Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Review Editor
Editorial Board
Submissions
Subscriptions
Current Issue
Volume 5, Number 2
Winter 2005
-- FULL TEXT AND NOTES -MARKUS PHLMANN
Towards a New History of German Military
Intelligence
in the Era of the Great War: Approaches and Sources
The history of German military intelligence (MILINT)
during the First World War has yet to be written in
full. Such a direct claim may seem at first glance to be
somewhat overstated; it is nonetheless fully justified.
Not least of all when one compares the few serious,
scholarly studies to the piles of popular literature.
These popular works, which began to appear almost
immediately after the war itself, have examined
intelligence operations and the key individuals with
either strong apologetic tendencies or the desire to
demonize, depending on each respective author s
political or military viewpoint. The bizarre political
pulp fiction of a William Le Queux, who wrote in the
hysterical pre-1914 atmosphere about the infiltration
of Great Britain by sinister legions of Teutonic spies,
has itself become a topic of cultural history. The books
by Curt Riess, a refugee from Nazi Germany, or the
French writer Jean Bardanne on the head of German
MILINT of 1914-18, Colonel Walter Nicolai, are as
breath-taking as they are erroneous in their claims.1
intelligence department IIIb. The fact that the Gemppreport was planned as a classified after-action report
and as a lessons-learned study, guarantees a number of
critical assessments. On the other hand, it would be
naive not to acknowledge that the report is also a
monument erected by IIIb for IIIb, that it argues
apologetically, and that the historian has to be aware of
all the methodical difficulties posed by an official
history. It has not been possible to establish whether or
not an equivalent study on naval intelligence was
written.7
A second important source is represented by the papers
of the former head of IIIb, Walter Nicolai, papers
which also came to Moscow in 1945 as war booty.8
Accessible since the early 1990s, these papers have not
been seriously examined since they first became
available. They consist essentially of a multi-volumecompilation of excerpts from Nicolai s war diaries,
and his war letters to his wife, interspersed with later,
interpretative remarks. Despite the methodological
problems of such a compilation, the papers provide an
interesting insight into the work of IIIb and the
Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, the Supreme Army
Command), and they complement and in fact correct
Nicolai s publications in many significant details.9
Furthermore, the records of naval intelligence have
survived without serious losses and are also available
at the Bundesarchiv-Militrarchiv in Freiburg.
Other groups of records owe their survival to the
military constitution of the German Empire, as it
provided the armed forced of the Kingdoms of
Bavaria, Saxony, and Wuerttemberg, plus the Grand
Duchy of Baden, with the right to maintain their own
military archives. Where these records have survived,
whether in archives in Munich, Dresden, Stuttgart, or
Karlsruhe, they include useful and often detailed
information on topics such as tactical MILINT, the
interrogation of prisoners of war, air reconnaissance,
propaganda, technical and counter-intelligence.10 The
records of the civilian institutions, especially the law
enforcement agencies, the Ministry of the Interior and
of the German Foreign Office, provide further
NOTES:
[1] See Nicholas Hiley, Decoding German Spies:
British Spy Fiction, 1908-18, in Spy Fiction, Spy
Films and Real Intelligence, ed. Wesley K. Wark
(London: Frank Cass, 1991), 55-79; Curt Riess, Total
Espionage (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1941);
Jean Bardanne, Le colonel Nicola [sic]: Espion de
gnie: Le vritable Organisateur de la rvolution
bolchevique et de l'Hitlrism, son succdan (Paris:
ditions Sibouey, 1947).
[2] See Captain von Rintelen (Franz Rintelen von
Kleist), The Dark Invader, ed. Wesley K. Wark
(London: Frank Cass, 1998, reprint, 1st edit. 1933).
[3] For an overview of the current state of the
academic discipline see Thomas Khne and Benjamin
Ziemann, eds., Was ist Militrgeschichte? (Paderborn:
Schoeningh, 2000).
[4] See e. g. David Kahn, Hitler s Spies: German
Military Intelligence in World War II (New York:
Macmillan, 1978), and Gert Buchheit, Der deutsche
Geheimdienst: Geschichte der militrischen Abwehr