The Funkabwehr, "Radio Defence Corps," was a radio counterintelligence organisation created in 1940 by Hans Kopp of the Armed Forces High Command during World War II. It was the principal body for the monitoring of illicit broadcasts. Its formal name was Funkabwehr des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht () (OKW/WNV/FU). Its most notable breakthrough occurred on 26 June 1941, when tracing teams at the Funkabwehr station at Zelenogradsk discovered the Rote Kapelle, an anti-Nazi resistance movement in Berlin, and two Soviet espionage rings operating in German-occupied Europe and Switzerland during World War II. The Funkabwehr was dissolved on 30 April 1945.
History Purpose
The Radio Defence Corps of the OKW was given the task of picking up and locating by Direction finding (DF) transmitters of secret agents and other clandestine 'underground' transmitters. An underground transmitter was the secret radio station established in enemy-occupied territory. Such a station was charged with passing back to its control station, information of a military, political, or war-industrial nature obtained through espionage. This facilitates the carrying out of pick-up missions. Underground stations also pass traffic relative to the administration and supply of secret organisations and resistance groups. An underground transmitter is usually one of several belonging to a more or less large espionage organisation.IF-176, p. 2.
The moment a clandestine transmitter sends treasonable traffic, it becomes an underground station. A method of discovering a secret agent and clandestine traffic, according to radio intercept procedure, and fishing it out of the mass of regular traffic was only possible when every intercept operator, or at least every analysis station, had access to the full spectrum table of all known radio traffic.
It was the duty of the Radio Defence Corps to build up this spectrum table of recognised traffic, by working it out by all the organisations concerned.IF-176, p. 3. When all unaccounted traffic had been DFd, the underground station was exposed. The DF of underground and clandestine transmitters had to be accurate enough so that, on the basis of the bearings alone, the station was located and destroyed. By DF and Radio Intelligence, it could be determined what espionage cover-organisation each transmitter belonged to. By deciphering intercepted traffic of a given station before its extirpation, the following actions are undertaken by units of the Funkabwehr.
Information was discovered and collected about the personnel and circle of acquaintances of the underground organisation. The technical and criminological aspects of the agents were discovered and collected.
By exercising rough DF-ing of the underground transmitter, the following could be accomplished: Determining the area of greatest espionage activity, from which can be concluded the areas of intended military activity. Plans made for the subsequent close-range fieldwork for the purpose of extirpating and rendering inoperative.
In the event that a so-called G-V Game, i.e. playback, was to be carried out, the Funkabwehr conducted the technical execution, while the information to be contained in the messages was furnished by the head office of the Reich Security Main Office, or Military High Command. To carry out a G-V Game means to have a captured enemy agent continue operations against the parent service which they had been previously operating.IF-176, p. 4. The fact that they are doing this must not become known to the original parent organisation. If the G-V Game was well carried out, it was possible to enter deeply into the parent organisation, such that the parent can be broken wide open. A good G-V game enabled future military organisations of the parent to be determined.
G-V Games in general could only be carried out when:
The agent was thoroughly willing and able to work for you. Organisation and technique of the secret organisation the station belonged to, was known. The removal of the agent is either not known, or the group of people who know about it and are able to give the control station word of the circumstances, are captured. Special procedures, ciphers, WT procedures and all security measures of the agent or agents are known.
Status and liaison
Introduction
The Funkabwehr developed out of the () or Listening Service, which was the German interwar radio intelligence and interception service, that was later expanded by the Funkabwehr, the Luftwaffe and the General der Nachrichtenaufklärung, early in the war, until by 1942, each service had an independent interception organisation. The Funkabwehr was an independent organisation whose head office was the department of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, specifically the OKW/WNV/FU.
The Funkabwehr consisted of three groups.IF-176, p. 5.
Group I was the administration, organisation and tactical employment section. Group II was the technical supply and development of equipment as well as motor transport. It was also responsible for camouflage of vans and cars to change their effective use, i.e. to change their common shape and colour. Group III was operations and was the central clearing house for the analysis of agents' traffic. It was responsible for WT security and controlled the agencies that enforced it.
Group III consisted of the following:
DF Plotting and evaluation section Office for agents' nets Office of unknown traffic Clandestine transmitters office Cryptanalysis office VHF evaluation section Fiesler Storch mission section Evaluation office Final analysis office
The Companies and intercept stations reported all DF bearing and intercepts directly by teletype to regimental level. The DF plotting and evaluation section made a central plotting of all bearings regardless of the net the stations belonged in. As the unit had to take DF bearings at great distances, the errors in maps affected accuracy to some degree. In order to remove or reduce errors, the exact locations, or triangles of error as a value, was calculated by a specialist called Dr. Dürminger.IF-176, p. 11.
Every day, the data for the next day were sent out by teleprinter to the subordinate units. The data consisted of frequencies, call signs, expected times of transmission and related information about the enemy traffic. Also included were the DF bearing fixes on enemy transmitters, which were calculated from the DF bearings supplied by the DF stations.
Rosters were also submitted that enabled the unit to work on the most advantageous possible allocation of frequencies. The DF Plotting and evaluation section handled the assignment of frequencies in the roster. In this way, the DF stations who were in the best geographic and technical position to take bearings on a given transmitter, were assigned the job and could be checked as to whether they had accomplished the discovery of the agent.
All matters pertaining to clandestine traffic were worked on by a section that had no particular subsection in charge of analysis. The technical spotting and removal of clandestine transmitters was the work of the Ordnungspolizei, known colloquially as the Orpo.IF-176, p. 12.
The most developed section was the Office of Unknown Traffic. It was considered the most important. Its work depended whether underground nets, which were operating with new traffic characteristics and new methods, could be spotted in time. The volume of unknown traffic was very large. A card index alone was not sufficient to document all the frequencies. A Hollerith (IBM section) was successfully used in this instance. The Office of Unknown Traffic worked with a large number of other organisations specifically involved in radio intelligence.IF-176, p. 13.
Deciphering and contents evaluation had conspicuous success, but the solving of traffic was almost always possible only when the code had been betrayed. Final analysts had the duty of:
Furnishing the High Command with as much information as possible on military, war-industrial and political matters, passed by agents' transmitters.IF-176, p. 14. Providing guidance for the work of subordinate units and assigning to subordinate units the transmitters to be eliminated, but sometimes it was more important to read the traffic than to eliminate the transmitters.
Every month the Final Analysis section of the Funkabwehr forwarded a report to the High Command. During the last period of the war, the report was divided for security reasons into a report on the situation in the east, and a report on the west.
WNV/FU III The OKW/WFSt/WNV/FU III (), the Radio Communication Group 3 of AgWNV, was the principal German unit dealing with signals security, the interception of clandestine traffic and the location, by technical means, of agents' transmitters.Rudolf Staritz: Abwehrfunk – Funkabwehr. Technik und Verfahren der Spionagefunkdienste. Unpublished manuscript, 1985, revised 2018 (PDF; 10,5 MB), p. 12 (German). The WNV/FU () formed the wireless department of the signals directorate of the OKW.
As a department of the OKW, the WNV was theoretically in a position to issue directions through its chief to the signals organisations of each of the services. In the cases of the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, this power of direction was practically ineffective. In the case of the Army, there was closer coordination since the chief of the WNV combined this post with that of the chief of the army signals service of HNW ()HW 34-2, p. 6. This position was held by Generaloberst Erich Fellgiebel, who was Director of the Code and Cipher section of the Defence Ministry from 1931 to 1932 and held of the office of dual combined office of Chef HNW and Chief Signal Officer Armed Forces (Chef WNF) from 1939 until 20 July 1944, with headquarters located in Dorf Zinna near Jüterbog. Thus it was possible for reasonably close liaison to be maintained between the WNV/FU III and the army intercept service. The intercept service provided the bulk of the personnel for the WNV/FU II and also did a certain amount of operational work on behalf of this organisation in the case of agent transmitters in the operational areas. The division of responsibility between the intercept service and the WNV/FU III in respect of traffic of partisans and saboteurs was not clearly defined, but in general the intercept service carried out such duties in operational areas.
Orpo Funkabwehrdienst While the intercept service had its own specific tasks of a different nature from those of WNV/FU III and cooperation and overlapping between them were purely incidental, the duties of the WNV/FU III and the Funkabwehrdienst of the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) were identical. Both were concerned with the location and apprehension of clandestine transmitters and, at least from the outbreak of war, it was impossible to distinguish between clandestine activities directed against the government and the regime. The sphere of the police monitoring units, which separately administered were controlled operationally by the central discrimination department of the WNV/FU III. This unity at the centre, the result of a specific order of the Führer, was not, however, accompanied by cooperation at the outstations. There was for instance in Paris, from the time of its occupation, both a branch control centre () of WNV/FU and a radio direction finder () of the Orpo; yet there appears to have been practically no contact between the two units while the members of one had but the haziest knowledge of the activities of the other. Similarly, while Aussenstellen of WNV/FU co-operated with the Funkmessstelle whose liaison was restricted to the Sicherheitspolizei.