Research Office of the Reich Air Ministry

Run since its inception by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, the Research Bureau was a Nazi Party institution rather than an official Wehrmacht-run military signals intelligence and cryptographic agency (headed up by the German High Command's OKW/Chi).

Its official full name in German was Forschungsamt des Reichsluftfahrt Ministerium, and in English the "Research Office of the Ministry of Aviation",[5](Luftwaffe) Late in the war the FA relocated out of heavy combat zones in the north[6] to the safety of southern Bavaria, setting up at the Kaufbeuren Air Base.

Upon seizure of its abandoned files in May of 1945, the trove was taken over by TICOM, the U.S. effort to seize military assets after the end of World War II in Europe.

Hermann Göring was a high ranking Nazi Party member who founded the party-run FA along with Gottfried Schapper in April 1933.

Göring consented and later stated during TICOM interrogations that he wanted an organization of his own which could handle all phases of monitoring under one central control.

[8] Göring ensured it was camouflaged under the title Reichsluftrahrtministerium-Forschungsamt to confuse its role within the Nazi hierarchy, though in reality it was not connected to the Aviation ministry.

Later, as the agency expanded, an additional 33 cryptographers, most with Nazi leanings, would be "poached" from the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, the OKW/Chi[11] cipher bureau, at the time when OKW/Chi itself was facing a severe personnel shortage.

Forced to evacuate Berlin due to the heavy Allied bombing, by January 1945 most of the unit had moved to Breslau and Luebben (site of an intercept station) and Jueterbog.

The nature of the work that the FA undertook, inevitably brought the agency to the notice of Heinrich Himmler, who attempted on his own initiative to gain control of the unit and its activity.

[4] The first major operation of the FA was the surveillance of Ernst Röhm, the co-founder of the Sturmabteilung (SA; Storm Detachment), the Nazi Party's militia, and later was its commander.

This evidence led directly to the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934 in which 85-200 members of the SA and others were assassinated.

[4] During this time, the Foreign Office, which was controlled by Joachim von Ribbentrop, was wired with microphones without any ministry official noticing.

The FA played a very important role in the intercepting communications of the government of the Federal State of Austria before the Anschluss occupation in March 1938.

Director Christoph Prinz von Hessen was a German SS officer who managed the agency between 10 April 1935 and 12 October 1943.

Director Gottfried Schapper, an extreme Anti semitic, was also a German SS officer who held the rank of Hauptsturmführer, and managed the agency between 12 October 1943 and the end of the war on 8 May 1945.

Prior to September 1939, the intercept stations acted in a civilian function, reporting on the many international lines coming into Germany.

After the war, B stations became increasingly important with the end of telephone conversations between Germany and other nations with the loss of foreign information.

One of the most important achievements of the FA which resulted from this cooperation and was revealed by Dr Otto Buggisch, one of the leading cryptanalyst of Inspektorate 7.

Wilhelm Tranow of the B-Dienst stated: About March 1942 we paid a visit, in conjunction with the Luftwaffe and the FA, to the OKH Hollerith department in Victoriastrasse, Berlin.

TICOM Team 1 first learned the existence of the FA from the foreign office cryptanalysts, who knew the names of many of the section heads in Department IV in which their work was related[36] The Yearly Report for 1942 from AA/Per Z inter alia, reveals an exchange of code book recoveries.

[40] The intercepted message traffic of Leland B. Harrison, the United States diplomat and Chargé d'affaires, in Bern, Switzerland were mentioned by Alfred Jodl and Hermann Göring as Signals Intelligence work completed by the FA, and by cryptanalysts of several agencies.

Sauerbier stated that the pages of the plain text were shuffled and an encipherment added, and the solution was achieved by the use of cribs, and common form messages, of which the best was a statement of the daily exchange rates between various countries.

[62][63] Rentschler stated that the easiest French cipher system to break of all those worked on by the FA was the Vichy France code.

It would be expected that Vichy codes would be available to Germany without necessity of cryptanalysis, and the reference to "captured tables" in the paragraph above would support this belief.

Mathematician of Inspectorate 7/VI (Army) and he General der Nachrichtenaufklärung who was then doing his research on the T-52 but liaison with the FA was bad anyway (Colonel Mettig was particularly opposed to the SS taint) and the next time Buggisch heard was that the traffic has stopped.

Buggisch was again questioned about this teletype machine success of the GA on what specifically were the results of the FA mentioned in connection with the Russian cipher teleprinter and answered in written [TICOM] homework (a document typed up by the interrogated to illustrate a process to TICOM) : the FA had analysed a Russian cipher teleprinter system in 1943 and recognized that it must have been based on a machine having certain similarities with the German SZ 40.

He was approached by the Ordnungspolizei, the Nazi police force, commonly called the Orpo, for a request for cryptographic advice on the systems used by the Russian agents.

Green folding box containing: a) Pink folder marked 'Russisches Beutematerial (Ueber FA)' containing, (1) Photostats (mimeographs) of Russian book of additive tables (including instructions for use), date 1940.

(3) Blue folder containing photostats of Instruktion für die Behörden des NKWD zur Führung der Chiffre-Arbeit.

[79][80] Kurt Sauerbier stated that commercial traffic between Turkey and Sweden was attacked particularly, solved but yielded non of the expected information on shipping possibilities.