The story of Walter Ader Hausman in Chile is linked to espionage, chess and mystery.
The chess master, who was born in 1912 in Hodonín, in the Moravia region, Czech Republic, became a Chilean citizen and later represented our country in three chess Olympiads, in 1956 in Moscow, in 1960 in Leipzig and in 1964 in Tel Aviv.
The Czech historian and chess player Jan Kalendovsky reported in his chess encyclopedia published in 2008 that Walter Ader Hausman was born into a Jewish family of restaurateurs and in 1938 he was proclaimed champion of the central union of Czech chess players.
Likewise, he was crowned champion of a blitz tournament with gas masks to represent his firm defense against the threat of Nazi Germany and the climate of imminent war.
Before the occupation of Prague by the Germans took place on March 15, 1939, he emigrated to Chile and decided to change his name to Walter Ader Hausman (his mother’s maiden name) since he thought it was more in line with Latin American custom. .
In 1947 he placed third in the absolute national tournament in which Mariano Castillo was the winner.
From there he built an outstanding sports career until in 1966 he managed to defeat David Godoy to become champion of Chile.
He represented our country in the three Olympic Games with good performance and a high evaluation of his game by specialists.
He also faced the most prominent exponents of world chess, including RJ Fischer and world champion Vasili Smislov, among others.
For these feats he is considered an outstanding chess player even in the Czech chess environment,
In fact, in the book “Bobby Fischer against Czech grandmasters” (2022), they refer to Walter Ader, praising his most outstanding games.
Espionage from Chile
Around 1962, residency in Chile was established (Soviet espionage term to designate spy stations), which meant an expansion of Czechoslovakian espionage activities in Latin America and Chile, as Michal Zourek points out in his recent book “Combat the Imperialism, Czechoslovak intelligence and the cold war in Uruguay in the 60s”, published in 2024.
According to professor and academic Ewald Meyer, in an article published by Quinto Poder, after the victory of the Cuban revolution, the KGB ordered that the secret services of the socialist bloc that were operating in Latin America not have contacts with communist militants since they were they would be in charge of that intelligence agency, without excluding the exchange of information and espionage.
At that time, the requirements to recruit informants and potential agents to operate in the residence were based on them being declared anti-imperialists and critics of the prevailing system. Fervent militancy was not necessary at all.
The case of Walter Ader highlighted his rather emotional bond with his homeland, which he never forgot.
«The departure and persecution of which the Jews and Czechs were victims during the period of the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939-1945) strengthened their inclination towards leftist ideas. “It is for this fact that many Czechs maintained, even in the hardest years, an effective link with the Czech homeland. In this sense, Czechoslovak nationalism manifested itself in various cases of citizens who sometimes came and went to and from the socialist orbit,” he noted. Meyer in the text titled “Walter Ader, the spy who was Chilean chess champion.”
In the archive of the Czechoslovak secret police in Prague, and under the Czech acronym STB, there is Walter Ader’s file with his code name and date of birth, which demonstrates his undisputed enrollment as a spy in Chile.
The record dating from 1968 revealed that during operational residence in Santiago de Chile. The chess player provided regular reports to the agents of the Czechoslovak secret police who were in our country.
«Ader was editor of a chess magazine in Chile and had extensive ties in the world of journalism and especially in the national chess environment, including collaborations with the prestigious children’s magazine Mampato. This no small fact gave him a wide margin to obtain privileged reports,” Meyer highlighted in his article.
Likewise, he recalled that “conspicuous men such as the Alessandri family, the patriarch, leader and president of Chile, Arturo Alessandri Palma, declared patron and furious chess player, as well as the writer Braulio Arenas and Radomiro Tomic, candidate for President of Chile to name a few, “They frequented the Chile Chess Club in Santiago in their time”, so it is not surprising that Master Ader “very loved in the environment moved with complete freedom to obtain critical and sensitive information, useful to Czechoslovak interests in Chile.
The chess player met a primary requirement for an STB informant: the opacity of not being a public figure with media commitment.
«Even other chess players in their time captured the attention of the press, such as Rodrigo Flores, Rene Letelier and Juvenal Canobra. There are plenty of reasons then not to arouse suspicion of this peculiar work carried out in parallel to his long and extensive chess career,” concluded Ewald Meyer.
