Hitler's Brandenburgers

by Lawrence Paterson

  9th Company: Oberleutnant Wülberg.

  10th Company: Oberleutnant Aretz.

  11th Company: Oberleutnant Schoeler (Leutnant Fendt after Balkan campaign).

  12th Company: Oberleutnant Schäder.

  Fallschirmjäger Platoon: Leutnant Hermann Lütke (incorporated in 4th Company, independently based at Stendal).

  Motorcycle Platoon: Oberleutnant Erwin Graf Thun.

  V-Leute Company: Hauptmann Vatter (created in the spring of 1940, later merged with 1st Company in May 1941, based at the Regenwurmlager).

  Interpreter Company (formed spring 1940 in Brandenburg an der Havel).

  Signals Company (Nachrichten Kompanie – formed in January 1941 with components detached to other units as required): Hauptmann Eltester.

  13th ‘Special’ Company (formed in Brandenburg in April 1941).

  14th Replacement Company (formed in Düren in April 1941).

  16th Jäger (Light Infantry) Company (formed in Düren in April 1941).

  17th ‘Special’ Company: recently commissioned Leutnant Fritz Babuke (formed in Baden in April 1941).

  ‘Trommsdorf Company’ (formed at Zossen in April 1941; later the 15th Company).

  Lehr und Ausbildungskompanie (training unit formed at Meseritz in April 1941).

  During this period of relative calm, the regiment consolidated its constituent elements and new units began training. An autobiography written by South Tyrolean recruit Sepp De Giampietro provides insight into conditions in the expanding regiment at this time as he joined the 8th Company at its training ground in the Pfeiffermühle near Wertach in the Bavarian Alps.

  The French campaign had ended. Grabert and his people were all safe. Grabert seemed to us to personify the Nibelungen hero that was his namesake. All his men had the EK II and he the EK I. We all admired them.

  They were almost all Sudeten Germans, though some were Baltic-Germans. These, unlike the Sudetens, were calm, prudent and approachable. They were all intellectuals: law students, assessors and the like. Grabert himself was 25 years old and a medical student in his sixth semester …

  We were divided into platoons and groups. Somehow, we managed to get five ‘Hegelhaeuslers’ in the same platoon. As a superior, we received Feldwebel Hiller. Hiller was not very tall in stature, but very agile and fast-moving. The steel-rimmed spectacles he wore on his nose gave him the appearance of a librarian or a Latin professor. His eyes, however, had the sharpness and mistrust of a financial official. He was very ambitious and had only one goal: his platoon had to be the first, his people the best …

  It was certainly no easy task for Hiller and his men to create from us simple and stubborn South Tyrolians soldiers that would fit the German pattern: after all, they themselves lacked the professional skill of a Prussian recruit. Through stubborn, relentless, back-breaking training we missed the essential atmosphere of the ice-cold barracks. We never got acquainted with it, thank God. We were always accommodated either in romantic and remote camps or in hotels, in which a barracks drill would not have been feasible.12

  CHAPTER 4

  Declared and Undeclared War in the Balkans

  ‘Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move.’

  Sun Tzu

  While training continued, a small Brandenburger element also remained active in Romania. During November 1939 elements of Oberleutnant Dr Gottfried Kniesche’s 1st Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. – most of them former members of the Deutsche Kompanie – had been involved in Operation ‘Sportverein Wiking’ that protected Romanian rail transport of oil to Germany. Earlier that year, on 23 March 1939, the governments of Germany and Romania had signed a bilateral agreement for the fostering of economic relations between the two nations. Germany was essentially granted considerable control of major aspects of the Romanian economy guaranteeing the delivery of quantities of agricultural goods, timber and – perhaps most crucial to Germany’s military machine – oil. In return, the Germans offered technical assistance and military equipment. Free trade zones for German companies were also established in Romania, much to the consternation of the British government who committed themselves publicly to the defence of Romania against potential German aggression during April 1939. Indeed, America’s Time magazine reported on 3 April 1939:

  Under the ‘heavy pressure of circumstances’ the Kingdom of Romania last week signed a trade treaty with the Third Reich which, in effect, converted Romania from an independent nation to a German dependency. In no instance of modern times has one state made such humiliating, far-reaching economic concessions to another as Romania’s King Carol II made in Bucharest last week to Dr Helmuth Wohlthat, Führer Hitler’s travelling salesman.

  There was also a pragmatism attached to Romania’s acquiescence in Hitler’s trade deal which drew the country closer to the Axis alliance. In the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 the region of Bessarabia had been unified with the Kingdom of Romania following intervention by Romanian troops to quell Bolshevik uprisings. The Soviet Union subsequently refused to recognise this, and in Article Four of the secret Annex to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact, Bessarabia fell within the recognised Soviet sphere of interest. In spring 1940 Stalin issued an ultimatum to King Carol II for the return of the region or face invasion. Although Carol submitted to the Soviet demand, brief and bitter fighting followed when Soviet troops entered Bessarabia before the withdrawal of Romanian troops, resulting in 356 officers and 42,876 Romanian soldiers dead or missing. Romania had mobilised and it took considerable diplomatic pressure from Berlin to prevent conflict. Hitler had long stated that he had no territorial ambitions in the Balkans and he subsequently brokered deals that settled outstanding territorial claims on Romania by both Hungary and Bulgaria. The Vienna Arbitration Award of 30 August forced Romania to yield one-third of Transylvania to Hungary, losing 16,600 square miles of territory and 2.4 million inhabitants, while southern Dobruja was ceded to Bulgaria in the Treaty of Craiova on 7 September. However, in return the Axis powers guaranteed to defend the territorial integrity of what remained of Romania.

  King Carol II and his government had been ardent Francophiles and France’s rapid defeat at the hands of the Wehrmacht served to alienate him from large portions of his people. The loss of swathes of territory sealed the matter and, once again under pressure from Berlin as well as his own populace, he abdicated on 5 September and yielded his dictatorial powers to the authoritarian Marshal Ion Victor Antonescu, bringing Romania further in line with Europe’s fascist powers.

  During the previous war, Anglo-French pressure to deny oil supplies to the Austro-Hungarian military had resulted in the destruction of 1,677 oil derricks, 26 refineries, storage tanks and the burning of 827,000 tons of oil derivatives. With Germany’s favourable trade agreement now in place, similar ideas were raised once again in Whitehall. In spring 1940, British demolition parties of the 54th Royal Engineers Field Company set sail from Alexandria, Egypt, aboard the merchant vessel SS Deebank bound for Varna. The ship arrived off Kilia on the west side of the entrance to the Sea of Marmara on 28 May as the German Blitzkrieg shattered Allied defences in France and Belgium. Unnerved, King Carol II reconsidered the tacit agreement he had given to Allied plans and, following Italy’s entry into the war on the Axis side, the British troops returned to North Africa as Romania declared itself of predominantly Axis alignment. An Allied attempt to block the Danube by sinking barges in the ‘Iron Gates’, a gorge through which the river runs that separates Romania from Serbia, to halt oil supply by fluvial transport was foiled during April 1940. The final British attempt at self-sabotage of the Tintea oilfield – owned by a British subsidiary company Astra Română – was also prevented at the end of June. Documents captured from the French General Staff on 19 June in a train at Charité-sur-Loire detailed the plan, its personnel and methods.1 The captured papers also revealed the degree of King Carol II’s somewhat duplicitous dealings between the Allied and Axis powers and allowed Ge
rmany to gain diplomatic leverage over the Romanian royalty.

  Three men of the Baulehr-Bataillon z.b.V. 800 had arrived in Bucharest at Christmas 1939: Feldwebel Gustl Süss and Unteroffizieren Walter Kriegisch and Leo Stöhr. The three had volunteered for the assignment and were supplied with large sums of money by the Abwehr as they stationed themselves in the Hotel Bucharest and began reconnoitring the oil installations of Ploieşti, 60km to the north, paying particular attention to those of the Astra Română. Their activities had strayed into the realm of Abwehr III, concerned as they were with counterespionage. Nonetheless, twelve more Brandenburgers (from the 2nd Battalion) arrived during January 1940, headed by Leutnant Dr Kurt Drögsler who had been a chemist with the Viennese Fire Department before being commissioned into the regiment and codenamed ‘Victor Luptar’ for the duration of the mission. Drögsler was not without previous military experience, having been a Leutnant in a Bosnian company of the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War. The sixteen men actively cooperated with the Romanian Secret Service to prevent Allied sabotage attempts in the entire oil-producing region.

  Meanwhile a second detachment under the command of Hauptmann Heinrich Verbeek, of Abwehrstelle Vienna, was tasked with safeguarding oil-bearing vessels using the Danube River. Once again, the men he led were Brandenburgers in disguises that ranged from tourists and customs officers to sportsmen. With the tacit approval of the Bulgarian authorities and the active cooperation of the Romanians, Verbeek’s men successfully prevented British attempts to block the river, leading to the planning of Operation ‘Sigmaringen’ during April. This plan involved Verbeek’s detachment destroying the Cernavodă bridge and blocking the Sulina Channel to delay any potential British advance into the Romanian heartlands. However, before the operation could be carried out, the complexion of the war in the West had changed dramatically and ‘Sigmaringen’ was shelved.

  Before the Brandenburgers’ arrival the number of incidents of sabotage and ‘accidental fires’ recorded in the Ploieşti oil refineries had been remarkably high and had resulted in a serious shortfall of exports to Germany, prompting a visit to Bucharest by Canaris himself during December before the arrival of Süss and his men. However, during the months that followed, oil production soared and transportation to Germany flowed virtually unhindered. Expulsions of British agents exposed by the Brandenburgers reached new heights between April and June and the discovery of the French military documents allowed Germany to demand the removal of British and French subjects still working in the oil industry in Romania. Small detachments of Brandenburgers would remain regionally as covert security, even after Romania officially joined the Axis on 23 November 1940.

  Of course, the threat of Allied espionage was not the only issue facing German interests in Romania. There was considerable anti-German feeling in the country despite their apparent close alignment, the military junta being maintained largely by German backing. Nonetheless, Germany had managed to secure Romanian cooperation and during October 1940 three military missions were despatched to Bucharest representing the Wehrmacht service arms. The missions’ tasks were threefold; security of oil production and delivery to Germany, reorganisation of the Romanian military and obtaining Romanian cooperation for the impending attack on the Soviet Union, already in its advanced planning stages. Germany insinuated itself into the communications and internal security of Romania and German–Soviet diplomatic relations soured as a result, Stalin’s Foreign Minister Molotov journeying to Berlin for meetings with Ribbentrop and Hitler where he emphasised that, as a nation that bordered the Black Sea, the Soviet Union had an obvious and logical interest in the Balkan countries.

  In the interim, during October 1940 Mussolini had launched an ill-considered war against Greece with the aim to establish a puppet vassal state while annexing several island chains in the Aegean. Advancing from the Italian protectorate of Albania, the offensive was a disastrous failure as Greek forces defeated the invading Italians and pushed them back beyond their starting points. Worse, the attack settled any question of Greece’s obscure political alignment and it joined the Allies, providing a Balkan staging post for British and Commonwealth forces. Winston Churchill had long harboured a fascination with military possession of the Balkan region that dated back to the previous war, and Greece’s accession to the Allied cause allowed him to transport forces from North Africa almost immediately, occupying Crete and Lemnos, much to the consternation of his overstretched commanders in Egypt.

  With the Royal Air Force now within striking distance of the Ploieşti oilfields, Hitler ordered additional Luftwaffe units to Romania and plans prepared for an invasion of Greece. Italian troops were failing on both the Greco-Albanian battlefield and against British forces in North Africa, so initial German objectives linked new operations in North Africa, Gibraltar and Greece to take control of the Mediterranean basin. Directive No. 18, issued on 12 November, outlined this ambitious concept. Vichy France was to be given the opportunity to defend its African possessions against the Allies or face occupation by Germany. Gibraltar was to be seized while Spain also defended against potential landings. German forces were to support an Italian offensive against Egypt while ten divisions seized northern Greece to permit the Luftwaffe to operate against British air bases in the eastern Mediterranean and correspondingly protect the Romanian oilfields. Neighbouring Yugoslavia would be coerced into either a pro-Axis stance or at the very least to remain neutral.

  However, the failure to convince Franco to render aid for Operation ‘Felix’ restricted the scope originally envisioned. Directive No. 20, issued by OKW on 13 December 1940, instead outlined an invasion of Greece codenamed Operation ‘Marita’ and scheduled for May 1941 when weather conditions would permit the necessary logistics. Twenty-four German divisions were to be assembled gradually in southern Romania and made ready to enter Bulgaria in transit to the Greek frontier. The northern coast of the Aegean Sea and, if necessary, the entire Greek mainland were to be occupied. As the directive was being prepared Italy suffered further calamity in North Africa as a British offensive drove the Italian forces west in disarray deep into Libya, by January 1941 complete Italian defeat appearing almost inevitable. To prevent disaster, Luftwaffe units transferred to Sicily and the lead elements of the Afrika Korps were despatched to Tripoli during February 1941 (Operation ‘Sonnenblume’) which marked the beginning of General Erwin Rommel’s fabled career in the desert.

  On 20 November Hitler secured Hungarian membership of the Tripartite Pact, Romania also joining three days later. Although Bulgaria at first refused to become a signatory – due predominantly to a fear of Soviet reaction – German access to the country through which it would reach Greece was granted and full cooperation extended. Inevitably, King Boris eventually bowed to German pressure and ultimately Prime Minister Bogdan Filov also signed the pact on behalf of Bulgaria on 1 March 1941. Of the countries bordering Greece, only Yugoslavia remained outside the influence of the Tripartite powers. Although Hitler’s generals stressed the necessity of using Yugoslavia as a transit area for formations attacking Greece, the Führer secured Yugoslavian signature to the Axis pact on the condition that German troops did not enter the country. Hitler evidently valued their limited cooperation over any potential military advantages and the diplomatic situation was settled in preparation for ‘Marita’.

  Hitler’s satisfaction was, however, fleeting as a bloodless coup d’état led by General Dušan Simović, the former commander of the Yugoslav Air Force, deposed his country’s existing government. Most of the nation, with the notable exception of Croatia, vehemently opposed any form of alliance with Nazi Germany, and Yugoslavia’s borders were tightly sealed as anti-German nationalist demonstrators celebrated in the streets. German minority populations were evacuated from Croatia after Goebbels’ newspapers reported subsequent ‘outrages’ which other Yugoslavian ethnicities had carried out against them, the vast majority of which had been grossly exaggerated. More significantly for Germany, al
l freight traffic along the vital Danube waterway was brought to a complete standstill in Yugoslavian territory. Despite assurances from Simović’s new administration that, though they would not ratify the signing of the Tripartite Pact, they wished to continue friendly relations with Germany, Hitler had decided to occupy Yugoslavia as well. At a meeting of his military chiefs on 27 March he demanded that Yugoslavia be destroyed as a ‘military power and a sovereign state’. Directive No. 25 was hurriedly prepared and signed; Yugoslavia would be first to fall in ‘Marita’ which had now become an attack on the last politically independent Balkan states. Berlin began laying the public groundwork for invasion by reporting in newspapers worldwide that intensive activity amongst Yugoslavian troops was being monitored along the Danube, all the while continuing to accuse the Yugoslavs of maltreating German minorities. The Brandenburgers had already begun preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union, albeit unwittingly as the undertaking remained shrouded in the tightest security. Only elements of the 2nd Battalion – minus those troops already occupied in Romania – were hurriedly made available to support ‘Marita’.

  The Brandenburgers covertly preceded the entry of German troop units into Bulgaria. The 8th Company had moved from Baden near Vienna to the region of Breaza in the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps, where they had been undergoing mountain troop training. An advanced detachment led by new company commander Hauptmann Buchler travelled in civilian clothes to the Bulgarian capital Sofia, meeting with Oberst Otto Wagner (alias Dr Delius) of the Abwehrstelle who issued final instructions to Buchler.2 The Abwehr feared British sabotage of railway and road bridges as well as other crucial transportation hubs and Wagner claimed to have discovered explosives and plans in the British Embassy through reports from an implanted agent. The men of Buchler’s company were to stand guard over important potential targets, dressed as Bulgarian soldiers or civilians as deemed appropriate to the location, their full military equipment being carried with them in boxes. Each small unit would be supplied with an interpreter, a graduate from the German school in Sofia. Shortly after the meeting, the 8th Company, with battalion commander Rittmeister Dr Paul Jacobi and Hauptmann Weiss, were en route to Bulgaria via the Danube, disguised as Romanian troops for their transit through that territory and Bulgarians after crossing the frontier.