Justice Department. A terminal illness prevented his deportation, and
he died in the United States the next year.BORCHARDT, PAUL (1886–1953). A noted archeologist arrested
as an Abwehr spy in the United States, Paul Borchardt was born
in Berlin. Although he had served in World War I as an undercover
agent in the Near East and subsequently received a professorship in
military geography in Munich, Nazi officials confined him at Dachau
in 1933 because of his Jewish ancestry. In 1939, released through
the efforts of Wilhelm Canaris and disguised as an Abwehr agent
to facilitate his departure from Germany, Borchardt arrived in Great
Britain and offered his assistance to MI5 as a Jewish anti-Nazi spy.
When perplexed British officials declined to classify him as a re-
stricted “enemy alien,” he continued on to the United States, where,
under the code name robert, he became associated with the spy ring
headed by Kurt Frederick Ludwig. Captured by the Federal Bureau
of Investigation on 8 December 1941 and placed on trial, Borchardt
emphasized his overriding loyalty to Germany and was given a 20-
year prison sentence. His early release on 7 July 1952 occurred as
a result of intervention by the government of the Federal Republic
of Germany, which had been petitioned on Borchardt’s behalf by a
former Abwehr officer in Munich.
BORM, WILLIAM (1895–1987). A prominent West German politi-
cian who served as an agent of influence for the Hauptverwaltung
Aufklärung (HVA), William Borm was born in Hamburg on 7 July
1895, the son of a furniture salesman. After serving in World War I and
studying economics at the University of Berlin, he founded his own
firm for electrical acoustical devices. During World War II, the Nazi
government deemed his economic leadership as a factory manager
necessary for the defense of the country. In 1950, Borm was arrested
at an Autobahn border crossing by the People’s Police of the German
Democratic Republic (GDR). Two years later, a court in Greifswald
sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment because of “war and boycott
agitation.” As his early release in 1959 neared, he was recruited as an
agent by the HVA and given the code name olaf.
Borm’s rapid ascent in the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) be-
gan first in West Berlin and then on the national level. Elected to the
BORM, WILLIAM • 47