Abwehr

The Abwehr (pronounced [ˈapveːɐ̯], Defence) was a German military intelligence organisation which existed from 1920 to 1945. Despite the fact that the Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Germans altogether from establishing an intelligence organisation of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within their defence ministry, calling it the Abwehr. The initial purpose of the Abwehr was defence against foreign espionage—an organisational role which later evolved considerably. To this end, the Abwehr gathered domestic and foreign information, most of it in the form of human intelligence. Under General Kurt von Schleicher the individual military service intelligence units were combined and in 1929, placed under his Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the Abwehr. Each Abwehr station throughout Germany was based on army districts and more offices were opened in amenable neutral countries and in the occupied territories as the greater Reich expanded. When Adolf Hitler replaced the Ministry of War with the OKW and made the organisation part of the Führer's personal "working staff" in June 1938, the Abwehr became its intelligence agency and Vice-Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was placed at the head of the organization. Its headquarters (HQ) was located at 76/78 Tirpitzufer, Berlin, adjacent to the offices of the OKW.

The Abwehr was created in 1920 as part of the German Ministry of Defence when the German government was allowed to form the Reichswehr, the military organization of the Weimar Republic. The first head of the Abwehr was Major Friedrich Gempp, a former deputy to Colonel Walter Nicolai, the head of German intelligence during World War I, who proved mostly ineffectual. At that time it was composed of only three officers and seven former officers, plus a clerical staff. When Gempp became a general, he was promoted out of the job as chief, to be followed by Major Günther Schwantes, whose term as the organization's leader was also brief. Many members of the Reichswehr (a significant portion of them Prussian) declined when asked to consider intelligence work, since for them, it was outside the realm of actual military service and the act of spying clashed with their Prussian military sensibilities of always showing themselves direct, loyal, and sincere. By the 1920s, the slowly growing Abwehr was organised into three sections:

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