Willy Lehmann

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Willy Lehmann (born May 30, 1884 in Mehderitzsch near Leipzig , † in December 1942 Berlin ) was an officer in the Political Police , later the Gestapo and Soviet agent in the German Reich . The criminal inspector and SS-Hauptsturmführer alias Agent A-201 / Breitenbach was one of the most valuable sources of the Soviet secret service NKVD in Germany before and during the Second World War .

Life

Willy Lehmann was born the son of a primary school teacher and learned the trade of a carpenter after attending school. From 1901 to 1911 he served in the Imperial Navy , most recently as head master.

In 1911 Willy Lehmann began his service in the Royal Police Headquarters in Berlin , first in Department IV ( criminal police ), then in Department VII ( political police ). From 1913 he served, initially as an assistant commissioner, then as a detective commissioner in the "C.St" responsible for counter-espionage . under police advisor Richard Koch. From 1920 he was head of the counterintelligence department there and was recruited in 1929 with the help of his former counterintelligence colleague Ernst Kuhr from the foreign intelligence service of the "NKVD". Although Lehmann developed great interest and a certain affection for Russia since the Russo-Japanese War in 1904/1905, he was not recruited on an ideological, but on a purely material basis. The diabetic police officer dreamed of buying and running a small hotel in the Giant Mountains after his retirement . Both in the Weimar Republic and during the National Socialist era , Lehmann was active in the defense against “ communist espionage ”. After 1933 he therefore sent the Soviet Union, in addition to valuable information about the imprisoned KPD leader Ernst Thälmann and the German armaments industry (especially rocket research and production), for example in 1935, a warning that the Soviet agent Stefan Lang alias Arnold Deutsch was about to approach under his arrest. The agent then managed to escape to England, where he successfully continued his espionage activities. Also in the espionage case of the well-known Polish spy Georg von Sosnowski , Lehmann, who was working on the case on the part of the Gestapo in 1934/1935 in parallel with the Abwehr, passed on all relevant information to his Soviet clients.

In 1934, at the instigation of the Soviets, Lehmann joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) and then the NSDAP ( membership number 5.920.162). In 1939 he moved to Office IV of the RSHA . There he was responsible for counter-espionage within the German arms industry . This activity made it possible for Agent Breitenbach to provide the Soviet secret service with a great deal of information about German armaments projects. After the outbreak of war in 1941, the connection to the Soviet secret service, which had previously been carried out via intelligence agents disguised as employees of the Soviet embassy, ​​was suddenly severed.

In December 1942, in connection with the uncovering of the Red Orchestra , Willy Lehmann was exposed and arrested after a gross leadership error by the Soviet secret service, and shot a little later without a trial on the orders of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , who at the same time ordered the case to be covered up. In 1942, parachutists (German anti-fascists) had been dropped off from the Soviet Union via East Prussia, who were supposed to make their way to Berlin and re-establish contact with important pre-war agents there. Since it was to be expected that one or the other agent might now refuse to continue his espionage activities, they carried copies of old handwritten payment receipts of those spies with them as means of pressure. These payment receipts fell into the hands of the Gestapo when the parachutists were arrested and also betrayed Willy Lehmann. In Russia it was not made public until around 1990 that they had “a man in the Gestapo”. However, as early as 1945, Soviet secret service employees visited the widow von Lehmann, who was still living in Berlin, and did not give her a Soviet medal for her husband posthumously, but at least presented her with a gold watch. In leading SED circles in the GDR it was also known that the Gestapo officer Willy Lehmann had worked as a spy for the Soviet Union. But because of his disreputable profession, people remained silent about him until the end, did not award him posthumously with a medal, nor did they name any streets or NVA troops after him, as in the case of other resistance fighters.

literature

  • Hans Coppi : Willy Lehmann. In: Hans Schafranek and Johannes Tuchel (eds.): War in the ether. Resistance and espionage in World War II. Picus Verlag, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-85452-470-6 .
  • Jürgen W. Schmidt: Against Russia and France. The German military secret service 1890–1914 . Ludwigsfelde 2007 (on Lehmann's work in German counter-espionage).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Uwe Klussmann: Stalins Mann in der Gestapo , Spiegel Online , September 29, 2009, accessed on May 29, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Lehmann, Willy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lehmann, Willi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet spy in the German Reich
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Mehderitzsch
DATE OF DEATH December 1942
Place of death Berlin