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In the peace and stillness of an average European countryside, while the golden September sunrays mildly touch the green leaves and red brick of the estate houses, it’s hard to imagine any of these places as spy stock. Vineyards and cellars didn’t see as many tanks and bombs as other places affected by World War II, and later the Cold War, but the danger wasn’t smaller. From the outbreak of WWII to the end of the Cold War, as time went on, European vineyards became quieter, but also more dangerous and sometimes even exciting.
European Wine Business in the Inter-war Period
As a part of the world with a very long winemaking tradition, it’s no wonder why European wineries have been a very strong pillar of the European economy. That is especially significant in the region closer to the Mediterranean, but Eastern European wines were also in demand. In the inter-war period, the wine business flourished, especially with the development of the economy and the evolution of new knowledge in the field of technology and marketing. So, it is not surprising that new strategies to promote wine products developed. These marketing strategies were sometimes aggressive, but efficient. The business owners made the target consumers aware of the importance and the quality of their brands. An especially interesting example is France, which, in the 1930s, was the wine producer of top global importance. The war changed the situation, but there was also the Resistance…
WWII: Secret Wars in the Wine Cellars
During the war years, an average wine cellar could easily become a spy stock. As already mentioned, France may be the best example. When the Nazis occupied France, it isn’t surprising at all why it was considered a great incident due to the previously mentioned global importance of the country in winemaking. When the occupation started and the Nazi soldiers looted and ransacked the French regions’ wine cellars, the Nazis appointed weinfuhrers whose main duties revolved around matters of winemaking. In the region of Champagne, the man put in charge was Otto Klaebisch, a greedy man who demanded 400,000 bottles per week to be delivered to Germany where they could be sold at a higher price. The resourceful French winemakers knew how to, at least in part, solve that problem. They would hide the high-quality wine in secret chambers they built, often masked with spider webs to conceal the “building renovations.” They would take the bottles with low-quality wine, mislabel them and send them to Germany. It’s interesting to note they would often collaborate with rug cleaners who delivered them dust from the carpet cleaning. They would use that dust to sprinkle over new wine bottles to make them look like fine, well-aged liquor. Maybe the best witness as to how wine cellars became spy stocks is the fact that before Rommel’s operation in Africa, one French wine manufacturer got the order to send wine to a “very hot country.” This information was forwarded to British allies. It wasn’t unusual also to hide allied soldiers in these wine cellars, and many Jewish people sought refuge there.
The Stillness of the Cold War
After the end of WWII, things started to take a little bit different form. As the Cold War was primarily the information war, with the world always on the brink of nuclear escalation, an aura of mystery and silence started to wrap around the vast and picturesque countryside estates. There was no “Allies against the Nazis” like during WWII. A polarizing world made the whole estate one big “spy stock.” The wine cellar might be adequate for hiding, let’s say, compromising documents, but for intense information exchange, and giving and receiving instructions, there was nothing better than walking through and around the vineyard while wearing a hat as additional protection from possible lip readers lurking somewhere in the shadows. “Business talks” and “that delicious red wine tasting” were often a cover in that chess game where the adversary needed to be as many steps behind as possible. As the world was polarized, the still and peaceful vineyards on both sides of Europe were polarized battlefields. In the Western part of the continent, the vineyards of France, Italy, and Germany were favorite dead-drops. They were vast, private with only a few individuals hanging around. As such, they were perfect places for placing and retrieving items and holding meetings without attracting attention. The vineyards were also favorite places for clandestine operations behind the Iron Curtain. These places were inconspicuous and the Eastern intelligence work was hidden within the regular agricultural routines. That way, it was harder for Western intelligence to notice it. The operatives using vineyards, due to the secretive nature of their work, remained nameless, but vineyards were definitely in the network of locations they used for the requirements of work.
Every war is determined by space and time. Concerning space, apart from well-known large battlefields, those smaller settings pique special interest often for their significance. They proved to be the places that determined those well-known events. The vineyards were the places for decisions and where information was exchanged. These events often rerouted the course of important historical events. In peace, stillness, and secrecy. Similar to today. In the case of critical business decisions.
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