Hans Thomsen

Thomsen was a son of the Norwegian-born banker Carlo Z. Thomsen. Hans Thomsen held the dr. juris degree, and entered the foreign service in 1919. After being stationed at the consulates-general in Milan and Naples from 1921, he was summoned back to Germany in 1923 where he subsequently advanced in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ranks. Thomsen continued as a diplomat for the Third Reich. Thomsen served as Chargé d'Affaires at the Embassy of Germany in Washington, representing the German government in the U.S. from November 1938 (after the recall of ambassador Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff) to December 11, 1941 (termination of relations after declaration of war). In November 1944 as relations deteriorated, he was recalled to Germany. Thomsen was interrogated prior to the Nuremberg tribunals but was not charged with any crime. In the early 1950s he served as head of the Hamburg chapter of the Red Cross. == Thomsen and the isolationists ==

Like Dieckhoff, Thomsen suffered no illusions about the U.S. administration's policy towards Nazi Germany, and he sent warnings to the German government advising them of President Roosevelt's hostility. Thomsen reported to the German foreign ministry on June 12, 1940 that a "well-known Republican congressman" had offered to take a group of fifty isolationists to the convention in exchange for $3,000 (). Thomsen asked for funds for this and for full page advertisements to be placed in newspapers during the convention. Fish does not appear to have been personally involved in these efforts, though he headed the National Committee to Keep America Out of Foreign Wars which sponsored the ads. == Purple cipher ==

In April 1941, Thomsen sent a message to Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, informing him that "an absolutely reliable source" had told him that the Americans had broken the Japanese diplomatic code (code-named "Purple" by the Americans). That source apparently was Konstantin Umansky, the Soviet ambassador to the US, who had deduced the leak based upon communications from U.S. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. These warnings were duly forwarded on to the Japanese government, but in the end they were not acted upon, and American cryptographers continued to read Japanese messages through the war. == Thomsen and Donovan ==

Just before the Pearl Harbor attack, Thomsen was involved in a curious attempt by William Donovan, the United States Coordinator of Information, to recruit him entirely to the American side. Thomsen had been supplying information on German military strength and movements to Malcolm Lovell, a real estate developer involved in Quaker anti-war efforts. Lovell understood himself to be an intermediary and passed the information on to Donovan. These messages included various warnings about Japanese actions and their consequences, including warnings that the Japanese Empire was compelled by its position to attack the United States; Donovan and Roosevelt were not entirely sure what to make of this information; nonetheless, just before the attack, Donovan offered Thomsen a million dollars in exchange for a public statement distancing himself from the Nazi regime. Donovan's efforts failed, and Thomsen returned to Germany at the end of the year as the U.S. entered the war. == References ==