Karl Brose

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Karl Brose (born February 8, 1855 in Cöslin ; † March 10, 1930 in Oldenburg ) was a Prussian major general and head of the military intelligence service, Section III b of the Great General Staff .

Life

Karl Brose was the son of the businessman of the same name, Karl Brose, and his wife Albertine, née Rackow. After attending general school, on October 16, 1875, he joined the 8th Pomeranian Infantry Regiment No. 61 of the Prussian Army as a flag junior and was promoted to secondary lieutenant until mid-February 1877 . After completing the application process, Brose was assigned to the War Academy in Berlin on October 1, 1883 . He finished this after three years and on March 22, 1887 became Premier Lieutenant in the 5th East Prussian Infantry Regiment No. 41 in Königsberg . Exactly one year later, on March 22, 1888, he was assigned to the General Staff in Berlin, which lasted until March 24, 1890. As a captain he was aggregated in the Infantry Regiment No. 132 without a patent and received a command to the side budget of the Great General Staff. Under position à la suite , Brose received his patent in the 2nd Thuringian Infantry Regiment No. 32 on September 20 . His use took place here in Section III b as a processor of the area Russia . The section, which was occupied by three officers at this time, was initially under the direction of Major Artur Waenker von Dankenschweil (1849-1894). In 1892 Major Mueller took over the management of the section and from 1895 Major Cai Theodor Dame (1851-1937). Its main task was to evaluate the incoming information from the individual intelligence gathering points in the area of ​​the border with Russia. To help select suitable people for intelligence gathering and to guide the district officers deployed for this purpose. As well as working with them to promote the establishment of the news collection points. After seven years in the General Staff took place on 27 January 1897 he was transferred as a company commander in the Fusilier Regiment "Prince Henry of Prussia" (Brandenburg) no. 35 . Brose received the character of Major on June 16, 1900 and was placed à la suite of the Fusilier Regiment "General-Feldmarschall Graf Blumenthal" (Magdeburgisches) No. 36 . He received the patent on April 14th and was reassigned to the General Staff.

After a short handover period, Brose then replaced the previous chief of Section IIIb in the General Staff, Cai Theodor Dame (1851-1937), his former superior, who was scheduled to return to the troops as battalion commander. At this time, Section IIIb, the military intelligence service of the Great General Staff, was still in the difficult development phase to broaden its information base in the individual army corps in the area of ​​the borders with France and Russia. The main goal was to obtain important, militarily significant information for assessing enemy activities. It was here that military intelligence stations were set up and profiled, headed by border police officers who were instructed and managed via Section III b. In addition, the task consisted of the defense against espionage activities through own information and the coordination with the Central Offices (C.St.), which are also still being set up, as well as the regional police stations. Of no small importance was the fact that the political framework conditions changed several times during his term of office and the experiences of earlier military conflicts experienced a serious change as a result of the Russo-Japanese war 1904-1905. Among other things, this resulted in a realignment of the military intelligence service around 1908 for the time of a war.

This new stage was characterized above all by the fact that from the summer of 1906 there was a further increase in personnel in Section IIIb through instructions from the Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke , the younger “by junior professional officers with foreign language skills and general staff training”. After their selection in Section IIIb in Berlin, they were familiarized with the task and then assigned to the army corps as intelligence officers (NO). To them belonged, for the I. Army Corps in Königsberg, First Lieutenant Walter Nicolai (1873-1947) and for the XVI. Army Corps in Metz, Captain Schulz. In 1908, as part of its regular reporting obligations, Brose commented to his superior Erich Ludendorff on the previous deployment of intelligence officers and was able to determine that this step had achieved a much greater ability to inform and act in Section IIIb. As a result, four more intelligence officers were deployed in the same year, two in the north-east and two in the west, whose leadership was carried out by the section from Berlin. In addition, there was the demand to find support and acceptance in the individual army corps for the necessity of secret intelligence gathering organization. Brose was promoted to colonel on March 22, 1910 and on October 18, as planned, handed over the management of Section III b to his successor Major Wilhelm Heye (1869–1947). With Brose, a head of Section IIIb was appointed for the first time, during the time when a German intelligence service was being established, who already had previous intelligence experience and held this position for ten years.

After returning to the troops, Brose was put up for disposition with effect from October 18, 1912 . It was only reused under the conditions of the First World War. At this point in time, the previous Section IIIb was upgraded to Division IIIb in the Great General Staff, staffed by experienced reserve officers and war casualties, and the Deputy Division IIIb was created in the Deputy General Staff. From 1914 onwards, Brose was appointed head of the intelligence service department, reporting directly to Department IIIb in the General Staff. Even though he was already a colonel, his former colleague, Major Nicolai, was his immediate superior. His area of ​​responsibility consisted in the organization of counter-espionage, the implementation of censorship and press work under the conditions of war. This also included the control of the foreigners staying in the area of ​​responsibility, especially from the countries of the "war opponents", as well as the monitoring of trade beyond the borders (front lines). A few days after the outbreak of the war, it turned out that the establishment of the front areas had almost completely stopped the gathering of information, but also the cooperation with the informants working in the border area. The objective of the intelligence work of Department IIIb, a weighty pillar for clearing up information in the direction of Russia with intelligence resources, had thus proven to be hardly feasible. Therefore, the urgently needed military information had to be obtained via the neutral countries and contacts to the informants had to be re-established. The mobile intelligence service (mob.III b) created for this purpose when the war broke out was temporarily subordinated to Deputy III b, so that Karl Brose was responsible, in order to implement this task quickly. The severed connections could only be tied again with great difficulty under the conditions of the state of war. They were then rebuilt via neutral Sweden, Switzerland and partly also via Romania.

In view of the devastating developments that began in mid-1916 on the front lines and also in the interior, the replacement of the 2nd Supreme Army Command under General Erich von Falkenhayn (1861-1922) and the takeover of military leadership by General Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff (1865– 1937) there were also significant changes in the structure, the staffing and the direction of the work of the III b. As a result of this realignment, Brose was retired at the end of 1916 and on January 27, 1917 he was given the status of major general.

Karl Brose was married. From 1917 he withdrew from the usual military structures and the public and later took up residence in Oldenburg. Since that point in time, neither the cultivation of political relationships, a later engagement in public nor the usual cultivation of military tradition with the majority of senior officers can be ascertained through Karl Brose. He died in Oldenburg on March 10, 1930.

literature

  • Hilmar-Detlef Brückner: The NO of Section III b of the Great General Staff of the Prussian Army 1906–1918. In: Jürgen W. Schmidt: Secret Service, Military and Politics in Germany. Ludwigsfelder Verlagsanstalt, 2008.
  • Johannes Ehrengruber: Secret and intelligence services of the German Empire from the outbreak of the First World War. grin Verlag, Munich 2013.
  • Klaus Walter Frey: Colonel Walter Nicolai, head of the German Military Intelligence Service III B in the General Staff (1913-1918). In: Jürgen W. Schmidt: Secret Service, Military and Politics in Germany. Ludwigsfeld publishing house 2008.
  • Walter Nicolai: Insights into the intelligence service during the world war. H. Fikentscher Verlag, Leipzig 1937.
  • Brose personnel sheet. Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, MSg 109/10857, In: Jürgen W. Schmidt: Against Russia and France. The German military secret service 1890–1914. Ludwigsfeld publishing house, 2009.
  • Jürgen W. Schmidt: Counter- espionage in the German Reich from 1890 to 1906. In: Jürgen W. Schmidt: Against Russia and France. The German military secret service 1890–1914. Ludwigsfeld publishing house, 2009.
  • Jürgen W. Schmidt: Secret Service, Military and Politics in Germany. Ludwigsfeld publishing house 2008.
  • Jürgen W. Schmidt: Against Russia and France. The German military secret service 1890–1914. Ludwigsfeld publishing house, 2009.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen W. Schmidt: About the use of intelligence and secret services. In: Jürgen W. Schmidt: Against Russia and France. The German military secret service 1890-1914. Ludwigsfelder Verlagshaus, 2009, p. 536 f.
  2. ↑ Johannes Ehrengruber: Secret and intelligence services of the German Empire from the outbreak of the First World War. Grin, Munich, 2013, p. 3 ff.
  3. ↑ Aspects for the regulation of the service of border inspectors in communications (1892) GStA, HA 1.Rep. 77 tit. 343, No. 171 in: Jürgen W. Schmidt, Against Russia and France. The German military secret service 1890-1914 , Ludwigsfelder Verlagshaus, 2009, p. 604 ff.
  4. ↑ Jürgen W. Schmidt, Counter- espionage in the German Reich from 1890 to 1906, in: Jürgen W. Schmidt, Against Russia and France. The German military secret service 1890-1914 , Ludwigsfelder Verlagshaus, 2009, p. 298ff.
  5. ↑ Hilmar-Detlef Brückner: The NO of Section III b of the Great General Staff of the Prussian Army 1906-1918. In: Jürgen W. Schmidt (Ed.): Secret service, military and politics in Germany. Ludwigsfelder Verlagsanstalt, 2008, p. 26 f.
  6. ^ Walter Nicolai: Insights into the intelligence service during the World War, H. Fikentscher Verlag, Leipzig 1937, p. 103 ff.
  7. ↑ All his predecessors such as Heinrich von Brand (term of office from 1866-1867), Paul Lettow von Vorbeck (term of office from 1883-1885), Artur Waenker von Dankenschweil (term of office from 1889-1892), Major Mueller (term of office from 1892-1895), Cai Theodor Dame (term of office from 1895-1900) was subject to the customs that were common in the military at the time, relatively short deployment times in the management of troops / associations and the assumption that professional and social skills could be acquired / enforced by order.
  8. ↑ Klaus Walter Frey, Colonel Walter Nicolai, Head of the German Military Intelligence Service III B in the Great General Staff (1913-1918), p. 164 ff. In: Jürgen W. Schmidt: Secret Service, Military and Politics in Germany, Ludwigsfelder Verlagsanstalt 2008,
  9. ↑ Hilmar-Detlef Brückner. The NO of Section III b of the Great General Staff of the Prussian Army, 1906-1918, p. 57 ff. In: Jürgen W. Schmidt, Secret Service, Military and Politics in Germany, Ludwigsfelder Verlagsanstalt 2008,
personal data
SURNAME Brose, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian major general
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Cöslin
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1930
Place of death Oldenburg (Oldb)