Security Service release

German Intelligence Officers

Walter Hintz (KV 2/1966)

Hintz was a soldier whose real interest lay in oriental archaeology and philology, and whose career led him to service in German military intelligence in Turkey during the Second World War. He acted as a controller of agents rather than being actively involved himself, and found time during the war to publish books and articles on archaeology and oriental languages. KV 2/1966records how by April 1944 he had become de facto head of the German military intelligence organisation in Istanbul, having previously served in Persia and Crete, where he was tasked with interrogating British prisoners of war. As the war in Europe drew to a close, Hintz was interned by the Turkish authorities, and was repatriated to Germany in June 1945, when he was held (and later interrogated) by the BAOR. He is described on the file as being "A Nazi for convenience rather than by conviction. Pleasant manners…Although he did his Abwehr work conscientiously, his interest in archaeology was probably more genuine than his interest in espionage." His file is perhaps largely of interest as a real-life model for the Nazi archaeologists featured in popular literature and the Indiana Jones films.

Walter Rauff (KV 2/1970)

Walter Rauff was the notorious friend and advisor of top Nazi Reinhard Heydrich during the Second World War, among whose dubious achievements was the development of trucks to gas victims. He was arrested by the Americans in Milan, after being rescued from Italian mob, but after his interrogation he escaped prison in mysterious circumstances and so avoided being tried for war crimes at Nuremberg. He subsequently surfaced in Syria as adviser to the government of Colonel Husni Zaim in 1949, and later fled to South America, from where several European attempts to secure his extradition failed.

KV 2/1970 contains reports mentioning Rauff picked up from sources such as German agents like Fritz Lorenz interrogated at Camp 020, which identifies Rauff as a friend of Heydrich and as speaking in a 'metallic voice'. The file includes a copy of Rauff's interrogation report, giving his account of his war-time activities, and discussion about the real nature of his wartime and post-war activities. There is little real detail, however, about his movements and activities after 1949.

Heinz Pannwitz (KV 2/1971)

Heinz Pannwitz, from 1943 the head of the Sicherheitsdeinst unit bearing his name in Paris, the Sonderkommando Pannwitz, was a key figure in German intelligence circles. He was charged, for instance, with investigating the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. This file, covering 1944 to 1954, shows that very little was known to the Security Service about him at the time he had penetrated the Soviet spy ring in Paris and was playing its radio sets back to Moscow through the arrested head of the ring, Leopold Trepper. There are only a few snippets of intelligence from various sources prior to the arrest of one of the translators for this Rote Kapelle operation, known as Friedrich von Sartorius, in Milan in May 1945, and no mention of Heydrich. It is largely from Sartorius' interrogation reports that it became known that Pannwitz and his Sonderkommando group had retreated into the Alps and were planning to form a last redoubt there. Sartorius is quoted as saying that Pannwitz planned to go underground and to carry out assassinations of "prominent allies such as Churchill and Patton". The file contains Sartorius' interrogation reports, early SHAEF appreciations of the Rote Kapelle, and notes that Pannwitz was captured by the French at Vorarlberg in May 1945. The file confirms that Pannwitz was still imprisoned, serving a 25 year sentence, in 1954.