Walter Nicolai

Walter Nicolai (August 1, 1873 – May 4, 1947) was the first senior IC (Intelligence) Officer in the Imperial German Army. He came to run the military secret service, Abteilung IIIb, and to be important in the pro-war faction of German leaders during World War I. According to Höhne and Zolling, he was supportive in the foundation of the Fatherland Party.

Walter Nicolai was the son of a Prussian Army Captain and a farmer's daughter in Brunswick. In 1893, he selected a military career. He studied from 1901 to 1904 at the War Academy in Berlin. Trips are known to have taken him shortly before his appointment as Chief of the Intelligence Service of the German High Command to Russia. He spoke fluent Russian. Nicolai was considered ultra-conservative, monarchist, and non-political.

In 1906, Nicolai began his career in Abteilung IIIb, when he took over the news station in Königsburg. He built up the news station in Konigsberg to a major center for espionage against the Russian Empire. After two years of service in early 1913, he was named the head of Abteilung IIIb, which helped to inform others of the Austrian espionage case against Captain Alfred Redl. Nicolai led the German secret service between 1913 and 1919. He directed Abteilung IIIb intensively during the First World War. Nicolai wrote: "Before each new acquisition, delivery pp. to ask the I.O., what benefits it brings for the war. "

When Erich Ludendorff was quartermaster general, there was an expansion of military intelligence for the secret police. Nicolai saw himself as a relentless will to win a military educator, a supervisor and an initiator of patriotic self-discipline. His officers took part in the promotional work for war bonds. Nicolai was behind the founding of the ultra-nationalist Fatherland Party.

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