Hitler's Man in Havana: Heinz Luning and Nazi Espionage in Latin America

258 Pages·2008·1.87 MB·English

by  Thomas D. Schoonover

Hitler’s Man in Havana

Hitler’s
Man in
Havana
Heinz Lüning
and Nazi Espionage
in Latin America
Thomas D. Schoonover
T U P K
he niversiTy ress of enTUcKy
Copyright © 2008 by Thomas D. Schoonover
The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea
College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson
Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State
University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky
University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
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www.kentuckypress.com
12 11 10 09 08 5 4 3 2 1
Maps created by Eric Truesdell and Jacob Wasilkowski at the University of Kentucky
Cartography Lab
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schoonover, Thomas David, 1936–
Hitler’s man in Havana : Heinz Lüning and Nazi espionage in Latin America /
Thomas D. Schoonover.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8131-2501-5 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1. Lüning, Heinz, 1911–1942. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Secret service—Germany.
3. Espionage, German—Cuba. 4. Spies—Germany—Biography.
5. Spies—Cuba—Biography. I. Title.
D810.S8L867 2008
940.54'8743098—dc22 2008013205
This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Member of the Association of
American University Presses
To two colleagues who have inspired this project:
Louis A. Pérez Jr., who proposed the project in April 2001
and listened to me repeatedly thereafter, and
Walter LaFeber, who has discussed this and other projects
with me for decades.

Contents
Foreword by Louis A. Pérez Jr. ix
Preface xv
Acronyms/Glossary xxiii
Introduction
Pushed to the Edge of Defeat in 1942 3
1. A Troubled Life 11
2. The World He Scarcely Knew 25
3. Back to School! Trained as a Nazi Spy 53
4. Tested in Action 63
5. Failure and Fatality 93
6. Their Man in Havana 123
7. Graham Greene’s Man in Havana 141
Conclusion
A Story More Familiar Than Expected 155
Notes 159
Bibliography 187
Index 209
Photo gallery follows page 122

Foreword
Latin America was one of the few parts of the world that was not directly
involved in World War II. As air raids and land campaigns laid waste to
cities and countryside in Asia, Europe, and Africa, Latin America ap-
peared to have remained at the margins of the drama that engulfed the
vast portion of humanity. Certainly, this has long been the conventional
historiographic wisdom. The received knowledge is not, of course, with-
out some basis. Measured by the magnitude of the loss of life and the
destruction of property, the Latin American experience during the war
years was relatively tranquil.
But the story of Latin America and World War II is more compli-
cated. In recent years, the works of Thomas Leonard, Leslie Rout and
John Bratzel, and Max Paul Friedman, among others, have directed re-
newed attention to Latin America during the war years. This scholarship
has provided a greater appreciation of context and consequence and the
nuanced ways in which the war insinuated itself into the conduct of daily
life. No less important, new attention has been drawn to the ways in
which the war was “fought” in Latin America.
Thomas Schoonover’s fascinating study of Heinz Lüning in Havana
makes one more contribution toward an understanding of the ways in
which Latin America served as site and setting for the greater war of the
world. At first glance, Lüning’s story seems to be no more than an incon-
sequential episode of the war. And, indeed, in many ways, and certainly
in a comparative sense, the Lüning affair never rose to any level higher
than an episode incidental to the global conflict, with the added allure
of tropical intrigue not unlike the imagined mystique associated with
Casablanca. In the case of Lüning, it was Havana: stereotyped as a ro-
mantic Caribbean seaport, something of an exotic New World center of
ix