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187 Bibliography Although German records were seized and microfilmed at the end of World War II, this apparent good fortune is less fruitful for the study of Heinz Lüning’s espionage in Havana than it might appear. Before the war’s end, some records were destroyed by Allied attacks or German acts of political self-defense. In fact, a general order for the destruction of records, issued on April 10, 1945, was poorly distributed and often ignored. Nevertheless, regretfully, the records of the staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht [OKW, Supreme Command of the Armed Forces], the materials of General Alfred Jodl (chief of staff of the OKW), the Gestapo archives, and the Abwehr files for the Hamburg AST stored at Flensburg and Zossen succumbed to acts of war or to willful destruction. The records of the Hamburg AST (Wehrkreis X, Military District 10)—which trained and employed Lüning—were near totally destroyed. The loss of Hamburg AST records meant that most Abwehr records related to the Caribbean are missing. This loss is lamentable but of modest consequence because few of Lüning’s secret ink messages made it to Germany in legible form. In 1986, the historian Uwe Brammer found fewer than two hundred pages of original Abwehr documents for the Hamburg AST. The surviving records do not mention Lüning by name. Allied sources supply most of our information about him. The Allied intelligence agencies had copies of perhaps seventy pieces of correspondence between Lüning, the Abwehr, and Abwehr agents. The SIS interviewed him scores of times about his Abwehr training, his activities , his contacts, and his espionage work. In addition, Brammer interviewed numerous former Hamburg AST employees to supplement the sparse paper record (Brammer, Spionageabwehr Hamburg, 11–21). The loss of German government records does make it difficult to assess the relationship between Lüning and his Abwehr handlers. The German Foreign Ministry files for 1942–1945 suffered extensive damage when an Allied air attack destroyed Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop ’s train, which held the originals of recent and pending Foreign Ministry records. Late in the war, Ribbentrop’s special train followed Hitler’s special train through Germany. (See various items in the Politisches Archiv des Aus- 188 Bibliography wärtigen Amts [PAAA] and record groups RH2 [Reichsheer], RW5 [Oberkommando Wehrmacht, Auslandsamt/Abwehr], and RW49, microfilm M-3811, and Bestand: Leopold Bürkner in the Militärarchiv, Bundesarchiv, Freiburg; and Kahn, “Secrets of the Nazi Archives.”) Despite these misfortunes, some materials about Lüning and his mission remain in the Foreign Ministry archives in Berlin and in the Military Archives in Freiburg. These documents must be supplemented from Allied sources. Thus, reconstructing Lüning’s relationship with Abwehr officials required foreign materials to a large extent. Public sources in the United States, Cuba, and Britain hold abundant documentation on Lüning and his activity in 1941 and 1942. The most extensive records related to Lüning are those of the FBI-SIS. The FBI-SIS and other U.S. intelligence agencies received copies of Lüning’s secret ink messages to the Hamburg AST that the British Bermuda station intercepted. After Lüning’s arrest , FBI-SIS agents interviewed scores of people in Cuba and Santo Domingo, throughout Latin America, and in the United States who knew or had contact with Lüning. This investigation produced a four-thousand-page file about Lüning and his Abwehr activity in the Americas. Despite the lapse of sixty-five years, this large FBI headquarters file is, however, available only in censored form. The highly secret Office of Censorship records (RG 216, National Archives) contain hundreds of thousands of intercepted secret ink and radio messages from World War II (an archival description of RG 216 is available). Since U.S. censors intercepted only a couple of Lüning’s messages, RG 216 may hold little of use. However, these materials are closed even to Freedom of Information/Privacy Act (FOIA) requests; only the U.S. president can approve the use of RG 216 intercepts (J. Edgar Hoover to Adolf Berle Jr., September 11, 1942, enclosing a memorandum, September 11, 1942, MID 201, Lüning, Heinz August 9-11-42, file x8536413, box 131E, RG 319, NARA; Kahn, “Secrets of the Nazi Archives”; Farago, Game of the Foxes, xi–xv). The nearly inaccessible British Imperial Censorship records at the Public Records Office likewise do not show the intercepts of 1941–1942. But many British records are closed...

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