Hans Josef Kieffer (4 December 1900 – 26 June 1947[1]) was a Sturmbannführer (Major) and the head in Paris of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD),[2] the intelligence agency of the SS during the German occupation of France in the Second World War.
Kieffer was successful in penetrating and destroying SOE networks, which had as their objective fostering and supporting the French Resistance to the German occupation.
Kieffer deceived SOE headquarters in London for many months in 1943 and 1944 by sending false wireless messages, a tactic known as Funkspiel (the radio game).
On 27 June 1940, shortly after the German conquest of France, he became a military field police officer, and was later sent to Paris to head the SD (intelligence agency).
Kieffer's assistants included Dr. Josef Goetz, a civilian who was a wireless expert, and Lt. Ernest Vogt, a translator and interpreter who spoke French, English and German.
Kieffer spoke only German, and focused his operations on capturing and interrogating Allied agents, escaped prisoners-of-war and resistance fighters.
Kieffer's immediate superior was Sturmbannführer Karl Bömelburg, head of the Gestapo in Paris, whose office was next door at 82 Avenue Foch.
[5] Most captured SOE agents and other prisoners arrived at Kieffer's headquarters after several weeks of being terrorized by brutal treatment at the hands of the Gestapo and their French collaborators.
Thus began Starr's collaboration with SD for which he was rewarded with a room of his own, permission to eat in the German officer's mess, and gifts of chocolate and cigarettes.
[10] Kieffer's great accomplishment was the destruction of Prosper (or Physician), SOE's largest and most important network (or circuit) of agents.
The three key personnel of Prosper were organiser (leader) Francis Suttill, wireless operator Gilbert Norman, and courier Andrée Borrel.
The three had been chosen for SOE's "most challenging job: to establish a circuit in Paris, covering a vast chunk of central France".
[11][12] Prosper's writ was to organize and supply with arms and equipment the many groups belonging to the fragmented French Resistance in anticipation of a 1943 invasion of France by the Allies, which did not occur until 6 June 1944.
Whether such an agreement was made or not, the information gathered by Kieffer enabled the arrest of hundreds of French collaborators with Prosper and the confiscation of a large supply of arms.
After the war, he testified to SOE spymaster Vera Atkins that Khan did not give him a single piece of information but lied constantly.
Instead, London rebuked him for forgetting his security code and thereby told Goetz how to send messages to SOE headquarters that would be accepted as authentic.
With the captured wirelesses and knowledge of the need to include a security check in the messages, Goetz and Kieffer could play radio games ("Funkspiel") with SOE headquarters.
On 8 August, the SAS soldiers were dressed in civilian clothes, told they were going to be exchanged for German prisoners and driven to a forest near Noailles.
[20][21] With the surrender of Germany in May 1945, Kieffer said goodbye to his wife, who was dying of cancer, and children, and went into hiding in Garmisch, where he worked as a cleaner at a hotel.
Kieffer's appeal of the death penalty was refused and he was executed by hanging at Hamelin Prison by the British executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, on 26 June 1947.
The author, Jean Overton Fuller, said "it did seem unfair that Kieffer, who had a certain amount of decency, should have been hanged" while Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon," was not.
[29] The author Sarah Helm asked why the British and French did not request that Kieffer's execution be delayed so he could testify against the accused double agent Henri Déricourt.