Research Office
The Research Office (FA) of the Reich Aviation Ministry (RLM) was an intelligence service in the Third Reich , which was subordinate to the Reich Aviation Ministry only in name.
It was founded on April 10, 1933 by Hermann Göring and dealt with technical information such as signals, tape recordings and cryptography . It was supervised by the Prussian State Ministry under State Secretary Paul Körner and thus Göring. Since Göring was at the same time Prussian Prime Minister and Reich Minister of Aviation, the office could be assigned to the Reich Aviation Ministry for the purpose of camouflage, but was organizationally separated from it.
Emergence
The office arose in connection with the ordinance of the Reich President for the protection of people and state . With the " seizure of power " on February 28, 1933, the postal , telegraph and telephone secrecy was lifted . The ordinance of the Reich President for the protection of the people and the state: Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Article 117 dealt with: a. the secrecy of letters . It read:
“The secrecy of letters, as well as the secrecy of mail, telegraphs and telephones, are inviolable. Exceptions can only be permitted by Reich law. See Sections 99 to 101 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of February 1, 1877 (RGBl. P. 253) in the version of the announcement of January 4, 1924 (RGBl. IS 15) "
Article 117 was suspended “until further notice” through Section 1 of the presidential decree for the protection of the people and the state of February 28, 1933 (RGBl. IS 83) in conjunction with Article 48, Paragraph 2, Clause 2.
tasks
The tasks are partly based on the interrogations during the Nuremberg trial of the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis :
“I ask the High Court to want to take my difficulty into consideration; I don't like to talk about these things either. I must add that Goering was the only head of the Research Office. This is the institution that did all telephone surveillance in the Third Reich. This research office was not content, as has been described here, with just telephone eavesdropping and decoding; it also had its own intelligence service down to its own officials who were able to make inquiries, so that it was entirely possible, including through Marshal von Blomberg to make confidential inquiries. When Helldorff had handed the files over to Goering, Goering felt compelled to give them to Hitler . Hitler suffered a nervous breakdown and decided to fire Marshal Blomberg immediately. As Hitler later told the generals in a public session, his first thought was to appoint Colonel-General von Fritsch as Blomberg's successor . At the moment when he made this decision, Goering and Himmler reminded him that this was not possible, since Fritsch was heavily charged with criminals by a file from 1935. "
Suggesting a corresponding name for the Air Force Research Office , asked Otto Stahmer , the defender of Göring in the Nuremberg Trial: Was the Air Force Research Office connected with this?
“No, the Air Force Research Office was something completely different, had nothing to do with research on the one hand and the Air Force on the other. The phrase was a kind of camouflage because when we came to power there was quite a mess in the technical part of monitoring important news. So I first set up the Research Office, that is, a place where all technical facilities for monitoring radio operations, telegraphy, telephony and all other technical facilities were possible. Since I was only Reich Aviation Minister at the time, I was only able to store this device with myself and chose this camouflage expression. Above all, the apparatus was used to monitor and decipher the foreign missions, the important personalities who telephoned, telegraphed and radioed with foreign countries, as is customary everywhere and in all countries, and then sent the evaluation to the individual departments. The office had no agent service, no intelligence service, but was a purely technical body, recorded radio messages, recorded telephone calls where it was ordered to be monitored, recorded the telegrams and gave the evaluation to the interested parties.
In this connection I can emphasize that I have also read a great deal about the reports from Mr. Messersmith , which played a role here. At times he was the main supplier for such reports. "
structure
The office was divided into the following departments:
- Dept. I: Administration
- Dept. II: Personnel
- Dept. III: Collection approach
- Section IV: Deciphering
- Tabulation machines were used as cryptanalytic tools . These were located in the building of the former headquarters of Danatbank , which went bankrupt in July 1931, on Behrendstrasse between Wilhelmstrasse and Friedrichstrasse.
- Dept. V: Evaluation
- Dept. VI: Technical Office
- Dept. XII: scientific evaluation
Surveillance
Listening logs were written on brown paper and therefore called "brown leaves" or, colloquially, "brown birds".
- Occupation of Norway
The decision to occupy Norway on April 2, 1940 is based on a message from a Finnish diplomat, deciphered by the Research Office, which was radioed from Paris to Helsinki. The message from the Finnish embassy claimed that Winston Churchill had told the outgoing French government at a meeting that British expeditionary forces were on their way to Norway.
- Military attachés to the Pope
During the Second World War led the group "air" the defense department 1, the Abwehr station (AST) of the Military District VII in Munich later CSU chairman Josef Müller . One of his employees was Wilhelm Schmidhuber . In May 1940 Schmidhuber had given the Pope's confidante Robert Leiber the note on which the date of the start of the German offensive to the west ( May 10, 1940 ) was written. The Belgian envoy to Pius XII. Adriano Nieuwenhuys telegraphed this to his government, which is why Göring knew that a German traitor came from Berlin on April 29, 1940. On March 8, 1940, Leopold II warned Maurice Gamelin that the Wehrmacht would lead the main blow through the Ardennes and thus include the Allied troops.
- Telephone surveillance and radio surveillance
The monitoring was switched by the Ministry of Post . 500 telephone connections could be tapped in Berlin. Regional A: Positions: Cologne , Nuremberg , Hamburg , 1935 Munich . The B posts were owned by the Reichspost . Eutin ended radio monitoring in July 1945 , Prien am Chiemsee continued to operate.
building
Bernhard Bleeker was entrusted with the art in the building for the decryption centers .
- Munich
The Luftgaukommando VII Süd was built from 1937 to 1938 according to plans by German Bestelmeyer . The building is located on the south side of Prinzregentenstrasse . The garden wall is adorned with a pine cone fountain by the sculptor Joseph Wackerle, the west side of the Carré adorns Wagmüllerstraße 18-20, the official residence of Karl Michael Betzl .
- Dresden
The Luftgaukommando IV was built in 1938 according to plans by Wilhelm Kreis and sculptures by Karl Albiker at August-Bebel-Straße 19.
Personnel development
- 1933: 120 employees
- 1938: 3500 employees
- 1944: 6000 employees
ladder
- Hans Schimpf 1933-1935
- Prince Christoph Ernst August of Hessen-Kassel 1935–1943
- Gottfried Schapper 1943–1945
literature
- Günther W. Gellermann: ... and listened to Hitler. Secret Reich Matter: The eavesdropping centers of the Third Reich. Bonn 1991, ISBN 3-7637-5899-2 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Alfred Kube: Pour le mérite and swastika . P. 63
- ^ Ordinance of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State Text
- ↑ verfassungen.de
- ^ The Nuremberg Trial, main negotiation, 114th day zeno.org
- ↑ George Strausser Messersmith (1883–1960) 1933 Consul General of the USA in Berlin. Messersmith's Nose . In: Time April 15, 1946
- ^ The Nuremberg Trial, main negotiation, 180th day zeno.org
- ↑ Keep bowel movements in order . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1989, pp. 38 ( online ).
- ^ John H. Waller , The Unseen War in Europe, p. 124.
- ↑ Staatsbauamt München I , Wagmüllerstraße 18–20 ( Memento of the original from November 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) 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.
- ^ Luftgaukommando IV . ifz
- ↑ Interrogation of Paul Körner by Eric Kaufmann, Nuremberg, No. 439D, 15 Sep 1947, "USArmy, Nuremberg Trials". After Robert H. Whealey: Hitler And Spain . P. 126.
