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 Hoffmann moved to Budapest in 1944 to join the Canaris agent network through Kurt Haller as an officer of the Abwehr, the German counterintelligence agency, according to MNVK-2. As the top man of the Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris colluded with the Anglo-Saxon powers, so Hitler had him arrested on 23 July 1944 and later executed. Kurt Haller came to Hungary in March 1944 to replace Edmund Veesenmayer and mediated on his behalf between the German Embassy and the Arrow Cross Party.24 Haller himself was the first to offer Ferenc Szálasi the option of a coup in late August 1944.25 In Budapest, Hoffman maintained contacts with an officer called Focke, who worked for the British intelligence agency. He was probably the same Albrecht Focke who belonged to the Canaris organisation, with whom Hoffman tried to persuade Haller to rob the cash desk and gold depository of the German Embassy in Budapest to prove his commitment to the Allies, and who promised in return to make sure he would avoid prosecution after the war.26 Haller chose not to accept the potentially deadly assignment. Hoffmanns relations with the British were also confirmed by an American intelligence report from 1960, according to which he was working simultaneously for both German and British intelligence in Budapest in 1944.27 24 ÁBTL 3.1.5. 0-12344/5 p. 19 Executive report, 4 March 1963 25 Keresztes 2004, p. 15 26 ÁBTL 3.1.5. 0-12344/1 p. 118 Executive report, 17 March 1960 27 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room (FOIA), Special collection of Emil Hoffmann, April 1960 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/HOFFMANN%2C%20EMIL_0085.pdf (Downloaded on: 10 August 2019) CIA FOIA: Central Intelligence Agency, Freedom of Information Act Following something of a cloak-and-dagger visit to Budapest, for which exact dates are unknown, Hoffmann volunteered to join the Schutzstaffel (SS) and was sent to the eastern front as a war correspondent, before escaping some time in 1945. The subsequent three years seem even more obscure than his already patchwork life story. According to Soviet sources, he was held as a prisoner of war by the Americans from July to November 1945, and then moved to the British zone in Germany, joining Marcus, his friend mentioned 18
