Spy Konigsberg: Polish intelligence in East Prussia

 

In the early twenties, the Polish special services were a fairly effective mechanism for obtaining information and ensuring the security of the armed forces, which gained positive experience during the Soviet-Polish war. In January 1921, the Ministry of War formed a Second Department within the General Staff responsible for solving intelligence and counterintelligence tasks in the interests of ensuring the security of the state. The structure of the French General Staff, which proved its effectiveness during the First World War, was taken as an example of organizational structure. In accordance with the nature of the tasks being solved, the Second Department of the Polish General Staff was divided into three leading divisions, which in turn consisted of functional and regional departments (abstracts). The 1st department dealt with organizational issues of the functioning of the intelligence of the General Staff, personnel, and financial problems. The 2nd Division was the leading unit organizing and coordinating all intelligence and counterintelligence activities of the General Staff. The 3rd department (research) was engaged in the synthesis and analysis of all intelligence information coming from the second department. The command did not assign the task of directly obtaining information to this unit, and therefore it did not conduct independent operational activities. The Department also performed the functions of developing promising tasks for mining vehicles, based on the information needs of the leadership of the General Staff and the Polish military department. In addition to the central office, the territorial representations of the 2nd department of the General Staff, usually located in the major administrative centers of the country and called by the untranslatable term "expositions", also carried out intelligence and counterintelligence activities. In the 1920s, three expositions of the Second Department of the General Staff of the Polish Army were engaged in intelligence activities in Germany: in Poznan (No. 3), in Krakow (No. 4), in Danzig (No. 7). The Danzig Exposition No. 7 was engaged in the work of obtaining intelligence information on East Prussia and the city of Danzig in different periods, and after its disbandment in 1930, the Bydgoszcz exposition No. 3. In Danzig itself, an overland abstract was formed, which closes in its work on exhibit No. 3. These Polish intelligence agencies were repeatedly reorganized due to changes in the operational situation in their area of responsibility, while the main structural division into organizational, operational and analytical units remained. The number of Polish intelligence officers working in East Prussia significantly exceeded the similar Abwehrstelle Ostproyssen apparatus. So, in the Danzig exposition No. 7 in the early 1920s, 5 officers, 4 cornet, 2 non-commissioned officers and 10 privates worked. The existing expositions included the so—called "officer's offices" (posterunki officerske) - grassroots intelligence units located in the border areas proper or on the territory of a neighboring state. In everyday life, they were more often called "parade grounds". Their area of expertise included intelligence gathering in well-defined border areas. For example, before the 1930 reorganization, the Danzig exposition No. 7 included the following officer departments: No. 1 in Grudzenets, No. 2 in Koschierzhin, No. 3 in Szczecin, No. 4 in Tshev, No. 5 in Konigsberg. Of the five listed departments, four directly carried out operational work, and one performed an observational function unrelated to agent work. The number of Polish intelligence officers and officers varied depending on the operational situation in their areas of responsibility and the urgency of their tasks. After the reorganization of 1930 and the creation of the Bydgoszcz Exposition No. 3, it included officer departments in Mlava, Chojnice, Bydgoszcz, Danzig, Ciechanów, and Chersk. The exposition itself was divided into 5 abstracts in terms of functionality, which involved from 30 to 35 employees. The first head of the exposition, Captain Zhikhon, had two deputies (Major Czeslaw Janicki, Major Witold Langenfeld), who simultaneously served as heads of the abstracts. Special importance was attached to the activities of the intelligence and organizational abstract, whose tasks corresponded to those of its opponent— the abstract of the ZF Abverstelle Ostproyssen. Accordingly, the officers of this unit were distinguished by a high level of professionalism in their work on organizing agent infiltration into the German special services. They carried out their activities in close cooperation with a separate information summary of the command of the 8th Military District. This was due to the presence of a certain contradiction in the nature of the tasks they solved: if the ODA carried out a purely "defensive" function of protecting the Polish armed forces from the penetration of German agents, then the organizational and intelligence summary of the 3rd exposition itself sought to plant its agents in German special agencies. This was done in order to protect the Polish Army from "distant" positions, learning about the plans of German intelligence to infiltrate sensitive places from the point of view of security. The main contradiction between "external" and "internal" counterintelligence arose when, in order to solve the tasks of agent penetration into the enemy's intelligence service, it was necessary to transfer some secret information to him so that the source of such information could not arouse suspicion because they were inconclusive. Every intelligence agency in the world is extremely reluctant to part with such information, and, accordingly, the arguments of "external" colleagues had to be extremely weighty in order to convince the "internal" ones to "share" it with the enemy. The nature of the operational activities of the Polish special services has led to a high level of coordination in conducting intelligence and counterintelligence operations. Thus, the permanent head of the Polish expositions in Danzig and Bydgoszcz, Major Jan Henryk Zhihony, attached great importance to the interaction of "positive" intelligence and counterintelligence and demanded that his staff use the full range of operational means to solve "offensive" and "defensive" tasks. The staff of the officer's department (PO No. 4) in Danzig created an extensive operational infrastructure that ensured the uninterrupted flow of materials of interest to Polish intelligence, including purely counterintelligence.

In order to characterize the characters who acted in the field of the struggle of the Polish and German special services, it seems advisable to focus in more detail on one of these fighters hardened in espionage battles, Jan Henrik Zhihon. His name has firmly entered the history of Polish intelligence as one of its most successful employees of the interwar period. He was a participant in most of the intelligence and counterintelligence operations in East Prussia, and during their conduct he proved himself to be a calculating and cold-blooded fighter of the "invisible front." Zhihon hid these qualities under the mask of a kind of "shirt guy" who, for example, could easily call the head of the Danzig Abwehr office, Oscar Reila, on the phone and inform him about his trip to the city or, after getting drunk, "sort things out with him" in one of the restaurants in the city. Zhihon did not recognize any authority, especially among his immediate supervisors, which constantly multiplied the number of detractors who hindered his career growth. This, obviously, explains the slow career growth of Zhihon, who completed his active work in Polish intelligence with the rank of major. However, this did not prevent him from being the organizer and direct participant of a significant number of successful intelligence and counterintelligence operations of the expositions headed by him. The plans of operations developed by Zhihon, as a rule, were successfully implemented, and the effect they brought earned him the honor and respect of his colleagues in Polish intelligence. In the Polish armed forces, as well as in the German, the corps formation of territorial military districts was adopted. The areas adjacent to the southern and southwestern borders of East Prussia were part of the command area of the 8th Corps Directorate, located in the city of Torun. In terms of drill, the expositions were confined to the relevant departments of the command of the military districts, and in operational matters — to the Second Department of the Polish General Staff. It is also necessary to note the nature of the relationship between the expositions and the counterintelligence departments of the headquarters of the military districts (separate information abstracts). If the entire volume of intelligence information received from behind the cordon was sent to the relevant units of the Second Department of the General Staff, then information messages concerning the areas of interest of the information abstracts were sent there for subsequent verification and implementation. The main counterintelligence agencies of the Second Department of the Polish General Staff were separate information abstracts (OIR), which were part of the headquarters of the military districts. Their task was to combat German espionage by their own efforts and means. Information received from Polish intelligence about the manifestations of Abwehr activity in Poland was sent to the OIR for subsequent implementation. Since Polish intelligence did not have executive functions (detention, arrest, investigation of German agents), this circumstance, in addition to the need to coordinate its actions in the fight against German espionage, determined the high level of its interaction with individual information abstracts, which were endowed with appropriate powers. The intelligence agencies of the Polish Border Guard provided great practical assistance to the officer departments. For example, part of the offices of the Greater Poland Inspectorate of the District Border Guard, which operated directly on the border with East Prussia, not only sent the information they received to the Bydgoszcz exposition, but also helped its employees organize the illegal transfer of agents across the border. In the second half of the 1930s, the inspectorate had 1 analytical officer, 6 operational staff, and 182 intelligence agents. The latter were distributed across 39 border posts. At that time, about 590 "confidants" worked for the Polish border intelligence apparatus, of which 180 collaborated on an ongoing basis. To prevent cases of "proactive espionage," Polish counterintelligence made extensive use of provocation, when the method of "framing" was used against suspects. A typical case is the case of Gunther Jagielski. In August 1932, a separate information report from the 8th Military District, through its intelligence capabilities, learned that a Polish citizen of German origin, "imbued" with the ideas of National Socialism, decided to voluntarily offer himself to the Abwehr as an informant. In the abstract, it was decided to stage the Abwehr's interest in the person of the initiator. By simple combinations, Mr. Jagielski was traced to a Polish counterintelligence officer posing as a German intelligence officer. After the initial information about Mr. Yagelsky's intentions to get in touch with German intelligence was confirmed and documented accordingly, he appeared in court. In the summer of 1932, Polish Navy lieutenant Vaclav Schnechowski informed Karol Koptsov, an employee of a separate information center in Gdynia, about his recruitment attempt by Oskar Reile. As a potential agent, V. Shchnekhovsky was quite satisfied with the Abwehr with his great operational capabilities. After graduating from the Naval Academy, he served on the Vilia warship in 1931, which delivered cargo and weapons to the Westerplatte Peninsula. Initially, it was decided to use Shchnekhovsky in the operational game of the Polish counterintelligence. But the proposal of the grassroots body in Warsaw was not supported. The leadership of the II/b division of the Second Department of the General Staff decided not to use Shchnekhovsky in the disinformation operation. The reason for this decision was the data not only about his low moral qualities, but also real suspicions of "double-dealing." It later turned out that Schnekhovsky had indeed maintained a relationship with the exposed Abwehr agent Janina Witte-Festenburg. Having previously addressed his relative Zbigniew Zh. with a request to collect information of interest to the Abwehr, she got into the development of Polish counterintelligence. During the check, it was established that I Witte-Festenburg is an active German agent and has already recruited Schnekhovsky to work for the Abwehr. Mr. Gorachek, who spoke under the working pseudonym "Dr. Muller", was appointed the responsible employee for organizing work with him. It was established that from July 1932 to the moment of Witte-Festenburg's arrest, Schnechowski managed to transfer a significant amount of military information to the Abwehr: technical descriptions of new weapons, the procedure for using ciphers in the Polish Navy, detailed maps of port facilities and transport infrastructure of the Westerplatte Peninsula, etc. After an investigation, Schnekhovsky's case was transferred to the court, which sentenced him to death on January 30, 1935.

The Polish intelligence service in the 1930s also did not remain in debt to the Germans. Among other things, the officer's postern No. 1, located in Mlava, was aimed at conducting intelligence operations in East Prussia. In May 1930, it became part of the exposition No. 3 (Bydgoszcz) and existed until May 1937, when it was disbanded, and the personnel and intelligence tasks were transferred to PO No. 7. The area of the intelligence study of posterunk No. 1 included the entire territory of East Prussia and extended to the section of the Polish border from Danzig to Lithuania. His area of responsibility was divided into the so-called "security zones", which included the areas of Goldup, Darkemen, Angeburg, Oletsko, Lykka, Letzen, Johannesburg, Ortelsburg, Allenstein, Osterode, Morungen, Elbing, Marienburg, Shtum and Marienwerder. In 1935, the configuration of the "security belts" of this poster was slightly changed in the districts of Elbing, Marienwerder, and Shtum. In the early 1930s, there was a temporary period of absence of significant operational results in the activities of the Bydgoszcz Exposition No. 3. Most of the espionage cases carried out in the late 20s and early 30s, which ended with the arrest of a significant number of German agents, led to the loss of opportunities to identify new operations of Abverstelle Ostproyssen. This explains the relative insignificance of the exposure results. In the accounting documents of the Second Department of the General Staff, it was stated that in 1932, the actions of German intelligence conducted in the Polish prikordon were not exposed. There is no information about the employees and locations of the German special services in East Prussia. The state of the German border guards and police has been studied much better. In addition, another reason for the low efficiency of exposure No. 3 was the lack of qualified agents embedded in the objects of interest to Polish intelligence. These shortcomings were typical for the majority of officer posters included in Exhibit No. 3. The same reports from the Second Department indicated that the postern No. 3 in Grudnendze was unable to implement the existing developments in relation to German facilities. Agent 549, having come into contact with German intelligence, was unable to secure it. Due to the termination of cooperation with agent 1082, the possibilities of studying the activities of the police presidency in Danzig were lost. All these circumstances made it impossible to get new "tips" on the current Abwehr employees and, accordingly, to identify the objects of their interest. In addition, in some cases, the low effectiveness of exposure posters No. 3 was explained by the likelihood of German intelligence infiltration into their agent network. The data available to the Polish counterintelligence service indicated that the low effectiveness of the posterunk2 in Gdynia was explained by the suspicion that the Abwehr had managed to take control of its activities by recruiting some agents. The recruitment work of poster No. 1 for 1931 is evidenced by the number of agents newly recruited to East Prussia — 20. Among them was Ernst Tormelen ("673"), an employee of the German border guard, who regularly provided Poles with information and documents about the activities of the guards. Fritz Kuwning ("675"), an architect by profession, was involved in the construction of fortifications. This gave him the opportunity to send his leaders in Polish intelligence a large amount of diverse intelligence information. Since 1934, there have been some positive trends in the work of the exposition No. 3. And they were connected with the activation of poster No. 1 for the study of the Reichswehr garrisons in the cities of Ortelsburg, Allenstein, Rastenburg and Konigsberg. Since the beginning of the year, the office has sent 49 messages to higher authorities concerning various aspects of combat training, the organization of Reichswehr units and the construction of military installations. In the context of the construction of new and reconstruction of old defensive structures in East Prussia (Hohenstein and Christburg defensive positions), which began in 1934, Polish intelligence paid great attention to the study of fortifications under construction. Thus, about 40 of the 49 messages sent to the Center related to the construction to one degree or another. Attached to these messages were 218 drawings, communication schemes, photographs, etc. At that time, the Posterunk staff had a number of valuable and active agents operating in East Prussia. Konrad Weissgerber ("5"), an agent under the cryptonym "527", and Emil Wecławski ("571") were recruited by Polish intelligence officers between 1931 and 1933 and for a long time provided assistance to Poles in obtaining up-to-date information. In 1934, Posterunk's officers conducted recruitment work on 15 candidates for recruitment from among the residents of East Prussia, which ended, however, with the involvement of only two agents. The social composition of the poster's recruiting contingent is indicative: 6 artisans, 3 Reichswehr soldiers, 3 workers, 2 party activists, and 1 policeman. The main objects of the intelligence study of this intelligence service in 1934 were the commandant's office of the 1st Military District in Konigsberg, military garrisons in the cities of Allenstein and Bartenstein. In addition to the intelligence units of the territorial bodies of Polish intelligence, the structures of the central office of the Second Department of the General Staff were also engaged in the planting of agents. For example, the residencies Lykk, Oppeln, Allenstein, and Marienwerder successfully operated on the territory of East Prussia, directly supervised by the Zapad abstract from Warsaw. The great success of Polish intelligence was the recruitment of an employee of the headquarters of the Reichswehr construction unit in Konigsberg (agent "672"), from whom, in the process, several dozen information messages were received on various issues of fortification construction of the Heilsberg-Bartenstein defensive hub. In 1934, about 260 messages were received from him and other posterunk agents with a large number of drawings, photographs, drawings, and operating instructions for individual units. In the Second Department of the Polish General Staff, materials related to the technology of construction work, technical samples of the components and assemblies used were also highly appreciated.

From 1934 until the outbreak of the war, the Bydgoszcz exposition conducted a long-term operation, which was listed in Polish intelligence documents under the conditional name "Wuzek" (cart, cart). All these years, the results of the operation were highly appreciated by the leadership of the Second Department of the Polish General Staff, who received a huge stream of information messages of various kinds. It was initiated by the same restless Captain Zhihon, when he managed to recruit an employee of the Dembowski railway directorate in Danzig, and a number of Polish customs and postal agents at the Polish-German Chojnica border station. The fact is that according to the Polish-German agreements, transit cargoes traveling from Germany to the territory of East Prussia, entering the Polish section of the "corridor", lost German jurisdiction. The wagons were guarded and their contents monitored by the Polish side. Polish intelligence took advantage of this by organizing a secret inspection of the contents of German wagons. The procedure for the operation was as follows. An official of the Danzig railway, Dembovsky, having access to the original lead seals and other devices used to seal the wagons in the Choins, arranged for their supply to Zhihon in the required quantities. The contact was another Polish intelligence agent, Viktor Klednik. At the Chojnice border station, the mixed Polish-German customs commission checked inventories and invoices for shipments, after which the wagons were sealed with German seals. Zhihon's agents from among the Polish customs officers, according to signs known to them, indicated the numbers of the wagons that needed to be secretly inspected. During the passage of the train through the Polish section of the "corridor", the wagons were opened by Polish intelligence officers, and their contents were examined. Postal items sent to addresses of interest to Poles were illustrated in a laboratory specially equipped at one of the stations. If there was a need to study technical samples, the wagons in which they were located were detached from the trains under various plausible pretexts and placed on sidings, where further work took place. After the completion of the next stage of the operation, the wagons were sealed with original German seals obtained from Dembovsky. The main requirement for such operations was the extremely secretive nature of the work, in order to exclude the very possibility of the Germans discovering the fact of access to their mail correspondence and thus not giving the German side a reason for political demarches. In the accounting documents of the Polish intelligence service, the progress of Operation Wuzek was regularly assessed and it was constantly stated that with minimal financial costs, the effect was enormous. Until the Germans discovered the secret archives of the Polish intelligence service in 1939, they did not even suspect that the largest Polish intelligence operation had been taking place under their noses for almost five years. Since the second half of the 1930s, Polish intelligence has generally experienced a marked decline in effectiveness due to a number of objective and subjective factors. Objective reasons include the tightening of the Reich's legislation on espionage and high treason, the strengthening of regime and counterintelligence measures in institutions and units of the Reichswehr-Wehrmacht for the protection of state and military secrets, and stricter rules for crossing the Polish-German border. The espionage cases heard in court in Germany in 1935, which ended in death sentences, sharply The recruitment base of Polish intelligence was narrowed; candidates for recruitment refused offers of cooperation en masse, fearing subsequent sanctions in case of exposure. Under these conditions, the Poles were forced to look for new forms of work and change outdated methods of intelligence activities. These "novelties" did not always contribute to success. For example, the use of the practice of sending so-called "recruitment letters", when proposals containing financial terms of cooperation, security conditions, etc. were sent to more or less studied candidates, led in the future to the "clogging" of Polish agent networks with double agents, substituted or turned over by German counterintelligence. It was under such conditions that German agents Jan Krajewski, Erich Krajewski, and Kurt Schwenzig managed to infiltrate the Polish intelligence network. This did not mean that the Poles suffered nothing but defeats at the front of the secret war. In addition to the operations already underway, a number of successful recruitments provided them with a large number of information materials on the progress of the ongoing transformations in the Reichswehr related to organizational changes, the introduction of new types of weapons and equipment, etc. Despite the list of tasks common to all Polish intelligence agencies, which included both "positive" intelligence and conducting counterintelligence operations abroad, due to the specific conditions of a particular intelligence agency, their peculiar specialization took place.

For example, the main focus of Officer's poster No. 2 in Gdynia was to conduct "offensive" counterintelligence operations abroad. The area of responsibility of this intelligence point included the regions of East Prussia and Szczecin. In 1933-1934, her network of agents included 13 agents who obtained diverse information about the Reichswehr, political organizations, the police, etc. Due to the active use of its agent, hidden under the cryptonym "1145", a number of objects of interest of German intelligence were identified, which made it possible to neutralize its activity in certain areas of Poland by setting up operational "games". In 1935, three agents were involved in Posterunk's foreign counterintelligence operations, but by 1937 their number had increased to ten. Accordingly, these quantitative changes were associated with a change in the specialization of this point in conducting active, offensive actions aimed at infiltrating the agent network of German intelligence. The process of forming new units and formations of the Wehrmacht that began in 1935, as well as the tightening of the counterintelligence regime in Germany, forced the leadership of Polish intelligence to reconsider outdated approaches to organizing intelligence work and begin organizational and staff changes in subordinate units. In particular, in the Bydgoszcz exposition, the agent networks were reorganized in a short time, providing for the creation of small and easily manageable groups. In 1935, as part of these changes, contacts were terminated with 26 agents suspected of "double-dealing", as well as those who lost the opportunity to obtain information of interest to intelligence. During the same year, it was again involved in cooperation. 38 agents. By this time, the formation in Danzig of the so-called "observation brigade" of seven agents, designed to carry out surveillance of objects of interest of Polish intelligence. With the measures taken, Major Zhihon managed to significantly activate the work of his subordinates. Leon Gronkovsky began his recruitment work in Danzig, having managed to recruit a certain Almon, an aviation expert who, based on the sources available to him, compiled analytical reviews on the progress of the reform of German military aviation. Since that time, the activities of the Bydgoszcz exposition, in addition to work on East Prussia, have spread to other regions of Germany. Agent "1185", who was acting as a draftsman in the Ministry of the Air Fleet, began transmitting information about the creation and modernization of German aircraft. Three stations were set up in Berlin and Schneidemuhl, led by recruiting agents "1144", "1164", "1178". What was the situation with the final assessment of the activities of Polish intelligence on the eve of the war? Already in London, where the Polish government-in-exile had moved, research was conducted by interested government agencies to determine the causes of Poland's military and political defeat in the 1939 campaign. A group created on the initiative of the head of Government, General Vladislav Sikorski, designed to assess the effectiveness of Polish intelligence, analyzed all available information on this issue, the results of which were summarized in a memorandum by Colonel Ludwik Sadowski. The study was conducted on the basis of interviews and written reports from 190 former employees of the Polish intelligence service who managed to evacuate Poland. In addition, after the war, the former chief of the Polish General Staff, General Vaclav Stakhevich, again turned to studying the issue of the Polish army's readiness for war, the conclusions of which were reflected in a detailed report. The conclusions contained in the memorandum testified that Polish intelligence, in the course of its activities, had studied the German armed forces, their mobilization capabilities, and partially their offensive plans. Immediately on the eve of the war, it was possible to identify the main groupings of German troops and identify almost 80 percent of the large units of the German land and air forces. The plans for the defensive campaign developed by the Polish General Staff were largely based on agreements confirmed in May 1939 with the French allies that, with the beginning of the German attack on Poland, France would immediately begin offensive operations in the West. It was here that the first major mistake was made by the Poles, who believed in the good faith of the allies, who, as it turned out, were simply not ready for a serious struggle. The second major mistake of the Polish High Command was the lack of faith in the possibility of any agreements between the USSR and Germany. Polish leaders, including the Chief of the General Staff and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, could not believe that in the face of a fierce ideological confrontation, Stalin and Hitler could secretly agree on joint actions in a relatively short period of time. The confidence that the Soviet Union would observe "benevolent neutrality" in the conditions of the outbreak of war was due to the lack of any information about the August Soviet-German negotiations. The analytical apparatuses of Polish departments, including military intelligence, "overlooked" or did not attach importance to important direct and indirect indications of changes in the official polemic between Germany and the USSR, which abandoned ideological cliches in the characterization of the opponent. For example, the absence of anti-Soviet attacks in Hitler's speech at the celebrations of the launching of the new armored cruiser Bismarck and, accordingly, the "anti-fascist" statements in Molotov's speech at the third session of the Supreme Council did not alarm Polish analysts.

In addition, Polish intelligence became aware of some information about the speech of "supporters of rapprochement with Germany" at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), which the deputy head of the Second Department of the Polish General Staff, Colonel Josef Englicht, ignored, considering "Soviet disinformation." More important data indicating a change in the nature of Soviet-German relations were contained in the intelligence reports of the Polish border guard, which managed to record the unloading of German military equipment in Leningrad. A direct indication of the ongoing Soviet-German negotiations was received by the Polish military attache in Berlin from General Bodenschatz. The Polish intelligence leadership did not attach importance to this information, considering it to be disinformation campaigns designed to influence Poland's position on the Danzig corridor.