THE BALKANS, and GREECE
In the Spring of 1941, the head of the Abwehr’s Hamburg Station was given permission to form two Naval Kommandos (Marine Einsatz Kommando – MARES) on similar lines to those formed for the invasion of Norway, one to assist the Africa Korps and the other to accompany the front line troops invading Greece, in order to provide forward reconnaissance and securing intact any installations of strategic importance. The main achievement of the Afrika Korps was to use its wireless operators on ‘long-range reconnaissance flights from HQ AK as far as the Middle Nile and deep into the Sahara Desert’. (8) The Balkans AK departed Hamburg in March 1941. (9) It was administered by Abwehr II and had personnel allocated from Lehr Regiment Brandenburg. These troops were especially successful in the Balkans under the command of a Naval officer called Kapitänleutnant d. Reserve Friedrich Wilhelm Obladen. They kept up with the front line, linked with agents and fifth columnists, guided, directed, and acted as communications links for the advancing German forces. (10) They were reported to have captured the entire staff of the Yugoslav NW Command, with all their papers.
The AK was present with the vanguard when German forces entered Athens. The AK’s first task was to secure the Ministry of Marine and other installations of importance in continuing the campaign. They did this successfully. (11) A Top Secret report by the US Armed Forces Security Agency noted: According to the German account of their experiences in the Balkans campaign, the Greek and Yugoslav Governments had obviously issued orders for the destruction of all secret documents, yet the amount of captured material was so enormous that it had to be shipped in barges up the Danube to Vienna and from there to Berlin in freight cars and nearly two years elapsed before a systematic evaluation of these documents was finally concluded by the Central Evaluation Section in Berlin. (12)
The British were impressed with the speed and accuracy of the unit’s reporting, especially in Athens and the Greek ports. Using ULTRA, the British were keeping a close watch on such units, as they proved an early indicator of possible German operations through their formation and training. From such Sigint the British had advance notice of the invasions of Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete, and the Caucasus. (13) Although the British had known of the invasion, they refused to pass clear ULTRA material to Gen Bernard Freyberg in Crete. They chose instead to disguise the information as coming from an SIS agent in the German HQ in Athens. When the Germans captured Crete, they found documents pointing to this phantom agent. (14)
USSR, and OPERATION BARBAROSSA
Abwehr Kommandos were of even more importance in the invasion of Russia due to the almost complete lack of strategic intelligence held by the Abwehr and the OKH (German Army High Command). This was in part because Hitler had refused permission for espionage operations in Russia to avoid antagonizing Stalin. Canaris, probably realizing that his organization’s reputation and continuing existence depended upon the acquisition of good intelligence on the Soviet Forces, began looking at the Soviet Forces again once the Germans had occupied Poland. (15) By this time, however, it was too late to acquire high-level agents with access to the top decision-makers. The OKH was also assuming that tactical intelligence would suffice, instructing the Abwehr to observe changes on the frontier only, as the OKH regarded the war as ‘virtually already won’. (16) As a result the Germans concentrated on using line crossers for short-term missions, and the OKH rated an accuracy rate of 20% on reporting as successful. The success of the collective efforts of the AKs at the start of the campaign, therefore, proved even more essential than in previous campaigns. According to Leverkuehn: For the Russian campaign the organization originally set up by the Abwehr for previous campaigns was enlarged, and one or more Reconnaissance Commandos were attached to each Army Group. (17)
Front Duties – Intelligence Duties, that is, at the front itself and in the immediate support areas – were directed by the Army Group or Army concerned. For the execution of these duties, the Abwehr Kommandos (I, II, and III) were placed under the command of the ICs, the General Staff Officers at Army Group or Army, as the case might be, who was responsible for Intelligence work at the front; and when required, units of the Brandenburg Division were also similarly attached. (18)
During the initial push into the Soviet Union, the AKs mainly focused on ‘collecting documents by searching important government, Party, and Soviet Intelligence Service Offices, as well as military command posts and buildings with the aid of former Latvian and Estonian intelligence officers, they captured large amounts of material on the Soviet Intelligence Services in the Baltics’. (19)
While few Soviet agents were taken, the Abwehr ‘captured so much material that the evaluation of it was not completed until shortly before the end of the war. Walli III, the controlling staff for counter-intelligence on the Eastern Front under the German Army High Command, which received only the most important documents, registered more than 3000 documents’. In the autumn of 1941, they also seized the complete files of the Soviet 19-A. (20) The AKs were said to have been very productive in the exploitation of Kharkiv after the first occupation in October 1941 and in the September 1941 Battle of Kyiv.
The Abwehr Kommandos operated under the command of Stab Walli I and III (i.e. performing Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence functions), moving forward with, and even ahead of the forward tank units. They worked in detachments of 25-60 men at the Army Group level or as squads of 12 men at the Army level. They reported by radio to Stab Walli I/III, as well as more locally to the Abwehr officers working in the Army Group Intelligence Departments. In newly-occupied cities, the AKs doing intelligence work searched for military information while the AK doing CI looked for NKVD documents. In June 1941, at the Belorussian city of Brest-Litovsk, near the Polish border, they found ‘a large cache of documents in NKVD headquarters, which they sent to Stab Walli in cars and trucks’. In the same month at Minsk, capital of the Belorussian SSR, they found 29 safes filled with secret documents giving details, including addresses, of soviet officials and their families. (21)
The documents captured in 1941 provided the Abwehr with ‘a reasonably accurate picture of the Soviet Intelligence Services and played an important role in how Abwehr III operated on the Eastern Front’. (22) However, in July 1942 the Military Intelligence Department of the OKH, Foreign Armies East (FHO), took control of Stab Walli I/III. It appears that the FHO was unimpressed by the information they received from the Abwehr on Russia, with one officer claiming ‘All we got from Canaris was rubbish’. (23) The AKs under Walli III were redirected to combat Soviet agents and partisans working behind German lines, as there were no mobile units dedicated to that role; and in 1944 the Captured Documents Section of Walli III (renamed Leitstelle III Ost) was also closed for lack of material (24) (however, FHO’s Russian Department did have its own section for handling captured documents).
The AKs under Walli I were involved in running agents, line crossers, and other deeper penetration operations. Later in the war, the designations of the AKs were changed to ‘Front-Aufklârung Kommandos’ and Front-Aufklârung Truppen (FAKs and FATs), and similar units operated in Italy and NW Europe. The Abwehr Kommandos received assistance from other types of ‘collecting’ units. The ‘Sonderkommando Künsberg’ (Special Unit Künsberg) was one such, which ‘systematically and on a large scale looted cultural treasures from the USSR’ in World War II. Commanded by SS-Sturmbannführer d. Reserve Eberhard Freiherr von Künsberg on behalf of the Foreign Ministry under the foreign minister of the Third Reich, this unit was ‘absorbed’ by the Waffen SS in August 1942. A command given on June 11, 1941, officially limited the Sonderkommando explicitly to the confiscation of records of embassies and legations, but the unit went far beyond the OKH order, accepting ‘special requests’ for artwork, libraries, and other cultural treasures.
The Headquarters of the Wehrmacht (OKW) and the ‘Sicherheitsdienst’, (SD) received from the Künsberg unit maps they had retrieved from the occupied areas as well as other regional geographic information. The Foreign Ministry alone received 69.135 maps and 75.608 volumes of geographical literature. Originally Künsberg’s Sonderkommando was ordered to secure buildings of enemy and neutral diplomatic representatives during the invasion of Poland. Before this action in the Soviet Union the unit was also active in Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, in the Balkans, and in Greece. (25) For the work of the ‘Geheime Feldpolizei’ (GFP) in the West, the Künsberg Kommando was classified by the OKW as indispensable. The Abwehr Kommandos also received assistance from the SS-Einsatzgruppen used to eradicate partisan resistance and to eliminate Jews, communists and intelligentsia from occupied areas. As part of their duties they also searched for CP and NKVD documents. The Einsatzgruppen were in turn helped by the Abwehr III field units vetting Soviet PoWs. They used the lists prepared by Abwehr III officers to identify Jews, Gypsies and Soviet commissars among POWs for execution. (26)
CONCLUSIONS
It would appear that the Abwehr suffered a lack of linguists to quickly translate and analyse the captured material from Greece, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. How much effect this had on their operations – and those of the German military – is impossible to judge. In one area, during Operation Barbarossa, the many captured documents were not processed in time to change the false impressions the OKH had from the lack of pre-war intelligence on the strength of the Soviet forces. As a result they were unprepared for the size of the counter-offensive against Army Group Centre in December 1941 and suffered losses of almost 376.000 men that winter.
The creation of the Abwehr Kommando introduced a new tool for the military intelligence officer, an organized force dedicated to the rapid collection and processing of captured documents and material from the front lines. However, perhaps the most important result of this innovation was the realization by the British that a similar organisation was required by Allied forces. The first such unit, designated S Force, was used in the occupation of Tunis and Bizerta in 1943, and the development of such organisations by the Allies is covered in subsequent articles.
NOTES
(8) Paul Leverkuehn, German Military Intelligence, (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson), 141
(9) Paul Leverkuehn, German Military Intelligence, (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson), 140
(10) Ewan Montagu, Beyond Top Secret U, (Transworld Publishers Ltd, 1979), 92
(11) Paul Leverkuehn, German Military Intelligence, (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson), 140
(12) WW2 Russian Cryptology, 19-20, Armed Forces Security Agency, undated Excerpt (S/UQO-Z)
(13) Ewan Montagu, Beyond Top Secret U, (Transworld Publishers Ltd, 1979), 92
(14) Anthony C. Brown, ‘C’, Secret Life of Sir Stewart Menzies (London 1989), 340
(15) Oskar Reile, Der Deutsche Geheimdienst WW2 Ostfront (Wiener Verlag, 1990), 292-294
(16) Robert W Stephan, Stalin’s Secret War (University Press of Kansas, 2004), 82
(17) Paul Leverkuehn, German Military Intelligence, (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson), 157
(18) Paul Leverkuehn, German Military Intelligence, (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson), 161
(19) Robert W Stephan, Stalin’s Secret War (University Press of Kansas, 2004), 137
(20) Robert W Stephan, Stalin’s Secret War (University Press of Kansas, 2004), 73
(21) Vadim J Birstein, SMERSH, Stalin’s Secret Weapon, (Biteback Ltd 2011), 149-50
(22) Robert W Stephan, Stalin’s Secret War (University Press of Kansas, 2004), 137-138
(23) Vadim J Birstein, SMERSH, Stalin’s Secret Weapon, (Biteback Ltd 2011), 153
(24) Robert W Stephan, Stalin’s Secret War (University Press of Kansas, 2004), 53
(25) Ulrike Hartung, Sonderkommando Künsberg, Looting of Cultural Treasures in the USSR, in Spoils of War International Newsletter No 2, (1996), Research Institute Eastern Europe, University of Bremen
(26) Vadim J Birstein, SMERSH, Stalin’s Secret Weapon, (Biteback Ltd 2011), 167-168
