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
EMIL HOFFMAN AND HIS CIRCLES reports to the Allied forces on a regular basis up until 1943, when links between them were temporarily suspended. This was clearly when he was captured by the Germans. It was in the camp that he got to know the future Austrian politician, Franz Olah, whose repeated scandals undermined the stability of the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ) years later.47 Olah helped Karpik gain Austrian citizenship, which in return secured the successful businessmans financial support for his political battles. In the first half of the 1960s, Karpik purchased a 50 percent share in the Neue Kronen Zeitung on behalf of Franz Olah, putting the most popular daily in Austria under the influence of the socialist politician.48 Karpik was therefore known as a major financier in European economic and political life in the 1950s and 1960s. At the base of his operations was Atlas, which was established with help from the American secret service. The companies Donau Handel and Frigaliment were established in a similar arrangement and the same ownership, more or less at the same time as Atlas; the goal of all three businesses was to monopolise trade between the Eastern Bloc and Germany. The enterprises achieved this within a few years, Karpik almost exclusively controlled meat trading between the entire Soviet Bloc and West Germany by the early 1950s. The other companies owned by the Polish emigrant also did business with a wide range of products from food to steelware.49 Karpiks good relationship with the trade companies of socialist countries and his frequent trips through the Iron Curtain naturally gave rise to the suspicion that he was collaborating 47 Franz Olah was a member of SPÖ s executive committee and worked as Austrias Minister of the Interior in 1963 and 1964. Hoping that he could even become chancellor if there were a Socialist-Freedom Party coalition, he funded both the Freedom Party and the Neue Kronen Zeitung. After his suspicious financial transactions were discovered, he resigned from his post as minister of the Interior, and the SPÖ revoked his membership. As a senior member of the trade union, he had solid social support, and therefore did not wish to leave politics, instead founding the Party of Democratic Progress instead, whose populist messages with slightly anti-Semitic undertones did not suffice to reach the parliamentary threshold, but drew enough votes away from SPÖ to force the party into opposition. Petritsch 2014, p 130-131 48 Rathkolb 2014, p. 150 49 CIA, FOIA, Special collection of Helmut Triska, 26 October 1964 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/TRISKA%2C%20HELMUT_0075.pdf (Downloaded on: 5 August 2019) 23
