Otto von Bolschwing

Early life & business ventures Otto Albrecht Alfred von Bolschwing was born in Schönbruch, District of Bartenstein, East Prussia, German Empire (now: Szczurkowo, Poland) on 15 October 1909. He was the youngest of five children and was descended from the Junker nobility via the untitled Bodelschwingh family on the paternal side and the baronial on the maternal side. His father, the Prussian aristocrat Richard Otto Wilhelm Ferdinand von Bolschwing, served as a cavalry officer (Rittmeister) in the Imperial German Army during World War I and was killed in action on the Eastern Front in October 1914. After the war, von Bolschwing attended Hauptschule in Königsberg (now: Kaliningrad, Russia), completing his final examinations in 1926. He went on to study law and economics at the Silesian Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Breslau and the University of London where he demonstrated an aptitude for finance and languages, eventually becoming fluent in English and French, in addition to his native German. During his time in London, von Bolschwing worked as an apprentice clerk for the shipping agency MacAndrew & Co., a subsidiary of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. While attending the Faculty of Law at the University of Hamburg, von Bolschwing also began pursuing a career in international commerce, working for the East Asian trading house of C. Illies & Co. from 1928 to 1930. Von Bolschwing joined the then ascendent Nazi Party soon afterward, on 1 April 1932 (NSDAP # 984.212). Later that year, he was dispatched to Sofia, Bulgaria as an arbitrator for Bank für Industrie-Obligationen (Bank for Industrial Bonds), a Düsseldorf merchant bank, to negotiate the installation of German-manufactured telephone equipment in the Balkans and Asia Minor. Von Bolschwing soon became a fixture of von Mildenstein’s social circle and established himself as something of a protege. This relationship would prove enormously consequential to von Bolschwing’s future career under the Nazis. Von Mildenstein had established a reputation as an authority on Judaism and the Middle East within the Nazi Party and, in August 1934, he became a member of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence and security service of the SS, and was appointed as the director of Abteilung II/12 (Jewish Affairs) by SD chief Reinhard Heydrich. In a series of clandestine negotiations, von Bolschwing and Polkes brokered an agreement in which the SD would permit Haganah to operate recruiting and training camps in Germany where Jewish youths would receive paramilitary instruction and encouragement to emigrate to Palestine to join the struggle to establish a Jewish state. In exchange, Haganah agreed to provide the SD with intelligence regarding British political and military activities in Palestine. Von Bolschwing's efforts were intended to serve several different elements of Nazi foreign policy. Foremost, to render Palestine an ungovernable political liability for the British. The creation of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East would also provide the Third Reich with a location where it could expel its unwanted Jewish citizens. Office of Jewish Affairs Following his return to Germany, von Bolschwing continued to pursue a career with the SD and joined the staff of the Jewish Affairs Office (Judenreferat), as a consultant on Zionism and Palestinian affairs to his benefactor Leopold von Mildenstein. Dissatisfied with the pace of Jewish migration to Palestine, Heydrich removed von Mildenstein as head of the Judenreferat in July 1936, eventually replacing him with Herbert Hagen. The departure of von Bolschwing’s erstwhile patron also marked a major shift in the overall policy of the SS and the SD regarding Jewish emigration; away from von Mildenstein’s pro-Zionist approach and in favor of increasingly harsher tactics. Von Bolschwing quickly adapted his work to fit this new regime. In January 1937 he wrote a memorandum concerning Jewish emigration, referencing the anti-Jewish riots in Berlin in 1935: Von Bolschwing's report suggested using this kind of organized, but unlawful, street violence in combination with legal bureaucratic measures such as economic sanctions, special taxes, and passport controls to purge Germany of its Jews. Heinrich Himmler was impressed with the document, and assigned von Bolschwing to work as a senior advisor to the Deputy Director of the Jewish Affairs Office, Adolf Eichmann. In another memorandum submitted to Eichmann, von Bolschwing stated: Von Bolschwing would also play a central role in planning Hagen and Eichmann's 1937 visit to Palestine as well as arranging two secret conferences in Cairo and Vienna between Eichmann and his former Haganah interlocutor Fievel Polkes to discuss the potential relocation of German Jews to Palestine. These events solidified Eichmann's reputation as the SD's foremost Judenberater (Jewish expert), creating the foundation for his later career as the administrative architect of the Holocaust. Von Bolschwing married his first wife, Brigitte Klenzendorff, in March 1938. The couple would have one child, Gisbert Otto Richard Ernst von Bolschwing, who was born in July 1939. Through his work for the Judenreferat, von Bolschwing also fostered professional alliances with a number of high-ranking SD officials in addition to Eichmann: • Director of SD-Amt II (Ideological Evaluation) and chief of staff at the Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi) Hermann Behrends; • Heinz Jost, Chief of SD-Amt III (Foreign Defense); • Head of SD-Abteilung II/12 (Political Opposition) ; • Alfred Naujocks, a senior operative with the SD's "Technical Services" division and it's Foreign Intelligence Service. These connections, particularly that with Jost, would later prove vital in advancing Von Bolschwing’s career in the security services over the coming years. This process of elevating himself through the careful cultivation of numerous influential personalities would become a recurring element throughout von Bolschwing’s professional life. Following the German annexation of Austria, Eichmann was dispatched to Vienna and given the responsibility of crafting a solution to the "Jewish question" in the newly acquired territory. He appointed von Bolschwing to serve as his primary adjutant throughout the project. The two men worked together to put in place many of the policies relating to forced immigration and the confiscation of Jewish property that von Bolschwing had articulated during his earlier service at the Jewish Affairs Office in Berlin. This collaboration proved to be a major professional success for both Eichmann and von Bolschwing and led to the establishment of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. This agency would become the prototype for similar SS organizations used to implement the deportation of Jews in Amsterdam, Prague and many other European cities. ==World War II==

Romania With the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, German policy toward the Jews shifted from voluntary emigration to forced deportation. Eichmann and von Bolschwing returned from Austria and went to work for the newly-established Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the police and security arm of the Nazi state. Eichmann assumed leadership of the Gestapo's Referat IV B4 (Jewish Affairs and Evacuation) while von Bolschwing was assigned to the Ausland-SD Amt VI (Foreign Security Service). Von Bolschwing was formally inducted into the Allgemeine SS (SS # 353.603) on 30 December 1939. He was accorded the rank of SS-Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) and served as a consultant to SS-Brigadeführer Heinz Jost, the director of the Ausland-SD. His new superior was deeply impressed with von Bolschwing’s abilities and his aristocratic pedigree, describing him in one internal RSHA memo as "being extremely intelligent, supple and well-bred". After seven months of confinement, von Bolschwing emerged from prison in April 1943 with his reputation badly tarnished. Austria Following his release from prison, the demise of his SS career and his divorce from his first wife, von Bolschwing turned his attention back to business and commerce. Specifically, he involved himself in the expropriation of Jewish property, opportunistically seeking to apply the expertise he had gained at the Office of Jewish Affairs to reinvigorate his sagging fortunes. Von Bolschwing traveled to Amsterdam, where he secured a lucrative partnership with Bank voor Onroerende Zaken (Bank of Real Estate), an investment house that specialized in the seizure of assets and property belonging to Jewish citizens of the German occupied-Netherlands. In mid-1943 von Bolschwing also participated in the Aryanization of Chemiefirma, a formerly Jewish-owned medical supply company in Hamburg. After illegally acquiring 20 percent ownership of the company for himself, von Bolschwing also took over the management of Chemiefirma Vienna office and facilitated its use as a front organization by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service. In October 1943 von Bolschwing remarried, taking as his second wife Ruth von Pfaundler, an Austrian national whose brother was a high-ranking member of O-5, an Austrian anti-Nazi resistance group. In late-1944, with the tide of war having turned decisively against the Nazi Germany, von Bolschwing moved with his family to Salzburg, Austria. He soon abandoned his previous loyalties to the Nazi Party and the SS and, under the auspices of his new brother-in-law, von Bolschwing served as a partisan of the Austrian Resistance in the Tyrolean Alps during the closing months of the war. Von Bolschwing was formally expelled from the SS in February 1945 and by April of that year he was collaborating directly with the headquarters of the US Army’s 71st Infantry Division. He quickly established himself as an extremely valuable asset, providing intelligence on German troop movements and also serving as a guide for US forces during the campaign in Tyrol. In a postwar testimonial, a senior officer of the 71st Infantry, Lt. Colonel Ray F. Goggin, lauded his efforts, stating: ==Post-war espionage==

Gehlen Organization Following the end of World War II in Europe, von Bolschwing became associated with the US Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) detachment in Salzburg and later worked for the American military government (OMGUS) in Bavaria from 1945 to 1946. In September 1949 von Bolschwing submitted a curriculum vitae to the CIA that conveniently made no mention of the three years he worked for the Office of Jewish Affairs. Similarly, a detailed background report on von Bolschwing that had been commissioned by Critchfield while evaluating him for potential CIA service, also completely omitted any information about his involvement with the Judenreferat or his association with Adolf Eichmann. No effort was made by US officials to fill in the gaps in either document. Following their arrival on 2 February, the family were hosted in the Boston home of a former military intelligence officer who had previously worked with von Bolschwing in Europe. Having brought him to the US in what it saw as a reward for his service, the CIA terminated its relationship with von Bolschwing, ordering him to break off all relations and to contact the Agency only in the event of a "dire emergency" which was a "life or death situation." ==Life in the United States==

Business career In the United States, von Bolschwing and his family settled in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan where he initially worked as an electrician at a power station operated by General Electric. He would utilize his skill with languages and his knowledge of international commerce to establish a lucrative private sector career. In 1955, von Bolschwing was hired as a tax and foreign trade specialist with the New Jersey–based pharmaceutical company Warner-Lambert. By 1957, he was working as Chief Assistant to the Director of International Operations and consulting on several of Warner-Lambert’s international projects in Western Europe, traveling there many times on company business. Getty was also a senior member of TCI’s Board of Directors. Getty’s intercession facilitated von Bolschwing's rapid appointment to the office of President of TCI in 1970. Von Bolschwing’s success was upended later that year following a fraud investigation of TCI by the California Department of Corporations. Several of TCI's major shareholders were accused of syndicating their stock and selling it to small investors, an act made illegal under a 1968 law requiring that all security sales be registered. Nevertheless, OSI Director Allan A. Ryan, Jr. filed a three-count complaint against Otto von Bolschwing with the US District Court for the Eastern District of California in May 1981. By this time, however, the elderly von Bolschwing was gravely ill, having been diagnosed with severe emphysema as well as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurodegenerative disorder. His declining condition raised serious doubts about von Bolschwing's competence to stand trial. In light of the circumstances, OSI Director Allan Ryan opted to conclude a plea agreement with von Bolschwing's legal representatives. Under the terms of the arrangement, von Bolschwing publicly admitted that he had lied about his membership in the Nazi Party, the SS and the RSHA, but was not required to disclose his involvement with Eichmann, the Office of Jewish Affairs or the Bucharest pogrom. Von Bolschwing also agreed that he would not contest his loss of US citizenship, while the OSI resolved that it would not attempt to deport him, given his poor health. The plea agreement was upheld by the US District Court in Sacramento on 22 December 1981. Otto von Bolschwing died in a nursing home in Carmichael, California ten weeks later, on 7 March 1982. He was 72 years old. Von Bolschwing remains the highest-ranking Nazi war criminal ever prosecuted by the Office of Special Investigations. ==References==