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Revision as of 18:39, 3 August 2008 by Hmains (talk | contribs) (copyedit)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Erich Kordt (10 December 1903 - 11 November 1969), German diplomat, was involved in the German Resistance to the regime of Adolf Hitler.
Kordt was a convinced Anglophile, and spoke perfect English after gaining a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. He joined the German Foreign Office in 1928, and was posted to Geneva and Bern in Switzerland. He then served in the London Embassy under Ambassdor Joachim von Ribbentrop, for whom he developed both personal dislike and professional disdain. Despite this, he joined the Nazi Party in November 1937, and in February 1938, when Ribbentrop became Foreign Minister, he was appointed Director of Ribbentrop's office.
Kordt's brother, Theodor Kordt, who was also a diplomat, was posted in London, and in September 1938, with the support of the German Foreign Office Under-Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker, Erich used his brother as an envoy to urge the British government to stand up to Hitler over the Czechoslovakia crisis, in the hope that Army officers would stage a coup against Hitler.
In June 1939, Kordt went to London to warn the diplomatic advisor to the British government Robert Vansittart, of the secret negotiations between Germany and the Soviet Union which led to the Nazi-Soviet Pact. He was dismayed that all approaches, made by the German resistance movement within the German Foreign Office, were ignored by the British.
In April 1941, Kordt was posted to Tokyo as German embassy First Secretary and later to Nanking as German Consul, where he worked as an agent for the Soviet spy Richard Sorge until 1944. He narrowly avoided being killed by a Japanese hitman when Japanese Intelligence discovered that he spied against the Axis.
At the Nuremberg Trials, Kordt testified in June 1948 on behalf of Weizsäcker, who was being tried for his role in Hitler's aggressive foreign policy. Partly as a result, Weizsäcker was acquitted. This aroused the hostility of Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who blocked Kordt's return to a career at the Foreign Office. From 1951, Kordt was a professor of international law at the University of Cologne.
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