The customs guard at Berlin's West-East Sandkrug Bridge stopped a Ford sedan one evening last week, glanced at the two men inside and gave the customary warning: "You are now crossing into the Soviet sector." The man behind the wheel laughed, said, "That's exactly where we want to go," and drove ahead into East Berlin.
The man at the wheel was Otto John, the expert in charge of all of West Germany's counterespionage. His disappearance behind the Iron Curtain last week shook the foundations of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's West German government and jarred allied secret services from Berlin to Washington. And his motive for defection, or the device used to lure him across the frontier, provided the mystery of the week.
Single Mind. Otto John was a complicated man, caught in the confusions and counterloyalties of his time. One key to his character was his hatred of Naziism, a single-minded purpose which had forced him to lead a double life. During World War II, he served simultaneously in the Abwehr (Wehrmacht counterintelligence) and as a British secret-service contact. He was legal adviser to the Nazis' Lufthansa Airline and a secret anti-Nazi resistance worker. One memorable day ten years ago last week. Otto John landed at war-battered Tempelhof Airfield, where his brother, Hans, waited.
He asked one question: When? "It's tomorrow," said Hans softly, as they drove into Berlin. Next day came the bomb-shattering climax to years of plotting on Adolf Hitler's life by Otto, Hans and thousands of others. When that day ended in failure, Hans was in Gestapo custody and Otto was flying back to Madrid for his life. In Madrid, he dyed his blond hair black, went on to Portugal and to the British (who used him to interrogate important German prisoners). Brother Hans lingered under Nazi torture until the night of April 22, 1945. Then, as the Russians penetrated Berlin's suburbs, the Nazis faced Hans to the wall and blew open the back of his head. He was one of the last men they killed for complicity in the July 20 plot.*The war left Otto John with one clear loyalty—the memory of Hans, and one clear hatred—the Nazis.
Double Life. In 1949, he went back to Germany, tried to get a teaching job and was refused, tried to get a foreign-service post but was turned down because of his having collaborated with the British. But in time he became head of West Germany's O.F.P.O.C. (Office for the Protection of the Constitution), the security agency charged with detecting espionage, subversion and treason. He was the J. Edgar Hoover of West Germany's FBI. a legendary "man of a thousand secrets." and with him to the east he carried the thousand secrets about the agents, techniques and plans of the West's intelligence.
Yet in the four years that he headed O.F.P.O.C., John apparently did an outstanding job of eradicating Communist subversion in West Germany, and had the complete trust of the Anglo-American occupation authorities. A year ago he helped smash a Communist spy ring; a fortnight ago his evidence led to the legal banning in the West of the East Zone Youth Movement.