Abwehr


The Abwehr was the German military-intelligence service for the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht from 1920 to 1944. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Weimar Republic from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the Abwehr. The initial purpose of the Abwehr was defense against foreign espionage: an organizational role that later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's Ministeramt within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the Abwehr.
Each Abwehr station throughout Germany was based on the local army district ; more offices opened in amenable neutral countries and in the occupied territories. On 4 February 1938, the Ministry of Defence—renamed the Ministry of War in 1935—was dissolved and became the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht with Hitler in direct command. The OKW formed part of the Führer's personal "working staff" from June 1938 and the Abwehr became its intelligence agency under Vice-Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. The Abwehr had its headquarters at 76/78 Tirpitzufer in Berlin, adjacent to the offices of the OKW.

Before Canaris

The Abwehr was created in 1920 as part of the German Ministry of Defence when the German government was allowed to form the Reichswehr, the military organization of the Weimar Republic. The first head of the Abwehr was Major Friedrich Gempp, a former deputy to Colonel Walter Nicolai, the head of German intelligence during World War I, who proved mostly ineffectual. At that time it was composed of only three officers and seven former officers, plus a clerical staff. When Gempp became a general, he was promoted out of the job as chief, to be followed by Major Günther Schwantes, whose term as the organization's leader was also brief. Many members of the Reichswehr declined when asked to consider intelligence work, since for them, it was outside the realm of actual military service and the act of spying clashed with their Prussian military sensibilities of always showing themselves direct, loyal, and sincere. By the 1920s, the slowly growing Abwehr was organised into three sections:
The Reichsmarine intelligence staff merged with the Abwehr in 1928. While the Treaty of Versailles forbade Germany from engaging in any form of espionage or spying, during the Nazi era the Abwehr disregarded this prohibition, as they saw it as hypocritical.
In the 1930s, with the rise of the Nazi movement, the Ministry of Defence was reorganized; surprisingly, on 7 June 1932, a naval officer, Captain, was named chief of the Abwehr, even though it was staffed largely by army officers. Proving himself quite a capable chief, Patzig swiftly assured the military of his intentions and worked to earn their respect; he established good connections with the Lithuanian clandestine service against the Soviets, forged relations with other foreign agencies—except for Italy, whose cipher he distrusted. His successes did not stop the other branches of the military services from developing their intelligence staff.
After the Nazis seized power, the Abwehr began sponsoring reconnaissance flights across the border with Poland, under the direction of Patzig, but this led to confrontations with Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. Army leaders also feared that the flights would endanger the secret plans for an attack on Poland. Adolf Hitler ordered the termination of the overflights in 1934 after he signed a nonaggression treaty with Poland since these reconnaissance missions might be discovered and jeopardize the treaty. Patzig was fired in January 1935 as a result, and sent to command the new pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee; he later became Chief of Naval Personnel. His replacement was another Reichsmarine captain, Wilhelm Canaris.

Under Canaris

Before World War II

Before he took over the Abwehr on 1 January 1935, the soon-to-be Admiral Canaris was warned by Patzig of attempts by Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich to take over all German intelligence organizations. Heydrich, who headed the Sicherheitsdienst from 1931, had a negative attitude towards the Abwehr – shaped in part by his belief that Germany's defeat in the First World War was primarily attributable to failures of military intelligence, and by his ambitions to control all political intelligence-gathering for Germany.
Canaris, a master of backroom dealings, thought he knew how to deal with Heydrich and Himmler. Though he tried to maintain a cordial relationship with them, the antagonism between the Abwehr and the SS did not stop when Canaris took over. Not only was competition with Heydrich and Himmler's intelligence operations a hindrance but so too were the redundant attempts by multiple organizations to control communications intelligence for the Reich. For instance, Canaris's Abwehr controlled the Armed Forces Deciphering operation, while the navy maintained its listening service, known as the B-Dienst. Further complicating COMINT matters, the Foreign Office also had its own communications security branch, the Pers Z S.
Matters came to a head in 1937 when Hitler decided to help Joseph Stalin in the latter's purge of the Soviet military. Hitler ordered that the German Army staff should be kept in the dark about Stalin's intentions, for fear that they would warn their Soviet counterparts due to their long-standing relations. Accordingly, special SS teams, accompanied by burglary experts from the criminal police, broke into the secret files of the General Staff and the Abwehr and removed documents related to German-Soviet collaboration. To conceal the thefts, fires were started at the break-ins, which included Abwehr headquarters.

1938 reorganisation

Before the reorganization of the OKW in 1938, the Abwehr was merely a department within the Reichswehrministerium, and it was not until after Canaris was appointed chief that its numbers increased and it gained some independence. Experiencing an explosion in personnel of sorts, the Abwehr went from fewer than 150 employees to nearly one thousand between 1935 and 1937. Canaris reorganized the agency in 1938, subdividing the Abwehr into three main sections:
  • The Central Division : acted as the controlling brain for the other two sections, as well as handling personnel and financial matters, including the payment of agents. Throughout Canaris's tenure it was headed by Generalmajor Hans Oster.
  • The Foreign Branch, was the second subdivision of the Abwehr and had several functions:
  • #liaison with the OKW and the general staff of the services,
  • #coordination with the German Foreign Ministry on military matters, and
  • #evaluation of captured documents and evaluation of foreign press and radio broadcasts. This liaison with the OKW meant that the Foreign Branch was the appropriate channel to request Abwehr support for a particular mission.
  • Abwehr constituted the third division and was labeled "counter-intelligence branches" but in reality focused on intelligence gathering. It was subdivided into the following areas and responsibilities:
  • *I. Foreign Intelligence Collection
  • *: G: false documents, photos, links, passports, chemicals
  • *: H West: army west
  • *: H Ost: army east
  • *: Ht: technical army intelligence
  • *: I: communicationsdesign of wireless sets, wireless operators
  • *: K: computer/cryptanalysis operations
  • *: L: air intelligence
  • *: M: naval intelligence
  • *: T/lw: technical air intelligence
  • *: Wi: economic intelligence
  • *: Attached to Abwehr I. was Gruppe I-T for technical intelligence. Initially Abwehr I–K was a technical research unit, a small fraction the size of its British counterpart, Britain's Bletchley Park. Its importance later grew during the war to match its British counterpart in size and capability.
  • *II. Sabotage: tasked with directing covert contact/exploitation of discontented minority groups in foreign countries for intelligence purposes.
  • *: Attached to Abwehr II. was the Brandenburg Regiment, an offshoot of Gruppe II-T, and unconnected to any other branch outside of Abwehr II. Gruppe II-T.
  • *III. Counter-intelligence division: responsible for counter-intelligence operations in German industry, planting false information, penetration of foreign intelligence services, and investigating acts of sabotage on German soil. Attached to Abwehr III. were:
  • ** IIIC: Civilian Authority bureau
  • ** IIIC-2: Espionage cases bureau
  • ** IIID: Disinformation bureau
  • ** IIIF: Counter espionage agents bureau
  • ** IIIN: Postal bureau
Abwehr liaisons were also established with the army, navy, and Luftwaffe High Commands, and these liaisons would pass on specific intelligence requests to the operational sections of the Abwehr.
Abwehr I was commanded by Colonel Hans Pieckenbrock, Abwehr II was commanded by Colonel Erwin von Lahousen and Abwehr III was commanded by Colonel Egbert Bentivegni. These three officers formed the core of the Abwehr.

''Ast / Abwehrstelle''

Under the structure outlined above, the Abwehr placed a local station in each military district in Germany,, called ' Abwehrstelle' or ' Ast'. Following the German Table of Organisation and Equipment model of Abwehr headquarters, each Ast was usually subdivided into sections for
Typically each Ast would be commanded by a senior army or naval officer and would be answerable to Abwehr HQ. in Berlin. Operations carried out by each Ast would be in tandem with the overall strategic plan formulated by Admiral Canaris. Canaris in turn would receive instructions on what intelligence gathering should take priority from the OKW or, increasingly after 1941, Hitler directly. In practice, each Ast was given considerable latitude in mission planning and execution—a facet of the organization that ultimately damaged its intelligence-gathering capability.
Each local Ast could recruit potential agents for missions and the Abwehr also employed freelance recruiters to groom and vet potential agents. In most cases, the agents were recruited civilians, not officers/soldiers from the military. The recruitment emphasis seems to have been very much on "quantity" not "quality". The poor quality of recruits often led to the failure of Abwehr missions.