Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
EMIL HOFFMAN AND HIS CIRCLES - In a jungle of secret services
FABULOUS SPY GAMES unanimously claimed to have evidence that Hoffmann was an imperialist spy, seemed to support the decision.14 The services above had one more thing in common, all of them made an attempt to recruit Hoffmann with little or no success. MNVK-2 did not hide the fact that it, too, tried to have Hoffmann collaborate with it from 1955 onwards, and had even received reports from him from 1957,15 but relations were broken off following a warning from the Soviets that he was working for the British, which was accepted as proven. Over the next few years, thousands of pages of files, surveillance reports and analysis were written about Hoffmanns activities, as an almost inextricable web of connections unfolded before the eyes of the detectives doing the operational work it seemed they could do nothing about: ‘Fabulous was in close contact with persons in Hungary, most of whom occupied protected positions within the party state hierarchy. 14 ÁBTL 3.1.5. 0-12344/5 p. 17 Executive report, 4 March 1963 15 ÁBTL 3.1.5 0-12344/1 p. 118 Executive report based on MNVK-2 documents, 17 March 1960 16 To present Hoffmans career, I consulted a study by Douglas Selvage he prepared primarily by processing Hoffmans writings and documents created by the Stasi. Selvage 2014 17 Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) was a politician renowned for being notoriously anti-Semitic and served as propaganda minister for Hitlers Germany from 1933 to 1945. He killed himself on the day after Hitler committed suicide. 18 ÁBTL 3.1.5 0-12344/2 p. 75 Note, 11 February 1961 The silver thread running through Emil Hoffmans thinking, which consistently explains every stage of a life packed with adventurous turns in abundance, was his heightened enmity for America. Hoffman was born in 1911, so the lost war was a defining childhood experience, and his grudge against the winners led him to the national socialists.16 He became a member of Hitlers party and joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1933. In 1939, he was hired as a journalist by the Propaganda Ministry headed by Joseph Goebbels,17 but he previously worked in Bucharest for two years for an industrialist of German origin,18 so he was not navigating uncharted waters when he was seconded on a foreign affairs mission to the German Embassy in Bucharest as press attaché from 1940 to 1942. During this period, Hoffmann had very close relations with 16
