Roger Hentges

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Roger Hentges (born January 16, 1917 in Schaerbeek / Schaarbeek , Belgium ) was an agent of German intelligence services .

Life

At a young age, during the Nazi era, Hentges was committed to connecting Flanders to the German Empire . These separatist activities brought him into contact with the Abwehr . Hentges did a pilot training with the Sabena . Before September 1, 1939, Hentges took photos from advertising planes at Belgian military bases. At the end of 1939 he was arrested in Luxembourg and sentenced to death in February 1940 for espionage and then to 20 years in prison in the second instance. On May 10, 1940, he was released from custody in Luxembourg by the chief of the Abwehr's front operations command, Colonel Oscar Reile . A letter to General Alexander von Falkenhausen dated June 17, 1940 reads:

“An aviator Roger Hentges contacted me today ... Hentges has worked reliably and well for the German secret service for a long time, and he is highly recommended to me by the relevant German Wehrmacht office ... I think Hentges is suitable for the ... rescue operation German aircraft to be clamped. "

- Field headquarters 515

In the seated war , Hentges was parachuted behind the Maginot Line . During the occupation by the Wehrmacht, Hentges maintained contacts with politicians in Belgium , the Netherlands and Luxembourg for the German military administration . After setting up missile bases in the Netherlands, he was deployed in civil apron protection.

A French court sentenced Hentges to death in absentia. A Luxembourg court sentenced him to prison for "endangering the external security of the state". Hentges organized under António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal escape aid for Rexists via Rotterdam to Latin America .

Hentges was sentenced in absentia to two years in prison for economic crimes. The arrest warrant appeared to have been aimed at keeping Hentges out of Belgium, as an entry application to Belgium submitted by the Netherlands was rejected. Hentges became foreign language correspondent for the Bonn acquisition office of Friedrich Großkopf in the Mainzer Landstrasse office in Frankfurt, from which the French aircraft supplier "Radio AIR" (radio equipment) and "Socapex-Ponsot" (pilot helmets) had been ordered for the Noratlas supplied by France .

In the 1950s, Hentges worked in the Federal Republic of Germany as a stateless foreign language correspondent in arms sales. The living and working conditions of Hentges in the Frankfurt office were precarious. To finance the acquisition of state-owned companies in the Grande Nation , Hentges, to whom no state gave identity papers, had to send his future wife Brigitta to Paris or Strasbourg to collect French francs in cash. The risk of such actions lay with the Hentges couple. In 1960, Gitta Hentges ran a restaurant, the Goldene Glocke, in the Schwanheim district of Frankfurt . In the fall of 1967, Hentges had the public prosecutor draw up a protocol: On Maundy Thursday evening, 1960, Otto Praun would have called the restaurant . Praun called the Frankfurt restaurant and asked for money from Bonn, whereupon Franz Josef Strauss's personal advisor, Brigadier General Werner Repenning, drove to Munich with Hentges and a Lieutenant Colonel Schröder in a Mercedes. Hentges had the Bundeswehr officers call Praun from Munich Central Station. According to Hentges, the trio was at Munich Central Station at around 0:15 on Good Friday and Repenning and Schröder would have been back at the Central Station at 02:00 on Good Friday. On the way back to Frankfurt Schröder said that they had had difficulties with Praun: Praun wanted to attack us.

With the revelation of the story, there was a prospect that the process for the gunsmith Johann Ferbach could be resumed. Hansjoachim Seidenschnur undertook an initiative in favor of Ferbach from the arms trade at the end of 1965. In early 1969 Werner Repenning's widow contradicted Hentges' portrayal in court proceedings. Hentges was sentenced by a court in Munich to a fine of around DM 4,000 for unofficial false testimony  . The Federal Intelligence Service assumed the punishment and the costs of the proceedings , for which Hentges undertook to keep his knowledge to himself in the future.

Only remnants of the BND files about him have been found so far.

literature

  • Karl-Hans Kern : The Secrets of Dr. Josef Müller. Conjectures about the murders of Flossenbürg (1945) and Pöcking (1960). Berlin 2000.
  • Ulrich Sonnemann : The Federal German Dreyfus scandal - breach of law and renunciation of thought in the ten-year-old legal case Brühne-Ferbach . Munich 1970

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernest R. May: Strange Victory p. 244
  2. ↑ A man by the name of Seidenschnur . In: Die Zeit , No. 40/1965
  3. ↑ Silkworm on the move . In: Der Spiegel . No. 53 , 1965 ( online ).
  4. ↑ At Omachen . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1969 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Calendar sheet: 4.6.1962 on one day
personal data
SURNAME Hentges, Roger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian foreign language correspondent for armaments components
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Schaerbeek / Schaarbeek