Abwehr

Abwehr (‘defence’), German military intelligence and counter-intelligence organization formed after the First World War. Although the Versailles settlement of 1919 had prohibited Germany from establishing an intelligence organization, a counter-espionage group was set up within the defence ministry in 1920. It was called the ‘Abwehr’ as it was the nation's defence against foreign espionage, and it retained this name throughout its existence, although its role was to evolve. It was not until after 1933 that the Abwehr went beyond merely defensive assignments and became involved in espionage. However, since its espionage networks abroad only then began to be set up, the task of establishing them proved extremely difficult and was by no means completed by the outbreak of the Second World War.

In January 1935, Captain (later Admiral) Canaris was put in charge of the Abwehr. He proved an appropriate choice for the job. During the First World War he had been involved in clandestine supply operations for the Imperial Navy in South America, he had travelled widely, and he had a good command of foreign languages, especially Spanish. Canaris set to work to convert the Abwehr from a gentlemanly but largely inefficient club into a modern intelligence organization. Although he had had no formal training on the job, he was quick to grasp the essential elements of espionage and counter-espionage. When the war ministry was finally merged into the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, or Armed Forces Supreme Command) in February 1938, Canaris was appointed one of its departmental commanders. Late in 1939 his organization, now called Amt Ausland/Abwehr (Amt, office; Ausland, abroad), acquired the structure it was to retain for most of the war as a branch of OKW (see Table).

It consisted of one Amtsgruppe (Ausland) and four Abteilungen (departments). Amtsgruppe Ausland was responsible for attaché work and other forms of non-covert intelligence. A Central Department (Abteilung Z) carried out administrative duties. It was headed by Maj-General Oster, who was to become one of the Abwehr's most influential officers.

Departments I, II, and III were entrusted with the classical elements of any secret service. The espionage department (Abteilung I) was under the command of Colonel Hans Piekenbrock; sabotage and subversion, Abteilung II, at first headed by Major (later Colonel) Helmuth Groscurth, was run by the enigmatic and resourceful Colonel Erwin Lahousen from 1939 to 1943; counter-espionage, Abteilung III, enjoyed its greatest successes under Colonel Egbert von Bentivegni who ran it from 1939 to 1944. Unlike the British system (see UK, 8) all the branches functioned within the same organizational structure, and there was very little rivalry between them. The Abwehr was not predominant in the field of technical intelligence. In particular, signals interception was largely left to the intelligence branches of the army, navy, and air force respectively (see Germany, 7).

Abwehr: Organization of Amt Ausland/Abwehr

		Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
Amtsgruppe Ausland	Abteilung Z	Abteilung I	Abteilung II	Abteilung III
Source: Contributor.
	1938–43	1937–43	1938–9	1933–9
Vice Admiral Bürkner	Maj-General Oster	Colonel Piekenbrock	Major Groscurth	Major Bamler
	1943–4	1943–4	1939–43	1939–44
	Colonel Jakobsen	Colonel Hansen	Colonel Lahousen	von Bentivegni
			1943–4
			Colonel von
			Freytag-Loringhoven
Non-covert Intelligence;	Organization	Espionage	Sabotage Subversion	Counter-Intelligence
Military Attachés	Personnel Archives
			Regiment, later Division,
			Brandenburg

Throughout the period from 1935 to 1944 the Abwehr was in constant rivalry with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) (see RSHA), the SS security service headed initially by Reinhard Heydrich, and later by Walter Schellenberg. The SD regarded the Abwehr as politically unreliable; the Abwehr in turn resented party encroachment upon what it felt was purely military territory. Basically, this conflict was merely a watered-down version of the major power struggle between army and party organizations, notably the SS. Canaris achieved a reasonably good working relationship with Heydrich, who had once been a naval officer. In March 1942, they reached an agreement which permitted the SD to conduct its own counter-espionage operations alongside those of the Abwehr, which, in turn, was no longer supposed to report on internal affairs such as the mood of the German people. Shortly afterwards, Heydrich was killed in Czechoslovakia. Between Canaris and Heydrich's successors there was fierce rivalry. Schellenberg, head of the SD foreign service, and Walter Huppenkothen, head of the Gestapo's counter-intelligence section (E), were to become Canaris' chief enemies; Huppenkothen eventually saw him hanged.

The Abwehr's foreign espionage networks in the Balkans, Portugal and, above all, Spain, were well informed. The Spanish secret service facilitated German surveillance of Allied shipping in the Mediterranean, and negotiations between Hitler and Franco about Spain's entry into the war were conducted by Canaris, who was a personal friend of Franco's. Similarly, the Abwehr conducted secret talks with the Greek dictator, General Ioannis Metaxas (1871–1941), just before his death early in 1941, aimed at avoiding German intervention in the Balkans. In France, penetration had been achieved only to a minor degree, and most networks were blown soon after war broke out. However, the attempt to set up an espionage network in the UK and the USA had failed completely. By the end of 1939, no German agents were operating in the UK. All attempts to smuggle new agents into the country, usually by parachute or submarine, ended in failure; some agents were hanged, most were turned round (see XX-committee). The Abwehr only once got anywhere near the best-guarded British military secret, ULTRA (see signals intelligence warfare, 7 for details). An attempt to co-operate with the Irish Republican Army in order to subvert British fighting strength operating from Northern Ireland failed, as did all attempts to lure Eire into the Axis fold. But although the espionage service never lived up to expectations, the other two branches of the Abwehr were quite successful.

Abwehr II fulfilled its first major tasks even before the outbreak of the Second World War. It was instrumental in organizing pro-German uprisings (see Volksdeutsche) which formed the pretext for the annexation of Czechoslovakia; it was also involved in a rather unsuccessful disinformation campaign before and during the Anschluss of Austria in 1938. When, in August 1939, Hitler postponed the attack on Poland at the very last minute, the Abwehr II group which had been charged with securing the strategically important Yablunka Pass across the Beskides mountains, could not be recalled in time. They successfully attacked the Polish platoon guarding the tunnel, only to give it up again when they learned that the invasion had not started after all. Raids like this were the essence of Abwehr II. They secured bridges in the opponent's rear, operated behind the other side's lines, and were largely involved in attempts to stir up nationalist trouble in areas under attack, mostly on the Eastern Front. For administrative reasons, these subversive units were classed together as Brandenburgers. Towards the end of the war, these reached the strength of a full infantry division. However, this also led to an increasing use of élite Brandenburg units as mere infantry, squandering valuable resources when manpower was beginning to be critically short. Abwehr II also took part in raising nationalist troops from among former prisoners-of-war (see Soviet exiles at war).

Counter-intelligence (Abwehr III) had its most spectacular success when, with the Gestapo (see RHSA), it broke into and then destroyed the large Soviet espionage and resistance network known as the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra) and the head of the Abwehr in the Netherlands, Lt-Colonel Hermann Giskes, was instrumental in running the war's best-known Funkspiel (‘radio game’) when British SOE and MI6 agents were captured and turned (see Englandspiel).

The Abwehr played a major role in the German resistance against Hitler (see Schwarze Kapelle). The direct, unfiltered, information about Nazi war crimes available to the Abwehr was enough to convince anybody of the evil nature of the regime. Its secret channels of communication and its ability to employ ‘shadowy’ (that is, politically unreliable) elements made it the ideal vehicle for clandestine opposition. Most conspiratorial activities, if discovered, could be explained away as being part of normal duties. The attempt to overthrow Hitler in 1938 was mostly engineered by Abwehr personnel, among them Oster, Groscurth, and Canaris himself. Later on, the Abwehr was actively engaged in providing means of communicating unobtrusively with the enemy. Through Abwehr channels, the resistance tried to obtain assurances of lenient treatment for Germany in the event of an attempted coup d'état. However the British, in particular, realizing that the Abwehr was involved in these approaches, tended to mistrust them. Finally, it was through Abwehr channels that the resistance obtained the explosives, captured from SOE agents, used in several attempts on Hitler's life.

The Abwehr's involvement in the conspiracy against the regime was to contribute to its eventual downfall. The SD had always had misgivings about the precarious agreement reached between Canaris and Heydrich in March 1942, and they continued to search for mistakes on the part of the Abwehr which would eventually bring about its ruin. Canaris had bluntly expressed his pessimism about the likely outcome of the war, thereby losing most of the support he still enjoyed at OKW and estranging himself from Hitler as well.

In the autumn of 1942, German police began to investigate major foreign currency deals operated through Abwehr channels. The affair ended up with the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt), which was all too eager to find an excuse to investigate the SD's rival organization. One of the suspects had been party to General Oster's 1938–40 conspiracies, and when hard pressed and seemingly deserted by his Abwehr colleagues, he began to tell his torturers what he knew. This led to large-scale arrests within the Abwehr and Oster's dismissal. Not only was the resistance against Hitler decisively weakened (it would not find a similar power base until Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg made his resources as Chief of Staff of the C-in-C, Replacement Army, available), but the position of Canaris and his organization was also seriously undermined. The defection to the British of a minor agent in Istanbul and the continuation of underground attacks against British targets in Spain, against the obvious wishes of the Spaniards, dealt a final blow to the Abwehr. On 12 February 1944, Hitler ordered Canaris to stay out of Berlin and German intelligence was put under Himmler's command. Colonel Hansen, who had taken over Abteilung I in 1943, was given the department for military affairs within the new service, which effectively operated under the Abwehr's former adversaries. Both Hansen and Canaris himself eventually fell victim to the fury of the Gestapo in the wake of the attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944.

The Abwehr's espionage achievements were sometimes overrated. On the other hand, it has not always been given full credit for its notable successes in counter-espionage and, above all, sabotage and subversion.

Winfried Heinemann

Bibliography

There is a paucity of recent English-language publications on the Abwehr. The best are probably:
Höhne, H. , Canaris (London, 1976).
Kahn, D. , Hitler's Spies. German Military Intelligence in World War II (London, 1978).
See also, although it contains some factual errors: Paine, L. , German Military Intelligence in World War II. The Abwehr (New York, 1984), who maintains that Abwehr espionage was in fact a success.
For the view of a participant see: Leverkuehn, P. , Der geheime Nachrichtendienst der deutschen Wehrmacht im Kriege (2nd edn., Frankfurt, 1957).