Salon Kitty Salon Kitty was a Berlin brothel used by the SD for espionage purposes during World War II . History . In the 1930s , Salon Kitty was a high - class brothel at 11 Giesebrechtstrasse in Charlottenburg , a wealthy district of Berlin . Its usual clientele included German dignitaries and foreign diplomats . Its owner and madame was Kitty Schmidt . The idea to use Salon Kitty for espionage purposes came from Reinhard Heydrich , but SD chief Walter Schellenberg did most of the work . Instead of infiltrating the brothel , Schellenberg decided to take it over . Kitty Schmidt had been sending money to British banks with fleeing refugees ever since the Nazis took power in Germany . When she eventually decided to leave the country on June 28 , 1939 , SD agents arrested her at the Dutch border and took her to Gestapo HQ . There Schellenberg made her an offer : either cooperate with the Nazis or be sent to a concentration camp . The SD closed the brothel for repairs and refurbished it with numerous concealed microphones ; wires from the microphones led to a cellar and from there to a room equipped with five monitoring desks and recording turntables . The idea was to entertain prominent guests with wine and women , so they would disclose secrets or talk about their real opinions . Berlin ' s vice squad ( the " Sittenpolizei " ) arrested dozens of Berlin prostitutes and selected 20 as potential agents to work at Salon Kitty . They were put through seven weeks of rigorous indoctrination and training . Among other things , they were trained to recognize military uniforms , and to glean secrets from innocuous conversation . They were not told about the microphones but had to make a report after every encounter . In March 1940 , Schmidt was told to continue as if nothing had happened , except that now she had a special book of twenty additional girls she should show only to certain clients . If a customer used the phrase " I come from Rothenburg " , she was instructed to show him the book , allow him make his decision and call for the girl he had selected . The girl would spend the night with the guest and depart later . Guests . Salon Kitty became even more popular when selected guests in the military and diplomatic corps were told the " secret codeword " and monitors made thousands of recordings . One of the customers was Count Galeazzo Ciano , Foreign Minister of Italy , whose forthright opinions about the Führer were not particularly positive . Another one , SS commander Sepp Dietrich , wanted all the 20 girls for an all - night orgy but he revealed no secrets . Additionally , Goebbels had been marked as a client by some . He , apparently , enjoyed the ' lesbian displays ' that were otherwise considered anti - social acts outside of that context . Reinhard Heydrich also made a number of " inspection tours " although the microphones were turned off on those occasions . However , British agent Roger Wilson , under his cover identity of Romania n press secretary Ljubo Kolchev , noticed when the wires were rerouted to another listening position . He became a regular customer of " Salon Kitty " , with a regular girl , and later arranged a wiretap to three cables . Now British intelligence heard some of the same conversations the SD did . Wilson was later captured and sent to a POW camp . End . As the war progressed , the clientele of Salon Kitty decreased . In July 1942 a bomb demolished the building the brothel was in and " Salon Kitty " had to move to the ground floor of the same building . Within the year SD abandoned the project and handed Salon back to Schmidt - with the threat that she would keep silent or face retaliation . The 20 girls stayed with her . Kitty Schmidt did not talk about the matter even after the war . She died in 1954 . In fiction . In 1976 , these events were turned into the highly controversial film , " Salon Kitty " , directed by Tinto Brass and starring Helmut Berger as Walter Schellenberg ( renamed Helmut Wallenberg ) and Ingrid Thulin as Kitty Schmidt ( renamed Kitty Kellermann . ) The 1981 BBC comedy drama " Private Schulz " , about a German fraudster and petty criminal ' s unwilling World War II service in the SS , prominently features the Salon . In the first episode , Schultz has been given the job of manning a listening post in the brothel ' s basement and recording the conversations picked up by the hidden microphones . The concept of the Gestapo using a brothel full of spies to find traitors within the Nazi regime has been recycled several times in various European nazi exploitation films .