of major German defeats such as the battle of Stalingrad was also
strikingly candid.
In the final stages of the war, Oshima reluctantly relocated the
embassy to Bad Gastein, Austria, before being captured by U.S.
troops, interrogated, and returned to Japan for trial. Although the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentenced him to life
imprisonment, Oshima was granted clemency in 1958 and died 17
years later, unaware that his wartime dispatches had been intercepted
and read by his country’s main adversary.OSLO REPORT. See MAYER, HANS FERDINAND.
OSTBÜRO DER SPD. A special branch of the Sozialdemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (SPD) working undercover in the Soviet oc-
cupation zone and later the German Democratic Republic (GDR),
the Ostbüro der SPD was founded in April 1946 as a response to the
forced merger of the East German Social Democrats and the Kom-
munistische Partei Deutschlands. As initially envisioned by SPD
leader Kurt Schumacher, the Ostbüro was a point of contact for SPD
members and other resistance groups in the Soviet zone, a collec-
tor and disseminator of information about the communist regime, a
counterintelligence network directed against Soviet and East Ger-
man spies, and a support group for political refugees fleeing to the
Western zones.
Based originally in Hanover and later in West Berlin and Bonn,
the Ostbüro was headed respectively by Rudi Dux, Günther Weber,
Siegmund Neumann, and beginning in November 1948, Stephan
Thomas. One objective was to disseminate newspapers and other
publications in the Eastern zone. Persons connected to the Ostbüro
figured as prime targets of the NKVD (Soviet People’s Commissariat
of Internal Affairs) and the East German K-5. The Ostbüro secre-
tary Heinz Kühne was kidnapped from West Berlin in the winter of
1948–1949 and forced to reveal the names of other SPD members
engaged in resistance activities. Because couriers were such a vul-
nerable link, greater reliance was placed on broadcasts by RIAS.
In 1952, balloons were introduced as a means of infiltrating printed
matter into the GDR.
336 • OSLO REPORT