Arthur Tester

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Arthur Albert Tester (born August 23, 1895 in Stuttgart , † probably August 24/25, 1944 near Pecica , in Romania ) was a British political activist (British Union of Facists).

Life and activity

Tester was the son of a British diplomat and his wife from Germany. The father was the British consul in Stuttgart, where Tester spent the first years of his life. One consequence of his youth in Germany was that he spoke English with a German accent all his life.

On the occasion of the outbreak of the First World War, Tester was sent to a German internment camp as a British citizen. Little is known about his life in the 1920s. In 1927, however, he is said to have been expelled from France on suspicion of spying against the country.

In 1932 Tester settled in Great Britain. He moved into a luxurious apartment in London and a stately home ("Naldera") overlooking the sea at Broadstairs / North Foreland in Kent , where he lived with his wife and five children for the following years.

In 1932 Tester joined the British Union of Fascists (BUF) founded by Oswald Mosley . The fascist ideology or especially the variant of the same practiced in Germany under the rule of the National Socialists was advocated by testers - according to his own statements - because as a "patriot" he wanted his homeland to be strong and he thought that an adaptation of the fascist or National Socialist Rulership model would make the land ruled in this way strong.

Tester's significance within the BUF is largely unclear. In part he is described as an aide-de-camp of Mosley's. The only thing that is certain is that he played a leading role in the BUF's propaganda and acted as a liaison to German agencies. He became known in public as the "financier" of the BUF or financial supporter of European fascist parties and movements: Tester founded various bogus companies, such as the British Glycerine Manufacturers at 14 St. James Place in London, which actually served the purpose of transferring from financial donations made by British sympathizers of fascist systems and groups in Europe.

With the support of German agencies, Tester also founded the European Press Agency, allegedly based in London, a propaganda agency disguised as a news agency that conveyed crypto-anti-Semitic and anti-communist reports in European newspapers. The German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels is said to have provided the funds for founding this company .

Some historians, such as David Turner , argue that Tester's importance in the BUF has been many times overestimated and exaggerated. Basically, he was a con man and a con man, who traveled through Europe and founded bogus companies to enrich himself at the expense of his clients, then file for bankruptcy and run away with the fraudulent profits. He is said to have taken advantage of Mosley, who was constantly on the lookout for lucrative business opportunities, to enrich himself at his own expense or to get clients from him in the fascist camp, at whose expense he then enriched himself. The doctoral degree the tester led is said to have been an invention, ie he himself acquired it for decorative and prestige-suggesting purposes.

What is certain is that Tester had an extensive social life in Great Britain: In addition to his feudal properties in London and Kent, he also owned his own yacht, the Lucinda, which was requisitioned by the British Navy in Naples in 1940.

In late 1938, Tester and his family left the UK from Southampton on their yacht, traveled to Lisbon and finally went to Greece. In 1940 he stayed in Belgrade and since 1941 in Romania at the latest.

According to some sources, Tester is said to have worked for the German Abwehr (code name "Teddy") and for the Gestapo in Romania during the Second World War , and to have participated in interrogations. In 1943 he should write a book called Quo vadis, England? have published that, however, cannot be found in library catalogs.

It is unclear why Tester was placed on the special wanted list GB by the Reich Security Main Office in 1940 , a list of people who, in the event of a successful invasion of the British Isles by the German Wehrmacht, were to be located and arrested by the SS special commandos following the occupation troops with special priority .

In 1942 Tester made the German envoy in Bucharest an offer to establish an English counter-government to liberate Mosley, who had been placed under house arrest in 1940, and to broadcast propaganda to Great Britain. The proposal was rejected by Foreign Minister Ribbentrop in July 1942 because the imprisoned Mosley was not endangered and was later to be used for German politics.

In September 1944, British newspapers reported that Tester had been shot dead by a Romanian border guard in August while attempting to cross the Romanian border into Hungary. According to the same reports, when he died he was said to have carried a passport personally signed by Hitler . In October 1944, reports surfaced that Tester had faked his death by putting another man in his clothes and papers in a burning vehicle. In order to clarify the matter, the British authorities are said to have exhumed the body in Romania after the end of the war with the approval of the Soviet occupying forces and to have established his identity with the help of x-rays from his English dentist. Nevertheless, rumors repeatedly surfaced in the Anglo-Saxon press in the late 1940s and 1950s suggesting the survival of Tester and a feigned death: An American magazine reported in 1954 that a traveling tester in 1954 as a "white" and "monocle-wearing" chief a native tribe in Portuguese West Africa near the border with Liberia. Arthur Tester, who was an arms dealer in the Middle East in the 1950s, is said to have been Tester's son.

literature

  • "The Case of Dr. Tester" in Searchlightmagazine October 1, 1989

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The building was named by the builder and previous owner, a colonial official, after a hill of the same name near Simla in India.
  2. ^ Entry on Tester on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .
  3. ^ Arnd Bauernkämper: The 'radical right' in Great Britain , 1991, p. 234.
  4. ^ "Gestapo Chief in Rumania Shot", in: Examiner of September 30, 1944 .
  5. ↑ Jet. "Says White Leader of African Tribe is Ex-Nazi Spy", in: JET. The Weekly Negro News Magazine , April 1, 1954 issue, p. 12 .; Mystery Financier Shot on Rumanian Frontier ", in The Advertiser of September 27, 1944, p. 1
personal data
SURNAME Tester, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tester, Arthur Albert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British political activist (British Union of Facists)
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: August 24, 1944 or August 25, 1944
Place of death near Pecica , Romania