German instructors taught us radio operation and ciphering methods, while former Soviet officers taught other subjects: military, economical, political, and sociological intelligence, topography, working methods of the [NKVD] and counterintelligence, and so on. There was Major General [M. B.] Salikhov (alias Osmanov), a Lieutenant Colonel of the General Staff with the alias [I. P.] Pavlov, a Major with the alias Zorin (he also headed a special laboratory that produced any Soviet document), and a Colonel with the alias Shelgunov…
A course lasted 11 or 6 months, and students spent 10 hours a day in classes… Every week four–five graduates left the school to be dropped in the Red Army rear.29
Walli I was responsible for military and economic intelligence at the Soviet–German front.30 Its head, Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Baun, was ‘a short, thin, chain-smoking ex-infantryman… who had been born in Odessa in 1897, spoke Ukrainian as well as Russian’.31 From 1921 to 1937, he worked at the German consulates in Odessa and Kiev. Admiral Canaris used to say that Baun had ‘a special gift for intelligence work’.32
Five years later, while interrogating the arrested Baun, the American counterintelligence officer Arnold Silver had a low opinion of him: ‘It did not take more than a few hours to determine that Baun was alcoholic dependent.’33 One more American intelligence officer, Captain Eric Waldman, recalled Baun as a dishonest person: ‘Gustav Hilger, the former German diplomat… discovered that Baun had stashed away under his bed a large trunk full of U.S. dollars, which should have been spent on operations. Another incident occurred when Baun tried to blackmail [Major Heinz Danko] Herre [also a captured German officer].’34
Walli I consisted of five referats:
IX: intelligence on ground troops;
IL (Luft): intelligence on the air force;
I Wi: economics intelligence;
I G: fabrication of false documents;
I I: radio transmitters, ciphering, and codes.35
Walli II, in charge of sabotage within the Red Army and at its rear, was headed by Major Seeliger, who had great experience in irregular warfare.36 In summer 1943 Soviet partisans killed him. Senior Lieutenant Müller, and, finally, Captain Becker succeeded him. The OKW’s directive to Abteilung II and its Walli II was to have ‘agents to promote rivalries and hatred between the various peoples of the Soviet Union’.37
Walli III mostly collected information about the NKVD. Its head, Lt. Col., later Col., Heinz Schmalschläger started his Abwehr career in Vienna in 1935 and later claimed that he was the nephew of Admiral Canaris.38 He was also responsible for Stab Walli as a whole. By 1943, Walli III consisted of five groups:
1. Commanding Group (general administration, planning of operations), Head: Oberstleutnant Heinz Schmalschläger
2. Analytical Group (intelligence analysis, issuing information for field groups and writing reports to Berlin), Head: Hauptmann Krickendt
Referat I (study and analysis of intelligence data, writing reports)
Referat IIIF (arrest of the enemy agents, analysis of the work of Soviet intelligence, writing memos)
Referat of Personnel and Training
3. Military-Topographic Group (preparation of operational maps of Abwehr field groups; maps of the location of Soviet intelligence agents; charts of movements of the German radio operators and Abwehr’s agents, etc.), Head: Hauptmann Krickendt
4. Radio Group (joint with Walli I until the end of 1942)
5. Transport (reparation of vehicles of field groups).39
Stab Walli received intelligence and counterintelligence materials from operational units in the field. After a preliminary evaluation, materials were sent to Abwehr headquarters in Berlin and to the Fremde Heere Ost or FHO (see below). In the field, during the advance of the three German army groups A (South), B (Center), and C (North) into Soviet territory, the Abteilung I and III reconnaissance detachments working under Walli I and III, respectively, moved with the troops, frequently even ahead of them with the forward tank units.40
There were two types of detachments, commando units of 25–60 men assigned to each of the army groups, and squads (gruppen) of 12 men assigned to each army. In all, there were only 500–600 intelligence men in the Abwehr detachments at the Eastern Front. Both commando units and squads included Abwehr officers, translators, radio operators, and others. Commandos and squads were in constant radio contact with Walli I and III. All Abwehr groups reported also to Abwehr officers of the department ‘1c’ responsible for intelligence in the army groups. Within an army, the staff of each German detachment from a divisional level upward consisted of three departments, 1a (operational), 1b (the rear, supplies), and 1c (intelligence).
In the towns abandoned by the retreating Red Army, the commandos and squads searched for documents—orders, cables, and so forth—left behind by the military commanders (the responsibility of Abteilung I) and by the NKVD (the responsibility of Abteilung III). For instance, in the city of Brest-Litovsk, they discovered a large cache of documents in NKVD headquarters, which they sent to Stab Walli in cars and trucks. It included a top-secret telephone book containing all of the Kremlin numbers and home numbers of all members of the Soviet government. In the Belorussian capital of Minsk, Abwehr groups discovered twenty-nine safes filled with secret documents, including lists of all members of the Soviet government and Party elite and their relatives with private addresses and phone numbers.41 Special Abwehr IIIF squads were in charge of finding spies and terrorists in the rear of the German armies.
Walli I was also active in a wide area behind the front line.42 Squads were sent into enemy territory for reconnaissance, frequently dressed in Red Army uniforms. They used local informers and interrogated POWs. In December 1941, Walli III began to send its agents to penetrate partisan detachments. However, as Baun admitted to the American interrogator Silver in 1947, ‘not one of his wartime operations had been successful… The Soviets had rolled up [the] agents one after another’.43 In the summer of 1942, the names of the German army groups were changed to South A, South B, and Don, while the attached Abwehr squads and groups received numbers.44
Walli II detachments were sent for special sabotage actions. For instance, a Brandenburger group penetrated into Soviet territory a day before the German attack. It took over a bridge and prevented its destruction by the Soviets until the main German troops arrived.45 During the first days of the war, numerous groups of saboteurs dressed in Red Army or NKVD/NKGB uniforms were parachuted into various locations in Belorussia, frequently before the arrival of the German troops.46 In Brest, German saboteurs put the telephone and telegraph cables out of commission and cut the electricity and water supplies to the city before it was taken over by the Nazi troops. The Party, the city, and the military authorities were helpless. In the Baltic States, 80 specially trained Estonians were dropped behind the Soviet lines and reported locations, operations, and movements of Soviet troops. To distinguish them from the Soviet servicemen, they had ‘a rust-red cloth about the size of a handkerchief with a circular yellow spot in the middle’.47
On October 9, 1941, during the German fast advance toward Moscow, a company of Brandenburgers was dropped near the Istra Water Reservoir, about 30 kilometers from Moscow.48 A detachment of NKVD troops killed all paratroopers before they blew up a dam and destroyed the main Moscow water supply.