《The Gestapo:A History of Horror》By Jacques Delarue
The Gestapo's power spread throughout France (4)
On 28 September, the task force entered the southern region. It consists of 280 personnel from Abbeville, the Gestapo and the Order Police, all of whom use forged French identity cards. It was an incredible German invasion of vichy government territory and an unprecedented attack on the famous "sovereignty" to which it valued it. The consequences of this incident are very serious.
The 280-man commando team moved into accommodation already prepared for them in Lyon, Marseille and Montpellier. Command was given to Fort Bermel, and Durnbach, who represented Abwell, and Shuster, who represented the Order Police, assisted him in his duties. The whole operation was named "Operation Donal" and all the people spoke French.
The first stage is to determine the location of the launch pads, which have been gradually located from the northern region. Friedrich Denbach was a man commissioned by Abwell, a master technician in the detection of underground networks and a veteran of the political police. Like many veteran agents of German intelligence, he once belonged to the infamous Baltic Freedom Corps, from which Roma chose friends.
He later joined the Black Wehrmacht (an illegal paramilitary organization supported by the Wehrmacht during the Weimar Republic), joined the Bremen Political Police in 1925 and abbeville in 1929. After specializing in radio, he eventually became section chief of the three F sections in Saarbrücken. He effortlessly and quickly located the entire secret network. During the operation's netting, 15 or 20 concealed sites were found in Lyon, while several other launch pads were discovered in the Marseille, Toulouse and Pau areas. Almost all radio operators and their assistants were swept away.
The men of Fort Bermel then arrived at the scene. In 1940, Kiefer's group was one of the first commandos to go to Paris to reinforce Knogen, and the group was named after its leader. Kiefer later stayed in France as a counter-espionage expert. He was a humble man, had no personal ambitions, and made a living from his profession. He was a radio expert who was known to the Germans as a master of "radio games (disinformation)" because of the nature of his special work.
Joseph Kiefer, head of the SS Security Service in France, was in charge of counterintelligence.
After the operator was arrested, the real work began. The "radio game" is a very elaborate substitution operation, after capturing a secret launch pad, in order to establish contact with the enemy, to allow it to continue to send messages. This is an extremely difficult operation. The first is the operational difficulty - having to master the encoding, the precise sending time and the correct call sign, etc. Therefore, before starting work, the initial monitoring time must be long enough so that most of the difficulties can be effectively resolved. At the same time, radio messages must be "received" and "sent" as the original operator.
In fact, there is a set of difficult-to-define customs between operators at both ends of the line, and they can "feel" any abnormal behavior. Each operator has its own "sending" maneuver, and if there are several operators at a location, the communicator can immediately recognize the person on the other end.
The mission of the "radio game" is to force the captured operator to continue sending and receiving messages, while not letting anyone know that he has fallen into the hands of the enemy. To this end, a particularly skilled person must be arranged to monitor him in order to prevent him from sending dangerous signals, even if it is a somewhat unusual method of sending reports.
If the communicator understands what is happening, then the "radio game" will not only not produce the expected results, but will adversely affect its users, because they can easily be "intimidated". The second solution is to replace the operator by imitating him, which is not satisfactory because it is much more difficult.
With the help of the great German expert Kopkov, Fort Bemer and Kiefer successfully completed the "radio game" mission. Many of the captured secret launch pads continued to send and receive regular messages and maintain contact with London, while the latter remained unaware of the operator's arrest, with disastrous results for the French resistance. The Germans received several consignments of airdropped weapons (about twenty thousand were captured in this way), ammunition and cash. They also received documents and uncovered hidden agents and underground networks, particularly in the Normandy, Orléans, Angers and Paris areas. Many were arrested by the Germans.
Horst Kopkov, a member of the Fourth Gestapo of the Imperial Security Directorate, was responsible for capturing all Allied parachute agents.
On 11 November, when German troops entered the unoccupied territories, members of the "Donal" commandos did not return to the northern region but stayed behind to continue their mission. The Gestapo patiently "jigsaw" worked on pieces of information obtained from interrogations or from interception stations, so that a certain number of elements could be reorganized and radio communicated with the French network of British intelligence (i.e., the French branch). After successfully contacting London, the British airdrop envoys were captured, documents were seized, and almost the entire Organization of the British in France was exposed and disintegrated. The Germans' successful use of fake radio transmitters continued until May 1944.
The real "radio game" ended a long time ago, and the Gestapo wanted to end it with a witty remark. In their final message to London, the Germans made a vague mention of the "parachutes" they had received, which read: "Thank you for your cooperation and for the weapons you have given us." But not to be outdone, the British operator returned: "No big deal." These weapons are a piece of cake for us. It's a luxury we can easily afford. We'll get it back soon. ”
Unaware that London had discovered a few weeks earlier that Brittany's launch pad had fallen into enemy hands, the British continued to send contacts to pretend not to know about it, and used this as a cover to introduce agents to form new networks elsewhere.
Operation "Radio Game" had extremely serious consequences for the French Resistance and Allied intelligence, and the damage caused by repair took months and heavy losses. Many resistance members and Allied agents were executed or deported after falling into the hands of the Gestapo. This period must be included in one of the most poignant pages in the history of the Resistance.