Heinz Höhne (1926 Berlin, Germany - 27 March 2010 in Großhansdorf) was a German journalist and historian who specialized in Nazi and intelligence history.
Born in Berlin in 1926, Höhne was educated there until he was called to fight during the last months of the Second World War. After the war, he studied journalism in Munich and went on to work for various newspapers as a freelance reporter. In 1955, he was hired by the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, where he joined the foreign staff of the magazine and eventually took charge of the Anglo-American department. It is while employed for Der Spiegel that he became famous for his exploits. Heinz's controversial efforts in covering unexploited areas of Nazi history earned him renown as his painstaking efforts exposed and elucidated missing pieces of the Nazi puzzle. His most famous of these works is titled The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS. (Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf: Die Geschichte der SS). This work first appeared in 1967, and many other notable works subsequently followed, such as his 1971 revisionist study of the Soviet Union's spy network entitled Codeword: Direktor. In 1976, Höhne went on to write Canaris, a radical interpretation of Hitler's spymaster, who was in charge of the Abwehr.[1]
Another notable work from Höhne is Krieg im Dunkeln (1985), which examines the centuries old relationship between Russian and German intelligence. After his retirement, Heinz Höhne worked on a complete history of the Third Reich, the first volume of which, Gebt mir vier Jahre Zeit, appeared in 1996.