Defense point Arras

Hôtel de Commerce on rue Saint-Aubert, 1944 headquarters of the Arras Defense Center

The Abwehrstelle Arras ( Abwehr Arras or Ast Arras for short ), also known as Abwehrstelle 430 , was a German Abwehr agency in Arras , Pas-de-Calais in northern France from December 1943 to August 1944 . She kept this designation until the end of World War II , even after she left Arras in July 1944.

task

During their stay in France (December 1943-August 1944), the Arras Abwehrstelle was responsible for the protection of the V1 flying bombs , which it was referred to as the "guardian angel", through secret service activities . Their goals were precisely defined:

Surveillance of the V1 launching areas in the Nord , Pas-de-Calais , Aisne and Somme departments , and later also ( ultérieurement ) in the Manche department .

Escort protection of the missile parts from the German border to the launch pad .

According to a report by the French government from October 1945, the activities of the Abwehrstelle Arras in France were very effective until the end; unauthorized access to the V1 launch area ( zone interdite ) was almost impossible.

The staff of the Abwehrstelle Arras was moved from Arras to Senlis and then to Brussels because of the Allied bombing in April 1944 . Until September 1, 1944, agents from the Arras Abwehrstelle were still active in the Lille area , who then went via Arnheim and Wiescheid (near Siegburg) to Almelo and Ahaus , where the commanding general of Ahaus was stationed in the Villa van Delden in March 1945 V2 weapons was stationed. Agents from the so-called Abwehrstelle Arras were active in the Ahaus area until April 1945 and were responsible for protecting the V2 rockets fired there until the end of the war .

organization

The V1 launching ramps, built by the Todt Organization near the French Channel coast since March 1943 , were largely destroyed by the Royal Air Force in September 1943 . Because of the central importance that Hitler and the OKW ascribed to the V-weapons, it was decided to immediately set up a defense organization specifically responsible for the protection of these weapons.

This new defense post became the LXV General Command. Army corps eg V. assigned. With this general command, which was set up on November 28, 1943 for the implementation of the V-Waffen operation against England, the Abwehrstelle Arras was directly subordinate to the OKW in Berlin and did not belong to the German Abwehrstelle France and Belgium . Therefore, unlike the other Abwehr offices in France and Belgium, it was not subordinated to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in September 1944 .

The Arras defense post is to be distinguished from the Lille defense branch set up in 1940 , which was subordinate to the Belgian Abwehr post in Brussels and thus to the head of the German defense, Wilhelm Canaris .

staff

The group of people belonging to the Abwehrstelle Arras consisted of the staff officers (with office staff), the German secret agents (in the rank of NCO, with code names), the informers assigned to these secret agents (French Indicateurs , mostly French, partly Belgians) and the French friends of these secret agents (French . maîtresses ).

Rod

Head: Lieutenant Colonel Erich Heidschuch .
Office officer: Rentzsch, head of the Arras Secret Field Police , after his death: Captain Henneps.
Head of Dept. IIIH: Captain Hans Maetschke, previously in Lille.
Head of Dept. IIIL: Major Erwin Albert Römmele, previously Defense branch in Lille Dept. IIIL.
Head of Dept. IIIF: Captain Dr. Karl Hegener (alias: Dr. Haase), previously Defense branch in Lille Dept. IIIF; from March 1944: Major Walter Schwebbach.
Head of the St. Quentin branch: First Lieutenant Kampf.

Secret agents

For the Abwehrstelle Arras, about eight to ten German secret agents - mostly as V-Person leaders - worked in the ranks of sergeants and sergeants, who had to have very good knowledge of French. As in other defense posts in the areas occupied by the Wehrmacht, their task was to break into sabotage or smuggling networks of the Resistance with the help of informers in order to report their members to the secret field police for interrogation .

Spy and girlfriends

The German secret agents recruited French or Belgian informers in exchange for money , with whose help they then tried to break into the networks of the Resistance. According to the French military authorities, this also included the friends of the German secret agents. In fact, however, in the cases in which reliable information is available, it is clearly evident that the young women (around 20-25 years old) joined the German secret agents out of love; Concrete assistance from the secret service as an informant has so far not been proven in these cases.

Criminal proceedings after the war

After the war, all members of the Abwehr were automatically sent to internment camps by the occupying powers ( automatic arrest ), but the French military courts did not convict them. Only the activity in the Abwehr was regarded by Germans (!) As a non-punishable military service for the fatherland.

Heidschuch and several other people, who were assigned to the Abwehrstelle Arras by the French military authorities, were charged in September 1946 with the French military court in Metz for the murder of over 150 prisoners who were executed for sabotage in the citadel of Arras from 1942 to 1945 had been. The proceedings were discontinued in November 1949 by the examining magistrate with the note " Non-lieu ".

literature

Franz Josef Burghardt : Spies of Retribution. The German defense in northern France and the secret service securing of the launching areas for V weapons in World War II. A socio-biographical study . Schönau 2018. ISBN 978-3947009022 .
Franz Josef Burghardt : Between right and right. The Duisburg lawyer and secret service officer Karl Hegener (1894–1954). In: Duisburger Forschungen 60. (2015), ISBN 978-3-8375-1345-5 , pp. 117-174.

Web links

Franz Josef Burghardt : The staff of the German counter-espionage in northern France 1940/44. In memoriam Johannes Kunisch .

Individual evidence

↑ The statement by Max Wachtels from 1965 that he met Lieutenant Colonel Heidschuch "from the Abwehr Arras" at the end of July 1943 is apparently based on an incorrect assignment of Heidschuch to his later function in Wachtel's memory; Max Wachtel: Company lumber room. In: Der Spiegel 49/1965, pp. 99−119, here p. 106. Cf. also Heinz Dieter Hölsken: Die V-Waffen. Origin - propaganda - war effort. Stuttgart 1984, pp. 115-116.
↑ "L'activité de cette Ast, qui subsista jusqu'au dernier moment, fut positive, et elle arriva à faire des départements surveillés une région d'accès très difficile." Les Services spéciaux allemand en France pendant l'occupation, Vol. I, Fascicule 2, Ast Arras (October 31, 1845); Bureau Résistance et Seconde guerre mondiale, Vincennes, Arras files, p. 1 and 3.
↑ Miss. Communicated by the Ahaus City Archives, according to the then villa owner Johann van Delden; see also Stadt Ahaus - Villa van Delden ( Memento from December 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).
^ Les Services spéciaux allemand en France pendant l'occupation, Vol. I, Fascicule 2, Ast Arras (October 31, 1845); Bureau Résistance et Seconde guerre mondiale, Vincennes, Arras files, p. 2.
↑ To the “roman. 65 AK “, as this general command was also called, s. Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in the Second World War 1939–1945, 5th vol. The land forces 31-70. Frankfurt a. M. [o. J.], p. 263. For camouflage reasons, the name was changed to “Generalkommando zb V. XXX” on October 20, 1944.
↑ On the defense station in France (headquarters: Paris, Hotel Lutetia) in detail Oscar Reile: Secret Western Front. The defense 1935-1945. Munich / Wels 1962. The organizational separation between the Defense Agencies France and Arras also results from a letter from the Foreign Office / Abwehr Department III dated December 22, 1943; Guides to German Records microfilmed at Alexandria, VA. No. 80. Records of the German Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht / OKW) Part VI. National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, Washington 1982, p. 31.
↑ Guides to German Records, pp. Vii u. xv-xvi
↑ The list of persons available for the Arras defense office from a French source (Les Services spéciaux allemand en France pendant l'occupation, Vol. I, Fascicule 2, Ast Arras (October 31, 1945); Bureau Résistance et Seconde guerre mondiale, Vincennes) in addition to staff officers, secretaries and radio operators, only three high-ranking members of the local secret field police and ten German secret agents. The much more detailed list of people for the Abwehr branch in Lille and the later autobiographical report by the German Arras secret agent Lambert (alias) prove the structure of the staff mentioned.
↑ There is evidence that some of these secret agents were trained in an interpreting school in Münster before the war. The most important V-Person leaders of the Abwehrstelle Arras were Sergeant Egon Mayer, Erwin Streif and Friedrich Topp.
↑ The interrogation methods used by the GFP varied greatly depending on the situation. They ranged from conversations without any form or threat of violence (e.g. Abbé Levebvre in Cambrai) to extremely brutal torture.
↑ In exceptional cases it also happened that a secret agent had a trained secret agent as a "wife" in addition to his French girlfriend. ("Diana Lambert" (alias))
↑ Staff officer Hegener and secret agent Lambert (code name) each spent about 18 months in internment camps.
↑ At the end of 1947, the German secret agent Lambert was released from brief French imprisonment without conviction because - as the prosecution claimed - he could not be proven to have participated in looting or interrogations.
↑ Besides Römmle and Schwebbach: Major Dr. Reitmeyer (? = Dr. jur. Theodor R., PhD 1927 in Munich), Captain Bayard, Captain Kroll, Captain Dr. Kurt Stein, First Lieutenant Klinger, NCO Franz Volner (code name: Francois); Dépôt central des archives de la justice militaire, Le Blanc, Heidschuch files. Although this file contains detailed information about the people shot in the citadel of Arras, it does not contain any significant information about the personnel of the Arras defense station.

[1] The statement by Max Wachtels from 1965 that he met Lieutenant Colonel Heidschuch "from the Abwehr Arras" at the end of July 1943 is apparently based on an incorrect assignment of Heidschuch to his later function in Wachtel's memory; Max Wachtel: Company lumber room. In: Der Spiegel 49/1965, pp. 99−119, here p. 106. Cf. also Heinz Dieter Hölsken: Die V-Waffen. Origin - propaganda - war effort. Stuttgart 1984, pp. 115-116.

[2] "L'activité de cette Ast, qui subsista jusqu'au dernier moment, fut positive, et elle arriva à faire des départements surveillés une région d'accès très difficile." Les Services spéciaux allemand en France pendant l'occupation, Vol. I, Fascicule 2, Ast Arras (October 31, 1845); Bureau Résistance et Seconde guerre mondiale, Vincennes, Arras files, p. 1 and 3.

[3] Miss. Communicated by the Ahaus City Archives, according to the then villa owner Johann van Delden; see also Stadt Ahaus - Villa van Delden ( Memento from December 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).

[4] Les Services spéciaux allemand en France pendant l'occupation, Vol. I, Fascicule 2, Ast Arras (October 31, 1845); Bureau Résistance et Seconde guerre mondiale, Vincennes, Arras files, p. 2.

[5] To the “roman. 65 AK “, as this general command was also called, s. Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in the Second World War 1939–1945, 5th vol. The land forces 31-70. Frankfurt a. M. [o. J.], p. 263. For camouflage reasons, the name was changed to “Generalkommando zb V. XXX” on October 20, 1944.

[6] On the defense station in France (headquarters: Paris, Hotel Lutetia) in detail Oscar Reile: Secret Western Front. The defense 1935-1945. Munich / Wels 1962. The organizational separation between the Defense Agencies France and Arras also results from a letter from the Foreign Office / Abwehr Department III dated December 22, 1943; Guides to German Records microfilmed at Alexandria, VA. No. 80. Records of the German Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht / OKW) Part VI. National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, Washington 1982, p. 31.

[7] Guides to German Records, pp. Vii u. xv-xvi

[8] The list of persons available for the Arras defense office from a French source (Les Services spéciaux allemand en France pendant l'occupation, Vol. I, Fascicule 2, Ast Arras (October 31, 1945); Bureau Résistance et Seconde guerre mondiale, Vincennes) in addition to staff officers, secretaries and radio operators, only three high-ranking members of the local secret field police and ten German secret agents. The much more detailed list of people for the Abwehr branch in Lille and the later autobiographical report by the German Arras secret agent Lambert (alias) prove the structure of the staff mentioned.

[9] There is evidence that some of these secret agents were trained in an interpreting school in Münster before the war. The most important V-Person leaders of the Abwehrstelle Arras were Sergeant Egon Mayer, Erwin Streif and Friedrich Topp.

[10] The interrogation methods used by the GFP varied greatly depending on the situation. They ranged from conversations without any form or threat of violence (e.g. Abbé Levebvre in Cambrai) to extremely brutal torture.

[11] In exceptional cases it also happened that a secret agent had a trained secret agent as a "wife" in addition to his French girlfriend. ("Diana Lambert" (alias))

[12] Staff officer Hegener and secret agent Lambert (code name) each spent about 18 months in internment camps.

[13] At the end of 1947, the German secret agent Lambert was released from brief French imprisonment without conviction because - as the prosecution claimed - he could not be proven to have participated in looting or interrogations.

[14] Besides Römmle and Schwebbach: Major Dr. Reitmeyer (? = Dr. jur. Theodor R., PhD 1927 in Munich), Captain Bayard, Captain Kroll, Captain Dr. Kurt Stein, First Lieutenant Klinger, NCO Franz Volner (code name: Francois); Dépôt central des archives de la justice militaire, Le Blanc, Heidschuch files. Although this file contains detailed information about the people shot in the citadel of Arras, it does not contain any significant information about the personnel of the Arras defense station.