The Madam and the Spymaster: Kitty Schmidt, Reinhard Heydrich, and the Secret History of the Most Famous Brothel in Wartime Berlin

This extraordinary story of a high-class Berlin brothel--taken over by the Nazi secret service--is one of the last untold tales of World War II. There is no book in English about the wartime Berlin 'salon' run by Kitty Schmidt under the secret control of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Final Solution. Salon Kitty was the most notorious brothel in the decadent Berlin of the Weimar Republic - the city of Cabaret. But after the Nazis took power, it became something more dangerous: a spying centre with every room wired for sound, staffed by female agents specially selected by the SS to coax secrets from their VIP clients. Masterminded by Reinhard Heydrich, the spymaster whom Hitler himself called the man with the iron heart, the exclusive establishment turned listening post was patronised by the Nazi leaders themselves, not knowing that hidden ears were listening. The Madam and the Spymaster reveals the sensational true story of this forgotten part of espionage history. The deep research undertaken by Nigel Jones, Urs Brunner and Dr Julia Schrammel sheds new light on Nazi methods of control and coercion, and the way sex was abused for their own perverse purposes.