Nazi Refugee Turned Gestapo Spy: The Life of Hans Wesemann, 1895-1971

(Hardback)

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This text details the life of Hans Wesemann, a German refugee in Britain during the inter-war period, who became a Gestapo spy responsible for collecting information about his fellow refugees abroad. Why would a journalist who was an ardent socialist and an anti-Nazi during the waning years of the Weimar Republic decide to go to work for the Gestapo abroad Hans Wesemann, a veteran of World War I and a succesful journalist, fled his native Germany in 1933 after writing a number of anti-Nazi articles. Once in Britain, he found life difficult and dull, and thus, for a number of reasons, agreed to furnish the German Embassy in London with information about other refugees. Inevitably, Wesermann became ensnared in his own treachery and suffered the consequences. During the volatile and experimental years of the Weimar Republic, Wesermann applied his urbanity and cynicism to the analysis of politics, high culture and popular beliefs. He dared not remain in Germany once Hitler came to power. Once working as a Gestapo agen, he was implicated in the kidnapping of a German exile onto German territory and spent considerable time in a Swiss prison. Although he was eventually freed and able to join his fiancee in Venezuela, his unsavoury past would continue to haunt him in South America and later in the United States.

Author Bio

JAMES J. BARNES is Professor of History at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. He has collaborated with Patience Barnes on several articles and volumes to include Free Trade in Books: A Study of the London book Trade since 1800, Authors, Publishers and Politicians: the Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement, 1851-54, and Hitler's Mein Kampf in Britain and America, 1930-1939. PATIENCE P. BARNES is a Research Associate at Wabash College./e She has coauthored numerous articles and books with James J. Barnes to include James Vincent Murphy: Translator and Interpreter of Fascist Europe 1880-1946 and Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844-1867.