Funkabwehr

[1][2] Its most notable breakthrough occurred on 26 June 1941, when tracing teams at the Funkabwehr station at Zelenogradsk discovered the Rote Kapelle, an anti-Nazi resistance movement in Berlin and two Soviet espionage rings operating in German-occupied Europe and Switzerland during World War II.

[16] This state of affairs led the officers of WNV/FU both to press the claims of their work with WNV/CHI with a view to the establishment of a special section in this department to handle agent ciphers and also to look around for cryptanalysis assistance from other quarters.

[18] The final reorganisation occurred during the summer of 1944, when the prospect of Allied invasion in the west and other fronts, made all static intelligence units in operational areas unsuitable for the conditions they were likely to encounter.

The Aussenleitstelle, now Radio Surveillance Department I (German: Funküberwachungsabteilung I), left Paris in early August, 1944 for Idar-Oberstein and moved shortly thereafter to Gobelnroth in Giessen where it remained.

The main result of this operation was the interception of no more than normal air and naval traffic, though a few WT transmissions directing supply dropping aircraft were apparently detected in the northern mountainous areas.

In order to ensure the closest possible liaison with the other interested authorities, i.e. Abwehr, Gestapo and the Orpo, personnel of Referat Vauck were detached to branches of wireless security intercept in Paris and Brussels.

[29] The earlies research work of Referat Vauck, carried out in close corporation with the evaluation section of FU III, was devoted to clarifying the use of Call signs and to ascertaining systems of Indicator groups and coding tables in different procedures.

[29] To supplement this research work an arrangement was made with the appropriate agencies to allow representatives of Referat Vauck to take part in important arrests and in the interrogation of agents.

In Jan-April 1944 it was found that two Allied agents who had been turned round by the Abwehr were operating in a villa south-east of Bordeaux and were being handed clear plaintext for encipherment and transmission without any supervision.

When it was discovered, all French books about the Spanish Civil War in the German state libraries of Paris, Madrid and Lisbon were read with the object of identifying these particular words.

The existence of a Skywave was irrelevant to the problem of interception and DF in the case of VHF, as the work concerned itself exclusively with the quasi-optical waves which radiate from the source according to line-of-site.

However, the continual shortages in equipment, made the general use of narrow bands impractical, while a centrally administered overall cover of the spectrum did not make allowances for the local search needs of units located in widely spaced areas like France, Norway and the Balkans.

Schedules and call signs were passed by the evaluation section to facilitate the identification of signals, but in the main, the wireless technician relied on his own training and experience of different organisations.

The amount of evaluation undertaken at each level varied considerably in accordance with local circumstanced and particularly with the existence of rapid and reliable communication between the Aussenstellen and the operational units.

Generally speaking the Funkabwehr units supervised the technical WT aspects of such cases and where Referat Vauck cryptanalysts were available at the Aussenstellen these handled the cipher details.

[66] The expansion of the theatres of war and the methods of combat used in the Balkans and the Soviet Union had the effect that communication intelligence was burdened with additional missions which initially had not been expected and which led to the organization of units employing special techniques.

[69] Whereas in Ukraine and in the former Baltic states, the partisans were of minor importance until 1944, they went into action in the extensive wooded swamps behind Army Group Centre in Belarus, in the Pinsk Marshes, and on both banks of the Dnieper and Desna River as early as the winter of 1941-1942.

[69] At first the partisan units were improvised by communist fanatics and individual officers who recruited able-bodied men, women, and children of the civilian population and countless Red Army soldiers whom the rapidly advancing German combat forces had left behind unnoticed during 1941.

The increase in organised raids and surprise attack upon infrastructure, e.g. vehicles, railways, towns and teleprinter communications resulted in an energetic punitive measures, which were beyond the scope of the area security detachments, which consisted of second-rate troops, police forces, and Hungarian units.

Occasionally German intercept units succeeded in deceiving Russian aircraft loaded with supplies for the partisans with deceptive radio and light signals, thus causing then to drop their cargo or land at the wrong point.

[71] By committing units up to Division size, important lines of communication were cleared of partisans, but the Germans were never able to eradicate this danger from the extensive areas which had poor road facilities.

[71] The insecurity in the rear areas was so serious that Army Group Centre designated a special partisan warning channel on which an ambushed or threatened unit could send out emergency calls.

The itinerary of the Polish troops subordinated to General Władysław Anders after their expulsion from Kuibishev, Soviet Union, through the Near East to Cairo, and from there to North Africa and Southern Italy was observed and reported by radio counter-intelligence.

Their activity steadily increased up to the time of the Warsaw Uprising commanded by General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski during the autumn of 1944, as the Soviet Union armies were approaching the city.

[73] During the uprising, Polish partisans who had advanced from wood south of Modlin attacked the evaluation centre of the German 9th Army located on an estate west of Warsaw.

[74] In this theatre, the partisans became such a threat to the occupying power that, after about autumn 1943, when the observation of British forces in the Near East and in eastern North Africa was no longer a source of much interest, practically all communication intelligence personnel were switched to anti-partisan operations.

[74] Radio intelligence provided information on the organisational structure, composition, and concentration areas of this force, also, its plans for future operations, but more often those which had recently been completed, including combat actions, the course of the front lines, shifting of forces, temporary disbanding and subsequent reactivation of combat units; deserters; projected and completed British supply flights, quantities of airdropped supplies, landing fields and their beacon lights; activities of the British and American military missions; behaviours of the Italians and Bulgarians; and finally Mihailović's attitude towards his various enemies, such as the Germans, Milan Nedić, Josip Broz Tito, the Croats, Ustashe, Montenegrins, Albanians and others.

His radio message read: He continued to profess his loyalty to England and the United States and the democratic ideals of freedom, and until the end he exhorted his senior commanders to remain true to the cause and to carry on the struggle against the Germans.

In addition to providing information on the confused political situation in the Balkans, the Funkabwehr and German communication intelligence units also furnished definite proof of the duplicity of Germany's allies and satellites, less on the part of the Bulgarians than on that of the Italians.

The station had an important general search commitment and was also used to monitor transmissions emanating from all points in south west Europe with particular attention being paid to the traffic of Allied agents in France and Spain working to North Africa or the UK.