Paul-Otto Schmidt

German interpreter in the foreign ministry from 1923-1945, who served as the translator for Neville Chamberlain's negotiations with Adolf Hitler over the Munich Agreement, the British Declaration of War and the surrender of France.

In his memoirs, An Extra on the Diplomatic Stage, Schmidt never mentioned the genocidal plans discussed in the Hitler-Antonescu meetings, giving the misleading impression that German-Romanian talks during the war were entirely concerned with military and economic matters. After the 1942 Dieppe Raid resulted in thousands of Canadian soldiers captured, Schmidt was in charge of their interrogations. Schmidt joined the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in 1943.

Arrested in May 1945, Schmidt was freed by the Americans. In 1946 he testified at the Nuremberg Trials. In 1952 he founded the Sprachen & Dolmetscher Institut in Munich, a college where students could learn languages and become translators and interpreters. He retired in 1967, and died on 21 April 1970, aged 70, in Munich, West Germany.