left the Abwehr in late March 1943 and was given the command of
an infantry division fighting on the eastern front. He was taken pris-
oner by the Red Army in early 1945, declared a war criminal, and
remained in captivity for the next 10 years. He died in Essen on 16
December 1959.PILSUDSKI, JÓZEF (1867–1935). An agent of the Evidenzbüro
prior to becoming the leader of Poland after World War I, Józef Pil-
sudski began his underground activities against Russia at an early age
and was imprisoned in Siberia from 1887 to 1892. His staunch advo-
cacy of a Polish state independent of Russia led him to an association
with the Austro-Hungarian secret service in 1906. During World War
I, direct ties existed between the Evidenzbüro and Pulsudski’s Polish
Legion. Yet after the Russian Revolution, the German government
became the main barrier to a sovereign Poland. In response, Pilsud-
ski refused to swear fidelity to German and Austrian forces and was
therefore arrested and imprisoned in Magdeburg in July 1917. The
armistice of November 1918 brought about his release, and he soon
emerged as the first head of the new Polish state.
PLATZDASCH, GÜNTER (1952– ). A West German publicist who
served as an agent for the Verwaltung Aufklärung (VA), Günter
Platzdasch was born in Eisenach on 6 December 1952. Schooled
in the Federal Republic of Germany, he not only became a member
of the Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (DKP) but by 1970 had es-
tablished contact with East German military intelligence. While he
initially reported on the U.S. Army installations near Frankfurt am
Main, the VA’s long-term plan involved his placement in the press
office of the Bundeswehr. Drawn to Eurocommunism, however, he
became critical of both the DKP and the Sozialistische Einheitspartei
Deutschlands, particularly following the expatriation of Wolf Bier-
mann in 1976.
Expelled from the DKP, Platzdasch terminated his relationship with
the VA and resumed his studies at Marburg and Frankfurt am Main.
A position at the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) fol-
lowed in 1988, although he left shortly thereafter. Denying charges
of serving as an Einflussagent for the Ministerium für Staats-
sicherheit, he later accused the ISHR of being a neo-Nazi front.
350 • PILSUDSKI, JÓZEF