Kitty's Salon: Sex, Spying and Surveillance in the Third Reich

by Nigel Jones

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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Germany, World War II, Espionage

348 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 27, 2023

Reviews

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe more like 2.5 stars? Really, I think my reading of this was made more problematic by the fact that I read the title and the subtitle but not the blurb. I was expecting an intereting history about a brothel used as a spying den in Nazi Germany. I got a little bit of that (maybe for the first chapter or so) but then I also got a catalogue history of all the sexual deviance of major Nazi Party members, followed by a dry descriptive section that outlined all the ways Salon Kitty has been represented in film and literature over time. So my rating is mostly a reflection of expectations unmet, and those expectations might have been misplaced.

[Sabina_bere · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zanimiv vpogled v seksualno ozadje nacistične Nemčije. Nacistični voditelji niso bili ravno moralen vzgled, o katerem so pridigali državljanom, saj so se sami pogosto zapletali v različne (razvratne) afere. Salon Kitty je rezultat razmišljanj 'moža z železnim srcem' Reinharda Heydricha, ki je bil sicer znan po svoji okrutnosti, cinizmu in ambicioznosti. Bordel Kitty je postal eno izmed središč za prisluškovanje in okoli njega se je spletlo kar nekaj različnih govoric.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

When making an assertion of facts, then, finding few facts to support the assertion, bombard the field with lots of trivial, if related, facts, hoping that readers will ignore the fact that you don't have facts to support your position.
That's a key problem with this book. Sure, Nazi hierarchy had some quirky lusts, but did they actually run a bordello dedicated to collecting traitorous pillow talk? The purported period high tech snooping operation would have generated hundreds of hours of recorded, both via wax cylinder, audio tape and written records. Zero have been found. Zero.
Hookers with hearts of gold (aka "gold diggers") reporting years later hardly count as evidence.
While no real harm is done through this book, nothing of substance is added to historical understanding, either.

[Kathy Allard · Rating 3 out of 5]

When starting nonfiction history books, I often ask, how much of this is true/actually happened? By the end of this one, I thought that the whispers of a Nazi surveillance operation at a brothel were total fiction, despite the earnest efforts by three authors to prove otherwise. I wondered why I'd listened to two hours of the book before anything about the subject was discussed, only to hear three wildly different stories of how the Nazis took control of Kitty's. This was followed by hours of material only tangentially related to Kitty's.

A lot of the material in the book interested me, and that kept me going even though the purported subject of the book wasn't being covered. But by the time I got to the last two hours about Kitty's in books and movies, I'd decided the authors had enough material/innuendo for a magazine article, not a book.

Thomas Judd is one of my favorite audiobook narrators and a main reason I carried on with this and didn't skim the last few hours. I also liked the mini bios at the end, which helped clarify all the characters who'd made an appearance in the book. In conclusion, clearly I have very mixed feelings about this book!

Also, you know you're reading a book about Nazis when it has terms like "experimental gassing." Not surprisingly, there's some rough stuff in here.

[Mariaᥫ᭡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some may say it had too many "random facts" thrown in there and it deviated from the main subject, which should be the brothel itself, but I did enjoyed it very much. I'm easily pleased though and quite interested in learning about Nazi Germany, so perhaps my opinion is biased.
I would say that when I picked up this book, I expected to read more about the brothel itself, not all its visitors and so many "what was going on during that year". I recommend reading it if you enjoy history and especially Germany during World War II history, but if you want the book to be strictly about Kitty's salon, this isn't for you.

[Luka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Knjiga o vlogi spolnosti v tretjem rajhu, o nacističnih veljakih in njihovi spolni (ne)morali ter tudi o neki Kitty, ki je imela svoj "salon". Četudi je slednje z največjimi črkami zapisano na naslovnici, vsebina knjige Salon Kitty obravnava bolj obrobno, saj je o njem premalo zanesljivih virov, prič ... Škoda, bralec pričakuje preveč ob takšni najavi na naslovnici. Sicer ponuja knjiga dober prikaz spolnosti v tretjem rajhu (podobno kot knjiga o (zlo)rabi drog Popolna omama: droge v tretjem rajhu), zgodba je lepo povezana, ponujenega je dovolj ozadja, da lažje razumemo zgodovinske dogodke. Proti koncu se začne malo ponavljati, kar je škoda. Zanimivo branje, ocena 2 pa zaradi zavajanja bralstva in ponavljanj.

[Gyrithe Blichfeldt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only lerned about this, from a recent vacation to Berlin. I went to the Bunker Museum, and there were a small story about Kitty. So ofcourse i wanted to lern more. And that I did.
what a horrible ugly part of the war this book describes. So much information i didnt know about. And I thought I knew alot. Well. Now i know more.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

More interesting than I expected.

[Georgia Rawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this in just 24 hours because I could not simply put it down!

[Neil Spark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting story about the bugging of a brothel and its Madam.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

No surprises here, sick puppies.

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not it

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

an good well research history

[Matic Slapšak · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can read my review (in Slovene) on https://maticpise.com/2025/01/24/salo...