Russian Spy (#15033)
by editor on July 11, 2003 at 3:37 PM

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Ottawa Citizen

July 11, 2003 Friday Final Edition

SECTION: News; Pg. A7

LENGTH: 526 words

HEADLINE: Third Reich film star Zarah Leander spied for Russians: researcher

SOURCE: The Times, London

BYLINE: Roger Boyes

DATELINE: LONDON

BODY:
LONDON -- The most glittering film and musical star of the Third Reich spied for the Russians and betrayed intimate secrets of the Nazi elite to Moscow, according to a researcher who has been trawling through the KGB archives.

The revelation will force a reappraisal, not only of the husky-voiced Swedish-born Zarah Leander, but also of other actresses and singers seen until now either as political dupes or collaborators.

Arkadij Waxberg, a Russian writer and researcher, said that other Third Reich show-business stars, including Olga Tschechowa, who was related to Anton Chekhov, and Marika Roekk also funnelled information to Stalin's secret service.

But it is the story of Leander that is most compelling because few film historians have been able to solve the riddle of her career. Why did she allow herself to be used by the Nazis? Why did she remain popular after the war in Communist countries?

Mr. Waxberg's disclosures are based not only on the archival material, but also on a deathbed tape recording of Pavel Sudoplatov, a senior controller for the NKVD, forerunner of the KGB.

Mr. Sudoplatov says that she was recruited before the war and given the codename Rose-Marie. Since she was free to travel between Berlin and Stockholm, she became a courier for the Russians.

"Leander helped us build a picture of the situation throughout northern Europe and of the various British, American and German interests in the region," Mr. Sudoplatov said in the taped confession. Leander's Party card is said to be in the KGB archives.

The Nazis needed a blond and sensual diva when Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo broke with the UFA film studios after Hitler's rise to power. Since German women were expected to be faithful mothers-in-waiting, Goebbels insisted that vamps be played by foreigners.

Leander was signed up and was quickly awarded diva status. Her 1937 To New Shores made her a star. She took more than 70 curtain calls when the film was premiered in Berlin.

Hitler is said to have admired her; Rudolf Hess, the deputy Fuehrer, listened obsessively to her records; Herman Goering the head of the Luftwaffe, tried to seduce her in Swedish; but Goebbels (unusually) kept his distance. "I think the woman is very overrated," he recorded in his diary. "I wish there were no Swedes."

Leander fled to Sweden in 1943 after her home in Berlin was destroyed in a British air raid.

The Nazis wrote her off as a traitor, and the Swedes cold-shouldered her as a collaborator. Only the Communist Party, to general mystification, described her as a "true democrat."

After the war the Allies banned her from performing in Germany for five years. But she did make a comeback of sorts, recording her throaty songs and co-starring with Anita Ekberg in a Swedish sex farce in 1966.

Above all, she became a cult figure for transvestites worldwide, as her voice was often indistinguishable from that of a man.

Until her death in 1981, she remained politically ambiguous, claiming always to be interested only in her art. The latest revelations, published in Stockholm, certainly suggest that she was anything but a political innocent.

LOAD-DATE: July 11, 2003