Official War Crimes Trials Photographs Set of Abwehr Chief and Knight’s Cross of the War Merit Cross Recipient Vice Admiral Leopold Buerkner

Each of the two photographs is approximately 1-3/4 inches by 3 inches. Buerkner was a German naval officer who served on torpedo boats in World War I. In the post-war period he served on a pocket battleship that patrolled the Spanish coast during the Spanish Civil War and he then commanded a light cruiser. In 1938 he became head of the foreign liaison section of the Abwehr, the General Staff intelligence department, and he rose to the rank of Vice Admiral. He became the temporary Director of the Abwehr after the removal of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. During the Third Reich he became one of the relatively few recipients of the Knight’s Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords. During the Nuremberg Trials he was called as a witness for Alfred Jodl. After his release he became director of the German staff of the Dutch airline KLM in Frankfurt. From 1949 he acted at times as an adviser to the Foreign Office. He was involved in the rearmament of West Germany.