Stage service

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or section needs to be revised. Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

The stage service was an operational ship supply network of the German defense . It consisted of contact points for supplying ships of the German Reich, especially submarines in the First and Second World Wars, with oil or coal, and dock facilities in several countries friendly with the German Reich. He was headed by Ministerialrat Friedrich Fetzer in the High Command of the Navy (OKM) , Fetzer was on the supervisory board of Continental Oil . Activities in Spain represented a special focus. The number of Abwehr employees in Spain in July 1936 is estimated at 50.

financing

In July 1938, at the suggestion of Wilhelm Canaris, a reptile fund of 11.5 million Reichsmarks was deposited by the High Command of the Navy for oil purchases in cities such as Amsterdam, London and Zurich. Of this money, 1.5 million Reichsmarks were deposited in Spain and one million in the Canary Islands. This was to prevent seizure or freezing by UK and French banks. In Spain, SOFINDUS also provided funding. On April 17, 1939, Canaris and Hermann Göring agreed that the intelligence service in Spain would spend US $ 96,000 annually on naval equipment and US $ 600,000. Worldwide, US $ 1,480,000 was spent annually on the stage service.

Technical development

Telefunken

With the laying of the first intercontinental telegraph cable in 1866, globalization had acquired a new technical quality. The worldwide cable networks formed a pool which was dominated by British companies. Trading companies from the German Reich used these networks. For reasons of competition and to be able to use it in the event of war, the German Reich built its own cable network.

Wireless telegraphy was a new competitor for the transmission of information. The technical effort was different. While the monopoly of the submarine cables was able to establish itself through exclusive landfall rights and in the event of war offered a very long, difficult-to-control line of attack, the concessional protection of wireless telegraphy lay in patents on transmitters and receiver systems. Their vulnerability in the event of war was selective. The coal stations of the Imperial Navy also formed a punctual structure . In 1911, the tasks of Telefunken and coal stations were combined on the occasion of the panther jump . The advantage lay in the diplomatic protection that the owners of the coal stations had from their consular duties. The disadvantage to wireless telegraphy was that coal stations were at sea level.

“... when I look around in the field of technical inventions, I cannot find an example that shows such a rapidity in recognizing the scientific context and the associated technical exploitation that can even be roughly compared with spark telegraphy . It always took decades for another great technical invention to develop to a certain degree. With wireless telegraphy, that actually happened within 10, 12 years. [...] The most important and most interesting does not immediately reach the public. The importance that the Navy today attaches to spark telegraphy has prompted it to incessantly incite inventors to make ever more progress. But the results and the means by which this has been achieved are no longer published today, they are kept secret. One should consider that in the Navy, wireless telegrams are not only transmitted from a squadron unit, but are exchanged with fleets 1,000 and more kilometers away, that these telegrams seek a route which is simply prescribed for them by the telegraph operator and which do not interfere with one another . [...] The main part of this development is due to German research, and it is primarily the large company 'Telefunken' that we have in Germany that has made these aids available in an extraordinarily precise manner. "

- Adolf Slaby , April 25, 1911, before the Colonial Technical Commission

Tabulating machines

The transmitted signs of the wireless telegraphy were recorded with the effort to be expected by opponents of war or trade competitors. That is why the messages were encrypted with Rotor cipher machines . The Imperial Navy used tabulating machines from Remington Rand , System Powers, for decryption . Kurt Passow presented the use of the tabulating machines in the naval administration.

Stage service in Spain

From 1934 to 1938, the stage service worked to ensure that the Compañía Española de Petróleos (CEPSA) received crude oil from Latin America and the USA so that the German Reich could be supplied with petroleum products from the CEPSA in the event of a war with France. The Spanish Civil War interrupted the development of the stage service. During the Spanish Civil War, the Condor Legion had no problem supplying petroleum products as Royal Dutch Shell , Texas Oil Company and the Standard Oil Company supplied.

In 1938 Spain became one of the four world centers of stage service. In Spain, the most comprehensive naval supply outside of the German Reich was established. In June 1938, Hellmuth Heye inspected the sites in Spain that had been closed during the civil war.

Transición Española

In 1945 the Western Allies compiled a list of 104 people whom they accused of war crimes and of whom they had identified a place of residence in Spain. This list was given to the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where it was found in 1999 by El País . From spring 1946 Paul Winzer and other members of the stage service at Hohenasperg fortress were interrogated by the Counter Intelligence Corps for two years. Some employees of the stage service were brought to Caldes de Malavella in 1945 . In 1949 Hans Doerr sat down with Konrad Adenauer for Germans interned in Spain, who u. a. were interned in the Nanclares camp.

Alicante

Baron Hans Joaquín Kindler von Knobloch, consul in Alicante came to Alicante in 1925 and worked for a consignataria de buques . He tried to free José Antonio Primo de Rivera from prison.

Barcelona

Between 1934 and 1935 there was a branch of Deutsche Werke SA in Barcelona , a location for the stage service. On May 6, 1945, the Deutsche Werke SA stage service in Barcelona owned currencies from 27 countries, e.g. B. from Argentina, India and Spain.

  • Fernando Birk, representative of IG Farben .
  • Hans Heineman murdered a Canadian pilot who was on the run in Spain.
  • Rudolf von Merode murdered numerous French citizens in Saint-Jean-de-Luz .

Bilbao

  • Josef Boogen († 1985) came to Spain in 1929; In 1945 he was held in a Hotel de Vitoria-Gasteiz for a year . He was told to give his fortune to straw men. In Spain, citizens of the German Reich who did not have legal residence status were expropriated from May 6, 1945.
  • Eduard Bunge and Friedhelm Burbach were each consul in Bilbao.
  • Eugene Erhardt ran an Empresa consignataria de barcos .
  • Otto Hinrichsen († 1982) led the defense staff in Latin America. In 1945 he was brought to Caldes de Malavella .
  • Federico Lipperheide was a member of the supervisory board of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya and headed Industrias Reunidas Minero-Metalúrgicas .
  • Karl Pasch was the general agent for MAN in Spain.
  • Wilhelm Pasch led the company Pasch Hermanos which exported ores, especially tungsten .
  • Wilhelm Plohr († 1977) NSDAP / AO Bilbao moved to Marbella after 1945 .
  • Wilhelm Spreter headed the NSDAP / AO propaganda in Bilbao.

Cadiz

On January 12, 1939, the radio operator, Lieutenant Rolf Rüggeberg (1907–1979) came via Burgos to the Escuela Naval Militar de Oficiales in San Fernando (Spain) near Cádiz as a naval advisor.

Donostia

During the Second World War, Willy Beisel Heuss made the German community in Donostia almost an appendix of the German Empire .

Madrid

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

  • Honorary Consul Sauermann protested at the hijacking of the Lufthansa Post Ju 52 DA POK Max von Müller from Las Palmas , with which Johannes Bernhardt then flew on.
  • Edmond Niemann alias Pablo García came to Las Palmas in 1934.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Jakob Ahlers, the consul of Santa Cruz de Tenerife , ran a Compañía Consignataria de Buques at the port since 1906 . Ahler's general agency for products from the German Reich also included banking services. In Ahler's extended backyard, the CEPSA built an oil refinery between April and November 1930, which refined 5,000 barrels a day. The refinery's starting capital was 75 million pesetas, 60 percent of which was owned by Juan March . The German Reich took a stake in the refinery through March in 1938, as its representatives were made credible that Shell would otherwise participate in the refinery to ensure a boycott against Mexico, where PEMEX was founded from nationalized shell facilities. In August 1936, Jakob Ahlers also supplied components for weapons production to the putschists under Luis Orgaz Yoldi .

Santander

Kurt Bormann († 1987) was a member of the Gestapo, the passport department of the organization of former SS members .

Seville

  • Gustav Draeger was consul of the German Empire in Seville, was under the protection of Gonzalo Queipo de Llano .
  • Adolf Clauss
  • Ludwig JR Clauss was brought to Caldas de Malavella and released.

Valencia

Walter Junghanns was involved when bombs were packed in orange boxes which were sent to Great Britain.

Fuerteventura

Gustav Winter built a power station in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. During the Spanish Civil War he planned a cement factory and a fish factory on Fuerteventura, during the Second World War the German Empire acquired the Jandía peninsula to build an airport. In 1946, Winter had the Villa Winter built in Cofete on Jandía.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Hampe, Peter Hampe Albrecht Ritschl: New results on the ns upswing. Akademie Verlag, 2003 page 195 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  2. ^ Robert H. Whealey: Hitler and Spain: The Nazi Role in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 . University Press of Kentucky, 2005, ISBN 978-0-8131-9139-3 , pp. 96 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ Adolf Slaby quoted from Michael Friedewald, Funkentelegrafie und deutsche Kolonien: Technology as a means of imperialist politics (PDF; 267 kB)
  4. ^ Kurt Passow: The machine reporting in military technical monthly books. (No. 62) 1965, page 4
  5. ^ Titus Kockel , German Oil Policy 1928-1938 Page 258
  6. ↑ Heberlein has left . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 1950, ( Online - July 13, 1950 ).
  7. ↑ a b El País 30/03/1997, lot 104 de la lista negra
  8. ^ Die Welt, December 7, 1949 Cabbage soup, watchtower and no support from home
  9. ↑ 34395 Safehaven report regarding Motores Deutsche Werke SA Barcelona, ​​Spain. 3 pp. December 1945
  10. ↑ El País , 01.06.1982, Un importante y empresario desconocido
  11. ↑ diariovasco August 14, 2008, RAMÓN BAREA, COMISARIO DE LA EXPOSICIÓN, "Donostia casi llegó a ser un apéndice más del III Reich", El historiador prepara un libro sobre el día a día de la capital donostiarra durante la II Guerra Mundial
  12. ^ Federal Archives, Karl Albrecht (1902–1976)
  13. ↑ El País , 01/04/1997, Un presunto nazi es el consul general de Alemania en Málaga desde 1974
  14. ^ El Mundo , 22 de June 2004, Un Hans Juretschke, uno de los grandes conocedores de la España del XVIII y XIX
  15. ↑ FTR # 682 Update on AIDS as a Man Made Disease
  16. ↑ El Mundo, April 13th 1997, Un presunto agente nazi dirigía la empresa que suministró los aparatos de escuchas al Cesid
  17. ↑ diariodeburgos, 10/08/2008 Reinhard Spitzy se refugió durante casi dos años como un monje más en el monasterio de San Pedro de Cardeña
  18. ^ Ian Kershaw , Hitler: 1936-1945: Nemesis
  19. ↑ You will win, but you will not win . In: Der Spiegel . No. 30 , 1986 ( online - July 21, 1986 ).
  20. ^ Secret mission for Guillermo . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1976 ( online - August 23, 1976 ).
  21. ^ Robert H. Whealey: Hitler and Spain: The Nazi Role in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 . University Press of Kentucky, 2005, ISBN 978-0-8131-9139-3 , pp. 146 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  22. ↑ la nacion 31 de marzo de 1997 La increíble historia de la familia Rant
  23. ^ Philosophy, La vida de Gustav Winter