Finding Count Sosnowski
A shotgun, a story and a wild goose chase.
Eight years ago Aunt Helen gave me a shotgun. It was the last of her late husband, Deryck’s fine firearms. He had sold off the rest of his collection towards the end of his life after reluctantly conceding that his hunting days were over. So, in the end all that remained in his safe was his old shotgun. Aunt Helen told me that it had an interesting history.
A South African soldier had apparently taken it from a captured officer in the Western Desert during World War II, and sold it to Deryck’s father on returning home. According to the soldier, the officer was an Italian Count. Aunt Helen proudly showed me his name which was engraved on the barrel.
The shotgun was in fair condition in spite of years of use. The maker was G. DufournySevrin in Liege, and the following engraving appeared on the barrels, “FAIT SUR COMDE DE J. SOSNOWSKI À VARSOVIE”. Fascinated by Aunt Helen’s story I began to wonder who this Count Sosnowski was. And would I perhaps be able to trace his descendants? I decided to keep the piece and try to find out more about its origin. So I moved the gun into storage, completed the competency course and applied for a license.
THE SEARCH
Then I started researching. The easiest and most obvious place to begin was the internet. I began with “G. DefournySevrin” in the hope that they had kept records of custom guns made for distinguished customers. But they had ceased manufacturing in 1959. I did find a list of their models though. The gun looked like a model 51, manufactured between 1924 and WW2. This made sense and was not at all surprising, but my next discoveries were!
I Google translated “FAIT SUR COMDE DE J. SOSNOWSKI À VAR SOVIE” from French into English and read
“MADE OF COMDE J. SOSNOWSKI has WARSAW”. In spite of the somewhat clumsy internet translation I had to conclude that “Varsovie” is not a town in Italy, as the family had thought all these years. It is in fact Warsaw. Not quite what I had expected. What would a Polish Count be doing in the German or Italian Army? My next surprise, while checking records of Polish nobility, was that all titles for nobles and landowners ceased to exist in 1918 (at the end of WW1), when the second Polish Republic was formed. So in theory no Polish counts actually existed when this gun was commissioned. Strange! Next, I noticed that there are many Jewish Sosnowskis. Phew!
An Italian or German officer who was a Jewish Count from Warsaw was beyond comprehension. Then my imagination kicked into gear. Perhaps this gun originally belonged to a Count, and then found its way into the hands of a German or Italian officer who wanted to do some wingshooting when he was not scrapping with Field Marshall Montgomery in the Western Desert. I tried searching “Count Sosnowski, Count J Sosnowski and Sosnowski” all of which initially yielded nothing.
Then I started going back through the Sosnowski sites on Google, page by page, carefully checking every reference. After reading several pages of Sosnowski’s I found a Wikipedia article about a Polish spy, Jerzy Sosnowski. And within a minute all the information that I had fell neatly into place. Or so I thought.
As I read the article, the fol- lowing words and phrases caught my eye: “Jerzy Sosnowski... From Warsaw... Polish spy in Berlin... during the 1920s and 1930s... used the titles of Count or Baron as part of his cover... double agent... lovers... treason.”
Wow! I was not expecting to find something this fascinating.
I then continued my search and typed “Sosnowski spy”. And a whole lot of references to him popped up. His case was reported in Time magazine in August 1936. And a book had been published about him, The Sosnowski Affair, Inquest on a Spy by Bernard Newman. I located a copy in a bookshop in New Zealand and ordered it online. Could this old working gun of Deryck’s really have belonged to Jerzy Sosnowski, I wondered. So when the book arrived in the post I immediately began reading the account of his interesting life, and what a story it turned out to be!
THE STORY
Some accounts of Sosnowski’s escapades differ slightly. But from Newman’s book and more cautiously from internet articles, I managed to piece together a picture of this intriguing chapter of history. While reading about Sosnowski’s life and times, I was often reminded of the 1972 film Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli, which portrays so well the atmosphere in Berlin during the final days of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis.
And this is the story of the “Count” J. Sosnowski from Warsaw.
He grew up in an ordinary middle-class home near Warsaw. During the First World War he served as Lieutenant in an Austrian cavalry regiment. After independence, in 1918, he served with the 8th Regiment of Lancers in Poland, attaining the rank of Captain. Although he was not noble by birth he had aristocratic ambitions and loved the high life. While serving with the Lancers, he owned and ran a small racing stable where he was rumoured to be involved in race fixing and shady deals. Here he met Josef Hertz, who, some accounts say, inspired him to become a spy.
In 1924, he took a year’s leave from his regiment and went to Berlin. There he moved in equestrian circles with rich and noble citizens and established contacts that would be of use to him later. On his return to Warsaw he volunteered to act as a spy in Germany. Sosnowski certainly had all the right cre- »
» dentials. He was handsome, fair haired, well groomed, charming, and was very successful in seducing women. He also spoke German fluently. By the mid 1920s, Germany was already breaking the Treaty of Versailles by re-arming. So clearly, neighbouring Poland needed as much intelligence as possible.
He was recruited, and after training he travelled to Germany to start his mission. He proclaimed himself to be Count, Baron and sometimes Ritter von Sosnowski. Nobody doubted his pedigree and he was readily accepted into Berlin’s social circles. He hosted many parties at his apartment, which were attended by a wide circle of friends including well-known sportsmen, politicians and celebrities.
I guessed that he ordered the shotgun in the late 1920s as part of his cover. A shotgun with his “title” and name engraved on it would have been useful at hunts with his aristocratic friends. Or so I thought.
He successfully recruited many agents, most of whom were women. Some became his lovers. Most notable were Baroness Benita von Falkenhayn (wife of Baron Captain Erich von Falkenhayn, nephew of the famous WW1 general) and Renate von Natzmer (the daughter of a general). Renate was a confidential typist in the Reichswehr (Imperial Defence Ministry). She is reputed to have smuggled the carbon papers from confidential documents out of the Ministry for him to study.
But all was not as it seemed. Either from the outset, or after a while, it is alleged that he started acting as a double agent, probably because he needed extra money to support his lavish lifestyle.
For years he supplied his Polish superiors with information which was “given” to him by the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) via Renate and Benita. By 1933, his superiors in Poland began to doubt his information and suspect that he was working for the Germans. They tried to put a stop to his activities without embarrassing the Polish diplomatic mission in Berlin, but he cleverly avoided all their attempts to get him back to Warsaw for interrogation. Then his deceitful world crumbled when the German police raided a party at his apartment and arrested him for spying. Benita and Renate were arrested shortly afterwards.
To understand why, you have to grasp the turbulent political scene in Germany at the time. The Nazis had only been in power for one year and there was still strong opposition to their movement. Sosnowski must have out-lived his usefulness to the Nazis as a conduit for passing on misleading intelligence so they decided to use him as a pawn in a more sinister game. They created a spy drama that served their propaganda machine well. Their aim was to stir up feelings of nationalism in the populace by finding “an enemy within”.
A year after their arrests Sosnowski, Renate and Benita were tried. The proceedings were cleverly staged by the Nazis for maximum impact. The calm behaviour of Benita and Renate seemed to suggest that they were expecting to be pardoned shortly after the trial. After all, they were Abwehr employees feeding false intelligence to a double agent with the apparent knowledge of their superiors. And Sosnowski, who was expecting to be released in a spy exchange, was conveniently proving to his seniors in Warsaw that he was not working for the Germans. But by admitting that he was a Polish spy he automatically provided damning evidence against Renate and Benita.
Tragically, all three of them had overlooked the fact that the Abwehr had recently been taken over by the Gestapo (Nazi Secret State Police). And in 1934/35 the Nazis were ruthlessly using any means to get rid of all opposition. Benita and Renate were both from noble families of the old traditional military order, who mostly despised Hitler. So their arrest and condemnation served the Nazis well.
After being found guilty of spying, Sosnowski spent two years in prison, and was then, as he expected, exchanged for three German spies. On his return to Poland he was immediately arrested and charged with treason. He was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years hard labour. He appealed, but Germany invaded Poland before his case could be heard and he was evacuated east. His ultimate fate is unknown.
Some reports indicate that he was shot and killed while escaping, some that he survived the escape, was captured by the NKVD (Soviet Security Police) and taken to Moscow where he served the Soviets. Others record that he either died of a hunger strike in Soviet hands, or that he was transferred back to the Communist People’s Army in Poland, where he died in the Warsaw Uprising. And there is even a bizarre report that he was shot in 1945 on direct orders from Nikita Khrushchev.
The fate of Benita and Renate is more accurately recorded. They were found guilty of treason. And on a cold winter’s morning in 1935, at the Plötzensee Prison, they were led from their cells and were beheaded. Some said they faced the executioner with dignity, “like Prussians”, other reports disagree. But I think that either way, they were just desperately unlucky pawns in the hands of the Nazi propaganda machine.
Sosnowski sold off most of his goods just before his arrest, probably because he suspected that the net was closing in on him and he wanted to “disappear”. His remaining property was seized by the German authorities in Berlin.
THE TRUTH
So after reading this story it seemed logical to me that his (seized) shotgun found its way into the hands of a German officer in Berlin, and so began its long journey to Cape Town. All the facts indicated that this was indeed his shotgun. The false title, initial, surname and timeline were all convincing evidence. What a unique find, what an interesting story, I proudly thought to myself.
Then almost a year after my search had begun, I stumbled upon an incredible coincidence while casually surfing on the internet. A newly posted query from the USA on a firearm forum requested information about a shotgun (also a WW2 trophy) with “La Maison J. Sosnowski, Vorsovie” engraved on the barrels. The response included a pamphlet on “The house of J. Sosnowski” in Warsaw, dealers in fine rifles and shotguns from manufacturers such as G. Defourny-Sevrin, Verney Carron, Vickers Ltd, etc.
So I carefully re-checked the translation of “FAIT SUR COMDE DE J. SOSNOWSKI À VARSOVIE”. I discovered that “COMDE” is also an abbreviation for “on command”, in other words, “on commission”. Not necessarily “Count” as the family had assumed all these years. So the gun was made for the House of J. Sosnowski, a gun dealer in Warsaw, not the bogus “Count” Jerzy Sosnowski, the spy.
And there you have it. What started out as a cunning bit of detective work turned out to be a complete waste of time and a wild goose chase.
If only I had properly checked out the translation on the barrels in the first place I would have saved lots of time and effort. But then I would never have immersed myself in this fascinating chapter of history. And I would not know anything about Sosnowski, Benita and Renate... and so neither would you.
And let us not forget about the shotgun.
In all likelihood the gun was either purchased by a German before the war, or it was stolen when the Germans invaded Poland.
I sometimes do wonder if the officer who had the weapon was actually a Count though, and if so… Who was he?