 | Hitler''s Man in Havana: Heinz Luning and Nazi Espionage in Latin America Subjects: Lüning Heinz 1911–1942; World War 1939–1945 -- Secret service -- Germany; Espionage German -- Cuba; Spies -- Germany -- Biography; Spies -- Cuba -- Biography; Schoonover, professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, charts the brief career of the minor and ineffective Nazi spy Heinz Lüning, whose arrest and subsequent execution were hyped and distorted by Cuban, American and British officials as a major coup for the Allies. Sent to Cuba to collect information concerning Allied naval maneuvers and commerce in the Caribbean, Lüning was a drinker and a womanizer with a brief training period, narrow and personal interests, modest intelligence, and no desire to serve Germany. The story of how this hapless, largely incompetent man found his way to the Americas and, eventually, the international limelight is at once strange, humorous and pathetic, if drily rendered. The final chapter, in which Schoonover makes a case for Lüning as the model for the character James Wormold in Graham Greene's 1958 novel, Our Man in Havana, is somewhat disconnected from the preceding sections, though it's a provocative if unusual conclusion to what is otherwise a straightforward work of military history. 32 photos. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved. Thomas D. Schoonover is professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is the author of eight books, including Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization, The Banana Men, and Germany in Central Americ a. |
