Otto Albrecht Alfred von Bolschwing (15 October 1909 – 7 March 1982) was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer, intelligence officer and international businessman. During the Nazi-era and World War II, he served as an operative of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in Mandatory Palestine, Greece, the Netherlands and Romania, where he was involved in instigating the Legionnaires' Rebellion and the Bucharest Pogrom in 1941. Von Bolschwing also worked as a consultant to the Office of Jewish Affairs (Judenreferat) from 1937—39. He specialized in the expropriation of Jewish property and also served as an advisor to Adolf Eichmann. In 1945, he abandoned his prior allegiance to Nazi Germany and joined the Austrian Resistance.
During the early years of the Cold War, von Bolschwing continued to work as an intelligence agent in Central and Southeastern Europe, first for the Gehlen Organization and later for the CIA. With the complicity of the U.S. government, von Bolschwing emigrated to the United States in 1954, where he embarked on a successful career as a corporate executive and eventually obtained U.S. citizenship in 1959. His prior Nazi Party affiliations and suspected involvement in war crimes were later uncovered by the U.S. Justice Department and he was forced to surrender his American citizenship in 1981.
Early life and Nazi career Early life & business ventures Otto Albrecht Alfred von Bolschwing was born in Schönbruch, District of Bartenstein, East Prussia, German Empire (now: Szczurkowo, Poland) on 15 October 1909. He was the youngest of five children and was descended from the Junker nobility via the untitled Bodelschwingh family on the paternal side and the baronial on the maternal side. His father, the Prussian aristocrat Richard Otto Wilhelm Ferdinand von Bolschwing, served as a cavalry officer (Rittmeister) in the Imperial German Army during World War I and was killed in action on the Eastern Front in October 1914.
After the war, von Bolschwing attended Hauptschule in Königsberg (now: Kaliningrad, Russia), completing his final examinations in 1926. He went on to study law and economics at the Silesian Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Breslau and the University of London where he demonstrated an aptitude for finance and languages, eventually becoming fluent in English and French, in addition to his native German. During his time in London, von Bolschwing worked as an apprentice clerk for the shipping agency MacAndrew & Co., a subsidiary of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company.Lichtblau, Eric. The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men
While attending the Faculty of Law at the University of Hamburg, von Bolschwing also began pursuing a career in international commerce, working for the East Asian trading house of C. Illies & Co. from 1928 to 1930. He was later employed as a manager with the Oberon Investment & Development Co. in Vienna and Berlin. During this time, von Bolschwing also established himself as a budding industrialist by acquiring ownership of the Upper Silesian Lime & Cement Works in 1931. However, when this enterprise quickly went bust amid the Great Depression, he returned to Great Britain where he found work acting as “continental representative” for a consortium of London-based investment banks, traveling extensively throughout central and southeastern Europe on business.
Von Bolschwing moved back to Königsberg in early-1932. In partnership with General Werner von Blomberg, he embarked on an effort to build a cement factory near the town of Heilsberg, East Prussia on behalf of the German Reichswehr. This venture ultimately failed to materialize when von Bolschwing was unable to obtain the necessary political support for the project from the Prussian Landtag. Von Bolschwing joined the then ascendent Nazi Party soon afterward, on 1 April 1932 (NSDAP # 984.212).
Later that year, he was dispatched to Sofia, Bulgaria as an arbitrator for Bank für Industrie-Obligationen (Bank for Industrial Bonds), a Düsseldorf merchant bank, to negotiate the installation of German-manufactured telephone equipment in the Balkans and Asia Minor. At this time, von Bolschwing also began an informal association with the German Foreign Office, providing the ministry with valuable political and economic information gathered during his travels abroad.
Mandatory Palestine Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party would come to power in Germany in January 1933. In September of that same year, von Bolschwing traveled to the British Mandate of Palestine to scout potential business opportunities and he soon established an import-export firm, Amaneh, in Jerusalem. The company was moderately successful and eventually expanded to include subsidiary offices in Cairo and Beirut. During his time in Palestine, von Bolschwing also met and befriended the Austrian Nazi activist and Schutzstaffel (SS) officer Leopold von Mildenstein.name=pc> Von Bolschwing soon became a fixture of von Mildenstein’s social circle and established himself as something of a protege. This relationship would prove enormously consequential to von Bolschwing’s future career under the Nazis.
Von Mildenstein had established a reputation as an authority on Judaism and the Middle East within the Nazi Party and, in August 1934, he became a member of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence and security service of the SS, and was appointed as the director of Abteilung II/12 (Jewish Affairs) by SD chief Reinhard Heydrich. In this role, von Mildenstein formulated SS policy toward Germany’s Jews, which, at this early stage, was centered on stimulating the immigration of Jewish citizens beyond the borders of the Third Reich. To this end, von Mildenstein emerged as a vocal proponent of Zionism as a method well-suited to resolve the official impasse within the Nazi government over how best to rectify the so-called “Jewish Question”. Once in office, von Mildenstein used his influence to secure a significant posting with the SD for his friend and mentee, Otto von Bolschwing, who was subsequently assigned to Abteilung III/112 (Foreign Intelligence) as a covert operative (Vertrauensmann). It was in this capacity that he returned to Palestine in late-1934.
As an undercover agent of the SD, von Bolschwing was tasked with collecting political intelligence regarding British operations in Mandatory Palestine. In the course of his intelligence work, von Bolschwing posed as a monk in Nazareth and later operated under commercial cover as an importer in Haifa and Jerusalem. Through his business associations, von Bolschwing established contact with Fievel Polkes, a senior commander of the Zionist militant organization Haganah.Levenda, Peter (2012). Ratline: Soviet Spies, Nazi Priests, and the Disappearance of Adolf Hitler, Lake Worth, Florida: Ibis, , n.p. In a series of clandestine negotiations, von Bolschwing and Polkes brokered an agreement in which the SD would permit Haganah to operate recruiting and training camps in Germany where Jewish youths would receive paramilitary instruction and encouragement to emigrate to Palestine to join the struggle to establish a Jewish state. In exchange, Haganah agreed to provide the SD with intelligence regarding British political and military activities in Palestine.
Von Bolschwing's efforts were intended to serve several different elements of Nazi foreign policy. Foremost, to render Palestine an ungovernable political liability for the British. The creation of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East would also provide the Third Reich with a location where it could expel its unwanted Jewish citizens. At the same time he was bargaining with Polkes, von Bolschwing was also meeting secretly with Arab leaders in an effort to encourage them to form a united front with militant Zionists in order to stage a rebellion against the British presence in Palestine. Von Bolschwing's covert efforts on behalf of the SD were eventually uncovered by British authorities and he was ultimately expelled from Palestine in December 1935.
Office of Jewish Affairs Following his return to Germany, von Bolschwing continued to pursue a career with the SD and joined the staff of the Jewish Affairs Office (Judenreferat), as a consultant on Zionism and Palestinian affairs to his benefactor Leopold von Mildenstein. In this position, von Bolschwing would author numerous reports and policy proposals outlining various punitive measures designed to eliminate the Jewish presence in Germany through a campaign of forced emigration and economic restrictions.Wyden, Peter (2001). The Hitler Virus: The Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler, Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown / London: Kuperard, , p. 8.
Dissatisfied with the pace of Jewish migration to Palestine, Heydrich removed von Mildenstein as head of the Judenreferat in July 1936, eventually replacing him with Herbert Hagen. The departure of von Bolschwing’s patron also marked a major shift in the overall policy of the SS and the SD regarding Jewish emigration; away from von Mildenstein’s pro-Zionist approach and in favor of increasingly harsher tactics.Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer-SS (2001) , p. 334Adrian Weale, Army of Evil: A History of the SS (2012), pp. 140–144 Von Bolschwing quickly adapted his work to fit this new regime.Yaacov Lozowick, Hitler's Bureaucrats: the Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil (2005), p. 20 In January 1937, he wrote a memorandum concerning Jewish emigration, recommending riots and attacks on Jews of the sort that occurred in Berlin in 1935:
Von Bolschwing's report suggested using this kind of organized, but unlawful, street violence in combination with blatantly discriminatory but legal bureaucratic measures such as economic sanctions, special taxes, and passport controls to purge Germany of its Jews. Heinrich Himmler was impressed with the document, and assigned von Bolschwing to work as a senior advisor to the Deputy Director of the Jewish Affairs Office, Adolf Eichmann. From 1937-38, von Bolschwing would become Eichmann's primary mentor on Jewish matters and Zionism. During his 1961 trial in Israel, Eichmann stated that von Bolschwing "spoke so knowledgeably" and that he "kept in touch with Herr von Bolschwing" about his (Eichmann's) primary matter of concern, i.e. expropriation of assets of German citizens who were Jewish and expelling them from Germany.
Over the ensuing years, von Bolschwing authored dozens more memos and reports detailing useful administrative methods by which to persecute Germany's Jews. His suggestions to Eichmann included the expropriation of Jewish assets and property, the labeling of their passports, and allowing Jews to leave Germany but not to return. Rather than advocating the mass murder of Jews, von Bolschwing proposed making their lives so unbearable that they would opt to leave Germany voluntarily and permanently.Lichtblau, Eric. The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men In another memorandum submitted to Eichmann, von Bolschwing stated that Jews "are and must always be an eternal enemy of National Socialism...[and they] are among the most dangerous enemies."
Von Bolschwing would also play a central role in planning Hagen and Eichmann's 1937 visit to Palestine as well as arranging two secret conferences in Cairo and Vienna between Eichmann and his former Haganah interlocutor Fievel Polkes to discuss the potential relocation of German Jews to Palestine. These events solidified Eichmann's reputation as the SD's foremost Judenberater (Jewish expert), creating the foundation for his later career as the administrative architect of the Holocaust. Von Bolschwing married his first wife, Brigitte Klenzendorff, in March 1938. The couple had one child, Gisbert Otto Richard Ernst von Bolschwing, who was born in July 1939.
Through his work for the Judenreferat, von Bolschwing also fostered professional alliances with a number of high-ranking SD officials in addition to Eichmann: