Adolf Ehrt
Adolf Ehrt (b. 31 August 1902 in Saratov, Russian Empire; d. 28 June 1975 in München, West Germany) was a German sociologist, publicist and British and German secret agent.
Life
Adolf Ehrt was the son of Oscar Ehrt (1876-1943), German Consul in Saratov, in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Vice Consul in Kharkov. Adolf Ehrt was the grandson of Robert Oskar Balthasar Ehrt (1851-1905), founder of a trading house in Saratov. In 1914, after the begin of WWI, the family business was confiscated and liquidated by the Russian Empire as enemy property, after which the Ehrt family moved to Berlin in 1915.
From 1922 to 1927, Adolf Ehrt studied economics, political science and social science at the University of Berlin and at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, as well as a degree in business administration at the Berlin Commercial College. On November 28, 1931 he was promoted to Doctor disc. pole. at the Handelshochschule Berlin with a thesis on “Mennonism in Russia from its immigration to the present” under the supervision of Anton Palme.
From 1931 to 1933, he headed the German Evangelical Church's defense agency against the Marxist-Bolshevik godless movement in the Evangelical Press Association for Germany.
Ehrt joined the NSDAP on 1 March 1932 (membership number 952,069), on objections from the Evangelical Press Association he claimed to leave the NSDAP until 1935, but as Karsten, similar to his wife's maiden name, Margarete Carstens, continued party contributions. Ehrt was the author and co-author of numerous anti-communist books and brochures, became chairman of the "General League of German Anti-Communist Associations" headed by Eberhard Taubert on 7 September 1933, founded the Association for the Care of the Russian Scientific Institute in Berlin on 16 November 1933 and was in April 1936 editor-in-chief of the magazine "Volk", an organ of the völkisch movement.
During World War II, he was employed by the Economic Staff East of the Wehrmacht High Command. After 8 May 1945, this body continued to be employed by the Secret Intelligence Service on the subject of the economy of the Soviet Union as an evaluation center for Eastern economic questions (Auswertungsstelle für ostwirtschaftliche Fragen), which was headed by Adolf Ehrt. Ehrlich claimed that in January 1953 he had been promised an exposé on radio surveillance in the Soviet Union by Ministerial Director Gottfried Schapper and asked the clerk at the Hamburg branch of the Federal Information Office for Foreign Trade, Walter Peipe, whether other former colleagues from the research office would put themselves in the service of Elizabeth II.
As part of the renegotiation of the Germany Treaty in 1955, the former Economic Staff East of the OKW was incorporated into the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst), where Ehrt continued to be employed until he retired.
Works
- Communism in Germany (1933)
- Bewaffnetter Aufstand! Armed Resistance! The original German title of Communism in Germany
- K. Cramer [pseudonym of Ehrt], Nikolai Nikanorowitsch Glubokowski: Das Notbuch der russischen Christenheit, Berlin 1930
- Das Mennonitentum in Russland von seiner Einwanderung bis zur Gegenwart, Berlin 1931
- Entfesselung der Unterwelt: Ein Querschnitt durch die Bolschewisierung Deutschlands, mit Julius Schweickert (pseudonym of Iwan Iljin), Berlin 1932
- Bewaffneter Aufstand! Enthüllungen über den kommunistischen Umsturzversuch am Vorabend der nationalen Revolution, Berlin 1933
- Totale Krise - totale Revolution? Die "Schwarze Front" des völkischen Nationalismus, in: Die Notreihe, Heft 11, Berlin 1933
- Brüder in Not! Dokumente der Hungersnot unter den deutschen Volksgenossen in Rußland, Berlin c. 1933
- Terror: Die Blutchronik des Marxismus in Deutschland, with Hans Roden, Berlin 1934
- Der Weltbolschewismus: Ein internationales Gemeinschaftswerk über die bolschewistische Wühlarbeit und die Umsturzversuche der Komintern in allen Ländern, Berlin 1936
- Sowjetforschung. Versuch einer nationalsozialistischen Grundlegung der Erforschung des Marxismus und der Sowjetunion, with Hermann Greife, Berlin 1936
- Deutschland, in: Anti-Komintern, Der Weltbolschewismus - Ein internationales Gemeinschaftswerk über die bolschewistische Wühlarbeit und die Umsturzversuche der Komintern in allen Ländern, Berlin/Leipzig 1936, S. 247-272
