The function of Abteilung II was based on the activity of the division Brandenburg-800.15 This division began in October 1939 as a battalion of Volksdeutsche, Germans living outside of Germany who were fluent in Polish. They were very successful saboteurs during the invasion of Poland, operating in the rear of the Polish troops. The original Brandenburg-800 battalion consisted of four companies, one of which comprised men from the Baltic countries and Russians, mostly emigrants. Later, volunteers from Soviet POWs were added. When the Brandenburg-800 expanded into a division, it included British, Romanian, African, Arab, and other units. From the end of 1942, the division was attached directly to Abteilung II. The men of the division became known as the Brandenburgers.
In action, a Brandenburger unit could be as small as a two-man team or as large as a full 300-man company, depending on the mission. The units operated in the enemy’s rear or in the German rear if the troops were in retreat. From the autumn of 1939 onwards, a special group of Brandenburgers watched the Ploesti oil fields in Romania. In 1940, groups of Brandenburgers dressed in the uniforms of the enemy played an important role in the conquest of Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Later they were also active in Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, and Africa.
In the Soviet structure the 4th NKVD Directorate headed by the infamous Pavel Sudoplatov was similar to Abteilung II.16 Originally, this directorate was formed on July 5, 1941 as the Special Group (terrorist and diversionary acts in the enemy’s rear) subordinated directly to Commissar Beria. On October 3, 1941 the group was transformed into the 2nd NKVD Department (with the same functions), which on January 18, 1942 became the 4th NKVD Directorate. On April 14, 1943, it was transferred to the NKGB as its 4th Directorate.
The 4th NKVD/NKGB Directorate was almost an independent service with its own intelligence at the enemy’s rear and abroad, and its own terrorist troops. The operational troops consisted of 5,000 men, up to 2,000 of whom were foreign Communists who lived in the Soviet Union. The activities of Abwehr’s Abteilung II and 4th NKVD/NKGB Directorate were similar to those of the British Special Operations Executive or SOE.17
Abwehr’s Abteilung III, that is comparable with SMERSH’s HQ, consisted of eleven groups, most of which were composed of sections called ‘referats’. Colonel Franz Eccard von Bentivegni, known as ‘Benti’ to insiders, headed it until April 1944. Karl Abshagen, Canaris’s biographer, wrote: ‘Despite his Italian name, [Bentivegni] came from a Prussian family… He was a typical old-fashioned Prussian officer, most careful about his appearance and never to be seen without an eyeglass in his eye… Bentivegni’s personal relations with Canaris did not become as close as those with Piekenbrock.’18 In May 1944 von Bentivegni left the Abwehr for the army, and in March 1945 he was taken prisoner by SMERSH.
In general, the Abwehr leaders tried not to follow the orders that would involve Abwehr in military atrocities. In April 1942, Colonel Piekenbrock told Canaris: ‘Herr Keitel [OKW Chief ] should be told once and for all to inform Herr Hitler that we of the Abwehr are not an organization of assassins like the SD or the SS.’19 With this attitude, Canaris and many other high-level Abwehr officers later joined the anti-Hitler military Resistance.
There was a serious reason why Piekenbrock mentioned the SD: in the spring of 1942, the Abwehr began to lose its positions to the SD, part of the RSHA. Created in September 1939, the RSHA consisted of the SD or Amt VI (foreign intelligence), Gestapo (investigation of political opposition), Kripo (criminal police), interior intelligence and the department for investigation of ideological loyalty.20 This German organization and the NKVD had a similar function, security of the ruling party. Even the name SS and the NKVD’s motto were similar: the SS meant the ‘Shield Squadron’ of the Nazi Party, while the NKVD was ‘the sword and the shield’ of the Soviet Communist Party. The title of RSHA head Reinhard Heydrich (and from January 1943 onwards, Ernst Kaltenbrunner), was ‘Chief of the Sicherheits-polizei and SD’. Walter Schellenberg headed the SD from autumn 1941 until the end of the war.21 He had the rank of colonel, and from June 1944 onwards, of brigadier general.
By March 1942, the SD took under its control almost all Abwehr’s counterintelligence work. Admiral Canaris signed the following agreement with Heydrich: ‘Counterintelligence shall in future be an additional function of the Security Police and SD.’22
Abwehr’s Branch for Russia ‘Stab Walli’
Before the end of 1939, Abwehr had almost no information about the Red Army.23 After the German and Soviet occupation of Poland in September 1939 and the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States in the summer of 1940, the situation changed. During this period, many thousands of refugees were suddenly on the move. The Abwehr used refugee crowds as an opportunity to send German, Ukrainian, and Polish agents onto the newly occupied Soviet territory. Also, from January 1940 to June 22, 1941, 327 Red Army men, from private to colonel ranks, escaped to the Germans.24 They brought a lot of documents and maps with them.
As a result, by May 1941, the Abwehr knew the exact location of seventy-seven Soviet Rifle divisions in the former Polish territories that soon became a battleground.25 Paul Leverkühn, head of the Abwehr station in Turkey, later wrote: ‘In June 1941, the distribution, arms and armament of the Russian force and the location of their aerodromes, at least in that portion of Poland which they occupied, were known with comparative exactness.’26 This information helped to destroy many Soviet planes on the ground within the first hours of the German attack on June 22, 1941.
The German agents collected not only military information, but also information on the NKVD and OOs. In May 1941, Anatolii Mikheev, head of the 3rd NKO Directorate in Moscow, describing the goals of German intelligence, noted:
Sometimes the Gestapo agents [at the time, the Soviets called all German agents ‘the Gestapo agents’]… are tasked with collecting intelligence specifically on the NKVD organs and their leadership, for instance with finding out the following:
1. What is a Special Department [OO] and to whom does it report?
2. Is there a connection between the NKVD organs and the Special Department and how are they subordinated?
3. What are the names, nationalities, and addresses of the [OO] workers?27
In early 1941, an operational organization with the code name ‘Stab Walli’—the future main target of SMERSH—was formed from Abteilung I’s eastern groups to head up Abwehr’s participation in Operation Barbarossa. It was located in the area of Sulejowek outside Warsaw, on the estate of General Jozef Pilsudski, the Polish dictator from 1925 to 1935.28 Soon Stab Walli was divided into I, II, and III, representing the three Abwehr departments.
Also, schools for training Russian Walli agents were opened. In January 1942, Walli I started to select volunteers for schools from among Soviet POWs. A former attendee of the Central School in Sulejowek recalled:
The ‘students’ were mostly former Red Army officers or captured young Soviet radio operators who needed to be taught ciphers…
A German Hauptmann (Captain) headed the Warsaw Intelligence School… During World War I he was a POW in Russia, spoke Russian perfectly and liked to repeat that he ‘knew the Russian soul well’. Nobody knew his name.