Alfred Redl

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alfred Redl (born March 14, 1864 in Lemberg , Galicia , † May 25, 1913 in Vienna ) was an Austrian intelligence officer who, at the time of political tensions in Europe and the Balkan War, told the Austro-Hungarian army military secrets to Russia , Italy and France betrayed. During most of his service he was in a leading position in the records office , the military intelligence service , and most recently held the rank of colonel and chief of staff of the VIII Corps in Prague . Thanks to his access to almost all secret documents of the army, he was able to become one of the most important spies of the Russian secret service. Most recently, he also disclosed state secrets to the Italian and French secret services. Redl committed in the course of his unmasking suicide .

Alfred Redl (around 1907)

Youth and education

Redl was born in 1864 as the son of Franz and Mathilde Redl in Lemberg, the then capital of the Austrian crown land of Galicia and Lodomeria. His father had initially taken up the profession of officer, but had to leave the army at the age of 31 because he could not afford the marriage bail required for a proper wedding . He managed to get an adequate job with the kk Carl-Ludwig-Bahn in Lemberg. There he rose to senior railroad inspector. Franz Redl's seven children were professionally successful: two of his sons became career officers, an architect, a lawyer and a railway official like his father. The two daughters took up the teaching profession. The fact that the father also tried successfully to raise the children in three languages ​​- Polish, Ruthenian and German - was to be of decisive importance for Alfred Redl's career.

After attending the lower secondary school, Alfred Redl entered the kk cadet school Karthaus, which was located in a suburb of Brno , at the age of fifteen . Redl was homosexual, which at the time would have led to dismissal from civil service, social ostracism and a lawsuit if it had become public. Redl left Karthaus in 1883 as a cadet officer deputy with "very good success" and after four years of service with the 9th Infantry Regiment in Lemberg "the officer corps found him worthy of promotion to lieutenant ". With an above-average assessment from his superiors, he applied together with several hundred other applicants for admission to training at the kuk war school , the training facility for officers of the general staff service . It speaks for Redl's above-average abilities that in 1892, as a graduate of an ordinary cadet school, he not only passed the selection process, but in 1894 was also one of the 25 officers who passed the course. Even before he was called up, Redl had to seek treatment for a syphilitic disease which, before antibiotics was discovered, often had a chronic and often fatal course. In 1892 the disease was supposedly completely cured according to a service description. Redl's autopsy after his suicide showed, however, that he was not only chronically ill, but also had no longer to live.

General Staff and Intelligence Service

After leaving military school, Redl worked in the railway office until 1895 , a service that dealt with transport and deployment planning. It was also about scouting out the railway lines of possible opponents of the war. This task was of particular importance in Russia, since maps there were subject to confidentiality and the course of railway lines could often only be determined by personal visits.

After this relatively short service, Redl was deployed for several years in the troop staff, first in Budapest and then - already as a captain - in his home town of Lviv. In 1899 he was sent to Russia on a language course on the instructions of the Chief of the General Staff Friedrich von Beck-Rzikowsky . In Kazan he then acquired the knowledge that was the springboard to his service in the “Russian group” of the Vienna registry office in the General Staff, which began in 1900.

The records office collected reports of military relevance from a wide variety of sources, which had to be submitted daily to the Chief of the General Staff and once a week to Emperor Franz Joseph I (handwritten until 1913). 20 officers were available for this, a fraction of what the German, let alone the Russian general staff had. The lack of staff and money was mainly due to the fact that the registry office was subordinate to the Foreign Ministry, which was co-financed by Hungary as one of the three imperial and royal ministries, which in principle only wanted to allocate minimal funds to the joint institutions.

Redl advanced rapidly. After a few months he came to the customer service office, which was responsible for the intelligence surveillance of all foreign states. In 1905 he was promoted to major and in 1907 took over the management of the customer service office. A few months later he became the deputy head of the records office, which made him one of the closest confidants of the chief of the general staff. After being promoted to colonel in May 1912, Redl was transferred to Prague on October 18 of the same year as Chief of Staff of the VIII Army Corps , which was commanded by the former head of the registry office Arthur Giesl von Gieslingen .

The "Redl Affair"

Redl's espionage activity

For a long time it was assumed that the Russian Ochrana , who was in charge of foreign espionage at the time and had offices in Moscow , Saint Petersburg and Warsaw , which was then Russian , had actively approached Redl. She worked closely with the "Department for Scouting" in the Tsarist General Staff. The Ochrana department in Warsaw was responsible for Austria and had a strength of 50 men, 150 of whom belonged to the reserve. The chief of scouting was Colonel Nikolai Stepanowitsch Batjuschin, who around 1901 sent a perfectly German-speaking Baltic German named Pratt to Vienna as a "vacationer" in order to recruit a high-ranking confederate from the Vienna registry office. In his search for weak points in the private lives of these officers, he allegedly struck gold in 1903 with Captain Redl, who at the time was having a homosexual relationship with a Lieutenant Meterling of the 3rd Dragoon Regiment . Pratt is said to have blackmailed Redl and forced him to espionage for the Ochrana.

Historians meanwhile believe that such blackmail never took place, since the sources in the Moscow archives do not contain any evidence of Redl's homosexuality, and that the initiative came from Redl himself to finance his lavish lifestyle. It is possible that the Russian agents did not even know the identity of their informant, because Redl had initiated the contact undercover and documents and money were always sent by post. At first he was looked after by the Russian military attaché Baron de Roop, an activity that Emperor Franz Joseph had expressly forbidden his military attachés to do in other countries. When de Roop had to leave the country for espionage, his successor, Colonel Mitrofan Martschenko , took care of it , who was later expelled for the same reason. He judged Redl in October 1907 as follows:

“Treacherous, closed, concentrated and dutiful, good memory ... sweet, soft, gentle language, ... rather clever and wrong than intelligent and talented. Cynic…"

With the Russians generously rewarding Redl, he was now able to lead a life that was otherwise reserved for aristocrats. As a matter of principle, he only frequented high-class restaurants and afforded himself two expensive automobiles, his own servants, horses, and allowance payments to his lovers (most recently the Uhlan lieutenant Stefan Horinka). In order to optimize his income, he began to offer his documents to the Italian and French secret services, which resulted in an annual salary of around 50,000 kroner .

Redl did not often hand over documents, but when they did, they were extensive and of great military importance for the opponents of the monarchy. He betrayed almost everything that was subject to secrecy in the Austro-Hungarian Army : plans for mobilization , troop strengths , inspection reports , plans for a fortress . He photographed the documents and developed the images himself. He also exposed Austrian spies, although not all of them were executed in Russia, as is sometimes claimed in books about Redl. In addition, he launched false Russian reports on the General Staff about the Russian troop strength, the quality of the troops and the duration of the mobilization, which was shown less.

The setbacks suffered by the Austrian scout service were of course noticeable. However, Redl and his clients knew how to make up for these setbacks with supposedly "successful actions". These were based on false Russian secret documents and "exposed" Russian agents who had become a burden for Redl's client and were sacrificed. However, it is incomprehensible that one never seriously investigated the origin of one's publicly displayed wealth. The Austrian intelligence service contented itself with declaring Redl's inheritance, which in reality was quite insignificant.

Once it was only with luck that Redl escaped exposure. In 1909 Major Lelio Graf Spannocchi was a military attaché in St. Petersburg. Spannocchi had qualified for this task through special achievements and earned the emperor's trust. In St. Petersburg he made friends with the British military attaché Guy Percy Wyndham (1865–1941), who one day confided in him that a senior Austrian general staff officer was passing all the military secrets to the Russians they wanted. Spannocchi informed the head of the registry office, Colonel Hordlicka, who did not investigate this suspicion and - when Spannocchi wanted to report personally to the Minister of War - asked him not to contact him, but to Colonel Redl. Together with the Russians, he managed to expose Spannocchi, obtain his recall from Moscow and inflict damage to his career, which, however, did not last.

Redl's exposure

On October 18, 1912, Redl was transferred to Prague, where he was appointed Chief of Staff of the VIII. Kuk Corps. Since in his new role he could hardly meet with the other side's liaison officers inconspicuously, money was mostly sent by post. Such a poste restante money shipment, addressed to a certain Nikon Nizetas, was returned by the main post office in Vienna to the posting post office in Eydtkuhnen in East Prussia as undeliverable after the deadline for recovery (collection period) . When the letter was opened in search of clues to the sender, 6000 crowns in notes and addresses came to light. The letter was forwarded to the German intelligence service. Major Walter Nicolai found two spy addresses known to the Prussians and Austrians in the letter and informed the Austrian Major i. G. Maximilian Ronge from the registry office. The letter had meanwhile been so compromised by the official opening that the recipient had to assume that its contents were known. Major Ronge had a new letter written, which Major Nicolai had posted in Berlin. The chief of the state police Edmund von Gayer had the counter for poste restante letters in the post office on the meat market monitored for over a month. His only hope was that the recipient would ask about the letter again. When Redl picked up the letter on May 25, 1913, he was tracked and clearly identified as the addressee based on the handwritten collection and posting slips that he had thrown away.

Attempted cover-up by the General Staff

For the chief of the Austro- Hungarian General Staff , Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf , who was controversial in Hungary and also in the Foreign Ministry, this meant a double blow. In addition to the betrayal of secrets, there was now an embarrassing process looming, which would have revealed the failures of the General Staff in the security check of officers in key positions and which would have provided the Hungarians with a lot of ammunition which could ultimately have led to his recall. He therefore ordered absolute secrecy. A delegation of officers was supposed to visit Redl in his domicile (the Hotel Klomser in Vienna's Herrengasse ) and arrest him. The delegation, consisting of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army, Major General Franz Höfer von Feldsturm , members of the Evidenzbüro Urbanski and Ronge and the military judge ( auditor ) Wenzel Vorlicek , found Redl, who suspected that he had been exposed, in his hotel room while preparing for suicide.

“I already know why the gentlemen are coming. I am the victim of an unhappy passion; I know that I have forfeited my life and ask for a weapon to end my existence. "

He confessed to his former colleague Ronge that in 1910 and 1911 he served foreign countries on a large scale and worked without accomplices. Ronge brought a pistol and a packet of poison from his office, and then they withdrew to give the criminal the opportunity to bring his life to a quick end . In the morning he was found as a corpse. Conrad reported heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand , the inspector general of the Austro-Hungarian Army, by telegram that Redl had shot himself "for a previously unknown cause". The emperor was informed in a similar way. A similar dispatch went to the press on May 26th.

Exposing the case to the public

The commission entrusted with the investigation of the case (Höfer-Feldsturm, Urbanski, Ronge, Vorlicek) was immediately sent by express train from Vienna to Prague to investigate Redl's accommodation and secure traces.

According to journalist Egon Erwin Kisch , the commission arrived in Prague around noon on suicide day. Since it was Sunday, it was impossible to find a civil servant locksmith who could open doors and other locked containers. A civil locksmith was therefore brought in to do this work. He belonged to the soccer team of DBC Sturm Prague and missed an important game due to the assignment, which is why he was reprimanded by Kisch, then local reporter for the German-language Prague newspaper Bohemia and honorary chairman of DBC Sturm Prague. When Kisch found out the reason for the absence in detail, he realized that the householder could only be Colonel Redl, whose death the newspapers had just reported. The information provided by the locksmith indicated that espionage and homosexuality were involved. Due to the censorship, Kisch could only bring this sensational report in the form of a denial of allegedly false facts, it appeared in bold on the front page of the Monday edition of Bohemia :

"We are asked by high authorities to refute the rumors that have emerged especially in military circles that the Chief of Staff of the Prague Corps, Colonel Alfred Redl, who committed suicide in Vienna the day before yesterday, had betrayed military secrets and carried out espionage for Russia."

This report caused quite a stir; It was also in this way that the emperor and heir to the throne learned of Redl's betrayal. An army of reporters began to look into the case. The representation of Kisch that he was solely responsible for the disclosure is doubted by many sides. Although Egon Erwin Kisch's reference to the Redl case can be found in the Prague daily newspaper Bohemia , the lexicon of espionage in the 20th century falsely claims :

"The alleged participation of the reporter Egon Erwin Kisch (Prague Bohemia and foreign correspondent for the 'Berliner Tagblatt') in the discovery is based on his own later account, for which there is no evidence."

According to research by Michael Horowitz, Kisch's portrayal of having become aware of the affair through the Prague locksmith is an invention of Kisch to protect a high-ranking informant. The war ministry only responded three days later by reporting that Redl had committed suicide "when they were about to transfer him to foreign powers for homosexual misconduct and betrayal of secrets". Even later, the ministry kept silent about the fact that Redl had been urged to commit suicide and that this prevented a complete investigation of the case. The head of the records office, Urbanski, later claimed that he had delivered a ruthless report, but that it had been played down by the military chancellery of the heir to the throne. Another scandal became public when a youngster bought Redl's camera and found photographs of top-secret military documents in it. They had been overlooked when Redl's apartment in Prague was searched.

When working through the case, the Austrian Abwehramt found that Redl's account with Neue Wiener Sparkasse had recorded deposits in a remarkably quick succession from 1905 to 1913: a total of 116,700 kroner. The time period and the amount of the deposits suggest that Redl's acts of treason lasted longer and were more significant than he had admitted shortly before his death. A final clarification was no longer possible because of Redl's death.

Alfred Redl was buried in a night and fog action at the Vienna Central Cemetery in a grave without a tombstone (in group 79, row 27, number 38). His grave was subsequently desecrated by angry citizens. After the scandal subsided, a tombstone was erected. This was removed by the National Socialists in 1944. Today the grave is officially abandoned and newly occupied. His bones still rest there.

Military impact

When the de Bataille order of war , the mobilization instructions for all contingencies, the reserve handbook, counter-espionage measures in Galicia, cover addresses of foreign general staffs, espionage correspondence, documents on scouting and other things were found in Redl's private rooms, the greatest damage to be assumed was treason of the Austrian deployment planning against Russia - out. The documents found represented the forces required to initiate military operations and their distribution in space. This assumption has since been confirmed by Russian historians.

After the affair was uncovered, the Austrian secret service did its best to downplay it in public. The first trace was mentioned in March 1912, Redl's increased need for money was set " in connection with his fateful passion " and a published autopsy report alleged a pathological change in his brain. At the same time, attempts were made to change the deployment plan and to suggest to the Russian side that the betrayed plans were still valid.

Many historians assume that Redl's betrayal contributed at least to the devastating defeats of Austria-Hungary during the first months of World War I , as the betrayed plans were very extensive and not completely rearranged in the short time between his death and the outbreak of World War I could. Since Redl also had Austrian and German spies exposed in Russia and thus shielded the massive armament of the Russian army as much as possible, Austria-Hungary received a far too optimistic view of the balance of power. The Austrian deputy to the Imperial Council, Count Adalbert Sternberg, commented on this after the First World War (and with regard to Redl's betrayal of the Russian Colonel in the General Staff, Kyrill Petrovich Laikow, who is said to have offered Austria no less than the entire Russian deployment plan) as follows:

“This villain [Redl] denounced every Austrian spy, because the case of the Russian colonel [Laikow] was repeated several times. Redl delivered our secrets to the Russians and prevented us from finding out Russian secrets through spies. In 1914 the Austrians and Germans allegedly did not know the existence of 75 divisions, which made up more than the entire Austro-Hungarian army ... "

Von Sternberg goes so far as to analyze the consequences of the Redl case as follows:

"If we had seen clearly, our generals would not have driven the dignitary to declare war ."

Espionage historians such as CIA boss Allen Dulles and the Soviet general Michail Milstein unanimously described Redl as an “arch traitor” who contributed to the Austro-Hungarian defeats in the first months of the war, but without any further details.

On the other hand, the tsarist general staff apparently also trusted in the unchanged validity of the deployment plan it had bought and was surprised when the main Austro-Hungarian power advanced 100 to 200 km further west than expected, which led to the Austrian successes in the battles of Kraśnik and Komarów .

Other historians come to the conclusion that Redl did not play a significant role at all, but was useful as a "scapegoat" for defeats of the Austro-Hungarian army. The Anglo-Australian espionage writer Philip Knightley argues in this sense. The statement that Redl was to blame for the devastating defeats of the Austro-Hungarian army in the first phase of the war with Russia is described by him as very vague and basically not proven. The damage that Redl did to the planning of the operation is still controversial today, but it is now more indicative that the information was ultimately of no decisive value for his Russian financiers.

In their most recent study on the Redl case , Leidinger and Moritz came to a similar judgment based on a much broader source of sources . Although they consider it to be proven that the Russian army had " on the eve of the First World War a level of knowledge that was worrying for the Austro-Hungarian army " through spies like Redl , this fact should not be overestimated. On the one hand, numerous instructions and deployment laboratories for the troops were reworked after the "Redl affair"; on the other hand, the Russian side was aware of certain natural and spatial factors. a. Conditions such as B. Railway capacities, already known, which is why the deployment of Austria-Hungary in a war could in a certain way be "calculated in advance". It should not be forgotten that with the start of the war in 1914, in some cases completely different, also constantly changing political and military factors came into play, so that rigid adherence to the information provided by Redl was of little help in the current situation.

Film adaptations

literature

Fiction

documentary

  • Fitzk Kaltis, Gerhard Jelinek : Passion and betrayal. Alfred Redl - the spy of the century . First broadcast: May 24, 2013.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ István Deák : The K. (below) K. Officer 1848-1918. Böhlau, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-205-98242-8 , p. 175.
  2. ↑ Georg Markus: The Redl case. Amalthea, Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-85002-191-2 , pp. 33-35.
  3. ↑ Verena Moritz , Hannes Leidinger : Colonel Redl. The espionage case, the scandal, the facts. Residenz Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7017-3169-5 ; Herbert Lackner : A passionate spy. In: Profil , 42 (2012), October 15, 2012, pp. 26–34, here p. 34. Albert Pethö: Agents for the double-headed eagle. Austria-Hungary's secret service in the World War. Stocker, Graz 1998, ISBN 3-7020-0830-6 , p. 231ff; Günther Kronenbitter: "War in Peace". The leadership of the Austro-Hungarian army and the great power politics of Austria-Hungary 1906-1914. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56700-4 , p. 18; Verena Moritz, Hannes Leidinger, Gerhard Jagschitz: In the center of power. The many faces of the head of the secret service, Maximilian Ronge. Residenz-Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7017-3038-4 , p. 111.
  4. ↑ Albert Pethö: The case of Redl. In: Wolfgang Krieger (ed.): Secret services in world history. Espionage and covert actions from ancient times to the present. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50248-2 , pp. 138-150, here: pp. 145f. and 359 (footnotes).
  5. ↑ Albert Pethö: Agents for the double eagle. Austria-Hungary's secret service in the World War. Stocker, Graz 1998, ISBN 3-7020-0830-6 , p. 232.
  6. ↑ a b Albert Pethö: The Redl case. In: Wolfgang Krieger (ed.): Secret services in world history. Espionage and covert actions from ancient times to the present. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50248-2 , pp. 138–150, here: p. 144.
  7. ↑ Verena Moritz, Hannes Leidinger: Colonel Redl. The espionage case, the scandal, the facts. Residenz Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7017-3169-5 , p. 44f.
  8. ↑ Lelio Spannocchi was an uncle of Emil Spannocchi , the army commander of the Austrian Armed Forces from 1973 to 1981.
  9. ↑ a b Albert Pethö: Agents for the double eagle. Austria-Hungary's secret service in the World War. Stocker, Graz 1998, ISBN 3-7020-0830-6 , p. 228.
  10. ↑ Janusz Piekalkiewicz: World history of espionage . Komet Verlag, Vienna 2002 ISBN 3-933366-31-3 , pp. 258f.
  11. ↑ Verena Moritz, Hannes Leidinger: Colonel Redl. The espionage case, the scandal, the facts. Residenz Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7017-3169-5 , p. 110.
  12. ↑ a b Albert Pethö: Agents for the double eagle. Austria-Hungary's secret service in the World War. Stocker, Graz 1998, ISBN 3-7020-0830-6 , p. 229.
  13. ↑ Georg Markus: The Redl case. Amalthea, Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-85002-191-2 , p. 233.
  14. ↑ Albert Pethö: The case of Redl. In: Wolfgang Krieger (ed.): Secret services in world history. Espionage and covert actions from ancient times to the present. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50248-2 , pp. 138–150, here: p. 142.
  15. ↑ Georg Markus: The Redl case. Frankfurt am Main 1986, pp. 235ff.
  16. ↑ Walther Schmieding (ed.), Egon Erwin Kisch: Nothing is more exciting than the truth. Reports from 4 decades. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-462-01320-3 , Volume 2: p. 79.
  17. ↑ Günther Kronenbitter: "War in Peace". The leadership of the Austro-Hungarian army and the great power politics of Austria-Hungary 1906-1914. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56700-4 , p. 17; and Albert Pethö: agents for the double-headed eagle. Austria-Hungary's secret service in the World War. Stocker, Graz 1998, ISBN 3-7020-0830-6 , p. 385ff.
  18. ^ Helmut Roewer , Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl: Lexicon of secret services in the 20th century . Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2317-9 .
  19. ↑ Michael Horowitz: A life for the newspaper. The mad reporter Egon Erwin Kisch. Orac, Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-85368-993-0 .
  20. ^ Herbert Lackner: A passionate spy. In: Profil, 42 (2012), October 15, 2012, pp. 26–34, here p. 32.
  21. ^ Clemens M. Gruber: Famous graves in Vienna. From the Capuchin Crypt to the Central Cemetery. Böhlau, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-205-77007-2 , p. 60.
    Hellin Sapinski: 100 years ago: The 'king of traitors to the fatherland' falls. The press of May 24, 2013.
  22. ↑ a b Egon Erwin Kisch: The case of the Chief of Staff Redl. Klett-Cotta, 1988, p. 59.
  23. ^ Richard Grenier: Colonel Redl: The Man Behind The Screen Myth , "The New York Times," October 13, 1985.
  24. ↑ Albert Pethö: The case of Redl. In: Wolfgang Krieger (ed.): Secret services in world history. Espionage and covert actions from ancient times to the present. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50248-2 , pp. 138–150, here: p. 150.
  25. ↑ Phillip Knightley: The History of Espionage in the 20th Century. Scherz, Bern 1989, ISBN 3-502-16384-7 .
  26. ↑ Günther Kronenbitter: "War in Peace". The leadership of the Austro-Hungarian army and the great power politics of Austria-Hungary 1906-1914. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56700-4 , p. 237.
  27. ↑ See Verena Moritz, Hannes Leidinger: Colonel Redl. The espionage case, the scandal, the facts. Residenz Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7017-3169-5 , p. 226.
  28. ↑ See Verena Moritz, Hannes Leidinger: Colonel Redl. The espionage case, the scandal, the facts. Residenz Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7017-3169-5 , pp. 221–244.
  29. ^ Passion and betrayal: Colonel Redl - The Spy of the Century. orf.at
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on April 11, 2007 .
personal data
SURNAME Redl, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Colonel in the Austro-Hungarian Army and Russian spy
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Lviv , Galicia
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 1913
Place of death Vienna