Gustav Hilger (centre), during his days as a German diplomat, at a meeting of Molotov and Hitler.
GUSTAV HILGER, BORN 1886
GERMAN DIPLOMAT
Gustav Arthur Hilger (September 11, 1886 – July 27, 1965) was a German diplomat and expert on the Soviet Union. He was best known for his role in German–Soviet relations during the interwar period as a Counselor at the German embassy in Moscow. After World War II, he advised the United States and West German governments on Soviet issues. Born in Moscow, the son of a German businessman, Hilger spent most of his life in Russia until 1941. After World War I and the Russian Civil War, Hilger advocated German rapprochement with the Soviet Union and helped negotiate closer economic ties and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In 1941, he warned Hitler and Nazi German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop against invading the Soviet Union to no effect. In 1945, Hilger surrendered himself to allied occupation officials in Salzburg. American intelligence officials considered Hilger's knowledge of the Soviet Union and German wartime activities in Eastern Europe valuable. In 1946, Hilger returned to Germany as an analyst for the Gehlen Organization, the intelligence agency of the American occupation zone in Germany. In 1948, Hilger and his wife moved to Washington, where he consulted for the State Department and the Office of Policy Coordination. In 1953, he published The Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German–Soviet Relations, 1918–1941 with support from the Russian Research Center at Harvard University. Having acted as an unofficial envoy of Konrad Adenauer in Washington, Hilger returned in 1953 to West Germany, where he was a Counselor at the Foreign Office in Bonn until retiring in 1956. Upon retirement he continued to provide informal advice to West German and American officials until his death in 1965.
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Source: Contributed by Andrew Rabeneck in 2022.