Hitler's Brandenburgers

Lawrence Paterson, David R Higgs

• Publisher: Greenhill Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781784382308
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

‘A fitting tribute to Germany's clandestine warriors, and a guarantee that their extraordinary efforts have not been relegated to comparative obscurity or entirely forgotten’ - David R Higgins.Hitler's daring and pioneering Brandenburgers special forces served in every German theatre of action. This is the most comprehensive account of an unusual and profoundly successful band of men.Lawrence Paterson traces the origins of the small unit, before the outbreak of war in 1939, as the brainchild of Admiral Canaris and part of his Abwehr intelligence unit through through to its breaking up in 1944 when it was largely converted to a, conventional Panzergrenadier division. At that point, many Brandenburgers transferred to Otto Skorzeny’s SS Jägdverbände.It is well-known that German troops disguised themselves as Allied troops for the Battle of the Bulge - but less well known the Brandenburger operations used such disguises - more effectively -in in advance of the Blitzkrieg in 1939-41.Despite their profound success as commando raiding troops their history has been overshadowed by equivalent Allied units and largely ignored. However, within North Africa the Brandenburgers employed similar techniques to the SAS and LRDG, at first earning Erwin Rommel’s disapproval for their unorthodox methods until he began to feel the effect of similar Allied raids.Paterson details the roles of key individuals, such as Theodor von Hippel, along with forensic details of key operations. He explodes many of the myths about the unit and provides a clear and comprehensive history of this key part of the Wehrmacht.

CHAPTER I

Baptism of Fire

‘If you win, you need not explain … If you lose, you should not be there to explain.’

Adolf Hitler

Hitler’s original planned date for the invasion of Poland was 26 August 1939. However, an Agreement of Mutual Assistance’ signed between Great Britain and Poland at noon the previous day which guaranteed military assistance to either party should another ‘European country’ attack them prompted a nervous Hitler to postpone until the morning of 1 September. Unfortunately, notice of this rescheduling came too late for one of the new covert Abwehr units led by Leutnant der Reserve Dr Hans-Albrecht Herzner.

Herzner was a reserve officer of the 9th Infantry Regiment and had also acted as a Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (civilian scientific assistant) to the Wehrmacht’s regional command in Breslau. He had also become involved in a plot to force Hitler’s resignation during the Sudetenland crisis of 1938, formulated by several high-ranking officers and police officials. Generaloberst Erwin von Witzleben had been an ardent anti-Nazi since the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ and the death of Ferdinand von Bredow. Part of Oster’s circle of conspirators, he had determined to enter the Reich Chancellery escorted by reliable officers of his headquarters staff, gain access to Hitler and demand his resignation and subsequent trial. Painstaking chronicles of the excesses committed by the SS and Gestapo were to be used as evidence against him, while psychiatrist Karl Bonhoeffer was prepared to provide a professional opinion of Hitler’s mental health. Canaris was amongst these high-level conspirators and, while he himself argued for Hitler to be arrested, an escorting ‘raiding party’ had gone as far as to plan a provocation of the Führer that could justify his being shot lest the SS manage to stage a counter-coup.1 This ‘raiding party’ was led by officers who included Herzner as well as Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz – who had argued forcefully for the assassination of Hitler – and Hans-Wolfram Knaak, also of the Abwehr. The group assembled in Berlin during September in preparation for their attempted coup before British acceptance of Hitler’s Sudeten gamble threw the conspirators into enough confusion to cancel their attempt, justifying it by presuming an Anglo-French declaration was imminent that they would stage military intervention should Hitler move to invade the remainder of Czechoslovakia.

On 24 August 1939 Herzner crossed the German–Slovakian border from Breslau by car, under the assumed identity of businessman Heinrich Herzog. He was headed to a rendezvous with his men, twenty-four members of ‘Abwehrstelle Breslau’ designated Kampforganisation Jablunka. The Abwehr operated three types of organisation during 1939:

•Kampforganisation: tasked with capturing and protecting important strategic objectives such as bridges, railway stations, tunnels and the like to enable a German military advance;

•Sabotageorganisation: tasked with destroying objectives behind the enemy’s front line to sever reinforcement links;

•Fallschirmorganisation; involving air-dropped saboteurs to carry out operations behind the front lines.

Herzner’s command was a Kampforganisation tasked with the capture and safeguarding of the 300m-long railway tunnel at the Jablunka Pass through the Beskids mountains, as well as the Mosty railway station in the pass itself. Defensive demolition of the tunnel that sat on the main single-track Vienna–Warsaw railway line would severely impede German invaders attempting to enter southern Poland. The Poles, fully aware of the strategic significance of this western Carpathian pass, had mined the tunnel during June and, every day after the final train had passed through, the fuses were made live and ready for firing.

Dressed in civilian clothes, Kampforganisation Jablunka proceeded from Čadca northwards across the Slovakian border, accompanied by a hundred men of the Slovakian fascist militia, the Hlinka Guard. Passing over the Polish frontier just after midnight, they travelled through densely wooded country where, due to faulty navigation and difficult topography poorly illuminated by the waxing moon, Herzner’s men had become scattered into small groups, he himself arriving west of the train station with Gefreiter Jung and twelve men slightly behind schedule at 0245hrs.

Herzner determined that Polish machine-gun positions and a defensive trench were unmanned though he could see that the tunnel’s northern end was guarded by a pair of sentries, the opposite end also patrolled by four riflemen of the 21st Mountain Division. At 0300hrs gunfire from another assault group was heard from the direction of the tunnel and Herzner attacked the train station shortly afterwards, the building being successfully taken along with a group of Polish steel workers inside. Unfortunately for Herzner and unbeknown to the attackers, there was a military communications centre in the station basement and a female Polish telegraphist alerted local troops who immediately took up defensive positions. As these Polish troops foiled the initial German attempt on the tunnel itself, a small group of Herzner’s men endeavoured to take control of the situation in the tunnel using a stolen locomotive but were defeated by Polish machine-gun fire. Herzner was painfully aware that the attempted operation had failed and he then discovered that the entire invasion had been postponed following a message from Major Paul Reichelt, Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht’s 7th Infantry Division that manned that portion of the Polish border. Herzner’s small group prepared to retreat, though they remained pinned down until midday the following day, after which they managed to break away and retrace their path into Slovakia with two wounded men. The commander of the 7th Infantry Division, Generalmajor Eugen Ott, apologised to his opposite Polish number General Józef Rudolf Kustroń of the 21st Mountain Division for the attack, blaming a single ‘insane individual’ for the action. Herzner was recommended for the EK II by Canaris but Wilhelm Keitel blocked the award as the action had occurred during peacetime and Herzner only belatedly received the decoration on 29 October 1939.2

While Herzner’s premature private invasion had been foiled, the Ebbinghaus Organisation began subsequent operations on schedule upon receipt of the code word ‘Falcon’. At 0300hrs on 1 September they attacked and seized several vital industrial and mining complexes as well as the railway transport hub at Katowice. The latter was taken and held by Grabert’s eighty men of the Deutsche Kompanie who came under heavy Polish attack throughout the day. Speaking fluent Polish, Grabert and his troops had crossed over the border during the last day of August, assisted by local volunteer guides who led them to the road to Chorzhow. The men were disguised as Polish railway workers and carried concealed small arms and explosives. By midnight they had reached the freight station of the Katowice railway yards which they successfully occupied, though the Deutsche Kompanie was thinly spread as it attempted to hold several key buildings. The arrival of Polish troops by train to counter-attack ten Germans in the main warehouse was observed at some distance by Grabert, who ordered a handful of his men to stage a diversionary attack on a nearby bridge. With Polish attention elsewhere, Grabert, assisted by a man named Schmittainsky, managed to creep aboard the locomotive that had brought the Polish troop train into the station and incapacitate the two drivers. Shouting to attract the attention of the enemy troops assaulting the warehouse, Grabert convinced their officer that German forces were now attempting to destroy the bridge, the Poles reboarding the train that headed at speed towards the new conflagration. Grabert and Schmittainsky subsequently took the train from the station and headed west, handing over the nearly 800 men aboard to advancing Wehrmacht troops. The Poles that had been left to contain the Deutsche Kompanie troops in the warehouse were too few to dislodge the invaders and subsequently Wehrmacht spearheads captured the railway station and its yards intact later that day.

Elsewhere the Ebbinghaus units suffered greater losses. While attempting to capture the ‘Max’ mine at Michałkowice, fierce Polish defence that involved pitched battles throughout the mining complex killed twenty-eight men including ‘Kampfgruppe Pisarski’ leader SA-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Pisarski and wounded a further twelve. Sixty-four others were subsequently taken prisoner while only a small number, including Pisarski’s deputy Hargut, managed to escape. Those captured were, of course, later released by the advancing Wehrmacht. Polish losses during the battle were also significant and ultimately the German aim was accomplished as the mine was captured intact. Elsewhere, Ebbinghaus units and men from Abwehrstelle XVII (Vienna) that attacked the Huta Hubertus Steelworks, Chorzów power station and Orzeł Biały mines were defeated with heavy casualties, though Polish defenders were unable to sabotage any of the valuable objectives, which were likewise captured intact by the Wehrmacht. To the north near Danzig the two parallel bridges over the Vistula at Dirschau were successfully demolished by Polish troops, despite a combined attack by Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht, SS and Abwehr troops from Abwehrstelle I (Königsberg). In total the Ebbinghaus Organisation lost 174 men killed and 133 wounded on the first day of the invasion of Poland; nine others were killed by 4 September and a further two wounded.

On 2 September 1939 Ebbinghaus troops were subordinated to Grenzschutz-Ahschnitts-Kommando 3 in Gliwice, combining with SS Standarte ‘Germania’ and troops of the 239th Infantry Division the following day. That same morning, Ebbinghaus ordered the surviving men under his command to ‘cleanse’ the area of Orzesze of Silesian insurgents while also safeguarding the flank of the Wehrmacht advance. At 1645hrs Ebbinghaus men seized and held the Katowice radio station, the remainder of their involvement in the Polish campaign seeming to be the occupation and pacification of Katowice and the surrounding area.

Engaged in paramilitary combat in which racial identity and its incumbent deeply ingrained hatreds were to the fore, the men also appear to have been involved in the massacre of Poles including seventeen defenders of Pszczyna (including Boy Scouts from the Pszczyna secondary schools), twenty-nine citizens of Orzesze and six more in Siemanowice on 8 September. On 1 October, they shot eighteen people in Nowy Bytom and larger atrocities are believed to have been carried out in and around Katowice. SA Sturmführer Karl Rolle and others were also known to have been involved in the torture and murder of Polish captives in Bytom. The SS Einsatzgruppen were already active immediately behind the front lines, rounding up Jews and Poles that fitted their target demographics. Though also tasked with intelligence work involving the recovery of documents, they, alongside the Ebbinghaus Organisation and other paramilitary units, provided a clear vision of Poland’s immediate future.

The Ebbinghaus Organisation was disbanded following its role in the Polish campaign, some of the more meritorious survivors being absorbed into 1. Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. which was formed at the existing base of the Deutsche Kompanie in Sliač. Hauptmann Putz gave the new unit its first orders; the men were to assemble in their base without attracting the attention of Slovakian border guards, the country’s new government having sealed the borders with military units, police and customs men. Travelling in small groups, once successfully in Sliac they again donned Slovakian Army uniforms with the ‘Deutsche Kompanie’ armbands. The company commander was the recently promoted Hauptmann Verbeek, with his chief instructors the now battle-experienced Leutnants Siegfried Grabert and Dr Gottfried Kniesche assisted by NCOs Feldwebel O.A. Süss and Gefreiters Fritz Buchholz and Pasche Klüver. Their intensive training included techniques for the taking and holding of bridges and other strategic objectives, as well as demolition and sabotage methods.

Meanwhile, on 27 September 1939, Adolf Hitler summoned his military chiefs to the Reich Chancellery. He ordered plans prepared for invasion of The Netherlands, Belgium and France during October in a knockout blow before Britain could fully mobilise its military. Though an impossible task, given the fact that the Wehrmacht had already expended vast energy subjugating Poland – the country surrendering on that day but the final battle at Kock not concluding until 6 October – the campaign strategy was slowly drawn up, while Army heads attempted to persuade their Führer to postpone the attack. Amidst the planning for war were instructions issued by Canaris to Hippel for the creation of a company of sabotage troops for commitment in the West. Hippel ordered the transfer of the Abwehr’s 320-man strong 1. Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. from Slovakia to Germany, now officially redesignated ‘Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. 800’ (800th Special Purpose Construction Training Company) on 25 October. He had even secured the ideal training ground for his sabotage troops.

In the Prussian province of Brandenburg, west of Berlin, the small town of Brandenburg an der Havel was chosen as the headquarters of Hippel’s troops, he himself having been quartered there during his time as an officer in the 43rd Engineer Battalion until 1937 and his transfer to the Abwehr. There, on the eastern shore of the Quenzsee, on an estate crowned by a three-winged manor house, the Abwehr established a ‘Training and Sabotage School’, known as ‘Quenzgut’, under the command of Hauptmann Seeliger.3 The rural estate was surrounded by a high wall and the grounds would eventually boast weapons ranges, a laboratory for the development of explosives, an explosives testing bunker (Sprengbunker), a locksmith’s workshop, models and mock-up bridges and traffic installations, a gymnasium, lakeside quay and various sports fields. All three branches of the Abwehr would send men to the school, ranging from specialised training for Hauptmann Verbeek’s soldiers to agents and spies (‘ V-Mann’ – Vertrauens man – a paid informer whose task it was to infiltrate political movements, or a spy). Explosives specialist Major Hans Maguerre, a First World War veteran of 2nd Engineer Battalion – and who had been engaged in work that had included potential biological sabotage – was responsible for procuring and maintaining equipment for the school, including enemy uniforms, arms, radio gear and explosives. He had played a major role in the establishment of the training centre despite ‘numerous difficulties’ put in his way by Wehrmacht administrative staff.4 Those piqued administrators subsequently spread the rumour that Maguerre had misappropriated state funds provided for establishing the school to construct his own house in the country, though this failed to impede Maguerre’s progress. ‘Technical Inspector’ Kutschke was on hand to instruct the recruits in engineering matters and the techniques employed by combat Engineers while Grabert and Kniesche would also act as military instructors.

Nearby, on Magdeburger Strasse, the barracks that had accommodated the Feldartillerie-Regiment ‘Generalfeldzeugmeister’ (1. Brandenburgisches) Nr. 3 of the Imperial German Army’s 6th Infantry Division served as the main quarters for Hippel’s Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. 800. Brand...