Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

extensive connections, which piqued the interest of the secret services. By his own admission, he was manoeuvring through the jungle of secret services all his life, but nobody ever managed to recruit him.2

Could this be the truth? Knowing the details, probably not, particularly if you consider the Third Reich’s military intelligence, the Abwehr, to be a secret service, alongside the notorious Gestapo, which could best be described as a political secret police. Yes, Emil Hoffmann was a Nazi much like a number of his partners and business associates, all of whom paved the way for the economic relations between the two blocs during the Cold War.

2 Hoffmann 1955, p 12

Hoffmanns life is fascinating in itself, since he operated after WWII in the areas that ensured interoperability between the two world orders and counted as the strongholds of espionage: foreign trade and journalism. Taking Hoffmann out of the network surrounding him would leave us with an exciting but average story that would divert attention from the most startling correlations that make one question the very basis of our knowledge of the bipolar world. Unveiling Hoffmanns activities and the activities of those related to him sheds light on a complex web of networking, at the very heart of which lies the way in which the business elite of the countries building socialism became entwined with former war criminals championing the national socialist idea, who were curious enough to avoid prosecution. This started with the funding of subversive secret organisations promoting communist internationalism and extended to the recovery of the social and business capital of top Nazis. Seemingly, both political and everyday public narrative was dictated by cold war propaganda, which condemned the power structure of the other side based on ideological grounds. In the meantime, however, a game completely lacking any moral scruples was being played out by the two calamitous and inhuman dogmas of the 20th century, Nazism and communism, both of which collaborated with the democratic West. The framework for all this was, of course, provided by the strict rules of the capitalist market.

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