Otto von Bolschwing

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 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.

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. 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. 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 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.

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.

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. Von Bolschwing quickly adapted his work to fit this new regime. 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. After seven months of confinement, von Bolschwing emerged from prison in April 1943 with his reputation badly tarnished.

Whereas U.S. intelligence agencies had rejected von Bolschwing as self-serving and disloyal in 1947, the major intensification of the Cold War over the ensuing two years led them to see those matters as less vital by 1949.

In September 1949 von Bolschwing submitted a curriculum vitae to the CIA that conveniently made no mention of the three years he worked for the Office of Jewish Affairs. Similarly, a detailed background report on von Bolschwing, commissioned by Critchfield while evaluating him for potential CIA service, also completely omitted any information about his involvement with the Judenreferat or his association with Adolf Eichmann. No effort was made by U.S. officials to fill in the gaps in either document. Following their arrival on 2 February, the family were hosted in the Boston home of a former military intelligence officer who had previously worked with von Bolschwing in Europe. Having brought him to the U.S. in what it saw as a reward for his service, the CIA terminated its relationship with von Bolschwing, ordering him to break off all relations and to contact the Agency only in the event of a "dire emergency" which was a "life or death situation." He would utilize his skill with languages and his knowledge of international commerce to establish a lucrative private sector career. In 1955, von Bolschwing was hired as a tax and foreign trade specialist with the New Jersey–based pharmaceutical company Warner-Lambert. By 1957, he was working as chief assistant to the Director of International Operations and consulting on several of Warner-Lambert’s international projects in Western Europe, traveling there many times on company business. aerospace developer and Fairchild Aircraft executive Emanuel Fthenakis; Helene von Damm, the personal secretary to then-California governor Ronald Reagan; billionaire philanthropist J. Paul Getty Jr., an heir to the Getty family petroleum fortune.

Getty was also a senior member of TCI’s Board of Directors. Getty’s intercession facilitated von Bolschwing's rapid appointment to the office of President of TCI in 1970.

Their inquiry into Trifa eventually led INS investigators to von Bolschwing, whom they determined had lied about his past Nazi affiliations on his application for citizenship, a fact that made him liable for deportation from the United States. Nevertheless, OSI Director Allan A. Ryan, Jr. filed a three-count complaint against Otto von Bolschwing with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in May 1981. The OSI resolved that it would not attempt to deport him, given his poor health. The plea agreement was upheld by the U.S. District Court in Sacramento on 22 December 1981. Otto von Bolschwing died in a nursing home in Carmichael, California ten weeks later, on 7 March 1982. He was 72 years old.

Von Bolschwing remains the highest-ranking Nazi war criminal ever prosecuted by the Office of Special Investigations.