Career
Many German veterans felt disconnected from civilian life, and joined a Freikorps in search of stability within a military structure. The German volunteer movement was opposed to the communist Spartacists movement. Both men were acquitted but evidently many thought them guilty, for the brother was assassinated himself sometime later.{1920}
In 1931 Pflugk-Harttung had been recorded as helping to coordinate Fascist groups and organisation in The Swedish authorities had Pflugk-Harttung expelled after it was discovered that he had been importing armaments illegally into Pflugk-Harttung then went to Norway on a similar mission where again he was soon asked to leave.
By 1933 Pflugk-Harttung was working for German Intelligence in As a cover he worked as correspondent for the paper, Berliner Boersen Zeitung, which was an organ of the Reich War Ministry.
Amongst his many covert tasks, he kept a close eye on the German exiles in, whilst the Danish Police co-operated with him through go-betweens. Along with other postgraduates of Gestapo spy schools, Pflugk-Harttung set up a spy ring that operated secret broadcasting stations and had engaged in nautical and hydrographical research.
Between them they had drawn up maps and charts, graphs and complicated mathematical tables of data that required the best technicians even to understand. They communicated by complex code systems that changed frequently.
The outlay for so extensive an apparatus as theirs could be justified only as part of Third Reich preparation for War against major countries.
Pflugk-Harttung"s network watched and reported on British shipping movements into and out of the Baltic Sea. In 1938 information revealed by Ernst Wollweber to the Danish authorities, along with further investigations by the Police led to the arrest of Pflugk-Harttung, along with eight other Germans and three Danes who were charged with operating as spies in Copenhagen. Investigations proved that the spy ring had been involved in the sabotage and sinking of Spanish trawlers on behalf of General Francisco Franco and his Nationalist navy which was operating from German ports.
These actions included the utilization of the spying apparatus to shell and sink the Steamship Cantabria off the Norfolk coast by the Nationalist Auxiliary cruiser Nadir.
Foreign his part in the espionage Pflugk-Harttung was only sentenced to a year and a half in prison and was released after a few months owing to German government pressure. After his release from prison, Pflugk-Harttung became one of the leading German Intelligence chiefs in
In 1944 Horst von Pflugk-Harttung was in control of the Kriegs Marine Dienst in Bordeaux, France.
He was arrested by forces of the United States of America. After his capture he was taken as a prisoner of war to Arizona in the United States of America for questioning.
The American interrogation concluded that Horst von Pflugk-Harttung was
.
Horst Pflugk-Harttung was returned to Germany by the United States authorities where he was released in November 1947.