Gerhard Alois Westrick (27 April 1889 – 10 June 1957) was a German lawyer and businessman who represented several major American companies in Germany before World War II.
[3] On the advice of Joachim von Ribbentrop, the French-American businessman Charles Bedaux met Westrick in August 1939 and hired him as his lawyer.
[3] Westrick recognized Bedaux's potential as a source for intelligence and brought him to the attention of Leopold Bürkner, the head of the foreign liaison section of the Abwehr.
[8] The US remained technically neutral until four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor; on December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
He was assigned by von Ribbentrop to undertake a mission to the United States to meet American business leaders and gain their support for Germany.
[11] However, according to Charles Higham's book Trading with the Enemy, Sosthenes Behn of ITT arranged the trip and persuaded Torkild Rieber, CEO of Texaco, to look after Westrick's local needs.
[11] On June 26, 1940, one day after the Fall of France, Rieber sponsored a celebratory dinner for Westrick at the Waldorf Astoria New York.
[19][c] The British BSC chief in North America, William Stephenson, found out about Westrick's mission and leaked it to the press.
[12] The Herald Tribune ran stories with headlines like "Hitler's Agent Ensconced in Westchester" and gave his home address.
Newspapers reported that the FBI had asked the police to record the license numbers of cars that stopped at Westrick's house in Scarsdale.
[28] On August 11, the New York Post said $5 million had been deposited for Westrick in a bank in San Francisco by a source in Germany, followed by additional sums.
[29] In the face of that storm of hostile publicity, German Chargé d'Affaires Hans Thomsen asked Westrick to return to Germany.
[9] In early 1942, Westrick flew to Madrid, where he met with Sosthenes Behn to discuss how to manage ITT's European business in the new political climate.
[29] During the war, Westrick remained in touch with ITT's head office in America through G. Edouard Hofer, the managing director of ISE in Switzerland.
During interrogations after the war the head of foreign intelligence, Walter Schellenberg, said that Westrick was among the few people with whom he could discuss in 1943 the need to overthrow Hitler or even to kill him.