Heinrich Pfeifer is not a name which springs to mind when we consider the major events of the twentieth century, but new evidence shows he might just be one of the key figures to decide the outcome of the Second World War, and hence one of the reasons why we are not all speaking German today instead of English.
Robert Temple explains.
Reinhard Heydrich, who was Heinrich Pfeifer’s boss. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1969-054-16 / Hoffmann, Heinrich / CC-BY-SA, available here.
Pfeifer’s name only became known for certain recently, when it was revealed by some Swiss intelligence files. Before that, only the top people of the world’s security agencies of the 1940s knew who he really was, as he had about twenty different names and identities. Indeed, the voluminous American security files on Pfeifer are still classified, and until now no one could have asked to see them anyway because no one knew which name to ask for.
Pfeifer was the highest German espionage official ever to defect from the Nazi regime. His immediate superior was Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the SD, which was the intelligence service of Himmler’s SS. His special activities were counterintelligence and foreign operations. At one time he infiltrated the French spy service (the Deuxième Bureau) and acted as a double agent for Germany. He was a master of disguise and sometimes went around dressed as a tramp. Despite being anti-Communist, he was elected head of a Trotskyite society which he gracefully declined. Later he infiltrated the Polish intelligence service and tricked the General Staff of Poland with a false invasion plan. In all, he worked for the intelligence services of at least seven different countries.
Ultimately, Pfeifer turned against the Nazi regime because of its anti-Semitism, the concentration camps, and violent murders, all of which he despised. He defected to Switzerland in September of 1938, and worked for Swiss Army intelligence for three years, helping to prevent Hitler’s plan to annex the German portion of Switzerland. In 1938 and 1939, Pfeifer flew to London and met with Robert Vansittart, the head of British intelligence. Pfeifer was able to identify the two leading German spies in the UK, who had never previously been named, and they were both expelled in 1939.
Spies
The spies Pfeifer named were Baron Dr. Kurt von Stutterheim, who had been posing as an anti-Nazi activist, and Hans E. Friedrich, who had been posing as an arts journalist. Pfeifer gave huge amounts of detailed information to Vansittart which Vansittart then passed over to sympathetic American sources for circulation and partial publication, to help influence the American public about the need to join the War. Vansittart’s intense efforts to out-maneuver Neville Chamberlain and get Winston Churchill into power were greatly aided by Pfeifer’s defection and the enormous amount of material that Pfeifer supplied. The contact was made all the easier because Pfeifer was multi-lingual and spoke English as well as various other languages (being fluent in Italian, one of his duties had been to liaise with General Roatta, the head of Mussolini’s security services, on behalf of Himmler and Heydrich.)
Heinrich Pfeifer worked and was registered under a false name during his entire time in the security service. Starting in 1929 his first boss, Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s close friend and chief ideologue of the Nazi Party, insisted he be called Heinz Stein. Pfeifer was only 24 at the time.
Pfeifer was a devout Catholic all his life and he only became involved with the Nazis because he wanted to fight Communism. He then found himself immersed in an evil empire which he had not anticipated, and from which it was difficult to escape. He had, after all, joined the Nazis four years before Hitler actually came to power, and when their true nature was not entirely clear.
After the war
In 1949, at the age of 44, Pfeifer was assassinated by a Nazi vengeance squad for having betrayed Nazi secrets. His memoir published in 1945 in Switzerland was bought up and destroyed by Nazi sympathisers, and few copies survived. But Pfeifer’s meticulous description of the precise structures and methods of Nazi espionage ironically recorded the replicated version of the same thing which commenced about that time by the Russians. In that, they were guided by Heinrich Mueller, the head of the Gestapo who fled to the Russians at the end of the War. So, Pfeifer’s guide to Nazi infiltration techniques is equally a guide to the Russians’ techniques after 1945.
Pfeifer knew that he was risking his life by escaping from his boss Reinhard Heydrich, whom he described as ‘satanic’ and more dangerous than Hitler. He had risked his life many times before in the interests of Nazi Germany, but he was to pay the final price for his efforts to try to save the Allies, and especially Britain. However, if not for his bravery in coming forward and supplying crucial intelligence to Robert Vansittart, and ultimately to the American press, the tides of war may never have meaningfully turned against Hitler. History would likely have turned out much different if not for the courageous acts of this one man, who most have never even heard of.
Robert Temple is a London-based historian, archaeologist, publisher, and former journalist who has previously written for publications such as The Guardian, New Scientist, and Harpers. Temple is editor of the forthcoming book, Drunk On Power: A Senior Defector’s Inside Account of the Nazi Secret Police State, the long suppressed memoir of Nazi defector Heinrich Pfeifer. Temple was the first person to reveal the ‘forcible repatriation scandal’ during and after World War II and persuaded Lord Carrington, then U.K. Defence Minister, to release the sealed War Office files which blew away the secrecy of that forbidden subject, which had resulted in the deaths and incarceration of two million people by Stalin, with the shameful secret complicity of the Allied Powers. Temple has been a member of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI) since 1972. Robert Temple is the author of numerous books on history and science. He has twice been appointed Visiting Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science and he has done archaeological work in Egypt, Greece, and Italy.
