Johann Wenzel (9 March 1902, Nidowo, Nowy Staw – 2 February 1969, Berlin) was a German Communist, highly professional GRU agent[1] and radio operator of the espionage group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr in Belgium and the Netherlands.

[5] When Wenzel returned, he worked as a full-time instructor for communist military issues in Hamburg, Bremen, Essen, Düsseldorf, and Cologne using the pseudonym Hermann, for the next several years.

[6] In the summer of 1933, Wenzel travelled to the Netherlands with Theodor Bottländer, an official of the AM Apparat department of the Central Committee of the KPD, to obtain information on Marinus van der Lubbe, who was in Berlin and who was among those accused of setting the Reichstag fire.

In 1935, Wenzel was ordered to report to the 4th Division of the General Staff of the Red Army, the Intelligence Directorate, to be intensively trained as a wireless telegraphy (WT) operator[2] in preparation to be a technical advisor in Western Europe.

[3] It took several days to identify the correct location due to the layout of the building and the electric railway that ran through the neighbourhood, but on 29–30 June 1942, Captain Harry Piepe[10] along with some men, including policemen and Luftwaffe personnel, sealed off the street in Laeken, in Brussels.

[3] These messages contained details of such startling content, the plans for Case Blue, that Piepe immediately drove to Berlin from Brussels and, after revealing his find and explaining its relevance, met with Wilhelm Canaris.

[3] Piepe informed Karl Giering, director of Gestapo in Brussels, and he forwarded a message to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) Section IV Subsection 2A, requesting any details regarding Wenzel, and they returned a number of card indexes that were found detailing Wenzel's early communist career and his name was identified in the RSHA Black Book as a wanted man.

[7] The funkspiel operated code named "Weide", was controlled by Heinz Pannwitz of Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle at a house on Rue de l'Aurore in Brussels.

[12] In Belgium, Soviet intelligence was likely given an early warning when Germaine Schneider informed Trepper of the raid at 12 Rue de Namur in July 1942.

[13] Over several months, the Sonderkommando guards at Rue de l'Aurore became lulled into a false sense of security and either on the 17 or 18 November 1942, Wenzel managed to escape, when they failed to lock an outside door.