Field Security Section

The Field Security Section was the British Army's secret service during World War II . In Germany in particular, the FSS began investigations against Nazi war criminals immediately after the war .

Emergence

Field security units, comparable to a kind of intelligence service military police , were established before the First World War . In the years 1914–1918, the Police intelligence was set up to protect the troops against espionage and sabotage. The units were poorly equipped and poorly trained and, according to a later FSS member, caused more problems than they solved.

Under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Templer , Security Sections were set up in the British Expeditionary Forces from 1939 . After all, 3,040 officers and 5930 soldiers of other ranks were on duty. Formally, the service of King George VI. erected on July 15, 1940.

The unit's task was to obtain information from prisoners of war and the civilian population associated with the Allies. The Field Security Section developed an airborne section, the 89th FSS, in 1942. The airmobile units of the FSS were used in North Africa, Italy, Normandy and on the Rhine border. The 89 Military Intelligence Section was later incorporated into the British Army's 16 Air Assault Brigade .

Training and tasks

The tasks and methods of the Field Security Section were originally carried out by the Corps of Military Police (CMP) in the units of the Field Security Police (FSP). With the establishment of intelligence units, the Intelligence Corps (Int Corps) in the mid-1940s, the FSP tasks and staff of the CMP were transferred to the Int Corps. The first training units were attended by the CMP in Mytchett , but were soon relocated to Winchester in the Field Security Training Center and Depot. This training center could dismiss 77 fully trained small units in December 1940.

In the “Manual of Field Security” of 1943, u. a. the following tasks are listed:

1. Compilation of "blacklists" and "whitelists" from various sources, such as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Special Operations Executive (SOE) and Ultra . The Black Lists contained people who collaborated with the enemy, the "White Lists" were created for contact with local resistance groups and allied-friendly people.
2. Detention and interrogation of people on the black list and "high category prisoners".
3. Search for captured enemy intelligence officers and skim off documents and other interesting material.
4. Briefing of own liaison officers with intelligence information.
5. Obtaining key information.

After the end of the war, the FSS also undertook investigations of a criminal nature and convicted a number of high-ranking Nazis.

organization

The Intelligence Corps Parachute FSS was trained in skydiving and airborne operations.

Two units were set up:

• the 89 Field Security Section
• the 317 (Airborne) Field Security Section (was formed in the course of the establishment of the 6th Airborne Division , on June 1, 1943 mainly with personnel from the 89 FSS). This unit was created specifically for the upcoming Operation Overlord . Field security was mainly assigned to tasks in Normandy and the Ranville area .

The 317 FSS was relocated to Palestine with the 6th Airborne Division in 1945 and disbanded in July 1948.

equipment

The units had extensive weapon knowledge and were trained on all heavy weapons of the British Army and also on their German counterparts.

The units were armed with the handguns introduced by the British Army in 1939: the .38 Webley revolver or the Enfield revolver . The parachute units used Colt and Browning's semi-automatic pistols . The early parachute units were armed with Thompson pistols . Later the lighter Sten Gun was used. Some also use captured German 9 mm MP40s .

The 7.92mm rifle from the k98 series, the 9mm MP40 submachine gun and the 7.92mm MG34 or MP42 of the German Wehrmacht , SA and SS could be operated.

The units used field radios No18 (Manpack for “short range telephony and C / W working in forward areas”, 6 - 9 MHz) and No38 (Manpack or for vehicles) to establish the connection at their headquarters. Call sign was ACORN.

Working in Germany

The FSS, which were commanded into occupied Germany at the end of the war, had the task of looking for war criminals and Nazi leaders. The focus was on Schleswig-Holstein , as numerous functionaries and celebrities of the Nazi state had fled here via the " Rattenlinie Nord ". The last imperial government under Donitz was here and most of the bars of SS and police from the Reichsführer SS , Heinrich Himmler , had been contracted in the northern part of the country. Field Security Section 92 was based in Heide / Holstein.

The FSS units had been comprehensively prepared for their deployment in Germany. They brought files and documents with them to start their work in Germany. In Germany, Jewish people who had emigrated from Germany before the war and who also spoke German were often used. As with the arrest of Rudolf Höß , the FSS was preceded by investigations by the War Crimes Investigation Team (WCIT).

After the end of the war, the FSS monitored postal traffic in northern Germany in order to track down Nazi officials who had gone into hiding. The FSS found out that the commander of Auschwitz , Rudolf Höss, was hiding in the Flensburg area and that his wife Hedwig Höss, who lived in Dithmarschen , knew his whereabouts. The FSS investigators threatened to send her eldest son to a labor camp in Siberia if she withheld her husband's whereabouts. She then gave her husband's address and code name: He lived on Peter Hansen's farm in Gottrupel near Flensburg under the code name Franz Lang. Field Security Section 92, based in Heide / Holstein, formed an intervention team and arrested Höß during the night. He had worked as a respected farm hand on the farm.

Working in Austria

Almost 300 FSS employees were deployed in Austria. Similar to Germany, they investigated Nazi activists and collaborators during the war. They also checked Austrian women who wanted to marry British soldiers, for example. The FSS worked with the newly founded State Police and investigated monarchists and neo-Nazis as well as right-wing separatists in Tyrol . The FSS people were faced with particularly large tasks due to the large number of refugees coming from Hungary.

Known relatives

John Edward Killick was a British diplomat and Ambassador of the United Kingdom to the USSR and NATO. During the Second World War he was initially with the Suffolk Regiment and later commanded the 89th Field Security Section of the 1st Airborne Division in Arnhem . He fell into German captivity, was liberated in 1945 and commanded the FSS unit in Siegen .

literature

• Nick Van Der Bijl: Sharing the Secret: The History of the Intelligence Corps 1940-2010. Pen and Sword 2010.

swell

1. ↑ 574 FIELD SECURITY SECTION. Retrieved July 28, 2015 . 
2. ^ Field Security. JUST ORDINARY MEN, accessed July 28, 2015 . 
3. ^ History of Intelligence Corps. (PDF) (No longer available online.) British Army, archived from the original on August 7, 2015 ; accessed on July 28, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Weapons & Equipment of the Airborne solder. 89FSS World War Two Re-enactment Group, accessed July 28, 2015 . 
5. ^ Auschwitz commander in World War II: How Rudolf Höss was arrested in SH. The British journalist Thomas Harding tells in a double biography of a game of hide-and-seek, Nazi hunters and a treacherous wedding ring. In: shz.de. December 5, 2014, accessed July 28, 2015 . 
6. ↑ Alfred Ableitinger, Siegfried Beer, Eduard Staudinger (ed.): Austria under Allied occupation 1945 to 1955.