Research Office of the Reich Air Ministry

Göring addressing the Reichstag

Hermann Göring was a high ranking Nazi Party member who founded the party-run FA along with Gottfried Schapper in April 1933. Schapper had worked in the Reichswehr Ministry from 1927 to 1933 and been dissatisfied by both the scope of monitoring work and the incompetence of the methods employed there. He along with some colleagues, including Nazi, Hans Schimpf, his predecessor and a personal friend of Göring, resigned in 1933 and proposed to Göring that a separate office be created that would be free from department ties. Schimpf had previously organized a National Socialist cell within the Reichswehr without any word having leaked out about it.[4] Schapper requested, due to both limited scope of operations and incompetence in the signals office of the Reichswehr Ministry, that the new agency be independent of the ministry. Göring consented and later stated during TICOM interrogations that he wanted an organization of his own which could handle all phases of monitoring under one central control.[6]

Göring ensured it was camouflaged under the title Reichsluftrahrtministerium-Forschungsamt to confuse its role within the Nazi hierarchy, though in reality it was not connected to the Aviation ministry. Göring also ensured by 1935 that it was not subordinated to the Reich Air Ministry, by having its own administration, with financing directly from the Treasury by 1938, and bore no relation to the research division of the Luftwaffe technical office, or the Luftwaffe's military intercept or cryptologic unit.[7] By then it was known as Hermann Göring's Research Bureau.[8]

The FA was a Nazi Party civilian organization, unlike complementary organizations that existed at the time, e.g. OKW/Chi, which were military in nature.[9] For security purposes, a small number of individuals, who were civilians, were ordered to wear German Luftwaffe uniforms. This was to ensure fruitful communication between signals intelligence.

The original unit consisted of eight-men when it was established on 10 April 1933. Later, as the agency expanded, an additional 33 cryptographers, most with Nazi leanings, would be "poached" from the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, the OKW/Chi[10] cipher bureau, at the time when OKW/Chi itself was facing a severe personal shortage. This caused considerable friction between the two agencies. The FA was located in an attic in Göring's Air Ministry building and later moved to a building in Behrendstrasse, Berlin. It then moved again in late 1933 to the Hotel am Knie in Chariottenberg.[7][11] In 1934 and 1935 it occupied a converted housing complex called the Schiller Colonnades at 116-124 Schillerstrase. Forced to evacuate Berlin due to the heavy Allied bombing, by January 1945 most of the unit had moved to Breslau and Luebben (site of an intercept station) and Jueterbog. By March, the remnants were sent to Kaufbeuren with a small group moving to Rosenheim. By this point the FA had shrunk from around 2000 personnel down to 450 with 100 at Rosenheim. At Kaufbeuren it occupied a block of six buildings at the airfield barracks on the local airfield, secured by the 289th Combat Engineers. The FA had been disbanded and all documents burned shortly before the arrival of the American Army. A small handful of documents discovered after an extensive search provided confirmation of the existence of the FA and provided a basic outline of its organization.[9]

Whereas the operational scope of the Foreign office and the Reichswehr were organized to monitor foreign communications, the Forschungsamt was designed to monitor interior communications, to collected all communications throughout Germany, and from Germany to foreign countries. The press, all printed material, the surveillance of personal letters, and the interception of conversations were undertaken.[4] Intercept stations were distributed all over Germany, postal districts and cable junctions all had surveillance points. All telegrams sent by anybody were copied and sent to the unit.[4]

Interception of telephone conversations of high ranking government officials, Nazi Party members and state officials were of particular importance. Gradually, an enormous spy net was created that spanned all of Germany. No officer, no official, no party functionary and no person of importance could telephone without the conversation being monitored.[4] The FA paid particular attention to the Reichswehr personnel and commanders of military districts. A system of confidential agents was established to pass it to the FA. Surveillance of general delivery letters formed a large part of the FA.

At the outset, the FA tried to work with the Reichswehr cipher bureau and Bureau C of the Foreign Office, but the relationship quickly soured, due to the nature of the FA always to be the receiver and never the giver. Eventually, cooperation was undertaken in a purely formal manner.

A number of objectives came into being, in the first phase of the FA operation.

• The Officer Corps of the Reichswehr, and the armed forces, in general, were put under surveillance.
• The leading figures of the Nazi Party were put under surveillance.
• The Catholic Church, the Vatican with all its institutions and leading personalities were put under surveillance.
• Anybody in Germany who had been active in political life, e.g. trade union movements, labour organizations, Freemasonry. For this objective, there was close collaboration with the Gestapo.[4]

The nature of the work that the FA undertook, inevitably brought the agency to the notice of Heinrich Himmler, who attempted on his own initiative to gain control of the unit and its activity. This led to an intense rivalry between Göring and Himmler. In time, Himmler succeeded in getting a stronger influence on the unit, so that gradually power in respect of the FA passed from Göring to Himmler.[4]

The first major operation of the FA was the surveillance of Ernst Röhm. Ernst Röhm was the co-founder of the Sturmabteilung (SA; Storm Detachment), the Nazi Party's militia, and later was its commander. Röhm and his SA associates had been watched continuously since the end of 1933. Every telephone conversation, letter written, and every conversation that Röhm had uttered was reported to the FA. For many of the associates of Röhm, microphones had been placed in their private lodgings. These were concealed in their telephones, table lamps, chandeliers, electric clocks and other locations. The evidence collected was collated and evaluated in the evaluation centre of the FA. This evidence led directly to the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934 in which 85-200 members of the SA and others were assassinated. During this action Schimpf was promoted to ministerial rank (German: Ministerialrat), which ensured for himself a position of great power.[4]

The second major operation of the FA was the Alexander Tukhachevsky case.[4]

The third major operation of the FA was the supposed "housecleaning" operation that was undertaken by the FA in 1938, when significant numbers of personnel from the Ministry of War were forcefully removed. Two major figures were Werner von Blomberg and the aristocrat Baron Werner von Fritsch and a number of very high ranking officers who had to leave the field. Flicke considered this Göring's revenge, and the revenge of the FA for the death of Hans Schimpf.[4]

During this time, the Foreign Office, which was controlled by Joachim von Ribbentrop, was wired with microphones without any ministry official noticing.

The FA played a very important role in the intercepting communications of the government of the Federal State of Austria before the Anschluss occupation in March 1938. A special subsection in the FA was formed, and subsequently the entire communications system of Austria was intercepted. They were increasingly aided in their operation by sympathetic Austrian officials. All telephone conversations carried out in Austrian ministries, the content of all telegrams sent abroad, and many important documents were sent to the Forschungsamt. The Austrian officials even went as far as to provide all the cryptographic systems used by the Foreign Office in Vienna, by the Austrian Armed Forces and by the Austrian Police. The Austrian telephone and telegraph cables leading through the Berchtesgaden areas were tapped by the FA.[4]

By 20 July 1944, Heinrich Himmler had firmly gained control over the FA.[4]

TICOM was the operation by the United States to seize military assets after the end of World War II in Europe.[12] The existence of Göring's Research Bureau was unknown by TICOM at the start of the war, which came as some surprise when papers were discovered by TICOM Team 1 at the Kaufbeuren Air Base indicating it was the FA's final location after fleeing there from heavy combat zones in the north.[9]

The final output of the FA was Brown Reports or Brown Sheets (Braune Meldungen or Braunblätter). Recipients of these reports included Chief of the Armed Forces Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Operations Alfred Jodl, Göring, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz and Hitler.[19]

In cases where special reports were created, these had a much shorter distribution list, specifically only Göring and Hitler. Information that would be considered special, for example, were the Berlin-Rome telephone conversations between Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano.[19]

Hitler's view on the FA reports were that they were extremely reliable, with the material presented to Hitler verbatim. Linguists were given orders not to make guesses if there were gaps, but to fill them with rows of dots. A special courier section was used that traveled in special cars, not railway cars, with dispatch boxes set up for which only Hitler, Ribbentrop and Göring possessed the keys. Once read, reports were returned, and sometimes due to mixups in sheet numbering or missing sheets due to human error, specific sheets would be re-requested.[19]

The government agencies on the distribution list for daily brownsheets of the RLM/Forschungsamt were:[20]

• Reichswirtschaftsministerium - Ministry of Domestic Economy.
• Reichsfinanzministerium - Finance Ministry.
• Reichspropagandaministerium - Propaganda Ministry.
• Auswärtiges Amt - Foreign Ministry.
• Buero Ribbentrop - Private Intelligence Service of the Foreign Ministry.
• Ministerium Speer - Armament Ministry.
• RSHA - Headquarters for the security police, security services, criminal police and Einsatzgruppen.
• Oberkommando der Wehrmacht - German Military High Command.

The FA ran its own intercept stations.[21] To meet its operational requirements, the FA used 5 different station types, and were called Research Posts (Forschungsstellen). The stations were categorized as follows:

• A Stations - Telephone Intercept
• B Stations - Wireless Intercept
• C Stations - Radio Broadcast Monitoring
• D Stations - Teletype and Telegraph Intercept
• F Stations - Mail Censorship[22]

The A stations were positioned throughout Germany and later in German occupied countries. These stations were equipped with one of two interceptor switchboards, which enabled the operator to tap into any conversation. The taping was done at the post office with tap lines routed into the station. Included in each switchboard was a Wire recording recorder. The operations of the A stations changed at the start of the war. Prior to September 1939, the intercept stations acted in a civilian function, reporting on the many international lines coming into Germany. Although the locations of most A stations are not available from TICOM documentation, it is known that Berlin had a large A station, which was used to tap the conversations of the diplomatic corps. It had a staff of around 100 people, including 50 to 60 intercept personnel. After the war, these operations ceased, with new operations largely concerned with war production bottlenecks, domestic affairs and attitudes of large industries.

B stations were usually positioned outside of towns in points of good wireless reception. Radio messages were intercepted by short wave receivers and then relayed in written form to the FA headquarters. After the war, B stations became increasingly important with the end of telephone conversations between Germany and other nations with the loss of foreign information.

Only one C station existed, which performed the pure monitoring service of public broadcasts from other countries.

The 3 D stations were located in Berlin, Vienna and Dortmund, which were the chief centres of cablegrams leaving Germany. The D stations operations were also greatly diminished after the start of the war.

The F stations were created after Germany was at war, were not extensive in operation. Censorship offices were operated by OKW and later by RSHA. The F station consisted of small groups attached to these censorship posts. It was known that the FA was concerned with postal censorship[23]

In addition to the stations operating in Germany, the FA setup operational units in occupied countries. In the Netherlands and Poland, A stations were installed with advancing troops. In Vienna, for example, the A station was functioning two days after the occupation. Mobile units were also used during the Polish campaign, but were reported to be largely unsuccessful chiefly because of lack of cooperation with the German Army.[24]

Specialist Oden Hoeckley, head of Section 15 of the FA, who had been employed by Siemens and Halske, and been classmates of various members of WA Pruef 7 (Waffenamt), and also collaborated on the design of the T53e (Siemens and Halske T52) teleprinter, stated the following:

There were 100 to 150 sets at the Templin and Luebben station and from 20 to 30 at Cologne, Konstanz, Eutin, and Gols. Traffic was forwarded by cipher teleprinter, i.e. the T52c, T52d or T52e. The FA did not develop its own intercept equipment, preferring to use the Army, the Reichspost or industry equipment.

Liaison between the OKW/Chi and the FA was known to exist[25] A special liaison officer (German:Verbinddungsmann), Dr E. Klautachke, was assigned to the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. The form of this liaison took the form of passing intelligence to the Supreme Command and answering specific questions.[26] Dr Klautachke stated that he did not concern himself with cryptologic matters and stated that liaison regarding these matters did not exist. Considerable ill feeling existed between the FA and OKW/Chi. Wilhelm Fenner in his homework for "TICOM"[10] stated that friction existed between the FA and OKW/Chi started when 33 people went over from Chi to the FA. Personnel friction between Fenner and Selchow existed as well. The question of competence could be used as a lever, as Hitler had assigned the working of diplomatic messages to the FA exclusively, which OKW/Chi had decided that it was not going to let that work move to the FA. Fenner considered the FA had overreached its competence, as the continual requests for help for decipherment aid by the FA to the Pers Z S showed that the FA was not able to supply what was desired. Indeed, the GA tried to get aid from Chi thus overlooking its claim that the OKW/Chi was not competent. Indeed, the OKW/Chi understood neither the organization nor the operations of the FA. The FA sent its traffic to Pers Z S and Chi but to Chi only what the FA saw fit to send, and the OKW/Chi would sometimes receive material from Pers Z S, which was not supplied direct.[10] However it was clear that intercepted traffic was still exchanged between the two units. Indeed, up to 30% of all the intercept traffic received by OKW/Chi came from the FA [27] Fenner stated he had no use for the FA and considered it a private toy of Göring, for which it has no excuse except to further inflate Göring's vanity.[10]

Attempts were made by the FA to take over the monitoring function for the OKW/Chi which was vigorously resisted and in view of the types of monitoring which the FA conducted, which was similar to the FA requirements, would suggest the duplication of monitoring activities as unnecessary. Dr. Walther Fricke, a leading cryptographer of the OKW/Chi, who stated that he knew nothing of the FA until some of them came to Schloss Glucksburg, and who stated that they were a big names with nothing behind them, on being told that the FA employed over 2000 personnel, his comments were:

For their deciphering they should have needed a handful. They must have had other work to do, but what the devil could they have been doing with 2000 people?[28]

As regards General der Nachrichtenaufklärung (Abbr. GDNA), the signals intelligence office of the Oberkommando des Heeres, it was evident that greater liaison took place. This liaison took the form of actual division of tasks and sharing of personnel information. Liaison was also conducted over the IBM developments (Hollerith machines). One of the most important achievements of the FA which resulted from this cooperation and was revealed by Dr Otto Buggisch, one of the leading cryptanalyst of Inspektorate 7. Buggisch reported that the FA was able to read Russian Teletype traffic.[29] Buggisch stated that the FA had some success in reconstructing a Russian Teletype machine in 1943 and recognized it had certain similarities in design with the German SZ40. After a short time, the Soviets changed the design. The FA communicated its results to Inspektorate 7 and were given a report on the solution of a German cipher teleprinter (the model unknown). Buggisch stated this was one of the very rare cases where the FA and Insp. 7/VI exchanged results. Other areas of liaison were known to exist. Insp. 7/VI took the lead amongst German cipher agencies in the use of IBM Hollerith machinery to conduct cryptologic work. This machinery was made available to other agencies. Wilhelm Tranow of the B-Dienst stated:

About March 1942 we paid a visit, in conjunction with the Luftwaffe and the FA, to the OKH Hollerith department in Victoriastrasse, Berlin.[19]

The position of the FA and the OKL-Stelle, the cipher bureau for high command of the Luftwaffe under Göring, should have facilitated an exchange of information between them. TICOM interrogation found no ill feeling between the FA and OKL-Stelle indicates that was not the case. OKL-Stelle was concerned with air traffic ciphers, so a functional division did exist between the two agencies. However, the FA did supply diplomatic and general intelligence to OKL-Stelle. Lt. Colonel Friederich, Chief of Division III of OKL-Stelle stated:

He did not work with them [the RLM/FA] except to the extent that Chief Cryptanalyst Ferdinand Voegele, Chief of Section E, sometimes met with cryptanalysts from this and other agencies to discuss general problems. The FA furnished the Luftwaffe with appropriate traffic on occasion. We asked what was the function of the FA. He said its purpose was really hidden from the services, who were not allowed entry to the establishment. Only Voegele had any contact with them and that only with the cryptanalysts.[30]

Friederich knew that it was a political organization, not military. When it worked on foreign systems, it was only on traffic in the rear.[31]

Liaison between the FA and the Signal Intelligence Agency of the Navy High Command (B-Dienst) was documented in B-Dienst Yearly Progress reports prepared by the navy and by interrogation of B-Dienst Chief Cryptologist Wilhelm Tranow. Cooperation took the form of working on the cracking of the British Inter Departmental Cipher.[32] Tranow stated in interview:

I informed the FA, the OKW/Chi and the GAF [Luftwaffe] of the existence of this cipher in 1940 and the FA and the Navy (B-Dienst) worked on it. The OKW/Chi and the GAF restricted themselves rather to reviving the cypher data when worked out. The GAF did a little work on it, however, and passed any recovered keys on to us.[33] The cypher went out of use in December 1942. This was the last of it. I believe it was used occasionally at a few stations. I stopped work on it [around] December 1942. The FA continued to send us occasional results. In particular these consisted again and again of information about our U-boat losses and British shipping losses etc.[34]

According to Tranow, 2 to 3% of all intercept traffic came from the FA.[35]

The status of the liaison between the FA and the AA/Pers Z, the cipher department of the Foreign Office (Germany) was more fully understood by TICOM. Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign minister of Nazi Germany stated that Minister (Gesandter I Kl.) Selchow, the director of the AA/Pers SZ worked closely with the FA. The Liaison Officer was Dr Gerstmeyer. TICOM Team 1 first learned the existence of the FA from the foreign office cryptanalysts, who knew the names of many of the section heads in Department IV in which their work was related[36] The Yearly Report for 1942 from AA/Per Z inter alia, reveals an exchange of code book recoveries. The name of Senior Specialist Waechter of the FA appears in the Yearly Report and the names of other FA personnel occur in the code books stored in the AA/Per Z archives.[37] From this evidence it is clear that technical cryptanalyst liaison existed between the FA and the AA/Per Z.