Salon Kitty

Salon Kitty was a high-class Berlin brothel used by the Nazi intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), for espionage purposes during World War II.

Created in the early 1930s by Katharina "Kitty" Schmidt, the salon was taken over by Nazi secret service and senior SS officer Reinhard Heydrich and operated by his subordinate Walter Schellenberg in 1939.

The plan was to seduce top German dignitaries and foreign visitors, as well as diplomats, with alcohol and women so they would disclose secrets or express their honest opinions on Nazi-related topics and individuals.

The salon had to relocate after an air raid in 1942, but eventually, as the war progressed, the project lost its importance due to the decreased number of clientele.

[1] Its usual clientele included German dignitaries, foreign diplomats, top industrialists, high-ranking civil servants and senior Nazi Party members.

[4] Using Salon Kitty for espionage purposes was an idea of Reinhard Heydrich, a leading SS general and police chief within Nazi Germany.

[4] Historian Paul Roland further notes that among the women who entertained members of the Nazi elite were respected ladies of Berlin's high society who were given no allowances for their "contributions" and were nearly all married to men of good financial means.

[4] Salon Kitty became even more popular when selected guests in the military and diplomatic corps were told the "secret codeword" and monitors made thousands of recordings during their visits.

One of the customers was Galeazzo Ciano, son-in-law of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Foreign Minister of Fascist Italy, whose forthright opinions about the Führer were not particularly positive.

Within the year the SD decided to abandon the project, also due to Schellenberg no longer having to report to anyone on the issue after the assassination of Heydrich by the Czechoslovak resistance in May 1942.

[9] The 1981 BBC comedy drama Private Schulz, about a German fraudster and petty criminal's unwilling World War II service in the SS, prominently features the salon.