Refugee, prisoner, wine service provider, secret agent: Peter Sichel was once many stuff in his lengthy, colourful lifestyles, however he was once most likely maximum incessantly known as the person who made Blue Nun some of the well-liked wines on the planet within the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s. At its height, in 1985, 30 million bottles of this somewhat candy German white wine — its label that includes smiling nuns conserving baskets of grapes in a winery — had been offered.
By the point Mr. Sichel (pronounced sea-SHELL) took rate of his circle of relatives’s wine trade in 1960, he had lived a protracted, clandestine lifestyles. For 17 years, first within the Place of business of Strategic Services and products throughout Global Warfare II, after which within the Central Intelligence Company — from its formation in 1947 till he resigned in 1959 — he performed a an important position in amassing intelligence for america.
He died on Feb. 24 at his house in Big apple, his daughter Bettina Sichel stated. He was once 102.
As a 19-year-old German émigré to america who volunteered for the U.S. Military the day after Pearl Harbor, Mr. Sichel was once recruited to sign up for the O.S.S. as a part of an effort to construct an American intelligence-gathering drive the place none existed.
He served in Algiers in 1942 and ’43, after which as head of the O.S.S. unit hooked up to Gen. George S. Patton’s 7th Military because it drove from Southern France towards Alsace in past due 1944. Amongst his jobs had been interrogating German prisoners of battle and recruiting volunteers to infiltrate the German traces and report to him.
Certainly one of Mr. Sichel’s O.S.S. colleagues, George L. Howe, wrote a unique about one such case, made into the very talked-about 1951 movie “Decision Before Dawn,” directed by way of Anatole Litvak, with a screenplay by way of any other of Mr. Sichel’s colleagues, Peter Viertel.
After Germany surrendered, Mr. Sichel turned into the O.S.S. station leader in postwar Berlin. He was once 23 and referred to as “the wunderkind.” Because the O.S.S. advanced into the C.I.A., and the Allies’ wartime united entrance deteriorated into the world standoff that turned into the Chilly Warfare, he oversaw espionage operations.
The Allies had divided Germany into 4 zones, every administered by way of probably the most 4 occupying powers: america, the Soviet Union, Britain and France. Berlin, the German capital, which was once in the course of the Soviet Zone, was once likewise divided some of the 4 powers.
It was once Mr. Sichel who synthesized the intelligence that exposed that the Soviet Union had no goal of allowing the citizens in their zones to resolve their very own political long run, because the Allies had agreed to do. As tensions rose, culminating in 1948 with the Soviet Union’s blockade of all rail, highway and water get right of entry to to Allied-controlled spaces in Berlin — a disaster that was once relieved handiest by way of what turned into referred to as the Berlin Airlift — it was once Mr. Sichel who decided that the Soviets weren’t making plans to invade western Germany, as many within the West had feared.
He returned to america in 1952, posted to Washington to take rate of the C.I.A.’s Jap Europe operations. There he labored in rickety brief quarters, erected along the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, whilst the C.I.A. awaited an everlasting house.
In 1956, Mr. Sichel was once despatched to Hong Kong to be the company’s station leader there, tracking what was once then known as Purple China in addition to different Asian nations. Hong Kong, then administered by way of Britain, was once the Asian counterpart to Berlin, a sliver of democracy at the huge Communist mainland. He remained in Hong Kong till he resigned from the C.I.A. in 1959.
A ‘Quiet American’
Mr. Sichel’s espionage exploits had been recounted in a variety of books, together with “The Quiet Americans: Four C.I.A. Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War — a Tragedy in Three Acts” (2020), by way of Scott Anderson, and Mr. Sichel’s 2016 memoir, “The Secrets and techniques of My Lifestyles: Vintner, Prisoner, Soldier, Undercover agent.” He’s the topic of a documentary movie, “The Last Spy,” directed by way of Katharina Otto-Bernstein, which is to be launched this yr.
In amassing intelligence, Mr. Sichel’s activity was once to come across any shifts within the leanings of nonaligned nations and to determine whether or not perceived disagreements between the Soviets and the Chinese language had been actual or fictitious. Each in Hong Kong and in overseeing intelligence-gathering in Jap Europe, he ran right into a struggle that in the long run led to him to renounce.
The C.I.A. had two vital portions: One incorporated intelligence gatherers like Mr. Sichel; the opposite deliberate and finished covert operations, like the coup in Iran in 1953 that overthrew the elected high minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and reinstalled the Shah of Iran, who had abdicated throughout Global Warfare II.
Mr. Sichel encountered those covert operators immediately, as efforts to parachute so-called freedom combatants into Albania and later China, aimed toward fomenting resistance to the Communist regimes, failed dismally. He was once particularly dismayed, he stated, for the reason that intelligence he had gathered confirmed that those operations had no likelihood of good fortune.
“If the intelligence doesn’t have compatibility, they don’t imagine the intelligence,” he stated in “The Remaining Undercover agent.” Covert movements just like the Iran coup, he added, had been “no longer handiest unlawful, however ill-advised,” with long-term penalties, together with the upward thrust of the Islamic theocracy in Iran, that ran counter to American pursuits.
Such covert efforts had been repeated in 1954 in Guatemala, when the Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was once deposed in a C.I.A.-backed coup, and once more in 1961 with the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.
“There’s no strive to be told from the previous,” he stated. “It’s an institutional mistake of this nation.”
Mr. Sichel spoke overtly about his evaluations within the movie, even though he was once much less candid in his memoir, which was once matter to C.I.A. censorship. He recalled asking C.I.A. officers why he may no longer talk about topics that were smartly documented.
“When reporters say it, it’s hypothesis,” he was once instructed. “While you say it, it’s affirmation.”
Son of a Wine Service provider
Peter Max Ferdinand Sichel was once born on Sept. 12, 1922, in Mainz, Germany, a industrial hub southwest of Frankfurt, close to the main German wine areas. His father, Eugen Sichel, was once a third-generation wine service provider. His mom, Franziska (Loeb) Sichel, oversaw the house.
The Sichels had been contributors of a big and wealthy secular Jewish circle of relatives. They owned vineyards and made wine, however the bulk in their trade was once as négociants, traders who purchased wine from farmers, combined it to fulfill their specs, after which bottled and offered it.
The circle of relatives corporate, H. Sichel Söhne, offered wine during Germany and exported it, in addition to uploading wine from France. Outposts of the Sichel corporate had been established by way of contributors of the prolonged circle of relatives within the past due nineteenth century in London, New York and Bordeaux, France.
Global Warfare I destroyed the ones companies, and it separated the prolonged circle of relatives. The companies had been rebuilt, however the circle of relatives got here in combination once more handiest after Global Warfare II, Mr. Sichel stated.
Quickly after the Nazis got here to energy, Franziska Sichel noticed what was once to return and prompt her husband to organize to depart Germany whilst they might. He was once no longer alarmed till the Nuremberg Laws had been handed in 1935, depriving Jews in their civil rights. At that time, 12-year-old Peter and his older sister, Ruth, had been despatched to England. They didn’t talk English, however realized the language temporarily, and at 14 Peter was once ready to sign up at Stowe, a non-public boarding faculty, at the situation, the headmaster stated, that he exchange the pronunciation of his surname from “seashell” to “sitchel” so he would slot in higher. Mr. Sichel persisted to make use of that pronunciation till he left the C.I.A.
His oldsters weren’t first of all authorized to depart Germany, as the federal government wanted the foreign currency echange that their wine trade introduced in. However they controlled to escape in 1938 and settled in Bordeaux, in southwest France, the place Mr. Sichel took over that department of the circle of relatives endeavor.
Peter and his sister had been visiting their oldsters in Bordeaux throughout the summer season of 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and battle was once declared. Regarded as enemy extraterrestrial beings by way of the French, they weren’t allowed to depart France, and when Germany invaded the rustic in Would possibly 1940, the Sichels had been despatched to French internment camps. That was once the tip of Peter’s formal schooling.
With the Germans assembly little resistance, his father was once ready to speak a camp administrator into liberating the circle of relatives, mentioning that as Jews, they weren’t disposed to assist the Nazis and had been possibly to be despatched again to Germany, for the reason that the oldsters had fled illegally.
The Sichels, together with refugees from Nazi-occupied spaces of northern France, discovered refuge at a château within the Pyrenees. A relative in New York controlled to get visas for the circle of relatives, in addition to transit visas via Spain and Portugal, and in March 1941 they left for Lisbon, the place they boarded the steamer S.S. Siboney. They arrived in New York in April 1941.
Inheriting a Trade
The circle of relatives sooner or later settled in Kew Gardens, Queens. Peter was once running at a shoe provide corporate when the Jap attacked Pearl Harbor.
Whilst running for the C.I.A. in Berlin, Mr. Sichel met and married a German artwork pupil, Cuy Höttler; they later divorced. In 1961, he married Stella Spanoudaki, a monetary analyst and actual property dealer; she died in 2022. Along with their daughter Bettina, an proprietor of Laurel Glen Winery in Glen Ellen, Calif., Mr. Sichel is survived by way of any other daughter, Sylvia Sichel, a director and screenwriter, and 5 grandchildren. Their daughter Alexandra Sichel died in 2014.
When Mr. Sichel took over his circle of relatives wine trade in New York in 1960, he discovered it antiquated and disorganized. He streamlined it, partially by way of merging with Schieffelin & Corporate, an alcohol and pharmaceutical corporate that might maintain uploading and distribution, permitting him to pay attention to selling the corporate’s manufacturers.
The point of interest, he determined, could be Blue Nun, a wine that combined riesling and different white grapes, together with Müller-Thurgau, silvaner and gewürztraminer. It was once known as liebfraumilch, which means the milk of the Holy Mom, a generic time period for Rhine wine.
Mr. Sichel traveled all over the world selling the wine and organized print, radio and TV promoting. A in particular memorable series of radio ads in the 1970s hired a tender comedy staff, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, touting Blue Nun as “the wine that’s right kind with any dish.”
Mr. Sichel attempted to copy his good fortune with different branded wines. Wan Fu was once a somewhat candy wine supposed to move with Chinese language meals: “To devour Chinese language with out Wan Fu is to devour with however one chopstick,” the slogan went. It was once reasonably a success, Mr. Sichel stated. Others, like My Cousin’s Claret, a fundamental Bordeaux, and Après Ski, a mulled wine, weren’t.
By means of the past due Eighties, as the arena’s urge for food for wine higher, pastime in branded wines like Blue Nun waned. To an aspirational target market, varietal wines like chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon gave the impression extra refined. Mr. Sichel offered off the American corporate in 1995.
In 1971, he used his contacts in Bordeaux, together with his cousin Peter Allan Sichel, an proprietor of a number of chateaus, to place in combination a bunch of buyers to shop for Château Fourcas Hosten, an underperforming Bordeaux manufacturer in Listrac. By means of the Eighties, Fourcas was once in monetary bother, and Mr. Sichel invested in my opinion, taking rate of the corporate; quickly he was once making improvements to and modernizing apparatus and renovating the château. He offered the corporate in 2006, as his kids weren’t within the wine trade.
When he left the C.I.A., his colleagues there had insisted that as a wine service provider he would by no means to find the fervour for the paintings that he had skilled in intelligence, and that in the future he could be again.
In “The Remaining Undercover agent,’’ his spouse, Stella, recalled how high-ranking C.I.A. officers would ask her, “When is Peter coming again?”
“They didn’t assume he would continue to exist out of doors,” she stated. “He would possibly no longer have survived if he had no longer fallen right away into his new hobby, which was once the wine trade.”
