Kitty's Salon

Sex, surveillance and the most sinister Nazi of them all in wartime Berlin

There is no book in English about the wartime Berlin 'salon' run by Kitty Schmidt under the secret control of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Final Solution

Salon Kitty was the most notorious brothel in the decadent Berlin of the Weimar Republic - the city of Cabaret. But after the Nazis took power, it became something more dangerous: a spying centre with every room wired for sound, staffed by women agents specially selected by the SS to coax secrets from their VIP clients. Masterminded by Reinhard Heydrich, the spymaster whom Hitler himself called 'the man with the iron heart', the exclusive establishment turned listening post was patronised by the Nazi leaders themselves, not knowing that hidden ears were listening.

One of the last untold stories of the Second World War, Salon Kitty's sensational true history is now revealed by historians Nigel Jones, Urs Brunner and Dr Julia Schrammel. After years of painstaking research and investigation, the story they tell sheds new light on Nazi methods of control and coercion, and the way that they used and abused sex for their own perverse purposes.

About the Authors

Historian and journalist Nigel Jones is the author of eight historical books and biographies, including acclaimed lives of Rupert Brooke and Oswald Mosley, Peace and War: Britain in 1914 and Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London. An authority on the poets of the Great War and the rise of Nazism and Fascism between the world wars, he has also guided historical tours of the Western Front, Germany and Italy for several years. A former deputy editor of History Today and a founding editor of BBC History magazine, he writes and reviews regularly for these and other national newspapers and magazines, and frequently appears in TV historical documentaries.

Urs Brunner studied History, Politics and Literature at the University of Zurich and the American University of Cairo, and works as a freelance journalist.

Julia Schrammel is an Austrian journalist who studied at the University of Salzburg and works with several media companies.