Hochschule des MfS in 1970. His official rank of colonel under-
stated his quasi-independent standing. On 15 February 1986, Volpert
died unexpectedly in the sauna of his East Berlin residence under
mysterious circumstances.VULKAN. A major blow to the Aussenpolitischer Nachrichtendienst
(APN) of the German Democratic Republic, Operation vulkan (Vol-
cano) involved the defection of Gotthold Kraus to the Federal Re-
public of Germany on 4 April 1953. Although the U.S. Central Intel-
ligence Agency had played an instrumental role, the new Bundesamt
für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) took credit for the operation. Because
at least half a dozen key operatives had been apprehended as a re-
sult, Markus Wolf was forced to undertake a major reorganization
of the APN. At the same time, the widely publicized arrest of 35
East German agents included several innocent businessmen, thereby
causing the first major embarrassment of the BfV. Among those
convicted—and given relatively lenient sentences—were ringleader
Ludwig Weiss, Hans Bogenhagen, and Josef Gebhardt.
– W –
WAETJEN, EDUARD. An anti-Nazi Abwehr agent and leading
informant of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Eduard
Waetjen was a jurist from Bremen whose mother was American.
Although an early supporter of Germany’s expansionism under
the Third Reich, he developed close contact with Helmuth James
Count von Moltke of the anti-Nazi Kreisau Circle and with Hans
Oster of the Abwehr. Waetjen’s overriding aim was a separate peace
with the United States, which he discussed in Ankara in 1942 with
Franz von Papen, the German ambassador to Turkey. The follow-
ing year, while stationed at the German consulate in Zurich as an
Abwehr agent, Waetjen contacted Allen Dulles, the OSS station chief
in Bern, and began to supply information based on his wide network
of international contacts. In 1944, Waetjen (code name Görter)
replaced Hans Bernd Gisevius as Dulles’s main informant regard-
ing the German military conspiracy against Adolf Hitler. Although a
Gestapo file existed regarding Waetjen’s contact with Moltke’s
WAETJEN, EDUARD • 479