Hitler's Brandenburgers

by Lawrence Paterson

  He was under direct orders from Abwehr II to take up to a dozen men from his platoon (3rd Zug der Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. 800) to Bad Münstereifel where he began immediate preparations to lead Fall Gelb (‘Case Yellow’), the planned attack on the West. Rudloff’s small contingent was reinforced by 100 men transferred by Hauptmann Fleck from Breslau to Jülich, less than 20km from the Belgian border.7 From there they travelled to nearby Bad Münstereifel and trained under the auspices of the Fourth Army; Oberleutnant Moll and Leutnant Hütten of the Fourth Army and Leutnant Kutschera, formerly of the Czech military, enlisted to assist Rudloff in his training regime.

  Rudloff was briefed on his coming tasks by the Army’s Chief Intelligence Officer Major Joachim Schwatlo-Gesterding. He and his men were to cross the Belgian frontier before the main attack, primarily concerned with the seizure of important bridges in the Eupen-Malmedy region before the enemy could destroy them. Fortunately for an unprepared Wehrmacht, however, delays began to mount until ‘Case Yellow’ was finally postponed to 1940 due to weather considerations. Remaining in their forward base, Rudloff’s group now formed the nucleus of a company-sized unit under Hippel’s command, comprised primarily of Romanian and Sudeten Volksdeutsche.

  Leutnant Grabert and his first eleven Sudeten Volksdeutsche men arrived in Brandenburg an der Havel from Sliac in November 1939 and joined Hippel’s company, soon joined by further volunteers from Grabert’s Deutsche Kompanie. The numbers of Hippel’s force were beginning to swell, volunteers from the Banat and Transylvania regions, the Baltic states and Palestine joining the ranks so that he soon had enough men to reorganise into three separate companies and a manpower reserve.

  Hippel’s original Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. 800 was serving as a collection point for troops wishing to enlist in the special force. Berlin had authorised Hippel to appeal for volunteers from existing Wehrmacht formations, each separate company designating a recruiting officer who would travel from garrison to garrison combing the ranks for willing recruits. Maintaining his rationale of enlisting foreign-speaking men, Hippel was then able to distribute them into a platoon (Zug) grouped loosely by ethnicity and cultural heritage. His approach was, in many ways, the antithesis of that taken by the Waffen SS who were also attempting to plunder the manpower pool provided by Volksdeutsche recruits. The SS had been constrained in its ambition to expand due to strict recruitment limits imposed by the Wehrmacht in Germany. However, Heinrich Himmler’s extremely efficient head of recruitment, SS Brigadeführer Gottlob Berger, had circumvented these restrictions by opening enlistment to suitable ‘Nordic’ recruits and Volksdeutsche from outside Germany’s borders. Fortunately, Hippel was unconstrained by delusions of racial purity, the ability of a man to assimilate in potential foreign operational areas being of greater value to him than his heritage. Recruiting by individual officers yielded large numbers of men willing to join Hippel’s force and by 15 December there were enough troops gathered to reorganise as a battalion:

  •Baulehr-Bataillon z.b.V. 800 (Hauptmann von Hippel);

  •Stabskompanie (Oberleutnant Kutschke);

  •1st Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. (Oberleutnant Dr Kniesche);

  •2nd Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. (Hauptmann Fabian);

  •3rd Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. (Hauptmann Rudloff).

  In fact, the rapid expansion of the Brandenburgers had begun to cause problems at the Generalfeldzeugmeister Kaserne as space became a serious issue. By their very nature Brandenburger units were loose organisations that experienced frequent reshuffles and changes, therefore it was decided that small constituent parts could be accommodated in pockets in villages neighbouring Brandenburg an der Havel. Kutschke’s headquarters company moved to Plaue while others moved to Kranepul, north on the bank of the Havel River. The various companies then began to be stationed away from Brandenburg itself as a matter of operational routine, located near to their expected combat areas.

  While Fabian’s 2nd Company remained in Brandenburg an der Havel, Oberleutnant Dr Gottfried Kniesche’s 1st Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. had begun training east of Vienna in Neustift-Innermanzing in the Wienerwald. Kniesche had received orders from Abwehr III (counter-espionage) to gather as many men from the Deutsche Kompanie with relevant linguistic abilities to relocate to the Wienerwald. From there they would be tasked with Operation ‘Sportverein Wiking, a mission to ensure the security of the Romanian railway route which transported oil from the oilfields at Ploieşti to Germany. Rudloff, meanwhile, continued training for the upcoming invasion of the West stationed in Bad Münstereifel. Over the winter of 1939/40 volunteers continued to arrive as Hippel’s formation received an unofficial soubriquet on Christmas Eve during celebrations at the Generalfeldzeugmeister Kaserne. According to the written account by the semi-official historian of the Brandenburgers (and later Quartermaster Officer of the Brandenburg Panzergrenadier Division) Helmuth Spaeter, during these raucous celebrations, in which Siegfried Grabert appeared in costume as the Devil, a nickname was given to the unit during a speech that soon stuck and was subsequently officially adopted: ‘Brandenburgers’.

  Men were not necessarily posted to the Brandenburgers, but claims that they remained strictly a volunteer unit are slightly misleading. Sepp De Giampietro enlisted in the Wehrmacht during 1940 and was assigned to the 8th Company. There he trained as a Gebirgsjäger and appears to have been perplexed after becoming aware of the fact that he was part of a unit that bore the designation ‘z.b.V.’ – for special purpose – fearing that it meant potentially risky operations. Not until immediately before deployment in Romania were he and his comrades informed by Siegfried Grabert of the specialised nature of their unit. Warned to remain silent about what they were being told on pain of court martial, it was at that point that they learned their commander-in-chief was not a Gebirgsjäger general, but Admiral Wilhelm Canaris of the Abwehr.

  However, once aware of their status as part of a specialist force, theoretically each man could decline an operation, particularly those that required the wearing of a disguise and thus had the potential for execution as a spy if captured. The ideal Brandenburg recruit was a long way from many of those who had comprised the bulk of the Ebbinghaus Organisation who had been more militia than soldier. They were required to possess a degree of maturity and self-reliance that would enable them to carry out their allotted missions either as part of a small team or individually. They needed to be fleet-footed and quick-thinking; one exercise in initiative that was carried out involved recruits being tasked with obtaining the fingerprints of the Brandenburg an der Havel police officials without their targets being aware of what was happening. Dietrich von Witzel, an early recruit, later characterised the calibre of Hippel’s new unit:

  What sort of men did this new force require and where did they come from? The first precondition was that they should be volunteers, then versatility, quick reactions, the gift of improvisation, a high degree of individual initiative, even to the last man, coupled with a strong team spirit; and besides these things, a sense of adventure, albeit restrained, tact when dealing with foreigners and of course physical stamina. Other priority requirements were a high level of linguistic expertise and cultural awareness to such a degree that a man could pass himself off as a British officer or a Soviet soldier … Ultimately, the men should have a solid military training and should know how to remove or plant explosive charges (to protect or destroy installations).8

  The familiar drills that all Wehrmacht soldiers mastered were included, but taken a step further for the Brandenburgers. Training at Quanzsee included more theoretical components such as language instruction, messaging in secret, radio operation and recognition of enemy uniforms and ranks. Basic fieldcraft was expanded to give recruits the ability to move silently and undetected through undergrowth and forests while perfecting infiltration and camouflage techniques. Physically demanding skills such as swimming, small boat and kayak handling, long-distance running and the like raised them to peak condition while lessons were also held in bo
th German and foreign weapons and vehicles, the manufacture and use of explosives, hand-to-hand combat, silent killing techniques using the knife or garrotte, and the customs, traditions and lifestyle associated with target regions. Lectures also focussed on the required sabotage – and ‘small sabotage’, i.e. without explosives – techniques for different targets such as bridges, power stations, industrial and railway installations, ships, cables and wireless stations. The nearby Arado works and the railway workshops at Kirchmöser were toured and used by Brandenburger instructors to demonstrate the theory and different requirements for railway and industrial sabotage.

  There were two general forms of disguise employed by the Brandenburgers: Halbtarnung (literally, ‘half camouflage’) which essentially comprised an enemy greatcoat over a German uniform with corresponding headgear that could confuse an enemy in poor visibility, and Volltarnung (full camouflage) which was an entire enemy uniform worn over the German one. The latter was obviously more convincing, but also limited both the wearer’s freedom of movement and ability to remove the uniform before opening fire. It would not be uncommon in the heat of action for the Brandenburgers to begin combat before they had removed their disguises, thereby running the risk of being legally considered as spies.

  Brandenburger units were typically small and autonomy was as essential as the ability to integrate as a team. A sense of camaraderie was fostered, not dissimilar to that in the early Waffen SS, with officers and men encouraged to greet one another with handshakes rather than salutes. This of course further alienated Hippel’s force from the orthodoxy of the traditional Wehrmacht who likened the techniques being perfected in Brandenburg an der Havel as those used by ‘renegades and bandits’. It could have been the shadow cast by the excesses committed by elements of the Sudeten paramilitaries during the Polish campaign that influenced many Wehrmacht officers’ views of the Brandenburgers and it would take fresh military success to vindicate Hippel and his troops.

  In combat Brandenburgers were answerable only to their own commanders and the Ic (Intelligence Officer) of the Army Corps in whose area they were operating. However, in practice they frequently continued to receive and act only upon orders issued by their own headquarters. German military staffs were, as a rule, smaller than their Allied counterparts. In general, there were Intelligence Officers attached at Division, Corps, Army and Army Group level. However, they were always rated as subordinate to the Operations Officers (Ia). The German Army Handbook of 1938 states:

  •The Ic is subordinated to the Ia and is his helper in working up the enemy picture.

  •Estimating the enemy picture is a matter for the commander in cooperation with the Chief of Staff or the Ia.

  •The judgement of the enemy situation always proceeds from the command authorities, not from the Ic alone.

  This ‘action before brain’ approach rendered an intelligence officer’s judgement as constantly rated secondary to the will of his military commander. Therefore, the effect of accurate intelligence was entirely dependent upon the degree to which individual commanders appreciated its value. In many ways, this tendency was seen throughout German military hierarchy all the way to the supreme commander himself, Hitler frequently dismissing intelligence reports if they failed to fit the narrative that he desired to see.

  While on operations, Brandenburg men were issued with that standard identity document of the Wehrmacht soldier – the Soldbuch – that showed them belonging to an ordinary military formation. Generally, a Brandenburger liaison officer was supplied to the umbrella Army Corps to allow such a free-wheeling unit to function within what was a highly methodical and fixed Wehrmacht command structure. These liaison officers’ tasks included defining the method of employment for the Brandenburgers: full or partial camouflage, dates, times and places. The troops needed to be clearly identified to other Wehrmacht units and supporting troops that stood ready to exploit their success, while also allowing the rapid extraction of the commandos once their mission was complete. They were not designed to be used as traditional ‘line troops’ in any but the most extraordinary circumstances, their armament remaining light with mobility and deception their primary means of waging war. They also fully embraced the concept of Auftragstaktik; the issuing of an order for the accomplishment of an objective but with broad parameters that allowed subordinates to fulfil the stated objective using their own initiative.

  The multinational makeup of the Brandenburgers was beginning to achieve some form of cohesive separation within the battalion. By this stage of the Brandenburgers’ development, Kniesche’s 1st Company in Austria was formed around men that could be described as ethnic Russians – sometimes Finns – or those from the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia; Fabian’s 2nd Company (based in Brandenburg an der Havel) would come to comprise primarily Englishspeaking North Africans or South Africans as well as those from Palestine and Portugal. At least one recruit, Gefreiter Siemens, had been born in Melbourne, Australia.9 In general, they were men who had returned from Germany’s former colonies. The Palestinian Volksdeutsche were from Haifa’s German colony, descendants of Templers – a southern German Protestant sect – that had emigrated to the Holy Land in 1868. By 1937, 34 per cent of those Palestinian Volksdeutsche were registered members of the NSDAP and many younger members returned to Germany, those remaining that retained German citizenship being interned by the British at the start of the Second World War. It was recorded that 232 such young men eligible for military service returned to Germany on the eve of war, primarily from ex-members of the Palestinian Hitler Youth and predominantly ending up in the Brandenburgers.10 Rudloff’s 3rd Company in the western base at Bad Münstereifel was made up of Sudeten Germans who spoke Czech, Slovak and Ruthenian, with an added platoon of men able to speak Dutch, Flemish and French, required for the impending invasion in the West.

  During the first weeks of 1940 Oberleutnant Uwe-Wilhelm Walther was appointed commander of a newly established 4th Company in Brandenburg an der Havel, comprised primarily of Volksdeutsche from Poland, Belorussia and the Ukraine. A native of Dresden, Walther, who celebrated his thirtieth birthday on 27 January, had joined the Reichswehr in 1934, his face marked with a duelling scar on his left cheek, which was popular as a mark of honour amongst German university students. While in higher education studying to become an architect, Walther had been a member of the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (National Socialist Student League) that had been founded to attempt to integrate university-level education with National Socialist principles. He had served as an officer in reconnaissance units before being recruited for the Brandenburgers. Hippel also established smaller semi-autonomous elements, including a Brandenburger Fallschirmjäger (paratrooper) unit to be commanded by Upper Silesian Leutnant Dlab. Dlab was charged with selecting a small group of suitable candidates who were transferred to Oranienburg by Feldwebel Erich Blöhme to begin parachute training. There, a 40-year-old veteran of the last war’s naval air arm, Oberleutnant Karl-Edmund Gartenfeld, instructed them. Following the 1918 armistice, Gartenfeld had flown for Lufthansa before enlisting in the Luftwaffe during 1936, transferred to the Versuchsstelle für Höhenflüge (Test Centre for High-Altitude Flights) upon the outbreak of war and subsequently to parachute training in Oranienburg during March 1940.11

  Unsurprisingly in a military that was riven with inter-service rivalry and competition, the training of Army troops for a role reserved for Luftwaffe paratroopers caused initial problems between the Abwehr and OKL. The Army had already formed a Fallschirmjäger company during 1937, expanded to a battalion the following year, though then transferred en-masse to the Luftwaffe on 1 January 1939. The vainglorious Hermann Göring jealously guarded ‘ownership’ of all of Germany’s military airborne assets, his previous authority over police units already having been undermined by the SS. However, the Abwehr could circumvent Luftwaffe apprehension regarding new Army parachute units as the Brandenburg men were clearly a small, highly specialised unit to whom
parachute training would provide a method by which to infiltrate enemy lines.

  After graduation, the Brandenburgers received their Luftwaffe Fallschirm-schützenabzeichen (Parachutists’ Badges), as opposed to the specially commissioned version that had been briefly issued to Army men during 1937. It wouldn’t be until the expansion of the Brandenburgers’ Fallschirmjäger unit to company strength in 1943 that the Army badge would be reissued. The qualified airborne troops formed a platoon in Walther’s 4th Company under the command of Leutnant Hermann Lütke, though based at Stendal where the Luftwaffe maintained an airfield and two squadrons of Ju 52 transport aircraft.

  During early January 1940, 22-year old Feldwebel (Officer-Aspirant) Hermann Kürschner, formerly of the 12th Battalion, 115th Infantry Regiment, was enlisted by Hippel to form a small shock troop for service in the upcoming ‘Case Yellow’ invasion in the West. Kürschner was placed in command of his own minor unit, named ‘Baulehr-Zug z.b.V.’ or ‘Westzug’ (West Platoon), into which he enlisted many men from the coalmining area of Kerkrade-Herzogenrath, notably Srass. This village near Aachen straddles the German–Dutch border and his new recruits were fluent in both languages, many having served in the border guard formation Grenzwacht-Abschnitt 46.

  The invasion of the Low Countries and France would comprise two phases: ‘Case Yellow’ in which the Channel would be reached and the British Expeditionary Force and swathes of other Allied troops isolated in Belgium, and Fall Rot (‘Case Red’), the final subjugation of France. The Wehrmacht applied one of its major advantages to ‘Case Yellow’ – the ability of officers such as Manstein and Guderian to consider operational possibilities not rooted in military orthodoxy. The decision had been taken that rather than crashing against the buttresses of the Maginot Line that trailed virtually the entire length of the Franco-German border, troops of Army Group A and B would advance through The Netherlands and Belgium into France. However, this broad front advance was reminiscent of that used by the Imperial German Army in 1914 and stood every chance of ending in the same impasse. Manstein’s modification involved German armour and troops breaking through the heavily wooded Ardennes region, sparsely defended by the Allies as it was considered unsuitable terrain for such an advance. Hitler, who had already proposed a similar idea to OKH, enthusiastically endorsed the plan and the original plans for ‘Case Yellow’ were altered accordingly. Key to the successful rapid advance through the southern provinces of The Netherlands and into Belgium would be the taking and holding of bridges that spanned the formidable waterways which provided natural defensive barriers.