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 - Atlas GmbH
FABULOUS SPY GAMES with secret services in the East. According to CIA information, he was the key figure of the Blocs illegal financial transactions in the West as the contact of the Urz^d Bezpieczenstwa (UB), the Polish state security agency.50 The received information, though not confirmed, that one of Atlas’ sister companies, Donau Handel, was engaged in large-scale illegal arms trafficking seemed to underpin that assumption as this would have been impossible without a foothold in the secret services.51 The CIA’s final conclusion on Karpik was that he must surely have been in contact with the Polish state security agency, the question for them was only in what form and to what extent he cooperated. Ferdinand Karpik’s activities in the first years of the unfolding Cold War were fascinating, since he participated in the Polish resistance movement with support from both great powers, who temporarily acted as allies. We know that he was arrested as a Communist by the Nazi authorities, which means he already had a close relationship with the Polish Communist Party, and therefore indirectly with the Soviets, at the time, while he regularly sent reports to the military intelligence agency of the USA. We also know that, as an emigrant right after the war, he established three companies specialising in trade between East and West, and it was the exact same two great powers that stood behind him, only they were enemies by that time. Atlas was granted a monopoly on the export of Polish meat to the West, the aim of which was to stabilise the finances of the Polish Communist Party. Karpik paid the communists commissions on the deliveries, and through this, as well as with the black-market trade of pricier electronic products such as watches, he was able to top up the Party’s coffers enough to fund the seizure of power and eliminate the opposition.52 This effectively means the American authorities directly contributed to the sovietisation of Poland through the operations of Atlas. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 CIA, FOIA, Special collection of Emil Hoffmann, 9 February 1954 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/HOFFMANN%2C%20EMIL_0047.pdf (Downloaded on: 10 August 2019) The Soviet Union’s policies to incite western societies were already successful between the two wars, let us just think of the contamination of the counterpart intelligentsia with leftist ideas, and the operation of Atlas clearly shows how 24
