for his work, including three medals from Cuba and a friendship
order from North Vietnam. At the time of its dissolution in 1989, the
OTS had 1,131 employees and was divided into a dozen specialized
subsections ranging from spy containers to false documents.SCHMIDT, HANS-THILO (1888–1943). The cipher official who be-
trayed details of the Enigma machine to France, Hans-Thilo Schmidt
was born in Berlin on 13 May 1888, the son of a baroness and a his-
tory professor. Although he was awarded an Iron Cross in World War
I, the military restrictions of the Versailles Treaty meant that, unlike
his older brother Rudolf, he could not continue his army career. After
his soap factory venture became a casualty of the rampant postwar
inflation, Schmidt turned to his brother for assistance and obtained
a position at the Chiffrierstelle as a civilian clerk (his brother had
previously headed this office and ironically given his approval for
the adoption of the Enigma machine). Yet this ill-paying job brought
little satisfaction or direction to his life, prompting him in June 1931
to contact the intelligence officer at the French embassy in Berlin and
offer confidential items for sale.
Once his bona fides were established by Rodolphe Lemoine,
frequent meetings between Schmidt (code name asche) and his han-
dlers took place in various European locales. Even though the French
received considerable information about the Enigma machine—from
copies of the instruction manual and operating procedures to lists of
the key settings—their cryptanalysts made no discernible headway,
and the purloined material was passed on to specialists in Great
Britain and Poland. Meanwhile Schmidt continued to supply ad-
ditional military data from his new position at the Forschungsamt
beginning in 1938. It was the arrest and confession of Lemoine in
Paris that led the Gestapo to Schmidt in Berlin on 1 April 1943. In
mid-September, without being apprised of the circumstances of his
death while in prison, his daughter was summoned to identify the
corpse. His brother, stripped of his military rank, made secret burial
arrangements.
SCHMIDT, IRMGARD (1930– ). An East German student enlisted as
a Soviet agent, Irmgard Schmidt (code name stephania) was trained
in the German Democratic Republic and dispatched to West Berlin
SCHMIDT, IRMGARD • 401