where the questioning continued. And ultimately it was decided to try him as a spy. He was tried in a military court by a military commission. Why? Because they could control the outcome.

[A]

Military justice being not exactly just. Is that what you're suggesting?

[B]

Well, just more under the control of the people that wanted to see it controlled.

[A]

So there was a certain amount of mystery about this, to put it mildly. But he was carrying what would turn out to be an absolutely incriminating document. Do you want to tell us a bit about that?

[B]

Yes. He had a Note from an official in Mexico City that actually called him a spy for the Germans. It was written in code, and they had to send it to Washington, where there was a fledgling cryptography department being developed in Washington.

[A]

In the Military Intelligence Division.

[B]

In the Military Intelligence Division. Exactly. And they were eventually able to break the code and translate the document.

[A]

So what did it say?

[B]

It said that he was a spy.

[A]

Why would he be carrying such a thing?

[B]

The idea was that he could use the document to get money from various Mexican consular officials as he traveled around.

[A]

So he's put on trial in the military justice system. And how does that go? What's the outcome?

[B]

Well, the outcome, not surprisingly, is that he was convicted and sentenced to hang. There was a group pushing for him to be hanged quickly. And there was a group that was more doubtful that he should be hanged quickly.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Some people weren't sure that military courts was the proper place for him. There was also a provision in the law that gave ultimate control over what happened to him to the President of the United States. And it was decided to push it up the the line to President Wilson. And he took his time.

[A]

And what did Wilson do then?

[B]

Ultimately, he commuted the sentence to life in prison. And Witzka was sent to Leavenworth, where,

[A]

if I recall correctly, you said he was sentenced to making little rocks out of big rocks for the rest of his life at Fort Leavenworth? Yes.

[B]

Well, I guess you could put it that way.

[A]

Okay, so at some point here, after the Wilson administration, after the end of World War I, he ends up pardoned.

[B]

Yes. He applied several times for a pardon and was turned down. Eventually, the German government itself got involved. The US Was trying to develop friendly relations with the Germans, and so they took seriously the request that he be pardoned. And eventually Calvin Coolidge did so.

[A]

Except Calvin Coolidge didn't know initially that he'd actually pardoned this guy. How does that happen? What the heck?

[B]

That one I can't explain. But can you tell us what happened? It is true that when the newspapers published the news that Calvin Coolidge had pardoned Witzka, Calvin Coolidge became upset because he knew nothing about the pardon. And there was a flurry of activity in the Presidential suite for an afternoon, and it was eventually straightened out and he got on board.

[A]

I have to imagine that some staffers got chewed on by the President.

[B]

You would think.

[A]

When we come back, we look at Vitzko's relationship with the Nazi party.

[D]

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[A]

So he goes back to Germany. What's his life and his future career like in Germany? After he's escaped the hangman's noose in

[C]

the United States, he went back to Germany. At the time of hyperinflation, Germany economy was in complete collapse. There was street fighting between nationalists and communists. Witzka was always a man of personal physical bravery and he participated in the street fighting on the nationalist side against the communists.

[A]

Nationalist meaning Nazi or nationalist meaning other right wing but not Nazi.

[C]

It was not yet Nazi. Okay, but he detested the Weimar government and he ascribed at the time to the stab in the back theory which said that Germany lost World War I only because they were stabbed in the

[A]

back by Jews and socialists. I think at home.

[C]

Correct. He needed money and he was helped to get a job by the German government representatives who were representing Germany in the interstate arbitration brought by the US against Germany. The German agents were worried that Witzke would be paid by the Americans to give testimony on behalf of the Americans. So they made sure he got a job. And the jobs they got from were actually back in Mexico and then elsewhere in Latin America and ultimately in China. And during the course of these years where he lived in exclusive expat German enclaves in these places. On a visit back home, he met an attractive young woman and married her and they had kids and he became a family man in addition to all his other adventures.

[A]

By adventures you mean philandering.

[C]

He was a womanizer, he was a good looking guy, he loved women and they loved him. He almost always had at least one woman in his life. And his womanizing would play a major role throughout throughout his life, especially towards the end of his life and even on the day of his death, which I guess we'll come to in a moment.

[A]

So he does in fact at some point then become a member of the Nazi Party and he even joins the German Abwehr.

[C]

Well, he became a member of the Nazi party in 1932.

[A]

Before Hitler took over.

[C]

That's right, Hitler took over in March 1933. So the question arises whether that shows true belief or opportunism on his part. I think the best explanation is that the Nazi Party, for millions of Germans then, represented vitality, adventure, and that's what Witzka was. He had a spirit of adventure. Nazi ideology probably did not much interest him, but it also didn't offend him. Nazi atrocities later, there's no evidence that they bothered him either. But we can see his joining the Nazi Party in 1932 as part of his spirit of adventure, I think.

[A]

Was he particularly anti Semitic? By the standards of the time and place that he was in, there's no evidence he was. So what was he doing for the Abwehr? And tell us about the Abwehr.

[C]

The Abwehr was Germany's counterintelligence organization. It was natural in some ways that Witzkel would be recruited for that. And he was recruited for it late in the 1930s. So when the buildup under the Third Reich, in the buildup to World War II, he was already in the Abwehr. As the war started, he was a commander in the Abwehr. He ran a ring of undercover agents smuggling explosives into Great Britain with the idea of industrial sabotage. Didn't amount to much, but we see examples there of Vitz's mastery of spycraft.

[A]

Yeah, so there's a wonderful story about a briefcase at one point that made me chuckle.

[C]

So Witzke traveled through the Netherlands in 1940 with a colleague from the Abwehr, carrying a suitcase full of explosives to ultimately get into Great Britain. He and his colleague checked into a hotel in the Netherlands, and Witzke came to guess correctly that the hotel staff suspected that they were carrying contraband and might search his room. So Witzka left the explosives in a suitcase hidden in plain sight in his room, went out, came back to his room. Just as he anticipated, a hotel staff exited his room as they arrived, having searched his room and having found nothing. And his colleague looked at him with amazement. And Witzka laughed and said, that's an old trick. What? You don't want them to hide. You hide in plain sight. What I think this story shows is his coolness under pressure, something. A trait he would exhibit throughout his life.

[A]

So what happens to him at the end of the war? Being in the Abwehr is not exactly a possibility after 1945. In fact, the Abwehr, I guess, gets reorganized into the SS at one point. But continuing as a Nazi intelligence officer is not an option after 1945. What happens to him?

[C]

Witsky knew how to make his way in life, notwithstanding five years of imprisonment in leavenworth and then after the war, he was imprisoned by the British for a year in a denazification facility outside of Hamburg. But he emerged from this seemingly unscathed, and he became a wealthy CEO during the 1950s. And he lived a good life, and he felt he had nothing to apologize about.

[A]

Was he involved in the espionage business at this point, or he left that behind him?

[C]

The answer to that is equivocal. He. So he was imprisoned by the British for a year. The company that he worked for was ultimately owned by the Brits. He was a member of the elite Anglo German club in Hamburg. These are all British connections. They're context that could lead one to think he might have been a British agent. On the other side, the Stasi. The East German Stasi deeply penetrated business circles in Hamburg and throughout West Germany, and they particularly targeted former Nazis who they could blackmail. All this is context. It doesn't amount to hard proof that he was or wasn't an agent or for whom in the 1950s. Except the circumstances of his death give

[A]

us much harder evidence, which are also pretty dramatic and pretty mysterious, which I think is a nice summary for large portions of Lothar Witzka's life. But can you tell us about that?

[C]

Witzker retired in 1962. On the first day of his retirement, leaving his house, he turned to his wife and daughter and said, now I'm going to do the greatest feat yet. Now we have to pause there for a moment. This was a man who was accused by the Americans of responsibility for the most spectacular act of sabotage in US History. This is a man who was the only German spy captured by the Americans, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. This is a man who got the Medal of Valor from his country for his courage in both world wars. And he's saying, I'm going to do the greatest feat yet. In 1962, within a few hours, he was dead. The Hamburg police investigated, told his wife, sorry, he died of a sudden heart attack. They told his daughter something else. They told his daughter he was found dead in bed, and he had been with a woman. Many years later, Ovitzka's daughter Helga got a visit from a former East German who they were convinced was a former Stasi agent who told Witzke's daughter that Witzke had been killed in bed, in a honey trap by a Stasi agent as payback for being a double agent for both the Brits and the Stasi, where he was supposed to be working only for the Stasi.

[A]

Plausible that was an era in which things like that did occasionally happen. But sounds like once again, we don't quite have the smoking gun, as it were.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

So what do you think made Lotar Witzka tick? What kind of person was he? Ultimately, you know, he's a guy with a gazillion girlfriends. He's a guy who tends to lie and boast a lot. He becomes a Nazi. Help us crawl inside the skull of this guy. He's really interesting. It seems to me what made him

[C]

tick changed over time. We have his youthful correspondence to his parents when he first leaves home from East Prussia and goes to the port town in Bremen to join the merchant marine there. He gives wide eyed descriptions of the new world he was seeing. He sees his first jukebox, he sees his first traffic jam. There's an innocence and there's always a spirit of adventure. And there's also a real patriotism that comes throughout his correspondence. There's also. He naturally is looking to make his way in life and he had the tools to do that. He was very intelligent. He had an amazing ability to learn language. Over time the picture hardens, cynicism comes in. He was, as he thought, betrayed by a double agent. The Polish Jew in Mexico City. He then had years at Leavenworth. He then returned to the hyperinflation of Germany, an experience that scarred a generation of Germans. When we then see him living in exclusive German expat communities in the 1930s, he's all about himself and all about making money during World War II. He's in it for himself. Wealth and women is what he cares about. There's no hint of concern about higher causes.

[A]

And I think you said in the book that we got to the second half of the war when it looked like Germany might possibly not win. And suddenly was much less committed to the cause and was much less ardent about the whole proposition too, I believe you said.

[C]

That's right. There was one day he was walking with his daughter Helga and they visited a church and he saw a priest kneeling down in prayer. And Witzka said contemptuously to his daughter, a man does not bend his knee. For Witzka, self reliance was what he had learned over the course of his life.

[A]

So all in all, an enigmatic man who I think deserves much more public attention. And I'm delighted that you've written this really excellent book, which I very much enjoyed reading and commend to everyone, in particular people interested in World War I, which I also think should be a larger group in this country. So Robert Hornick and Paul Friedland, thank you so much for joining us on Spycast.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Thanks for listening to this episode of Spycast. If you like the episode, please give us a follow on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or review. It really helps. And if you have any feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by [e-mail] I'm your guest host, Dr. Mark Stout, and this show is brought to you by N2K Networks, goat rodeo and the International Spy museum in Washington, D.C.