We know that the Third Reich failed militarily. But what about the intelligence failure which ultimately decided the outcome of the war? Why are there hardly any relevant books or TV documentaries about it? The Nazis knew very little about their opponents, yet could hardly keep any of their own secrets. It can take decades for a new leadership to get rid of traitors among their own ranks, vet the next generation of leaders and build spy networks in other countries. Between Hitler’s rise to power and the outbreak of World War 2 only six years had passed.

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Hitler sent three million soldiers into the Soviet Union; unaware of over 30,000 armored vehicles and millions of soldiers in reserve under Stalin’s control. The Nazi leadership was not aware that the USA could produce more war equipment than all other participants in the war combined. The fact that anthrax biscuits were produced on a massive scale in the British facility at Porton Down and in the American facilities at Fort Detrick, which would have been dropped all over Germany if necessary¹, was unknown to Hitler, or perhaps it was revealed to him in the middle of the war and he decided to give his infamous “hold order” and let the encircled British army escape at Dunkirk. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Louis Kilzer was able to prove that Britain had succeeded in a massive deception that led the Nazis to believe that the Brits were willing to cooperate². Kilzer was further able to show that Martin Bormann, the shadow master behind Hitler, had spied for the USSR³ and delivered virtually all secrets of German warfare plans. Everywhere in the Third Reich were people in positions of power with old family ties to Britain’s nobility. Important military gear of the Germans was produced by formerly American companies or joint ventures, which most likely included spy rings. To what extent was the Third Reich infiltrated by foreign secret services? To what extent was this espionage crucial to the course of the war? How early did the espionage begin? What operations were already underway against Hitler in the early phase of his political career? How much could Hitler be influenced by this? And what effect did disinformation have on National Socialist ideology, the earlier rightwing movements and the fairy tales about a global Jewish conspiracy? So far, these crucial questions have not really been addressed properly.

For ordinary historians, there were no large, professional secret services comparable to those of the 20th century in past times, because there are no corresponding files available from bureaucratic state agencies. Previously, it is said, intelligence work had tended to be a spontaneous, improvised affair, as well as just a tactical field of activity for the military. This point of view is downright ridiculous, since empires back to ancient times simply could not function without large intelligence services and the various noble houses or ruling dynasties had enough staff, money and experience. It was just as important for the ancient Roman Empire to have eyes and ears everywhere as it was for the Persians, the Greeks, the Islamic Caliphate, the British Empire, the French Monarchy or the Habsburg Dynasty. In addition to the search for sources of information at the top of the enemy’s structures, it was also about creating broader networks of agents and informants who could, for example, obtain technological secrets that were important to the war effort or simply make observations about troop numbers, equipment, financing and mobilization activities for a war. Even as parliamentarism spread, nobles were free to maintain and develop their own familial secret services at will. Officially, noble secret services did not exist and therefore they did not have to answer to any parliament or court.

The aristocrats help Hitler

The last person who could have prevented Hitler’s dictatorship at the last moment was Paul von Hindenburg, who had headed the Supreme Army Command during the First World War, while Hitler was a simple dispatcher who spent most of his time away from the front.

Von Hindenburg came from a fairly young and insignificant noble line, had a great career in the military in the German Empire, fought in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870/71 and was retired in 1911 with the award of the Order of the Black Eagle, whereupon he joined the Guelphs -stronghold of Hanover. At the outbreak of the First World War he was 67 years old and again took command, although his role in successful battles was completely exaggerated in public and thereby laid the foundation for his later political career. He became Field Marshal and received the Star of the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross. In August 1916, together with General Erich Ludendorff, he took over the Supreme Army Command, which quickly gained influence on the politics of the German Empire and practically deposed Kaiser Wilhelm II from power. Ludendorff’s father came from a Pomeranian merchant family whose family tree can be traced back to King Erik. The Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel is a forerunner of the Kingdom of Hanover (see also British throne).

After the First World War, von Hindenburg and Ludendorff spread the so-called “stab in the back legend” through the Supreme Army Command (OHL), according to which the German army remained “undefeated in the field” and that the defeat was ultimately due to treacherous socialists and international Jewry. This view fit exactly with the anti-Semitic conspiracy propaganda that was increasingly circulating in English-speaking and German countries and also attributed the outbreak of the war to a Jewish plot. Ludendorff and von Hindenburg said that one of the British generals named Neill Malcolm used the metaphor to them in a conversation after the war that Germany “had the knife stabbed in its back.” With this propaganda in mind, right-wing radicals also committed a number of political murders in the early 1920s, such as those of Matthias Erzberger and Walther Rathenau. One of the men who killed Rathenau in 1922 believed him to be a member of the “three hundred elders of Zion,” reminiscent of the legend of the 300 Jewish families from Count Cherep-Spiridovich’s conspiracy book. Adolf Hitler wrote in the Völkischer Observer in 1923:

“We must always remember that every new external battle, with the November criminals behind us, would immediately thrust the spear into the back of the German Siegfried.”

The unacknowledged military defeat caused the National Socialists and the military leadership to fail to recognize the role that the economic and military power of the USA had played in this defeat. This led to the significant underestimation of American capabilities in World War II. Von Hindenburg retired again in 1919 and once again chose the Guelph stronghold of Hanover as his home, where he was made an honorary citizen and provided with a villa. In 1925 he was elected Reich President and had a broad base of ethnic, right-wing organizations that were heavily infiltrated by the Guelph network and influenced by the Guelph anti-Semitic conspiracy propaganda. Von Hindenburg made his son Oskar and Wedige von derschulenburg his adjutants. Brüning described von der Schulenburg as the secret informant who informed the NSDAP leadership in detail about the discussions with the Reich President. Ludendorff took over the leadership of the German National Freedom Party (DVFP), which wanted to inherit the NSDAP, which was temporarily banned after the Hitler putsch, and which had as a member Hermann von Treuenfels, the aristocratic employer of the spy Martin Bormann, who later kept all of the Third Reich’s military secrets transmitted to Russia. One of the leading politicians of the DVFP was Ernst Graf zu Reventlow, who was part of the early nobility with connections to the Danish Welf nobility and the House of Schleswig Holstein-Sonderburg. In the Reich presidential election in 1932, Hindenburg was confirmed in his office for another seven years. On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. On February 1, 1933, he dissolved the Reichstag and was soon rewarded with donations of around one million Reichsmarks. After his retreat to his East Prussian estate Neudeck at the beginning of June 1934, von der Schulenburg had the aged Reich President Hindenburg completely isolated from the outside world for the remaining weeks of your life. Important politicians were therefore unable to warn Hindenburg and suggest that he use the command of the Reichswehr to prevent the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship at the last minute. The background of the von der Schulenburgs is revealing: There was, for example, the Hanoverian lieutenant general Alexander von der Schulenburg (1662–1733). His sister Ehrengard Melusine was the long-time mistress of the Hanoverian Elector and British King George I. After studying at university, Alexander von der Schulenburg joined the army and took part in the Turkish Wars from 1683 to 1688. He then went into service in Braunschweig-Lüneburg and fought against the French from 1688 to 1697. During the War of the Spanish Succession in 1704 he was a major general in the army of the Duke of Marlborough (member of the Privy Council, Churchill family). In the Battle of Oudenaarde on July 11, 1708, Alexander von derschulenburg was a lieutenant general in the entourage of the Elector Prince of Hanover (later: King George II). In the Battle of Malplaquet he commanded a cavalry division under General von Bülow. The Bülows have many Guelph connections, particularly with the houses of Hanover and Braunschweig, and were represented in the Third Reich on several occasions, including

• Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, State Secretary in the Foreign Office from 1930 to 1936. As early as 1933, he gave instructions to collect material on the alleged “disproportionate penetration of Jews in public life in Germany” as an argumentative aid to justify Germany’s Jewish policy towards foreign countries. .
• Friedrich von Bülow was a German department director at Friedrich Krupp AG who was sentenced to twelve years in prison as a war criminal in the Krupp trial. His functions included managing the Krupp Group’s labor camps, where concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war had to do forced labor.
• Harry von Bülow-Bothkamp is listed in US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s office files as a key figure in National Socialism.

The nobility had already indirectly influenced National Socialism through the early infiltration of the ethnic lodges and through a massive campaign of conspiracy publications. As already explained, the publications appear to have been tailored to ensnare the Nazi leadership. After World War II, there were a few half-hearted attempts by historians to examine the role of the nobility.

Karina Urbach’s 2015 book “Hitler’s Secret Helpers” is practically the first study to ever examine the international dimension of the nobility with regard to the Third Reich. The original English edition was published by Oxford University Press and is therefore unsurprising that it does not conceive of the nobility as a true intelligence network, even though the widespread and widespread nobility were already by their nature an ambitious group that had amassed power over centuries by the individual members communicating and coordinating with each other confidentially. The nobles helped Hitler to rise and gave him support in the social arena. In 1933, Hitler had almost no international contacts and relied on the nobility to use their diplomatic network. Urbach relies on the simple explanation that the nobles were simply afraid of Bolshevism and were hoping for improved status through the National Socialists. Prince Philipp of Hesse (1896-1980) was primarily responsible for the Third Reich’s relations with the Duce, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He went on numerous secret missions past the Foreign Office and was married to a daughter of the Italian king, so all doors in Rome were open to him. Another key networker was Carl Eduard Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the grandson of Queen Victoria. He was a Nazi from the very beginning and Hitler’s most important liaison to the English kings Edward VIII and George VI. With his shuttle diplomacy, he gave the impression that he could possibly get England on Germany’s side. Then there was Prince Max Egon of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1897-1967). After the Counts of Gleichen died out in 1631, the Counts of Hohenlohe-Langenburg received the Thuringian county of Obergehen with Ohrdruf in the Duchy of Saxe-Gotha. The Hohenlohe-Langenburgs had cross-connections to the houses of Saxony-Meiningen and Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were related to the royal houses of Coburg, Leiningen and Hohenlohe. The Royal British archives on the subject are closed for the foreseeable future, as are various aristocratic archives. 70 members of the nobility alone joined the NSDAP before 1933; in 1941 there were already 270. According to researcher Malinowski, almost 3,600 nobles joined the NSDAP from 350 randomly examined families, including 43 Bismarcks and 41 Schulenburgs. And one in four of them before 1933. The number of noble officers rose from 900 to 2,300 between 1933 and 1935.

Karina Urbach also writes about Hitler’s “dear princess” Stephanie zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, who opened important doors and was awarded the NSDAP’s gold party badge despite her Jewish ancestors. She took on secret assignments for the British Lord Rothermere, who owned important newspapers, and negotiated directly with the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. She established relationships with high-ranking, apparent Nazi sympathizers in England and became an honorary member of the Anglo-German Comradeship. Although she is generally considered a German spy, she could have been thoroughly manipulated by the British or, in theory, could have just as easily worked for the British. Urbach does not see the Guelphs as a secret service, but rather as service providers who had found a “niche” as secret diplomats for the Nazis:

“But a group that was once so powerful does not cease to exist overnight. It is looking for new niches – and one niche was secret diplomacy. Their international network was the ideal prerequisite for this. It had grown organically over several generations and had always brought her many benefits.”

Duke Ernst II of Coburg invoked the unity of the members of his house in a secret memorandum from the 1840s. In the 19th century, there was certainly discussion among the German public that the “German Empire” could go to war against Britain and that this would create a loyalty problem among nobles on German soil who were too closely related to the British royal family. The German Empire was formally a unified state, but ultimately just a patchwork of various mini-kingdoms, counties and principalities. Carl Eduard, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, for example, was the grandson of Queen Victoria and this connection was quite obvious, but the Guelph network was a much larger organization, the parts of which went back a long way. Various Guelphs were considered “German princes,” although they saw themselves primarily as Guelphs and not as Germans. Exactly who was loyal to whom was difficult for outsiders to determine, and the British monarchs had gradually concealed the extent of their power behind a series of politicians, some of whom were completely unaware that the policy was controlled by the secret service. Even the German Emperor Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern had Queen Victoria as a grandmother and that is why it was so difficult to see the Guelphs as the closed unit and organization that they were. Arthur Connaught rejected (for strategic reasons) the succession to the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and instead the German Emperor, the British Queen Victoria and the Duke of Coburg agreed on the young Charles Edward (Germanized Carl Eduard), because he was so seemed as if he could become a “real German”. Carl got a deep insight into the Prussian state apparatus and married the daughter of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a lineage from the Guelph-dominated complex, and he joined a bunch of patriotic clubs. At the beginning of the First World War, the international orientation of the Guelph network became even more evident, as the Russian royal family had for a while been under control of the Schleswig-Holstein and Hesse lines. The Grand Duke of Hesse had to pose as a loyal patriot of the German Empire, while his sister Alexandra was the Tsarina of Russia and another relative of his was King George V of Britain. The Duchess of Coburg was insulted as a “Russian spy” and had to change her citizenship twice. The outcome of the First World War was a crushing defeat for the Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns, the competitors of the Guelphs. In Britain the royal family was renamed the innocuous-sounding “Windsor”. During the war, noble families financed hospitals in their castles as a PR campaign. The women collected medals of merit from the Red Cross. In the German Foreign Office, around 70% of the 550 diplomats were aristocrats. It was not just the aristocratic men who carried out “secret diplomacy” throughout Europe during the war, but also the women, who were largely kept out of public reporting. Karina Urbach writes:

[So] noble houses with Russian relatives tended to support fascism much earlier. The German-English houses of Coburg, Hesse, Leiningen and Hohenlohe were all related to the Russian pretender to the throne and all four actively supported National Socialism. The Duke of Coburg proved to be Hitler’s most vehement supporter.

The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Louis Kilzer showed in his book “Churchill’s Deception” that the nobility in Britain deliberately carried out a huge deception to make the Nazis believe they were willing to cooperate. In another book, he exposed the high Nazi official Martin Bormann as a spy who passed on all of the General Staff’s and Hitler’s secret plans to the Russians. As already mentioned, Bormann had supporters from Guelph circles. The argument used again and again that the nobility ran into the arms of the National Socialists out of fear of Bolshevism does not stand up to closer scrutiny, even if one believes the official narrative of the communist revolution in Russia. Lord Sydenham of Combe and the Duke of Northumberland Alan Percy busily gave anti-Bolshevik speeches in the House of Lords alongside all the publications they published. Northumberland published the newspaper The Patriot, which was also strongly anti-Semitic. Lord Rothermere created the United Empire party. It was always said that the Jewish conspiracy was behind Bolshevism, behind decomposition and behind the First World War. Fortunately, Carl Eduard Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha’s pocket calendar was preserved by chance. A comparison with English and Russian archives shows that he was extremely diligent in promoting right-wing radical and anti-Semitic groups. He supplied money and contacts and hidden weapons for right-wing groups such as the Wikingbund, the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and the Young German Order. Urbach writes:

“In all the decisive foreign policy crises of the 1930s, Hitler sent Carl Eduard to Great Britain as a secret helper.”

Italian dictator Mussolini is confirmed to have worked for the British secret service MI5 early in his career. The Guardian newspaper reported in 2009:

Archived documents show that Mussolini entered politics in 1917 with the help of a weekly wage of £100 [equivalent to about £6,000 today] from MI5. This must have seemed like a good investment to British intelligence. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not only prepared to ensure that Italy continued to fight alongside the Allies in the First World War by publishing propaganda in his newspaper. He was also prepared to send his people to “persuade” the peace protesters to stay home. Mussolini’s payments were approved by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5 agent in Rome, who was then leading a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/13/benito-mussolini-recruited-mi5-italy

Carl Eduard, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, brought figures on board for the Nazis such as the steel magnate Fritz Thyssen, the banker Hjalmar Schacht and the industrialist Günther Quandt. He also provided support for Freikorps troops in the fight against communists and was indirectly involved in the Kapp Putsch. Carl Eduard placed a co-conspirator, Lieutenant Commander Ehrhardt, at Callenberg Castle and gave him the cover identity “Neumann”. There were also connections to the terrorist secret group “Organization Consul”, which carried out various attacks. At the same time, he worked on serious conservative politicians. Hitler was still a small number at the time, but he was able to become friends with Carl Eduard early on. Hitler’s attempted coup in 1923 was a quick shot that rather disrupted the larger plans. Ehrhardt, the lieutenant captain, actually expected to become the great leader because he had the support of Carl Eduard. Coburg was the first city in Germany to be ruled by Nazis. Citizens saw a picture of increasing unity and legitimacy of the right-wing camp; not least due to the practically identical conspiracy propaganda at home and abroad. Carl Eduard’s cousinPrince Josias of Waldeck and Pyrmont was SS and police leader for the military district to which the Buchenwald concentration camp belonged, as well as adjutant to Heinrich Himmler. The latter and Hitler both became godparents for Josias’ son. Himmler’s father had been an educator for the Bavarian royal family, which was connected to the Guelphs. A subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp was located in Neustadt near Coburg.

Hermann Göring had already been enthusiastic about nobility as a child and had Hermann von Epenstein, Knight of Mauternburg, as his godfather (and perhaps secret father). The expensively restored Veldenstein Castle was made available to the Göring family as a residence. Hermann Göring also visited his “surrogate father” Epenstein at Mauterndorf Castle, which he later called “the castle of his youth”. Göring married a Swedish noblewoman and maintained all kinds of contacts with the nobility, especially with the Princes of Hesse, Prince Max of Hohenlohe, Prince Viktor of Wied and Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (a brother-in-law of the Queen of the Netherlands). Mussolini visibly integrated the Italian royal family into the fascist regime. In the 1920s, important British figures such as Winston Churchill, the Duke of Westminster and Oswald Mosley traveled to Italy. Carl Eduard provided Hitler with tons of contacts, but for a long time he did not let it be known that he really wanted Hitler as leader, because there were a whole range of other possible candidates. A year after the seizure of power in 1933, Coburg became a representative abroad, also using the German Red Cross as a cover. Hitler repeatedly blasphemed the Americans and the British, but at the same time he was considered an Anglophile and seemed to hope that he could keep the Anglo-Americans passive and, above all, buy American technology. In addition to Hitler, Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg and Ribbentrop also maintained relevant contacts, traveled extensively and had confidential meetings in noble castles and country houses. The Nazis were led to believe that a British network of the upper class of nobility and industry (including the organization “The English Mystery”) had great Nazi sympathies, wanted to fight Bolshevism and prevent further wars against the Germans. The Prince of Wales (King Edward VIII from 1936) in particular was ensnared by the Nazis. Urbach writes:

“Hitler therefore used all available channels to London – official and unofficial – to ensure that the British government would not take action against Germany.”

Edward abdicated and was succeeded by George VI. After the Polish campaign, Carl Eduard remained active internationally. He tolerated the concentration camp and was traveling with, among others, the German ambassador Count von derschulenburg. The Swedish King Gustav V also supported the Germans. Operation Willi was the German code name for the SS’s unsuccessful attempt to kidnap the Duke of Windsor in July 1940 and get him to work with German dictator Adolf Hitler to achieve either a peace settlement with Britain or a restoration of the throne after the German one to achieve the conquest of Great Britain. When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the Duke became a liaison officer for the British military mission with the high command of the French army. In fact, he served as a British military intelligence agent. After the war, Victoria Melita accused her father Carl Eduard of sexually abusing her since she was 12, which her brother confirmed.

“Like a plague bacillus,” the connections between nobles and Nazis spread, complained Helmuth Graf von Moltke in a letter to an Englishman. He did not become an influential general like others in his line, but rather a resister against the Nazis and worked with the US secret service OSS. The Moltkes come from Mecklenburg and have a significant connection to Denmark and therefore Britain. Field Marshal and second-in-command of the Army Walther von Brauchitsch is another special case. His mother came from the Scottish-English noble Gordon family, which was firmly anchored in the British colonial empire. Baron Gordon of Drumearn, for example, sat on the British Privy Council. After his school education, the young Walther von Brauchitsch served as page of Empress Auguste Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg. Her father came from the House of Oldenburg and was connected to the thrones of Britain, Denmark and Russia. The mother Adelheid zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg descended from Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Adelheid’s grandmother married the Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III, in May 1818. of Great Britain and Ireland; they were the parents of the future Queen Victoria (1819–1901).

Hitler preferred to surround himself with people from the lower middle class who were similar to him. An exception was his head of protocol Vicco von Bülow-Schwanke, son of the Prussian Field Marshal Karl by Bülow. This noble line served Hanover, Braunschweig-Lüneburg and Mecklenburg in the past. Hitler then replaced him with another nobleman, Baron von Dönberg, who in turn had dangerous connections to Hesse and Thurn and Taxis. But from the Fuhrer’s point of view, these were not dangers, but rather advantages. The nobility had assured the people early on that fascism would, in principle, be similar to classical aristocratic rule in important aspects and that there was no need to worry. Hitler believed he could successfully use the nobles as diplomats in Italy and Britain. He even thought he could recruit all sorts of sympathizers from the British through the noble diplomats. In 2000, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative author Louis Kilzer exposed Martin Bormann as a spy in his book “Hitler’s Traitor,” who had revealed all of Hitler’s and the General Staff’s relevant military plans down to the last detail. When he was young, Bormann worked for Lieutenant Colonel Hermann von Treuenfels in Mecklenburg. The Mecklenburg royal family plays an important role in its connections to the British throne, the Russian royal court and the Danish royal family. Mecklenburg-Strelitz emerged from the division of Mecklenburg. Adolf Friedrich IV, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1738-1794) was the son of the Princess of Saxe-Hildburghausen. In 1761 he married his younger sister Sophie Charlotte to George III, King of Great Britain. In 1764 he became the first Mecklenburg prince to receive the Order of the Garter, the most exclusive British award. Duke Adolf Friedrich V of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was the child of Princess Augusta Karoline of Great Britain, Ireland and Hanover. Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop had only been adopted by a distant noble relative, but he tried his best to make noble contacts. He created the “German-English Society” with high-profile nobles such as Carl Eduard Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. State Secretary Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker was not at all comfortable with Hitler’s war plans. On June 24, 1943, at his own request, he was appointed German ambassador to the Holy See in Rome. To Pope Pius XII. According to his own statements, he had a friendly relationship. Hermann Göring, the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, loved to go hunting with princes and chatted about all sorts of things. Heinrich Himmler often visited Baron von Sangern’s castle. Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg became Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht and, in consultation with Walter von Reichenau, organized the swearing in of the Reichswehr soldiers to Hitler. On November 5, 1937, Blomberg took part in Hitler’s conference with Commanders-in-Chief Werner von Fritsch (Army), Erich Raeder (Navy) and Hermann Göring (Air Force) as well as the Reich Foreign Minister Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath. Blomberg and Fritsch doubted that the Wehrmacht could even win a European war.

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt enforced the famous halt order at the Battle of Dunkirk, which enabled the Allies to evacuate around 370,000 trapped soldiers from Dunkirk to Great Britain. The order to stop ultimately went back to Hitler, but decisive action would still have made it possible to encircle the British. The British thanked him by releasing him in 1949. The military historian Sönke Neitzel said in 2020 that Rundstedt failed several times in the war; including the Allied invasion of Normandy. Some noble resisters who attempted late assassination attempts on the leader became known. There were also repeated contacts between high-ranking officers in Britain, but no negotiated solution was reached. There were many unofficial communication channels. Opportunities for espionage accordingly. After the Second World War, there was once again no systematic, comprehensive investigation into which noble spy networks had revealed the (primarily military) secrets of the Third Reich. Instead, we only saw new stab-in-the-back legends for the right-wing target audience. The noble founder of the NPD party, Adolf von Thadden, was ultimately exposed as an agent of the British secret service MI6. In popular conspiracy literature, the old fairy tales about the Elders of Zion were spun and the typical legal revisionism immediately arose.