Hitler's Brandenburgers

by Lawrence Paterson

  Ironically, Eppler and Sandstede would have been unable to communicate with their Abwehr contact who had been attached to Panzerarmee Afrika even if they had managed to establish a reliable wireless station. Major.i.G. Josef Zolling was Rommel’s Intelligence Officer (Ic) and the small staff of his ‘Abteilung I’ numbered just six junior officers and only one qualified Abwehr radio operator, Gefreiter Waldemar Weber of the 5th Company, Lehrregiment ‘Brandenburg’. He, together with driver and fellow Brandenburger Walter Aberle, were jointly known as ‘Funktruppe Schildkröte’. Weber had arrived as part of Almásy’s group and transferred to the Panzerarmee Ic, referring all subsequent information received directly to Zolling who in turn was supposed to pass the raw material through to Unteroffizier Holzbrecher at the Zuara ‘Wido’ station, maintaining the link with the Abwehr and, by extension, the Brandenburger Regiment. The cipher data that Weber required to effectively communicate with Almásy would be provided by Zolling, consolidating his position as a vital intermediary between Almásy and Weber. Similarly, there was to be no wireless traffic between Eppler, once in position in Egypt and the ‘Wido’ station; all messages were to be relayed by Weber to Zolling for subsequent dissemination.

  Rommel was an avid consumer of radio intelligence and demanded ‘hands-on’ control of his front-line units via a busy radio net. He had personally ordered the two ‘Salam’ operators to join his headquarters during the difficult Gazala battle as he suffered from a shortage of wireless operators and needed every asset he could accumulate. Funktruppe Schildkröte was accommodated aboard a 3-ton Citroën truck which was patently unsuited to traversing the rough desert landscape. While attempting to keep pace with the advancing troops of the 90th Light Division the vehicle’s sump plate was damaged by sharp rocks, bringing them to a standstill as engine oil drained out over the sand. While awaiting recovery, Marmon-Herrington armoured cars of the 4th South African Armoured Car Regiment arrived on the scene first and the two men were captured. Both Brandenburgers were of Palestinian birth and could speak fluent Arabic and English. Weber had transferred to the regiment in the spring of 1940 and taken part in the covert operations in Bulgaria, before further cipher training and posting to Istanbul and ultimately Tripoli. Aberle had also transferred to the regiment during the spring of 1940, spending time on the Belgian coast during preparations for ‘Seelöwe’ before posting to Tripoli in October 1941.

  Alongside the capture of ‘Funktruppe Schildkröte’ there was another problem that dogged the Abwehr, though one of which they remained blissfully unaware: from the winter of 1941 Bletchley Park had managed to break the Abwehr Enigma code. A conversation between a captured U-boat radio man and Brandenburger prisoner of war recorded by British interrogators in September 1942 provides a telling example of German unwillingness to believe the impossible had been achieved:

  Radio operator: We have cracked the British code, during the Norwegian campaign for example, but they will never crack the code we had in the navy. It’s absolutely impossible to crack.

  Abwehr commando: Everyone says that of their own code.

  Radio operator: What!? They can’t crack it.

  Abwehr commando: There’s only one method that can’t be deciphered and even that can be deciphered by expert mathematicians: I think they can break a code in the course of two years …

  Radio operator: No, they can’t crack it …

  Abwehr commando: Oh, that’s just one of those silly ideas people have.

  Radio operator: No.19

  By December 1940 the Abwehr’s hand cipher had been broken, but it was another year before Alfred Dillwyn ‘Dilly’ Knox cracked the Abwehr’s Enigma settings, providing up-to-date priceless information. For example, the British were aware of ‘Salam’, through the successful decrypting of the complex ‘Chaffinch’ code belonging to the Afrika Korps (also compromised by Bletchley Park operatives) coupled with intermittent radio contact from Almásy’s column. It was only the infrequent nature of messages from ‘Salam’ that kept the British several steps behind the German vehicles. Nonetheless, Enigma information greatly assisted in the capture of the two agents in Cairo and subsequent foiling of numerous Abwehr operations in the Levant.

  Under interrogation, Eppler and Sandstede provided as much information as they could, helping destroy the so-called Egyptian ‘fifth column’ and bargaining to save their own lives from the gallows that traditionally awaited captured spies. On 4 August 1942 British authorities recorded a conversation between Eppler and Sandstede that seems a fitting footnote to their fumbled espionage attempt.

  Eppler: Those bastards Almásy and the others. All of them have received the Iron Cross First Class. To hell with them. That is why I decided to tell everything to save our lives. [Talking of Weber and Aberle] Aberle is 100 per cent Nazi.

  Sandstede: They have treated me awfully well and I have told them everything. What else do they want of us?20

  Amongst the information obtained from Eppler were indications of a new German expedition into southern Libya. He informed his interrogators of the possibility of another mission planned for the southern fringe of the North African desert.

  While preparations were made in Berlin for the Almásy expedition … the equipment accumulated was stored in a private building on the Mattheikirchplatz [i.e. near HQ Lehrregiment ‘Brandenburg’]. In the same building was also stored the equipment being accumulated for an expedition under Schulz-Kampfhaenkel. [Eppler] saw there, he estimates, eight to ten medium machine guns, several light machine guns, .08 pistols, beds, chairs, tents, tables, etc. There was also a generator for electric light and power which was to go on this expedition … Working together with Schulz-Kampfhaenkel was Oberstleutnant Haeckel (Heckel) (Major until December 1941). He is to oversee land reconnaissance in south Libya and French Equatorial Africa … [Eppler] does not know how many men Haeckel has under his command, but assumes the number to be at least fifty, possibly drawn from the Lehrregiment

  ‘Brandenburg’.21

  Otto Schulz-Kampfhaenkel was a noted geographer, filmmaker and airman who had previously led the Amazon-Jari Expedition of 1935–7 that explored the Amazon basin, sponsored by both the Brazilian government and the Nazi Party’s Foreign Service. Commissioned into the Luftwaffe as a Leutnant, his new proposal was to reconnoitre the area south of Kufra as far as the Belgian Congo, providing cartographic details while also monitoring the region for signs of enemy activity. The Allies had an established air supply route through French Equatorial Africa against which Germany had already violently protested in Vichy, urging Marshal Pétain to take Chad back from the Free French. The route was immensely valuable to the Allies, material being shipped from North American industries, through Brazil and across the Atlantic under American and Brazilian air and sea cover. Once in Dakar or Takoradi, the cargo would pass through forts occupied by Free French troops until they reached Khartoum, Wadi Halfa and finally Cairo. In Berlin, OKW were concerned also about the possible threat of a rumoured French Army under formation by De Gaulle in French Equatorial Africa. There was insufficient cartographic information to determine the ability to move large bodies of men and mechanised units from the south to threaten Rommel’s right flank.

  To that end, a special detachment codenamed ‘Theodora’ of the Abwehrstelle VI, Münster, had already begun a somewhat academic examination of poorly mapped African territory, largely performed by university professors temporarily assigned as Sonderführer to the Abwehr in order to put their scientific knowledge at the disposal of military intelligence. This work was directed by Dr Konrad Voppel who had been the peacetime head of a state cartographical institute in Leipzig.22 The work was carried out in close cooperation with the Military Geographical Department of OKW, though ‘Theodora’ enjoyed far greater powers than the OKW department, able to issue completely new maps based on a combination of fresh scientific surveys and aerial photographs while OKW’s department could only revise existing maps. The interrogation of prisoners from French colonial troops al
so yielded some information, but a reliable physical exploration of the territory between Equatorial Africa and the North African zone of operations was demanded, dovetailing with Schulz-Kampfhaenkel’s proposition. He would lead a group of approximately thirteen scientists – astronomers, geographers, geologists, cartographers, surveyors, palaeontologists, zoologists, botanists and other scientists plus an engineer from Zeiss – supported by approximately sixty soldiers with pre-war African experience, equipped in Tripoli and supported by both the ‘Wido’ station and the Italian War Ministry. Luftwaffe Oberstleutnant Haeckel was placed in military command while Schultz-Kampfhaenkel oversaw the scientific work.

  Correspondingly, he also established an office in Berlin codenamed ‘Theo’ equipped with modern scientific instruments for the preparation of maps, which would compile the information transmitted from the expedition itself named ‘Sonderkommando Dora’. The Sonderkommando took fifteen Steyr 1500 A trucks, six V Kübelwagen, two Horch 901 (Sdkfz 15) trucks, two Horch 901 Funkwagen (Sdkfz 17), nine Opel Blitz trucks – including one equipped as a photo laboratory – six Mercedes trucks, one captured Ford V8 Truck, two Horch Sdkfz 222 Panzerspähwagen (armoured cars) and a heavy BMW R75 sidecar combination. A powerful aerial component was also included that numbered two Heinkel He 111s, two Focke-Wulf Fw 58s, one Henschel Hs 126, a Fiesler Storch, a motorised Go 244 and two gliders, a Gotha Go 242 and a DFS 230. All powered aircraft were equipped with towing gear, cameras and powerful radio transmitters for the collection of data.

  Though defensively equipped, ‘Sonderkommando Dora’ was not intended as a fighting unit. They established a base at the oasis of Hon, launching expeditions as far west as Ghat and as far south as the Tibesti Mountains (the Dohone Region at Bir Sarfaya), the Tummo Mountains south of Bir Mushuru and along the Gebel ben Ghnema. The results of their labours were twenty-three highly accurate sketch-maps, Nikolaus Benjamin Richter’s astronavigation being found in modern times to have been accurate to within 300m. They also confirmed the unlikelihood of French attack from the south, although by the time their findings were collated the situation for Rommel’s African campaign had already changed irrevocably.23 The scientists were eventually evacuated to Germany during January 1943 while the attached combat troops were transferred to Koenen’s ‘Tropical Company’.

  Operation ‘Dora’

  Somewhat confusingly, the second half of Koenen’s ‘Tropical Company’ launched a parallel mission with a similar cover name. Under the command of the one-legged Oberleutnant Conrad von Leipzig the force of approximately a hundred men mounted Operation ‘Dora’, charged with travelling south through the Sahara to Chad in order to harass and potentially sever Allied supply lines while also reconnoitring established camel tracks, searching for water sources and marking out potential airstrips. Leipzig’s men were equipped with twenty-four captured British trucks – including twelve 2-pdr Portee vehicles – four captured jeeps with Flak guns, a command vehicle, one radio car and various German trucks and were accompanied by an experienced vehicle maintenance crew. The operation was also bestowed the use of a captured British fighter aircraft, a Spitfire reported as having been ‘borrowed’ by Canaris from a Luftwaffe testing facility and listed as flown by a Brandenburger Hauptmann Gerlach, though particulars of his identity remain scarce.24

  Most of Leipzig’s men could speak English, French and various Arabic dialects to varying degrees, the use of subterfuge essential for the completion of their mission. The entire ‘Dora’ group departed Tripoli in a single column amidst heavy Arab road traffic of overburdened camels and shepherded livestock, heading south for nearly 1,000km towards Murzuq deep in the Libyan desert and home to a small Italian border garrison. Gradually traffic thinned and the ‘Dora’ column began to make good time.

  We travelled through the Gefara, the broad built-up plain south of Tripoli. Before me in the car sat Oberleutnant Conrad von Leipzig, the leader of our operation … a task which required at the same time the maximum amount of physical effort and planning skill; exactly the mission for a Brandenburg officer.

  A splendid Italian road went through developed land, which the industriousness of Italian colonists had wrested from the plain. Before us lay Garian with its white houses and barracks. It was the gateway to the Jebel, the mountains. Gradually the road became worse and narrower. It snaked through mountains free of vegetation to Mizdah, a small village of dilapidated Berber huts and an Italian garrison post.

  For nearly 1,000 kilometres we passed over the plain through Hun and Socna until we reached Misurata. During late afternoon, we reached our first objective in Murzuq, a wretched nest of Arabs with dilapidated huts and an Italian barracks. But whoever, like us, arrived there after a long trek through the desert waste found the place rather comfortable.25

  There they established themselves in the Italian garrison, guests of the desert veteran Major Matteo Rinaldi who had arrived in the region with Marshal Graziani during his brutal campaign against the Senussi tribes in 1931. His garrison amounted to four Italian infantrymen and 150 Meharis, tribal militiamen named after the Mehari camels they rode. Leipzig was also planning to establish an airstrip in order to make his rendezvous soon with the captured Spitfire. Scheduled to arrive from Italy before the ‘Dora’ men continued their mission, it disappointingly failed to materialise. From Murzuq, Leipzig divided his force. A single column, ‘Trupp III’, under the command of Leutnant Becker, would take three of the heavier vehicles and head west across the Wadi al Hayaa to the Algerian border at Ghat. From there, Becker would swing to the south and head towards French West Africa, skirting the western fringe of the Sahara Desert. The remainder of the force would proceed south-east to Gatrun (Qatrun) before crossing the border into Chad. There, it would divide once more; ‘Trupp II’, under Feldwebel Stegmann moving along the Tibesti Mountains of northern Chad in the direction of the Sudan, to interdict Allied supply lines, while ‘Trupp I’ under Leipzig headed south to Lake Chad.

  Following advice from Rinaldi, a small party left Murzuq during the following morning to head to firm ground near Qatrun and begin preparation of an advanced airstrip. After several days’ effort, the strip was built though the aircraft had still not arrived and Leipzig opted to move onwards. The remaining two Truppen established a forward operating base at Qatrun, where the two columns split, leaving a signal station, the maintenance troop and two armoured cars behind as protection against marauding Arab tribesmen.

  Trupp III pushed west to Ghat through often pathless country in which the three vehicles frequently bogged down. They finally reached their immediate objective.

  Only natives live here, who surveyed us with ample mistrust. Our translator had to summon up all his language skill to get anything out of them. Suddenly, a tall scraggly man in an unspeakably dirty Burnous came up to us and said ‘Hummel, Hummel!’ We were shocked. Who was this son of the desert and how did he come by the typical greeting of the Hanseatic cities? Soon we learned the answer: the man was Ernst Niebuhr, a genuine Hamburger from the suburb of Barmbeck, for whom a lust for adventure had taken him into the French Foreign Legion in 1920. One day he up and left [i.e, deserted]. He found shelter amongst the Berbers, went with the caravans into the deep desert, wed a desert beauty with smouldering eyes, had a dozen kids and worked here for God only knows how many years with a lively trade, using camels to go from oasis to oasis. He had not the slightest desire to return to the Alster lakes of Hamburg.26

  For Becker’s Trupp, the discovery of a German so deep in the desert was heavensent as he furnished them with information and the kind of local detail that they had been sent to find, amassed over the decades since his desertion from the Foreign Legion. Though they were bemused by his apparent indifference to Germany’s war, they spent the evening around a fire recording as much material as they could obtain. Before long, Becker and his men returned to Qatrun to report their findings to the ‘Dora’ base and await news from the remaining two columns.

  Oberleutnant von Leipzig’s
Trupp I had probed south to the Tummo Mountains that marked the borders of Libya, Niger and Chad. The Germans had opted for Volltarnung and were equipped with British uniforms to match their vehicles. While crossing the first foothills they encountered a French reconnaissance vehicle, each party waving to their ‘allies’. However, approximately 15km into French West Africa (now northern Niger) the Brandenburgers entered a small village which transpired to be a French military outpost. Challenged, they were soon identified despite their disguise and a sharp firefight followed during which the Brandenburgers lost two vehicles. In the confusion that followed, Leipzig and his men retreated into Libya, the weak French force that chased after them soon abandoning pursuit. However, with a German presence now identified, the Tummo mountain passes were reinforced with additional French troops, ruling it out as a potential covert route for the Brandenburgers to repeat their penetration of French West Africa.

  Feldwebel Stegmann’s Trupp II had meanwhile advanced to the south-east along the Wadi Arahi to the foot of the Tibesti Mountains that lay on the border with Chad. There they met with local Tibbu tribesmen who related stories of a German aircraft bombing Fort Lamy south of Lake Chad, the regional headquarters of the Free French forces. The raid, of which the Brandenburgers had been unaware, had been mounted by Hauptmann Theodor Blaich, an adventurer and plantation owner in West Africa who had flown back to Germany in his own aircraft to enlist in the Wehrmacht at the outbreak of war. He had recognised the strategic location and importance of Fort Lamy after its occupation by Free French forces in 1940 and recommended its capture. Unable to obtain official support he changed tack and proposed a bombing raid which found approval from Erwin Rommel, the idea forwarded to Fliegerführer Afrika who allocated a single Heinkel He 111 – designated Sonderkommando Blaich – that flew from a remote natural airstrip in southern Libya for the mission on 21 January. Sixteen bombs were dropped, destroying 80,000 gallons of stored fuel, stocks of oil and ten French aircraft without any return fire. However, in bad weather and low on fuel the Heinkel made an emergency landing on its return journey, eventually being found by Italian search aircraft six days later. Resupplied with food, water and fuel, the Heinkel managed to take to the air again and returned to base successfully. The raid had slashed available supplies for Free French and RAF units in the area by half, though it also provoked an increased tempo in French hit-and-run raids on Italian outposts as well as strengthened French regional defences, bolstering their forces and establishing a string of observation posts on the heights of the Tibesti range along the border.