Description

Available in English for the first time, this meticulously detailed account of the Nazi ‘Deep State’ by one of its leading counterintelligence chiefs reveals the deepest secrets, and names foreign Gestapo agents whose identities have never before been public knowledge. Heinrich Pfeifer, the ‘man of a thousand names’, was one of the strangest spy chiefs of the Nazi SD (Security Police of the SS and Gestapo). He reported directly to Himmler’s chief deputy, Reinhard Heydrich. He accomplished many daring and incredible missions in various countries. Heydrich insisted that Pfeifer work under a pseudonym even in his own office. And he had at least twenty aliases, including ‘Heinrich Orb’, the name he used for this book.

Pfeifer joined the Nazi spy service as a German nationalist and Catholic before Himmler and Heydrich had moved to Berlin. He later became disgusted by the anti-Semitism, the concentration camps, the murders and corruption, and what he called the ‘satanic’ character of Heydrich. He defected in September 1939 and lived in fear of his life until his assassination in 1949.

Before his death, Pfeifer left this priceless record of the mechanism of evil of the Nazi Deep State, its methods, its procedures, and its zoo of crazed personnel, all of whom he knew intimately as his own working colleagues. He reveals their peculiarities and personal characteristics, and even their private nicknames for each other.

Pfeifer’s account was not illustrated and Eglantyne has added more than 250 photos, many of them never before seen, presented with extended commentary.

530 pages hard cover